Chapter 52
Chapter 52
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 52
Chapter Title: Alma Mater (3)
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Once hailed as Korea's shield, the Hunter training institution known as The Guard—envied and resented in equal measure—met a pathetic end.
Only a scant handful of people had gathered.
A lone man stood at the podium, delivering a speech.
"The very people meant to protect us abandoned us to save their own skins. They're not even plotting a counterattack. They literally deserted us. They're stains on our era. I intend to wipe away those stains and build a new future in their place."
A face I'd seen somewhere before.
Park Sang-min, was it?
The National Assembly member who strutted around like he owned the place.
I hadn't seen him since he started hanging around Je Phong-ho, but like always, scum like that seemed to have nine lives.
Murmurs of discontent rippled through the crowd.
"That's the bastard. The one who insisted on tearing down the school building even after nothing was left."
"At least he's trying something. Elections are coming up soon, right?"
"National representatives? That thing where they're picking five hundred of them?"
"Korea's population's been cut in half, and yet the number of freeloaders just keeps growing? For whose benefit?"
Half the crowd was badmouthing Park Sang-min, but the other half looked like his entourage.
"What do you know?"
"Shut up. You obsolete relics got dumped for a reason."
"Don't you get it? More national representatives means more rights for the people."
"Exactly. If you're gonna whine, take it up with the National Crisis Committee that abandoned you. You wouldn't dare say a word to the ones holding your leashes."
Park Sang-min watched from afar before wrapping up his speech.
"The filthy era will end. A new one will dawn. I, Park Sang-min, will sprint full throttle today and every day to usher it in alongside all of you."
As Park Sang-min drove off in his car, half of the already sparse crowd filtered out.
In the bleak scene, whipped by sand-laced winds, only about twenty people remained.
They all looked older than me.
Mostly in their forties, with the occasional fifty-something sprinkled in.
No one younger than me, even if I scoured the crowd. Not even anyone my age.
I scanned for one woman, clinging to faint hope.
Maybe Kim Daram was here.
She was one reason I'd accepted Woo Min-hee's invitation.
I'd thought she might show up.
This place held deep meaning for both of us.
Others might curse my mentor as a fraud, but I'd received his grace.
Kim Daram had too.
Jang Gi-yeong treated orphans like us the same as rich kids with power and money.
He never belittled us for lacking parents or gave us any disadvantages.
I'd always been grateful for that.
The other instructors weren't like him.
But Kim Daram didn't appear.
Neither did Baek Seung-hyeon, who'd tried to drag me down using her name.
"......"
Two small goals had gone up in smoke.
Had either shown, I might've gotten some answers to lingering questions.
Beside the school stood a modest mourning hall.
Jang Gi-yeong's.
I hadn't known why they'd set up a funeral for a living man next to the school, but now I had an inkling.
Woo Min-hee's doing.
Her twisted sensibilities had scripted this melodrama.
The visitor's book opened to a flourish of elegant script—the name of the event's mastermind.
[Woo Min-hee]
Behind it, hazy memories of a few instructors, some seniors' names. Totaling fewer than ten.
I added mine on the tenth page.
"......"
I hesitated for a moment.
Should I write Park Gyu?
Technically, yes. That was proper—my public and private name, respect for the deceased.
But some inexplicable whim pushed another option.
No one guarding the hall lent it weight.
Slowly, reverently, I inscribed my presence in the book for the still-living "deceased."
[Professor]
To the mentor already dead—and fated to die again—that name might resonate deeper.
Thinking of his shining moment, pushing through opposition that deemed me unworthy.
Voices from middle-aged men by the hall drifted over.
"The director said he had an ace up his sleeve to stop the demolition. What do you think that was? He swore it'd work."
"Who knows. But no matter what anyone says, Jang was a patriot. Loyal to the nation till the end. After stepping down and getting tangled in lawsuits, the Chinese tried scouting him. He turned it down flat. No one else like him."
No matter the criticism, Jang Gi-yeong commanded more respect than Lee Sang-hun. He deserved it.
Not just because I was his favored student.
"Please step back. Demolition starting soon."
Gunfire echoed distantly as people clustered.
A few nodded at me, but I didn't recognize them.
Vaguely familiar faces, but too distant now for chit-chat.
Any talk would echo hollow.
The countdown began. Explosives planted across the school roared to life.
Amid dust clouds, the campus and classrooms where I'd spent three years sank like melting wax.
This moment, my mentor—virtual founder of the school—would meet true, eternal death.
I paid silent respects to school and mentor alike, mourning a page of time I'd never revisit, then left.
The ride back was in an armored vehicle.
Unlike helicopter troops, these soldiers didn't raise walls.
Curious like me.
"You were a Hunter, right? What'd it feel like facing monsters?"
"Same as living. Wanna run, wanna quit."
"Know Kang Han-min or Na Hye-won?"
"Not well. With twelve hundred in your class, you pass some without a glance."
A quiet officer glanced around.
Then blurted at me:
"Living like this doesn't give you depression?"
"Guess it's something to overcome."
"Heard there's freelance Hunters. Pay's not great, but enough to scrape by. Could get a decent place by the docks, not out here."
I blinked. He was worried for me.
The officer handed me something.
"From Director Woo. For you."
Palm-sized notebook.
