A Leader's Responsibility
Gulping down his anxiety at the silence, Heejun typed out an excuse like a man pleading his case—then his fingers stopped.
Now that he'd gone and said even that much, anything more he typed felt like it would only provoke the other side further.
Living long enough, you learn that sooner or later you have to pick a side. But actually going through it, Heejun's heart sat anything but comfortably on either one.
Some part of him already knew, on some level, that he'd done the wrong thing.
Blindly trusting one man's word was barely any different from passing judgment without a trial.
Heejun knew perfectly well, in his head at least, that it was something a person leading any group should never, ever do.
And yet shallow sentiment had gotten there first, and he'd gone and done it anyway—all in the name of looking after the people he'd known longer, casting out a shallow acquaintance without ever bothering to establish who'd actually done what.
Emotional, and at the same time calculating, in the pettiest possible way.
A deep discomfort was settling into a corner of Heejun's chest.
It was true that he felt a measure of guilt toward Hyunmin, of course.
Though right now, the fear weighed considerably heavier than the guilt.
Whatever the deliberations and whatever the consensus, they had cast out a man who was no ordinary hunter.
A hunter ranked quite high up... no, very high up.
If he went up against the guild's full strength, he might be at a disadvantage—but judged on pure individual skill, he was a formidable power in his own right.
In a one-on-one, there was probably no one in this guild who could beat Hyunmin.
He remembered it clearly. It had only been a friendly exhibition, nothing on a grand scale, but it was Hyunmin who had single-handedly racked up all-kills, match after match, at the arena tournament held between multiple guilds—and handed this guild the championship.
So yes, it was a deeply hypocritical thought, but Heejun was terrified, down to his bones, of making an enemy of Hyunmin.
Ever since Hyunmin had walked out of the HunterTalk not five minutes ago, the anxiety had him gnawing at his fingernails.
Confused messages began surfacing all across the HunterTalk the instant Hyunmin left—proof enough of just how much weight he'd carried in this guild.
Heejun had expected roughly this kind of reaction, but it ran far stronger than he'd imagined.
Truthfully, he'd been aware of it himself, at least to a degree.
That what Hyunmin did for the guild was never a small thing. That the influence he wielded within it was enormous.
That was why he'd been afraid—and why the fear was flooding back now, all at once.
Hyunmin had stayed such a short time, and yet he'd left deep footprints everywhere before vanishing. It gave Heejun chills.
Maybe the guild's executives had felt a similar creeping dread.
Watching everyone lean on Hyunmin more than on the very people running the guild must have stirred some uneasy restlessness in them.
And even so, Heejun felt gratitude toward that same man, tangled up with the fear.
Hyunmin had quietly taken care of the new guild members that Heejun, head over heels for his girlfriend, had neglected. Whenever there was a guild event, he threw himself into it more eagerly than anyone—sometimes organizing the whole thing himself.
An honestly ideal guild member.
But no matter how fine a member he was, he couldn't overcome layer upon layer of territorial resentment.
Some of the existing members found Hyunmin deeply, unbearably awkward to be around, and in the end he had to go.
They'd confronted Heejun with such a plausible cause, such convincing testimony, that there'd been nothing he could do.
"Heejun, look at this. The reason Yujin quit the guild last time? This guy wouldn't stop coming onto her. That's it, that's the whole story."
"Even on the Hunter Code, recruits only join when there are women on the roster. It's all guys? Nobody signs up."
"This is our chance to push him out. You keep him around any longer, he's going to cause an incident. I'd bet my life on it."
Guild master or not,
a Korean was still a Korean, and under the pressure of his older hyungs and noonas, Heejun had no choice but to waver.
He was always preaching—forget about age, let's build a fair and harmonious guild—and in the end, this was what it came to.
He trumpeted his ideals, yet every time something like this happened, the wall between generations loomed unmistakably real.
Maybe a difference in age was the single tallest wall that could stand between human beings.
Maybe the reason people understand each other least comes down to nothing more than the years between them. A bitter, self-mocking resignation settled over him.
There was no un-spilling the water now.
The executives had agreed, the decision to expel Hyunmin had been finalized, and they'd flung the banishment notice at him like an interrogation.
Even replaying it in his own head, the tone had been foul enough to make anyone grind their teeth.
And yet here he was, trembling at the thought that the man might hold a grudge.
He'd plunged the knife that would earn their enmity, and now, paradoxically, he was terrified of having a full-blown enemy on his hands.
Perhaps Heejun's instincts were registering the danger before his mind caught up.
Either way, Heejun forced himself to steady his nerves.
No—he had to steady them.
The decision was made, and as guild master, he had to keep his head on straight somehow.
The best he could do was smooth things over on the surface, at least.
He had jumped the gun and thrown Hyunmin out on a snap judgment himself—but whatever happened, he was determined to prevent the fallout from ever reaching the guild and tearing it apart.
A selfish, shallow attitude through and through. But as guild master, he had to salvage something.
He rationalized it as the best he could offer—confessing his honest feelings without the usual flimsy lies.
Anyone else listening would gag at the bias and point fingers, but this was Heejun, unvarnished, down to the bedrock.
