Scandal Rocks Onhwa Guild
After contacting all twenty-five people who had attended the interviews and informing them of the results, my tasks for the day were finally complete. Work was done, so I briefly considered heading home when a conversation drifted into my ears.
“Hey, hey. Did you hear? Onhwa Guild’s really stepped in it this time.”
“Out of nowhere?”
“What do you mean, out of nowhere? Things have felt shaky with them for the past month at least.”
I had never gone out of my way to look up news about the guild after I left. Since I had walked away like that, I wasn’t particularly curious. There was no reason to be.
Still, Onhwa Guild was one of Korea’s top guilds, so whenever something happened, word inevitably reached me.
“Ah, yeah. That interview I saw last time was a bit… off.”
“Right? Yu Hyejeong’s tone has gotten a lot rougher lately. Caused quite the controversy.”
“Her tone was always rough. What’s new?”
“No, it’s not that refreshing ‘cider’ vibe from before. It’s like she’s showing her true, unfiltered self now, you know?”
A month might be short in the grand scheme of things, but it seemed like enough time for a person’s emotions to settle. I could feel that my heart, which used to tremble at the mere mention of Yu Hyejeong’s name, had grown remarkably steady.
Or maybe it was because living a life for myself while handling all these tasks had made me realize just how trashy my previous days had been.
“So what exactly blew up this time?”
“It’s Min Jiyeon. One of the guild members caused a massive scandal.”
Min Jiyeon. Hearing that name felt strangely distant. There was a time when she harassed people so obsessively that I genuinely wondered if she was mentally ill.
‘Oh my, your ass feels incredible. Is that how you seduced Hyejeong?’
Yu Hyejeong’s longtime friend who casually sexually harassed others with those disgusting comments. She was the kind of woman who stirred up every scandal imaginable inside the guild.
“She gathered people while claiming she was from Onhwa Guild, blackmailed them, forcibly stripped them, and took photos.”
“Is she insane?”
“If that was all, it’d be a relief. She forced those people to… do it with each other and got off watching.”
That was exactly the kind of woman Min Jiyeon was. Her reputation among the guild members had always been terrible, and I remembered stepping in to stop a similar incident once before. When I later insisted she needed to be expelled, I could still hear how Yu Hyejeong had responded.
‘Wow, Han Junho. You’ve grown a lot, huh? You can even suggest kicking out my friend now?’
Thinking back on the things I heard during our time together, I could finally see how little she had thought of me. Lower than a friend.
‘It’s annoying, so shut up and get lost.’
Someone she could treat however she wanted depending on her mood. Human emotions really are fickle and ridiculous. At the time, I had thought that treatment was completely natural.
“Wow, she’s actually crazy, isn’t she?”
“And apparently she and Yu Hyejeong were really close. Old friends, and Hyejeong took extra good care of her.”
“At that level, doesn’t it mean Yu Hyejeong knew and just looked the other way?”
“...No way. Even she wouldn’t go that far, right? Not someone in her position.”
I figured that woman was more than capable of it, but… if she still had even a shred of sanity left, she would release a statement saying it had nothing to do with her. If she didn’t cut ties after an incident this explicit, that would be the end for her.
…But even if Yu Hyejeong might not, the guild members I had personally chosen weren’t that stupid.
Well, that’s right. It was now truly an affair that had nothing to do with me anymore.
So I shook off the memories of those miserable days and said,
“Then I’ll head out first.”
I’d go home, crack open a beer, and relax. Things were going to get busy again starting tomorrow.
Hyejeong had always lived for her own arrogance. She never paid attention to those supporting her from the shadows and believed every achievement of Onhwa Guild was hers alone. That was the kind of person she was.
“So… the articles related to Min Jiyeon this time…”
From the moment the guild was founded until now, Onhwa Guild had never been touched by the kind of scandals that plagued every other major guild. It was proof of how hard Junho had worked, but she—revered as a goddess and drunk on power—had never realized it.
“You fucking bastards! You should have kept the victims’ mouths shut from the beginning so this kind of thing could never happen!”
Most of the violent language Yu Hyejeong spewed had always been directed at Junho, so the guild members had rarely heard her direct verbal abuse like this.
“And if something like this breaks, you should have told me immediately! What the hell am I supposed to do if you come to me now? Fuck, you people are seriously shit at your jobs, you crazy bastards.”
“I tried to tell you last time, but you hung up on me…”
One guild member, slightly fed up, stepped forward, but such words would never work on Hyejeong.
“You can’t even do your jobs properly and now you’re talking back? Have you all lost your minds? Should I just kill every last one of you?”
When she was this angry, there was no way the words pouring from her mouth would be polite. The guild members had expected harsh language, but this was beyond even their imagination.
“Just how did Vice Guild Master Junho endure all of this?”
One person who couldn’t stand it anymore muttered quietly, thinking it was to himself, but—
“Hey. What the hell did you just say?”
There was no way an S-rank hunter with superior senses like Hyejeong would miss it.
“Ah, n-no… I-I’m sorry.”
“Hey, say it to my face. What? Can’t do it? Of course you can’t. Trash like you only know how to talk behind people’s backs.”
“…Sorry. I’m sorry.”
