Bait Number One
The most puzzling thing of all, Ja Hayeon thought, was that she simply could not understand why he went to such lengths for her.
Honestly, the past few days had been nothing but questions. The suspicious hulking figures that had suddenly begun tailing her. The mere fact that those figures had turned out to be monsters should have knocked her flat on her back — and yet, somehow, she found herself accepting it as if it were nothing at all.
That said, no hidden power stirring awake inside her had come of it. Surviving that moment had been pure, undeniable luck. But behind that luck — the kind that might well have spent a lifetime's worth of fortune in one go — an almost eerie string of good fortune had kept right on coming.
Out of nowhere, a connection to the Hunter Association had appeared. From what she was told, they would use the Association's systems to keep her protected. Things had improved somewhat since the end of the Second Great Cataclysm, but until quite recently, countless people had still been turned into the unreturning dead by monster attacks. For her, accepting was a given; there was nothing to think twice about.
And the one who had arranged that connection with the Association was none other than Lee Joongoo himself!
However little her life had ever touched this industry, even she knew the name Lee Joongoo. And once her flicker of doubt — could this be some kind of scam? — had melted away the moment she heard it, she could only conclude that what she'd been handed was a stroke of fortune she had never once imagined in her entire life.
And at the center of every one of those changes stood him.
Park Woochan.
If asked who he was, she would honestly have to answer that she had no idea. He seemed to be acquainted with Hunter Lee Joongoo, so nine times out of ten he was a hunter himself. Hadn't he, after all, delivered one hell of a performance?
Yet for all that skill, she could find nothing — not one thing — about the name Park Woochan.
Which was strange. In an age when hunters had all but been deified, a hunter of that caliber could not possibly have left no trace of a name behind — and that only made it stranger.
Could she have misjudged how strong hunters actually were? Perhaps he had merely looked overwhelming to her untrained eyes while really being an E-Rank. She entertained the thought — but no. The moment he cut down three dragons in the space of a breath, such theories died on the spot.
What was more, he had known Hunter Lee Joongoo's phone number — a number never once made public — and with nothing more than a few short crackles over the line, he had been able to summon the man himself.
Even looking back on it now, it felt unreal enough to be a delusion.
But if unreality was the measure, then the scene from that day was more so still.
A single stroke.
Perhaps it had been more than one — but at least as she remembered it, with movements so economical they barely registered, a hunter had slaughtered a swarm of dragons in one blow.
And that hunter had happened to save her in her moment of crisis, called the most famous hunter in the country to handle the aftermath, and now — now he was going to look after her outright?
...That wasn't a delusion. That was cheap pulp fiction.
And so, more than anything else, Ja Hayeon wanted to know why Park Woochan was being so good to her.
Could he be interested in me?
That was the only explanation she could come up with on the spot.
A rather self-assured thought, perhaps — but honestly, wasn't she fairly pretty? She had never said it out loud, too embarrassed to be so forward, but in this way Ja Hayeon harbored a quiet, secret confidence in her own looks...
Yet for all her agonizing, Park Woochan had never once made any request of that kind. He had every right to grumble about a housemate dumped on him out of nowhere — but not once had he voiced a single complaint about the whole affair.
If anything, he occasionally sent her looks brimming with expectation, as if she were some unexpected windfall.
And that was precisely what flustered her. It seemed Park Woochan had truly taken her in without a single expectation attached. Of course, she doubted she could provide whatever a man of his caliber might want — but even granting that, the total absence of complaint was excessive.
It didn't seem to be about money, either. It wasn't as if she would suddenly discover an inheritance she never knew she had — and besides, though he lived in a semi-basement without a single decent piece of furniture, he had never once seemed short on cash.
And so Ja Hayeon was confused. It was partly why she had spent the past few days living in silent contemplation, eyes burning. What on earth did he want from her?
Deliberation. Doubt. Deduction. Confusion.
Then, after days of it, she finally understood.
He wanted nothing from her. Truly, nothing at all.
