The Special Class
After entering the school together from the HHH Hunter Office, the first place they reached was the teachers' office on the first floor. This time, however, Mina couldn't go in with Seok-jun. She stood alone in the hallway, leaning against the pristine white wall and staring down at the floor alongside her slippered feet. A savory, timeworn scent of wood lingered in the air, carrying an odd sense of nostalgia.
"Feels like I'm being punished for no reason." The memory of standing idly in the hallway whenever she forgot her homework or got into trouble overlapped with the present moment, leaving her with a wry feeling. She was far too old to actually be punished now. The cool touch of the wall against her back, the long stretch of silent corridor, and the distant chatter of children drifting from classrooms like the murmur of a drowsy lecture—all of it was exactly as she remembered. Yet what occupied her mind most was Seok-jun's business.
"What on earth is he doing in there?" She recalled the man in the long coat they had encountered before entering the school. His expression when looking at Seok-jun had been one of bewilderment, but the look he gave her had been stranger still, as though he were seeing something inexplicable. On top of that, Seok-jun had gone into the teachers' office alone, so there was no way to know what was happening.
"It doesn't seem like anything illegal..." The man they'd met in front of the school had looked suspicious, but even so, speaking with teachers inside a school building couldn't possibly be against the law. No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn't guess the nature of his task, so Mina decided to simply wait and observe. While she stood there growing bored from Seok-jun's prolonged absence, something caught her eye.
"Hm?" In a corner of the hallway, a girl with bright green hair was watching her. She looked to be around first or second year middle school—old enough that the childish air was beginning to fade, though not entirely gone. The girl hesitated, clearly wanting to approach but unsure. Their eyes met. She flinched as though startled, then cautiously made her way over and spoke.
"Are you... the new teacher?" Her voice was so small that it was nearly drowned out by the distant sounds of children playing outside. If Mina hadn't been a hunter, she might not have heard it at all. The word "teacher" made her reflect, with a touch of melancholy, that she really was getting older. She bent slightly at the waist to meet the girl's gaze.
"Not quite. Just here for an observation of sorts."
"Observation?" The girl tilted her head, puzzled. Mina gave a bitter smile. Of course it would seem strange for an adult to be observing a school. As they spoke, something glinted at the edge of Mina's vision. She looked up.
"Did I imagine that?" But the hallway beyond the window was empty, only pale winter sunlight filtering through. She was about to dismiss it as a trick of the light when the teachers' office door slid open and Seok-jun stepped out.
"Are you finished with your talk?" The green-haired girl flinched at the sight of him, then bolted down the corridor and disappeared through a door.
"Wait, kid!" Mina called after her, but the girl was already gone. She turned to study Seok-jun's face, wondering if he looked frightening to children. His sharp eyes might indeed scare a timid one.
"Were you speaking with her about something?"
"I was curious how the school is doing these days." Asking the teachers might have been the proper route, but Mina knew from experience that not many of them were particularly passionate. Children would likely give more honest answers anyway.
"In that case, shall we follow her?"
"What? Is that allowed?"
"I was planning to check on the students anyway." They walked down the hallway, glancing through classroom windows in search of the girl. Through the lower half of a window partially covered by an opaque sticker, Mina's eyes met those of a boy staring outside. He startled and stepped back. Seok-jun looked up at the sign above the door.
"This must be the place." The sign read Special Class.
"...Are we allowed to go in?"
"I've already received permission from the school." Without hesitation, he opened the door and stepped halfway inside. Mina followed, her thoughts growing increasingly tangled. The scene within was quite different from a normal classroom. The floor was covered in yellow safety mats, and various toys lay scattered about, making the room feel more like a kindergarten than a middle school.
"Who are you, noona?" Besides the green-haired girl, the boy whose eyes she had met through the window was there as well. Unlike the girl, he didn't appear to be an awakened; he had short black hair and brown eyes.
"Just here for a quick school observation." The boy had dried mucus crusted beneath his nose and spoke with a clumsy, childish manner that didn't suit a middle schooler. Mina answered while trying not to look too flustered.
"Then do you go to our school too, noona?!"
"Uh, yeah?" Before she could react, the boy grabbed her hand with a bright smile and began pulling her along. She could have resisted easily, yet found herself being dragged anyway.
"Oppa, what are you here for?"
"Got a bit of a headache to deal with." The green-haired girl's voice drifted over from nearby. Seok-jun had been cornered by her and was now engaged in conversation. So she really was just shy. The boy led Mina to the window side of the classroom. She wondered why he had brought her to this unremarkable spot with its drawn curtains when the boy began glancing furtively around as though hiding something, then beckoned her closer.
"What's wrong?"
"From now on, you can't tell anyone about this." He slipped behind the curtain to hide. Mina stared, confused, until the boy poked his head out again and gestured urgently.
"Hurry!"
Half-suspecting a prank, Mina followed him behind the curtain.
"This is my secret spot!" The boy's proud expression made her bite back a laugh that threatened to escape.
"How about it? Pretty cool, right?"
"Y-yeah. It's amazing that no one else knows." She didn't have the heart to shatter the boy's pride over what was, at best, a space created by a single curtain. I thought so. Mina vaguely recalled seeing classes like this during her own school days. These children were likely dealing with disabilities of some kind. Their behavior, so unlike typical middle schoolers, made sense in that context.