"Said it's your mentor's keepsake. Thought Park Gyu should have it. Asked me to pass it on."
The battered leather cover brimmed with bold, precise script.
First page: an old-school dragon sketch beside vigorous hanja.
[Even if this body shatters, for the fatherland's protection.]
Unmistakably my mentor's hand.
I recalled him scribbling in that room with an inkless pen.
I thanked him politely and hopped off the APC.
The soldiers waved warmly.
Good hearts.
But my bunker was still miles away.
I'd walked 12km to keep my location from Woo Min-hee before calling.
Should've made it 3km.
Still, one reliable backup lately.
"Defender bro around?"
"Those ribs you gave? So good, two of us could've killed three without noticing."
"Share my position. Scout the area?"
"Aight~."
With Defender's backup, I trudged the barren path home.
The usual desolate yet comforting sight.
Opened the bunker door, flopped onto the mattress.
"......Hoo."
Felt like a lot happened, but home, it all slipped away like sand through fingers. Nothing stuck.
Best recall: waking to morning sun, that felt nice?
Thought of browsing net, but lay zoned out thirty-plus minutes.
The K-walkie-talkie buzzed me awake.
Caller ID: REDMASK
Woo Min-hee.
Why contact me now, after ghosting in Incheon?
Ignore? Tempting, but I dragged my leaden body up, grabbed the radio.
"Woo Min-hee?"
"Sunbae!"
Her voice brimmed with... unseemly glee.
"Jang Gi-yeong said it!"
"What?"
"Right before dying, he convulsed, shitting and pissing everywhere, but amid the chaos, he screamed your callsign! Professor! Professor!"
Her mocking, scornful reenactment wronged my mentor.
For all his flaws, he wasn't for her to judge.
I pieced together his end my way.
Lab staff strapped the statue-still Jang Gi-yeong to a convertible surgical chair-bed, needled his vein, pumped lethal drugs.
Till then, he stared blankly ahead like a corpse.
As the poison hit his heart, halting beats—
He snapped the leather-and-steel restraints, bolted up.
Guards rushed with stun batons, guns.
They eyed him warily for trouble, but he saw beyond the lab.
The school he'd built, the shabby hall beside, me pondering with pen inside.
Then the four syllables I'd written.
Some unknowable urge gripped him. He roared like a tiger.
"Professor!"
I snatched the notebook from the mattress corner.
Inside: monster types countermeasures, formations by type, positions, efficient weapons.
Honestly, impractical in real fights.
Too flashy, meaningless fluff.
Page after page bred doubt.
How could every page overflow with corny, unrealistic fantasies?
Absurd that this man taught us. Almost laughable.
That's why.
Jang Gi-yeong demanded perfection from us.
To manifest his vague dreams, he needed top actors, artists. So he hammered us mercilessly, instilled "perfection."
But his imagination was too frail for reality.
Who could've guessed.
The Kang Han-min he dismissed as worthless would remake the world.
Meanwhile, objectively, I, Park Gyu, best embodied his wild fancies.
As if proving it, the final page sketched a weapon linking us: his dream state-of-the-art axe.
"No, Instructor."
I muttered unwittingly, seeking him.
Ridiculously, rocket boosters capped the haft.
[Rocket-Propelled Striking Force Enhancer]
Inspired by robot anime from his youth?
His childlike whimsy tugged a smile as I studied the axe.
"?"
Something off.
The shadowed black haft had a stark, carved-out clean spot.
Closer: something stuck there.
Peeled it off.
No ordinary paper.
Psychic resonance test paper.
The black sheets I'd pinned up with Su and the wall.
But this one's color was alien.
Not black. White.
Pure white.
His daughter's words resurfaced.
Black - blue - red - gray - white.
White.
So pale it ached.
"......"
I closed the notebook, reimagined his end.
In the harsh experiment he'd volunteered for, Jang Gi-yeong was chosen by the divine.
With insight piercing all creation, like Kang Han-min or Na Ye-won.
That instant, he understood everything.
His grand triumph, inescapable dark fate.
He knew outcomes good or ill, he couldn't escape test-subject destiny.
But now, power to turn tides.
Divine strength to shatter bonds, teach his contemptuous daughter a lesson.
I knew he chose not to.
Soldier, patriot, harsh on others as himself.
To spare Korea harm, he'd awaited decreed end silently.
Not an easy choice.
He knew his daughter waited in the hall, hoping he'd call her name.
Till last, duty warred with desire.
Rage at Woo Min-hee and her National Crisis Committee backers swayed him too.
His choice: passive resistance—a quiet death.
Why my callsign at end? Unclear.
Not daughter, wife, Kang Han-min, or Park Gyu—but Professor.
After long thought, a clumsy guess.
Final lesson for his prized disciple.
"Professor!"
To remind us unchosen: "still" before us.
*
That night, I dreamed.
In monochrome, I was a fresh-faced teen; my mentor before me, thirties vigor intact.
"Park Gyu! This is how you wield an axe!"
We sparred wildly.
Draining every ounce of energy.
Trails too fast for eyes—I parried, countering similarly.
"Break!"
Like old times, tireless Jang Gi-yeong panted, catching breath. I turned away.
His tiger eyes blazed fury.
"Kang Han-min! What the hell?!"
He looked back, smiling.