Why Were You Discharged?
"Why were you discharged, anyway?"
Clink.
Glasses tapped lightly together. The smell of grilling meat pricked at the nose.
And there, in the middle of it all, I sat drinking with three beautiful A-class hunters — Lee Are, Yu Gwon-sun, and Grace Ri Syu.
"God, this is good! Nothing beats a cold beer after work, I'm telling you!"
"Agreed. Vin is lovely, but for something cold and refreshing, Bière isn't half bad either."
The two of them chatted cheerfully as they tipped their glasses. Are, meanwhile, had gone quiet after a single drink, focusing silently on the meat sizzling on the grill. I watched her for a moment, then spoke carefully.
"Um… let me take over. You must be exhausted after the mission."
"No, I'm fine. If we're measuring by that standard, Jinhyun-ssi must be more tired than I am."
"Well…"
The usual consideration for me. But this time, I couldn't let it go. I put a little more firmness into my voice.
"Please. I appreciate the thought, but I can't have someone who just came back from a battlefield doing this kind of work on top of everything else."
"The person who prepared and commanded that battlefield is sitting right in front of me, Adjutant. I can't hand this off to the man who carried all of us on his shoulders."
"Even so, what I went through was only mental strain. Let me do it. Are-ssi, just sit back and enjoy yourself."
"Mental fatigue is more dangerous than physical fatigue. Please don't say that. Since I already started, I'll finish it myself."
We'd somehow ended up in a mild argument — and yet, for some reason, I had no desire to back down. It wasn't mere pride. It was genuine concern. After everything she'd been through roasting hundreds of Abysses, I simply couldn't let her grill meat on top of that.
That was when a pair of pointed looks settled on us from the side.
"Hello? A marital spat at a place like this is not a good look."
"Indeed. From an outsider's perspective, it's rather Je suis embarrassé."
"…"
"Mm…"
The two of them delivered the joke with just enough edge to make it land. Realizing I'd gone a little overboard, I felt my face flush and had no choice but to yield.
Across from me, Are seemed equally mortified by the whole exchange. She kept her head down, determined to focus solely on the grill.
For a while, the only sound was the meat sizzling. Then Gwon-sun broke the awkward atmosphere with a bright, energetic voice.
"Oh, that reminds me — wasn't this last operation incredible?"
"It truly was. I'd heard that our Aide was quite capable, but I never imagined it would be to this degree."
"You're too kind. This much is just a matter of paying a little attention while managing a battle."
"Come on, that's way too modest. By that logic, are all the hunters and adjutants still grinding themselves into the dirt day after day just a bunch of idiots? This isn't about 'paying attention' — it's because you're that good, Adjutant."
"She's right. I've worked as a hunter in other regions, and I've never met an Aide like you."
"Ah… ahaha…"
Unaccustomed to praise like this, I felt a flicker of embarrassment and managed an awkward laugh. Back when I'd first devised this kind of operation, I'd been quietly proud of myself — but I'd never received this level of admiration for it.
In the first place, running strategies like this had been nearly impossible with uncontrollable S-class hunters like Sena around. Even the few times I'd tried them as experiments, Sena and Yujin had gone completely off-script, nearly gotten us into serious trouble, and then dumped a mountain of blame on me for it.
In the end, for all its efficiency, the tactic had been half-shelved inside the Hunter Guild. Looking at it that way, the success of this operation owed just as much to the hunters who followed my orders without a single reckless stunt — Are among them — even if their raw combat power was a notch lower.
"I may have come up with the plan, but the ones who actually executed it and brought home the victory were all of you. As your adjutant, I want to thank you again for that."
They recognized my ability and marveled at it. Hearing their words, I felt something like compensation for every slight I'd endured — and I offered them my genuine gratitude.
"Ah…"
"Mm…"
The two of them looked at me with a hint of bewilderment. They exchanged a glance, then carefully asked:
"I still don't get it."
"Même idée."
"Pardon…? Get what?"
I blinked at the sudden shift. They looked me straight in the face.
"No matter how I think about it, it doesn't make sense. Adjutant Lee Jinhyun, you're this skilled and this humble — so why the hell were you discharged?"
"Even accounting for the state of the Armée sud-coréenne, I can't accept it. What on earth were the hunters in your unit thinking, replacing their Aide?"
They asked with genuine curiosity and frustration. Of the reasons that made up about sixty percent of my discharge, I offered them the biggest one.
"Well… the Guild Master just didn't like my face. That was pretty much it."
"Come on… that is so not it."
"For an Aide, I'd say your face is more than acceptable."
"I… don't dislike it either."
It was a truth I couldn't entirely deny — but the two of them treated it as a joke and brushed it off lightly. Are, surprisingly, answered in a slightly more serious tone.
The reason for my discharge…
Setting my answer aside, their question automatically pulled me back into the real reason I had managed to escape that miserable place and end up sitting here.
The reason I was discharged.
If I had to name the biggest cause, the fact that S-class hunters like Lee Sena simply didn't like me would account for roughly sixty percent of it. As I'd just said, my face was probably the single largest factor — but there were other, more complex reasons mixed in as well, like the fact that my command style didn't suit them.
That, however, was only the broader background. The decisive trigger was almost certainly this: the 28th Guild had racked up consecutive achievements and, despite being a latecomer unit, had drawn the government's attention.
Watching the 28th Guild's unbroken streak of success, the government raised the matter of adjutant replacement rights under the pretext of increasing support — and Sena, who had long resented me, snapped up the offer without hesitation.
From my perspective it was a blessing, but I had a fairly clear idea of why the government had made that proposal in the first place. It involved reasons that weren't exactly clean.
A generational shift… most likely.
Though it was barely visible from the outside, the system for appointing Hunter Guild adjutants was undergoing a significant transformation — with me as something of a turning point.
Until three years ago, most hunter adjutants had been ordinary military academy graduates like myself. The method was simple: select personnel at random from among those already on the officer track. That was how I, who had originally been aiming for a general's stars, had the rotten luck of being dumped into a Hunter Guild.
The problem was that most officer-born adjutants struggled to adapt. The fundamental culture of a Hunter Guild was quite different from the military — and on top of that, these guilds were packed almost exclusively with superhuman women. Think of a man trying to fit into a women's university and failing. That was roughly the idea.
In the end, a great many of them either had no choice but to discharge mid-career or pulled every string they could to transfer to another unit. At some point, the government began looking for alternatives beyond the current system.
Their solution: stop relying on military academy graduates, and instead educate and select adjutants specialized solely in managing hunters.
That was the background behind the birth of the so-called elite adjutants from prestigious universities.