An Absurdly Polite Exile
"Hyunmin... I'm sorry, but I think you need to leave the guild."
Even hearing those sudden words from the Guild Master, I wasn't particularly surprised.
After all, when someone drags you out this late at night for an emergency talk, it's always going to be something like this.
If anything, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a line straight out of a novel or a drama.
Not the kind of opener you'd find at the start of a proper banishment story — Lee Hyunmin, you are hereby expelled from our party — you know, the classic.
Instead, this was calm. Almost polite. And somehow that felt like the bigger letdown.
Then again, I suppose it beat getting chewed out.
So I simply accepted what the Guild Master had to say and nodded along.
If we were parting ways anyway, my parents always taught me not to leave behind bad memories.
And I'd always been a solo hunter at heart, so I had no real attachment to the guild to begin with.
"Understood."
I left a short reply, gathered my things, and walked out.
I had no grudge against Oh Heejun, the Guild Master — we'd never fought, never clashed — so there was no bad blood on my end.
If anything, I'd watched him more than once from the sidelines, head in his hands over responsibilities he never wanted.
I figured he must have his reasons for needing to cut me loose, so I didn't even ask what they were.
More than anything, I'd spent the whole day clearing dungeons and gates, and it was already late. I was tired, and I just wanted to sleep.
I'd formally withdraw from the guild early tomorrow morning... or, if I didn't get around to it, I assumed they'd simply expel me on their own. Either way, it would sort itself out.
Except Oh Heejun apparently had no intention of letting me go that easily. The moment I stepped through my front door, my phone began buzzing with a text.
From Oh Heejun.
The message, in other words, was asking me to sit down and reflect on my own sins.
Hmm... with Oh Heejun, my pity outweighed any irritation, so I wasn't exactly itching for a fight.
Besides, making enemies for no reason is a losing proposition in life anyway.
That didn't mean the text put me in a cheerful mood, though.
As far as I was concerned, the basic courtesy when pushing someone out is for the party doing the pushing to explain themselves.
So honestly, texts like this did not sit well with me.
If anything, they were uncomfortable.
The whole reason I'd left so quickly was to avoid hearing them drag out the explanation, minute by painful minute.
Getting interrogated over text like this was flat-out unpleasant.
For a moment, I considered just ignoring it.
I quickly gave up on the idea.
This was a relationship that was already ending — no point in souring it further.
Hunter society had more or less established itself by now, but there was still not a single good thing that came from making enemies.
That said, I wasn't so much of a pushover that I'd answer a text like that with perfect courtesy.
I figured I was entitled to show a little of my annoyance too.
Also, I genuinely had no idea.
The reply to my "no idea" was somehow even more absurd.
Blatantly nudging me to reflect on my wrongdoings and confess them.
Except I didn't think I'd ever seriously wronged anyone in my life.
Though they do say the perpetrator never remembers...
So I just made something up and sent it.
I threw together a rough blend of every unpleasant thing I'd ever been told, every bad habit someone had once pointed out to me.
"You're too loud" was about the only criticism I'd ever heard in my life, so this answer was about as carefully considered as I was going to get.
"..."
The content of the reply was, of course, utterly ridiculous.
I mean... you won't even tell me who had a problem with me, and I'm supposed to apologize to whoever I feel sorry toward?
Hmm... fine. Fine, I can see it a hundred different ways. From the Guild Master's position, he's probably trying to protect the "victims."
Like I said before — enemies are a massive headache once you've made them.
Maybe he's keeping them hidden from me, wrapped up tight, so they don't needlessly develop a grudge against me.
So yeah... I get it.
I understand that, as Guild Master, he doesn't have much choice.
But understanding it doesn't mean I have to play along.
For one thing, wasting energy on this nonsense was getting tiresome.
And for another, I didn't actually feel sorry.
No, seriously — a loud voice isn't a crime. Some people even liked it. Said my voice was good, said it had power.
Right. My voice isn't some one-sided flaw; it's the kind of thing that splits into pros and cons depending on the listener.
It comes down to taste. That's all.
Apologizing over something like that felt a bit much.
Specifically, I thought going around person to person to apologize for it was absolutely out of the question.
I fired off a bare reply and decided not to lift a finger beyond that.
Hey, if anyone out there was genuinely wronged, they'd crawl out of the woodwork on their own.
And fine — if someone actually worked up the courage to come to me directly, I'd be willing to apologize.
