The Era of Loss
Half a year ago, an A-rank monster known as Gwisusan had appeared off the coast of Namhae. And using it as their stronghold, a pack of fox demons led by the S-rank monster Yuseongsin had made it their base of operations.
The subjugation of both was now over.
That said, it didn't mean we could kick back and relax just yet. Much to their misfortune, perhaps, there was still work left to be done.
AAAAARGH!!
Seohui! Seohui!!
And that was how we came to be standing at a funeral right now.
It was only natural. Sure, the fox demons had seized the Namhae branch, but among the hunters stationed there, plenty had already been married. Of course, there were more than a few who'd enjoyed the occasional fling regardless of age or gender — but on the flip side, there were far more who hadn't.
Which was why the fox demons had resorted to trickery when they moved to take over the branch. Lovers. Wives. Husbands. Daughters. Sons. Parents. They had infiltrated the branch disguised as the hunters' own families.
Now, simple disguises were one thing, but the art fox demons used to transform completely into another person was common knowledge. Countless records tell us that a fox wearing a person's skull atop its head can take on that person's form.
With Yuseongsin — whom I'd faced personally — decapitated, and Seoa's strike team having brought down two nine-tailed foxes besides, the fox demons' tricks were bound to be exposed eventually.
Thanks to that, the Namhae branch had the atmosphere of an ill-timed funeral house. And I meant that literally.
The wailing drifting up from below the building jangled unpleasantly in my ears. It was far too rowdy to pass for a funeral.
Can't blame them, though...
It wasn't just one or two people grieving. If anything, it was almost pitiable.
Three days. That was exactly the amount of time they'd been granted. The problem was that every single member of the Namhae branch had been hit with a mass bereavement all at once.
In any case, with all this having happened, the branch's operations couldn't be allowed to grind to a complete halt. These three days, you could say, were the compromise struck between the time they needed to process their grief and the gravity of the situation at hand.
Despite having devoted themselves to Namhae more than anyone, they were the first to be made targets by the monsters — such was the absurdity of it all. And even so, they weren't even granted enough time to soothe the loss of their families, forced to hastily wrap everything up under the name of a joint funeral for the sake of public duty.
This was the life of a hunter.
Teacher.
I was watching the scene over the rooftop railing when the voice suddenly reached me. A calm tone, even in the middle of all this. Beyond the profile that slid smoothly into view, lemon-colored hair caught the light.
It was Yeeun.
"There you are."
"Mm-hm."
"What have you been doing?"
"Sightseeing."
At that, Yeeun puffed up into a sulk. I snickered at the sight of her, then turned my gaze back to the people bustling in and out of the funeral hall below.
"What, it getting to you?"
"...A little. Just a very little."
"What's getting to you about it?"
"The atmosphere."
"Yeah, I suppose it would be."
For girls who'd half expected this to be a sightseeing trip, it must have felt like a bolt from the blue. This was an era where loss had become commonplace — but no living creature could ever grow accustomed to death. And for them, this was surely the first time in their lives they'd been connected to so many deaths at once.
If it were their own affair, they could at least grieve. They might even harbor a dark, festering desire for revenge. But how were you supposed to bear the deaths of strangers you'd never known — strangers you'd somehow become entangled with?
"So you ran away from it, huh?"
"I'm not the only one."
"Yunha probably did the same."
"Jihee too."
Yunha, who proudly declared she'd become a hunter out of pure greed, no sense of duty whatsoever. Jihee, who was half monster — a dream demon, kin to the nine-tailed fox. No wonder both of them couldn't sit still.
That left Seoa and Tiamat, who were comparatively used to this sort of thing, and maybe Hayeon — who'd grown up with everyone around her being strangers to her anyway.
"Teacher."
"What."
"Did you... plan this? So we'd learn what the industry is really like?"
"Are you insane?"
"...No?"
"Kid, I've only been here a minute."
It had been busy in all sorts of ways, but it had barely been a week since I'd come down to Namhae. If anyone could have predicted this situation back when Seoa was still going on about her request, that guy would be a god. Not one of those so-called Constellations — the real deal. Though even then, probably an evil god.
No, wait — not even that. What kind of lunatic would try to teach high schoolers something like this? There'd come a time when they needed to know, sure, but even then, you'd need some kind of cushion. Otherwise it isn't shock therapy — it's just shock.
"Asking me that means you got pretty rattled, huh."
"...Yes."
She hesitated for a moment, but Yeeun soon admitted it frankly. Well, she couldn't exactly help it. I suppose I was fair game for the question.
