The Orange Wish
Minju lay on the medical gurney as if he were already dead, and he did not so much as twitch.
The sheet beneath him was soaked a raw, brilliant red, as though it had been dyed that way from the start. No one needed to look twice. Every bit of it was Minju's blood.
"Master...!"
Suhyun clapped a hand over her mouth. Faced with what had been done to him, she could not even scream; she only began to shake, trembling from head to toe.
The other Legion guild members beside her were no better. Even Eunha, whose expression almost never changed, had gone still. Her pitch-black pupils blown wide, she stood frozen, unable to move.
"G-guardian, you can't— not right now—"
Suhyun shoved past the transport crew and trudged toward Minju.
Blood-soaked bandages wrapped the boy's small head and still were not enough; they covered both his eyes. Around the bridge of his nose, the only skin left bare, cold sweat beaded thick as glass.
Even someone with no medical knowledge at all could see it. His condition was as bad as it could be.
"Mas... M-Minju..."
Suhyun reached out with a hand that would not stop shaking. Before her fingers could touch him, the cape around his shoulders slid free and fell, limp, to the floor.
It was a green cape, steeped in blood until the red had darkened all the way to black. The stars embroidered in gold thread had gone utterly black.
"Ngh..."
Suhyun kept her mouth covered and collapsed where she stood. Tears she could not hold back spilled in heavy drops, falling like thick streaks of rain.
"We'll transfer him."
A paramedic spoke heavily and took hold of the bed's rail. And then—
"...na."
A twitch. Minju, who had lain still as a corpse, moved one finger by the barest fraction. A thin, perilous breath escaped him, and his lips stirred, very small.
"Noo... na... Yu... ra..."
"Yes, Master. Miss Yura has arrived."
The voice was pressed flat with everything it was holding back. It was Junhwan. He had bitten his lower lip hard, and now he turned his head toward Eunha.
Catching his look, Eunha hesitated, then carefully approached Minju.
"..."
But that was all. She stayed frozen, unable even to move her lips. Seen up close, Minju's condition was too dreadful for words.
A rustle—the sound of a blanket shifting. Bandaged as he was, Minju forced his hand out with everything he had.
The small hand that used to work a rifle of his own making with such sure fingers had changed, like a leaf gone rotten where it fell. A needle thicker than his little finger was driven into the back of that hand, and with it still in him he groped blindly at the empty air.
"Noo-na... are you... there?"
"...Yeah."
Eunha answered softly.
Perhaps her voice had been too small. Minju felt along the surface of the sheet, then worked his lips once more, with terrible effort.
"Noo... na, did you... come?"
"Yeah. I'm right here."
This time she answered a little louder. Even so, Minju's hand remained in the empty air.
"Junhwan-hyung... Noo... na, I can't..."
As if he could not hear Eunha's voice at all.
Minju did not make even the smallest movement again.
Eunha had gone rigid, hairline cracks spidering across her face, and only then did she notice the thin strand clutched tight in that small hand. It was filthy, caked with dirt, but she knew what it was. Once, it had been orange.
An orange Wish Bracelet.
"What in the world happened?"
In the silent corridor, Suhyun's voice trembled out, anger barely leashed.
The guild members hung their heads, unable to meet her eyes. From among them, Junhwan spoke, heavy.
"Calm down. Right now, Master's recovery comes first."
Recovery? At his words Suhyun frowned, as if she had just heard something that made no sense at all.
She had already seen Minju's condition. Was that a state in which anyone could hope for recovery?
No. Absolutely not.
The surgery was already over, and yet he looked more ruined than he had before it. Cardiac leads plastered all over his body. A thick tube forced between lips pried open to keep an airway. An IV needle driven without mercy through the thin skin on the back of his hand. And besides those, nameless medical devices clung packed against that small body.
"Master never once went to a hospital, not even with the flu. He hates needles that much..."
Suhyun bit down hard on her lower lip, and her eyes flashed sharp.
"Tell me. Right now."
"I'll kill every last one of them."
As she added it, something slipped from beneath her cape and fell.
A tail. A bird's tail, feathered blue.
Junhwan, who had been enduring her in silence, finally opened his mouth, quiet.
"Stop. What are you going to do? The Unknown Gate is already closed. All we can do now is pray that Master recovers."
"How could you—!"
Suhyun shouted, the sound breaking out of her, and seized Junhwan by the collar. Blue veins stood out across her clenched fist.
"What were the rest of you even doing? What were you doing, for Master to end up like that?!"
"...We didn't do anything. On Master's orders, we got out of the Gate first."
"What?"
Suhyun blinked, as if she could not believe her ears.
"You're telling me you turned tail and ran, and left Master behind?"
Junhwan did not throw off the hand at his collar. Just as he was, he met her eyes.
"We took down every Named Monster in there, the boss included. We confirmed the clear message, and the exit definitely opened. Not a single item dropped, but there was no way to read it as anything except a successful subjugation."
A storm cloud settled over his face as the memory returned. He forced the words out one syllable at a time, as if he were vomiting them.
"So? You did nothing? Until Master ended up like that?"
Suhyun cried it out as if she were screaming.
