So, What Do You All Think of Our Homeroom Teacher?
Then again — what do you all think of our homeroom teacher?
And that day. The very day Park Woochan, their homeroom teacher, returned early out of concern for his students' futures — the students themselves, including Ja Hayeon and Lee Yeeun, the two most directly involved, were busy chewing the fat over something utterly trivial.
It wasn't as if the topic had come out of nowhere. The gathering had originally been a study session to prepare for the midterm exams, after all.
But that was the thing. A few offhand remarks about their homeroom teacher — Park Woochan, who had once again vanished without a word — had piled up and up, and in no time at all they had grown into a full-blown gripe session. All the more so when every single student crowded into the clubroom happened to nurse a personal grievance against the man.
He ditched us again, apparently.
Eight times out of ten, it's something to do with that organization.
And not a single word of explanation this time either. What do you make of that?
The truth is, to him we're probably just kids, no matter what……
He just happened to have a reason worth explaining, that's all. It's not like any of us are the type to enjoy getting tangled up in that kind of business anyway.
First complaints, then grudging understanding, then sighs. If Park Woochan himself had been there to hear it, he might have felt a faint sting.
And yet the students gathered in the clubroom knew perfectly well that what they were really venting was nothing more than simple disappointment. Didn't it stand to reason? On any level of common sense, the ones being unreasonable would be whoever tried to drag a bunch of students into a war against an organization capable of deploying S-rank monsters.
But when you were one of the parties involved, that kind of logic was hard to hold onto. In short, they were simply feeling bitter about their own inadequacy.
He's the kind of person you could follow your whole life.
Lee Yeeun's answer was exactly one part of that same current.
Of course, she hadn't thought that way from the start. There had once been a time when she looked up to her brother, Lee Joongoo, more than anyone else in the world. But a string of incidents involving their homeroom teacher, Park Woochan, had given her the chance to think things through — deeply.
Why had her brother, Lee Joongoo, looked so troubled whenever she imitated his signature technique? Why had Park Woochan gone so far as to call it a bet when he tried to talk her out of it?
……Legitimate reasons. Circumstances of his own.
At the end of it all, this was what her brother had said: if she truly wanted to become a hunter — not his little sister, but a real hunter, a genuine article — then she shouldn't follow in his footsteps. She should follow Park Woochan's.
For a girl who had spent her whole life trailing behind her brother, it was not a question she could answer easily.
Then, while she was still wavering, the incident at the Gangwon branch struck her head-on.
An absurdity that no amount of individual power could hope to touch. For the first time, Lee Yeeun came face to face with a cold, unvarnished reality — not the glamorous life of hunters on a TV screen.
And at the same moment, she understood. She understood why Park Woochan had once judged her the way he did, watching her nothing but copy her brother.
She saw it in his face — that profile which confronted even the wails echoing through a funeral hall with unnerving composure.
That was why Lee Yeeun resolved to become a hunter in the truest sense. She didn't much like it, either, knowing there existed a grief that even her brother — the strongest man in humanity — had been unable to gather up and carry away.
But more than that, what she couldn't stand was the sight of a hunter regarding a tragedy like this one with such placid indifference. That expression, settled into stillness at the end of a road where there was nothing left to mourn, as though he had long since grown used to this kind of horror. It stirred an unaccountable rebelliousness in her.
So she decided to become a hunter. Even if her brother could never erase every tragedy in the world, she would still stand and fight against them, the way he did.
And — she wanted, someday, to be able to tell him that something still remained within that grip of his. She wanted to stand beside him not as a student or a disciple, but as one hunter facing another. That was what she had thought.
Well, she's certainly got the ability. And no shortage of claim to the name of hunter, either.
Still — the reason Lee Yeeun wanted to follow behind Park Woochan might owe less to his competence than to something closer to outright admiration.
Oh? This from the girl who spent a whole month tearing into our homeroom teacher at every turn? Hard to imagine it, honestly.
At Hwang Yoonha's teasing jab, Lee Yeeun quietly flushed pink in both cheeks. Looking back on it now, it really had been rather rude of her, hadn't it.
Well, everyone has their off days, I suppose~
Ryu Jihee chimed in with sly ease, laughing lightly as she said it. Truth be told, she had been plenty flustered herself, back in the beginning.
The Slaughterer.
A hunter said to have buried countless monsters — and, for all anyone knew, a number of mixed-bloods that would run into three digits. When she'd first heard that their homeroom teacher was that man, even Ryu Jihee hadn't been able to swallow her unease. It was, in a word, like discovering a serial killer shared her classroom.
