The Rust on the Butcher's Blade
Long story short, there were no problems. At least, none from where I was standing. In fact, Do Joojin, who had just taken a thorough beating, did nothing but gush admiration the whole time. Truly astonishing. So weapon techniques have their uses after all! By the time he was chattering away like that and excusing himself with a glance at the clock, there wasn't a single wrinkle of embarrassment on his back as he walked away. All things considered, I'd say it was a pretty decent fan meeting for one hour's work. Except. Are you sure he's okay? That was all Seoa offered in return, sounding more worried about him than anything. ……Well, I could understand it. Hunter Do Joojin — a man who once carried the name Butcher. What he'd hoped for from me was never going to be some lecture on weapon techniques. But still. So what? He's never going to see me again anyway.And when you say that, I have nothing to say back.Honestly, how do you even think that far ahead for someone?Consider it solid fan service. It would actually help him, after all. Even if it wasn't the service he came looking for, too bad~ I never signed up for the service industry to begin with. Granted, it's true I was happy to meet someone who called himself my fan. But catering to the man's expectations by putting on a performance I'd never rehearse for anyone else — that I simply wasn't willing to do. He looked pretty upset about it, though. Again, so what? Let's get moving. Lunch is about to end.Yeah, okay. Whatever the case, the schedule properly kicked off after lunch. The fan meeting was all well and good, but right now it was time to do my job as an Academy teacher. Not that I'd paid Yoonha the slightest attention, too busy keeping an eye on Do Joojin. And what was I supposed to do about that one? Either way, one thing was certain: it was going to be a headache.
He's rusted. That was the verdict Do Joojin passed on what had just transpired between himself and the Butcher. To be honest, this meeting had been entirely unexpected for him. No — to phrase it more precisely, it had been unexpected ever since he first spotted the name Butcher in that article. The Butcher as he existed beyond the rumors — the one painted in his imagination — was never a man you could sit across from and talk to like this. Which was why, when he heard the man had been missing ever since his retirement, he'd found that part perfectly believable. It made sense. If you asked who the strongest hunter in this country was, the vast majority would answer Lee Joongoo. If you asked who the most brilliant hunter in this country was, people would name Choi Seungjun without hesitation. But. If you asked who the most hunter-like hunter in this country was? Anyone who knew the rumors of the Butcher would think of him, every single one. That was the kind of existence he was. That was the kind of name it was. Butcher. A hunter whom no one who had set even a toe into the industry's underside could fail to know. The strongest hunter was someone else. The most exceptional hunter likewise. And yet. Considering that the essence of the hunter's profession lay, in the end, in the hunt itself — the finest hunter of all had always been the Butcher. His conduct spoke the same language, too. A hunter who never set foot in the Association on the grounds that it interfered with the hunt. The Butcher's refusal to make a single enemy in the Association, all for the sake of devoting himself wholly to hunting, sometimes made him look like a stubborn old craftsman. I'm full of impurities. When he first researched the Butcher, that was the only assessment Do Joojin could make of himself. I want to kill monsters. I want my revenge on them. No matter how many times he repeated those words to himself, he'd compromised again and again, calling each concession a choice made for survival. It can't be helped. Easy to say, isn't it? You can't summon strength on an empty stomach. Not wrong, that. To kill monsters, you first need to survive. Ask the Butcher himself and he'd give you the same answer. And yet. The sight of a man who seemed to have dedicated every faculty required for living to the hunt alone — that was what Do Joojin had come to admire. ……Honestly, if the man had been found dead somewhere, he wouldn't have been this shocked. And he certainly wouldn't have been this disappointed. After the Great Invasion ended, he'd simply assumed the man — unable to adapt to a changing world — had died somewhere out there, living as a vagrant. Do Joojin himself had assumed it, after all. But Park Woochan had calmly reappeared, wearing his old face once more. First as the master of Hunter Shin Seoa. Next as a supervising teacher of the Academy. And finally, before Do Joojin — who still remembered the man's epithet from his active years — as the Butcher. That was what grieved Do Joojin so deeply. The spar just now had been the same. If this had been the Butcher he remembered, the man would never have let the fight drag on the way he had. Do Joojin would have been flattened flat on his back from the very first exchange. What Do Joojin had wanted was the same thing. He'd wanted to feel, with his whole body, the strength of the hunter they once called the Butcher. In that sense, the result had been half a success. There was no denying the man's skill was outstanding. But. It wasn't at a level he simply couldn't keep up with. There was that much distance between the Butcher of the rumors and Park Woochan. Of course, if Park Woochan himself had heard this, he would have nodded along and said it was only natural — but Do Joojin, ignorant of the full circumstances, couldn't think any other way. The Butcher had rusted. Rusted clean through. Whether it was the result of some grievous injury, or something else entirely. The end result was a man killing time playing teacher at an Academy on the side. Do Joojin's suspicion soon hardened into certainty. Because partway through the afternoon schedule, here and there, a few students began to show glimmers of the Butcher's signature craftsmanship. Unthinkable, from the Butcher he'd heard about in rumors. Selling off his techniques, piece by piece, to brats not even twenty years old. ……Should he call it being buried in his own imagined Butcher, or something else? Either way, Do Joojin genuinely believed it. It left his memory of how the rest of the afternoon unfolded hazy at best. The fall — the fall of a hunter once called the Butcher — struck him that hard. And so. It seems you've had quite a demanding time of it, Professor. He had just stepped briefly outside of himself, managing the bitterness in his chest. That was the exact moment someone approached Do Joojin.
