The Moon Was No Longer That Moon
"What do you mean, why am I here?"
Eunha spoke as if she could hardly believe her ears.
"You called me."
"......"
Yijun, for his part, said nothing. The mask made him impossible to read with any certainty, but he looked like a man sunk in thought.
"I never called you here."
That, after a moment, was what he offered.
There was no way to test whether he meant it. What she did know was that she had no further reason to stay.
"Is that so? Then I'll go."
Eunha turned her back without hesitation. Yijun stepped squarely into her path.
"Wait. I called you? I need to understand what that means."
"You said you didn't. Then we're finished."
"You came here because you thought I'd called you?"
"......"
Eunha answered with a silence heavier than words.
From behind the mask, Yijun stared at her. Whether he was smiling, incredulous, or simply expressionless, she still could not tell.
He was quiet for a long while. Then his lips moved, barely.
"You've changed."
"What?"
"You used to hate places full of people."
"......"
At that, Eunha laughed without a sound beneath her mask. There was something faintly absurd about Yijun telling her she had changed, when he was the one who had.
"Come with me first."
"Where? I told you I was leaving."
"Not that way. By now the lobby will be full of reporters. If you want out, take another exit. I won't stop you if you'd rather give them an interview."
"......"
"There's a hidden elevator behind the banquet hall. I know where it is."
He did not wait for an answer. He turned neatly on his heel. Eunha watched his back for a moment, then slowly followed.
Different strides, different speeds, and still they walked the same road.
Out of the banquet hall and down an empty corridor, then around a corner once the corridor ended. They moved through the hotel's maze of passages without a single word between them.
The divine beast Cat that Wanders the Darkness tells Unni this bastard is suspicious, and suspects this may be some new method of kidnapping.
"......"
Eunha followed at Yijun's back and stared straight through him. She did not agree that he meant to abduct her, but the halls were certainly growing empty of people.
The moment they left the last corridor, Yijun finally stopped. Eunha stopped with him and looked calmly around.
Ceiling, walls, even the floor were reinforced glass. It felt like standing suspended in midair.
Beyond the panes, the city lay impossibly far away. Seen from above, Seoul's forest of buildings glittered small as the Milky Way across a black sky.
The ensemble that had filled the banquet hall had faded until it could no longer be heard at all. In that stillness, Eunha spoke.
"Far as I can see, there isn't anything like an elevator here."
Yijun, who had been gazing quietly outward, answered short.
"Yeah. I lied."
What? Behind the mask, Eunha's brow snapped tight. At the same instant the cat's yellow window flared, plainly furious.
She started to say something to him, then shut her mouth again. She was about to turn away in silence when he spoke.
"I heard you were in the hospital."
Yijun's fingertips had been trailing the glass. He opened his mouth quietly.
Eunha, who had stopped, looked back. He did not look at this place as he went on.
"You look more intact than I expected."
So he had known about the Busan Gate, and about the hospital stay. How he knew, and why he had kept his mouth shut to the Association even so, she could not begin to guess.
She did not think asking would earn her an answer. So she said only this.
"You almost sound like someone who was worried."
"The you I knew wouldn't set foot in a hospital over anything ordinary. Being admitted was out of the question."
His gaze turned to her. Both of them wore thick masks.
"Are you going to keep being a hunter?"
"Why are you asking?"
"Because I want you to quit."
The bluntness of it closed her mouth.
Quit? Her, a hunter?
"Why?"
"You know as well as I do that the world you remember and this one aren't the same. You're still playing hunter in that ridiculous getup, as if you're trying to fit the modern age. Do you actually mean to become a Concept Hunter?"
No. Maybe she already had. In front of the silent Eunha, Yijun murmured it under his breath.
"I'm curious. These days hunters are a dime a dozen, nothing like before. What reason could you possibly have to keep at it that hard?"
He took one step closer.
"The thing is, I hate that someone like you is a hunter."
A low voice, soft as a whispered spell. His scent came with it, sudden and close: a pheromone so thick it made her head swim.
And at the same time, that same timbre brushed her ear.
Little enough had changed.
He lifted his head slowly toward the moon at his back. Now that she thought of it, that night had been a full moon too. Eunha stared up at the moon hanging high overhead.
Beside her, as she gazed blankly upward, Yijun murmured once more.
"I told you back then, too."
Tall as he was, he bent slightly until their eyes met.
"Eunha. You aren't the sort of person who belongs as a hunter."
She had been watching the moon in silence. Only then did the corner of her mouth lift, faintly.
"And yet there was one foolish teammate who wanted to become just like me."
Eunha turned slowly. Without looking back, she spoke in a voice that did not rise or fall.
"Is that why you lied to bring me here? Just to say this?"
"......"
"We could have talked without going that far. I thought we were at least that close."
"Weren't we?" She added it lightly, like something tossed aside, and took the step she had paused.
Click.
Her heels struck the glass with a sound that was unusually cold. Yijun did not catch her. Eunha did not look back.
The moon was still bright. But it was no longer the moon of that night.
Back in the banquet hall, Eunha went straight for the elevators, meaning to leave the hotel. She was passing through the crowd of guests when someone strode up to her.
Whoever it was, she meant to ignore them. She had no wish to remain here a moment longer. But then—
"Excuse me, Lady."
Eunha turned toward the voice before she could stop herself. The English was unfamiliar, and the reaction was pure reflex.
A stranger, hair falling just to the shoulders, a little shorter than she was.
...No. A woman?
The voice was a neutral, androgynous tenor, and the sex was difficult to judge. The mask over the face only made it worse. The tuxedo was the only reason she guessed he might be a man.
