I Awakened as a Dark History - Chapter 1

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 1
December of senior year, after the college entrance exam results came in—the day had arrived to exorcise the books from the shelves.
“This is heavy…….”
My steps grew clumsy under the weight of the box crammed with textbooks.
The Trash Dump just ahead seemed as distant as a thousand-mile journey.
As I moved slowly, someone came running and took the box from me.
“You carried it all the way here yourself? I told you to wait.”
“If you kept going back and forth, it would be too much for you, Dad.”
Dad carried the box to the Trash Dump with practiced efficiency.
His gloved hands pulled out the books and wrapped them tightly with twine.
“Are there more books coming down?”
“This is almost everything. Mom said she’d bring down the notebooks.”
I crouched beside Dad and began pulling books from the box.
“Hey! Wait! Ha Choeun!”
This wasn’t a task for me alone. A friend who lived in the same Apartment Complex waved frantically from a distance.
I tossed aside the box I’d been emptying and waved back with equal enthusiasm.
“What? Choe Arin, you’re throwing out books too?”
“Yeah, getting rid of everything. I’ve even got middle school textbooks.”
“You do? Me too. I’ve got a ton of notebooks. Two shopping bags full.”
“Wow. I don’t use notebooks much, so I don’t have many. But do you have any that are completely filled?”
“No. Not a single one.”
While we giggled, Mom came downstairs with a shopping bag.
I hurried over and took it from her.
Choe Arin awkwardly bowed and greeted my mother.
“Hello.”
“Oh, Arin—it’s been a while. Throwing out your books?”
“Yes.”
In the meantime, I was pulling notebooks by the handful from the shopping bag.
Everything had to be tied up with twine or the garbage truck wouldn’t take it.
And in the course of those careless hands, something ominous finally emerged…….
“Wow. That landscape photo notebook is like an artifact, right?”
“I bought it when I started middle school and it’s still here. It’s practically new.”
Among designs that stirred memories, it appeared.
“Gasp.”
A jet-black cover.
And across it, words scrawled in white marker caught our eyes immediately.
‘Do not read.’
‘My notebook only’
‘Only I can see this’
‘Absolutely do not open XXX’
They were words that transformed an ordinary notebook into something ominous.
The moment I saw it, I should have backed away quickly…….
But like the first victim in a foreign horror film, I summoned up courage from nowhere.
“What notebook is this?”
“Look. It might be worth keeping, don’t you think?”
Choe Arin moved close beside me as I crouched. And so the ominous notebook fell open.
“Aaaaah!”
The black notebook deployed a psychic attack.
Its effectiveness was extraordinary.
I immediately shrieked and clutched the notebook to my chest.
“Aah! Agh!! Aaaaah! Aaaaaaaah!”
As I suddenly collapsed and screamed, the gazes of passersby converged on me.
“Mom, look—a prairie dog.”
“Shh. That’s not it. She’s a test-taker.”
Fortunately, people showed infinite tolerance toward students discarding books at this time of year.
And within that kindness, I turned my eyes sharply toward Choe Arin.
Depending on the situation, I was prepared to turn my friend into the heroine of a morning drama.
A resolve best forgotten.
“Did you see it?”
“Huh?”
“Did you see it?”
I grabbed Choe Arin by the shoulders and started shaking her.
“Did you see it or not?!”
Choe Arin raised a soulless thumb with an ominous smile plastered across her face.
“Yeah, Chloris!”
Back in elementary and middle school, there were certain manga that had taken the world by storm.
And I had become deeply, utterly, completely obsessed with them.
Obsessed enough to imagine myself living in that world.
The name of the fairy that had been born from that obsession coming out of my friend’s mouth was mortifying.
I braced myself as best I could.
“Come here. Head down.”
I looked around for the perfect rock.
Unfortunately, the well-maintained Trash Dump had no rocks.
Instead, someone had left behind a frying pan.
“Perfect. Let’s just erase that one memory.”
