The True Duty of an Educator
The white cane tapped lightly against the pavement.
Passersby stepped aside carefully, wary of bumping into him.
It was a kind gesture, but for Lee Hyun, every bit of it was unnecessary. The texture of the ground beneath his feet, the presence or absence of obstacles, even the people approaching from ahead — he was aware of all of it. There was only one reason he extended the cane in his hand forward as he walked.
It was to let others know that he could not see.
Nothing more than a very human desire to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings with strangers.
Tap, tap—
Lee Hyun found himself thinking of Han So-yeon, the woman he'd parted with on the train just moments ago. A murky miasma of death had been swirling around her. She stood at the tail end of a fate that would, without question, meet with disaster today. Grave injury at the very least — nine times out of ten, she would lose her life.
Hunter, company — listing it out like that, the cause was almost certainly a Gate.
I had to do something.
His deliberation was short, and his action swift. She had helped him, so he would repay the favor. Good deeds deserved good in return — that was what Lee Hyun believed.
"Don't enter the Gate today."
He couldn't see the world the way others saw it. But he could see what others could not. So he had shared with Han So-yeon the fate he'd witnessed.
The rest was now her choice to make. Would she accept the advice of a stranger she'd only just met, or brush it aside and walk on?
If fate allows, I suppose we'll meet again.
Tap, tap—
At last, he arrived directly in front of the National Hunter Academy.
Gazing upon the academy through his Mind's Eye, Lee Hyun couldn't help but marvel. It looked exactly as it had in the game. What impressed him most, though, were the people passing by.
The closer they get, the more brilliant the light becomes.
Those who strove relentlessly. Those blessed with extraordinary talent. The light of their fates painted itself vividly across his mind. He found himself genuinely looking forward to the exceptional students he would soon be teaching.
"Hey. Blind freak."
Of course, not everyone carried that light.
Tap, tap—
He tried to walk past the filth spewing from the boy's mouth, ignoring it entirely. But the other party seemed to have no intention of letting him go so easily.
"What, are you pretending you didn't hear me?"
Someone planted himself in Lee Hyun's path.
Still holding his cane at his side, Lee Hyun raised his head. He could feel the ripple of the muscles in the boy's face, the movement of his lips. A sneer, dripping with mockery, aimed squarely at him.
"Why are you lifting your head? It's not like you can see anything anyway."
The voice was thick with a sickening arrogance and a repulsive sense of superiority. A reckless, half-grown child who knew nothing of fearing people or the world.
"Hey. Do you even know where you are?"
"The National Hunter Academy, isn't it?"
"Right. Hunter Academy. Hunter Academy. This isn't a place just anyone can walk into."
A guy who couldn't even see in front of his own face, an Academy student? Ridiculous. A hunter, by definition, had to be flawless — stronger than anyone else. A defective body like yours had no place here.
Lee Hyun caught the meaning behind the boy's words and gave a small nod.
"You're right. This isn't a place just anyone can enter."
"Some disabled kid trying to feel good about himself, coming here of all places. This isn't like those other universities where any random person can waltz onto campus."
Lee Hyun had read articles saying that students like this were far more common than expected. The misguided belief that the awakened were somehow a chosen people — and the words and actions born of the severe hunter supremacy that grew from it. Watching firsthand a social problem he'd only ever seen on the news made his chest ache.
"Get lost. Before I snap that cane in two."
"I believe there's been a misunderstanding."
Raging at a beast was bad for one's mental health.
"I am the professor newly appointed to this academy. Student."
"...Professor?"
The arrogance that had filled the boy's voice only moments ago vanished without a trace. His breathing grew thin and unsteady. The visible fluster in his posture was a bonus. Panicked and at a loss, the male student spun around to look behind him.
As expected, he hadn't been doing something this stupid alone. He'd gained his confidence from the pack of friends at his back.
"What the hell are you doing?!"
Another voice rang out from behind, and Lee Hyun tilted his ear toward it.
"Whoa, whoa. That blind guy — he says he's a professor?"
"A professor?"
"Shit. Aren't we screwed?"
"You're the one who started this."
Amid the muttered bickering, as they tossed blame back and forth, a girl's voice cut through.
"Don't tell me you're actually chickening out? Unbelievable."
