Three Nuclear Bombs and a Stray Girl
Long story short, it seemed I really had been killing monsters.
Frankly, I'd been so pent-up lately that I half-wondered whether I'd mowed down a few passing strangers and was rationalizing them as monsters—but thankfully, that didn't appear to be the case.
The problem, as it turned out, was rather the opposite.
Slicing things apart had felt great in the moment, but thinking back on it now, something was definitely off. It had been three years since humanity conquered the gates. And now, out of nowhere, three monsters capable of impersonating humans had popped up?
Easy to say. Mimicry is no simple feat. Unless we were talking about a monster specializing in exactly that—a doppelganger, say—it was all but impossible. It stands to reason. In a world where even humans struggle to disguise themselves as other humans, how could passing yourself off as an entirely different species be easy? That's why most monsters, even when they did assume human form, gave themselves away somewhere or other, like a foreigner speaking broken, half-baked Korean.
The dragon—hailed as the most powerful creature on Earth—was no exception. If anything, those bloated, obscenely fat lizards were far too arrogant to ever lower themselves and imitate some lesser life form.
Factoring in the difficulty of what's called polymorphism, each of them had to be at least A-rank. And an A-rank monster is the kind you meet with missiles, the kind that might demand a tactical nuke to handle with certainty. In other words, that day, in that place, three nuclear bombs had gathered in one spot.
So? You really can't think of anything at all?
No.
It's not like I could tell them I'd just happened to stumble across three nukes rolling around on the street. So right now, the question occupying most of my brainpower was the girl sitting across from me.
The girl said her name was Ja Hayeon. Seventeen years old—the age where she'd just be starting her first year of high school. That is to say, she would have been in school, if she'd had the luxury. Ever since monsters tore society a new one, compulsory education had long since become a dream within a dream.
In fact, she didn't seem to have ever considered the possibility of furthering her education herself—at least, not going by the conversation we'd just had. She described herself as a mere orphan, flatly stating that she could expect no connections or family ties of any kind, and there was something strangely detached about the way she said it.
Up to that point, she was simply a pitiful girl. Born an orphan of the world, she had never once received any real help in her entire life. A common enough story, if you wanted to call it common—but even so, that didn't diminish the weight of the misfortune she'd endured.
Naturally, that didn't mean I actually believed she was some innocent civilian. However bad the times had gotten, what dragon comes flying out of the woodwork for some random orphan off the street?
Really, the truth was plain to see at a glance. Wavy, undulating hair like rolling blue surf. Pearl-colored eyes glittering beneath it. Beyond that radiant beauty—recognizable at a glance even in the pre-dawn dark—her features were sharply defined, and her skin, like a halo around the moon that night, glowed with the soft, milky sheen of white porcelain.
Some orphan, my ass.
If you're going to claim that, at least have the decency to prepare an ordinary-looking face.
To be fair, appearances like hers weren't exactly rare in the post-gate era. The mana emitted by the gates and the physical changes it brought weren't limited to hunters alone. Not everyone exposed to mana awakened as a hunter, but conversely, those who failed to awaken still sometimes found their bodies altered by its influence—more common than not, these days.
Even granting all that, though, her looks were striking to the point of excess. And beyond her appearance, what gnawed at me most was that peculiar coloring. Hair in shades far too vivid even accounting for mana exposure, paired with eyes like cherry blossoms in bloom. That luminous quality you'd never find in your average hunter was itself proof that she had been exposed to far more powerful mana than the rest of them.
Which meant—
That was exactly where the problem lay. Because the girl before me, despite all of it, kept stonewalling my questions.
"Thank you for saving me. But I honestly have no idea why something like that would happen to me. It's never once happened before, you see……"
What a headache. At least from where I sat, it felt far more plausible that the mana she'd unknowingly awakened had exerted some kind of influence, than that a pack of dragons collectively lost their minds over some lunatic whose hair had already been dyed hunter-style from the start. And the girl speaking those words was herself visibly confused—there wasn't the faintest whiff of a lie about her.
Let's get organized here.
I shifted my thinking. The name of the girl before me: Ja Hayeon. Seventeen this year. A lifelong orphan with no knowledge of her parents. No known relatives either, and in fact she'd been living at an orphanage until just recently. She'd been turned out the day before the incident, which was why she had no idea when exactly the monsters had started following her.
Tap, tap. My fingertips drummed the table without my meaning them to. Deep down I knew it wasn't the sort of gesture that would put a young lady at ease, but I couldn't help myself.
That's all I've got?
That was my first thought. The hints I'd been given were simply too sparse to build any kind of inference on. Not that anyone had handed me a duty to solve this case—but I couldn't help feeling the lack all the same.
Nine times out of ten, there was something about the girl in front of me. What exactly that something was, I had no idea. Honestly, I didn't care. What mattered to me, pure and simple, was the fact that monsters had come looking for her, drawn by whatever it was she carried.
Yes. That was also the reason why I—a man whose sociability ran thin even as a joke—was spending this much time on a girl I'd met for the first time in my life. In a word, I was thinking I might use her as bait to lure the monsters in.
……It was hardly a praiseworthy idea, granted. But I'd call it a force of nature, on my end. It's not like this was for my benefit alone, anyway.
