I Came Here for the Money
"Actually... I came to this school to make money."
That was what Yunha said afterward. Her tone was practically that of someone confessing her sins, but from where I stood, it was something I had expected from the very beginning.
Honestly, I didn't much care either way. Money was a good reason, wasn't it? About as straightforward as reasons came.
But Yunha herself, the person concerned, clearly didn't see it that way. Shame was probably the word for it. To put it more precisely, she seemed to feel disgraced that—unlike those who became hunters to protect people—she had thrown herself into the industry with her eyes fixed on nothing but money. And above all, at the fact that she now had to bare that inner truth in front of someone else.
It's not as if I'm the type to judge her that harshly, though.
But rather than launch into a lengthy sermon on the matter, I simply urged her on in silence.
"As you probably know, I have two younger siblings. A girl and a boy."
"Of course I know that."
"I was wondering if I could even afford to send them to school."
Her words, spat out like a sigh, were steeped in deep weariness. It was the kind of lament, soaked through with the grind of daily life, that only someone supporting a household before even coming of age could produce. In truth, the complaint that tumbled out one after another sounded less like the eldest of three siblings and more like the worries of a mother raising two children on her own.
"Right? It's hard enough just getting into high school these days, and if things stay like this, what are they supposed to live on after they graduate?"
It wasn't wrong. Her younger siblings' situation was all the more serious, after all—since the Second Great Cataclysm, South Korea's education infrastructure had collapsed outright. Which was another way of saying that the younger generation's entry into society had been pushed forward even further.
It was bound to hit home for her all the more. After all, only a few months ago, she herself had been a middle schooler. It had to feel as though her past self—clueless about everything—was about to be tossed straight into society, and that was precisely why she wanted to give her family a better environment.
To that end, she had decided to become a hunter. Hunters were somewhat avoided these days, but for her, it was as good as a lifeline. If she hadn't awakened as one, her family would already be standing at the front lines of society, one after another.
In that sense, enrolling in the Academy had been, for Yunha, a gamble whose math more or less worked out. The reason it worked was, of course, the benefits the Academy provided. Before the Cataclysm and after, this country had always valued credentials over skill—and if anything, the Cataclysm had only deepened that tendency, not weakened it. In a South Korea like that, the title of first graduating class of the nation's first national hunter education institution was bound to carry value all on its own.
There was also the advantage of learning the skills of a hunter. Compared to others in similar straits, she was considerably better off simply for having the option of being a hunter at all, but that didn't change the essential nature of the profession. Fighting monsters with your own life as collateral. No matter how much of it was a path she'd chosen herself, Yunha couldn't help but be anxious—and that was exactly why the Academy's promise to teach actual hunter skills was so tempting.
And on top of that, the tuition was nearly free!
On paper, it was a dream of a deal.
But if it had truly been nothing more than a dream of a deal, she would never have needed to agonize over it in the first place.
As life always goes, a gamble always carries risk.
The biggest problem was time. Cheap tuition, an investment in the future... all true. But flip it around, and it also meant spending at least three years as a student.
Of course, that too was a necessary expense. That was how Yunha had justified her decision to enroll. But three years. For Yunha, who hadn't yet lived thirty, three years carried a weight beyond its mere length. Three years, in name only—it meant investing roughly a fifth of her entire life into the Academy.
Wouldn't doing something else in that time be more help in feeding her siblings?
That was the first worry.
Ironically, what kept that worry buried was the characteristically high pay of hunters. Three years. It must have felt long to her, but objectively speaking, it wasn't so dire that she couldn't tighten her belt through it. In other words, a period she could somehow endure by juggling her studies with part-time work, even if things ran a little tight. A sacrifice for future prosperity—something she could stomach.
It felt overly grave for a mere worry about high school entrance, but the anguish she'd carried back then surely didn't fall short of that gravity.
Yet the second worry, the one that had brought her low, was none other than the Academy's academic schedule.
To put it bluntly, that was mostly my fault.
"But once I actually enrolled, all we ever did was physical training..."
