The Order of Things
On the subject of the Hunter Academy's curriculum.
To tell the truth, there was a considerable gap in ability among the students currently enrolled. It was only natural, given that the place had only just opened its doors. Until very recently, no official hunter training institution of any kind had existed, so the students, too, would each have stuck to their own idiosyncratic training methods. And naturally, the ones whose methods happened to suit them were the first to stand out — while those less fortunate inevitably came across as lagging behind everyone else.
But the Academy was, first and foremost, an educational institution. Admitting exceptional students and giving their talents room to bloom was important, sure. However, with two Cataclysms behind it and still no properly established method for raising hunters, what the Academy valued now was how many hunters it could produce over the long haul... And beyond that, establishing an educational model capable of raising such hunters had become the very yardstick by which the institution itself was judged.
Therefore. The Academy's curriculum was built, above all else, around the majority of its students. Not the handful standing right in front of you. In any case, hoping that every student who enrolled from here on out would measure up to a Jung Pilyeon was simply asking the impossible.
The baseline assumption was E-Rank. Greenhorns who had only just awakened their abilities. Using those acorns as the standard, one rank per school year: D-Rank upon completing the first-year curriculum, C-Rank upon completing the second, B-Rank upon completing the third. That was the target trajectory of growth.
In other words, you might call it the mass production of a mid-tier workforce. Well, it went without saying. No matter how extraordinary a hunter might be, no single one of them could cover the entire nation at once. Even Lee Joongoo, hailed as humanity's strongest, was no exception.
Throw away ninety-nine stones to find the one gem? Write off the incompetent as dead weight and be done with them? Only in the academy stories of manga and light novels could you get away with that. Reality played by far stricter rules. Managing the gates across the whole peninsula didn't call for one brilliant hunter — it called for legions of solid, mid-tier ones.
And so. The Academy's curriculum, too, kept its focus fixed on the growth of low-rank hunters. What homeroom teachers — myself included — had been granted was, at most, discretion over the content of their lessons. When, at what point, and in what order to teach what: the guidelines for all of it had already been laid down. A full twenty-three years had passed since the First Cataclysm, and by now at least a rough consensus existed on what sequence of knowledge best produced a hunter.
The academic calendar was much the same. First semester: shoring up each hunter's individual abilities and experience. Second semester: learning the practical knowledge an actual hunter's life demanded. Repeat that cycle every year, and out comes a finished, quality hunter. That was the Academy's blueprint.
In short.
"You all know what this means, right? Field training starts next week, kids!"
It meant that field trip season had arrived at the Academy as well. Two weeks into the new term — downright early compared to an ordinary high school schedule. Especially from the students' point of view, since it meant they'd be sitting their midterm exams immediately after the field training...
"YAHOOOO!!"
"WOOHOOOO!!"
Haha. Monkeys, the lot of them. If the old idiom about the monkey keeper and his chestnuts — three in the morning, four in the evening — ever had a perfect match, this was it. But oblivious to all that, they just kept whooping at the top of their lungs, and it really sank in that these kids were, in the end, still children.
...Well, as I said, the Academy's field training was, at its core, closer to job experience as a hunter. Given that the upcoming midterms were meant to measure their growth as hunters, maybe that much was only natural. Which is to say: a reflection essay on the field experience would be on the midterm. Watching them celebrate, blissfully unaware of what was in store, I hardly knew what to say — they were that guileless. Then again, even if they had caught on, they'd probably have cheered anyway.
The Academy's current class assignments were based purely on grades. Personally, I'd have thought sorting by combat style made more sense, but that was desk-bound bureaucracy for you. Which meant the students gathered in this class were, by and large, the high achievers.
At least when it came to grades!!
Whether they were out to spite me or what, I couldn't say — but it was Choi Seungjun who'd dumped these problem children on me under the banner of "gifted students." And skill at that age was, in practice, synonymous with insolence. The first semester alone had proven that. Good grief, the trouble these kids had put me through. Just the fact that it was only second semester was enough to give me chills.
Well, anyway. Thanks to that, their skills were all reasonably solid. Not that every last one of them was at a Jung Pilyeon or Lee Yeeun level... but they at least cleared the bar. In that sense, the first-year curriculum was probably a comfortable fit for these kids. Few of them would struggle even with D-Rank material, so no wonder they had energy to spare.
Of course, there were also those grinding harder than ever to sharpen their skills. Most of the ones whooping it up right now were middling, grade-wise. The two genuinely top students of the class — that is, Jung Pilyeon and Lee Yeeun — were, if anything, quiet. Jung Pilyeon, who'd recently developed a real taste for the sword. And Lee Yeeun, newly awakened to an entirely new way of fighting. With a little more polish, either of them could have graduated from the Academy on the spot and been none the lesser for it.
In rank terms, B-Rank. They'd already been at C-Rank to begin with, but their recent growth was honestly frightening.