He demanded nothing. He had never once said what he wanted. No matter how many times she turned it over, she could not fathom why he treated her so well. But when she saw that contented expression he sometimes wore as he looked at her — eyes so pure it made her ashamed of herself for weighing profit and loss — she became certain.
There was truly no particular reason why Park Woochan was kind to her.
Pity. Compassion. Whatever the reason might be, he was simply, genuinely looking after her. That was all.
And so, at long last, the Hunter Association.
Standing before the mana tester at the main gate, this was the prayer Ja Hayeon offered up:
She could never hope to repay the kindness she had received these past few days. Then, at the very least, she must not become any more of a burden to him.
To cut straight to the conclusion: my guess had been right. She simply hadn't realized it herself, but she was already a fully awakened, bona fide hunter.
Personally, I couldn't fathom how anyone could miss it with hair that vivid — but then, as far as the general public was concerned, mana was just "some kind of amazing power." The facts that exposure to mana creates the organs needed to wield it, or that the greater the mana's influence, the greater the changes it works on the body, weren't exactly public knowledge. So I decided to cut her some slack and let it go.
The ability the girl Ja Hayeon had awakened was Curse.
A power that released her own mana to inflict harmful effects on others.
Speaking as a personal assessment: an excellent ability.
In proportion to the changes mana works on the body, a hunter's ability falls into one of two types — the "shallow and wide" versatility type, or the "deep and dense" specialization type. And she belonged to the latter, while possessing an ability excellent enough to flex versatility approaching the former.
Her mana's nature was specialized in interfering with others, and the range of that interference was absurdly broad — projecting hallucinations before their eyes, or placing strain on their bodily functions, and so on.
An ability's raw strength doesn't directly determine how complete a hunter you become — but an easy-to-use ability is obviously better than an awkward one.
The monsters being drawn to her was probably part of the same phenomenon. The Association staff agreed with my read. The working theory among the Association's hunters was that she had interfered with some form of communication used between monsters, injected false information into it, and lured them in reverse.
The actual origin of those monsters remained a total mystery, but even so, this much counted as a triumph.
At least for me. Because if that theory held, then this kid really could lure monsters!
Who knew taking out the trash would turn up a windfall like this? It felt like winning the lottery at the strangest possible moment.
"Oppa!"
Ja Hayeon came trotting over from beside the measuring device, calling out as she came.
Over the past few days, what she called me had grown steadily less formal. First it was Mr. Park Woochan, then Mister Woochan. I figured a man my age probably counted as "mister" to kids hers, so I let it slide — and then at some point, she had simply started calling me Oppa.
I haven't exactly done anything to earn it, though~
For the first few days she had stayed quiet as a mouse, so I'd assumed she was just shy around strangers — but apparently that wasn't quite it either.
Before I knew it, a pleased grin was creeping across my face, and I barely managed to get it under control. She was an active high schooler, after all. I did not care to be mistaken for some guy grinning ear to ear over being called Oppa.
Not that I could exactly claim I wasn't giddy at the thought of using you as bait from here on out!
While I was busy managing my face, she closed the distance and proudly held out something resembling a staff ID badge. Much like the one I'd received before. In other words — her Association registration card.
"Congratulations."
"Hehe."
A sheepish grin. I couldn't imagine what was so delightful, but I figured that to kids her age, hunters might well seem like heroes out of a movie — so I nodded along.
Even if, in reality, it was a 3D job — dirty, dangerous, and deadly — fought with your life on the line.
You look way too happy about this.
She was so visibly, thoroughly delighted that my eyes darted away on their own. The thought of using a girl this pure as bait had suddenly pricked my conscience.
Of course, bait or no bait, I wasn't about to throw her in front of a horde of monsters. If things were ever crawling with monsters to that degree, I'd be the one itching to kill them.
It was also true that having me around would help her. But even granting that, it was equally true that I had mentally filed her under Bait Number One. My conscience had no choice but to sting.
But.
With this, it was settled.
Separate from all that, she had now stepped into the Hunter Academy project alongside me. Never mind that I would be the teacher and she the student.
