Siyun's Heart-Pounding Association Tour!
It was her first visit to the Awakener Association since the day she had come to report her awakening.
"Nothing's changed at all."
At least among the things she still remembered, nothing looked different. Then again, it had been years since her last visit—maybe she simply wasn't remembering properly.
A massive building that called to mind the adventurer guilds from manga. Flags bearing the emblems of the major guilds and families flapped in the wind from the facade. Before the entrance stretched a tall flight of white stairs, flanked on both sides by flower beds overflowing with greenery. Awakeners of every kind and Association staff came and went freely through the doors.
Inside, the Association's main hall looked like the interior of a castle from a romance fantasy novel, with staircases branching off to either side. The first floor handled general consultations and registrations. The second floor offered deeper counseling, various administrative services, and a range of commissions.
From the third floor up, however, things were different.
The first and second floors were open even to unaffiliated awakeners—those commonly called freelancers. From the third floor onward, only those with an official affiliation were allowed entry. Not only that, but the building itself was split down the middle from the third floor up, as if it had become two separate structures. Climb the left staircase and you entered the space used by guild-affiliated awakeners; take the right and you reached the area reserved for family-affiliated ones.
When the two sides had first been divided, people had argued that there was no need to separate awakeners who were essentially the same. But even if they currently maintained a peaceful coexistence, guilds and families were fundamentally hostile to each other. Before the Great War, conflicts between guilds and families had broken out nearly every other day.
The mere fact that those same guilds and families had joined hands for the first time—and that fifteen years later they were still working to repair the damage from that era—was enough to suggest just how catastrophic the devastation Wolshik had inflicted on the world, and how far-reaching its influence had been.
Back to the present: the place Yi Siyun needed to go today was the second floor… or so it should have been. But a girl who had barely set foot in the Awakener Association before could hardly be expected to know that. Jostled this way and that by the crowds, she wandered until she finally grabbed hold of a nearby Association employee.
"Um, e-excuse me…"
"Yes? How can I help you?"
She had simply grabbed the nearest staff member within reach—but the moment she looked at the person she had stopped, she couldn't help but freeze in shock.
Because the woman was famous? Possibly. The Association employee she had seized, Cha Nari, actually held a fairly high position within the organization, and with her good looks she appeared on broadcasts often enough.
But at least in this moment, the reason Siyun was stunned had nothing to do with the woman's celebrity.
What had left her speechless was the sheer, overwhelming—almost violently enormous—size of her chest.
When she had first called out to Cha Nari, Siyun had assumed the woman was carrying something heavy. That was part of why she had spoken so carefully. After all, when two objects the size of watermelons were nestled against someone's body, the natural conclusion was that she was holding something.
Staring openly at a person's chest after calling them over was hardly polite—no, it went well beyond a lack of manners and into territory that could easily be called sexual harassment. And yet she couldn't tear her eyes away from the suit jacket whose buttons looked ready to burst at any second, the glimpse of cleavage through the slightly parted fabric, and the black mole set like a star in that vast valley.
Fortunately, Cha Nari herself didn't seem particularly bothered by the stare. She asked again.
"Is something the matter?"
"Huh? Oh—no, I mean…"
Only then did Siyun manage to claw her way back to her senses. She lifted her head, saw Cha Nari's face—and promptly lost her grip on reality all over again.
Neatly arranged black hair. Fair, clean skin with light makeup. Round glasses. And that eye-catching mole just below the left corner of her lips. It was the face of someone she had seen countless times on television.
Right. Siyun had been so captivated by Cha Nari's chest that she was only now realizing the owner of those breasts was Cha Nari herself.
In short: Yi Siyun was a fan.
On top of that, this was her first time ever seeing a celebrity—or anyone of similar fame—in real life.
"Ah—um, h-hello…!"
"…? Hello."
When Siyun offered an awkward greeting, Cha Nari gave her a puzzled look. Fair enough—stopping a stranger mid-stride, standing there in silence for ages, and then managing nothing more than a hello would look strange to anyone.
"Is that all you needed?"
"Oh—no, that's not it."
Finally collecting herself again, Siyun asked what she had originally meant to ask.
