The Nightmare's Daughter
To Ryu Jihee, her nightmare bloodline had never been anything more than an unwanted stigma.
Despite carrying the identity of a half-blood, there was only one reason she had come to think this way: the nightmare known as the Queen Bee. In other words, her biological mother — a succubus said to have torn apart countless survivor camps in the early days. As long as she belonged to the Honinhoe, stories about that woman reached her ears whether she liked it or not.
Of course, most people tried to hold their tongues in front of the woman's daughter. But there was no locking every mouth, least of all when the listener was a nightmare's daughter. The emotions that leaked through. The bitter remarks let slip without thinking. Add a little inference to that, and guessing what kind of being her mother had been was an easy thing indeed.
The awkward part was what came after. The moment the Honinhoe realized Jihee had learned about her mother, they were the ones who put on apologetic expressions.
Shouldn't I be the one apologizing here?
She had thought that once or twice, but the adults involved were stubborn to a fault. Their judgment was that a child born into this world bore no sin — and yet, at the same time, her appearance was impossible not to flinch from. And so the people of the Honinhoe often felt a stab of guilt at the sight of themselves keeping their distance from Jihee. Which was why she, in turn, gradually stopped letting it show. She gathered what information she could, but never let on in front of those who had actually seen the woman.
The acting skill that even her homeroom teacher, Park Woochan, had marveled at was born right there. The astonishing part was that everyone had been taken in by the performance of a child not yet ten. Even accounting for the various tricks people had picked up to survive the Great Invasion, it was a decidedly unusual outcome. Demonic talent, perhaps. Or should it be called nightmarish talent? Either way, Ryu Jihee felt fear at the fact.
More than the people who murmured she really does look just like her in passing, it was the knowledge that she herself possessed such a gift that felt alien. So much so that she had once tried to keep it at arm's length. Wearing clumsy round glasses. Keeping men at a distance. Not having worn makeup once since entering middle school was part of the same effort — not that anyone could have called it effective, even as a joke.
She had never needed makeup. Hers was not a beauty that glasses could hide. A light combing was enough to bring a sheen to her hair, and no all-nighter ever left a single blemish on her skin. She didn't even have to try to hold a conversation with the boys, because unlike every other adolescent, she could read what was in the other kids' hearts with ease.
How to smile with her eyes. How to keep a relationship balanced on a knife's edge. Do this, and that happens; do that, and this follows. She had never once set out to learn any of it, yet Jihee understood it more naturally than anyone — as half-bloods do.
That power. That magic. The older she grew, the more she ripened, the more keenly Jihee felt herself developing in the direction of the nightmare. And with it, terror. Someone might have called it enviable. But to Jihee, it looked like nothing more than a brand proving she was a nightmare's daughter. And Jihee hated herself for it.
Put simply, being a nightmare's daughter was, to Ryu Jihee, a kind of shame — a secret that must never come to light. And so, running out of school the day her identity was suddenly exposed had been, for her, the only natural response.
Ryu Jihee was a nightmare's daughter. That much was undeniable fact. But for Ryu Jihee the person to be treated as nothing more than a synonym for it — for every action she took to come tagged with that label — was something she could not bear. Honestly, she had even thought about killing herself. Though it was less serious deliberation than a bitter, self-mocking wonder whether there was any point in going on. That was how heavy the stigma sat with her.
Maybe I should just quit school?
The thought crossed her mind, but she shook her head soon enough. No. Nothing would change anyway. Now that her identity was out, she would go on living as a nightmare's daughter regardless. Perhaps for the rest of her life. Whenever that thought struck her, Ryu Jihee would shiver against a chill that had no business being there.
And so, the day after she had forced her turbulent heart quiet and shut her eyes by sheer stubbornness, Ryu Jihee confirmed that the tabloid articles had vanished without a trace.
The hell?
There were reasons, of course. The vigorous defense mounted by Choi Seungjun, chairman of the Academy. The Honinhoe elders stepping forward to shield her in the open. From official statements to front-page features, everything she had dreaded flared up and died down just as fast as it had ignited. Call it the power of influence, and that was exactly what it was. Still, to her, who knew none of the details, the whole affair felt almost like magic — as if to say that a good seventeen years of anguish had amounted to nothing at all.
And in truth, it had. Not a single student made a fuss over tabloids that had boiled up and vanished within a day. Or maybe they had never taken it seriously to begin with; the articles had been nothing but speculation without a shred of real evidence. In that sense, most people were probably more surprised to learn that Jihee really was a half-blood. Thinking that, she wondered what on earth yesterday's disgraceful display had been for — and burst out laughing before she knew it.
...Of course, she didn't truly think that. She had simply let go of the reins, and things had worked themselves out. She was neither young nor foolish enough to genuinely believe otherwise. That was exactly why Jihee had come up to the rooftop: to hear from whoever had orchestrated all of this what they intended.
