The Butcher's Old Trade
With Yoon-ha's agreement secured, the next place I headed to was one of the gates I had recently revisited.
More precisely, the processing facility attached alongside it — a place particularly familiar to me.
Oh, our Makdung-ah, is that you?!
The moment I stepped into the processing yard for the first time in years, the ajusshis scrambling out to greet me looked just as familiar as ever.
Some of them crowded around in a flurry, fussing about how long it'd been and what brought me here on this occasion, while others simply clapped me on the back and griped — you showed your face after years away and no greeting? What kind of manners are those?
Well, excuse me! I was working, I tell you, working!
What, our Makdung-ah's gone and made something of himself?
What?
When did I even tell them I'd become a hunter, and why are they only acting surprised now? Ah, forget it! You got any work for me? Work?
Either way, it was genuinely good to see them again after so long.
I caught myself answering in the same gruff, snappish tone I'd used back when I used to run with these ajusshis, when a tug on my sleeve pulled my attention aside.
Um, Teacher?
Yoon-ha, who had followed me with a nervous look on her face just moments ago, now wore an expression of deeper bewilderment.
It felt a little cruel to say, but her behavior was so wildly out of place that I nearly burst out laughing on the spot.
Who are all these people?
That was probably not what she truly wanted to ask.
So I, in turn, hunched my shoulders slightly and gave her the answer she was really looking for.
Dismantling crew foreman.
Literally, an organization that this era could not exist without.
The butchers of our age — the ones who managed and supervised the dissection of monsters.
Of course, Hwang Yoon-ha had known about dismantling yards too.
She might not have thought twice about the countless low-rank monsters lying around, but among the higher-rank ones, there were plenty of individuals equipped with some manner of defense. Beyond simple hide that was merely tough or magical barriers — the kind of conceptual protection where nothing short of a specific weapon or method could deal damage.
A creature that could only die by the sword. Scales no spear could pierce. Hide that only a blade — never an arrow — could wound. Ignoring flames and taking damage only from lightning was commonplace; there were even things that could not be killed unless a particular sequence of steps was followed, to the letter.
Even hunters struggled against such creatures. Call it affinity, perhaps. Against a monster that shrugged off every form of physical attack but was weak to mana interference, sending a D-rank mage was far more efficient than an A+-rank vanguard.
It wasn't about brute-forcing things apart — it was about understanding a monster's nature and exploiting it.
That was why they were called hunters rather than mere superhumans.
The problem was what came after the hunt.
As noted, monster defenses came in many varieties. And the most formidable among them were the monster's own inherent traits — in other words, a kind of constitution.
Physical defenses could be shattered with greater attacking power.
Magical protection could be dispelled by nullifying the magic itself.
But a constitution that simply ignored weapons was another matter entirely. Worse still, in most such cases, the effect persisted even after the monster drew its last breath.
Which was precisely why such hides were prized as armor materials — and conversely, a living hell for the hunters who had to strip them.
To put it bluntly, how the hell were you supposed to skin a hide that a blade couldn't even cut?
These problems surfaced far more sharply among mages than among warriors who handled weapons. It was inevitable. Unlike swordsmen, who were accustomed to edged tools from day one, mages were strictly rear-line — their physical stamina was bound to fall short. And you wanted them to butcher the hide of a monster whose defenses their own weapons couldn't touch, right after finishing a hunt?
Even exceptional warriors routinely collapsed the moment a subjugation ended. For a mage, that would be nothing short of torture.
That was how the dismantlers — or butchers — the professional monster-butchers of this world, came to exist. A trade that, after a subjugation, relieved exhausted hunters by breaking down the monster materials and hauling away the carcasses.
At first, the work had been treated as odd jobs for lower-rank hunters, or as a way to accumulate experience. But as humanity began taking down higher-rank monsters, it gradually became a profession of its own.
How much edge did a blade need before a monster's uncuttable hide even registered it as a blade? At what calcium content did a scale that ignored edged weapons register as the flesh of a living creature?
Know-how like this, accumulated layer upon layer by dismantlers alone, helped transform them into a kind of master craftsman.
And so dismantlers emerged who could stand on equal footing with even the highest-ranked hunters. There were practical reasons, too. Hunters could barely manage preparing to fight monsters in the first place; only a rare few went on to research, one by one, how to process the materials after the fight.