“Eek! Chloris is bullying me. That’s school violence, Chloris! And you’re supposed to be the kind fairy of the flower garden!”
“You lunatic, I said don’t!”
I lunged after Choe Arin as she fled, my own ridiculous shouts chasing her.
Both sets of parents watching our foolish antics simply shook their heads.
Since this wasn’t the first or second time, neither seemed to have the will to stop us.
My meager high school fitness gave out before long.
We couldn’t even escape the Trash Dump before collapsing against each other, gasping for breath.
“Don’t tell anyone about this. Seriously.”
“Yeah, but honestly I barely saw it anyway. I only caught the name and the picture.”
That was some consolation.
Only one thing had been discovered—and even then, just the name and the drawing.
‘Even one page is mortifying enough.’
Choe Arin still had that mischievous gleam in her eye, grinning away.
I dragged her back between the piles of books.
In my mind, I wanted to burn the whole wretched thing on the spot and scatter the ashes all the way to the sea, but reality had other plans.
“I’m going to hide it between other notebooks and throw it away. Don’t touch it. I mean it.”
I was warning Choe Arin, who was eyeing my notebook like a hawk, when it happened.
Boom—
The ground shook once, sharply.
Rumble—
Then the apartment swayed for a long moment after.
A chill ran through us both.
Earthquake. Fire. Sinkhole. Every natural disaster imaginable flashed through my mind.
And finally, there was only one natural disaster that dominated all our thoughts.
A Dungeon.
The kind that had appeared suddenly over ten years ago, causing countless deaths and financial losses—and was still doing so.
“Evacuate! We need to get out of here, now!”
My father was the first to snap to attention, gesturing urgently.
But it was already too late.
A deafening roar filled the air.
The sound of an enormous vortex tearing through space assaulted our ears.
It was the sound of chaos, wind, and suction—the sound of people being pulled in.
“Mom! Dad!”
“Ahhhhh!”
Then everything went black.
* * *
Splash. Splash…….
My face was cold.
“Ugh… ugh.”
I groaned softly and raised my hand to wipe my cheek.
Ice-cold water clung to my face instead.
The chill jolted my eyes open.
Through newly opened eyes, a familiar face suddenly came into focus.
“You’re awake! Ha Choeun, hey—are you okay?!”
“Uh… uh.”
I managed a response and pushed myself up to sit.
Choe Arin let out a sigh of relief and pressed close against my side.
“Where is this? Where are we?”
The surrounding space was a vast cavern, though it hardly resembled one.
The wide, luminous underwater environment overhead was the reason why.
It felt like we’d stepped into an underwater dome.
Though there was no glass, the water seemed held back by something—it didn’t pour down into this chamber.
And the countless passages that branched out from this cavern were likewise untouched by the water.
It was an incomprehensible sight.
“I don’t know. It’s a Dungeon, I guess.”
Choe Arin answered that way while sniffling—not an idle gesture, but the sound of swallowing back tears.
Looking around, there were plenty of people besides us. It seemed the Dungeon had swallowed everyone who’d been in the Apartment Complex.
Children cried while adults scrambled to make sense of the situation, leaving everyone in chaos.
“Where are our parents?”
“Over there.”
And amid those trying to manage the situation were our parents as well.
Whether it’s a blessing or a curse that they’re here too, I couldn’t say.
“They keep saying it’ll probably be okay, but nobody really knows. Nobody seems to understand what’s happening. There aren’t any Hunters here.”
Choe Arin sniffled again as she spoke of darker prospects, fresh tears threatening.
I too felt my heart sink, and I clutched the Notebook in my arms tightly.
And I regretted it.
“God, this is insane. Why did this Notebook come with me? Am I cursed?”
I had no idea why this thing—not even a doll—had ended up here.
Suddenly all the tension and fear drained away, replaced only by exasperation at the Notebook.
At my reaction, Choe Arin reproached me with complete bewilderment.
“Hey, is a Notebook really important right now?”
“It is.”
Unfortunately for me, it’s important above all else.
