Live Your Life, Mr. Hunter!
The fire I came to cast upon the earth—how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.
— Luke 12:49-51
Lee Mina opened her eyes.
The ceiling was the same as always. White, plain, and utterly unremarkable. The faint hum of the air conditioner filled the quiet room, and the digital clock on the nightstand blinked 6:47 a.m. in soft blue light.
She lay there for a long moment, staring at nothing. Her body felt heavy, as if someone had poured lead into her veins overnight. It wasn’t the pleasant kind of exhaustion that came after a good workout. This was the bone-deep weariness that came from carrying too much for too long.
Another day.
She sat up slowly, the blanket slipping down to her waist. The oversized sleep shirt she wore—black, faded, with the logo of some defunct hunter agency peeling off the front—clung to her skin. She ran a hand through her messy hair and let out a long breath.
Just get through today. Like always.
Good morning, User. Daily Quest has been issued.
Mina’s lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. She waved her hand lazily, and the blue window vanished. She already knew what the quest would say. The same thing it said every single day for the past three years.
Live like a normal person.
She stood up, bare feet padding across the cold floor toward the bathroom. The mirror showed her the same face she saw every morning: sharp eyes, pale skin, and a faint scar running along her left cheekbone that no amount of makeup could completely hide. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders in tangled waves. She looked… ordinary. Exactly the way she wanted to look.
She splashed cold water on her face, then stared at her reflection again.
“You’re not a hunter anymore,” she whispered to herself. “You’re just Mina. Lee Mina. Twenty-seven years old. Office worker. Normal person.”
The words tasted like ash in her mouth.
After a quick shower, she pulled on her usual outfit: black slacks, a white blouse, and a thin gray cardigan. Nothing flashy. Nothing that would draw attention. She tied her hair back in a simple ponytail and slipped on her glasses—even though her vision was perfect. They helped her look harmless.
Her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter as she was making coffee. She glanced at the screen.
She set the phone down and took a sip of her coffee. Bitter. Strong. Just how she liked it.
The subway was crowded as usual. Mina stood near the door, one hand gripping the overhead rail, the other holding a book she wasn’t really reading. Around her, people chatted, scrolled through their phones, listened to music. Normal people living normal lives.
She envied them.
A little boy sitting across from her suddenly pointed at her and whispered something to his mother. The woman glanced over, then quickly looked away. Mina pretended not to notice. She knew what she looked like to them. Just another tired office worker. Nothing special.
That was the point.
When she arrived at the office building in Gangnam, the security guard at the front desk gave her his usual nod.
“Morning, Miss Lee.”
“Morning, Mr. Park.”
She swiped her employee ID and stepped into the elevator. The company she worked for—Haneul Consulting—handled public relations for several mid-tier hunter guilds. It was ironic, really. She spent her days writing press releases about hunters raiding gates, managing their public image, and making sure the world saw them as heroes instead of the walking disasters most of them were.
The irony was not lost on her.
As soon as she stepped into the office, her coworker Ji-hoon waved at her from his desk.
“Mina! You’re early today. Did you see the news? There was a big gate break in Busan last night. S-rank. The White Tiger Guild handled it, but there were casualties.”
She hung her coat on the back of her chair and sat down. “I saw. Tragic.”
Her tone was perfectly neutral. Professional sympathy. Nothing more.
Ji-hoon leaned closer, lowering his voice. “They say the hunter who died was only twenty-four. Just awakened last year. Poor kid.”
Mina’s fingers paused on her keyboard for half a second.
Twenty-four.
She remembered being twenty-four. She remembered the first time she stepped into a gate. The way the air had tasted like ozone and blood. The way her flames had roared to life for the first time, burning everything in their path—including the people she was supposed to protect.
She pushed the memory down.
“We should prepare a statement for the families,” she said quietly. “Something compassionate but not too emotional. The White Tiger Guild will want to emphasize that they contained the breach quickly.”
Ji-hoon nodded, already typing. “On it. You’re the best at this stuff, you know that?”
She gave him a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Just doing my job.”
The morning passed in a blur of emails, meetings, and carefully worded press releases. During lunch, she ate a sandwich at her desk while reviewing footage from the Busan incident. The video showed a young hunter being torn apart by a monstrous creature that looked like it had crawled out of someone’s nightmare. The flames she once wielded could have ended that thing in seconds.
She closed the video.
Her phone buzzed again. This time it was a message from an unknown number.
"It's been three years. The Association wants to talk. Don't make us come find you, Flame Queen."
Mina stared at the screen for a long time. Her fingers tightened around the phone until the plastic creaked.
Flame Queen.
The title she had once worn like a crown of fire now felt like a noose.
She deleted the message, blocked the number, and set her phone down with deliberate calm. Then she took a slow breath and went back to typing her report.
At exactly 6:00 p.m., she shut down her computer, said goodbye to her coworkers, and left the building. The city lights of Seoul glittered around her as she walked toward the subway station. Billboards advertising the latest hunter merchandise flashed overhead. A giant screen showed footage of a popular A-rank hunter striking a heroic pose after clearing a gate.
She didn’t look up.
Her apartment was quiet when she returned. She kicked off her shoes, changed into comfortable clothes, and heated up a simple meal in the microwave. While she ate, she turned on the television to a random channel. It was a variety show featuring hunters playing silly games. One of them, a handsome man with bright red hair, was laughing as he failed spectacularly at a cooking challenge.
She recognized him immediately.
Baek Seo-jun. S-rank. Fire specialist. The current darling of the media.
The man who had taken her place in the public eye after she disappeared.
Mina watched him for a moment, expression unreadable. Then she changed the channel to a documentary about marine life.
After dinner, she sat on her small balcony with a glass of wine. The night air was cool against her skin. From her apartment on the twelfth floor, she could see the distant shimmer of a gate forming on the horizon—another one opening somewhere in the city. Red warning lights flashed from the nearby hunter response towers.
Her fingers twitched.
The fire inside her—the power she had sealed away three years ago—stirred for the first time in months. It whispered to her. Begged her. Just once. Just a little. No one would know.
She closed her eyes and forced it back down.
“Live your life, Mr. Hunter,” she murmured to herself, repeating the sarcastic slogan that had become her personal mantra. A bitter twist on the Association’s famous recruitment line: Live your best life, Hunter!
She wasn’t a hunter anymore.
She was just trying to be human.
Her phone buzzed one last time that night. Another message from her boss.
Mina stared at the message for a long time before typing back a simple reply.
“Sure.”
She set the phone aside and looked out at the city again. Somewhere out there, hunters were fighting. People were dying. Gates were opening. The world kept turning whether she participated in it or not.
She raised her glass in a silent toast to no one.
“Here’s to living a normal life,” she whispered.
The wine tasted like regret.
Far away, in the deepest basement of the Hunter Association headquarters, a red emergency light began to flash above an old, sealed containment unit.
A bored technician looked up from his phone and frowned.
“What the…?”
He walked over to the monitor and tapped a few keys. The screen flickered to life, displaying a single line of text.
SEAL INTEGRITY: 0.03% COMPROMISED
ENTITY: FLAME QUEEN — POWER FLUCTUATION DETECTED
The technician’s face went pale.
“Oh shit…”
He reached for the emergency phone with shaking hands.
Somewhere in Seoul, Lee Mina finished her wine, washed her glass, and went to bed like any other normal person.
She had no idea that the fire she had tried so hard to bury was finally beginning to wake up.