The Cracks Begin to Show
I've included two sheets as a token of my gratitude for all the kindness you've shown me until now.
"Th-that so? He just up and left like that?"
"Yeah. Said he felt full responsibility for this whole mess or whatever. The higher-ups didn't really have much of an issue with that part itself, so they seemed to accept it without a fuss."
"Hmm... so that's... how it is..."
Listening to Jiyun's report, Sena wore a slightly flustered expression.
Honestly, the current situation could be said to be Choi Han acting exactly as she had demanded. Even so, for him to use that as a pretext to request a transfer and leave the place completely was something even she had never anticipated. Though she had considered applying for an adjutant replacement since she didn't particularly care for Choi Han, she truly never expected it to happen this quickly.
Well... since things have turned out this way, I should try to look on the bright side for now. The one who was going to leave has left, and someone better might come next, after all.
Consoling herself like that, Sena tried her best to maintain her composure. Watching her, however, Seo Jiyun did not show it outwardly but was clicking her tongue inside.
Pathetic bitch... I knew it would come to this. Who do you think dragged a bitch like you this far while calling herself guild master? Now that he's gone, you'll slowly start to realize just how much of a shitty mess you made with your own hands.
The humiliation of barely scraping through a B-class mission was only the beginning. Not even a month had passed since Adjutant Lee Jinhyun left. In Jiyun's eyes, the cracks forming all over the guild were already visible—fatal cracks that no ordinary adjutant could handle, ones that had been filled solely by Lee Jinhyun's capabilities all along.
Anyway, a new adjutant will come next, but I wonder how long that one will last. No... if someone with some real skill comes, maybe...
Thinking that, Jiyun was trying to pin even a little hope on the current situation.
Then—
Bang!
A sudden, loud sound of a door flying open reached her ears. Jiyun and Sena both turned their gazes toward the door at once, automatically assuming the owner would be Na Jiseon.
However...
"Huff... huff..."
"Huh? What, Choi Yujin, why are you..."
"What's going on? Why the rush?"
Choi Yujin stood there panting hard, as if she had sprinted the whole way. Seeing her like that, the two felt bewilderment and curiosity as they asked. And toward them, Choi Yujin slowly held out her phone and spoke in a desperate rush.
"This... look at this... Th-this is big trouble!"
"What on earth is going on that..."
Receiving the phone Choi Yujin thrust out so urgently, Sena and Jiyun looked at the screen. Right after, their faces began to drain of all color.
The news article displayed on the phone was a piece about the 28th Guild's previous B-class mission—to the effect that they who had even resolved S-class missions had suffered major losses on a mere B-class one. And the issues pointed out as the cause of the current situation were...
"S-class hunters' inadequate combat preparation… and… the atrocities committed by ignoring the commander's orders…?"
Sena spoke in a voice boiling with rage. Then she momentarily released a killing intent close to pure hatred as she fixed Yujin with a cold stare.
"Just... just how did this happen? How does the media know about this—that we went out without managing our weapons properly?!"
"I... I don't know either. The only ones who know that fact are the hunters under us and Adjutant Choi Han, who's already left..."
"Which means it was Choi Han after all... that son of a bitch... Where is that bastard now? I don't care which unit he's in! I'll make sure he can't set foot in this industry again—no, no need for that. I'll go find that bastard myself and wring his neck!"
Sena showed a momentum as if she would track Choi Han down that very instant and kill him. Looking at her, Jiyun tried her hardest to keep her composure and spoke in a voice that barely held onto its cool.
"Calm down. I understand how you feel right now, but you shouldn't deal with this emotionally. More than anything, we can't definitively conclude that this news came from Choi Han."
"What nonsense is that! In a situation like this, who else but that bastard would pull a stunt like this? It's definitely something that bastard did... He must have held a grudge against us and caused this mess just to screw us over once!"
"Haa..."
Watching Sena explode without restraint, Jiyun let out a heavy sigh. That did not mean, however, that she had given up on persuading her.
"Think about it. Unless Choi Han is a complete idiot, would he really try to screw us over in such an obvious way? He knows full well what would happen to him if he messes with your mood right now, doesn't he?"