“If we leave it in the Dungeon, nobody’ll ever see it. Should we just dump it and go?”
“…And then some Hunter finds it, thinks it’s an Item, takes it out, and it goes on the news broadcast.”
[Breaking News]
A Notebook has been discovered in a Dungeon. It contains descriptions of various creatures, including the fairy Chloris, and the Hunter Association suspects it may be a record of Magical Beasts—
‘I absolutely cannot leave it behind. I’ll keep it safe and burn it the moment we get out of this Dungeon.’
I steadied my resolve and cradled the Notebook close.
Never in my life did I think I’d treasure a Notebook this much.
Thankfully, talking about the Notebook seemed to ease Choe Arin’s tension.
She wiped her eyes with a much calmer expression on her face.
“We learned all the Dungeon Wave Evacuation Procedures, and still people fall into Dungeons.”
Choe Arin spoke in a voice that was trying, however weakly, to sound more upbeat.
“I’ve heard stories about Dungeons appearing and houses collapsing or fires breaking out.”
But this was the first time I’d seen a Dungeon pull in all the people around it.
I even entertained the absurd thought that maybe it formed underground like a sinkhole and people just fell through.
“Will the Hunters come soon?”
“Hey, hey, don’t cry. If you lose your nerve, you won’t be able to run.”
I wrapped an arm around Choe Arin’s shoulders and patted her gently.
I was soothing her with pretended composure, but truthfully, the situation wasn’t good for me either.
If Choe Arin cried, I’d start crying too—so I was desperately trying to comfort her.
“Mom. Mom.”
Just then, a young child’s voice came from not far away.
The boy was tugging at his mother’s hem while pointing upward with his finger stretched high.
I followed the child’s gesture without thinking and looked up.
Overhead, the clear underwater environment was still spread out as before.
But unlike before, there were fish we hadn’t seen earlier moving about.
“Look, an eel. An eel.”
If you had to judge by size, perhaps as large as a dolphin.
The fish gathered one by one, looking down at us inside the dome.
And what the child was pointing at was beyond those fish.
A long, massive shape moved slowly closer, casting a huge shadow.
Just as the child said—it looked like an eel.
But you could tell it wasn’t an eel even from a airplane.
It lunged forward in an instant, its massive body crashing down upon the dome.
Crash!!
The impact shook the cavern itself, sending tremors through every stone.
“Ahhhhh!”
“Run, run! Help!”
Panic-stricken people screamed and fled in all directions through the cavern.
Every dark passage became a route of escape.
We were no different. Drained of color, we cried out for our parents like frightened children.
“Mom, Dad!”
“Dad!”
We tried to push toward them, but there were too many people.
Shoved and crushed from all sides, we found ourselves being driven further away.
“Ha Choeun! Honey, where’s Ha Choeun!”
Before I could wave my hand at the sound of Mother’s voice cutting through the screams, the cavern shook once more.
Crash!
Splash!
This time an ominous sound accompanied the impact.
The massive beast shattered the barrier that separated the cavern from the water above.
Water poured down like a bomb, hurling people away.
“Gasp! Cough!”
Choe Arin and I were swept up in the deluge, pushed to the far end of the cavern.
I couldn’t see my parents anymore.
Screech!
Crack.
Help me! No, please!
Growl.
Run, get inside, hurry!
Our child! Our child!
All the sounds merged together until nothing made sense.
As water rose to my chin in seconds, I could see it beyond the barrier with perfect clarity.
It resembled a serpent, but it had a mane.
Three claws tore relentlessly at the dome.
With each blow, more Magical Beasts poured through.
Choe Arin grabbed my arm and forcibly pulled me up.
“We—we need to run too! Now!”
I don’t know where she found the strength, but she lifted me bodily. I had no time to think.
Shriek!
Splash. Splash. Splash.
Screech!
Dodging the torrent of fish-shaped Magical Beasts, we stumbled desperately into the darkness.
The chaos behind us felt like a dream.
I wished it were a dream.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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