Vacation Plans and Window Shopping
Cha Seok-jun led Mina into the cafe inside the HHH Hunter Office and set a freshly brewed coffee in front of her.
“So this is what you call a vacation?”
“Yes… I know the circumstances are what they are, so there wasn’t much choice.”
The rich aroma of dark coffee, sweetened with sugar and syrup, rose in gentle steam and carried a soothing power. Before she realized it, Mina found herself pouring out her worries to him.
What am I even saying to someone I only met yesterday?
She knew full well that conversations like this were usually reserved for close friends, but her one and only friend wasn’t exactly easy to meet these days. Maybe that was why she’d latched onto someone she could actually talk to. She was starting to wonder if she had always been this chatty.
“From the company’s perspective, they’re probably scrambling to clean up the atmosphere first,” he said.
Of course, the fact that he had saved her probably played a part too.
“I understand that, but everything happened so suddenly that I have no idea what I’m supposed to do now.”
Mina felt both grateful and guilty toward him. She kept wondering how she could possibly repay the favor. After all, she still hadn’t properly thanked him for rescuing her.
Then her eyes fell on the trench coat he was wearing, and an idea struck her.
“That’s right! What kind of equipment do you usually use, Mr. Seok-jun?”
“Why are you asking all of a sudden?”
“I still haven’t given you a proper thank-you gift. I’d like to buy you something.”
For hunters who spent most of their time fighting monsters inside gates, equipment was just as vital as weapons. Some pieces carried rare special effects, but their primary role was to provide resistance. The alien mana that filled gates tended to exhaust hunters quickly, and equipment helped block that mana to a certain degree. That made it essential—big or small—for every hunter.
“You’ve still been worrying about that?”
“It’s important to me,” she insisted.
Mina knew she could be rather obsessive about these things, but she simply couldn’t stand leaving debts unpaid. It made her skin crawl.
He eventually shook his head with a small sigh.
“There’s no winning against your stubbornness, Mina.”
“Hehe, so you’ll accept? Since it’s equipment, it’s better to see it in person. Let’s go together when you have time.”
She had been about to ask when he might be free so she wouldn’t inconvenience him, but—
“Then let’s go now.”
“Huh?”
“Didn’t you say you were on vacation? We still have time before lunch. Let’s go together.”
They left the cafe shortly after.
The moment they stepped onto the main road, the familiar roar of car engines and exhaust assaulted their ears. Even though she thought quiet back alleys were far more pleasant, Mina walked alongside Seok-jun through the bustling street. The sharp click of their shoes echoed in unison against the gray pavement blocks.
“You’re planning to go to Ice Square again, right?”
“It’s the only place around here that carries that kind of stock, isn’t it?”
Then she noticed that the antique-looking rifle he had carried yesterday was missing from his back.
“You didn’t bring that gun today?”
“It’s too conspicuous. I didn’t want to draw unnecessary suspicion.”
It was true—when he walked around with that long rifle slung across his back, people’s eyes tended to linger. In Korea, where firearms were rare, guns still drew more attention than hunters’ weapons. Even so, Mina smiled as she felt the curious stares following them with every step.
“Even without that gun, you stand out plenty, Mr. Seok-jun.”
In truth, he would probably turn heads no matter what he wore, but the real culprit was definitely his outfit. Standing in the middle of a street filled with zooming cars and lined with buildings of every size, he looked like a cowboy straight out of a Western who had accidentally time-traveled into the future.
He let out a dry chuckle at her words.
“It’s not entirely my fault, is it?”
“You and I are completely different.”
“Isn’t that a bit unfair?”
“Hehe. If you’re unhappy about it, why don’t you change your clothes first?”
They continued their lighthearted, trivial conversation as they walked down the wide avenue until they reached a massive four-way intersection.
“Ah, the light’s changing! Let’s hurry!”
The blinking pedestrian signal greeted them just as they arrived. They broke into a run, dashed beneath the gray concrete overpass, and crossed the street. Since Ice Square was right in front of them, the moment they stepped inside the building the wind died down and it felt slightly warmer. Still, it wasn’t completely sealed, so occasional gusts still slipped through.
They rode the escalator to the fourth floor, where another escalator leading to the fifth floor came into view. However, access to the fifth floor was restricted to hunters only. A QR code issued with their hunter license had to be scanned before they could proceed.
After scanning the code and stepping onto the escalator with him, various pieces of equipment filled their vision. Many looked like ordinary clothing, but the most eye-catching items were medieval-style weapons and armor that gleamed under the lights.
“Wow… No matter how strong a hunter’s body is, carrying around those hunks of metal still looks exhausting.”
The very existence of such weapons was precisely why hunter licenses were required to enter this floor. While some weapons were made from expensive materials, the biggest reason for the restriction was to prevent anyone without a license from stealing and misusing them. That could lead to serious trouble.
“I think it’s a bit absurd for people dressed like us to carry cold weapons around, but you don’t seem to carry any weapons at all, Mina.”
“My mana type creates weapons on its own.”
