Ten Minutes
With the midterm exams upon them, the school was bustling with an unexpected influx of visitors.
With the Academy's full-scale operations set to begin next year, every broadcasting company had come charging in to cover the story.
Choi Seungjun's warning echoed in my mind — make a good impression here, and we secure next year's incoming students and staff; but the moment anything went wrong, the optics could flip on us overnight.
And so, with the exam looming, the teachers had all gathered in front of the training hall, watching like hawks to make sure nothing slipped through the cracks.
Ordinarily, I would have been right there with them. Right now, though, I couldn't afford to be.
The majority of the staff crowding the training hall meant, in other words, that the main building's defenses had gone thin.
If I were the Honinhoe, that's exactly the opening I'd strike for.
Which was why I'd smoothly put distance between myself and the training hall under the pretext of scouting the main building zone.
God, this is boring as hell.
Honestly, it stung a little, too. Other homeroom teachers were off cheering their classes on, and here I was, alone.
Not that my kids need the pep talk — they'll do fine on their own...
[Tighter security than I expected.]
[Seriously? That's a pain.]
Choi Seungjun's voice crackled through the earpiece. Until moments ago, his position as Academy chairman had chained him to schmoozing with the reporters, but he'd apparently managed to slip away somehow.
The problem was the sheer number of journalists who had swarmed the place.
Choi Seungjun himself had said he could sweep most incidents under the rug, but even so — better to show them a school with zero commotion.
And this wasn't exactly the kind of thing you could broadcast to the world, anyway.
Officially, the justification was on our side. But the moment word got out that we were hunting down hunters, everything could invert in an instant. We couldn't exactly announce we'd detained them either.
Which meant we had to pick our battleground properly and fight there...
[I'll do what I can, but don't get your hopes up.]
The opponent was practically a giant half-blood. More combat experience than me. I couldn't even choose the terrain, and I had to fight as carefully as possible.
I didn't believe it was possible to pull this off without raising a single ruckus under these conditions.
Realistically? I'll try if I happen to have the luxury was about the best I could promise.
[Doesn't matter. Prioritize the win.]
[And the capture?]
[If you have the luxury.]
Well, I had Choi Seungjun for that.
If anything, the better the results, the more the man would find some way to exploit them.
Clearing the objective wouldn't be hard. But the higher the score I posted, the finer the compensation waiting on the other side.
Lousy terms all around — and yet this was exactly why I could go all out. Whatever else you said about the man, as a businessman, he was someone you could trust.
[The key isn't the rank-and-file. It's that bastard Nam Sangwon.]
[Agreed.]
[Obviously, I can't leave my post. That one's yours.]
[Aye aye.]
That much was exactly as I'd expected.
The crux of this defensive battle came down to how much damage I could rack up against Nam Sangwon.
In other words — it all rested on me.
Over the past few days, I'd been running the Honinhoe's assault plan — as told to me by Jihee — over in my head while loosening up, ready to bolt the instant the signal came.
The target, of course, was Nam Sangwon himself, along with the route he was expected to take. A counter-ambush against the Honinhoe who'd launched their surprise attack on the Academy.
[Right on time.]
And then.
In a tone as casual as someone remarking on the weather, Choi Seungjun said those words.
What followed, of course, was anything but simple.
From the outside, nothing appeared to change. If anything, it only felt a touch chillier. But that alone was enough for me to be certain the man had done his job.
Dead of Winter.
That was the name given to Choi Seungjun's ability. The effect: cryogenic control. Cryogenic control was underselling it — it was a power powerful and versatile enough to drop most of the invaders who'd set foot in this school in a single stroke.
The precision to single out specific targets within the grounds while leaving everyone else untouched. The output to neutralize an opponent in an instant across this kind of distance. And the sheer capacity to blanket the entire school without so much as a ripple in anyone's breathing.
Truly, performance befitting the greatest talent in the world.
I'd wager most of those invaders had already frozen solid under Choi Seungjun's ability, and pre-positioned personnel were out collecting the icebound half-bloods even now.