Collar still in her grip, Junhwan had only this to say.
"Yeah. We didn't do anything. Because instead of us, Master ended up like that alone."
His voice had gone wet.
"So we didn't have to do anything."
"..."
"...I'm sorry."
Suhyun had no choice but to shut her mouth. Because his eyes, as he said it—
"I really am... sorry..."
—were far too red.
Slowly, the hand that had been fisted in Junhwan's collar fell.
"You're a doctor, aren't you?"
From beyond the closed door came Gyeongho's shout, a voice every bit as worked up as Suhyun's.
Junhwan did not even straighten his disordered cape. He quietly turned his back on her.
The lock clicked.
When the door opened, there he was, just as expected: Gyeongho, veins standing in his neck as he tore into the doctor. He looked ready to overturn the entire exam room.
"What? Wounds you take in a Gate aren't the same as injuries from ordinary life? So what? You're saying you're just going to do nothing?"
"We will do everything we can, but as you know, in cases involving a curse, modern medicine has difficulty responding..."
The doctor was repeating the same words over and over.
Eunha leaned against the wall in a corner of the exam room and watched them in silence, neither stepping forward nor leaving.
In truth, everyone there already knew. What had happened to Minju was not the doctor's fault. And yet—
"Damn it! You're a doctor! Isn't saving people your job?!"
They simply could not endure unless they struck this grief against someone.
But the moment Gyeongho grabbed the doctor by the collar—
"Stop."
The measured click of unfamiliar heels drew near.
"A doctor isn't a god."
Gyeongho froze, then creaked his head around toward the voice.
"...Dr. Plant?"
One of Korea's S-rank Hunters, and the most famous and exceptional healing Hunter of them all. Master of the Rose Guild—Geum Rose.
In the suffocating quiet, the click of heels went on, calm, and then stopped dead in one place.
A light tap. Rose struck the back of the hand still locked on the doctor's collar, lightly knocking it away.
"No matter how skilled a doctor is, they can't save every patient. Just as a Hunter can't save every ordinary person."
"..."
"And you heard them yourself. The Trickster's injuries are a curse. So stop taking it out on the wrong person."
At Rose's words, Gyeongho bit down hard on his lower lip. She was right. He had known from the start. He had known, and yet...
In the end he collapsed where he stood.
"Hhk...!"
Leaving Gyeongho sobbing in ragged bursts like a child, Rose quietly turned her gaze on the flinching doctor.
"You know this already, but you'll have to keep your mouth firmly shut about the Trickster. The reporters, especially. Give it less than an hour and it'll be all over the broadcast news, and the search rankings will be in an uproar."
"Yes. I'll keep that in mind."
The doctor nodded in a rush.
"I'll contact the Association myself. For now, all of you focus on treating the Trickster."
"I'm sorry? But the curse..."
"I'm telling you to stop it from getting any worse, at the very least. The Rose Guild will send people as well. First, clear this entire ward. No one in or out except medical staff and guardians. Thoroughly."
Go on, then. Rose tipped her chin toward the door, and the doctor fled the spot as if he had been waiting for nothing else.
Rose perched lightly on the edge of the desk, let out a small sigh, and slowly looked over the people who remained, one by one.
Gyeongho, collapsed on the floor and wailing as if he had lost his mind. Junhwan, arms folded, keeping a heavy silence. And—
"...?"
Rose's eyes changed in an instant.
A Hunter leaning against the wall, watching all of it. A black dress, and a black parasol. She was fixed, unmistakably, in Rose's memory.
The look Rose turned on Eunha filled with an unreadable light.
She had just begun to move her lips, as if to say something more to Eunha, when—
"You're the one who threw Master into the Unknown Gate. That's why this happened."
Gyeongho, still on the floor, was looking up at Rose with eyes full of resentment. Rose's gaze slid slowly from Eunha to him.
"Stop it. Seok Gyeongho. Someone among the S-ranks had to enter the Unknown Gate anyway."
Junhwan, unable to watch any longer, tried to hold him back, but Gyeongho did not take those fierce eyes off Rose.
"Then why did it have to be our Master?!"
Beside him, Rose only gazed at them in silence. As if there was nothing she wanted to say, and nothing she needed to.
"Doctor. Is there... truly no way to save Master?"
Junhwan asked her.
His face was calm compared to Gyeongho's, but inside he was the same. Even now, he wanted to overturn everything and save Minju somehow.
What Rose said next was not particularly hopeful.
"The only way is to compound every item that might have any effect on the curse and make him take them, whatever we can get our hands on. Only the one who laid the curse can know what it actually does."
"I'll get them. Whatever they are."
Rose stared at Junhwan's resolute face, then let out a small sigh and rummaged in the pocket of her coat.
"Do you really think you can?"
What she drew out at last was a single sheet of paper, dense with neat handwriting. It looked like a reagent formula she had recorded herself.
"If I bring what's written here, will that be enough?"
Junhwan snatched the paper and checked what was on it. But—
"Well? It's impossible, isn't it?"
"..."
The paper fell. Junhwan's face, as he let it drop, was soaked through with despair.