The Untimely Parent-Teacher Conference
With a heavy thud, the headless corpse of the demon crumpled to the ground.
I tossed my weapon back through the rift I'd torn open with another flick of my tool. A kind of ritual, really—a routine marking the end of a fight. Only then did I slow my breathing, drawing one deep lungful after another. The air, which until moments ago had hung as thick and stifling as century-old kudzu root, gradually began to carry a faint sweetness. A sure sign the monster had fallen.
It was a habit born of the simple fact that a fair few monsters might as well be immortal. In truth, how many hunters had met their end because a monster they were certain they'd killed was still breathing... or because the damned things rose from death even after a confirmed kill?
But my mana sensitivity, sharp to a fault, had never once missed the breathing of a monster. Which meant that when the instinct raging at me to grind every monster into paste this very instant finally regained its calm, that in itself became a signal I could afford to relax.
One last light stretch to loosen up. Maybe because it was my first real run in a while? My stiffened body ached something fierce. At the same time, I switched my thinking over from hunter to teacher. Only after finishing my stretches did I slowly turn my gaze.
Fortunately, the hard work had paid off: the coat was trembling like a leaf, but aside from a dusting of dirt, not a single scratch marked it.
"You okay in there?"
I picked up the coat she hadn't even been holding onto properly and slung it over my shoulder. And with that, out came a pair of sorry sights I could hardly bear to watch. Even with the monster down, the girls kept shuddering as if they still hadn't come back to themselves. Honestly, at this rate I should count it a blessing they hadn't fainted.
Well, hunter reservists, the pair of them.
As the oppressive presence that had been devouring the gate's interior faded away, light gradually returned to their pupils.
"Quick as ever, I see."
Of the two, Ja Hayeon had come back to her senses first. Perhaps because she'd made contact with an A-rank monster before—a dragon, no less. Over her pearl-colored gaze, lifted slowly toward me, a faint smile gradually spread.
"You won."
"Nyaow."
But that was the extent of the conversation. The situation wasn't exactly suited to chatting any longer than that. Partly because she still had no real grasp of what had happened, but more than anything, Hayeon herself was visibly spent. The way she swayed and staggered upright looked precarious indeed. I thought it might be best to rest before moving on, but when she herself shook her head, there was nothing to be done about it. Not that I'd want to take a breather in a place like this, either.
I didn't need to look to know the practical training would be suspended. No one could be crazy enough to insist on continuing it under these conditions. And outside, people were no doubt panicking over what on earth had happened—it was plain as day. Now was the time to let everyone know, as quickly as possible, that every one of us was safe.
That was my judgment, anyway. The problem was Lee Yeeun.
It was only natural, really. Yeeun's entire experience with monsters amounted to the E-ranks we'd run into just before. And even those had been weakened by Hayeon's ability. In other words, there was no way she had ever clashed head-on with a high-rank monster. Pile onto that the crushing pressure radiated by a monster of A+ rank or higher?
If anything, I ought to praise her for not passing out.
"...Teacher?"
That's right. I'm her teacher.
Even in the words she pushed out past a barely loosened tongue, none of her usual audacity remained. Looking into those sky-blue eyes, grown murkier than ever, I found myself worrying whether she could even keep herself upright, let alone stand. In the end, I let out a quiet sigh and bent down at the waist.
And then.
Matching the sigh I'd released, her shoulders drooped, and I carefully gathered Lee Yeeun into my arms.
"H-huh?"
"What're you so startled about? Hold still, will you."
She'd been sputtering, thrown off by the sudden move, so I gave her a light scolding. At that, the girl who'd been flailing her limbs in a frankly comical state seemed to realize the sorry figure she cut, and went docile as a hamster in an instant.
I burst out laughing at the sight before I could help it. As her glare gradually sharpened and her face flushed in proportion, I looked away, steadied my stance so as not to waver, and only then opened my mouth toward Hayeon.
"Hayeon, let's get moving. Just in case, you take the coat—"
"Yes, Teacher."
Paying no mind to how my words had trailed off, Hayeon smiled sweetly, lifted the coat from my shoulder, and wrapped it around herself.