Besides, Hyunmin was a deep, thoughtful sort. If Heejun laid his heart bare like this, maybe the man would come to accept it on his own. He even harbored that ugly little hope.
A dry, clipped reply, before long.
Only then did Heejun quietly let out a breath of relief.
He'd been wringing his hands the entire time—no answer for ages, was the man stewing in resentment, gearing up some kind of smear campaign?—but it seemed the worst-case scenario had been avoided.
With the tension eased just slightly, Heejun decided that since the channel was open anyway, he'd wrap things up with as pretty a bow as he could manage.
Of course, the flat finality of Hyunmin's text sent the sinking anxiety surging right back up—but there was nothing Heejun could do about it now.
No. Even if he were tomorrow's Heejun, there wouldn't be much he could do then, either.
"Guild Master. Why did Hyunmin leave?"
"Th-that... I'll make an announcement on HunterTalk later. Let me discuss it with the executive board first."
A stalling excuse, nothing more.
But the next morning, with a handful of new guild members—perception-disruption kits wrapped around their faces—asking where Hyunmin had gone, deflecting was about the best play Heejun had left.
One way or another, the decision had been made by getting swept along in the senior members' turf war.
If anyone started pressing into right and wrong, this side had more than one or two things to answer for, so he wanted to tread as carefully as possible.
At the very least, he wanted to stop any needless rumors about Hyunmin from spreading further among the members.
But that small hope of his was soon shattered to pieces by a single executive's shout.
"Whoa... that Lee Hyunmin bastard, he cleaned out the guild warehouse!"
"What?? Are you serious?"
"Eh?? Hyunmin did what?"
Watching Junho deliberately raise his voice as if making sure everyone in earshot heard, Heejun felt an inexplicable weariness wash over him.
He didn't think the man was a bad person at heart.
But for some reason, whenever anything involving Hyunmin came up, Junho reacted this sensitively, this loudly.
This was no different.
Even if Hyunmin really had raided the warehouse, the proper order of things was for the executives to assess the situation first and then make an announcement.
So what was the point of standing in the middle of the guild airing it out like a town crier? What was he playing at?
What if it turned out to be a misunderstanding? How would anyone clean that up?
Besides, a hunter who'd accumulated wealth on Hyunmin's level had almost no reason to loot guild supplies in the first place.
And doing it while leaving the guild? That was the kind of stunt that got you blacklisted across the entire hunter community and thoroughly ostracized.
The Hyunmin Heejun knew wasn't stupid enough to play such a self-destructive move.
"I mean, wow... looks like he took everything he could get his hands on within his access permissions?"
Still, Junho had said his piece, so Heejun dragged his exhausted body over to the guild warehouse system.
And there it was, in its entirety: the withdrawal log showing Hyunmin really had pulled a massive quantity of items.
"Heejun, we can't just let this slide, right? We should pin this to the Incident Archive right away, no?"
For a moment, Junho looked pathetic—oddly giddy and excited, even with guild assets ransacked.
But Heejun couldn't bring himself to push back.
He owed the man for past favors, and the record showing Hyunmin had taken the goods right before his withdrawal was undeniable.
So he gave a silent nod instead—tacit consent.
Junho whooped with delight, snapped photo after photo of the evidence, and promptly bolted for the Hunter Plaza archive where incidents were recorded.
"Um... Guild Master? When are you distributing the Ertel's Breath? We've got a guild raid first thing this morning, so..."
He was still staring sourly after Junho's skipping, receding back when a guild member's careful question snapped him out of his thoughts.
"Ah—my apologies. There's a bit of an issue with the warehouse right now. I'll distribute it personally in a little while."
Right. What was done was done.
He couldn't fathom why Hyunmin would raid the warehouse knowing full well the risk it carried.
But first things first—he had to deal with the crisis right in front of him.
Because he was the guild master, after all.
Heejun hurriedly called the one member in charge of supply logistics, the man who kept the warehouse stocked.
"Yeah, Minhyuk? You asleep?"
"Mm... hyung... just woke up. I'm a little worn out from getting run ragged by Hyunmin and you yesterday..."
At the sudden mention of Hyunmin's name, Heejun nearly choked.
He barely managed to swallow the awkwardness and forced himself to the point.
"Uh... sorry you just woke up, but—could you restock the Ertel's Breath in the guild warehouse? Right now, if possible?"
"Huh...? We've already used all of it? I remember there being quite a lot."
"Yeah... about that... you probably haven't checked HunterTalk yet, but Hyunmin, he..."
"Look, I'm in really rough shape today, okay... Just talk to Hyunmin-hyung directly about it. If you ask him, he'll send it to you straight from the source."
"Straight from the... source?"
In that instant, Heejun sensed something deeply ominous in Minhyuk's choice of words.
Something slithering up out of the dark—a colossal truth he'd been desperate to look away from.
He could feel it gnawing its way up through him: the crushing, original guilt of a guild master who had neglected his own guild and let something fatal slip past him.
Every instinct screamed to hang up right now.
To never, ever hear the next words out of that mouth.
But Minhyuk—fresh out of bed, with no grasp of the situation whatsoever—was in no mood to grant him such a flimsy escape.
"Yeah... everything in there, I stocked it all after receiving it from Hyunmin-hyung in the first place..."