"!... Th-that..."
Sena was slightly at a loss for words at Jiyun's remark. Taking advantage of that opening, Jiyun continued in a calm voice.
"And there's another fact you're overlooking. Although the people who heard the conversation about the weapon conditions at the time were limited, if you look carefully at the footage uploaded for the battle report, someone with a good eye could probably roughly figure out your situation—from the way you kept turning Rose Cutter's power on and off, or the way Yujin forced herself into close combat to conserve bullets, and so on."
"Umm..."
"Kh..."
At Jiyun's words, Yujin had no choice but to slowly nod, and Sena likewise could not refute her. Certainly, battle footages recorded from the commander's perspective were reported upward unless there was a special reason, and in that process some inevitably got exposed to the media as well. In fact, the footage currently running on the news was showing exactly those parts and picking Sena and Yujin apart point by point. Considering that, as Jiyun said, it was not something that could be definitively pinned on Choi Han alone.
"Goddamn it!!"
Bang!
Setting aside her feelings toward Choi Han, Sena began venting her displaced rage on the innocent furniture. Leaving her to it, Yujin turned to Jiyun with worry in her voice.
"Then... setting the Choi Han part aside, what do we do from now on? If news like this has come out, it'll probably be noisy for a while..."
"Haa... Since the fact that we made such a disgrace of ourselves on a B-class request has been laid bare so nakedly... We'll have to refrain from external activities for a while and lie low as if dead. If any statements or interview requests come in, rather than making clumsy excuses, it would be better to admit that we also made mistakes and apologize. There's a convenient pretext for that, after all."
"Pretext?"
At Jiyun's words, Yujin asked with a bit of expectation. In response, Jiyun spoke in a calm voice while checking the netizens' curses directed at them in the news comment section.
"Yeah—like how there was confusion in the chain of command with the adjutant change... or that we were a bit emotionally strained, something like that."
"Umm..."
Though not entirely pleased with Jiyun's words, Yujin expressed agreement for now. As she said, if they made clumsy excuses here there was a real risk of only making things bigger. It was far better to accept the mistakes to some extent, appeal to emotions, and then quietly wait until the situation calmed down.
"Haa... At this rate, we'll have to cancel all these CFs. The penalty fees will be huge too..."
"Can't be helped. Still, looking at it another way, it's fortunate it ended here. If someone had died, there really would have been no answer then."
"That's true, but..."
Like that, the two felt bitter about the losses they would suffer. However, unlike Yujin who purely thought the current situation was just bad luck, Jiyun could roughly guess the inside story of how this had happened.
I said that, but this incident... was definitely something Choi Han did. Even if the footage was made public, there aren't that many people who would go through it one by one analyzing it. And more than anything, given how oddly specific the situation is, probably...
Even so, Jiyun well knew that she had no choice but to shield Choi Han here for now, and she actually acted that way. Although she did not like the current situation either, if Sena really retaliated against Choi Han while the actual evidence remained unclear, it was obvious that things would only get more complicated. In fact, Choi Han had probably grasped that fact as well—which was why, instead of fully exposing every injustice he had suffered in the 28th Guild, he had caused the incident indirectly like this.
In the end, the executives of the 28th Hunter Guild, including Jiyun, were forced into a position where they had no choice but to issue a public apology to the entire nation because of Choi Han's attack. And so the S-class hunters, including Sena, had no choice but to suffer the public humiliation of bowing their heads before the whole country.
Damn it... Why do I have to do something like this?
Just keep your head down quietly. If you explode here, we're all finished.
Haa. Because of these idiot bitches, even me...
Jinhyun oppa... Please come back...
However, their misfortune did not end there.
They did not know it, but due to the post Choi Han had already uploaded on the adjutant-exclusive site—together with the request to "please refrain from external leaks"—the story that the 28th Guild, once considered a rising star, was a graveyard for them had firmly spread among the adjutants. The 28th Guild had been solidly marked as the number-one guild to avoid for every adjutant.
And that ultimately meant the placement of a competent adjutant that Jiyun had hoped for was as good as gone. It became the signal flare announcing the start of the monthly adjutant-replacement relay that would follow.