There was a curious amusement steeped into her every movement. Though the target of it was Yeeun, not me. A kind of display, should we call it? Or pride, perhaps. Unable to escape that gaze, so laden with feelings of that sort, Yeeun stole her own glance aside. And at the sight, Hayeon's smile grew all the more triumphant, intoxicated with victory.
"What are you two doing?"
"Nothing at all! Let's head back, Teacher!"
Well, at her urging, I could only shrug and comply.
Despite setting off on such a lighthearted note, hardly a word passed between us on the walk back. Then again, for those two, the whole ordeal had been exhausting beyond measure. They'd been exposed to a high-rank monster's pressure until moments ago. With even the training itself feeling like a distant memory, let alone the bet, there was no strength left in them for idle chatter.
Fortunately, no ambush came. Perhaps the monsters native to this gate were too busy reeling from the foreign species that had barged in uninvited. Either way, it was a good thing for the girls. Even I, who would normally have charged in with fire in my eyes, had a certain peace of mind for once, thanks to having just put down a high-rank monster.
Hm?
Huh?
Low-rank monster subjugation before, high-rank monster subjugation now. Come to think of it, wasn't this an absurdly bountiful arrangement, considering that until only recently I'd been wallowing around without a single monster to kill?
Is this place heaven, by any chance?
Idling away the walk on such pointless thoughts, we finally stepped back through the gate.
Hunter Academy. Its underground depths.
It was some distance from the training grounds, but even so, small cheers went up the moment we emerged from the gate. Nine times out of ten, they were reserve personnel that Choi Seungjun—having successfully contained the commotion—had wrung out of the association with a single call.
But I was not the one those cheers were for.
No—what I was looking at wasn't those nameless hunters, either.
I moved with careful steps. She looked uninjured as far as I could tell, but even so, the situation alone must have been anxiety enough for her.
But.
"You're late, you bastard. The least you could've done was tell me this much."
Instead of reining in the feelings that had escaped me before I knew it, I quietly held out Yeeun where she lay in my arms. He reached out his own to receive her... and then abruptly dropped to his knees.
"Thank goodness."
"Whoa—you startled me."
For a second there, I thought he was about to crack a weight joke.
Suppressing the laughter that nearly slipped out, I looked down at him—and tears had already welled up along his eyes. Frustration, or maybe fear. Spilling over with emotions I'd hardly ever seen between the siblings as I knew them, he wept desperately toward his younger sister instead of tossing out some joke about her weighing a ton.
"B...big brother?"
"That's right, it's me. Yeeun, it's your big brother."
"Geez. Way to make a guy feel like a third wheel."
Rather than listen to any more of his blubbering, I turned my gaze to the hunters arrayed behind him. And on behalf of humanity's strongest hunter—currently bawling his eyes out behind me—I jerked my chin toward the gate, still gaping wide open.
"There's one more we've got tied up in there. Go give it a look, would you?"
From there, everything went off without a hitch.
Choi Seungjun's handling was truly impeccable. There had been the unfortunate matter of humanity's strongest barging in midway, but no real damage came of it.
The training was called off on the spot. At a few words from Choi Seungjun, who had the situation under control, the students still standing on the field dispersed in twos and threes, and the teachers burning to know what on earth had happened had no choice but to take his word for it.
I was the exception, of course.
I was required to appear as a witness for the full-scale investigation into the incident.
Not that "appearing" amounted to much more than answering the researchers' questions.
Well, the actual investigating belonged to the higher-ups and the field researchers, not some undereducated grunt like me, so that much was only to be expected.
The investigation concluded that the monster I'd put down was S-rank. Even though it had possessed strength on par with S-rank, they said, factors like its being stranded alone in an unfamiliar environment, cut off from its gate's support, and its never having been given time to shape conditions in its own favor were all taken into account.
And with that, I became an S-rank hunter on the spot.
Even so—S-rank in less than half a year since registering my license.
Would've been nice if it'd been like this from the start.
That thought arrived before any deeper sentiment could. It couldn't be helped. In the end, not one solid answer had surfaced as to how the monster had come to appear in a gate inside the academy in the first place. In all likelihood, the gate itself would remain effectively sealed until the full investigation ran its course.