The students had spent the earlier session listening to a careful briefing on the situation facing the Gangwon Branch. In other words: a battery of knowledge checks worthy of the name field training. Pre-expedition scouting. Survival techniques within the terrain confirmed by that scouting. An analysis of the monsters native to mountainous terrain. The characteristics of the dungeons those monsters had built. And the groundwork needed for the assault to come. The order meant nothing. Five categories in total — solve the prepared problems, and the fastest team takes the prize. A simple structure. And. The ones who distinguished themselves first, as ever, were my class. Naturally. While the other classes had been busy training their flashy abilities, mine had started from the fundamentals. Under these conditions, the other classes had no room to compete on judgment. However. The ones truly standing out, above the rest, were Team 4. To be more precise — one member of that team. Class A, Team 4! Class A, Team 4 is on an absolute tear!! Hwang Yoonha. Through eyes narrowed in that lazy, unimpressed squint of hers, Yoonha was demolishing her assigned problems in the blink of an eye. Has she always been that good? Seoa was already questioning it under her breath, which told you everything. Well, sure she is. Still. As I said, first-year Class A is the class Choi Seungjun dumped full of problem children under the flattering label of "elite." Do you call it a bad personality backed by real ability, or did the constant fawning over her talent make her insolent in the first place? It's a chicken-and-egg question, but personally I lean toward the latter. And. Even within Class A, there were exactly two students whose ability was solid — not a matter of talent or promise, but of sheer necessity — because they had only just become hunters. One, of course, was Ha-yeon, who enrolled on account of my circumstances. The other was Yoonha. So then — how did Yoonha, who'd been too busy running part-time jobs to develop her ability even once, make it into Class A? Was she a filler agent Choi Seungjun slipped in, sensing it would look bad to crowd all the top scorers into one class? No way. I could see plenty of potential sprouting in Yoonha too. Her ability being excellent was an established fact. She had stamina forged by years of manual work. Even if it started from wallet problems, she showed real enthusiasm for studying monsters. But. The defining trait I saw in Yoonha was that personality of hers. Call it composure. Call it daring. You only have to look at her — handling her assignments with that bored, unhurried air. Some would call it simple indifference. Others might sneer that she's just lazy. And it wouldn't be entirely wrong, either. But. We are hunters — just not mere hunters. Dismembering the kinds of monsters no ordinary person would ever dream of facing, on their behalf — that is our job. And so. Hunters who fumble their judgment at the decisive moment exist in truly endless numbers. The crushing weight of responsibility felt in the words countless lives hang on this. The gravity of knowing a single choice decides who lives and who dies. The terror and dread of a wrong ending. Because of all that, countless hunters justify their own indecisiveness under the name of caution. We need careful judgment, they say. The intel hasn't come together yet. Of course information matters. But. A hunter making calls in the field should, if anything, guard against exactly that attitude. On a battlefield where the situation shifts by the minute, you may never expect to be handed complete information. You need the nerve to accept that information matters, and still reach a workable decision with what little you have. And once the decision is made, you have to carry it out decisively. Hesitating under the banner of caution only multiplies the damage. In that sense, Yoonha's conduct was refreshingly clean. She never wavered, whatever the situation — her decisiveness could look almost startling at first glance. People of this type tend to deify their own choices, but Yoonha never went that far. She trusted her decisions without clinging to them. She never looked back until the results came in, but once they did, she accepted and corrected them. Until then, agonizing was, as far as she was concerned, a pointless waste of time over something she could no longer change anyway — that was the sheer shamelessness of it. A boldness most people understand in their heads but can never practice. Literally big-hearted — there's no other way to put it. Even right now was a case in point. Her classmates were burning precious minutes agonizing over the optimal route. Yoonha, by contrast, had started the test wherever her feet happened to land. Likewise, unlike the classmates who froze stiff the moment they faced an unfamiliar situation, she had no hesitation about offering answers. In a sense, she seemed to think: hope it's right, and if it isn't, who cares. Of course, given that every single answer she offered turned out correct, she clearly wasn't just throwing them blindly. Instinct — or call it intuition. Ah, with no change in the standings, Class A Team 4 takes the win!! Now let's see — student Hwang Yoonha? How are you feeling?Like dogshit.Whoa. Watching her scratch the back of her head with that same bored expression, I was half a beat from laughing out loud myself. Well, I suppose that'll be a good experience for her too. The prize for this afternoon's schedule: hands-on dungeon experience. Just as it sounds — a training ground the Gangwon Branch had established separately near the Taebaek Mountains. Granted, "dungeon experience" was the pitch, but Association hunters were stationed on-site the whole time. And no one would have built a brand-new site just for our Academy visit — in practice it was a training ground they'd been using all along. They'd exaggerate and call it a real dungeon for the sake of the fun, sure enough. I could feel a vague dread creeping over the faces of the students as they took in the announcement. Yoonha herself, for her part, still wore that same unbothered look. I wonder how this will go. ……That subtle attitude Yoonha showed earlier was weighing on me too. But there was nothing I could say right this moment. Maybe I should have pulled her aside during lunch after all. Swallowing that thought, I let my gaze drift. Beyond the sky I was looking up at. At the clouds gathering, ever so slightly, on the horizon. Is it going to rain?