And Jihee was more still. Her publicly known ability was roughly D-Rank. But. Jihee, who'd been dragged into one incident after another since the days of the Cataclysm, was in practice the equal of B-Rank. If she cut loose with her half-blood abilities, she'd give those two a genuinely good fight, no question. And if she could master the mana of the queen-class nightmare she'd recently come into? For all I knew, A-Rank would be within her grasp. Kids like her were exactly the ones for whom the Academy's policy of securing as many B-Rank hunters as possible became, ironically, a shackle.
Tch.
Of course, that wasn't the only reason the kids were quiet. The first two, maybe — but Jihee, at least, was still feeling the aftershocks of the half-blood revelation incident from the start of term. The fallout from said incident was still very much in effect.
To be fair, thanks to Choi Seungjun's efforts, the articles gossiping this way and that about Jihee's parentage had vanished overnight. But. The atmosphere afterward was another matter entirely.
...It wasn't as if the other students were actively ostracizing her. If they had been, I'd have rolled up my sleeves and stepped in myself. It was just... how do I put this.
A little awkward, yeah~
No, really. In a manner of speaking, they'd all learned a classmate's family circumstances from the newspaper. Most of them were probably simply at a loss for how to approach her. She was a half-blood, after all. Of course words would fail them. All the more so with a few who'd blindly cursed half-bloods in general after hearing about the Honinhoe incident.
On top of that, it was hard to just walk up and act like nothing had happened. Because of how Jihee had reacted when it all came out. She'd blown up and stormed right out of the Academy. And so the mood in class was, frankly, uneasy — because Jihee, the one who always led the cheering at moments like these, had her mouth clamped shut. It wasn't to the point that anyone would call her out on it, but it was the kind of demeanor that made distance feel inevitable. Knowing Jihee's personality, of course, that was the exact opposite of her nature. She'd blown up like that in front of everyone, so now she was probably agonizing over how to talk to them normally again.
Either way, Ryu Jihee's inner world was far more ordinary than anyone would guess. Half-blood. Daughter of a nightmare. And an officer of the Honinhoe, no less. On paper, a résumé that couldn't be more extraordinary — but the girl herself was, at the end of the day, just one high schooler. In fact, this was someone who'd agonized for years over the simple fact that she'd first approached Yeeun just to secure herself a normal school life. No way she could step forward in a situation like this.
Mmmm... And sure enough, that seemed to be exactly the case. She'd been making strange noises for a while now, and it didn't look good. Apparently she still hadn't managed to come up with a decent solution.
So, so timid...
As a result, Jihee's relationship with the other kids hadn't budged an inch since that day. Well, couldn't be helped. From the others' perspective, they'd come back from break only to get tangled up in someone's family drama on day one.
The problem was the mood right now. If things kept up like this, ugly talk about Jihee would inevitably start to circulate — along the lines of, she's the one who blew up first, and she's been poisoning the atmosphere ever since. For the moment, given the circumstances, the unspoken consensus was to hold off. But who knew how long that would last.
Swallowing that thought, I let my gaze drift. What a moment like this needed was someone immune to the atmosphere. Not someone simply oblivious, mind you — someone who could read the room perfectly well and stride right in anyway.
In other words.
Yoonha! Help me out here!
Some would call that being a delinquent.
Naturally, my gaze settled on our very own Hwang Yoonha — proud recipient of the honor of being the first student in Academy history to skip class.
However.
...
Ms. Hwang Yoonha herself wasn't saying a word. Now, she was never the type to go around chattering at people unprompted — unless the mood struck her, maybe. But. Even accounting for that, something about Yoonha's behavior was off. Normally, with Jihee this quiet, she'd have kicked up at least twice the usual ruckus to compensate. And it wasn't just today, either. She'd been like this ever since the term started.
Class time was no different. From first bell to last, she simply stared blankly at the blackboard. To her credit, she didn't seem to be genuinely checked out — she faithfully did what was asked of her and kept up with her assignments. But. Only that much. Outside of the bare minimum of classwork, Yoonha spent most of her time like that, as though lost in thought about something. Honestly, far from being in any position to ask her for help, I was starting to worry whether something was wrong with her.
Dammit.
Was it because of that, after all? That was the first thought to cross my mind. The trip to the Namhae branch. The string of events they'd lived through over the break had, it seemed, forced these acorns to ripen before their time. Yeeun was one thing, but even Jihee seemed to be carrying some burden or other. Fair enough — even I'd been thrown off balance when an entire Association branch turned coat out of nowhere, in what I'd assumed was a simple field exercise.
A mystery-thriller-suspense at the worst possible time, that was.
For kids who'd never so much as handled a request before, it must have been a scene far too harsh to witness.
Things they'd need to wrestle with, one way or another. Things they'd inevitably have to face someday. That much was certain — but there was an order to these things.
Things they'd need to wrestle with, one way or another. Things they'd inevitably have to face someday. All well and good — but there was an order to these things.
Tch. Before I knew it, I was clicking my tongue again.
Summer break had come and gone, and school was back in session. And the second semester it ushered in still carried, thick and heavy, the aftertaste of everything that had happened over the summer.