Confessions at the Pension
The pension booked under Park Woochan's name wasn't half bad.
No, honestly speaking, it was pretty spacious.
It was clean enough to put the semi-basement boarding house we usually lived in to shame, if anything.
It was a little late to be wondering this now, but the question gnawed at me all the same.
Why on earth did Park Woochan insist on living in a semi-basement?
It wasn't as if he was short on money.
Of course, it was a perfectly natural question to ask.
Even Hayeon had only spent barely half a year by his side.
She couldn't even imagine him voluntarily burrowing underground just because he couldn't stand watching monster advertisements pass by his window.
And so, Hayeon had no choice but to tilt her head and unpack her luggage in quiet puzzlement.
"Come to think of it, Hayeon."
"Yes?"
"What exactly is your relationship with Ssaem?"
It was a single passing remark from Lee Yeeun that cracked the mood wide open.
Attention flooded in at once.
Every imaginable shade of gaze came flying at Hayeon.
"Oh my, sorry."
Even Yeeun, the one who'd asked, had said it half without thinking.
She wasn't being sincere, of course.
She was sorry to some degree, sure — but the desire to get an answer to her own question weighed far heavier.
Truthfully, it was a situation anyone could have predicted. The girls themselves had made a decent show of keeping it under wraps, but the way Park Woochan treated Hayeon was, if anything, almost brazenly obvious.
Take, for instance, the time he'd summoned them using Hayeon's number during the whole guild incident.
Well, the most telling thing of all was, conversely, the way Hayeon looked at Park Woochan.
"Huh? No, it's not like that."
Which was why they didn't spare Hayeon's flimsy excuse so much as a glance.
High schoolers were the ones who screamed "couple" the moment a boy and girl stood in the same room, and high school girls were the ones who went absolutely feral over romance gossip.
Naturally, when the encirclement tightened and the pressure closed in from all sides, Hayeon, too, could only shriek and admit defeat.
"Okay, okay! Fine, I'll talk, seriously! What—what's so interesting about it?!"
"Oh, then Hayeon-ssi. Might I ask how you feel about Ssaem?"
When it came to jumping on a bandwagon, Hwang Yoonha was, as ever, the first through the gate.
Somehow or other she'd produced a spoon from the kitchen and was thrusting it forward like a microphone.
Hayeon caught herself glancing away at the sheer shamelessness of it, but Yoonha didn't budge an inch.
In the end, Hayeon could only answer with a quiet sigh.
"...A reliable older brother?"
"What the—?! Older brother?!"
"Girls!! Hayeon's got something to say!! Huh?! What did you say, Ssaem's little sister Hayeon?!"
I'm going to kill every last one of them.
She tried to snap the words out with forced composure, but her voice was already trembling in full.
Her face burned scarlet.
And at the sight of it, Hwang Yoonha and Ryu Jihee erupting into cheers was so unbearably infuriating she could hardly stand it.
Her brother had a habit of calling the two of them "grinning orangutans" from time to time, and right now she found herself agreeing with the description completely.
"So then—do you like him for being reliable? Or is it more... how he usually is?"
"Ooh~ how he usually is~"
"I like you just the way you are, Hayeon."
Ryu Jihee, go die, please.
"Sorry, sorry~! You just caught me off guard, that's all."
"Well, if you say 'how he usually is,' that's a little..."
At those words, Hayeon nearly flared up on reflex, but managed — barely — to steady herself right before her mouth opened.
She had no intention of becoming further fodder for teasing, and besides, the one who'd said it was Hwang Yoonha, of all people.
Gas mask. And a hazmat suit.
The crease between Hayeon's brows deepened without her meaning it to as the two utterly incongruous words surfaced together.
Ryu Jihee, who had never once witnessed Woochan in a domestic setting, merely rolled her eyes in bewilderment.
"Ah, but he does have his cool moments, you know?"
"Well, true."
"He shows up right when it counts, like — bam."
"Right, right."
And just like that, the summit of worship shifted from Hayeon to Park Woochan himself.
It was true that she'd felt some resistance at first, but once she'd let it all out in the open, she actually felt a little lighter for it.
