The Rush Hour Express

The compensation Team Leader Myo had offered was far too enormous to simply turn down. And so Kang Yul accepted her proposal and agreed to assist with the Gate reconnaissance.

Which raised the question of what, exactly, they were doing now.

"Team Leader Myo. The express train on the Sanggye Station side is ready to go! They say it can depart for Nowon Station whenever you give the word!"

"Stand by until you receive further orders."

...They were just sitting there.

Among the entry conditions for the Gate known as the Rush Hour Express was this: board an express train.

Any ordinary hunter would have sprinted themselves ragged trying to satisfy that requirement, or else stood around waiting for an express to arrive before making their attempt. Team Leader Myo's position, however, was far too high for any of that.

"Based on this information, we will designate a train that travels only three stops as an 'express.'"

"Understood!"

When Team Leader Myo gave an order? The Bureau staff ran themselves ragged making it happen. There was not a single task that Team Leader Myo or her direct subordinate, Kang Yul, needed to lift a finger for. The Association's elite staff had already handled everything long before it could become their problem.

"Hunter Kang Yul! Please, have a nice cold iced Americano!"

"Ah — thank you."

"And these are Deli Manjoo, Nowon Station's famous specialty! Please have some of these as well!"

"Ah — thank you."

"Hunter Kang Yul~! Let me help you with the bodycam~!"

"Ah — yes."

And so Kang Yul simply sat there, sipping coffee and eating the sweet, pillowy Deli Manjoo. The only time he had to move at all was when they needed him to put on a piece of reconnaissance equipment. Beyond that, there was nothing for him to do.

This kind of pampering... might not be so bad?

But good times, as they always do, passed quickly. A staff member who looked to be of considerable rank approached at a brisk walk and addressed Team Leader Myo.

"Team Leader Myo. They're reporting that the Dobong District side is fully set up."

"Depart simultaneously in exactly three minutes from now."

"Understood. Ah — and the dummy staff?"

"We will not be deploying any from our side. Hunter Kang Yul."

"Yes."

At Team Leader Myo's brief summons — the kind that meant get ready — Kang Yul set down his coffee and Deli Manjoo and gave his body a light stretch. And in that short span of time—

The announcement rang out, and a train eased to a halt at the platform. The screen doors slid open, revealing the interior.

At that moment, the inside of the train looked like any ordinary Korean subway car you might see anywhere in the city. But then—

"Hunter Kang Yul. From this moment, we will commute to the 'Hunter Management Bureau Ssangmun Branch' as 'Association employees.' The reason is a support request from that branch."

The instant Team Leader Myo spoke those words aloud — satisfying the Gate's remaining entry conditions of being an office worker and being on the way to work—

A whispering hiss slithered through the air.

The scenery inside the train began to change.

At a glance, it still looked like an ordinary subway car. Nothing jarringly out of place. Which was another way of saying that if you paid even the slightest bit of attention—

...What country is that ad even from?

—the wrongness was easy to catch. The grotesque advertisements plastered along the walls, and the LED display overhead that had tried to mimic Hangul and smeared it into sludge, were as good as proof that this train was a supernatural phenomenon.

"..."

Team Leader Myo seemed to share the thought. She stood beside him, sweeping a peculiar gaze over the interior for a long while. She was probably thinking something similar to Kang Yul — with one difference. As a veteran hunter, she would already be turning over how to clear this particular supernatural event.

"We'll enter the Gate now."

After studying the interior at length, Team Leader Myo stepped inside just as the doors were about to close. Kang Yul followed her in.

And in that instant—

"!"

Kang Yul snapped back to himself at the sound that seemed to ring directly inside his skull. He set the new information aside for now. What mattered was where, exactly, he had been moved in the space of a single blink.

"..."

He steadied his breathing and took in his surroundings, his gaze sweeping this way and that, searching for someone. The person who was supposed to be here. The person who was supposed to keep him safe.