Yunha, who was ashamed of regarding her hunter's license as nothing more than a paycheck. Jihee, who saw it purely as a means of hiding her mixed blood. And last of all, Yeeun, who'd seen it as nothing more than a way to imitate her brother.
Any of them had reason to give it some real thought now.
"Well, it's a shit situation."
"You think so too?"
"Mm. Ah — I don't mean the funeral. Honestly, right now it's on the better end."
"Better... how?"
"Because at least those people down there don't blame us."
"Huh?"
Yeeun blinked at me, clearly having no idea what I meant. It might sound absurd, but it was hardly a rare phenomenon. If anything, it was common.
"Cognitive dissonance. The hunters came and poked around a household that was peaceful until literally yesterday — that's the shape it takes."
"Ah..."
"The human brain is simpler than you'd think. The hunters arrived, and then the families disappeared. The hunters left, and then the families died. If we frame it with this case, it'd come out something like that. A grieving person's brain has a tendency to compress events that way."
"Th-then, Teacher, how do you resolve it when that happens?"
"Huh?"
"Um, you know..."
"I don't resolve it."
"...What?"
"More importantly, I can't. What am I supposed to do about that? That's a job for an actual grief counselor, not some dunce like me."
That said — better than being dead, at least. Not that I truly believed it, mind you.
This era, if you had to name it, would be called the era of loss. But even so, not everyone could grow numb to loss. There were people who needed someone to blame, or they'd break apart. There were people who would shatter otherwise — because the calamity we faced was simply that vast.
"Well, whatever the case — it's a thoroughly terrible line of work. It'd be nice if people recognized that properly, but it's not that easy. Nothing to be done about it. Don't sulk too hard about it."
"I'm not sulking."
"Don't spiral too deep, either."
"..."
It's fine to grieve. It's fine to use it as fuel. But you must not drown flailing in helplessness.
The fear that the same fate could one day befall you — that emotion sits at the immovable number-one spot for why hunters retire. People are being sacrificed even as you hunt your monsters. Even if you kill the monsters and kill them again, will it truly ever end? Countless hunters have had their hearts gnawed hollow by that thought and simply... snapped.
Which was exactly why I intended to make these kids not awakened heroes or shining champions of justice — but hunters, plain and simple. To live through an era of loss, there are times you have to take a step back. You kill the beast, and the beast kills you. That is the law of nature. You need a hunter's mindset to look at it that way.
"Do you think... my brother thought that way too?"
"No."
"...Then what he believed wasn't what you said?"
"That's exactly why they call him a hero."
Even in this era of loss, he didn't want to let a single person slip through his fingers. He wanted the power to cast down any absurdity, however great. He wanted to become someone who could reach out a hand before it was too late.
And so, his signature took the form it did. Thunder God — crushing his enemies with the force of a thunderclap, and saving people faster than anyone, like a bolt from the blue. Humanity's strongest, and humanity's fastest. The man he aspired to be was, perhaps, exactly that.
"That's a little different from what I heard."
"Huh?"
"He said there were people he couldn't save no matter what. That's why he went into politics."
Looking at Yeeun as she pushed back — isn't that still true even now? — I found myself nodding along. She had a point. No matter how fast the guy was, he couldn't turn back the flow of time.
A full six months ago. The fox demons' schemes against the Namhae branch had been going on for half a year, and killing their leader couldn't undo any of it.
Truly, the world was a broken mirror of a mess. Toppling the head of evil didn't neatly solve anything. Even if you clawed your way to victory through blood and struggle, what was lost never came back. Those left behind would spend the rest of their lives chewing on their loss.
That was why he had become a politician. He said a hunter could only act after the fact — after the tragedy had already happened. He said he had to become someone who could solve things before they happened.
Hunters' rights. Narrowing the gulf between the general public and the hunter class. Even now, standing there in a suit, the man who had stepped into the political arena ironically carried himself more like a hunter than anyone else I knew.
"I get it now."
"Get what now?"
"Why my brother told me to be like you."
...Hold on. Something about that felt off. The strange, distant way she'd said you was one thing — but the claim that her brother had told her to be like me was another entirely.
"Whoa, whoa. What's that supposed to mean?"
"And why bring that up all of a sudden?"
"My brother has had to face scenes like this, over and over again, hasn't he."
But instead of answering my confusion, Yeeun quietly leaned her head over the rooftop railing. Below, the funeral went on. Death was swirling everywhere.
