What Am I Even Doing
Exhausted to the bone, Shin Seoa finally dragged herself into her own bed. The unexpected taste of working life had left her whole body aching.
Frankly, she'd never actually believed she would end up going to work.
No — it had just been drunken rambling.
And yet.
After listening to her own pitiful, embarrassing-in-retrospect whining, Park Woochan had gotten her a teaching position at the Academy in a single day.
Woochan himself had only muttered something about how having a student teacher around was a nuisance, but honestly, that much was already more than she deserved.
Still, this is a public institution, isn't it? Is it really okay for me to slip in this crudely?
The rumor that Choi Seungjun, the current principal, wielded considerable discretion over the Academy's operations, it seemed, had been true all along.
And her Master had gone to negotiate with that very same Choi Seungjun — all for a single word of complaint she'd let slip while drunk.
Whenever she pictured it — Park Woochan squaring off against the heir to a conglomerate whose name every citizen of this country would recognize, and a sitting S-rank hunter besides — her chest still tingled.
Embarrassment.mortification.
And then, a thin thread of doubt blossomed among them.
Of course she was happy. But the sight of her Master talking eye-to-eye with the likes of Choi Seungjun struck her as even more alien than all of that.
Really, it should have been obvious.
A person's life is made up of countless encounters.
Just as she'd met her own comrades after becoming a hunter, her Master must have had connections of his own.
She wasn't so young that she couldn't understand a thing like that.
And yet.
Knowing something and feeling it in your bones are two different matters.
For Shin Seoa, this stint of employment had been the process of that realization.
The fact that she'd frozen up the moment Hunter Choi Seungjun stood before her — a man she'd only ever known by name — was frankly the least of it.
It had been barely two months since the Academy opened.
In that span, it seemed her Master had been through more incidents than she could have imagined.
And the one that grated on her worst of all was the discovery that most of the students close to Park Woochan were high school girls.
The boys who tried to steal his techniques as if worshipping him were almost cute by comparison.
A high school girl who'd somehow grown close to her Master. A high school girl whose family circumstances had led him to arrange a part-time job for her. Even a high school girl who turned out to be that Hunter Lee Joongoo's little sister.
Three girls, three different stories.
Frankly? She was furious.
— You knew from the start?
— Yep. From the start. Oh. Did I never mention it?
— No, you obviously never did!!
Come to think of it, she had never actually asked.
But her Master, the person in question, had simply answered like that.
Of course she hadn't asked. Nobody in their right mind went around asking that sort of thing. Who, after all, walks up to every person they meet and inquires whether they happen to know the President personally?
And yet, Shin Seoa felt a deeper loneliness in his answer than she cared to admit.
The Master she knew was exactly that kind of man. The kind who wandered alone under a perpetual storm cloud of a face. The kind who, if nobody nagged him, would forget to eat and simply go carve up monsters until they were dead.
Was that why? She had unconsciously assumed that the version of him she knew was Park Woochan's true self. Unlike anyone else, only she knew his smiling face. She had believed that the man she knew was the whole of him.
Reality had been different.
Her Master was an exceptional man. She'd thought she already knew that — but he was far more than she had ever imagined.
He moved among hunters so far beyond her that an A+ rank disciple like herself wouldn't even register in their sight, and by now he seemed to be receiving treatment worthy of that caliber.
Look at how he'd vouched for her to Hunter Choi Seungjun himself, or the fact that Hunter Lee Joongoo had entrusted his own sister's education to him — there was no other conclusion to draw.
...She had once told him she'd make the world recognize his name — so criminally underrated was he for his actual ability.
Her Master had only answered with an empty laugh, gently shaking his head. That'll just wreck your own career path, he'd said, and the image of his slow, sidelong headshake was still burned behind her eyes.
He had a point.
No one gives thanks each morning that the sun rises in the east.
No one bows to their own eyelids in gratitude every time they blink, thanking them for obeying their will yet again.
Put that way, other people's opinions of Park Woochan were exactly that — nothing more.
Something he could rewrite at any moment, whenever he pleased.
And so he simply never bothered to care what anyone thought of him.
Ah. I'm an idiot.
A dry laugh escaped her.
Look at me. What was I even twisting myself into knots over?
She wanted to say that out loud, but her mouth refused to move.
While she'd been away from home, her Master had taken in other disciples. That Tiamat woman, was it? He seemed to have a girlfriend now, too. Where he'd dug up someone from the Middle East of all places, she had no idea.
He'd even taken in another girl at the boarding house, and apparently they were living together.
...She knew she ought to be relieved. She ought to say, good, he's finally come to his senses.
But.
That face of his — living his life as if nothing had changed, as if her absence were no loss at all.
The way Park Woochan had simply filled the space she left behind with other people, without so much as a glance — it made her feel more wretched than she could have imagined.
What on earth am I even doing?
There was nothing she could do.
No — there wasn't even a place left for her to stand.
Just one day removed from a rebellion that had been closer to running away from reality, Shin Seoa already felt a vicious weariness settling over her.
— Will you not return, then?
A strange voice asked it, without warning.
By the window.
In the very spot where no one had stood a moment before, an uninvited guest now stood.
A man of strange appearance. A robe of the same hue as midnight draped over his entire body — a paranoiac's outfit. With every part of him hidden except the eyeholes, he looked as though darkness itself had been tailored into the shape of a garment.