The conclusion, however, was this:

"...Team Leader Myo?"

No matter how thoroughly he looked, there was no one who resembled Team Leader Myo. That did not mean he had been isolated alone inside an empty Gate. She wasn't in the train car — but something else was there in her place.

And that something was—

"Well, that's a shame! I'm not that stone-faced Team Leader Myo, you know!"

A woman was beaming at him, greeting him with a brightness that left no room for argument — and then, as if she already knew him, closing the distance without a hint of hesitation.

"You're Kang Yul, right? I'm Team Leader Oh!"

"Team Leader...? Ah — then, are you perhaps—"

"That's right. I'm the Dobong-gu Representative Hunter assigned to today's mission. So just trust this senior of yours and follow my lead, rookie!"

It was the moment Kang Yul came face-to-face with a veteran hunter who, according to Team Leader Myo herself, possessed power on a level comparable to her own.

Once he understood that he had not been isolated alone, Kang Yul found himself accompanying the woman who had introduced herself as Dobong-gu's Representative Hunter, Team Leader Oh. She took the lead, tossing out questions as she walked, and he answered them.

"Got any questions for this senior of yours, rookie?"

"Not particularly... Ah — but how did you recognize me at a glance?"

"Oh, that? You wouldn't know me, but I've seen you before."

"Me?"

"There was another Representative Hunter on the Surak Mountain operation last time, right? That was me."

"Ah."

Come to think of it, he did vaguely remember reading that two Representative Hunters had handled the source of the Surak Mountain erosion. If she had caught even a passing glimpse of him then, recognizing him at a glance wasn't so strange.

"I, uh — I've spent my whole life being told I have no presence, so I think this is the first time anyone's picked me out like that."

"I snatched up all the credit for a discovery you made, didn't I? Least I can do is remember your face."

"Snatched it up? I dropped out because I didn't have what it took to handle it anyway."

"Well, if you want a long career as a hunter, safety comes first. Our rookie planning to stick around for a good long while, then?"

"Haha. That would be nice."

After a round of light small talk to ease the awkwardness, Team Leader Oh's expression turned serious, as if she intended to show him exactly why she was called a Representative Hunter.

"Alright. Shall we get started?"

She began her reconnaissance in earnest.

"Oh, I heard from Team Leader Myo that our rookie is high-grade personnel specialized in reconnaissance?"

"I wouldn't go as far as 'high-grade.'"

"She can be a real piece of work, but she's not the type to make things up. I respect the opinions of capable subordinates, so if you've got any advice along the way, speak up whenever."

"Understood."

With that — a promise that she would listen to whatever he had to say — Team Leader Oh drew on her own hard-won know-how and began picking apart the Gate's rules at a rapid clip.

"Hmm~ Overall, it looks like it's imitating ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a Korean subway."

She glanced around the train car as she went, narrating as if she meant for Kang Yul to hear every word.

"Then the basic rules probably won't be all that different from a real Korean subway. But looking at these grotesque ads they slapped up in a clumsy imitation, there's bound to be some twisted rules in the mix too. Figure those out, and clearing the Gate itself shouldn't be hard."

Right after that—

"So... hmm... it should be around here somewhere...?"

She wandered forward as if searching for something, and before long she had found it: a route map, printed clearly enough to actually read, sitting among the alien advertisements scrawled in smeared lettering.

"Ah. Of course they wrote the subway map properly."

She said it as if she had expected nothing less. Kang Yul stared at her, impressed, and she shrugged as though it were nothing.

"We already knew this was a Rule-type Gate where you have to get off at the correct station, right? Then the first thought should be that they at least wouldn't mess around with the station names."

"As expected of a Representative Hunter."

"Rookie. Aren't you selling Representative Hunters a little short? If you can't even do this much, you won't last long in this line of work. And from where I'm standing, you're the impressive one for figuring out this rule before we even entered."

