The Butcher in Slippers
Unlike Park Woochan, she—Ja Hayeon—remembered the events of that day with perfect clarity. In truth, moments that hard to forget were rare in themselves, and for her more so than anyone.
At the very beginning of the memory, she was always running. The stage was a back alley in the dead hours before dawn, when the world wasn't watching; a hazy ring of moonlight glazed the plaster walls in a thin coat, and the only sound in all that gloom was her own footsteps, tolling dark and clear like a bell.
Her breath had climbed all the way to her throat, yet her head had never been clearer—clear enough, in fact, for her to calmly retrace just how she had come to be in this situation.
The girl's name was Ja Hayeon. Sixteen years old—or to be precise, seventeen as of this year. She was an orphan, hardly a rarity in this day and age, without parents or so much as a single cousin to her name; alone in the world, in the fullest sense of the word. Naturally, then, she had no particular grudges. She could not recall a single memory of ever earning anyone's enmity.
And yet, if that was so—why was she running for her life like this?
Running. The word had slipped out unbidden, brushing past her lips. She was half in a trance, but it wasn't the wrong word. Who? Why? She couldn't know anything beyond that. As if her memory had simply been blown away, all that welled up from her chest was the desperate certainty that she had to run. A premonition of dread. The grip of that emotion, shoving roughly at her unwilling back, was pitilessly cold. It was as though she had become an actress playing the part of "Ja Hayeon"—and a third-rate one at that, unable to lose herself even properly in her own role.
But there was one thing she was certain of.
There's no way this is anything legitimate.
Unidentified thugs chasing a lone girl through the streets at this hour of the night. There was no way they had a decent reason for it.
And yet even this ill-timed chase was finally drawing to a close. The outcome had been obvious from the start. Judging by the footsteps, there were three pursuers—and through all that heavy silence, the steps trailing her had never wavered once. They didn't sprint recklessly, nor did they carelessly close the distance. As if they had no intention whatsoever of letting her slip away, the footfalls that followed at a fixed interval behind her carried something that could almost be called leisure.
And then—
BOOM!!
Suddenly, sound exploded. There was no other way to put it. The instant she noticed the footsteps behind her had somehow become two, one of the men who had been chasing her until moments ago was already standing before her eyes. It was less a leap than a glide, his physical ability so overwhelming the word hardly fit. And yet there was not a trace of bewilderment in the girl as she looked up at the hulking figure who had literally leapt over her to get ahead. No—if anything, the eyes she raised to meet the man's carried something like secret satisfaction.
Now that was a dragon.
The most arrogant of all monsters, and at the same time the most powerful. She had been nodding along, almost proudly, at the vertically slit pupils that showed for an instant behind the man's sunglasses—when suddenly, without knowing why, a shiver ran through her shoulders.
A dragon?
Of course she knew what dragons were. Their teeth, sharper than any spear. Their claws, keener than any blade. Their scales, harder than any shield. Their magic, as boundless as the open sea. Beings one could boldly declare the finest of all monsters—that was what dragons were.
But that wasn't why she was bewildered.
A dragon, he says? Really? This man standing before her right now—was he truly a dragon? It was a bizarre turn of events. Naturally, until just yesterday, the life of a girl worrying over how she would survive going forward had contained no chapter in which monsters were supposed to intrude—all the more so unless a twist was waiting where the parents she had never once seen turned out to have been hunters. Let alone a dragon. No, wait—why was she thinking of this man as a dragon in the first place? A man whose getup, look how you pleased, was closer to a stalker's than a dragon's. And yet Ja Hayeon found herself firmly declaring this man who had dropped down before her to be a dragon.
"Now, why don't we head on back, miss?"
...They do say you shouldn't go anywhere with strangers, after all.
Shuffle by shuffle, she found herself backing away without meaning to. Of course, her attitude was plain as day to them as well, but they showed no particular reaction. It was a demeanor someone might dismiss as carelessness. But she—no one else—knew better. That wasn't simple arrogance. It was a kind of pride in their own strength.
And they had every right to it. Because the eyes of the two men who soon revealed themselves beyond the moon-cast shadows were slit long and vertical as well.
...Dragons capable of passing as human—three of them, no less. It was a lineup far too lavish for the job of grabbing a single high school girl.
Well, well. Somebody trained you boys properly.
With a dragon guffawing right in front of her, she slowly sounded the alarm in her heart. She had no intention of letting her guard down. The gap in their strength had never allowed for such recklessness to begin with—and besides, she had been thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, the dragons' arrogance might leave her an opening to escape.
Which was why the violence that crashed into her the next moment was not on any level that could be excused by carelessness or anything of the sort.
"Uh."
That was truly all she could manage. What on earth had happened? Unfortunately, she lacked the talent to explain it. There was only one thing she knew: the man who had been standing dumbly before her until moments ago had attacked her. It wasn't that she had looked away. Nor was it some unpredictable attack, a tail or a whip or the like. She simply had no means of doing anything about it—that was the only way to put it. If anything, she found herself wondering how she was still holding a human shape at all, even granting that he had been holding back.
A slick, sliding sound reached her ears. Only then did she realize she had been slammed into the wall. The impact—like colliding with a dump truck—belatedly swept over her whole body, and the moment her feet, which had left the ground without her noticing, touched down again, she crumpled where she stood.
"Huuurgh......"
It was far from a pleasant sound, but she had no composure left to hold it back. Splatter—a wretched noise spread through the back alley. Sudden vertigo and dizziness washed over her, and when the sour scent of stomach acid rose on top of it, she truly could not bear it. Only after purging every last drop of bile from her stomach did she finally, faintly, register the pain wringing her body.