Which was why she had thrown herself into every scheme imaginable, all for the sake of prying Nam Sangwon — resolved as he was to assault the Academy — away from Park Woochan. Not that it worked.
But then. Contrary to all her expectations, Park Woochan heard her out — one single sentence — and left Nam Sangwon and the rest of the Honinhoe entirely untouched. No, more than that: even after her connection to the Honinhoe came to light, she'd been allowed to keep attending the Academy as if nothing had happened.
What exactly is he playing at?
She had been suspicious, once. Frankly, she'd even wondered whether the man was after her body.
Though that particular direction of thought was, admittedly, a sorrowful habit peculiar to the nightmare race.
Yet even a cynic like Ryu Jihee could not deny one thing: the kindness Park Woochan had extended to them had truly been nothing more than simple consideration. Consideration for his disciple, Ryu Jihee — or perhaps for the Honinhoe, the victims of that organization's schemes.
Sure, there could have been any number of calculations behind it. Couldn't snub a group once you'd brought them into the fold, and so on. But beyond all that, Park Woochan had never once made a personal demand of her, or of the Honinhoe. Suspicion. Doubt. Observation. And then — a conclusion.
Having watched him for some months, she had come to see that his behavior was, at its root, concern for his own disciple.
And so — the day her identity was suddenly exposed to the entire nation. The moment she saw her homeroom teacher come running out, of all people, in search of her —
Ryu Jihee, who had been pressed so hard she half-wondered if she ought to just become a nightmare after all, felt, paradoxically, a wave of relief. Because in a world where everything she'd known until that very instant seemed to have turned hostile against her, it was the face of her homeroom teacher — finding her before the Honinhoe elders, before anyone else, and visibly relaxing at the sight of her — that did it.
Which was why Ryu Jihee had chosen Park Woochan as the one who would someday pass judgment on her.
……She pressed down hard on her stomach, and felt the mana churning within. It was the power of a queen-class nightmare — the power she had swallowed with her own two hands, right in front of Park Woochan, that day. A mass of mana she had taken into her mouth because she could not, in this world or within herself, find any certainty — and it still lived inside her, hiding nothing of its desire to drag her down into a nightmare the moment her heart ever broke.
And so Park Woochan had promised: if the day ever came that she fell, he would cut off her head for her. Because she did not want to live as a nightmare — and he respected the wish of a girl who had thought so her entire life.
In a manner of speaking, Park Woochan was, to the Ryu Jihee of today, something like a weight on a scale. A weight that anchored her to reality whenever she feared she might one day turn into a nightmare after all. At the same time, one might call him her reference point.
As long as Park Woochan looked at her as he always did, Ryu Jihee could be certain she had not yet become a nightmare. And if the day ever came when he turned hostile toward her — well, on that day, she could finally accept the truth that she had.
For all his infamy as the Slaughterer, Park Woochan had looked after her all this time for no reason other than that she was his disciple. And the only thing that could ever make such a man turn against her would be, in the end, her falling completely to the nightmare within.
Huh?
Isn't that… kind of a more important position than I thought?
Back then I figured anyone would have done……
Swallowing this unexpected confusion, Jihee caught herself wearing a dazed expression without quite realizing it.
Hwang Yoonha, who had been watching that face, summed up the present situation in a single line — as befitted the one who had started it all.
What's this? Does everyone like our homeroom teacher, or what?
BANG!!
The room erupted. One girl bolted up from her chair in a panic; another drove her knee straight into the desk.
W-wait, isn't that jumping the gun a little?
R-right! We're not elementary schoolers, you know~
What? Isn't it perfectly normal, though?
…Normal?
At that single word, the ears of the girls who had been dutifully feigning composure went rigid and stood on end.
Uh, well, isn't it? Girls our age always think their teachers look cool. It's just a thing.
I-is that so?
It was, of course, a lie. Well — not entirely a lie.
It was an undeniable fact that for high school girls of their age, a homeroom teacher often became an object of longing. But that sprang purely from the image of an adult man nearby, nothing more. It was hardly an excuse that held up when you were harboring feelings for one specific person, the way these girls were now.
And yet the classmates who had just secured their license of "normalcy" were already stepping straight into the poison Hwang Yoonha was scattering.
And what about you, then?
Huh?
I mean, you're talking like it's someone else's problem? So I got to wondering — what about you, Yoonha, the one who said it~?