For me, it was a goddamn infuriating state of affairs, but there was nothing to be done. Truthfully, a few days ago I might have thrown a tantrum—reasons be damned—but fresh off carving up a high-rank monster for the first time in ages, I was in too good a mood, and it struck me as a perfectly reasonable call.
The problem was the demon's materials.
This, too, was why hunter society could exist at all. It wasn't some primitive hunting age; no matter how efficient the work, a nation's economy couldn't run on the byproducts scraped from every life-or-death hunt. And so hunters inevitably made their living by carving select materials from monster carcasses after a kill and selling them off. What the world called "hunter society"—contrary to popular perception—was a civilization rebuilt atop those rare harvested materials and the handful of mana compounds analyzed and refined from them.
Which was, of course, why friction flared between hunters and butchers over the materials of high-rank monsters that only S-rank hunters stood a chance of bringing down. Raw force was one thing, but to hunters as well, butchers who had mastered the secrets of processing high-grade materials were treasures in their own right. Heaven forbid you leave a monster's corpse to rot in the street—the association would come down on you with a wall of fines. So, contrary to what the public imagined, hunters could hardly order porters or butchers around like servants.
Such is life—nothing ever comes easy.
Naturally, I had no connections of that sort. Which was why, right after deciding to become a hunter, the very first skill I'd learned was carcass processing—if the association failed to secure a butcher in time, I'd be the one dissecting the monster with my own two hands.
I didn't think my technique lacking. I just hated having to touch the things.
Honestly, I wasn't strapped for cash at this point, and I'd even offered, magnanimously, to let the association keep the materials...
Fortunately for some, and inconveniently for me, that proved impossible. The Hunter Association had been founded on the principle of advancing hunters' rights, so any distribution of materials that could invite extortion or bribery was strictly off the table.
Fuck me, the Korean Hunter Association sure is thorough~
So for now, I'd left the matter in Choi Seungjun's hands. The idea being: with my wishes reflected, he would arrange priority supply to whatever sectors genuinely needed the materials, and in exchange, expand the academy's facilities. If the deal went through, the academy might finally get a mana measurement device of its own.
Naturally, no one alive could match Choi Seungjun in that arena.
And so.
At this point, with the incident more or less wrapped up, I was enjoying an ill-timed break.
There was nothing left that demanded my attention. Given how serious the whole affair had been, a gag order had been imposed on everyone involved—and I had neither the acquaintances nor the reason to go blabbing about it in the first place. Which made this stretch of time one of the very few true vacations I'd had lately, living as I had been—busy, and happy.
Or, to put it another way: boring.
Well, otherwise I wouldn't be out here, would I.
It was a café I'd grown quite familiar with by now. The age of peace had finally arrived, and I now held the right to skewer monsters under the title of academy teacher—yet this café remained one of the few sanctuaries my heart had. Nowhere else suited a lazy weekend quite so well. It was something I'd only realized once I'd gained some breathing room recently: Hayeon was still a girl in the flower of her high school years. Think it through, and there was no way living in a semi-basement single room with a man practically old enough to be her uncle was any fun.
Perceptive as ever in these matters, yours truly. That was exactly why I'd brushed aside Hayeon's protests that she was fine and commandeered a quiet café terrace.
I should get her a place of her own later.
Not anywhere too far, of course, seeing as I was living with her in the capacity of guardian. Even this café was only a three-minute walk away—or a one-second trip, if I invoked Shukuchi. I couldn't carelessly leave my post, after all. Even now, out here, I was keeping myself within range of Hayeon's mana.
Saying it like that, I suppose I sound like a stalker. Anyway.
However.
That wasn't why I'd come out here today.
Nothing remained of this incident that required my hand. But there was still one thing left to bring to a close.
Namely?
The wrap-up of a most ill-timed parent-teacher conference.
Ting-a-ling. The wind chime on the door let out a bright, crystalline cry. I didn't even need to turn around. He was suppressing his mana, sure—but there was no way he could slip past my sensing ability.
"So you came."
The hopelessly devoted parent who, just days ago, had come running to the school the moment he heard news of his little sister.
Or, if you prefer: the most famous National Assembly member of our era.
By another name: humanity's strongest hunter.
And to me: the weird bastard who'd bawled his eyes out at the sight of his own sister a few days back.
The very man who'd summoned me out to this place was now stepping over the threshold.