Gong-ri-bi-sa (1)
It was the weekend. The weekend had arrived—the kind on which day passes and overnight leave were permitted.
"Hey, hey. Hwi, are you going out tomorrow by any chance?"
"Yep."
I had no plans for an overnight stay, but a day out was another matter. Fun as academy life was, there were far too many things out there I'd never gotten the chance to properly enjoy.
"For real, for real? What's gotten into Mr. Model Student!?"
Kim To-eun only grew more excited at that.
"What're you gonna do? Got plans??"
"Nothing grand. It's not like we're allowed beyond the designated guard zone anyway."
At best, my itinerary amounted to touring famous eateries and a bit of small-time fun.
At my explanation, Kim To-eun's face deflated for a second before she bounced right back.
"I'm going shopping too! Wanna come together?"
"Where are you headed?"
"Toward Gyeongbokgung! You know the Insadong street over there, right?"
For reference, the Hwadam Army Special Military Academy kept branches in Seoul, Hongcheon, Daejeon, Gwangju, and Daegu—and the one I attended was in Seoul.
Why not Daejeon? Your guess is as good as mine. I'd have had to ask whichever officer handled the assignments to find out. Not that I'd ever actually get around to it.
"If it's the Insadong strip, that overlaps with most of what I had planned anyway. Sure. Let's go together."
"Yay!!"
Unplanned company, but hardly unwelcome. Wandering the streets with a friend was on my bucket list, after all.
"Now I've just gotta rope in the others! Oh—Gwon! You thinking of going out tomorrow??"
And so Kim To-eun set about recruiting more companions, with all the bearing of a huntress on the prowl.
Hmm. Maybe I should try coaxing Pyo Do-hyeok along, too.
Pyo Do-hyeok still gave the rest of the world a wide berth. Even so, club activities had brought him a great deal closer to me. Sort of. Probably?
For one, he took me up on one invitation out of every three. And when the others weren't around, he'd sometimes keep me company anyway.
So it was worth another attempt this time—especially since Kim To-eun, from the look of her, had been itching for a chance to talk to Pyo Do-hyeok as well.
Not that her wanting to open a conversation came from any longing for friendship. As I saw it, she'd simply been forced to care because it kept looking like Pyo Do-hyeok was being left out.
Whatever the reality, anyone who didn't know better would have sworn Pyo Do-hyeok was the one being frozen out—when in truth it was closer to Pyo Do-hyeok freezing us out.
"...What is it."
"Wanna hang out with us tomorrow?"
"No."
"Really? You really won't come?"
"I believe I already said no."
"Come on. Hang out with us."
"..."
"Come—on—hang—out—with—us."
I caught Pyo Do-hyeok as he tried to slip quietly away. He pulled a face of pure disgust, but I was not one to be deterred by that.
"You're going to have the time of your life today!!"
"Hwi. The plan?"
"Just you wait—I've already scouted out all the best restaurants."
"...Haah."
And so the four-person party of Kim To-eun, Seong Gwon, me, and Pyo Do-hyeok was at long last complete. Woohoo!
"These strawberry rice cakes are seriously good. Should we grab more for the trip back?"
"I vote yes—"
"Hwi."
"—ah, okey."
I bit into the japchae hotteok Seong Gwon held out to me—a griddle-fried sweet pancake stuffed with glass noodles. My reason for eating her share was nothing complicated.
Seong Gwon loved sampling all kinds of food, but her stomach was simply too small. Finish one item, and she was too full to manage anything else.
Me? I was the sort of big eater who could put away five servings without breaking a sweat.
It had all started with me taking pity on her as she whimpered over a single crepe she couldn't finish, and these days I was the squad's official leftover-disposal officer.
Frankly, I was delighted with the arrangement. Prices out here were steeper than I'd expected, so whenever I hesitated over a purchase, it worked out to Seong Gwon buying it for me.
"...And all of that actually fits in you?"
"Yep. It's good, isn't it?"
Try spending your whole life on hospital food. Outside meals would be going down your throat without pause, too.
With that thought, I swallowed the last of the hotteok. Snacks bought with someone else's money tasted absolutely divine.
"Hwi, tell me when you're full."
"Will do. But this won't do it."
I could say this with certainty: Seong Gwon, filling up one nibble at a time, would hit her limit long before I felt the first hint of fullness.
"Hey, hey. I think this every time we eat, but you seriously put it away..."
