See You Tomorrow
Even after that, we found ourselves visiting the disassembly facility often. Partly to pick up material supplies, but more than that, because the gate investigation still wasn't over.
Or, to put it more precisely, because there wasn't the slightest sign of it ending. The whole point of this investigation was, in the end, simply a job of flushing out anything at all that seemed even remotely off. Nothing suspicious to report; the gate remains stable... It was not the kind of matter you could close the book on with a single line of assessment like that.
So in practice, we ended up treating the whole thing as time to kill. Mornings were for classes at school; afternoons, for wandering the streets under the pretext of investigating the gate. The goddess, who normally did nothing but hole up in a corner of the house with nothing to occupy her, was obviously enjoying herself—and Hayeon, too, didn't seem to mind the change of pace one bit.
And so we whiled away the days for a while—turning over every shop in the area, swiping the card without a second's hesitation whenever something caught our fancy.
When night finally came, we closed out the day the same way we had every night that week: with one last trip to the disassembly facility, where Yunha was waiting.
Oh, a gargoyle.
The material Yunha was wrestling with today was the gargoyle, a C-Rank monster out of France.
It was a creature born of misinterpretation—someone had looked at the monster-shaped carvings that had adorned door handles and eaves since ancient times to drive off evil spirits, and decided they were the real deal. Or, taking the idea a step further, someone had stared at a stone statue of a monster and wondered, what if the monster turned to stone?
A modest thing, perhaps, but one of the reasons French hunters drew no small amount of envy. For all that the country lacked genuinely powerful monsters, it had no shortage of materials whose value far outstripped their rank.
The gargoyle's most distinctive trait was its ability to slip between living flesh and stone whenever subjected to a specific stimulus.
Easy to process, easy to transport—and on top of that, with a little work it could be converted into whatever type of stone you wanted. An overwhelming convenience, all told. Thanks to those properties, it was currently basking in the spotlight as the construction industry's hottest new material.
What Yunha was carving away right now was the very part that received that external stimulus. If a block already installed in a building could be revived into a living creature from the outside, it was plain as day that catastrophic accidents would follow. Which was why that part had to be removed in advance, before gargoyle material could ever be put to use.
That was also why only a disassembler skilled well beyond the monster's rank could work gargoyle material—one slip of the hand, and the lives lost wouldn't stop at one or two.
She was groaning at the moment, admittedly, at a loss for how to even handle the stone. But the fact that Yunha—contracted on the explicit condition that she would only ever touch low-rank monster materials—was laying hands on this thing at all said she'd earned a considerable amount of trust.
My name carried some weight in that, sure. But Yunha's own technique wasn't bad either. Especially when it came to hard materials like this one.
Yunha's ability was physical reinforcement—and within that, a hardening of the body focused squarely on durability. Literally, turning her flesh rigid, like a gargoyle. Maybe because we wielded similar abilities, the work came especially naturally to her.
“Whew. That looks brutal just watching it. Tell them to cut off more later.”
“I was already planning to.”
That stubborn, unyielding way of answering had grown quite familiar by now. Then again, from what I'd heard, she planted herself here nonstop from the moment school let out—hard not to get used to it, really.
Watching Yunha flounder as she wrestled with the material, I settled onto a stool off to the side. Demonstrating for her again like last time would have been fine too, but I'd decided to sit this one out. Just like in the classes at the Academy, working out for herself how to deal with gargoyle material gone to stone would do far more for her growth.
Give it your best, kid. Who knows—you might end up carrying a gargoyle shield someday.
With an ability like hers, Yunha's role in monster subjugation would be the vanguard nine times out of ten. The so-called tank position—standing between her allies and the monster's claws.
The uniform she wore right now was woven from this very kind of special material, so it would offer her a fair degree of protection against monsters. But if she was serious about becoming a hunter proper, she'd need gear of her own. The day poison seeps through a gap in secondhand armor, the joke stops being funny.
If you're ever thinking of ordering equipment of your own, tell me. I know a good place—I'll set you up. And one thing I won't stand for is my student fighting in monster materials. I'll have to tell her to use special mineral stock, same as me.
Come to think of it, that Choi Seungjun was a piece of work in his own right. How on earth had he landed a contract to outfit the entire student body in uniforms? And in quality good enough for practical training right away? He'd apparently skipped monster materials for cost-effectiveness reasons, but if anything, that only made me rate him higher.
Even as I turned these thoughts over, Yunha hadn't said a word. Wondering if something was wrong, I found myself studying her face—and she suddenly opened her mouth.
“Why are you so good to me?”
“Huh?”
“Don't even think about playing dumb. Even I know how valuable a dedicated craftsman and a personal disassembler are to a hunter.”
“...”
“Honestly, it throws me off a little. Why would you go this far for me?”
No, your problems can be solved with money.
I barely strangled the words before they could leave my mouth. Melodrama or not, even I would've been furious if I'd heard that.
And besides, it's simple human nature to want to give the good kid an extra rice cake.
“Hmm. Does it make you uncomfortable?”
“No, it's not that. Really. Thank you.”
“But it still weighs on you a little. That's it, isn't it?”
Raising a person. Supporting a person's life. Those were words that carried real weight.
For someone whose own life was a struggle just to keep one body fed, I couldn't even begin to imagine how it felt to be her—barely that age, already saddled with providing for an entire household.
But I could try.
Right up until she entered the Academy, Yunha had never received any real training as a hunter. Which meant, put another way, that the people around her had spent their school years alongside a girl who had awakened as a hunter back in middle school.