"Could I maybe get a photo with you… just one?!"
Wait—that wasn't it either!
Only after taking a selfie with the still-bewildered Cha Nari did Siyun truly snap back to her senses and ask the question she had actually come for.
"Um, where can awakeners pick up commissions…?"
"Ah… for that, head up to the second floor and go all the way to the left. You'll see it."
"Ah… thank you…"
"Of course. Good luck."
With the same cool expression as before, Cha Nari gave a light nod and continued on her way.
Siyun, giddy just from having spoken to someone famous, climbed the stairs to the second floor with a goofy grin—then belatedly cried out.
"I didn't get an autograph!"
She could always get one next time… right? Cha Nari had looked busy, so hanging onto her any longer would have been a nuisance. Siyun decided there would be another chance and resolved to wait for it.
Of course, she had no way of knowing that the next opportunity would be a long time coming. Cha Nari was an indispensable figure at the Association—busier than Siyun could possibly imagine.
Spinning happy daydreams, Siyun walked all the way left on the second floor until several rooms came into view. Through each doorway she could see multiple kiosks, and the type of commission available seemed to depend on which room's kiosks you used.
Rooms 1 and 2, for example, handled odd jobs—the kind she had heard about before: finding a lost pet, moving heavy furniture, and so on.
From Room 3 onward, the nature of the commissions changed in earnest. Combat became a requirement. Everything from bodyguard work to beating down local thugs or teaching someone a lesson. And since these were commissions available through the Association, the opponents you faced would also be awakeners. At best they might be unaffiliated neighborhood punks—but that didn't make them opponents to take lightly.
And finally, Room 4. The commissions available there were the kind where a single misstep could cost you your head. Given the danger level, lethal force against the targets was permitted. Suppressing organizations or groups that had been caught endangering civilians or possessing dangerous materials—or villains with firepower on par with an organized force. "Suppress" was the polite word; most of those jobs ended in total wipeouts.
Naturally, commissions of that caliber weren't meant for solo work. How was one person supposed to take down an entire group of awakeners? Most of the time, teams of at least five awakeners accepted those jobs together.
That said, there were people who took them on alone. Those individuals generally fell into three categories.
The most common were rookies who overestimated their own strength and accepted the commission without knowing any better. Most of them charged in alone and died horribly. Occasionally one got lucky and made it back alive—but those cases were genuinely rare. Organizations weren't exactly in the habit of letting the awakener sent to kill them walk away free.
The second type were those who wanted to grow stronger even if it meant risking their lives. Their survival rate was higher than the first group's, at least. They knew their own limits well enough that when something looked impossible, they didn't stubbornly push through—they ran. Of course, the death rate was still far higher than not.
The last type… put simply, were madmen. Lunatics. Avengers who had lost someone precious and gone blood-mad with revenge. Money-crazed bastards who would do anything if the price was high enough. And… those who simply enjoyed killing—no, massacring.
Among those who fell into that final category, one person had been making waves recently. Her exact identity was unknown, but… what was it people called her? The White Witch?
The Witch in White. The Crystal Witch. The Blood Witch. She went by countless names. Among the public, she was often just called "the Witch" for convenience.
Public opinion on her split into two camps. Some argued that wiping out every single target on every commission she took made her a potential villain in her own right. Others shrugged and said she only killed villains, so what was the problem?
Yi Siyun personally belonged to the former camp. For all the airheaded moments she showed day to day, she was still an Academy student aiming to become a righteous hero. Someone like that could never accept the Witch's methods. If she ever met the woman in real life… well, she wouldn't have any grounds to pick a fight, so she couldn't fight her—but she certainly wouldn't be able to get along with her. A psychopath who enjoyed murder was exactly the kind of person Siyun found utterly repulsive.
"…Whatever. I should just grab a commission already."
She wanted to give gifts to her benefactors—Cecilia and Elysia—as soon as possible.
Siyun carefully opened the door to Room 1 and stepped inside. Since it was her first day, she planned to try a few commissions from Room 1, then move on to Room 2 if those went well. And if those went well too, Room 3.
…As for Room 4, she had absolutely no intention of ever setting foot in there.