"Growing boy."
"What nonsense. Even a growth spurt doesn't cover that much."
Pyo Do-hyeok had a word for me. Of course, since Pyo Do-hyeok saying it stood shorter than I did, I let the remark go in one ear and out the other. If it stung, he was welcome to grow taller than me and come back.
"Hehehe... anyway! It would've been nice if the others could've come with us. Right?"
Kim To-eun, the shortest member of our party, swiftly steered the conversation away from treacherous ground.
For the record: Sa Seo-yeon had to stop by her family home, Lee Hoe-uk's homebody tendencies ran deep, and Yeo Woo-jung claimed he had business to attend to—so none of them had joined us.
"Can't be helped. Let's at least stock up on snacks for them."
"Yep-yep!"
We'd already bought plenty of the dragon-whisker honey twists Insadong was famous for, plus strawberry rice cakes and a pile of other treats, but it was less than a week's worth. You had to hoard while you had the chance.
"Our country's in danger too!"
"What's all this about sending troops abroad!"
Just then, at the far end of the street we were walking, we spotted people staging a protest. Their red placards were plainly visible even from a distance.
"Ah... now that you mention it, they did say there's another overseas deployment coming. Was it the US?"
"No, Britain."
"Britain?"
"A Grade 10 Dimension Gate popped up in Britain just recently, remember?"
"To be precise, it carries a danger rating of 8.10.3."
"Yeah, that one."
A Dimension Gate's danger rating was measured across three metrics: the creature types that emerged, the width of the gate's interior, and the hazards of its environment and structure.
In other words, a rating of 8.10.3 meant Grade 8 otherworld creatures on average, an interior the size of the South American continent, and an environment that only slightly impeded activity.
That said, even with the system explained, ordinary people tended to cite only the creature grade. "Grade 8" simply rolled off the tongue more easily than "8.10.3," so it was only natural.
"The creatures' grade is one thing, but with an interior that size, no single nation's troops would find the Dimension Core easily."
A Dimension Gate only vanished once the ⟨Dimension Core⟩ at its heart was destroyed. Put differently, fail to find the core, and the gate would never go away.
That was why Britain had put out a call for help to our country—partly because this Earth's South Korea was a powerhouse of otherworld defense, granted.
"Still, a deployment would only be one or two thousand troops, wouldn't it? I don't think it warrants a protest."
"Perhaps because this is Seoul."
"Huh? Oh—the Military Demarcation Line?"
Of course, this being South Korea didn't make it safe and sound.
As I'd said before, this Earth's South Korea was still a divided nation under armistice—and the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) along it no longer held nothing but North Korean landmines.
"I heard another otherworld creature came down from the DMZ just yesterday. That's bound to be having an effect too."
Right. New Dimension Gates and otherworld creatures that neither South nor North had dared touch had been added to that stretch of land.
That was why South Korea churned out soldiers like there was no tomorrow.
"I knew Seoul sat close to the front line, but hearing it like that really is scary. I kind of understand the protest all of a sudden."
"It isn't merely a front line, either. This is a city that was once half-destroyed by an otherworld creature that came down from the DMZ."
"Even so, I doubt that protest will find much sympathy. Turning a blind eye to the provinces beyond the capital region is one of Korea's chronic ills."
With me having yet to memorize this Earth's history, Kim To-eun and Seong Gwon carried the chatter in my place. Pyo Do-hyeok, who never hesitated to chime in on subjects like these, made the conversation all the richer for it.
I diligently gathered up every scrap of that knowledge. Unless I wanted an earful from the history teacher, this was exactly the sort of moment to study hard.
"I'm getting kind of thirsty, though. I'll go grab us something to drink."
"Oh! Mine too. Hot chocolate, please!"
"Okay. You two?"
"I'm fine."
"As am I."
"Two drinks it is, then."
Pocketing the money Kim To-eun handed over, I ducked into a nearby café.
"That'll be 21,900 won."
"...Whoa. Here you go."
Fine, hot chocolate I could forgive, but nearly ten thousand won for an ade that vanished in two sips? Outrageous.
Waiting for the drinks, I found myself thinking that Seoul somehow felt even pricier than Sejong.
The café's jazz BGM and a news broadcast the part-timer had apparently left on blended together at a near-whisper. If it sounded this faint even to my unusually sharpened ears, the other patrons likely couldn't make it out at all.
"One hot chocolate and one lemonade!"
