The Demon Realm (1)
"The settlement numbers didn't add up, so I went to the company — and I nearly got buried in the ground, Hyung-nim."
Her agency had been tied up with gangsters. They'd been laundering the take from an illegal gambling site through stream donations.
"Then the agency turned around and bought gold bars and the like with that money and stashed them away. When I tried to report it, they beat the hell out of me."
That part, I understood perfectly.
"I really almost died back then. Got hurt pretty bad."
The arts-and-athletics world had always been crawling with thugs.
"You've been through it."
I also learned she'd never actually set foot in a prison.
"Through it? What was there to go through. Thanks to that, I never even crossed a prison threshold. I was stuck in the hospital the whole time getting treated, and when I heard about this program, I volunteered."
I'd had my own trial postponed over treatment, so I knew. Stay in a hospital that long, and your life had genuinely been hanging by a thread.
"If you were doing that well, couldn't you have just stayed a broadcaster? Even if you'd gone to trial, you could've aimed for a suspended sentence, or an acquittal."
All of a sudden I was curious why she'd come to be a hunter at all.
"Oh, I am going back to streaming. But the world's changed, so streaming needs new content too, doesn't it?"
That was not the answer I'd expected.
"Content?"
"The influencers killing it these days are all Awakened hunters. The scene is so fucking— no. So many people are pouring in, I figured I ought to get on the boat too, right?"
Treating the aftereffects of her injuries had been part of it too, she added. Just as I'd become a hunter to take up a sword again, Lee Hae-il seemed to have become one so she could broadcast again. I understood that hunger completely.
"Payback worried me too. Those guys are convinced I know where our boss buried the gold bars."
"Bastards like that only ever believe what they want to believe."
"If I actually knew, maybe. But all I've got are a couple of places I half suspect, so it's awkward to even say."
"Get it right and you've done those bastards a favor for nothing. Get it wrong and they come after you, don't they?"
"Yes. And I hear something called the Scorpion Crew or whatever has sprung up outside."
Then Lee Hae-il told me a story I'd already heard myself.
"You know about that too?"
"Huh? Hyung-nim heard that from Hunter Hong too?!"
It seemed Lee Hae-il had gotten the same offer from Hunter Hong Si-yu that I had — cooperate further with a police operation, and they'd shave time off the sentence.
"Figures, though. I bet Hyung-nim was first on the list."
"Yeah. Problems like this are best finished with your own hands. Let's do it right."
All at once she felt that much closer. Not everyone was handed a chance to take back what they'd lost, but Lee Hae-il and I had been. My chance was hers as well, so it would be good if she could make it alongside me.
"Guess we'd better hunt magic beasts hard, huh?"
"Right you are."
"And more sword practice."
"You'll keep teaching me?"
"A little after work? Why? Don't want to learn?"
"No, no, no! I'm just too grateful, that's all."
At that she startled, amber-tinted eyes blowing wide as ping-pong balls. Quite a sight.
"It's too small to call a proper thanks, but I'll put you up until you find a place. Free, of course. My place has plenty of rooms."
That, I had not seen coming.
"What? A house?"
I stared at her.
"Yes. When the banks went under, my deposits vanished, but the house I had in Incheon was fine. It was never seized, so I can just go live there."
"A house you 'had in Incheon'?"
Lee Hae-il nodded, perfectly proud of herself.
"Yes. I was pretty popular. Had five or six apartments, even."
"..."
"They've been sitting empty for years, so they'll need some cleaning, but the two of us can knock it out fast."
First a regret flickered through my head — I should have bought in Incheon, not Seoul. Then I wrestled with whether to take her up on a bed, even for a while. The offer itself was welcome. Lodging in the home of a woman my own age, though, seemed likely to land us both somewhere awkward.
A dry patter from overhead. A swarm of cockroaches dropped out of the ceiling, wings rattling as they fluttered this way and that before scattering in every direction.
"I'm good at cleaning. Always was the youngest."
I shot to my feet. This was no time to be picking over awkward or whatever.
"Let's go together."
Lee Hae-il was already up.
"This is it."
