There's No Way My Daughter Has a Problem!
The process by which a nation decides on a policy and puts it into practice is rarely as clean as one might imagine.
From power struggles among politicians to the scramble for vested interests among those who stand to profit from the policy itself—the inner workings were, as a matter of course, a thoroughly complicated and thoroughly dirty affair.
And in that regard…
The man who had once poured every effort into pushing through legislation related to the training of elite hunters—Lee Jaemin, the current Vice Minister of National Defense of the Republic of Korea—was nursing a splitting headache over the recent state of the 28th Guild.
Just how had things come to this… Why…?
The 28th Guild had long been one of the most closely watched hunter guilds in the entire country. Built around a core of capable and beautiful S-class hunters, it had racked up one dazzling victory after another. Impossible missions completed with ease, friendly casualties virtually nonexistent, exchange ratios so lopsided they bordered on the absurd—that was the 28th Guild.
People naturally attributed all of it to the brilliant leadership of Guild Master Lee Sena, and Vice Minister Lee Jaemin had thought the same. Granted, the adjutant and the other hunters were talented in their own right—but at the end of the day, it was the leader who steered the organization. It was conventional wisdom that a guild's success was proof of its leader's competence, and he had naturally thought so as well.
And above all, that leader was none other than his own daughter—S-class hunter Lee Sena. So of course Vice Minister Lee Jaemin believed every achievement of the 28th Guild was the fruit of his daughter's excellence.
That was why, both to indulge his daughter's wishes and to more clearly demonstrate the usefulness of the Elite Adjutant system he himself had championed and built, he had discharged that military-academy graduate of an adjutant—Lee Jinhyun, or whatever his name was. Since Guild Master Lee Sena—his daughter—had always insisted the man was a worthless, incompetent waste of space, the Vice Minister had considered it an unimpeachably good decision. As a bonus, he had quietly contacted the relevant officer and arranged for Choi Han—a newly minted elite adjutant known as a so-called A-tier talent, especially capable and sharp even among the elite—to be assigned in his place.
But all those expectations and efforts of his came back to him, in less than a month, as a result he had never imagined.
The first mission conducted not long after the adjutant had been replaced. In that mission, the 28th Guild produced a performance so abysmal it made all their previous achievements look like a joke—a battle that would go down as a textbook example of a disastrous bungle. Inadequate combat preparation by the Guild Master. Desertion that ignored orders. And on top of that, a host of casualties resulting from the whole mess.
These facts not only left Vice Minister Lee Jaemin deeply flustered—they eventually leaked to the press, forcing his daughter Lee Sena and the other S-class hunters into a public apology to the nation. It was as if a ship that had been sailing smoothly before a fair wind had, out of nowhere, run aground on a reef.
But the troubles at the 28th Guild did not end there.
After Choi Han took responsibility for the incident and left the guild, new adjutants were assigned. But every last one of them failed to adapt to the 28th Guild, and the moment the so-called adjustment period of the first month was over, they immediately filed for transfer. The result: over the past four months, the 28th Guild had gone through a total of four adjutants—a record as bizarre as it was thoroughly humiliating.
"Just what is the problem here? The 28th Guild—the one with my beautiful, talented daughter! Why on earth should it have to suffer this kind of humiliation at the hands of its adjutants?!"
From Vice Minister Lee Jaemin's perspective, it was utterly incomprehensible. This was the 28th Guild, which had delivered nothing but top-tier results the entire time his daughter had been Guild Master. If a capable adjutant were assigned there, excellent results should have been a given. And yet everything they had shown so far was disappointment itself. The so-called adjutants assigned there had all spent their time scheming about when they could leave, and the moment the opportunity came, they piled on every excuse under the sun and clawed their way out of the 28th Guild.
That the elite adjutants who benefited from the very system he had built with his own hands were putting on such a disappointing display had Vice Minister Lee Jaemin's insides literally boiling these days.
Could it be that the so-called elites were nothing but a collection of incompetents? No… that couldn't be. The overall numbers still showed solid results. So if something like this was happening anyway…
For the briefest of moments, a thought flickered through Vice Minister Lee Jaemin's mind—Could there be something wrong with my daughter?—but he immediately shook his head and rejected it.
Was she not the finest of S-class hunters, his proud daughter who had performed more brilliantly on the battlefield than anyone over the past four years? And the idea that there could be anything wrong with that child—who always presented nothing but a perfect, adorable face before him—was, from the Vice Minister's point of view, pure nonsense.
"Yes, this is clearly a problem of caliber. There simply aren't many adjutants who can handle a daughter as capable as mine. How could a mere sparrow possibly understand the will of a phoenix?"
Thinking that, Vice Minister Lee Jaemin looked once more at the documents laid out on his desk. A request form from his daughter, asking for a new adjutant. This time, however, the contents specified that she needed someone whose feet could be thoroughly bound—someone who could not slip away after a mere month.
"Right… After all, the 28th Guild has been carried by my daughter this whole time. Ability matters, of course, but more than that, planting someone who absolutely cannot go anywhere else—so they don't poison the atmosphere—would be better."
The root of the crisis the 28th Guild was currently facing was that those adjutant types kept dropping out at the drop of a hat, wrecking the guild's internal atmosphere, and as a result Sena was under such extreme stress she couldn't command properly. In other words, if they simply filled the post with an adjutant who wouldn't keep changing, the 28th Guild would return to its original form—that was the Vice Minister's thinking.
And so, taking special care, he requested that one adjutant who was unable to transfer due to personal circumstances be rounded up and assigned to the 28th Guild. Hoping once more that the 28th Guild led by his daughter would return to its former glory.
"Here it is. The current status information on that Lee Jinhyun you requested."
"Thank you… Really… Thank you so much."
Na Jiseon kept expressing her gratitude to the person who held out the envelope to her. Even though the person in front of her was someone who had done the job for money, she was expressing genuine gratitude in that moment.
"Don't mention it… If you need help again later, please don't hesitate to contact me."
"Yes, I will. Thank you so much."
After the hireling left, Jiseon began opening the envelope in her hands with trembling fingers. Inside was the information on Lee Jinhyun she had been waiting for. It roughly indicated where he currently was and what occupation he held.
Dreamouth… a Black Hunter company, huh… That's Jinhyun oppa for you. Who would have thought he'd land a job and settle in this fast…
Honestly, Jiseon had been hoping Jinhyun was still unemployed. If, as Sena and Yujin were always saying, Jinhyun were still jobless, it would have been that much easier to get him to come back to where they were. Even so, just having pinpointed Jinhyun's whereabouts was enough to put Jiseon in a good mood.
Even if she couldn't make him come back… at least now she could go to him and apologize.
Of course, that won't be easy either. I've done wrong by him all this time. But still… it'll be okay… Jinhyun oppa is kind. After this much time has passed, even a little…