Setting aside Nam Sangwon's side, the situation was effectively over.
Having worked that much out, I stamped the ground lightly.
Shukuchi.
My weapon was already drawn. Warm-ups were done. My ability didn't even need priming.
Now then — shall we get a look at that face?
The giant warrior said to have led the Honinhoe since the First Incursion.
Recalling the title that would shame even the heroes of myth, I took my time committing the surrounding terrain to memory.
One minute passed like that.
Two.
Three.
Five.
Ten.
...Huh?
He's not coming?
A vague, indescribable bewilderment settling over me, I dragged a hand down my jaw.
Meanwhile, in the Academy's underground — at the mouth of the gate.
Nam Sangwon was there.
It had been no comfortable journey. The frost and scorch marks clinging to his body had left more than a few lingering wounds, even for one blessed with the strength of a giant.
Then again — lingering wounds was all they were.
Had he not been briefed on the Academy's defense grid, things might have gotten genuinely troublesome. He might have struggled to make it even this far.
But it worked out, unexpectedly enough, he murmured to himself.
Predicting where the hunter held captive in this Academy would be was easy enough. After all, a teacher spent most of their hours at the school. Unless they were recklessly leaving loose a hunter with power on par with A-rank, the odds were high he'd been stashed somewhere on campus.
And if so — somewhere out of sight of the students and other teachers, and secure enough that nothing bad happened if the hunter snapped out of it and went on a rampage.
Work through those conditions, and the currently-sealed gate emerged as the most likely candidate.
He swept a glance around, but nothing in the immediate area caught his eye. Hide the tree in the forest, as the old saying went — they'd likely stationed people deliberately where they wouldn't stand out.
Still, he found it hard to believe the place was truly left undefended. Inside the gate, there was almost certainly a permanent watch on the captive hunter — and to achieve his objective, Nam Sangwon would inevitably have to clash with them.
In other words, this mission only truly began once he stepped through the gate.
Subdue the watchers within the time limit, seize the hunter, and escape.
None of it would be easy.
But he had no other path left.
He reached out and took hold of the perfunctory chain looped across the gate's front. Merely gripping it was enough — the links crumbled feebly in his hand. He turned the metal shards left inside his glove over and over, and only once he was certain they left no identifiable trace did he toss the fragments back over his shoulder.
Clang. A thin, high ring of metal.
And beyond it, the elegant click of heeled shoes echoed through the dark.
Clean, right, sir?
A sound familiar to Nam Sangwon — and a voice he had no wish to hear right now.
He turned his head slowly, and there, approaching unhurried from the darkness, was Jihee.
And here he'd thought she'd be sitting her exams.
Oh, that? I'm not actually testing right now, so I slipped out for a bit.
Like a child caught in a minor mischief, Jihee gave a short, sheepish laugh — and her silver hair shimmered and swayed with it.
At the sight, Nam Sangwon found himself wearily dragging a hand down his face.
Exams are to be taken when they're meant to be taken. Go back.
Until just before the First Incursion began, Nam Sangwon had been a teacher-in-training.
Jihee brushed off his model-student tone with airy indifference, as if to say the man was hopelessly boring. But when Nam Sangwon stubbornly held her gaze, she soon gave in, shoulders slumping in resignation.
Not even going to thank me?
For what?
The people here? I cleared them out myself.
When he first heard those words, Nam Sangwon couldn't process them.
Then the understanding caught up, and it hit him like a blow to the back of the head.
There was no way Jihee — a mere student — had wiped out every hunter stationed here.
Which left exactly one explanation.
Jihee had leaked the plan for this assault to the Academy.
With false information mixed in, most likely.
At this point it amounted to outright betrayal of the Honinhoe — but the real problem was that he found it hard to believe the Academy's teachers would take the word of a mere high schooler at face value.
Which meant Jihee had, in all likelihood, publicly revealed what she was to make it happen.
If she were truly just a high school girl, maybe they'd have dismissed her. But coming from an informant inside the Honinhoe? That was impossible to ignore.