"Did I tell you to go to class, or didn't I?"
"Hehe, sorry."
And then the culprit appeared before her, waiting there alone — under the pretext of having come to catch her for skipping class. Park Woochan. A teacher at this Academy, and the hunter who was her homeroom teacher.
...As noted more than once, she didn't know much about Park Woochan as a person. She had heard the rumors, but that was the extent of it. The Butcher, said to have slaughtered countless half-bloods and monsters without mercy. The finest unlicensed hunter in the country. An avenger who had sworn to devote his life to eradicating every last monster. Was that really all there was? What his personality was like, what kind of man he actually was — rumors couldn't tell her that.
But the homeroom teacher she had actually met was hardly the sort of man those rumors should have followed. Well — when he was facing monsters, who knew. Honestly, in her eyes, Park Woochan was closer to a civil servant. What could he possibly have to do that kept him so busy? He was always dashing here, there, and everywhere, and she had never once seen him sit down and rest. Not that the Honinhoe hadn't lent a hand in creating that state of affairs. A schedule packed to the point of suspicion. Incidents of bizarrely enormous scale. And, on top of it all, the ability to somehow process every last item on schedule. In her eyes, her homeroom teacher was not a blood-mad killer but a salaried worker.
And she wasn't judging from a first impression alone. The first time she had revealed her identity to Park Woochan — to prevent an all-out war between the Honinhoe and the Academy, Ryu Jihee had dangled even the fact that she was a half-blood as bait, because she had believed him a lunatic killer who spared not even half-bloods. In the end, it had been a magnificent failure.
Yet there was only one reason Nam Sangwon was still alive: Park Woochan had granted her request. A plea so pathetic she couldn't even properly remember what she had said. And having heard it, Park Woochan truly had not killed a single member of the Honinhoe. A result far too clean to attribute to one student's request.
Why? What difference was there between her and the half-bloods Park Woochan had killed until now?
My face?
Honestly, that was all she could come up with. Come to think of it, was the rumor that Park Woochan killed half-bloods even true? Not that she felt there was no smoke without fire. Still, the gap between the Park Woochan of rumor and the Park Woochan she had met was enormous. She couldn't exactly ask him point-blank whether he had ever danced with a blade among half-bloods. And yet, for all that, he was uselessly faithful to his post as a teacher — when it came out that he was the master of Hunter Shin Seoa, she had actually found it convincing. A benefactor, and yet a strangely odd man. That was the Park Woochan in Ryu Jihee's mind. Well, owing him a debt as she did, she no longer felt the old wariness around him. So here they were.
But listening to this kind of story, she couldn't help wondering all the same.
What on earth is this man?
It seemed this whole affair involved the organization that had contacted the Honinhoe a while back — the nightmare who had claimed to be her mother was part of it, too. She didn't know what had passed between that woman and Park Woochan. She didn't particularly want to know, or to ask. Only this: as a result, the woman had apparently been purged by that organization. The object Park Woochan had held out as he said so was the orb before her eyes. No — more precisely, a mass of magic that had taken the form of an orb. Apparently her mother had turned her back on the organization because she wanted to pass this on to her daughter.
Honestly, she felt nothing. To Jihee, family had always meant the people of the Honinhoe, and no one else. Being told now that her biological mother had died warranted, at most, a click of the tongue; no overwhelming grief came flooding in at the wrong moment. Well, her heart did grow a little heavier. Which is to say, that was the extent of it. If anything, she was more curious why the woman had left something like this behind.
Could it be that Teacher killed her?
The thought flickered through her mind, but she figured it didn't much matter either way. There was no real evidence, and if you asked whether he had even needed to kill her or hide it, the answers didn't quite add up. Even if there were, it would change nothing. It would only make things awkward between them.
"What is this?"
"Uh, a lump of nightmare power?"
She had been a little bothered when she said it, of course. Even when she looked at Park Woochan hoping for a fuller explanation, the man only shrugged, as if that really was all there was to it. Well, he did tack on a modest explanation.
"That's the power a single nightmare amassed over her lifetime. Looks like she wanted you to have it. What you do with it is up to you. I'm handing it over simply because it's a keepsake left in your name, that's all..."
An attitude of genuine indifference. Whether she turned it into an ornament, or even threw it away.
And then, as Ryu Jihee gazed down at the orb, she suddenly recalled what the nightmare who had claimed to be her mother had once said.
"I came to teach you the life of a nightmare."
She was certain that was what the woman had said.
"Then... if I use this, could I become a nightmare?"
And so, raising that question so naturally — honestly, she hadn't meant anything by it. Only this: beyond that question, she caught a glint flickering in Park Woochan's eyes.