If one had to say it once more, this was, of course, the natural outcome. Even the dullest elephant is more than a match for an ant—and what if there were three elephants? One would be called a fool for even calculating the ant's odds. Indeed, the dragons dispatched to hunt her were not, at this point, the least bit concerned about any threat that might befall them.
Therefore—
"Huh?"
The voice that suddenly rang out was likewise not part of their original plan. Beyond the ringing in her ears, it came through with miraculous clarity. And so Ja Hayeon could tell that the young man who had just made that sound was rather flustered.
Well, of course he was. Anyone would be startled by a scene like this. A woman collapsed under a moonlit night, and the men surrounding her—even if their true identities weren't dragons, it would be a startling sight. And indeed it was. Beyond the gaze she barely managed to lift, she too could see the figure of the newcomer who had just barged into this place.
The first thing to catch her eye was a pair of slippers scraping lazily against the ground. Above them came the face of a shabby young man in plain, unremarkable clothes. Judging by the hand flexing open and shut, as though it had been gripping something only moments before, he had probably been on his way back from a stop at the garbage dump across the way.
Of course, she hadn't expected a prince on a white horse to appear in a situation like this either. But far from anyone conveniently coming to her rescue, the scene now looked set to gain one more ill-timed victim—and that, she could only call despair.
Run.
She wanted to say it, but her trembling tongue couldn't manage a single proper word. In the end, her head sank limply. One thing she knew for certain: those arrogant dragons were hardly about to let the intruder go now.
Naturally, the dragons had no such intention. If word of this ever got out, it would become a nuisance—and besides, dragons were not creatures that granted such mercy in the first place.
Deal with it before it becomes a problem.
The judgment of the three dragons was almost simultaneous. If anything, what displeased them was not the man before them but the very fact that a third party had intruded at all. Fine, they were serving as hunting dogs—but to think they'd let their attention wander like this. Fortunately for them, they were not a race that felt much aversion to burying a human being. And more than that, they had more than enough power to do so. At most, they had no desire to pour real effort into this affair—but neither did they intend to waste time. Whatever else, letting more chores pile up was simply out of the question.
Therefore—
"The fuck is this guy."
The violence that crashed into them the next moment was likewise not on any level that could be excused by carelessness or anything of the sort. It happened in an instant. The tail and claws that had been swinging toward that man moments ago were torn clean off and sent flying. What on earth had happened? The one who voiced that bewilderment was the first of the three to die. The dragon's body—praised as harder than any armor—was crumbling to pieces like a clumsy elementary schooler's plaster craft.
But the last thing the dying dragon put voice to was not a question about this situation.
Fear. Or perhaps, pure awe.
At the sight of his kin's bodies—those who had set out on this task with him—slammed into the walls on either side and shattered, the dragon harbored emotions ill-befitting his kind.
He had been carved apart. That was the only truthful way to put it. It was evident from the cross-sections severed moments ago: rather than a single clean cut from masterful skill, the surfaces looked as though a savage beast had torn at them with its teeth. But the dragons could tell. Not because they were versed in the art of arms. Simply—as dragons, they knew. How to kill their own kind. Strip the scales, cut into the tender parts of the flesh, sever clean through the bone. If one could manage it, the most intuitive method of dragonslaying there was.
And yet—to slice so effortlessly through dragon scales that not even the heroes of old could readily conquer—
Before the thought could even finish, the dragon's body dropped to the ground. And as wretched luck would have it, with every organ in its body shredded to ribbons, it breathed its last on the spot.
Two remained. But which side, in the end, had truly been the lucky one?
"You bastard!!"
Their judgment was swift. They forcibly repaired bodies that would have killed any common creature or monster outright—magic, hammered in raw, drove their regeneration. And almost in the same breath, the two dragons who completed it cast off their disguises and hurled themselves at the man.
...It wasn't that they felt any tremendous camaraderie. No—for the solitary, self-supreme dragon, few words could fit so poorly. Vengeance was the same. And yet, despite that, there was a clear reason why they, without exchanging a single word, attacked in perfect sync. There was, admittedly, some pride in being the strongest of monsters. But more than that: even dragons, the strongest of all monsters, could not say with any confidence that they could escape that man now. That weighed far heavier.
And indeed, that was exactly how it turned out.
What on earth had happened? Unfortunately, there was no one left to explain. Only this much: before the dragons' shed disguises had even fully taken their true shape—
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.
With a filthy wet sound, entrails plummeted, scattering a spray of blood. It wasn't simple brute force shattering them. The same superb technique as before stripped the dragons' scales, filleted their flesh, and cut through bone. Bladework closer to cooking than to swordsmanship had literally flayed the dragons apart.
The time it took: a mere three seconds, give or take.
After a brief silence, the man slowly looked around. In his hand—empty until moments ago—a brutal greatsword had appeared from who knows where. The gesture of scanning for any dragons left lurking nearby, coupled with the utterly unreal carnage of moments before, made him look, if anything, like a lost traveler. He certainly didn't look like a prince on a white horse.
But was that because of what had just happened? Or had that air hung about him from the very start? Unlike that first impression, which now felt like some distant old tale, the sight of the man who had barged in with detached indifference and settled the whole affair brought to mind... not the word hero or superman, but something rather different.
A hunter.
And then, a voice rang out—calm, and sunk low. A voice so composed one could hardly believe it belonged to the same man who had massacred dragons in the space of an instant. Despite achieving a feat one could justly call heroic, far from being heated with excitement, it was almost monotonous—as if he had never cared about this situation in the first place.
Beneath the hazy ring of the moon, eyes brimming with vivid killing intent flashed brazenly. And when she realized that gaze was fixed no longer on the shadows beyond the wall, but on her—
"What in the hell is going on here."
With lightning bladework, the man had somehow already leveled his blade at her.
"And who the hell are you?"
...That was, more or less, how first meetings with the hunter Park Woochan tended to go.
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