With no other customers in the shop, the drinks came together in no time. The part-timer slid two cups and a single cookie toward me.
"This one's on the house."
"Oh—thank you."
Jackpot. A chocolate chip cookie.
I smiled back at the part-timer, whose smile was dazzlingly bright, then scooped up the drinks. The kids would be waiting, so I had to hurry.
"Wow, the prices here are truly no joke."
"How much?"
"9,300 won a cup. Yours was 12,600."
"Eek."
Delicious, though. I sipped the sweet-and-tart, ice-cold lemonade—and half of it was gone in a blink.
"Hwi."
Seong Gwon waved a churro at me. An offer, clearly—and naturally, I didn't turn it down.
"Oh, this is good. Where'd you get it?"
"Over there."
"I've got to note that down—"
"GRAB HIM!!!"
But right then, from behind me, a deafening roar utterly out of place on that street came tearing through the air.
"Oh, f—!"
A sound like that was impossible to ignore; the kids and I all craned our heads toward it. Between the sparsely scattered pedestrians, someone came sprinting toward us at full tilt.
"Bastard, I said stop!"
"You f—ing punk!"
Behind the running man, two more figures appeared, clearly chasing him. Their faces were vicious beyond belief.
"Yahui. The man running up front looks like a Licensed Hunter."
"Huh?"
A Licensed Hunter was a civilian granted official permission to use force—against otherworld creatures only. If the Hwadam Army was the government's hunting service, Licensed Hunters were something like its private-sector counterpart.
But "hunter" was generous; their status was, at the end of the day, civilian. Innumerable among them couldn't handle Phantasms, or didn't even know such things existed. Naturally, few of them ever hunted in earnest the way the Hwadam Army did.
From what I'd heard, the most a Licensed Hunter ever amounted to was shooting the occasional otherworld creature that wandered outside a Dimension Gate with their permitted firearms. In effect, civilians with an expanded right of self-defense.
"Explanations can wait. I'll block the front—if he sees me and changes direction, catch him."
"Okay."
"We'll help too. If you only block the front, there's no telling which way he'll swerve."
"...Very well."
It was Pyo Do-hyeok's request, so we readily obliged: Pyo Do-hyeok took the front, I took the left, and Seong Gwon and Kim To-eun the right.
Pyo Do-hyeok left his coat in Kim To-eun's keeping and strode out front, unhurried and measured. His crisply pressed uniform was impossible to miss.
Ah, now that I thought of it—back at that café...
...we had heard that news about the Licensed Hunters colluding with organized crime. This could well be an extension of the same affair. Probably why Pyo Do-hyeok was stepping forward, too.
Was he holding off on seizing the man outright in case he turned out to be innocent?
If the man were innocent, he'd have no reason to flee at the sight of us—or more precisely, of the academy uniforms we wore. He'd have asked for help, if anything.
But if he ran even at the sight of an academy uniform...
"F—! Why are there even grunts—!"
Yes—if he bolted like that. And if, on top of it, he cursed while using "grunts," the slang and slur for the Hwadam Army... suspicious hardly began to cover it.
The moment the man caught sight of Pyo Do-hyeok, he cut to the left—and I slipped smoothly into his path. Thanks to my coat, the (presumed) Licensed Hunter hadn't yet realized I was a cadet.
"Move—"
"My apologies, sir—but might I ask why you're doing your level best to avoid our Hwasa cadets?"
"Are you insane—!"
If he turned out to be an innocent civilian, this would get ugly fast. With that in mind, rather than grabbing him, I blocked the way with my sheer bulk.
I didn't forget, in the process, to loosen my coat's front and show the academy uniform beneath.
"You cadets there! Grab that man! He's a criminal!"
"Don't let him get away!!"
The two officers who'd been chasing the hunter bellowed at us. The hunter tried to force his way past me regardless, but I was not someone he would slip by.
I twisted my body this way and that to match his footwork. Completely walled off, the man spat stream after stream of curses and shoved at me—useless. Maybe if I hadn't seen it coming, but I'd already driven my stance firmly into the ground.
"You son of a b—!"
Then the hunter whipped something out of his jacket. Far too serious a weapon to pass off as self-defense gear: a military combat knife.
So he was a criminal after all.
Too late, though. He should have accounted not only for his two pursuers, but for Pyo Do-hyeok as well—the man whose path he'd slipped past.
Before the blade could reach me, Pyo Do-hyeok seized the hunter from behind.