She didn't know him. But his appearance was so singular that Seoa could guess his identity without asking a single question.
So when she opened her mouth again, her voice carried an unmistakable edge.
"And you crawled in here how, exactly, considering where this is?"
"No one will notice. Rest assured."
A hollow laugh burst out of her. The man's utter composure — his sheer, matter-of-fact confidence — was simply too absurd to bear.
"Amazing, really. When did our guild even pick up talent like you? Last I checked, we couldn't handle the one member we had."
There was no answer. The man simply waited, quietly.
"If you intend to return, I will escort you. It would be more comfortable for everyone."
The man's presence was so faint that even Shin Seoa, sitting right in front of him, had to actively focus to keep track of him.
Because there was no conviction behind his words at all.
Like a messenger, he merely carried someone else's message.
Seoa's eyes narrowed at the man's shadow, wavering like heat haze — a gaze as piercing as it was unlike anything she ever aimed at her Master.
Faced with those burning eyes, the man could only retreat a step with an awkward flourish of his hands.
"As I said, I have no intention of taking you by force."
"But you could?"
"I could not. Which is precisely why I must ask again."
His silence spoke volumes: return whenever you wish, and I will see you home.
Seoa clicked her tongue and waved him off.
"Get out. I'm not going."
"Understood."
"And tell them if they try anything funny, I'll blow the whole thing sky-high. They'd better be ready for that."
Even to her growling voice, there was no reply.
Strictly speaking, the man's presence here at her family's own home was the guild's answer.
"Don't get any clever ideas."
This was a warning.
"...Sons of bitches."
"Your compliments are appreciated."
Without conceding a single word to the last, the figure at the window quietly faded from sight.
Thud.
Only after seeing the man off did Seoa finally let the back of her head collapse into her pillow.
She had known.
From the very start, this had been nothing more than a simple act of rebellion. She knew better than anyone that she would have to return to the guild soon enough. She had no intention of acting rashly, and she had no strength left to search for another way now.
And yet.
What on earth am I even doing?
Once again, she could only murmur those words to herself.
Meaningless defiance like this would do nothing but provoke them. If she wasn't going to resist anyway, bowing her head might serve her better.
But.
What was I hoping for, then?
Had she ever explained herself? No. Which meant she had no right to spit disappointment at Park Woochan for failing to read her heart. She'd half-hoped he would come visit — and when he instead carried on with that serene face, as though he'd forgotten his disciple's empty seat entirely, it was hardly the moment to feel betrayed.
Of course, the heart never moves as reasonably as all that.
A dry snort of laughter slipped out of her, and Shin Seoa closed her eyes.
Once she closed them, she didn't want to open them again.
Because if she opened them, tomorrow would come.
Hmm.
Well, then.
The boarding house kitchen.
More specifically — standing in front of the refrigerator, I had just listened to every word of the exchange between Seoa and her intruder.
In defense of my honor, let me say upfront: I was not eavesdropping on purpose.
Call it this: I heard it even though I didn't want to.
Believe me, I would have preferred to excuse myself, but what could I do, standing here like this?
Anyway, what Seoa's conversation partner had said was no lie. My usual self would never have caught their conversation at all.
That's how exceptional his concealment was.
I sensed no combat ability from him whatsoever — which, if anything, made him even harder to detect.
Eight chances out of ten, a stealth specialist.
Both his awakened ability and the man himself, in all likelihood, had devoted themselves exclusively to the craft of hiding the body.
To see through concealment honed to that degree, you'd need a detection-specialized ability of your own.
Given the conversation the two of them had just exchanged, they'd probably selected him with my registered mana-sensitivity rating in mind — assuming, that is, the Association has him on file.
It's been a whole three months since my name went into the Association's records. The old line about how no official channel could dig up anything on me is ancient history now. If someone had connections to the Association's upper echelons, getting their hands on my information wouldn't be impossible.
Good judgment, honestly.
However.
The man stank of monster.
Had he come straight from loitering around a gate? The stench clinging to him was so vivid, so thick, that it couldn't possibly be hidden.
Even against a stealth-specialized hunter, slipping out of my detection range at this point is effectively impossible.
Using this as grounds to persecute the poor bastard would be cruelly unfair, of course. It's not his ability — it's my constitution.
That said, Seoa has her privacy too.
Even if that privacy consists of cozying up in her own bedroom with a masked man who looks, to any honest observer, shady as sin, it's not my place to come in now and lecture her about it.
If he'd been a stalker, maybe. But this wasn't that either.
If anything, I'd spent the whole time tensed up, wondering whether that cult was finally planning to attack the boarding house...
A guild, then.
Given the conversation the two of them had just exchanged, there was no other way to read it.
And.
If that conversation was an internal guild matter, there was nothing for me to do.
Seoa had already graduated and stood on her own two feet as a fully-fledged hunter.
For me — never asked, never consulted — to butt into a guild's internal affairs would be nothing but meddlesome nosiness.
That was what I thought.
And yet.
Tell me about it.
What on earth am I even doing?
Having accidentally overheard every word of this entire conversation, I had no choice but to answer her muttered sigh with one of my own.
The great incursion was over — and yet that dense, reeking monster stench.
On top of that, a conversation that reeked of something shady no matter which way you sliced it.
No, seriously, Seoa. What on earth have you been getting up to?
That was all I could mutter to myself.