The Committee for Mixed-Blood Rights
The next day, after finally returning from escorting the Director to the academy—just in case anything went wrong—the midterm exam period had already begun.
That said, midterm season at the academy wasn't all that different from any other time. Which is to say, it looked exactly like any other high school in the country.
The exams lasted a single day. Some students, dutiful overachievers angling for good marks on their student records, drilled themselves relentlessly through their Korean, English, and math. Others had clearly given up entirely, wearing expressions that seemed to say, What's the point of a hunter? As long as I can kill monsters, who cares?
To be fair, even a hunter academy most definitely did grade written exams. Given the same ability, anyone would rather hire a person of culture than a boor. That much was simple human nature.
But at its core, the academy was, first and foremost, an institution for training hunters. Student or teacher alike, the exam that drew everyone's attention was inevitably the hunter course. Not that it mattered much—with practicals suspended, the exam format would be considerably different from what anyone had planned.
The original design had been to pit students against the boss of a gate under the same conditions as a practical assessment, hadn't it? Either way, with gates unusable for the time being, someone was going to have to come up with a new plan.
And so, with midterms approaching, I too had entered my final stretch of preparations.
It was about time I started putting a period at the end of the one-on-one counseling sessions.
For some students it had been academics; for others, family troubles. Every conversation had been shaped by some private circumstance, making each one feel like a completely different world. But there were also cases—Lee Yeeun's, for instance—with a direct bearing on midterm results. Best to wrap things up before the exams, at least.
It was in the middle of one such counseling session that I found myself swallowing a most ill-timed dose of bewilderment.
Scarlet sunset light stretched in long ribbons through the window. This was a classroom where I spent the better part of every day, yet the scenery drenched in orange held something that gently tugged at the heart of anyone who looked.
And there, in the very center of a view that seemed stitched together from the most beautiful hours of the day, she sat.
Ryu Jihee.
Honestly speaking, she had never been a student who left much of an impression on me. In middle school she had been a prospective hunter who competed with Lee Yeeun for the top spot, but until she entered the academy her record was essentially one of total defeat. At the same time, she was the very person who, in the sparring match right after enrollment, had taken my advice and handed Yeeun her first loss—in other words, the origin point of that wager I'd made with Yeeun. Laying it all out like this, one might almost think they were sworn rivals. And yet, apparently, Jihee had been one of Yeeun's closest friends since their middle school days.
Her personality had no doubt played a large part in that—her trademark flippancy, her unshakable tenacity, her total indifference to her own defeats. Because of it, my first impression of her had been something like a rabbit. Light-footed as she slipped into other people's territory, yet with a manner so soft and slippery that no one could quite call it rude. She was, so to speak, the mood-maker of our class.
Or so I thought.
Because looking at her now—perched on a desk, white legs laid bare without the slightest reservation, her whole posture radiating a bewitching allure—who on earth would have recognized Ryu Jihee at first glance?
It was an unbearably unfamiliar scene. Her silver hair, which had once gleamed pale as the first snow of a midwinter month, shimmered with an eerie luster. Her jade-green eyes, which had always brought to mind a shyly blushing rabbit, now glittered with something sinister. Unlike the girl who answered roll call with an excitable chirp, something curiously playful had settled into the gaze she fixed on me.
The reason for her reaction stood before me right now, filling the classroom—a single pair of wings.
Black wings rooted near her shoulders. No—not rooted, but sprouting from her shoulder blades themselves. Those membranes recalled the wings of a demon I'd seen somewhere before, and the meaning of their presence was not lost on me.
You see, I'm a half-blood.
With courtly grace, Jihee placed a hand over her chest and made that declaration. There was something strangely familiar in the way she did it—as if waiting to see how I would respond—and after a long, deliberate breath, I finally opened my mouth.
"What... did you just say?!"
...Judging by the satisfied little smile spreading across her face, apparently that was the right answer.
She was grinning with that much delight, so I could hardly tell her to her face that I'd known all along.
And so, once again, I was forced to swallow a sigh.
Of course, she hadn't come to bare her identity to a homeroom teacher she'd known all of two months. There was a far more concrete problem at hand.
I heard you recently fought with one of those 'hunters who hunt people.'
Jihee had come to see me as the representative of a certain organization.
The Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights.
That was the group she belonged to.
I'd certainly heard the name before. Casting my mind back, I had a vague feeling they were one of the parties that had sponsored that orphanage.
We had no intention of clashing with the academy so soon.
In other words, I was not to take the girl before me as the flippant classmate I knew. She was neither Yeeun's best friend nor our class's mood-maker right now.
She was an emissary—a spokeswoman and courier, sent by that faction to make contact with me.
There was nothing more pointless than demanding proof of her claims. This wasn't the sort of thing a mere high school girl could have known in the first place.
In the end, I had no choice but to admit that they had outmaneuvered me as well.
Still.
'"We," is it?'
The phrasing struck me as oddly detached.
Mind you, their audacity in reaching into the academy and planting their own little pawn already left me floored. But at the same time, I could feel it—the distance baked into her answer. The way she spoke, you'd think this attack had nothing to do with her at all.
'Almost as if she finds the whole thing tedious...'
No, come to think of it, this entire situation was strange in its own right. Maybe they'd chosen her precisely because she had easy access to me, but even so, wasn't she far too young to be sticking her face into business like this? To put it bluntly, what meaningful conversation could anyone hope to have with a girl of seventeen?