"No weapons, sir."
Seong Gwon was suddenly there as well, chopping the weapon hand with a knife-hand strike. The combat knife clattered to the pavement.
"Well done!!"
By then the two pursuers had fully caught up as well. Clack. In an instant, the handcuffs were on the hunter's wrists.
"Are you police officers?"
"Uh, y-yeah. We're cops— no. We are police officers."
"May I see your badge?"
"Ah—yes, sir."
The handcuffs alone made their identity plain enough, but Pyo Do-hyeok played the script through to the very end. While one officer kept the hunter pinned, the other caught his breath and showed us his badge.
"Thank you for your help. We'd never have taken him this cleanly otherwise."
"It was simply our duty as officer cadets."
While Seong Gwon and Pyo Do-hyeok handled the officers, I stood watching the hunter howl his lungs out. Criminal or not, this was my first time seeing an active Licensed Hunter up close, and I found it genuinely fascinating.
"Hey, hey. Um, could we ask what this is all about?"
"Ah..."
Kim To-eun asked cautiously, and the two officers traded a look.
"W-well. Not sure whether you've seen the news... this is one of the Licensed Hunters who'd been colluding with organized crime."
"Whoa. There were more than just those three?"
"Embarrassing as it is, yes. The story was meant to run only after we'd swept up the entire ring..."
So a broadcaster or a reporter had broken the embargo. That one sentence from the officer, and I had the whole picture.
Whoever had slipped up, it was the working officers left holding the bill.
"You've got it rough, sir."
"Thank you for your hard work."
"Hang in there."
"We're always grateful to those of you holding the rear so steadfastly. Fighting!"
"Ah—and fighting to you cadets as well."
"Fighting...!"
Still, that was about the extent of what we could offer as academy cadets. We exchanged cheers and encouragement, then parted ways.
"Those officers really do have it rough. Now that it's hit the news, the ones still at large will be on their guard..."
"The media's recklessness hardly began yesterday. Don't let it weigh on you."
"Still..."
"Yahui is right. That said, I do find myself thinking the government ought to step in on the Licensed Hunter question at least once."
"Huh? The government? On hunters? Why?"
"Perhaps not to the extent of mob collusion, but the incidents and accidents Licensed Hunters cause are hardly one or two in number."
"Huh? Are there really that many?"
At her echo, Pyo Do-hyeok released a faint sigh. He wasn't rebuking Kim To-eun for her blindness to current affairs; his face simply wore its own quiet disillusionment at the words he himself was about to say.
"Only last month, an underqualified Licensed Hunter forced his way into an active scene and died on the spot. And in Gangwon Province, money-blind hunters wrecked a containment perimeter, letting an Owl Bear push all the way to a civilian home."
"Oh, right... I think I did see that on the news."
"Handing civilians the right to exercise force was a mistake from the very start. Soldiers are more than sufficient for the fighting..."
"I don't know. I'd say Licensed Hunters themselves are necessary. The Hwadam Army fails to respond in time on occasion, doesn't it?"
Seong Gwon voiced her dissent with a perfectly untroubled expression. Rather than rebut in earnest, Pyo Do-hyeok let the matter die on a noncommittal "I suppose." Fair enough—this wasn't exactly a topic for a stroll.
"Well, none of that matters right now. I just hope it doesn't fester into something ugly down the line."
Above all, the likes of us, here and now, had no power to change the situation or the system itself—however ominous it felt, however uneasy.
So for now, all we could do was sweep it under the rug and move on.
"By the way, Pyo Do-hyeok—how did you know who he was?"
"I've seen his face in the newspapers. Not for this affair—for his earlier exploits."
"You remember that? Are you a genius?"
"OMG. The way you rattled off case after case, too—you're like, scary smart... Wait! Isn't that Yeo Woo-jung?"
"Where, where? Oh—it really is him."
"Well, well. Fancy meeting every one of you here?"
And so we crossed paths, by pure chance, with the one face we weren't supposed to see today: Yeo Woo-jung, who had declined to join us on grounds of private business.
"You said you had things to do! Are you already all done?"
"No. Regrettably, not yet."
As ever, Yeo Woo-jung folded his slender eyes into crescent moons as he smiled—which made even his sincerely regretful tone come out sounding faintly amused.
"You see, the person I arranged to meet simply refuses to arrive."
Truly, it was a dependably suspicious smile.