What he wore was a half-mask shaped like butterfly wings. Looking at it, she suddenly remembered the gold-foil butterfly printed on the invitation.
"Ah. Korean would be more comfortable, wouldn't it?"
A low laugh slipped out from behind the mask. He seemed a little excited.
"My condition's been strangely good lately, so I thought my reading had finally come true. I've wanted to meet you for such a long time. I never imagined you'd actually come. Where have you been? I've been looking and looking."
He spoke as if he had known her all along. Puzzled, Eunha studied him outright. Only then did he let out an "Ah," and the shoulders that had climbed so high sank back down.
"I'm sorry. I got too excited. I ought to introduce myself first."
He laid a hand lightly over his left chest. With a small bow, he whispered, low enough that the strings nearby would swallow the words at once.
"Fortune-teller."
Emerald eyes glinted behind the mask.
"Please, just call me Andrea. Princess."
Princess. It could not be dismissed as flattery. He knew. Her epithet. The Princess of Dark Flare.
"......"
Eunha took a step back. Perhaps he read the wariness and distrust in the movement. Andrea hastily raised both hands.
"Ah, please don't find me suspicious. I'm simply... something like a fan of yours. I know you were at the auction not long ago. Wearing that cat mask."
"...And is that the only cat mask in the world?"
"Mm. That's fair, but... No, I'm asking you, please don't doubt me. I only want to talk with you."
"Talk?"
Eunha echoed it, short. All at once Yijun's voice brushed her ear.
I never called you here.
Then... could it be this person?
Eunha lifted her gaze and stared at Andrea. He scratched his head as if troubled, then, resigned, touched the side of his neck.
"Haa. I'm really not supposed to do this, but..."
What he drew from behind his tie was a pendant no larger than a quarter. The silver coin was engraved with a wing.
"I'm with GIA."
A secret hunter alliance that ignored nationality, spanning the world: GIA, the Global Intelligence Alliance.
The pendant was proof that Andrea belonged to it. An identification as clear as a national ID card—clearer, perhaps. And yet.
"......"
In the silence that had arrived uninvited, Andrea scratched his cheek and tried again.
"It's GIA... you see."
"......"
"......"
Even so, the quiet did not lift easily. Of course it didn't. Eunha had no idea what GIA was.
A humanitarian hunter organization. Faceless heroes. GIA was famous for appearing like a comet at disaster-scale scenes across the world and vanishing like the wind. Their exact size, their membership, even the year they were founded and the nature of their leadership—none of it was known. Their popularity, all the same, was enormous in every country.
But.
"...I do know the CIA."
Gaps in modern common knowledge were, unfortunately, inevitable.
"Sorry? The CIA...?"
Andrea's eyes went round enough to show even past the mask. Then he clutched his stomach and burst into innocent laughter.
"Ahaha! You're funnier than I expected. Yes, people mix us up all the time. Well, the work is similar enough, if you want to call it similar."
Ahem. He cleared his throat, composed himself, and went on in a calmer voice, as if explaining.
"Anyway, GIA has taken a considerable interest in your recent activities. We also know you broke your contract with the Wolf. Ah—how we came by that information is a secret."
"......"
Eunha did not answer. Even so, the Fortune-teller, Andrea, went on in a manner that left no room for doubt: he believed she was the Princess of Dark Flare.
The conversation was anything but ordinary. Guests nearby began to glance their way.
This is a problem.
Eunha did not want eyes gathering on her. Worse, she did not know who he was, and he knew who she was. Not a pleasant position.
She was looking for some way to cut him off and get clear of the place when—
"What are you doing here?"
English again. She turned, and there stood a man in a black suit, a white mask with smiling eyes.
Baek Yijun?
He was there. He must have followed her.
Yijun slipped between the two of them as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Johan? When did you get here?"
"I've been here a while. And you? What are you doing? Don't tell me you've forgotten what you were supposed to do."
"What are you talking about? I was just..."
"Don't make excuses, Andrea. I was clear. Don't show the pendant here. You broke the rules—and to an outsider you don't even know."
"No, Johan. Listen. You only say that because you don't know who this person is. I saw it."
"Andrea, your readings are reliable enough, I'll give you that. But whoever this person is, it doesn't change the fact that you broke the rules."
After that the two of them went on at length in English she could not follow at all.
Eunha was not good at English, and yet somehow she could tell that Yijun was deeply displeased. The cock of his head. A voice lower than usual. Above all, the air around him.
It was a different face from the one he had shown while speaking with her. Even through the mask, she felt it clearly enough.
A glance.
In the middle of his exchange with Andrea, Yijun sent her a short look from behind the mask. He did not put it into words, but it was as if he were saying it all the same.
Go.
"......"
Eunha moved, slowly. Andrea let out an "Ah" and looked her way, but Yijun, standing between them, did not step aside.
Until she was well away from that spot, Andrea never managed to catch her.
And so Eunha left the banquet hall without incident and stepped into an elevator.
The divine beast Cat that Wanders the Darkness demands to know what that was—did that blond just help Unni?—and questions the conduct of a man whose intentions cannot be read.
I don't know.
Eunha could not find the thread of it either.
When she stepped out of the elevator, the lobby lay before her as empty as it had been when she first arrived.
"Are you heading home? I'll call the limousine."
The man who had been waiting in the lobby came toward her. Eunha, worn out, shook her head.
"No. I'm fine."
She refused in a few short words and slipped out of the hotel before he could try to persuade her.
In the end she learned nothing. Not what GIA was, nor what a Fortune-teller was. Not who had invited her there. Not why Yijun had changed so much. There was not a single thing she could be sure of.