If those monsters really had been chasing the girl and crossed paths with me as a result, then she was nothing short of a benefactor. I'm not exaggerating. That's exactly how high my spirits were—after a full three years, I'd finally gotten to slice monsters apart again.
In a sense, she'd played the role of a game-beater, driving the quarry right to me. Frankly, I couldn't have used all the kills even if I'd had them, and part of me wanted to toss her a few hundred million won as a thanks-for-your-services bonus.
But what if she never realized what it was she carried? What if the monsters kept hunting her from here on out? Then what would become of her—alone, with no guarantee that anyone else would come to her rescue this time?
As a hunter gone thoroughly to rot, I couldn't help but imagine a scenario like that. It would be nice, while I was at it, to smash a few monsters along the way, too! Come to think of it, shouldn't the Association be thanking me? That's the salary they pay to handle these problems, and I've been running around doing their job for free.
That was how I rationalized it, anyway. But it seemed unlikely to bear any fruit. Such is life—things never come easy. Then again, by that logic, what could a guy like me expect to uncover, playing amateur detective with no training in professional investigation whatsoever?
With that thought, I took a sip of the coffee in front of me.
A café terrace. The house the girl had been living in turned out to be rather terrible at putting anyone at ease, so we'd had no choice but to shoot the breeze outside a convenience store in the pre-dawn dew. When morning broke, we drifted naturally on our feet and now sat tucked into a corner of a café that had only just opened its doors.
Business had just started for the day, so the place was empty—there wasn't a single other customer in sight. Truth be told, that quiet atmosphere was this establishment's signature. Word was, the owner had opened it after their original shop was physically flattened by a monster incident, which meant there wasn't a trace of monster-related marketing anywhere—not even if you washed your eyes out looking for it. That made it one of the few places I could frequent with a clear mind.
So. What are you going to do from here?
No answer. Honestly, if she'd been able to answer easily, I'd have been surprised. The obvious truth was that ever since the gates appeared, the world had filled up with children who'd lost their parents to monsters. And as it happened, South Korea's orphanages simply didn't have the capacity to support a population of orphans swollen that large. So now children were forced to leave the orphanage at sixteen, not twenty.
Someone might say: in an era where nearly thirty percent of the nation's citizens are said to have lost family, that's actually doing pretty well for itself. Not wrong. But that didn't mean a girl of sixteen or seventeen could suddenly figure out how to make a living.
You got somewhere to go?
Again, no answer.
If that were all, maybe the right move would've been to hand her over to a police box right then. But a man who'd butchered monsters after three long years of drought was feeling unusually good, and beneath that good mood, two worries jostled for position. One: that a girl I'd spent barely half a day talking to might freeze to death somewhere out on the street. Two: that if I sent her off like this, whatever household she'd been relying on might get blown to bits by a monster attack.
Granted, my uncharacteristic generosity owed no small amount to finally getting to rip a monster apart after so long.
Maybe I'll buy you a house?
……?
No, that one was a genuine slip. I'd meant to ask if she wanted to crash somewhere for a little while, but apparently I was far more giddy than I realized.
In any case, thanks to that, I tried again, dripping magnanimity—and all she offered in return was a faintly sour smile. Well, sure. No matter how desperate you are, sleeping at the home of a middle-aged man you met an hour ago is bound to feel off-putting. Setting aside that slip of the tongue just now, of course.
……It is set aside, right?
Well, this much will do.
But it was about time to wrap things up. Considering the need to handle the situation, I'd already lingered far too long, and setting aside my personal sense of debt, there wasn't much more I could do for her. If she wanted it, I could offer a house, no problem—but honestly, what high school girl would nod along when a stranger offered to buy her one? If she did nod, I'd be worried in a whole different sense. Might need to instill some survival instincts in her.
Either way—regrettable as it was—it was time to bring this to a close.
"Alright, then. Give me a moment."
All that remained was damage control. And what a person needs to survive in this society, whatever else you say, is blood ties and connections.
Hmm? School ties? The gates ate those, obviously. To be fair, even "blood ties and connections" had degraded somewhat as terms since the gates appeared, but whatever.
So thinking, I rose to my feet with great flourish—only to quietly make a request of the café owner instead.
"Could I borrow your phone?"
"Go ahead."
Oh, right. I still haven't bought a new phone.
Ignoring the lukewarm gaze boring into my back, I picked at the keypad of the café's landline. Thankfully, I remembered the number. If anything ever happens, call me. I'll hear you out. I'm begging you. Just don't keep it bottled up inside, alone……
That was because there'd been a man who pleaded with me like that, so desperately, so many times over the years. It had all sprung from a comedy of errors—he'd misread my attitude—but thanks to it, his number had somehow become a thing my own fingers knew by heart.
Never actually set out to memorize it, though.
I heard the slow ring tone. It occurred to me, suddenly, that the man had become wildly famous since the old days—maybe he'd ignore my call now. Of course, even if he did, the worst I'd suffer was a cold look shot at a guy who'd swaggered up all confident and then collapsed without managing to do a single thing right.
Really, there was never any need to worry.
Click.
"Who is this?"
"It's me, you bastard."
Maybe he'd had a change of heart. Maybe he'd ignore me, since this was a café's landline and not my own number anyway…….
Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately—he was simply not the type to pull any of that.