Perhaps this was one more reason she'd been reluctant to open her mouth. But the glances she kept stealing at me—the man responsible—were subtly laced with a resentment she couldn't help.
In defense of my honor, allow me to explain in advance: I hadn't simply been running the kids ragged to break them in.
As is well known, a hunter's physical abilities are considerably superior to an ordinary person's. Even without awakening a body-reinforcement ability, a hunter's physique, powered by qi or mana, sits far beyond the range of a civilian. It's obvious with a moment's thought. If an ordinary person's physical ability is 1, then a hunter fresh from awakening, reinforcing their body with mana, sits at roughly 10—nearly ten times as much. Considering that even a well-trained person maxes out around 5, it's easy to see why hunters see no reason to train their bodies.
But what if a trained person becomes a hunter?
Their physical ability is easily 50. Nearly five times that of an average hunter—a difference of 40.
In terms of raw physical ability alone, that's certainly within the margin of error against a hunter wielding mana. But precisely because it's within that margin, it's all the easier to train—and a gap built through that training only widens as more mana is layered on top. It never shrinks.
The problem was...
"Exactly. We could do that kind of thing at home."
"Right~"
It was delivered in the tone of a middle schooler asking what good math does in the real world, but the point was worth taking to heart.
Basic physical training is, at its core, the foundation of all foundations. In other words, it's nothing more than something you can do anytime, anywhere, if you put your mind to it.
I could have answered that, I suppose. For example, if I sent a student like Lee Yeeun home, would she actually practice her running or sit-ups like I told her? No—she's the type who, for all that power at her command, hasn't done a speck of research into close-quarters combat. I'd bet anything she'd just mess around with pilates in the name of "keeping her figure."
That's simply how exercise is. No matter how many times you drill it into someone's ears that it's necessary, the results don't show right away. And even if you do see gains, it's still just basic conditioning—a difference so trivial that to a hunter it can only look like a joke. Leaving this kind of practice to the students' own initiative was, in practical terms, a declaration that you were washing your hands of it.
Which is to say, my defense is that I personally drilled every student in the minimum exercises precisely to prepare for exactly that kind of situation.
But for Yunha—who, like Jung Pilyeon, showed no deficiencies in basic fitness—it must have felt stifling. No, it went beyond that. She may well have thought she was wasting her time.
There was also a practical problem.
If it's going to be like this, maybe I should just bring in a fitness trainer.
A realization I'd had just now, listening to Yunha. After all, I couldn't exactly claim to be better than a professional fitness trainer at basic conditioning.
The time I'd invested in basic conditioning so far was one month. Barely enough to lay a foundation. Which was why, from my perspective, I'd thought I was making a huge concession.
But what if I'd hired a fitness trainer from the start and delegated the conditioning to someone else? Couldn't that month have been put to far better use?
All the more so for Yunha, surely. One month. For her, it was probably too short to write off as "initial investment" the way I did.
"And on top of that, the practicals got canceled too."
And in the middle of all that, the practical training had been canceled.
The reason, of course, was that demon bastard that had popped up out of nowhere, as I'd mentioned any number of times. But if the Academy publicly proclaimed that an S-Rank monster had suddenly appeared on its own grounds, its very existence could be jeopardized—all the credit for resolving the incident without a single casualty would go straight down the drain.
And so, Choi Seungjun had imposed a gag order on everyone involved. Because of that, while I technically held authority equivalent to S-Rank within the Association, I couldn't disclose how I'd come to hold it. No—come to think of it, the fact that I'd become an S-Rank hunter at all might not even have been made public.
Thanks to that, to all outward appearances I still looked like nothing more than an inexperienced hunter—or a connected hire who'd dutifully pitched in on cleaning up the gate inside the Academy.
Naturally, the anxiety Yunha felt must have been far greater than mine.
Of course it would be. She'd steeled herself and enrolled in the Academy, only to find it doing nothing but running them in circles instead of teaching them how to fire lasers in style. And then, on top of that, the practical sessions she'd barely dared hope would teach her the knowledge a hunter actually needed had been canceled for some reason nobody would explain.