"Noona, noona! And this!"
"What's that?"
"My treasure! You can see really far away with it!" The boy proudly presented a pair of binoculars resting on the windowsill, their metal frames polished to a mirror-like shine.
"I'll let you borrow them specially!"
"Oh my, really? Are you sure?" It didn't seem like much to her, but she understood that to this boy it was genuinely precious. She feigned reluctance. The boy puffed out his chest and nodded.
"Yeah! I'm only lending them to you, noona." Mina accepted the binoculars with a soft chuckle and bent down to peer through the lenses. The moment her eyes met the eyepieces—
"Ugh?!" A wave of dizziness struck her, and pain lanced through her head. She sank to the floor.
"Mina-ssi! Are you all right?" Seok-jun's voice reached her as the curtain was pulled aside. She pressed a palm to her spinning head.
"Ugh, it's nothing. Probably just anemia." She waved off his worried tone with her free hand. The boy stared at her with a dazed expression. Mina forced a smile.
"Sorry. I don't think I can play today—my condition isn't great."
"Huh? Uh..."
They left the special class together. The cool air brushing through the hallway seemed to help. "Will you be all right continuing like this today?"
"Anemia is pretty common. Worry about your own work first." She was used to dizzy spells from low iron. A supplement when she got home would fix it. An awakened's body wouldn't collapse over something so minor. Her curiosity about Seok-jun's task had only grown, so she stubbornly continued following him through the school.
"Really, what exactly are you doing here, Seok-jun-ssi?" All he did was wander the halls, occasionally glancing through windows to observe students remaining in classrooms. She still had no idea what his purpose was.
"This might not be finished in just a day or two."
"What kind of job requires all this? Can't you at least give me a hint?"
"Most requests are confidential." They walked for a while, occasionally passing students who either startled at the sight of them or bowed, mistaking them for teachers. Mina tried again. "Can't you at least tell me the general goal?" Seok-jun merely shrugged. Mina puffed out her cheeks in frustration—then spotted something through a first-floor window: a pile of old desks stacked in a corner of the schoolyard behind the building.
"What are those desks?"
"They look like they've been set aside because they're worn out." Just as Seok-jun said, they appeared considerably older than the ones still in use inside the classrooms. On a whim, Mina opened a nearby door and stepped outside to examine them. Running her fingertips across the surface, she felt an uneven texture beneath the smoothness—scratches and gouges left by box cutters and other sharp objects.
"Ah, here it is!" She found what she was looking for: a pitch-black hole drilled into one of the desks.
"Old desks used to have a few of these. We were all curious about them back then." Whether made by a drill or an awl, the purpose of the perfectly round hole remained a mystery from her school days. Some were painted over or sealed with a coating like a lid, which only deepened the question of what students had been doing.
"Those holes were made so students could secretly use their phones."
"What? But isn't it too small to see the screen?" Mina tried sliding her smartphone beneath the desk to check, but only a few characters were visible through the hole.
"Back then, everyone used flip phones."
"Eek, flip phones? Not even a folder type?"
"Yes. The screens on those were small enough that the hole was sufficient."
By Mina's time, smartphones had already become common, so she couldn't have imagined such a thing. "Besides, most of those holes weren't drilled at all. They were made with pencils."
"How?"
"You just scratch the surface and keep rubbing the same spot with a pencil. Eventually, it wears into a groove and becomes a hole." That explained why the holes were so dark. Mina asked on a sudden impulse, "Back then, was it because of the gates—?"
"Even before the gates appeared, children proved that with enough time and effort, a human without mana could bore a hole through wood using nothing but a pencil." When the gates first emerged, the fantasy novels labeled "hunter stories" had drawn the most attention. Even if not all of them, most of the gate and awakened traits depicted in those novels had borrowed their terminology directly from earlier works. Hunter-related names had all originated from those stories.
"...Even without the gates appearing, wouldn't the world have already been fantastical enough?" Mina was still marveling at the thought when a rough voice shattered the moment.
"Ah, fuck! Did you guys rent this place out or something?! Go yap somewhere else!" Startled, she turned toward the voice. Several boys—some with messy hair and bleary faces, as though they'd been smoking or sleeping—were glaring at them with scowls. Boys, if they could still be called that.
"Ha, those are students, right?"
"Wearing school uniforms or not, they'd fit right in with the end-of-the-world gangsters."
"That absolutely doesn't suit them, does it?!" Without the uniforms, Mina wouldn't have recognized them as students at all. She knew today's kids grew fast, but these boys were as tall as or taller than her. They looked her over, and their expressions shifted into something uncomfortably familiar—an oily, adult-like smirk.
"Whoa, check out those tits."
"Damn, they're huge."
"M-my breasts?!" Mina was so shocked by the crude, explicit remarks that she could only gape. Even so—
"Well, kids these days don't really filter themselves."
"This isn't something you can just brush off as kids being kids, is it?!"
"Honestly, it's just the truth."
"Seok-jun-ssi, you really are a pervert, aren't you?!"
"All men are perverts by nature."
"How can you say that so confidently?!"