Besides—weren't they the ones who started this fight?
So I decided to probe a little.
It wasn't as if the point was wrong. They could protest that it hadn't been their doing, but the victim here was me. All I'd done was swat away an ember that flew at my face.
'That said—send a monster, you absolute idiots. I said send a monster.'
This whole mess happened because they suddenly sent a hunter, of all things.
If they'd sent a monster like they always had, I would have been blissfully lost in peaceful, happy slaughter, giddy as a schoolboy—and I'd have had no spare time to dig into any investigation. And in turn, they'd never have had their tails stepped on.
In other words, the ones who threw ash all over an arrangement that could have ended with everyone happily avoiding the issue... were none other than them.
We're not here to assign blame. It's simply that some among us are quite rattled by this recent clash. I only ask that you keep that much in mind.
With those words, I could finally be certain.
The "we" she'd used moments ago referred, strictly speaking, to the Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights—nothing more.
Given that, what she—or rather, the committee she represented—wanted to convey was probably this: One of the hunters who joined hands with you some time ago reportedly clashed with someone on our side. But that was not the will of the Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights. That is why we have sought contact with you...
Watching her inadvertently hint at an internal schism, it was quite possible this was a solo operation kept secret even from their own side.
And if that were true, most of the questions I'd been carrying would dissolve.
Why would a student already planted inside the academy go to the trouble of revealing her card? No—more fundamentally, was it remotely plausible to make a girl of seventeen the public face of an entire organization? If the party in question was the Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights rather than the Assembly, then yes—entirely plausible. One might even call it extravagant treatment.
After all, a seventeen-year-old mixed-blood belonging to that committee would almost certainly be one of its most senior figures.
That was the kind of group it was.
The Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights.
Just as the name suggested, it was a transnational alliance dedicated to advancing the human rights of mixed-bloods—and as such, as I recalled, it naturally maintained a branch in this country as well.
So what, then, was a mixed-blood?
Unfortunately, the term had nothing to do with mestizos or the like. Ever since the First Great Incursion, the word mixed-blood had been wholly replaced by an entirely different meaning.
Simply put, in this era, "mixed-blood" meant the offspring of a human and a monster.
The circumstances varied. Monsters that violated women; children born from the seed of monsters that used men as breeding stallions, as in the Greek legends; half-human, half-monster beings that ignored the very concept of biology the way the creatures of myth once had. That was the true face of the mixed-blood.
The Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights had long argued that these children—born of monsters—should not be classed as a species of monster, but accepted as members of human society.
Of course, the fundamental problem was the power they wielded.
Unlike ordinary civilians, mixed-bloods were born with bodies resembling those of monsters, harboring a mana-conduction organ within them from birth. One might call them innate hunters—assuming, that is, you defined "hunter" as any living being capable of manipulating mana.
Because the way they handled mana was far closer to that of monsters than of hunters.
Where hunters awakened their latent power through the influence of mana, monsters were born innately possessing their own ecology and abilities. And the mixed-bloods' method of mana manipulation clearly resembled the latter far more than the former.
Jihee, sitting right in front of me, was no exception. Her ability as written in her enrollment records was shadow manipulation. But judging by the wings she'd unfurled moments ago, her true nature was surely that of a half-demon capable of commanding shadows.
Thus, the mixed-bloods stood as an indelible scar our society had suffered since the Incursion, while simultaneously serving as the tender, aching finger that could remind us of it at any moment.
It wasn't hard to imagine what people felt—watching monsters carry off their loved ones, seeing those loved ones used as broodmothers, losing everything. To such people, a mixed-blood was nothing more than a child born of a monster. A fiend's spawn. Never a fellow victim like themselves.
In a world like that, a seventeen-year-old mixed-blood was all but guaranteed to be a senior figure in the Korean branch. To be sure, organizations like this always had human rights activists who came championing the mixed-bloods' cause, or the mixed-bloods' own parents, holding seats at the organization's core—but even so, it was hard to believe someone nearly at the very top of the seniority ladder would carry little weight.
Which raised the question.
The Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights, which had dispatched a senior figure of that caliber to make contact with me—what exactly was its relationship with the Assembly?
A simple partnership? Surely not a hierarchy—at least not the committee being subordinate. Their arrangement struck me as oddly loose, and the thought crossed my mind that this might simply be the shifting alignment of factions that happened to share a particular objective.
The reason we've made contact with you, sir, is one thing and one thing only. We've come to offer advice.
"Advice?"
While I was still turning that thought over, Jihee had said exactly that.
Advice? It was a rather insolent word.
But instead of answering, Jihee merely gave a light shrug of her shoulders. Even though she had come ostensibly to apologize, she showed not the slightest concern for my reaction—and a strange unease began to close in around me.
Before long, a certain organization is going to use the midterm exams as their opening and launch a full-scale assault on the academy.
And such ominous premonitions never missed their mark.
As expected, I couldn't help but widen my eyes. I tried my best to keep my emotions off my face, but I couldn't hide the way my expression twisted all the same.
"...That's a bold thing to say."
It's a bold plan, too.
"Where on earth...?"
In answer to the question that escaped me like a groan, Jihee drew her shoulders in slightly.
They say it's the Committee for the Advancement of Mixed-Blood Rights.
"What?"
Had I heard her correctly?
My head lifted before I could stop it. But Jihee, her face still impossible to read, said it once more.
I mean—our organization is going to attack the academy.