Well, there would be no real trouble getting her enrolled. She had Lee Joongoo's name behind her, and the project itself was not something that could be bandied about publicly. With most people rock-solid in their belief that an era of peace had arrived, a state-run program to raise hunters would only breed needless anxiety.
It wasn't at the level of a gag order, but conversely, you couldn't exactly advertise it far and wide, either. Something like that.
Which meant the project's candidates were inevitably few: the rare few who dug into its contents on their own and applied, or talents personally recommended by hunters connected to it.
Above all, even scraping together that many, it was doubtful they could fill a single class — never mind anything resembling an ordinary high school.
In any case, "project" was just the word for it — in practice, it was a state-led program to raise the next generation of hunters. Which meant the students who stepped into it would, before long, be the very first to have their lives flung away like weeds when the Third Great Cataclysm began.
Hardly a pitch that would draw crowds of applicants.
All the more so in this country. Who in their right mind volunteers to be the first stake driven into the army? Nobody enlists twice when they can barely stomach enlisting once.
And I, for my part, would be the one personally raising those sacrificial pawns.
But her face was too radiantly bright for such grim talk to spoil the mood. And so I, too, could only answer with a sheepish air.
"Looks like we'll be commuting to the same place?"
"We sure are!"
"Well, it's not exactly a flattering arrangement... but I'm counting on you from here on out."
Teacher and student living under one roof was one thing — but a semi-basement, of all places? Maybe it really was time to buy a new house. After being shot down countless times over the past few days, the idea raised its head once more.
"Yes!"
A cheerful reply. I'd tossed it out half as a joke, but this was hardly the time to be fretting over housing.
And so she became a hunter. For now, at least, she was officially a student-cum-apprentice hunter, and falling short of pulling her own weight. That, after all, was the very reason I had been dispatched as her escort.
But separate from that, her Academy enrollment was all but confirmed.
Which also meant that a girl who had never properly learned a thing would have to jostle and compete with students who had enrolled specifically to become hunters.
There would be jealousy. She might get branded a parachute — someone who floated in on connections. Like me. No — with me right beside her, if anything it would be worse, never milder.
Which meant I had no choice but to concern myself with her skills and the like. I was no longer in a position to stand by if such things happened among the students — and I hardly could ignore a girl living under my roof being marked for bullying.
I might have to teach her the basics of hunter craft, however informally, before school started.
Even as I was roughly sketching plans in my head, she kept chirping away like a lark, seemingly without an ounce of fatigue.
"Ah, right. Hayeon?"
"Yes?"
"Now that I think of it, there's still something I have to take care of here."
"Here?"
She tilted her head, puzzled.
Honestly, if she'd snapped back — what business could someone who just signed up possibly have? — I'd have had no comeback. Thankfully, she simply nodded along. Had she said something like that, it would have left a wound on my fragile heart...
"Mm-kay. Then shall I head in first?"
"No, then what was the point of me tagging along? Wait for me down there a minute, will you?"
The Association building was certainly imposing, but a building was still just one building. Something this size, I could cover from practically anywhere.
At that, she nodded once more, her expression just as puzzled.
As if pondering how to pass the time, she turned her head this way and that, quick-stepping back toward the mana measuring device.
Watching her retreating back, I caught myself wearing a wry smile.
I hadn't lied. It was true that I still had things left to do.
But if you asked whether it absolutely had to be done, I would have to shake my head at that, too.
Except that right now, I was — on paper, at least — a hunter with zero field experience.
That girl aside, it was a point I couldn't help but be mindful of myself, one way or another.
In other words: this was no time to be picking and choosing.
I slipped around to the back of the Association building and put a call in to Lee Joongoo on the borrowed phone. Unlike before, I was now Association-affiliated, and this was the kind of business a touch too heavy to handle solo.
Fortunately, the permission came through without a hitch. Then again, unlike me, that side had never once refused — I should have seen it coming.
I drew a slow, steady breath. I needed to ready my mind — or my body.
"Alright."
It was decided; I was doing this either way. Then — all the way to the end, let's give it everything.
Urging myself on, I drew the gas mask from inside my coat — the one I had stowed there in advance.