A Year of Soulless Meals
For a year, I ate nothing but food without âme.
The government had launched a program to train elite adjutants.
Hunter guilds were military organizations in practice, but their nature differed enough from the regular armed forces that cultivating specialized elite adjutants was, from a certain perspective, a reasonably sound idea.
Through newly established university programs centered on prestigious schools, elite adjutants had begun flowing into the hunter guilds in earnest roughly a year earlier.
Of course, many of the military academy graduates who had suffered through the guilds all those years voiced their support for the change. Still, among those academy-trained adjutants, a fair number had already adapted to guild life in their own way.
Setting aside the widespread maladjustment and discontent, the people who had been leading hunters and driving back the Abysses before the elite adjutants arrived were, in the end, those same military academy graduates. In that light, their reaction was only natural.
From their point of view, a government policy that sought to push them aside based solely on average figures on paper—when they had been fighting perfectly well until now—was hardly something they could welcome.
Given that background, relations between the existing adjutants and the newly arriving elite rookies had been poor from the start. The government's attempt at generational replacement had, as a natural consequence, forged a competitive rivalry between the entrenched military academy adjutants and the professional specialists.
A battle of wills: academy graduates fighting to keep their posts versus the newly emerged professional elite adjutants.
And when it came to the so-called "political side" of things, the government—tied as it was to such matters—naturally wanted to back the professional adjutants it had appointed under the new policy, the better to show the public a record of achievement.
To that end, the government would lean on the press to put a slightly exaggerated shine on the elite adjutants' combat records, or deliberately place them in guilds already known for competence so their results would stand out all the more.
The elite adjutants' skill and ability were not, on the whole, particularly poor, so the actual results, while short of dramatic improvement, were respectable enough. More importantly, unlike the academy graduates who had been assigned through semi-compulsory postings, the elite adjutants had at least chosen this path of their own free will. That alone produced fairly positive outcomes in terms of unit management.
As a result, public opinion toward the elite adjutant system began to turn reasonably favorable, while the existing military academy adjutants became fixed in people's minds as outdated remnants of a bygone era.
Quite apart from the hardships of daily life, the fact that I—who had been running my guild reasonably well—had been forcibly discharged owed something to this background as well, beyond my relationships with the S-class hunters.
But I saw no need to tell any of that to the people sitting in front of me.
Whatever their motives, and whatever the results, the government had pulled me out of that hell. For that alone, I was in a position to be grateful.
The satisfaction I drew from my life now was incomparable to what I had known then. There was nothing to complain about in my discharge, and nothing to feel bitter over.
With that thought, I set aside the complicated background, allowed a light smile to touch my lips, and tipped my glass once more.
"Come on, eat up, eat up. Our adjutant needs to pack it away so he can keep commanding hard."
"Thank you. Kwon-sun… no. You too, Jogs. You really worked hard today."
Watching Gwon-sun heap meat onto my plate with such enthusiasm, I answered in good spirits.
"Well, getting discharged itself isn't exactly something I can look on fondly—but honestly, from our side, it worked out great. Thanks to that, we get to work with someone this capable, right?"
"If it hadn't been for Aide, we'd probably be camping out in the woods right now chewing combat rations instead of grilling meat in a restaurant… putting that soulless, barely-food garbage back in our mouths… ugh…"
Gwon-sun spoke with a voice that held both comfort and genuine pleasure. Glass, slightly tipsy and still tending the meat, shuddered in full agreement. One look at her face made it clear she wanted nothing to do with combat rations ever again.
"Come to think of it, Glass, the reason you discharged was because of those combat rations too, wasn't it?"
"Précis! I was posted to the Himalayan border region. There was nothing to eat out there but combat rations, so I lived on them the entire time. For a while I forced them down out of a sense of duty to humanité—but after about a year of that, I started wondering what the hell I was even doing. Was this why I'd become a hunter?"
At Are's prompting, Glass launched into her story, riding the alcohol. It was a far cry from her usual languid self, but she was so beautiful at her core that even this animated version of her had its own charm.
"A full year of nothing but combat rations… yeah, that would get old fast."
"As a Français, I consider it an insult to food itself! That so-called combat ration…"
Glass shuddered as she recounted a story that sounded nightmarish even to me. On top of that, she was French—a people so devoted to cuisine that the proverb about digging your own grave with your mouth might as well have been written for them. Her cooking was excellent, and hunting down delicious things was one of her hobbies. The suffering must have hit her far harder than it would the rest of us.
After that brief outburst of pure hatred for combat rations, Glass wore an expression of genuine revulsion and pressed on.
"In the end I decided I simply could not live like that anymore, and the moment the operation wrapped I put in for discharge. I swore I'd never touch combat rations again—but somehow I drifted back into this line of work, and inevitably I found myself staring at that horrible stuff once more."
"Well… they do say once a hunter, always a hunter, even after you discharge."
"People like us don't exactly find it easy to live ordinary lives in civilian society. You can't exactly undo the modification surgery. Still—being able to go out to eat like this so often, and having enough ingredients to cook whatever we want… isn't that already a good thing?"
"It is. On that point alone, working in Corée feels like a blessing."
Saying so, Glass popped another piece of meat into her mouth. The sheer beauty of her—radiant even in that simple act—clashed so hard with the wretchedness of the story she was telling that a bitter little smile found its way onto my face before I knew it.
Looks like a goddess, but even goddesses don't live on dew alone. I never would have guessed combat rations were the reason she discharged.
I was tipping my glass with that thought when a rather important question suddenly occurred to me.
It might be a touch rude—but the subject of discharge had already come up, and a little alcohol was already in play. I carefully put the question to the other two sitting across from me.
"Um…"
"Hm?"
"This might be a little out of line, but since the topic's already open, there's something I'd like to ask as well. Would that be all right?"
"A question? Fine by me. Ask whatever you like."
"Huh? What is it?"
Both of them showed a flicker of curiosity at the word "question." I took another pull of the beer in front of me and let a brief pause settle.
Personal curiosity played a part, but even setting that aside, this was something I needed to pin down at least once. Depending on the person, the subject might dredge up memories none of the three in front of me particularly wanted to revisit.
But it could also be tied to combat trauma—and as the one in command, I needed to understand that.
Having made the decision, I looked at Are and Gwon-sun and asked.
"Glass's situation aside… how did the two of you end up discharging?"
"Our discharge… you mean?"
Both of them reacted as if something they had half expected had finally arrived. Whether that was because of a dark past or some other reason, I couldn't tell—but I could at least sense that the atmosphere had shifted with the question.
In that moment, it was Lee Are who spoke first.
"Well… it's not exactly a pleasant story, but since it's come up, I'll tell you. You'd find out eventually anyway."
With that, Are slowly drew out her phone. She tapped the screen a few times, then turned it toward me to show the photograph displayed there.