"Here?"
Lee Hae-il's apartment was seventy-two pyeong. More than two thousand square feet.
The next morning.
"You up?"
"Ten minutes. Just ten more minutes."
"It's our first day."
I laid convenience-store triangle kimbap and cup ramen out across the marble table.
"Where'd you get those? There's no way my place had anything like that."
"Bought them downstairs. They're not years old, so they're fine."
I'd picked them up before she woke. Back in the fencing club, even heading out for dawn practice, I'd eat at least one triangle kimbap before I left. You only went as far as you ate.
"Gear all packed?"
We ate a quick breakfast and got our equipment together.
"Yes. Combat suit and saber, all here. They said we pick up the guns on site."
"Used to be even competitive shooters had a hard time owning their own guns. The world really has changed."
I pulled on a skin-tight tactical combat suit, tucked a calorie bar and a tourniquet into the lower pocket of my pants, and belted on the estoc Hunter Ji In-hwi had made for me. Tightening the laces of my combat boots in front of the shoe-cabinet mirror, I caught my own reflection. A young man with a faint blue-white gleam in his eyes was smiling with a vitality that surprised even me. A pleasant tension wound through my whole body. The tutorial had been a tutorial in the most literal sense, and nothing more. Today was my first day reporting in as a hunter. My first real fight. Wondering what magic beast and what bout waited for me, I felt every muscle draw tight, running from my heart out across my shoulders.
"All right, Hyung-nim. Let's go wreck some magic beasts!"
Lee Hae-il came out in a tactical suit that clung every bit as tight as mine. The belt carrying her saber hung loose at her waist, slung at a slant across her hips. I narrowed my eyes at the sight.
"What? Surprised?"
"No."
Reading my face, she twitched the corner of her mouth as if she'd figured something out.
"You don't have to deny it. A handsome man looks good dressed as a woman, and a pretty woman looks good dressed as a man! And my figure is excellent, I'll have you know."
"Wouldn't know about that."
"If my physique hadn't been up to it, I'd have had to stream on a makeup concept instead of a guy-disguise one. Really dodged a bullet there."
"Tighten that belt properly."
"Huh?"
"If that thing spins, you won't be able to draw when you need to, or you'll hit the ground rolling and the strap'll twist and snap. You were taught to cinch anything that swings, and to wear the top layer over the bottom. Weren't you?"
I pointed at her belt. Leave it like that and she might catch the scabbard on her leg mid-sprint and go down.
"Yes."
Looking disappointed, Lee Hae-il cinched it.
"Let's go."
Off to work. Inside Incheon the buses ran fine. Now and then you could see bullet holes, bite marks, claw scores, but no one riding paid them any mind.
"This is the place."
The Saetbyeol branch we'd reported to sat right in front of the gate called the Demon Realm. They'd taken over a fairly large commercial building whole, and there were so many people in tactical suits around it that I was sure we'd come to the right place.
"I'm a little nervous, not gonna lie."
"Thought you were a genius?"
"Ah, that part's true too. What couldn't I pull off?"
Lee Hae-il chattered nonstop beside me.
"Hyung-nim. Watch out for that Team Leader Choi. Word is he might beat somebody to death."
"I heard."
The automatic doors hummed, and we stepped through.
"Huh?"
A scene I never could have imagined opened up in front of us.
"You sons of bitches! You gonna get your heads on straight or what?!"
"Sorry, sir!"
"Who's hitting a place with easy women after work today?"
"I'm telling you, that girl from yesterday was seriously fine. You get ahold of her?"
"Hey, just three hundred—"
"Get lost, you buck-toothed moron."
No matter how I looked at them, the wide lobby was packed with people who looked like nothing but raw thugs whose lives had already gone to hell. Guys in knockoff fatigues, neon pants, and gold-plated chains were holding assault rifles.
"Did we come to the wrong place?"
"Seems like it."
Apparently I'd already walked into the gate called the Demon Realm. There was no other way a scene like this could exist.
We had not come to the wrong place.
Unfortunately.
This was Saetbyeol.
Regrettably.
