Still, a Filthy World (2)
I'd never actually seen how women fought each other, so I couldn't say for sure—but I'd also never seen a woman with a cheek bruised purple from a real hit, and the sight of it hit me hard.
On top of that, for all that she was our senior, Minji looked three or four years younger than us twenty-year-olds. I just couldn't bring myself to say anything harsh to her.
And she wasn't stupid. She had to have known exactly what kind of rough reception she'd get, coming here. There had to be a reason.
"Serena. I need a favor."
"Huh? What kind of favor?"
"Take Lim Sowon and head home first. She's way too drunk."
"Don't be ridiculous!"
Sowon raised her voice and shouted at me. Whether she was actually fine or just pretending, only tomorrow's version of her would know. Judging by how much she'd poured down, it was safe to say she'd already hit the blackout threshold for tomorrow.
So I decided to get firm.
"Lim Sowon. I'm ordering you as captain of the first-year raid team."
"You seem to have forgotten—I'm the one entrusted as the representative for the entire year. I need to understand this situation more thoroughly!"
"This involves my teammate getting hurt. And I was there when it happened."
"That's…"
That finally seemed to stop her. Sowon bit her lip. This was the moment to ease off the reins a little. I took her hand, lowered my voice, and asked properly.
"Just go inside for now. Scolding and interrogating a senior who came all the way out here isn't a good look. I'll talk to her carefully, so just go in. I promise I'll tell you everything I hear."
Her dignity was already in tatters, but Sowon would figure that answering a request made this earnestly with pure anger would only put her own baseness on display.
Sure enough, she twisted a lock of her wavy silver hair around her finger, making no effort to hide how uncomfortable she felt—but she chose to step back.
"Don't get the idea that you've won. I simply chose to yield."
"Yeah. Thanks."
No need to press the point. I gave Sowon's shoulder a couple of pats and jerked my chin at Serena. Serena nodded like she understood and took Sowon by the arm, pulling her along.
At last it was just Senior Minji and us. Facing her—hair a mess, head hanging, face full of gloom—left me feeling thoroughly unsettled.
"Fix your hair again. People are staring from every direction as it is."
Sowon's exit had more or less settled things, but after the whole scene, people were still glancing over and whispering. Minji nodded and slowly put her hair back in order.
She only pinned it up loosely with a hairpin, though, without removing the hair stick. Taking the stick out and redoing it properly would have looked much neater. I stepped closer, meaning to help by undoing it for her—
"Ah—wait, this is…!"
"Sorry?"
"The hair stick…. You can't touch it."
She flailed her hands in the air in embarrassment, and I just nodded.
Don't tell me it's something like my horns. The thought of how incredibly inconvenient that must be sparked a strange sense of kinship and pity. Of course, it might not be that at all….
While she was fixing her hair, the proprietress came over and asked to check her ID—a little incident born of how young she looked. Minji handed it over without a flicker of panic, as if this happened all the time.
"You look so young. I thought you were someone's niece."
Whose niece? Mine? Technically she was about that age relative to me, but hearing it while stuck in a twenty-year-old body left a sour taste.
I'd already ordered the drinks, and money was money—I wasn't about to waste them. I offered Senior Minji a glass of soju-beer mix.
"…Thank you."
Minji accepted it with both hands, polite as anything, knocked it back in one go, then poured herself another and drank that too. Baby-faced or not, the girl could put it away.
"Philin. You shouldn't drink too much either."
"What, you gonna drink it then? What am I supposed to do with all this?"
"I'll drink it."
"Well…. Fine."
The coming night still niggled at me, but he wasn't the kind of guy I needed to worry about that much. I decided to just hand most of the alcohol off to Junhyuk. It wasn't the money I hated wasting—it was the booze.
I downed a glass of soju-beer myself, then stopped Senior Minji, who was already on her third.
"Did you come here to freeload free drinks? How about you start talking now."
"No, I was going to pay…."
"That's not what I meant…. Ugh, I'm covering the tab, so don't worry about it."
A credit card with no limit worries was basically a magic item. At the rate I was swiping it, I half expected a phone call to come through one of these days.
Senior Minji started speaking, her pronunciation slightly soft around the edges.
"I need to tell you about the Gwinung special admission first…."
"So it was Gwinung after all."
"What's that?"
It was a setting that never showed up in the game, so I asked Junhyuk. He crossed his arms, making no effort to hide how sour he looked about it.
"The ability user among ability users."
"Also called the supernatural among supernaturals."
In this world, by design, humans, demons, and elves could all handle mana. Depending on how hard they worked, they could go beyond everyday applications and reach a level where they could actually fight monsters.
There was a classification code for people qualified to face monsters. In my case it read "Mage–Healer"; Junhyuk's was "Warrior–Martial Artist." Basically, a job class system.
But sometimes a special code got attached on top of that.
Proof that someone possessed a unique supernatural ability no one else could replicate—something beyond the level of ability you could generally achieve with mana.
"I never thought there'd be someone at the Academy with the character for 'demon'—gui—stuck after their classification code."
"How many Gwinung special admits are there at the Academy?"