"That's the skill doing all the work."

"Acquiring that skill was your ability too, you know. Anyway — looking at this, does anything come to mind?"

"Come to mind..."

"...Yes. I'll write it down so it's easy to read."

Kang Yul quickly transferred the information into the mini notebook he had packed for exactly this kind of situation.

Scratch-scratch-scratch—

Watching from beside him, Team Leader Oh pointed at his pen.

"Rookie. That black pen doesn't look like an ordinary ballpoint."

"Ah. It's an artifact pen. A little friend that writes down whatever I'm thinking."

"You've got some interesting things."

It was not, in fact, an artifact. It was the Goblin Club, currently disguised as a cheap five-hundred-won ballpoint that had been lying around his house, with the ability to rapidly transcribe whatever Kang Yul ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was thinking.

At any rate, about thirty seconds later—

Scratch-scratch-scratch—

A soft tap. Then the sharp rip of paper tearing free.

"Here you go."

Kang Yul tore out the page he had just filled and handed it to Team Leader Oh.

"That's what I have for now. There's probably a few other ways out, though, right?"

Kang Yul was thinking of all the Gate manuals and clear guides he had seen on the galleries. If "disembark at the correct station" was the official escape method, then unofficial ones — exploits that bent the loopholes in the rules — were bound to exist as well.

Of course—

"You... this... wait, huh? No...?! This is real...?"

—the veteran hunter in front of him had no room to share in his speculation. And why would she? Kang Yul was, in real time, invalidating this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠veteran hunter's entire career. Poking holes in the rules — the kind of work even veterans had to stake their lives on.

"The Gate's called Rush Hour, so... maybe if you come in on a day off, you can just leave?"

"Ah. That's it."

Kang Yul was uncovering the rules with nothing more than a single idle thought — wouldn't that work? Skills were, as a rule, abilities whose inner workings defied understanding. But the one Kang Yul possessed was, even among those, something uniquely unfair.

"Give me a moment. I'll write this down too."

Scratch-scratch-scratch—

"Team Leader Oh. Here's the additional information."

"...Ah. Yeah. Okay."

Team Leader Oh took the memo and read it with hollow eyes, and thought: I was right not to attack this thing the first day I saw it.

And of course she was.

...Team Leader Oh forced herself to look at the being she had been so carefully avoiding eye contact with.

A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠face drowned in pitch-black static stared back.

From within that static, a noise-laced voice called her name. It was the sound of something that existed on a vastly higher dimension forcing itself onto a human frequency — clumsily, insistently, impersonating speech despite occupying an entirely different plane of reality.

Every time she heard that voice, her body flinched. A maddening, bone-deep chill crawled over her.

They say that when you enter a Gate, a being's true nature leaks out a little, but...

...Even so, this was so far past the line she had imagined that the line was no longer in sight. An ordinary civilian's brain would rupture from the voice alone. A regular hunter would go insane. She herself — already one step removed from being human — was barely holding on. So what chance did ordinary people have?

And so Team Leader Oh understood it once more. She had felt it last time, too. This monster was something that must never, under any circumstances, be provoked. The day this being lost interest in humanity and revealed its true form, Korea would simply cease to exist.

And yet, on the other hand... another thought occurred to her.

"Good job, rookie! You've got a real talent for this hunter thing! Keep at it!"

"Come on, I keep telling you it's all the skill."

If they could just stay on this being's good side, Team Leader Oh thought, they might even be able to completely destroy the A-rank and higher Gates that had, until now, remained nothing but unsolvable problems. The ability this being had just displayed was more than enough to make her think so.

And for that reason, if nothing else—

"If it weren't for Team Leader Myo, I'd kidnap you straight to Dobong-gu right now~!"

"Thank you for thinking so highly of me."

Team Leader Oh resolved to do everything in her power to maintain a good relationship with the rookie hunter named Kang Yul. It would be the best choice — for herself, and for humanity.