The aura she unleashed as her rage reached its peak made every guild member in the room begin to suffer.
“Urgh…”
“Ugh…!”
Regardless, Hyejeong, who had been threatening them with her aura, suddenly felt a strange sense of dissonance.
What is this…? Something feels… off.
It felt as if her power was just the slightest bit weaker than usual.
…My condition must be bad.
With everything that had happened, it was understandable. A small leak in the dam wasn’t enough to cause real trouble, she told herself.
“Anyway, prepare response articles or do whatever you have to and take care of it.”
“…Y-yes… understood…”
Looking down at the guild members trembling in fear, she let out a snort and withdrew her aura. Only then could they finally breathe sighs of relief.
“I don’t even want to look at you. Get lost, all of you.”
As she watched them scramble out, thinking how pathetic they were, the name Han Junho suddenly floated into Hyejeong’s mind.
“…Now that I think about it, when that bastard was around, everything ran smoothly without any incidents…”
It was a name she had completely forgotten. A useless, incompetent man who only nagged annoyingly. To Hyejeong, that was all Junho had been.
Since he never made a show of the work he did, that impression had probably stuck even more firmly.
I thought he was completely useless, so I never paid him any attention.
After thinking about him for a moment, she shrugged and quickly brushed the thought aside.
“What could a guy like that have accomplished anyway?”
Min Jiyeon had been friends with Hyejeong for quite a long time. There had been countless incidents even while they were together, so she simply thought what was bound to happen had finally happened. She brushed it off lightly.
Anyway, after some time passes, everyone will forget about it.
It had always been that way. As if someone had arranged everything for her benefit.
“…I keep having strange thoughts.”
She decided she must be tired. The fact that Han Junho’s face—one she had never cared about—kept appearing was simply because she was exhausted.
“Haah… I should go see Seonghun.”
Once time passed and the incident was buried like always, it wouldn’t come to mind again. She thought of it that simply and lightly.
“She really seemed crazy, didn’t she?”
“It’s getting worse by the day.”
But the guild members’ thoughts were completely different from Hyejeong’s.
“No, it’s not that it’s getting worse. Vice Guild Master Junho was the one taking all of it on himself.”
“After Vice Guild Master Junho left, the guild became a total… mess.”
“…I’m thinking of quitting. Honestly, without Vice Guild Master Junho, how long can this guild even last?”
The castle Junho had built was incredibly solid and sturdy, so it had only suffered minor scratches so far. But they could tell it wouldn’t stay that way. No matter how strong a castle is, without someone to maintain it, it will eventually crumble into ruins.
“I think about that a lot too.”
“It’s only been a month since he left, and there’s already noise everywhere.”
“There was controversy at that press conference last time too, wasn’t there?”
At the first press conference after Junho left Onhwa Guild, Hyejeong had revealed her true colors in an unprepared setting. She hadn’t spewed curses or shown open displeasure like she did in front of the guild members, but her sharp words, heavy with her real feelings, had caused an uproar.
At the time, it had been explained away as her being tired and speaking harshly. But this current incident…
“This isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to blow over easily. Not honestly.”
While the guild members racked their brains and considered quitting, Min Jiyeon was in no position to feel at ease either.
“…Fuck. How did things end up like this?”
The situation had spiraled so far out of control that even the shield of Onhwa Guild could no longer protect her.
Her mind went blank. Her head felt empty, and her hands and feet turned ice cold.
“…Yu Hyejeong, why the hell isn’t she picking up…!”
The only person who could fix this was Hyejeong. As the Guild Master of Onhwa and a woman worshipped as a goddess, she would surely have a solution.
But ever since the incident broke, Hyejeong had been completely unreachable. When her anxiety finally hit its limit, another name rose in Min Jiyeon’s mind.
“Han Junho…”
She had tried something similar once before. The grand, abnormal dream of gathering men and women she liked to create her own personal harem. It wasn’t the first time. And the one who had stopped her back then wasn’t Hyejeong—it was Junho.
“Ha, Han Junho stopped me that time too, now that I think about it…”
Back when Junho still loved Hyejeong, Min Jiyeon had been an extremely irritating presence to him. Someone who hovered around Hyejeong—the one who was supposed to be the best—and interfered with her. But because she was someone Hyejeong cherished, he had stuck close to the woman he disliked, nagging her constantly and giving her attention to prevent any accidents.
“That guy… that guy was really interested in me…!”
Even Junho, who was skilled at reading people, had never imagined that interest would be so horribly distorted in her mind.
He showed me so much attention because he was interested in me, right? His relationship with Hyejeong worsened and he even left the guild, so if I reach out to him now… maybe he’ll solve this incident for me too…!
It was true that Junho had worked tirelessly to prevent scandals from touching Onhwa Guild. However, there was one critical mistake in her thinking: he had worked to prevent incidents before they happened. He had never once covered up crimes that had already occurred.
“I-I should contact him. Han Junho… his number should still be the same, right…? If someone like me, Min Jiyeon, reaches out personally, he’ll be happy to answer, right…? H-haha…!”
But she, who had already gone completely mad, wasn’t capable of such rational thought. She simply dialed the number saved in her phone, thinking only of clinging to Junho once more to clean up her filthy scandal.