"Didn't you hear him? A professor! He said professor!"
"And you believe that?! A blind guy, a Hunter Academy professor? What's he going to teach, braille? How to beg on street corners? And look at him — can't you tell? He's clearly about our age. Have you ever in your life seen someone become a professor in their twenties?"
Objectively speaking, Lee Hyun had to admit the point was fair. Ordinarily one was a student, an assistant at best, and becoming a professor in one's twenties was a genuinely difficult feat. Though that was, of course, judging by the standards of normal people.
"Wait, so what, that crippled bastard was straight-up lying too?"
"Fucking hell. Hey, you. If you're a professor, show us your faculty ID."
At the demand for identification, a bitter smile crossed Lee Hyun's lips. The faculty ID that would prove his professorship at the National Hunter Academy should have arrived days ago at the residence address he'd registered.
But the post office had been blown to smithereens in a monster attack. His ID, sitting in the outgoing mail pile at that very moment, had burned away with everything else.
In the end, he would have to collect it from the Academy in person — which was the whole reason he was here.
"We asked to see your ID. Don't have it? Wow, so it really was a lie."
"A disabled guy faking a professorship on top of everything?"
"Hey, wait a sec. Now that I'm looking, he's kind of hot though? Hey, what's your name?"
"Why is this airhead thirsting in the middle of all this."
Words with not a shred of value left in them to hear. Lee Hyun moved to walk past the students blocking his path and enter the Academy.
"Where do you think you're going!"
Along with the shout came a tremor of hostile intent.
KWAANG—!
With a tremendous crash, the ground where Lee Hyun had been standing caved in.
A fierce wave of power hummed and vibrated right at his feet.
"...Are you in your right mind?"
This was a clear crossing of the line.
"For a student to carelessly use his abilities against another person."
"Clearly you don't know how things work. If there's a suspicious character trying to break into campus, students are well within their rights to use their abilities. Who knows when someone like you might suddenly snap and do something crazy? Call it the privileges of an enrolled Hunter Academy student."
Lee Hyun had assumed this was nothing more than the incoherent antics of a few disposable villain extras. But it seemed they had their own internally consistent logic — he could only be impressed. It even made him wonder whether the game's lore had actually included provisions like this.
But that was all it was. What these students were doing now was, unambiguously, over the line.
"Very well. Since you're all so keen to invoke the rights of students."
Tap.
He tapped the ground lightly with his cane.
"Then allow yourselves to experience the authority of a Hunter Academy professor as well."
"What kind of bullshit is that, you disabled piece of—!"
The sound of a foot kicking off the ground reached him, along with the faint tremor it produced. The disturbance in the air grew stronger as the movement accelerated. A distinctly human scent drew steadily closer. The boy specialized in grappling, apparently — he was charging in at a respectable speed.
But that was all he had.
"You have a great deal to fix."
It was such a low-grade attack that Lee Hyun felt less exasperation than pity. With no thought of counterattacking at all, he answered with a slight turn of his body.
"Ugh—?!"
CRASH—!
The fist thrown with all his might buried itself helplessly in the dirt. The charging student tumbling head over heels across the pavement was the natural consequence.
Tap, tap—
The white cane tapped the ground, the way a lecturer might call a classroom to order.
"Your speed is fine, but your accuracy is abysmal. At this rate, it's nothing more than a suicidal charge."
"Y-you bastard, what did you just say?!"
The felled student scrambled upright, flailing. From behind him came the laughter and jeers of his pack.
"You idiot! What are you doing?!"
"He still can't even keep his balance?"
"Sh-shut up! I just put too much power into it!"
He said that, but the male student felt an inexplicable unease crawling over him.
What was that? What the hell just happened?
His opponent was unmistakably blind. A man who could not see. And yet that blind man had dodged his attack — effortlessly, as if he could see every one of his movements perfectly.
Did he just get lucky? But the way he evaded was impossibly smooth...?
It made no sense at all, and his brain refused to accept it. Overloaded, he stood frozen — which was when another student stepped in.
"Pathetic bastard. Move. I'll handle this."
Shring—!
Without a moment's hesitation, the boy was drawing a sword against a human being. So there really was some provision about the right to deal with intruders.
I suppose it's only natural — in the game, the Hunter Academy raid event would trigger if you got bored enough.