The one truly critical point — living under the same roof as him — she had somehow managed to protect.
Which meant Hayeon could now lend both ears to their conversation, free and easy.
"Honestly, he goes way out of his way for us, you know."
"That he does. He even hooked me up with a part-time job."
"I straight-up thought I was going to be murdered once the whole thing blew over."
"Aw, come on, that's a bit harsh."
"I'm serious? I mean, I know he's not that kind of person anymore."
Listening to them talk like this, it became clear just how many things Park Woochan had gotten up to, in ways even Hayeon herself hadn't known.
And, at the same time, exactly why the girls respected him, whatever else you could say about the man.
To Hwang Yoonha, he had served as a mentor and senior hunter, laying out a compass for how she ought to live her life going forward.
To Ryu Jihee, he had shown a leniency beyond all expectation, going so far as to put an end to the very thing she'd lived in fear of.
For their sake, and theirs alone.
And here was the crucial part: Park Woochan had owed them none of it.
There was no need to wager his life against a combat-specialist hunter for the sake of a single high schooler.
There was no need to show mercy to the half-bloods who had stormed the school for the sake of a single high schooler.
Park Woochan had done both anyway.
And no benefit of his own was entangled in it whatsoever.
Purely, genuinely, he had rolled up his sleeves and stepped in for them.
Faced with that, it was hard not to respect him, whatever his surface might suggest.
Well, me? My whole life changed —
Compass for Yoonha, mercy beyond expectation for Jihee.
By contrast, meeting Park Woochan had rewritten Hayeon's life itself.
She had become a hunter. She had made it into the Academy, gotten to attend school like a normal high schooler.
Living with her brother, she had learned so much.
He had even saved her life. Twice, no less.
With Park Woochan as her subject, Hayeon tended toward a resigned, faintly self-deprecating honesty — but today was different.
Heh. I win.
Just like that.
She couldn't have explained why, but quietly comparing her own standing against the other girls' and savoring a secret satisfaction had become — hobby or not — one of her hobbies.
To be honest, she was well aware it was a gloomy little habit.
Yet it was also true that, deep down, a hope had taken root: that when it came to Park Woochan, she wanted to be his number one.
What a mess this is.
And then —
That's how I'd put it, all things considered.
That was Tiamat's verdict, delivered with comparatively level judgment.
Her tone was that of a detached third party.
It had to be.
Thanks to her motion sickness, she hadn't been able to wedge a single word into the conversation.
"Khh... damn it all."
Cornered in the far reaches of the room, rubbing her churning stomach — a rather pitiable sight, all things told.
Why was a woman once called a goddess reduced to this?
Barely a moment after her muttering trailed off, Tiamat pricked up her ears at the girls' chatter.
Ancient goddess or otherwise, tales of romance were a joy simply to listen to.
Other people's romances, all the more so.
Hm. The little one with the blue hair still seems unaware of it herself.
The girl with the algae-tinted strands was comparatively unambiguous in her affections.
Were the others still only seeds, then?
She entered fresh data into the chart she'd drawn up some time ago, having snooped around the boarding house during the Kim Minchul affair.
Except —
I simply cannot tell what that one is thinking.
At length, the goddess's gaze settled on Lee Yeeun.
The girl who had thrown out the very topic on everyone's lips, and who now, like the goddess herself, had taken a step back to quietly listen to the rest.
...The younger sister of Lee Joongoo, a name even a goddess knew. That was what she'd been told, at any rate.
And they call these two siblings?
How could they be so different?
Her transparent, sky-blue eyes gazed out, distant as an autumn sky.
Watching her, the goddess thought to herself —
"Uuurrgh."
Never mind anything else: if there was a next time, she was bringing motion sickness pills. That much was certain.
Still, sitting mute while a group of girls gabbed away about romance right in front of her — the sheer indignity of it was almost beyond imagining.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Around that time.
Seoa and I arrived at the Hunter Association's Namhae Branch.
Our objective was exactly one thing.
To review the case file and the findings reports left behind by every hunter dispatched here to date.
Of course, I didn't expect it to be easy.