Looking at it coldly, it had only been a month. It might be a bit premature to give up hope in the school.
But for a girl of seventeen holding up an entire household, it was more than enough time to break.
"So it just... happened. I didn't know what was what, and it felt like I was only wasting time. I have to do well. I can't be like this... And then, I guess, all of that just built up into this."
Ah, jeez. Wiping away the tears that had seeped out with her palm, Yunha swallowed her sobs. Whether her emotions had gotten the better of her as she talked, or whether she was embarrassed at having blurted out circumstances she'd never meant to share... either way, it probably didn't make much difference.
So then, what was I—the very person hearing all this face-to-face—thinking?
Sh-shit...
Honestly, I thought I'd asked for nothing.
No—her circumstances themselves were genuinely moving. So there really are kids who think this deeply, huh? When I was her age, all I ever thought about was killing monsters. Not that much has changed even now—but regardless, she cut such a dignified figure that I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that way.
Above all, even while pouring all this out, her deep love for her family was palpable. In a situation like this, resentment toward the family making you suffer tends to pile up whether you like it or not, but there wasn't a trace of that in her.
Magnificent, Yunha! I wanted to root for her that badly.
The problem was that I had money. A suspiciously large amount of it, at that.
If I hadn't had money, I could have sympathized with Yunha's plight without any difficulty. I might even have asked whether there was anything I could do for her right away, or donated whatever modest sum I could under the banner of "sponsorship" and savored that warm glow.
But right now, I had a hell of a lot of money.
More than enough to make her worries vanish in a single stroke.
It was a truly awkward predicament. One person's whole life. One person's lament. Standing before the weight and hardships a single person had shouldered all her life, the knowledge that the means to resolve it all rested in my hands was a sensation so bewildering I could hardly put a name to it.
Worst case, I could just hand her a billion won or so...
What on earth was I supposed to say?
"Wow, what a heartbreaking story. As it happens, I've got about a billion won sitting around. Want it?"
Yeah, somehow I don't think that'd fly.
Back when TVs still worked, I'd seen a trashy drama or two, and a scene from one flashed vividly before my eyes. Are you pitying me right now?—the actress delivering that line with burning conviction seemed to be playing out right in front of me.
Honestly, if you asked me, every time I watched scenes like that I figured—pride be damned, what's wrong with a little pity?
Wasn't that only natural? Where in the whole wide world could you find an adult who'd look at a kid in her position and feel not one shred of sympathy?
Of course, if the girl herself shot that question back at me, I'd have had no answer to give.
Was it that she couldn't bear the thought of the pride she'd built—holding up her family's life on her own strength alone—being swayed by a single wave of someone's hand? Either way, it was a feeling I found hard to grasp.
"Look, Yunha, I understand what you're trying to say."
But if she didn't want it herself, there was nothing more I could do. Watching Yunha conceal a ferocity that matched—or perhaps surpassed—that actress from the TV, I thought as much.
No, hiring a fitness trainer was definitely the right call, though.
I filed away the additional items to propose to Choi Seungjun and steadied my breath.
Yunha gave no answer. Perhaps she hadn't heard me—but judging by the ragged breathing coming from behind the palms now buried completely in her face, that probably wasn't it.
Well, setting Yunha's circumstances aside, the situation itself was fairly clear-cut. In short, she wasn't happy with the curriculum as it stood.
Naturally, I couldn't tear the academic schedule apart on her word alone. But the timing happened to be just right.
One month.
By now, whatever else, the students were starting to get a feel for how to handle their own bodies.
In other words, I'd been preparing the next stage of my lessons as well.
Of course, winning Yunha's mood back on the spot would be a tall order...
"Then, Yunha."
"Y-yes."
"Come on now, no more crying. Dry those tears. Thank you for trusting your teacher enough to tell me all this, hm? You must have been anxious, our Yunha."
Yunha nodded—small, but certain—in affirmation.
And as it happened, I had just the right task for her.
"When I first came to the big city, I had people take care of me too."
"So then, our Yunha. How about trying a part-time job with your teacher?"