The Mother of Gods and Monsters
The reason Ja Hayeon stayed behind in the training hall was nothing complicated.
When Park Woochan registered at Master Jung Ilhyun's dojo, he had paid her registration fee along with his own.
There were several reasons for it. For one, now that Park Woochan had enrolled at the dojo, Hayeon had little choice but to accompany him. On top of that, it was rather embarrassing to watch her kill time every day, waiting around just for his sake. And finally, Park Woochan himself simply lacked the fundamentals needed to handle a quarterstaff.
Well — between the protective guardianship system and the fact that things had already come this far, it wouldn't hurt to learn something properly while he was at it.
There was also a practical matter at play. After summer break, Hayeon had asked him to teach her a combat style of her own. Hearing that, Park Woochan had instructed her, within the limits of his own knowledge, in the style that suited her best.
Which is to say — Kim Minchul's tactics.
She had balked at first at the idea of learning techniques from the man who had once kidnapped her, but in the end she accepted it. To repay her debts as quickly as possible, she set about learning to wield her staff like a weapon.
The problem was that, fundamentally, everything Park Woochan knew about weapons was nothing more than a self-taught hack job. He couldn't claim to know nothing at all, but a guardian's heart wanted to teach her the real thing if he could. Hayeon herself had tried to decline, saying it was too much trouble, but this time Park Woochan insisted. Of course it might feel like a burden to her. But watching Hayeon stand around all day doing nothing would be far more of a burden on him — that was his judgment.
And so Ja Hayeon became the third member of the training hall's after-school trio.
Then—
“Hayeon, that tired, huh?”
“Step back, please. You smell.”
“Huh? Uh—right. S-sorry about that.”
“Ah — not you! I meant me! Me!”
Hayeon, who had been slumping wearily while answering on autopilot, frantically waved both hands. She had only been trying to spare Park Woochan from the smell of her own sweat-drenched body, but evidently that was not how it had come across.
Park Woochan, assured that it was fine, took a seat off to the side — and, in the same motion, subtly sniffed at himself.
Do I smell like a widower or something?
That was what he'd just heard, after all. He couldn't shake the suspicion that maybe Hayeon had actually been trying to spare him.
But at the quiet, tearful look on Hayeon's face as she watched him, he couldn't press the matter any further.
Maybe I should change my cologne.
He had no choice but to let it go at that. Hayeon, for her part, who had quite suddenly declared to his face that he smelled, could only scramble to recover.
“It really was about me……”
“Forget it. Smell, my ass. You don't stink.”
Perhaps not entirely absent, but faint enough that you'd have to strain to notice. If anything, it came off as healthy. They'd been living under the same single-room roof for ages now — it was hardly the stage for quibbling over body odor.
No, wait — if they were talking about smells, then this morning's……
Whoa there.
Over the memory that had flushed into his mind unbidden, Park Woochan forcibly slammed a lid. He decided this was neither the situation nor the frame of mind for such imaginings.
“Hm?”
Watching his reaction, Hayeon let out an unconscious little hum. Park Woochan flinched and hunched his shoulders, just for a moment. Those upturned, rosy-pink eyes curved like a crescent moon. Hayeon smiled like a cat.
“Ahh, I see.”
“……See what?”
“Nothing, I can just roughly guess what you're thinking right now.”
“I-is that so?”
I can't guess at all.
Suppressing the urge to say exactly that, Park Woochan maintained a noncommittal expression. At the sight of him, Hayeon burst into mischievous chuckles — and, fittingly, the sight of her whole body still glistening with sweat from swinging her staff moments before struck him as almost unbecomingly alluring for her age.
“I'll go wash up real quick.”
“Uh—yeah. Sure.”
If anything, Park Woochan was relieved at her announcement that she'd vacate the room. Only after Hayeon had truly left the training hall could Park Woochan finally breathe out a sigh.
“You two seem close. That's good to see.”
“You really think so?”
“Sorry.”
And it was only then that he could finally hold a conversation with Jung Pilyeon, who had barely managed to catch his breath.
“I meant it sincerely, though — you two really do seem close.”
“Ah, well. We're in a much better state than at the start, at least.”
“By 'the start,' you mean when you first took her in, right?”
“That's right.”
It went without saying that, with things having turned out this way, Park Woochan had needed to explain at least part of the situation to Pilyeon. A student in his own class. A member of the club he supervised. Being friendly or trading jokes was one thing, but no matter how you sliced it, having her call him “oppa” or paying her dojo registration fees was beyond the pale.
So he'd given Pilyeon a rough version of the story, edited down to a level he could carry — the child of someone he knew, who had somehow ended up under his guardianship. Thanks to that, Pilyeon had come to see Park Woochan not as some degenerate making his students call him big brother, but as a struggling single father.