What on earth have you done?
Huh? No praise for me?
I trust you weren't expecting any.
Well, fair enough.
At the sight of her quietly shrugging her shoulders, Nam Sangwon's frown only deepened.
When he'd first agreed to lend a hand to this plan, he had made one thing crystal clear to Jihee: stay out of it. Don't you dare get involved.
Honestly, it could hardly be called a plan with favorable odds.
Which was why he'd never liked it. No — truth be told, the others felt the same. None of them wanted to expose children not yet even of legal age to danger for the sake of such a flimsy scheme. Least of all Jihee, a half-blood whose nature had still gone undetected.
But Jihee had ignored his warnings and contacted the Academy entirely on her own initiative.
Had he not needed to keep drawing people in, he'd have bellowed at her right then and there. What have you done? Do you even understand what you've done? What you've committed just now is no different from tearing up your own future and selling it off.
But all Jihee did was answer in that languid, teenage drawl.
Sir, have you ever stopped to think about what would've happened if I hadn't stepped in?
I haven't, and I don't plan to. Go back. Now!
If I hadn't moved, you'd have run straight into the 'Butcher' down here.
...Your homeroom teacher, you mean?
Yes. The very Butcher you mentioned, sir.
Nam Sangwon knew that name, of course.
No — anyone who had ever lent so much as an ear to affairs beyond the Association would have heard of him.
Which was why, when he learned that the infamous Butcher was at this school — and worse, serving as Jihee's homeroom teacher — Nam Sangwon had very nearly fainted.
The spokesperson who first brought him this contract had said the same thing. Are you certain about this? You know the Butcher's reputation. And to the Butcher, you may be no different from monsters...
It wasn't an unfounded concern. That man had a nose for half-bloods, after all. Though it had never been widely publicized, Nam Sangwon was confident he wouldn't blink to learn the Butcher had already butchered half-bloods numbering well past three digits.
That was part of why he'd wanted to keep Jihee out of this whole affair. Others like himself might manage it — but he balked at making a girl of seventeen witness a slaughter so early in her life.
Ah. So that's what you thought.
Yes. So even now, if you'd just—
Then did you ever think about how I felt?
But that had never once crossed her mind — and it was none of his business to know.
Come on. Does that make any sense to you, logically? It's dangerous? You might die if things go wrong? So you'll just leave me behind?
...Hm.
And what about my feelings? What if you die, sir — what if all the others die too? It's that dangerous, and I'm supposed to send everyone else and sit here alone, twiddling my thumbs? Sit through classes, calm as anything, under the man who killed you?
Then, suddenly, Jihee remembered something Park Woochan had once said.
Do you know why you're called hunters, instead of superhumans or heroes?
When Park Woochan put it that way, Ryu Jihee — who had never once thought of herself as a hunter — had always scoffed inwardly. But he'd carried on regardless.
It's because even if you've awakened your abilities, you've realized nothing. Because even if you hold power beyond ordinary people, you aren't superhumans. And because even if every media outlet in existence calls you heroes, you've accomplished nothing — you haven't even managed to become heroes at all.
He'd been right.
Born a half-blood, she had never gained a single realization in her life. She'd been born with power surpassing humanity's, but she had never once believed she'd gained the spirit to match it.
And she was certainly not the sort who could sit there calmly taking exams, business as usual, while people she knew and cared for might be dying at any moment.
Which was why Jihee was here.
She'd fed the Butcher, Park Woochan, false information — but that only bought her barely ten minutes.
In those ten minutes, somehow, she had to see this whole thing through to the end.
Can I actually win?
She didn't believe it. Honestly, her odds were slim. Even if she somehow brought the old man down, she couldn't be certain everything else would fall neatly into place.
And yet.
Even so — rather than swallow their deaths for the sake of half-blood rights, she would far sooner live her life holding her breath and staying hidden.
So thought, quite firmly, a girl of seventeen who was neither superhuman nor hero.