My voice was too loud, they hated hearing it — if they were willing to go that far, sure, an apology was the least I could do.
It's not like apologizing would cost me an arm and a leg.
More than anything, if one apology could shake off someone who hated me that much, that was a pure win.
I'd experienced more than once how exhausting it is to have someone clinging to you with some inexplicable grudge.
But apparently Oh Heejun wasn't looking at it that way. It seemed this man belonged to an entirely different breed.
...? Minji...?
Who on earth is that?
Out of nowhere, the name of someone I couldn't place at all came flying at me.
Wondering if the Guild Master had developed some kind of misunderstanding about me, I sent back an honest answer.
Eridna... Ah, the hunter with the codename Eridna?
Her real name was Minji? So she's a woman.
Wait, hold on — am I even allowed to be hearing this, secondhand, behind her back?
She never revealed it herself, did she?
Before I could even gather my thoughts, the phone buzzed again, texts stacking up one after another.
The Perception-Disruption Kit.
These days, it's a baseline necessity in hunter society.
"Know your enemy and you'll win every battle" — read in reverse, that means the moment your own capabilities are exposed, you've already lost to whoever's facing you.
Countless fights had proven exactly that.
No matter how strong a hunter was, if too much information about them got out, they'd find themselves flat on their backs against some scrappy underdog who had come prepared to exploit every weakness — occasionally... no, honestly, quite often.
Which is why the perception-disruption kit, invented by one particular awakened hunter, had become all but mandatory equipment for hunters today.
It vaguely obscures your name, your face, that sort of thing.
Now, a powerful hunter who really set their mind to it could punch through one.
But unless two people were genuinely ready to go all the way to the bitter end, that kind of thing almost never happened.
It might sound funny to put it this way, but.
A sort of etiquette had taken root in hunter society — one where protecting each other's personal information came first, above everything else.
And that was exactly why I found myself wondering whether I should even be continuing this conversation.
The hunter known as Eridna had never once revealed her personal details to me.
Learning them like this, through someone else's mouth — was that really right?
Granted, if she set her mind to it, anyone could dig up that kind of information in no time, but I'd never had any intention of doing so.
And judging by the fact that Eridna had kept it hidden from me, at the very least she hadn't wanted me, of all people, picking her identity apart in that much detail.
So I decided to just wrap up the conversation as quickly as I could.
We were talking casually...?
She'd slipped into informal speech a few times while we were joking around, sure, but I don't think we ever actually dropped honorifics for good?
Besides, mentoring rookie guild members was hardly a once-or-twice thing for me. I'd done it plenty.
So why was he reacting this defensively?
Could it be... this guy had fallen for that Minji person?
The man who has a girlfriend?
No. No way.
Oh Heejun might be a little wishy-washy and a little slow, but he wasn't the kind of trash who'd cheat. I wanted to believe that, at least.
"What the— are you serious?"
Approaching her with impure intentions?
I didn't even know whether that person was a man or a woman?
Normally I'd let a fight slide, but swallowing an injustice like this was a different matter.
Without a second's delay, I fired back a reply.
The sheer injustice dragged the most obvious response imaginable out of me.
Honestly, I didn't have anything else to say beyond that.
Because I was genuinely, bone-deep wrongly accused.
Look, I like women. Sure. I was born a man, after all.
Given the choice between spending time with a man or a woman, I'd take the woman every time. I'll admit that freely.
But not once — not a single time — had I ever approached someone because I thought they were a woman.
"No, what kind of brain-dead..."
The kind of garbage nonsense that forces a mutter out of you even when you're trying not to.
I simply closed my phone and pulled out a single Guild Move Scroll.
The scroll wasn't cheap, but this was not the moment to be pinching pennies over a situation this asinine.
After all, my parents always used to say:
When your feelings are settled and certain, act on them — don't stop to count the material costs.
So I tore the scroll without a moment's hesitation.
The instant I arrived at the guild, I made straight for the mail slot, ready to jam my withdrawal notice inside.
Stamped, sealed, and pressed down good and hard.
And in that very moment, something caught my eye.
"Ah, well. It's not like I wanted to stoop to this — my pride just wouldn't survive it otherwise."
Still, having burned an expensive scroll on this, I figured I ought to walk out with something.
So before slamming the withdrawal form down, I turned on my heel and headed, step by deliberate step, toward the Guild Public Storage.