"One."
"…What?"
Each year had about two hundred students, four years total—roughly a thousand to eleven hundred people. And among all of them, the single person classified as a Gwinung holder.
That was Min Yukyung.
"They're rare enough just existing, but the moment they enter a mission, their very presence is a tactical asset."
"So the professors…."
"Dote on them, yes."
There were so few of them, and once they joined a team their presence alone could tear through any strategy. Just having a Gwinung was enough for automatic admission to the Academy with no exam, and from day one every professor showered them with favor.
"That's why Yukyung did combat specialization in first year, fire support in second, and nursing now. She'll almost certainly do intelligence in fourth year."
"Why switch that often?"
"She's reading the professors. Figuring out who treats her best."
Producing fine heroes to protect humanity from monsters—that was the Academy's founding ideal and its reason for existing. Professors who contributed to turning out lots of heroes received generous national research funding without stint.
From that angle, the easiest way to achieve the goal of "producing fine heroes" was to hold onto a Gwinung special admit. Actually protecting humanity from monsters was too vague to pin down, so as long as they could snag the research money in front of them, the atmosphere was one of not caring much what that student got up to.
"Everyone's gone completely insane."
Rotten to the core. Even a supply sergeant dangling a career NCO contract in front of a short-timer wouldn't be this evil. At least that sergeant would pretend to feel responsible if the NCO he recruited caused trouble.
When monsters became a variable, people had rallied around heroes.
Now that life was livable again, people had started exploiting that environment and structure all over again.
I'd felt the same thing when I heard about scammers targeting the independence support funds given to heroes' children.
It was so similar to reality that it made the whole worldbuilding even more miserable.
But separate from all that, there was something I still didn't understand.
"But Senior. Listen."
Senior Minji, who'd been drinking after finishing her explanation, froze mid-sip and looked at me.
"…No. You can keep drinking while you listen."
Unnecessarily polite, this one. She was two years our senior, and seeing her this cowed and anxious actually made me the uncomfortable one.
"But why are you the one apologizing over that?"
The system was the problem. It didn't seem to have anything to do with Senior Minji herself.
She fidgeted with the hand holding her glass for a moment, glancing around uneasily. Then she dropped her already soft voice even lower—so quiet it was barely audible—and spilled the story.
"I wanted to get into Yukyung's good graces, so I did something I never should have…."
First year.
Senior Minji had been in nursing specialization, Yukyung in combat.
During the midterm exam against shadow monsters, she'd watched Yukyung ignore every teammate and tear the monsters apart alone—and felt a strange kind of admiration.
"Do different specializations usually form teams together?"
"No, but that time was an exception. It wasn't really a test—it was just a showcase for Yukyung."
Because there was no existing sample of how her ability manifested, the monsters couldn't copy it. They just charged in with swords, she said.
A stage that made abundantly clear just how overwhelming a student admitted as a Gwinung special recruit really was.
Yukyung put on the most dominant display she could and became a member of the first-year raid team. She would have been selected even without all that, but there was a reason she'd given everything she had.
"Yukyung had no money. Her whole family."
"Family—but aren't her parents heroes too?"
"No. That whole family are non-ability users."
I supposed that was possible. Skill with mana varied from person to person. A spectacular dragon rising out of a ditch, basically.
But her parents hadn't been admirable people. Once the concept of mana existed, it became a new kind of credential, and people who couldn't handle it properly in daily life got washed out of the workforce.
Yukyung's father lost his job that way, then became a violent alcoholic who beat her at the slightest provocation. Her mother, trying to save herself in that situation, had an affair and ran off, abandoning Yukyung.
No money. Everything came down to money. If there'd been money, her father would have been warm, and her mother wouldn't have run. That was how Yukyung thought about it, Minji said.
So instead of killing the father who hit her and the mother who fled from her, Yukyung decided to put everything back the way it was supposed to be.
With money.
"Isn't that a completely insane idea?"
"It is insane, but…. Back then I didn't have room to think about that. I just wanted to help Yukyung."
"How were you supposed to help her?"
The answer to that question was a shock.
"If you use the detoxification techniques you learn in nursing specialization, you can manufacture drugs with mana—it's banned, but…."
"Don't tell me you…."
Sold them? I couldn't close my mouth. I never would have guessed the story was this wild. It wasn't the alcohol—the story itself was enough to make my head spin.
But if you could think normally—no, she knew it was banned, so why had Senior Minji helped Yukyung? No matter how I turned it over, it didn't add up. What was the source of that recklessness that could move a person even knowing the path was wrong?
Then one possibility suddenly brushed through my mind. I shook my head, thinking there was no way—but given that an already absurd-scale story had come out, nothing would really be strange anymore. I decided to just throw it out there.
"Uh, please don't take this the wrong way, Senior. It's just that no matter how I think about it, this is the only case that fits."
Senior Minji kept her head bowed, biting her lip as if she'd already anticipated the question.
All kinds of thoughts seemed to be crossing through her. Tears dripped one by one into the empty glass.
"Do you… like Min Yukyung?"
I'd asked thinking of course not.
"…I love her."
She nodded.