Step, step—
This one was a level above the student who'd gone for hand-to-hand. From his very first stride, he carried the bearing of someone with proper fundamentals. His breathing was sound, and a real sense of balance lived in his gait.
WHAM—!!
"Guhk—?!"
But did that mean he could land a blow on Lee Hyun? Not in the slightest. Just like the last one, he went sprawling across the ground, flailing at the dirt.
"What the hell are you two doing? Go easy on him, he's disabled!"
"Sh-shut up!"
Tap, tap—
Tapping the ground once more with his cane, Lee Hyun spoke.
"An attack with no follow-up is worse than no attack at all. I suspect it comes from an overreliance on finishing things in a single strike — I'd recommend correcting that. Do you two both wish to serve as flashbangs? Or maybe flares?"
From where Lee Hyun stood, every word was earnest, heartfelt advice — blood and sustenance for a hunter's growth. But to the two students, it was nothing more than a blind man heaping mockery upon them.
"You little shit!!"
From the left and the right, they charged — one swinging fists, the other a blade.
"Hey! If you two gang up on him—!!"
Subduing a suspicious person trying to enter the Academy was one thing. But doing it not alone, but two-on-one, would earn them accusations of excessive force.
Ugh. Whatever. Their parents will clean up the mess, I'm sure.
One was the son of a police chief; the other, a relative of a city councilman. With the kind of powerful connections people whispered about, they had always gotten away with everything — and this time would surely be no different.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
National Hunter Academy. Faculty lounge.
"Seriously? Someone like that is coming in as a professor?"
"That's what I'm saying. Honestly. So now the professorship comes with a disability quota, does it? And not some provincial college — the National Hunter Academy, of all places, with a blind professor. Unbelievable."
Word of Lee Hyun's appointment had long since spread among the surrounding professors. And their reactions were, naturally, overwhelmingly negative. Every professor here was an active hunter with real field experience of their own. Because of that, each of them knew better than anyone just how dangerous Gates were. Teaching the students who would have to enter those places was a matter of the gravest importance.
And now a professor was coming who, hunter though he might technically be, had no confirmed combat experience — and was blind, on top of it all? No one could be blamed for struggling to welcome him with open arms.
"..."
Watching his colleagues, Kwon Moo-hyuk scratched the bridge of his nose. He, too, had reacted much the same way — and that had been only last week. Students survived by being taught even a little better than the day before. The students of Hunter Academy could afford to fall short; the professors absolutely could not. That was precisely why he had found himself unable, in good conscience, to approve of a blind professor coming here.
"Hey. Keep this to yourself, but a new professor is headed your way soon."
—That is, until two days ago, when a friend working in a government agency had said this to him.
"Just so you know — don't you dare treat him carelessly. The hunter assigned as that professor carries a Callsign."
A Callsign. A unique tactical designation.
For a hunter to carry a Callsign means he's racked up a seriously impressive record. But was there ever a hunter among them who was blind — or who went blind?
No matter how he turned it over, Kwon Moo-hyuk could not work it out, and all he could do was tilt his head in puzzlement.
There was one thing he had failed to grasp, however. These days, a Callsign signified fame — but it had not always been so. In the earliest days of the Gate crisis, at the edge of the abyss they called the Great Upheaval — in an era when annihilation swept the world — carrying a Callsign meant one thing only: that the bearer was an elite state hunter, running the nation's most classified operations.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
What... what on earth just happened?
The female student had no choice but to doubt her own two eyes.
"Gkkh!"
"Kghk!!"
Before her, quite literally in the blink of an eye, lay her friends — subdued completely. She had trained as a hunter, made it all the way into the Academy itself, and yet she had seen nothing, sensed nothing.
Tap, tap—
Only when she heard the cane strike the ground did she finally lift her head and look to the side.
"The blind one is me — but it seems it's all of you who truly cannot see."
A man had closed the distance to right in front of her without a sound, without the faintest trace of presence. A terror that squeezed the heart like a vise, and a helplessness that bound her limbs where she stood. The girl, staring at Lee Hyun with eyes drowning in fear—
"I-I'm sorry! I was wrong!!"
—could do nothing but drop to her knees as instinct demanded, press her palms together, and grovel with everything she had.