If this was the greatest guild there was, then what kind of hell were the rest of them? It was a sight I couldn't make sense of.
"These bastards haven't got a scrap of discipline left!"
On the right side of the lobby, dozens of men were locked in push-up position with bottle caps balanced on their heads, and one man was swinging a mop handle at their backsides.
"Hey, Yeong-su's girlfriend — the one we saw at his funeral — I hear she's working at that bar down the way. Wanna go?"
"Why bother? Everywhere around here is easy pickings these days."
On the sofa to the left, a dozen-odd men smoked indoors and traded lewd, cheap talk. Jeong Ho-min, the Awakened out of the Scorpion Gang, and his cronies were mixed in among them.
"Unni. That lipstick looks really good, doesn't it?"
"Y-you want it?"
"Why say it like that? You make it sound like I'm taking it. Friends can share, you know."
Down another hallway, four or five women were snatching one woman's makeup. I stood stock-still.
"Hyung-nim. Wh-what is this?"
Lee Hae-il asked it looking every bit as stunned as I was.
"Unawakened hunters, I think?"
"Ah, those gunslingers, you mean?"
I ran back through Hong Si-yu's briefing. Most magic beasts could be stopped with guns. So once an Awakened hunter cut down the unusual beasts that nullified firearms, the Unawakened hunters suppressed the rest with volley fire.
"But do hunters normally act like this with each other?"
"No idea. Think about the truly rotten sports clubs, though. In a hierarchy that does dangerous work, nothing that happens is all that surprising."
"Who the fuck are you bastards?! What's with a couple of strangers crawling in here at this hour?!"
The men playing at punishment drills on one side had turned their shouting on us.
"You talking to me?"
"Who else would I be talking to! Get over here and drop, asshole!"
The man with the assault rifle slung across him jabbed a finger at us, rough about it. So these were the Unawakened hunters. It was treatment I hadn't even gotten in prison. Looking back, it was a lot like the high school fencing club. Back then, too, some guy calling himself a senior had talked like that. What had I done, then.
"Drop?"
I walked toward him. My reflection showed in the big mirror on the wall. A faint ring of light lay over my irises — not a metaphor for a look in the eyes, but real light, the way Hong Si-yu's hair had glowed like lava, the way Su Seong-min's gaze had shone like a glacier.
"What?"
It meant that anyone with eyes properly stuck in their head could tell I was Awakened. And as far as I knew, in the hunter business the gap between how Awakened and Unawakened hunters were treated was a wide one.
"Hey, but why are both of them wearing swords?"
"Didn't they say the Awakened hunters were coming today?"
"Weren't they all already here?"
"Um, by any chance..."
The faces of the men who'd been playing at rotten-sports-club hazing stiffened by the second. A mutter reached me. We're fucked.
"By any chance what?"
For a moment I even pictured these guys shooting me. They seemed like the type who would, and then some.
"Are you the Awakened hunters who were supposed to arrive today?"
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry! I didn't recognize you and I spoke out of turn. Please forgive me just this once."
Fortunately — or perhaps inevitably — nothing of the sort happened. He bowed his head with enough force that he might as well have been prostrating. The same man who'd been spewing filth and swinging a beating in front of dozens of people a moment ago had flipped so completely it was absurd.
"If I weren't an Awakened hunter, I'd have had to drop?"
I asked it with my voice dropped low, and his face filled with discomfort.
"I'm sorry! Please forgive me."
But instead of an answer, he only repeated the apology like a parrot.
"Right. Not like I can refuse to forgive you."
A bitter smile came on its own.
"Thank y—"
"Then you forgive them too."
"What?"
"I don't know what those people did that was so wrong, but I don't think this is something you do first thing in the morning. You'll be spent before the hunt even starts."
Even so, I decided to leave it there for now. I deliberately left him one step of ground to retreat onto. It was a demand that he not repeat the same thing when I wasn't around — and a warning that next time I wouldn't spare his face like this. Even in that high school sports club, where the senior-junior culture had been horrific, this was about how you closed things out.
"Understood. Thank you."
He seemed to have gotten the message, and bowed his head once more.