I like him, obviously?
GAHK—!!
Ryu Jihee, who had boldly launched her counterattack, went down in a single stroke.
That was how brazen Hwang Yoonha's remark had been, coming hot on the heels of everything before it.
Wha— huh? Y-you're serious?
Why? It's not weird, is it? He's tall, he's a hunter so he's loaded with ability, and he'd make perfect son-in-law material for our house, wouldn't he?
Oh. That's what it is?
Of course, that was a lie too.
She could have come up with a plausible reason, same as the others. That he'd saved her twice. That she'd watched him fight a hunter for her sake. That he'd been her handhold every time things got hard. That he'd, almost carelessly, said the very words she'd wanted most to hear……
But —
No way. That's not the kind of thing my character would say out loud.
In a word, it would have been deeply, mortifyingly embarrassing to actually say any of that. She had no desire to make the same lovesick spectacle of herself that Lee Yeeun and Ryu Jihee were making of themselves right in front of her, both of them wearing misty little expressions.
That was simply who Hwang Yoonha was. A girl miles away from words like "duty" or "obligation," stuffed to the brim with nothing but vanity. She was ashamed of it herself — which was exactly why she'd once felt such contempt for herself, declaring she'd become a hunter for the money and nothing else.
But then. Park Woochan had said this:
That the heart which had driven Hwang Yoonha to leap into danger to save him, in spite of all that, was precisely the kind of heart that could become someone else's handhold — the strength that would let her save other people, too.
Just a single sentence. And yet she'd never felt so saved in her life.
That was when Hwang Yoonha's feelings for Park Woochan had first turned personal. Not the image of him fighting her kidnapper to rescue her — but the moment he worried about her future beneath the night sky. Not the image of him fighting the gunman for her sake — but the moment he gave her the words she'd wanted to hear more than anything.
Every time, her heart would pound in a way that suited her not at all……
Ugh, damn it all!
Confronting the realization anew only made her feel absurdly self-conscious. So Hwang Yoonha shook her head from side to side and resolved to shake off the small thoughts along with it.
At the same time —
And that man has no survival instincts whatsoever.
Frankly, that was what she thought. She'd kept saying no way, no way — and it turned out the majority of them had already crossed the line.
Even if she poured her heart out right this second, that man would just weasel away with some lecture about teacher-student boundaries. And he didn't even believe his own excuse — that was the thing.
Watching the odd, faint-hearted delicacy Park Woochan let slip from time to time, Hwang Yoonha had reached that verdict. Which was why she'd planned to probe the hearts of her fellow club members first, as a kind of preemptive check on the competition……
Every last one of them, holy hell~
Lee Yeeun, whose first impression had flipped in the best possible way. Ryu Jihee, who'd discovered an unexpected side to a man she'd never expected anything from in the first place. And then, on top of all that, herself.
Hayeon and that student teacher were probably in the same boat, nine times out of ten. And Tia-unni — well, she wasn't sure about Tia-unni.
Laid out in a row like that, you couldn't find a bigger pack of lechers if you tried.
Wonder if she takes after her master, that Park Woochan of ours?
Delivering that dry verdict on Shin Seoa's peculiar faint-heartedness, Hwang Yoonha turned her head casually toward the window.
Still, honestly — talking about marriage is way too fast.
Right, right! It's not like we're at the point of debating how many kids to have yet!
Wait, when did I say anything about kids……? Huh?
Hwang Yoonha pulled her gaze away from her classmates' fantasies, which had by now sprouted wings and taken flight entirely. And then her eyes caught something moving beyond the schoolyard.
The next moment —
Hey! Outside!
Huh?
What? What is it?
She shouted before she could stop herself. At the sound of her voice, the club members crowded to the window in a clump.
And — perhaps because of what they'd been talking about mere moments ago — the temperature inside the clubroom seemed to drop all at once.
Because there, plain as day, was Park Woochan, their homeroom teacher who had slipped away yet again today citing some business or other — back on campus.
The problem was the head of crimson hair swaying gently at his side. Hair they all knew very well.
Tia Bint Rahman Bin Abdullah Muhammad. Tiamat — who for some unfathomable reason insisted on going by that bizarre Arabian-style name at school — was there beside him.
And when the girls realized that Tiamat, too, had been absent from school just yesterday —
— they noticed that the two of them were wearing the exact same clothes they'd left school in, that very day.
……The students' eyes grew sharply, unmistakably narrow.