It was hard to imagine she'd been bullied. A fledgling she may have been, but she was still a hunter. However strict the Association might be about hunter crime, that was a far cry from preventing it entirely. In the worst case—someone teases her too hard, takes a hunter's punch, and ends up with a broken neck—no amount of compensation would be worth a damn.
No, the kids around her and the teachers alike probably never had any thought of persecuting her. If anything, they might have envied her, just a little. The children, for the sheer fact that she was a hunter; the teachers, measuring their own lot as salaried grunts against hers.
Maybe sometimes, behind the compliment—wow, a hunter, that's amazing—they'd tacked on a quiet I'm jealous.
And so, nine years.
For everyone else, a passing remark once in a while. For Yunha, nine years of it.
All those half-hearted words, piled layer upon layer in her chest—somewhere along the way, they must have dried thick and crusted over into a scab.
The duty she carried as a hunter. The fear of having to fight monsters. The crushing weight of providing for her younger siblings with what she earned...
For a girl who had lived hounded by every emotion there was, exhaustion must have been a lifelong companion, and peace nothing more than a luxury.
And that, perhaps, was why the first teacher to ever offer her real, practical help felt to her both deeply grateful and strangely foreign.
No teacher introduces part-time work to a student who will soon out-earn them a hundredfold, and it's hard to imagine an ordinary teacher would even know what jobs a hunter could take in the first place.
Above all—to her, life had always been something she was supposed to shoulder alone. That much had simply been a given.
“Well. I've never really thought about it.”
“Sorry?”
“If I had to put it into words—it's because you're my student, Yunha. That's all there is to it.”
Still, telling a kid like that 'no real reason, I'm just rich' felt a bit off, yeah. Turning my eyes away from the weight in her heart, I reached for a suitably packaged answer. Clichéd, sure. But not a bad one, all things considered.
“Oh.”
“Hm? What?”
“No, I mean—wasn't that kind of cool just now, teacher? You dropped your voice and everything. 'You're my student. No other reason. That's enough.'”
Hold on, Yunha. I think something very strange just got added to that line, Yunha!
Goosebumps rippled across my whole body at a line even Lee Joongoo wouldn't deliver. No, seriously, what was wrong with her...
Yunha burst out laughing at my reaction, then thumped me heartily on the back, once, twice.
“It's fine, it's fine. Everyone's like that~”
“Let me make one thing very clear: I have never once, in my entire life, said anything that embarrassing. Got it?”
“Aww. Denying it that hard just makes it more suspicious.”
Now she was giggling outright, making no effort to hide it. Honestly—there were moments you genuinely couldn't tell which of us was the teacher.
“I really am thankful, though.”
“I know, kid.”
“When you have time later, I'll introduce you to my siblings.”
“Why all of a sudden? It'd just be awkward for everyone involved.”
“Hm? Why?”
“Why do you think? I'm your homeroom teacher, not theirs.”
“You're still my benefactor for life. If they have any conscience at all, they should come pay their respects without being told.”
“'For life'? Now that's laying it on a bit thick, even for you.”
At that, Yunha erupted into laughter all over again. Compared to the girl I'd first met, she was barely recognizable.
After that, we traded the most trivial of small talk. Which of her siblings liked what, what they'd fought about recently, that sort of thing.
Family talk was a little rich coming from me, though, so naturally the conversation drifted toward the Academy—safe ground for both of us.
We couldn't touch the one thing Yunha was truly burning to know—what had happened during that practical training—but even without it, we had more than enough to fill the hours. The rumors making the rounds among the students. The teachers of the neighboring classes and their kids. The Academy's lessons, hitting snags left and right the way any first attempt would. Yunha marveling, wide-eyed, at the deftness of S-Rank hunter Choi Seungjun, who had somehow snapped up hunter-turned faculty before anyone else could blink—and me, nearly choking as I fought down a laugh at the sight of it...
“Oh, that reminds me. What exactly is going on between you and Hayeon?”
“What do you mean, 'going on'? There are some circumstances, so I'm looking after her. That's all.”
“C'mon. You two seemed awfully attached for 'circumstances.'”
“Careful. That's the kind of talk that gets people killed. Don't go spreading it around, or your teacher's a dead man.”
“Really? Then I'd better watch my mouth. Oh—then what about her? The red-haired one. She was gorgeous. Is she your girlfriend?”
Who knew academic stress could hit that hard... Yunha, you should have warned me sooner.
It was, quite literally, the most meaningless chatter imaginable. Nothing but idle gossip about daily life—exactly the kind of thing time was made to be wasted on.
“I should get going.”
“Oh, you're leaving?”
“Yup. And you should get back to work too. That crew chief ahjussi's been glaring daggers at you for a while now.”
“Probably because of you, teacher.”
“Hey, kid. Believe it or not, I was the baby of this place once. I know exactly how much they doted on me.”
“Now that you mention it, the ahjussis do say that all the time.”
“Hearing that is somehow creepier, you know? Anyway, I'm off. No badmouthing me the second I'm gone.”
“I'll think about it!”
Yunha flashed a bright, easy grin. And at the sight of me sighing and shaking my head, she even called out after me in a voice as light as the evening air:
“See you at school tomorrow!”
Perhaps because she'd finally set some of her burdens down, there wasn't a single crease of worry left anywhere on her. She looked so carefree, so unguarded—a sight I couldn't have imagined for her just days before.
And maybe that was exactly why what came next struck so much harder.
The next day.
Yunha had vanished.
This was no case of running away from home, or of simply skipping school.
Quite literally—from that evening, after our conversation, Yunha had erased every trace of herself.