Only the look in Yeeun's eyes as she watched had changed. The storm clouds that had hung over them until moments ago had somehow given way to light. Clear, clear sky-blue eyes.
"I respect my brother."
"I know that much."
"But one day, my brother said something. That maybe — just maybe — he had run away."
One day. Yeeun said it vaguely, but I knew exactly when. The first practical training class. The very day a monster burst out inside the Academy.
Yeeun had surely guessed it too — that I'd caught on. But rather than press the point, she simply spoke quietly.
"At first, I thought, what is he even talking about?"
"Same here."
"Right? If you asked anyone in the world, eight or nine out of ten would say the same."
That was true enough. Ran away? Who? Lee Joongoo? Honestly, you'd be hard-pressed to find a phrase that suited the man less. Whoever the opponent, he would clench his fists and take one step forward. At least as far back as I could remember, that was always who Lee Joongoo was.
"But my brother didn't see himself that way."
"Why on earth not?"
"He said he fled from how cruel the world is."
"Come on, that's just—"
"Yes. Plain survivor's guilt."
Honestly, that was all I could say. At the same time, I thought that's exactly how he would put it. Bottom line, he just ran from the battlefield. There were people who clacked their gums exactly like that when news broke that Lee Joongoo was throwing himself into politics.
And in truth, maybe they weren't wrong. Thinking of the next hundred years, a hunter-turned-statesman was an absolute necessity. A hero who could bridge the gap between the people and the hunters, and unify the nation. To prepare for the third and fourth great incursions that would inevitably come, South Korea had to become one again. The fame and the political muscle to pull that off — only Lee Joongoo had both.
But then. Would the people Lee Joongoo had managed to save in the name of the next hundred years really see it that way?
Well, me, I'd just tell them to go screw themselves. Couldn't expect anything else from that bastard — that's just the kind of man he is.
Still. Ran away, huh. What could he have meant by choosing those words?
I had a guess. This won't change the world. All we're doing is hunting monsters by the seat of our pants. It's nothing but symptomatic treatment. To change the world, I need a more fundamental answer. Sweep away every monster — an easy answer to state, a brutal one to execute. Facing that, he apparently described his choice to enter politics that way.
A sense of duty that even I couldn't help but admire, frankly. And yet.
But why me, of all people?
So what was the deal with my name coming up in all this, then? As luck would have it, I had absolutely no idea. With a topic this heavy, all the more so.
As I studied her again with that thought, Yeeun opened her mouth slowly.
"Unlike my brother, who fled the battlefield, there's someone still fighting."
"Huh?"
"Even now, after the great incursion. Never once letting the fire in his heart go out. All this time."
Her pitch warbled, almost like birdsong. And listening to it, I wanted to die.
Heat bloomed across my face.
"Look, even if you say 'the fire in his heart'—"
"Um, this is kind of awkward for me?"
Fairly sincerely? On the verge of losing my mind, I was about to start talking her down when she steamrolled right past me.
"He said as a person, it's borderline — that honestly, it scares him a little."
This absolute menace.
"But as a hunter, he said, he could respect it."
"Ahem."
"...Unbowed before any absurdity. Never kneeling, no matter how unjust the violence. And—"
After that brief wind-up, Yeeun turned her eyes back to the funeral hall below.
"No matter what sorrow he tastes, he never stops baring his teeth."
Look, I haven't tasted any sorrow, all right?
There was no way I could say that, though. Because Yeeun — who'd been wearing a dead-eyed expression until just moments ago — had somehow put on the face of a proper, seasoned hunter. I'd always taken her for little more than an imitation of her brother and some half-hearted fangirling; I'd have called it no more than that, honestly. But the poise in her now made that impossible to believe.
Was it witnessing the tragedy before her eyes?
It seemed she'd finally understood what the hunters' blessings — we're counting on you — had truly meant. What weight the words Lee Joongoo's little sister actually carried.
And at the same time, I found myself turning over a thought I'd once had before. Lee Joongoo, who had intended to recommend me as an Academy instructor from the very beginning. Lee Joongoo, who had just as casually dumped his little sister's problems into my lap. Looking at that imperturbable face of his, I'd wondered: did this guy plan to leave her education to me from the start?
And now—
"Teacher."
"...Mm-hm."
"Could I become a hunter like you?"
Facing Yeeun as she said it, my hunch hardened into certainty.
You—
Beyond her shoulder, beneath the Namhae sky, a bright head of blonde hair streamed in the wind. Watching her stand there, I found that I, too, could not bring myself to shake my head.