Still—
Separate from all that, he had noticed that the way Hayeon looked at Park Woochan was anything but ordinary. Park Woochan, for his part — call it obliviousness, or call it a situation in which he simply couldn't afford to think that way. Really, any man who assumed a girl ten years his junior must be in love with him just because she teased him a little would be a genuine lunatic. It was a fact only someone Pilyeon's own age could pick up on.
“If I were to date someone, I think I'd like a girl with a quieter personality.”
“Huh? What's this, all of a sudden? Talk about romance?”
“Ah—yes. Well, it's about that age for it, and I'm no exception.”
“Says the man himself, that's a bit funny. But wait — quiet personality?”
“Yes.”
“Man, that's about the blandest taste I've ever heard. You're not eyeing our Hayeon, are you?”
“What?”
Are you out of your mind?
Jung Pilyeon had meant it, completely. He had clearly just said he liked quiet types.
Granted, on the surface Hayeon might pass for quiet. Judging by her usual demeanor, one could even call her catlike. But—
The way Pilyeon saw it, Ja Hayeon was not quiet-natured at all. She was merely patient and stubborn. In other words — a hunter who maintained her silence until the moment she could sink her teeth into the prey she wanted. A spider, if you had to put it in a metaphor.
Granted, looks-wise, she wasn't bad. Far from his type, sure, but objectively quite pretty. Still—
The very fact that he'd come to want a quiet girl as a result of watching Hayeon meant Park Woochan's remark was nothing but absurdly off the mark. To put it bluntly, Pilyeon had come to like quiet personalities precisely because Hayeon had turned out to be far more of a shock to his system than he'd expected.
“Why are you saying that so seriously……”
“Is Hayeon's look not your type?”
For his part, Park Woochan couldn't help but react with a touch of sourness.
Thus, once each day's training was done, Park Woochan would finally return to the boarding house. A disciple who ached and fretted over the sight of him. A student who looked at him and thought many things. The boarding house where she, too, had once lived.
……And then—
The goddess who had been watching this entire tableau from the very top floor of the Association — Tiamat — let out a soft sigh.
“Goodness, but he works hard.”
Watching Park Woochan devote nearly the whole of every day to fighting that cult, such an impression was inevitable. He practiced magic, trained his students. He honed his own swordsmanship and layered further refinements on top of it. And when he finally dragged himself home, it was straight to sleep. An ascetic existence, with not a single hobby in sight.
Granted, if Park Woochan himself had heard this, he would have objected inwardly that killing monsters was his hobby. But either way, that was how it looked to her.
And so—
She could not help but think it once more.
……It had been that way from the very reason she had first come to this land.
In mythological terms, the name of the goddess Tiamat was extraordinarily useful. The mother of both sides — she who birthed countless gods and countless monsters. The goddess of the Mesopotamian creation myth. And for her, the life that awaited beyond the gates — before she ever descended to this land — was nothing short of pandemonium.
One day, a successor inherited the name of the goddess Tiamat. And at her existence, both the gods and the monsters of myth raised a cheer.
The gods wanted her to birth gods once more, to turn the tide of a war in which they were being pushed back by the monsters. They praised her as the one who would bear the gods' soldiers. The monsters, meanwhile, wanted her to drive the wedge in now, in this very moment — to create monsters that could kill gods and swell their ranks. They wanted her as their womb.
It was precisely because of that dual nature that she had been able to descend to the surface. Mother of the gods, and at the same time mother of the monsters. A Constellation, and at the same time, a monster.
And so, when the countless gods, at long last facing the hour of their rising, were being slaughtered by the monsters — she alone was not killed by them. Instead, like a monster herself, she came down into this world through a gate. Because she was utterly sick of the war between the two factions squabbling over what she should be.
And then—
How many years has it been, like that?
Fleeing the land of her descent, entering the country illegally. Taking in a child, raising her — and parting with her in the end. And ever since then, she had thought she was managing reasonably well.
So the third great invasion is upon us.
She had sensed it to some degree ever since she first heard the cult's purpose. And the moment she learned what means they intended to use to bring it about, suspicion hardened into certainty.
She could no longer remain in this land. What twist of karma was this — or had they simply come seeking a land stripped of Constellations like herself? The cult was attempting to summon an Extra-standard monster and carve the world up all over again.
And now — now that the Academy, led by Park Woochan, stood opposed to them in an effort to stop that ambition — her own existence, capable of mass-producing either gods or monsters at will, had become far too dangerous to leave alone.
To speak plainly: what would happen if one of her avatars fell into their hands? It would almost certainly aid in augmenting their forces like nothing else could. Conversely, if you asked whether the people of this Hunter Association could actually protect her, the answer remained dubious at best. Unless the Association committed its entire strength — and considering a force split across branch offices across the country—
If the cult, seeking to replenish its monsters, raided a branch office like the South Sea branch or the Gangwon branch, would the children who once called her goddess truly survive?
It won't be easy.
In the end, it came down to that. To this long sojourn of hers, it seemed, an ending was finally drawing near.