Thanks to that, she could save the cost of buying separate weapons—aside from equipment, of course. It also meant she had less to carry, which made everything more convenient.
“Don’t you buy equipment separately? If you’re saving on weapon costs, you could afford better gear.”
“That’s true, but…”
His words made sense, yet Mina’s voice trailed off. It wasn’t as if she had never considered it.
“It’s because of the guild’s rules.”
“Hanshin seems particularly strict about that sort of thing.”
The guild she belonged to, Hanshin Guild, was indeed a famous corporation in the hunter industry. At minimum, any hunter who reached A-rank received high-performance equipment as standard support, which made it a highly desirable workplace. The problem was that, even among guilds, Hanshin was unusually corporate-minded. Compared to the free-spirited atmosphere of most other guilds, it felt distinctly different.
“Yes. We even have to be careful with accessories.”
They were especially sensitive about image. Aside from the formal uniform she was currently wearing, any other equipment was essentially prohibited.
“Sometimes I wonder if Hanshin just really loves suits. Like they’re sacred or something—how dare you defile the holy suit?”
“Pfft, what is that?”
Still, the suit’s limitations made movement uncomfortable, which made it ironic that it provided special effects to boost agility and resistance. Of course, once you gained enough seniority, they would allow you to wear better equipment like Manager Oh did. The catch was that the performance of Hanshin’s official uniforms cost a fortune if you tried to buy something equivalent on the open market. And better equipment would cost even more.
In her heart, she wanted to wear something more comfortable when entering gates, but without the money to buy proper equipment, that dream remained out of reach.
“By the way, I don’t see any decent pieces here.”
“No matter how important it is not to damage rainbow fish scales, I’d rather pass on those glitter pants. This isn’t the 1980s.”
Mina gave an awkward laugh at the sight of Seok-jun glaring at a pair of iridescent pants.
Hunter equipment was usually crafted from byproducts left behind when monsters died. When turned into clothing, the original form often disappeared completely, resulting in pieces like Hanshin’s suits that looked no different from ordinary modern attire. On the other hand, if the original material couldn’t be altered or if the craftsman harbored strange romantic notions about hunters, the items were sometimes deliberately made to look like game artifacts. That was how things like those questionable pieces came to exist.
“Ugh, we couldn’t find anything after all.”
“If I picked something from here at random, I’d look more like a hippie than a cowboy.”
By the time lunch was approaching, they still hadn’t found anything and descended from the fifth floor.
“Those kinds of items would burden me too much. How about you help me with a simple job instead?”
“Huh? What kind of job?”
“A new request just came in.”
“It’s not dangerous, is it?”
She wondered if anything could be more dangerous than clearing a gate, but—
“You can just think of it as observing. Come watch.”
Mina hesitated for a moment before nodding. She couldn’t say she wasn’t worried, but she was genuinely curious about his work. Especially after what had happened with Gu Gang-woo yesterday—yet he had still been released from the police station without much trouble. That image had stuck with her.
Following him, they soon reached a staircase on the second floor that connected to the subway station.
“We’re taking the subway? Is it far?”
“Just two stops.”
They bought tickets and waited inside the station. Before long, a train pulled in.
“The train looks a bit… unusual?”
Mina stared in bewilderment at the subway visible beyond the transparent safety doors.
“Is this your first time riding the subway?”
“No, I’ve ridden it a few times, but it didn’t look like this before.”
Unlike the trains she remembered, this one was covered in flashy illustrations and photographs of active hunters. The strange poses were obviously attempts to look cool, yet they were so awkward that Mina didn’t know whether to laugh or stay silent. It reminded her of pro gamers from the early days of gaming broadcasts. Especially since many of the faces looked strangely familiar.
“I see several S-rank hunters.”
While A-rank hunters needed to make a noticeable impact to become famous, S-rank hunters tended to become celebrities simply by existing. In Korea there were fewer than ten of them, so it was no wonder they were well-known.
“They’re called theme trains. They decorate them like this and run them every hour. Looks like we caught one at the right time.”
As fellow hunters, she felt a sense of camaraderie, but it was still overwhelmingly embarrassing. Even so, it felt like a waste to let the train leave without boarding, so they got on.
“What in the world is that?”
What surprised her even more was that the inside of the train had been decorated too. If that were all, she wouldn’t have said anything—but in the seats where passengers should be sitting, a giant figurine was lounging.
“It’s a 1:1 scale figure modeled after S-rank hunter Yu Seongjin.”
“I can tell that just by looking, but… this is a bit much.”
She knew that popular S-rank hunters had merchandise made of them, but she hadn’t expected the inside of a subway car to be decorated like this. No matter how much the government invested in hunter-related businesses…
“By the way, there used to be a figure of Hunter Choi Mijeong on the opposite side, but it was removed.”
“Why?”
Choi Mijeong was also an S-rank hunter.
“It was made to look exactly like her. There were all sorts of strange incidents because of it.”
“Ah… I see.”
Mina’s face flushed red. She had a pretty good idea what those “strange incidents” might have been.