If this whole affair turned out to be nothing more than a mirage, we'd have to bust our humps to prove it.
But what if a monster was involved in this commission?
Half a year on the contract alone, with who knows how many hunters dispatched — and not a single proper report to show for it. Something was off, plain and simple.
Had the branch actively buried it? Or was there some other circumstance at play?
Either way, the Namhae Branch's involvement was all but a foregone conclusion.
If they were simply incompetent, that would almost be a mercy.
The worst case was when a branch sat on a situation like this for political reasons.
Even limiting ourselves to the possibilities I could think of off the top of my head, there were several.
The Namhae branch chief burying the case deeper than necessary to protect his own career path, for instance.
Or the reverse — refusing to hand the case over, lest it become someone else's ticket to promotion.
In that scenario, the Namhae Branch would have to be treated not as an ally but as an outright enemy.
Far from feeding us information, they might well try to pump us full of distorted facts.
Which, frankly, would suit me just fine.
Telling friend from foe is a pain in the ass.
If the sides sorted themselves out from step one, it made my life easier, nothing more.
And yet.
"Still, this is a bit much, don't you think~?"
I let my gaze drift slowly across the room.
Hunter Association, Namhae Branch.
Inside the building that administered every gate in the surrounding region, the only people still conscious were Seoa and me.
To put it more precisely, the branch staff were one and all sprawled on the floor, out cold.
One look told you this was not a natural state of affairs.
"No, why are you talking like it's somebody else's problem?! You're the one who caused it!"
"Now, now, Seoa. People might get the wrong idea."
"Wrong idea, my ass — it's the truth! Seriously, what IS this?! You walk in the door and immediately start swinging your sword!"
Seoa wailed, clawing at her own hair.
Just as she said, it was the kind of statement practically engineered to invite misunderstanding — but fortunately, no ears were around to hear it.
Not that ears mattered. Everyone was unconscious.
Still, from my perspective, I was the aggrieved party here.
Well, I could concede that some parts were technically true.
From Seoa's point of view, it must have looked like I walked into the Namhae Branch and abruptly started slashing.
And then every member of the staff dropped unconscious at once — so of course she'd pin it on me.
However.
"Seoa, read the room."
"Shouldn't that be my line?! Wait, no — is now really the time for this?!"
"What better time, then?"
"...Huh?"
"Every one of them was tripping on hallucinations, remember?"
Signature — Cut Prettily.
The moment I stepped through the doors of the Namhae Branch, my signature had swept out of its sheath, almost on reflex.
Naturally, I hadn't fired it off like a fireworks salute.
Something smelled like shit in there.
"Bad ventilation, maybe?"
That was my first thought, but apparently not.
Shuuuk.
My senses, honed to a razor's edge, traced the currents of mana.
Thin. Faint.
A flow of mana that had wrapped this entire building like a haze.
Though it was colorless and odorless, the mana gave off the distinct impression of something rank.
In the first place, my signature hadn't cut a single person in this building in two.
The building itself, the objects within it — untouched as well.
All I'd severed was the mana that had, until that very moment, been cocooning the Namhae branch and its staff.
The employees collapsing was merely the recoil.
I'd forcibly amputated a hallucination-class mana field, after all.
No permanent damage would remain — but to them, it must have felt like reality itself shattering before their eyes.
In other words, what we were seeing now was nothing more than their consciousness slamming the emergency shutters to protect their own minds.
My signature had done no more than play the role of a scalpel.
I wasn't an idiot. When all that needed cutting was mana, there was no reason to leave blade-marks in flesh.
The staff would wake before long.
And —
"Grab your gear, Seoa."
My signature slicing through that cleanly meant one thing: the mana from moments ago was a monster's handiwork.
Which meant —
The hunt is confirmed.
"You're kidding me."
Seoa let out a short, exasperated laugh.
But she, too, was an A+ rank hunter.
Scratch-built credentials from after the Second Great Invasion or not, she was still a huntress forged in the industry's front lines.
Which meant she wasted no breath on pointless objections.
And so, half a day after touching down in Namhae —
We succeeded in mapping the outline of this case.