For Yoon-ha, who had once agonized over whether to go on to high school or find a job, it had also been a career she'd quietly kept in mind.
She just never imagined she'd be getting that abandoned job experience now, of all times.
It was ten at night. At some point, a bright moon had climbed into the sky. Thinking of how she'd normally be sprawled out watching TV by now, she found herself resenting her own self for nodding along and getting swept up in the moment.
Contrary to what she'd vaguely imagined, it wasn't dangerous work — but it was exhausting all the same.
Mentally, above all else. For a hunter like her, a McDonald's-level part-time job wouldn't have registered as effort anymore. But the day's events had been far too much to process. A classmate had shown up at her workplace with an alien in tow, and that alien had turned out to be her homeroom teacher……
Suddenly, the back of Yoon-ha's neck burned hot. The humiliation she'd displayed just after came flashing back to her.
Fuck, I totally lost it.
What on earth had she been doing, grabbing a man she'd known for barely a month?
Her head began to throb at the realization that she'd acted every bit as shameless as the drunk troublemaker customers who occasionally staggered into the shop. For an adolescent high school girl, the hour when the evening sky bled red carried a dangerously potent magic all its own……
And yet, when she thought it through, it was all a very strange affair.
What on earth was our homeroom teacher, anyway?
Setting aside his frankly deranged fashion sense, it was an odd thing to consider in hindsight. He'd been appointed an Academy teacher, which implied a former hunter — but eavesdropping on what the other kids said, it seemed nobody had a single piece of solid information about him.
Yet he didn't quite seem like a nepotism hire either. Above all, there was the day of the practical exam — the very reason she'd skipped school without permission. Some people said they'd seen him throw himself into the gate.
Embarrassing as it was to admit, that was part of why she'd vented her anger at him out of nowhere. The practical had been abruptly cut short the moment Park Woochan vanished into the gate, and she'd jumped to the conclusion that there was some connection.
But the Park Woochan she'd met outside the Academy was a far stranger man than the one she thought she knew.
Setting everything else aside — why had he been meeting another student separately, outside of school? Her gaze flicked sideways. There sat Ja Hayeon, the classmate Park Woochan had brought along, hunched over something resembling a carving knife, grunting as she picked away at it.
Honestly, she'd never once imagined this combination.
They'd barely exchanged words, but Ja Hayeon was, in her own quiet way, a notable figure in the class. A major newcomer of unknown origin. On the very first day, she'd stood before Park Woochan — who'd made her run laps around the training field instead of teaching her how to use her ability — and completed the punishment with a perfectly composed face. Among the next-generation hunter hopefuls who'd built their networks since middle school, Ja Hayeon had landed as a fresh shock.
Her showing during the practical hadn't been bad either, and her mysterious beauty on top of that — Yoon-ha herself aside, some of the girls in class hesitated to even strike up conversation with her.
When Ja Hayeon had shown up at the shop with him, Yoon-ha had wondered for a moment whether they'd been searching for her — but thinking about it now, it was a bizarre pairing all around.
And the person beside her was stranger still.
Hyah!
Accompanied by an adorable little battle cry, she caught sight of a woman peeling the shell off a monster's back with one hand. The same shell Yoon-ha had spent nearly ten minutes wrestling off just before.
Her provisional girlfriend. That was what Yoon-ha privately called the woman who'd introduced herself as Tia. Had Park Woochan himself known, he would no doubt have cheerfully begun preparing for optic nerve surgery — but from where Yoon-ha stood, she couldn't see it any other way.
No, more than that — if they weren't in that kind of relationship, there was simply no explaining why she was here.
She was, likewise, someone Park Woochan had brought along. At first Yoon-ha had thought she might be trying to become a model, but watching her now tear apart a monster carcass bare-handed, it occurred to her that maybe she was a hunter.
A homeroom teacher in a spacesuit, dragging a hunter who looked like a model and a classmate all the way to her part-time job……
Take the first half and it was a love-triangle melodrama; take the second half and it was B-grade snack culture.
And so Hwang Yoon-ha still couldn't quite size up what kind of man Park Woochan was, the one who'd introduced her to this job.
Yoon-ha, you doing okay over there?
And so.
Watching the spacesuit sauntering toward her from across the yard, Yoon-ha sank briefly into the dilemma of what she was supposed to say.
Oh, not bad for a first try.
Sorry? This?
Yeah. This is actually pretty decent.
