Radioactive Waste, Recyclable Waste
Changing a person's personality is an extraordinarily difficult thing.
Even when someone inwardly recognizes that there is a problem and that change is necessary, turning that recognition into actual action is never easy.
That is because human beings are, at their core, animals that dislike change, creatures whose instincts prioritize immediate convenience above all else.
And yet, even for beings as resistant to change as humans… there was not entirely no way to force an extreme transformation.
An event large enough to shock the human mind…
When a person experiences something like that, the metal called personality—so stubbornly resistant to change—begins to soften and reshape itself, like steel heated until it turns pliable in the flames.
The process is always painful and agonizing. In severe cases, a person cannot endure it and ends up mentally broken, or even loses their life.
But if they weather that time of suffering and finally succeed in forging a new self…
Then a human being can grasp the change they have long desired.
Whether they succeed in changing and live a life different from before, or die inside the cocoon like a butterfly that never breaks free—
That depends entirely on the person's will, and no one can ever be certain of the outcome.
And… at this very moment…
Crack!
Boom!
In the middle of a blood-reeking battlefield…
She was still thrashing about like a worm that had not yet found its way out of the cocoon, still lost and wandering inside a net of anguish.
“…”
“Hey! What are you doing?”
Yujin's urgent voice came from beside her.
Yet even as she heard it, she—
S-class hunter Na Jiseon simply stood there gripping her black spear, staring blankly ahead with vacant eyes.
The Abysses charging straight at her.
Their pure combat power, with forms reminiscent of rhinoceroses, was, to put it coldly, not even worth the tip of Jiseon's toes.
They were Middle-class Abysses with respectable strength of their own, but considering Jiseon's fighting style and her superpower, they were practically soft counters—laughably easy opponents.
And yet… even so, Jiseon showed no sign of swinging her weapon or activating her ability.
No—right now she felt more like a doll without a single spark of will, simply watching the Abysses rush toward her in a daze.
“Na Jiseon! What the hell are you doing?! Snap out of it!”
Immediately after, Yujin shook her body hard and shouted again in desperation.
At her comrade's frantic voice, Jiseon managed, for just a moment, to turn her gaze back to the situation unfolding right in front of her.
“…Huh?”
“It's not 'huh'! Get your head on straight and focus on the mission! With your power those things are one-shot kills!”
“…Ah… uh… y-yeah… okay…”
Barely collecting herself at Yujin's words, Jiseon adjusted her grip on the weapon.
Then she aimed the tip of her spear at the charging Abysses as if sighting down a gun barrel.
And…
Zzzzzap!!!
“Kueeeeek!”
“Kwoooargh!”
In the next instant, a single bolt of lightning lanced from the tip of her spear. The moment it struck, the Abysses exploded into scattered pieces.
The ones that had been charging the allied formation with terrifying force were reduced to pulp in an instant—yet as she watched Jiseon like this, Yujin's expression was far from bright.
…As I thought… this can't go on…
Why… why did it turn out like this?… What on earth made our 28th Guild fall this far in just a few months…
Watching the scene before her, Sena felt as though her insides were burning.
After Lee Jinhyun left and the new adjutant, Choi Han, bolted the moment his one-month probation ended, a relentless carousel of adjutant replacements had followed.
Over the past several months the adjutants who stayed here had kept changing every month on every trivial pretext imaginable, and under those conditions the 28th Guild had, of course, become virtually incapable of carrying out missions properly.
Even when they managed to pin an adjutant down and half-coerce him into running a mission, the best they could handle was B-class.
In the end Sena, unable to stomach this pathetic state of affairs any longer, had forced through an A-class mission this time—only for that decision to come back as the worst possible result.
The hunters of the 28th Guild who had barely finished the A-class mission and returned.
Until only a short while ago they had cleared A-class missions as a matter of routine without major issues, yet this time the outcome was truly, utterly catastrophic.
Not a single hunter who took part in the operation had escaped injury, and one A-class hunter had even been diagnosed with half a year of hospitalization—effectively a discharge sentence.
Receiving the worst report card in the history of every A-class mission they had ever run, Guild Master Sena, who had pushed this mission through by force, finally began to grasp the gravity of the situation.
Unlike the earlier days when even basic weapon checks had been so slipshod they caused problems, this time she had prepared as thoroughly as she possibly could, and though she had not liked it, she had still followed the adjutant's orders as best she could during the operation.
Yet the result had left them with nothing but a hollow, wounded glory, and once again stained the name of the 28th Guild.
The fundamental problem is that every new adjutant who shows up tries every possible way to escape somewhere else. First I have to deal with that, no matter what it takes.
So Sena searched for solutions in her own way.
But… even in the midst of it, there was one fact she absolutely could not accept, even though it was clearly the root cause of this entire mess.
Adjutant Lee Jinhyun.
The starting point of the once-triumphant 28th Guild's freefall had been the moment he was driven out of this place by Sena's own hand.
Yet on that point,
Sena could never, under any circumstances, accept it.
You're saying we ended up like this because that guy disappeared? No way… A guy who wasn't even good-looking, who was slow as hell at his work, and who talked back every time I said something. There's no way our 28th Guild—the greatest hunter guild in Korea that I lead—could have become this pathetic just because one guy like that was gone!
Realistic possibilities did not matter.
What mattered was that she had never been wrong.
Even if there was a problem, it was never her fault—only the fault of the people and environment around her.
Just like the life she had lived until now.
This is definitely because every single adjutant who comes here is a complete idiot. At this point I have no choice but to go over their heads myself. Even if I have to talk to Father directly…
In a dark, deep room…
In that forgotten place almost no one visited anymore…
S-class hunter Na Jiseon was curled up, shedding tears.
The various documents and notes piled inside the room.
And the small odds and ends he had left behind.
Among the only traces he had left,
she was thrashing under a guilt that still had not faded with time—no, a guilt that only grew clearer and more solid the more time passed.
I… I was such an idiot… Just because he accepted my feelings so casually… that didn't mean I could treat him however I wanted… But… but I… someone like me…
Until now she had never been able to control her own emotions.
And even knowing it was wrong, she had never truly tried to fix it, simply dismissing it as an uncontrollable illness and leaving it alone.
Yet that careless attitude of hers had ultimately
driven away the first person she had ever come to like,
and now that fact was crashing down on her as an unbearable pain and regret.
What do I do?… At this rate… at this rate I really can't do anything… Without Oppa… without Jinhyun Oppa, someone like me is…
Recalling the utterly pathetic battle from earlier that day only made Jiseon feel more desperate.
Even though Yujin's scolding at the last moment had kept her from causing a major disaster, Na Jiseon herself knew better than anyone that she was in an extremely precarious state right now.
The abuse she had inflicted on Jinhyun and the guilt that came with it.
If that was not resolved… she would never be able to live a normal life again. She felt that truth deep in her bones.
And so, in the midst of that thick despair and pain, at the very moment Jiseon was suffering…
her eyes fell on a single frame hanging on one wall of Jinhyun's room.
Not a picture, but a frame with a short phrase written inside.
Inside it were the following words:
In the time you would despair, move first.
“…”
A single line that struck deep into Jiseon's heart.
The moment she saw it, a faint, faint light seemed to enter her mind—yet to someone trapped in darkness like her, it began to shine with almost unbearable brightness.
Yeah. Better that than just sitting here… Instead of thrashing around in misery, I should go find where Jinhyun Oppa is. Then bow my head and apologize to him myself…