With that, Park Woochan strolled up to her and, with admirable dexterity, picked up one of the back-plates she'd pried loose using the hand wrapped in his spacesuit.
As it happened, what Park Woochan had offered her on the way here had, in the end, been a part-time job. Dismantling lower-rank monsters. With the gate closed, hands had naturally grown scarce, and he'd pulled strings to slot her into an empty seat.
I'll teach you some tricks, so watch closely, Yoon-ha. See, this shell disperses impact on its own, right? But there's a pattern to how that impact spreads. So if you slot the tool in at the angle where the grain of the shell and the spreading shock line up——
Crack! With a satisfying snap, the back-plate Yoon-ha had been struggling with split clean open. A far cleaner surface than the mess Tia had ripped off by brute force.
Watching that, it was plain as day how a man like Park Woochan had built up connections like these.
Maybe even that grotesque fashion sense had been cultivated working here. Touching a venom sac mid-harvest, for instance…… In fact, she suddenly recalled that the crew foremen who'd recognized him hadn't said a word about his taste in clothes.
With a little practice, you'll handle this level easily.
Why are you going this far for me?
Instead of asking what he meant by that, Hwang Yoon-ha found herself asking that question before she could stop herself.
She simply couldn't understand it. It felt awkward to say, but she and Park Woochan had known each other barely a month. And in that month, she'd skipped school when she felt like it and shown him nothing resembling diligence.
Yet even after hearing her mortified confession, instead of lecturing her the way her middle school teachers had — you're better off than others, so you must try even harder — Park Woochan had silently slotted her into a job.
If a kid was skipping school because of a part-time job, wouldn't the right move be to make her quit the job? That was the only conclusion Yoon-ha could reach.
Well, because you said it yourself.
Sorry?
But by comparison, Park Woochan's answer was remarkably simple.
You came here to become a hunter and earn money. That's what you told me, didn't you?
I mean, I did, but……
Then this will help. You know my job is raising you all into proper hunters. You'll have a hard time putting what you learn here to use right away — but even if you can use one percent of it, more of your classmates might survive.
With that, he tapped one of the back-plates lying beside them and split it open once more.
Granted, she'd struggle to use a technique like that mid-hunt. But what if she came up against the owner of that shell with nothing but physical attacks available? Normally, they'd find themselves helpless — forced to retreat, or perhaps wiped out entirely. But if she knew a technique like that…… she might find some way to bring it down after all.
She followed the logic that far. But it was the word survive that Park Woochan had used moments ago that lingered in her ears.
Only then could she understand what her mind had known all along, but her heart never grasped.
If Park Woochan was a former hunter, then he had surely witnessed countless deaths by now. And perhaps, until the gates closed, he had seen off countless people.
Friends. Or family.
More bonds than he could count — enough to laugh off her petty rebellion as nothing more than a teenager's acting out.
She could also guess why he'd introduced her to this job. The vague, unimpressed look he'd worn when she said she'd come to become a hunter — that had been his answer.
And hey, you'll save money too, right?
Faced with Park Woochan tossing that out like a joke, Yoon-ha couldn't bring herself to reply.
Well, the pay itself'll be ordinary. Can't exactly hand a rookie freshly learning the trade the materials off a high-rank monster. Better than most part-time jobs, though.
……I wasn't even hoping for that much. Thank you.
Ha! Might come in handy once you're a hunter, so work hard. Don't worry too much about school stuff.
At that offhand remark, Yoon-ha's shoulders flinched.
You're at the age where you might feel anxious, sure. How could you not, with the world in this state.
……I'm sorry.
I didn't say that so you'd apologize, kid. But remember this one thing. It might've been a boring class to you — but for the others, it was something they needed.
……I know that now.
It wasn't lip service.
Perhaps to Park Woochan, a hunter was not some dashing hero carving through monsters in glory.
He was a hunter — someone who survived to the very end and, by any means necessary, severed the monster's breath.
It didn't matter if there was no style to it. Even if they recoiled from the filthiness of the methods — anything was better than dying.
surely with that in mind that he was raising his students.
Come find us whenever you feel like it. We'll be moving on to the next lesson at school soon enough.
With those words, Park Woochan gave her shoulder a light pat — a touch so gentle that no spacesuit could have hidden it.
That night, when Hwang Yoon-ha returned home, she quit most of the part-time jobs she'd been working.