I Like Dogs
She opened her eyes.
Still half-asleep, she groped around the pillow until her fingers met the hard shape of a phone.
Eleven-thirty in the morning.
She had slept late. Eunha checked the clock on the screen, then slowly pushed herself upright.
The dress she had worn to yesterday's party lay in a careless heap on the floor. If Jehwi saw it, he would scold her again. She got out of bed and gathered up the clothes she had shed like a snake's skin.
Once she had roughly tidied the room and stepped out into the living room, bright sunlight was washing over the whole space. She poured a glass of cold water, carried it with her, and dropped onto the sofa.
Unlike the old days, hunters are a dime a dozen now. What reason is there to keep being one, to that extreme?
I have a reason. I hate that someone like you is a hunter.
"......"
Expressionless, Eunha stared at the glass in her hand. Her eyes had sunk so deep that no one could have guessed what she was thinking.
The officetel, empty of anyone but her, was as hushed as a vacant reading room. In that stillness she sat for a long while without moving, as if she had frozen in place.
Rrrr......
The phone on her knee began to ring. It was Jehwi. Eunha set the glass on the table in front of the sofa and answered.
"Hello."
"Ah, Hunter. Is now a good time to talk?"
"Go ahead."
"It's nothing major. I was just worried someone might have come by the apartment."
"No one came. I was out for a little while yesterday, too."
"That's a relief— wait. What? You went out yesterday?"
"Yes."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you call me?"
Eunha closed her mouth for a moment and blinked twice.
If she told him outright that she had gone to a party at Maestro's invitation, there would be another uproar. Jehwi was already being hounded by the reporters as it was. She could not drag Maestro into it on top of that.
"I just took a short walk around the neighborhood. It's fine. Nothing happened."
"Is that so? Hmm... Still, you'd better avoid going out for the time being. If we wait a little, the way we always have, some other story will come along."
It was like that last time too, wasn't it? Jehwi added.
"In fact, not a single article about you went up today. At this rate, things should quiet down again in two or three weeks. I know it's stifling, but please bear with it a little longer, Hunter."
Eunha reached for the glass she had set on the table. Dew had beaded across the cold surface. She traced it with a fingertip and spoke as if it hardly mattered.
"I'm all right, but I feel bad for you, in a lot of ways. The contract's already over, and here I am putting you to needless trouble."
"What? No— Hunter, please don't say that. How many times have I told you? I, Park Jehwi, am ready to lay down this one life for you."
The utter seriousness of his voice drew a faint laugh from her.
"Are you laughing? I mean it."
"Yes. I know."
She answered lightly and brought the glass to her lips. The cold water sliding down her throat felt good.
From the other end of the line came Jehwi clearing his throat.
"Anyway, let's think positive, you and I. All we have to do is wait for this to die down. Then you'll be free. From now on, Hunter, all you have to do is whatever you want."
"Whatever I want..."
Eunha murmured it under her breath.
What she had wanted was this: since she had failed to save her mother that day, to save the people the person she was now could still save. She had never once thought about wanting anything else.
She, too, had meant to go looking for the life of my own her mother had spoken of, once the contract with Siwoo ended. But now that she actually stood at the fork, she had no idea what she was supposed to do.
Had there ever been anything she could do, besides cutting monsters down?
"Right. Whatever you want. Even if it isn't you, how many hunters are there in the world? There's no need to go looking for hardship. Like you said, the contract's already over, isn't it?"
Unlike the old days, hunters are a dime a dozen now. What reason is there to keep being one, to that extreme?
"......"
Eunha closed her mouth and gave no answer.
Unable to see her face, Jehwi went on in a bright voice.
"What's the first thing you want to do, Hunter?"
"......I..."
The words died, and her lips sealed themselves. Phone still at her ear, Eunha went rigid.
It felt as if she had run looking only ahead—never once glancing back, never once to the side—and had suddenly come up against a dead end.
"Anything is fine."
"......"
"Hello? Hunter?"
"......"
Silence.
Even through the receiver, Jehwi's bewilderment came through.
"Uh... um... was that too hard a question? Really, anything at all is fine. Something you like— yes! A hobby, maybe."
Something she liked...
A cool breeze slipped in through the slightly open window.
Phone still pressed to her ear, Eunha was drawn to look outside. A tall building with a blue sign. And beyond it, a quiet hill.
From here, you should be able to see where Senior's mother is. There— you see the hill behind that blue sign?
A single book caught the corner of her eye.
Easy Dog Grooming for Beginners — Basic Styling
It lay tossed in a corner of the sofa. Eunha slowly reached for it.
She stroked the stiff cover with her fingers, then her lips moved, barely.
"Dogs."
"Sorry?"
The pages fluttered. Eunha added, as if speaking to herself:
"I... I like dogs."
The Korean Hunter Association.
With midnight drawing near, Association President Go Daeyun stood at the glass and looked out over the nightscape of sleeping Seoul.
Tap, tap...
The fingers drumming on the cold pane suddenly stopped. He thought of the white bird that had come to him the night before.
A messenger bird. A special bird, tamed by a certain awakener, that carried messages.
"Within one month, a massive gate will appear somewhere along the Namhae Coast."
The bird had said as much, wings beating. Daeyun's attention went first not to the message, but to the pendant at its throat.
A round pendant engraved with a wing. Anyone who worked in the hunter world would have known it at a glance. The talking white bird, and the pendant shining a brilliant silver— both were symbols of GIA.
He had heard the rumor that they had come to Korea, but had it been true? If so, then the other rumor, that they had attended the party the Korean Association hosted a few days ago, might also...
"......"
Daeyun went to his desk and looked over the guest list from the party.
One hundred and twenty-one names in all. Every one of them had held a genuine invitation. The invitations, of course, had been made so they could not be easily forged.
Of all years, we had to throw a masquerade.
If they had not been wearing masks, he might at least have tried to call each guest's face back to mind. Was it coincidence that GIA had come to Korea just as this year's party was held?
"......Ngh."
Daeyun set the list down, let out a low groan, and leaned back in his chair.
"What are you going to do?"
From a corner of the conference room, someone spoke all at once.
It was Team Leader Kim Gwanghyeon, who until then had been waiting in silence for nothing but Daeyun's instructions.
Daeyun pressed the back of his hand over his eyes and said nothing. He turned last night's warning over in his mind once more.
"I see a great tree."
"A tree pure white, and pure through. Not even a sturdy axe could fell it, and not even blazing flame could burn it."
"The attributes are likely Holy, and Wood."
As prophecies tended to be, the words were as riddling as a puzzle. The last hint the bird gave him was only one.
"The Dark attribute and the Fire attribute would be effective."
Dark and fire. Darkness and flame.
With that, the messenger bird gave its wings a shake, then split apart like fragments of pixels and scattered into the air. It left not even a trace behind, as if to say they could believe it or not, as they pleased.
"There are over two thousand islands on the Namhae Coast alone. No exact time, no coordinates— how are we supposed to prepare for anything? I'd like to know."
Gwanghyeon let out a deep sigh.
They were already short of agents to send into Burst Gates, and Trickster's injury had left the upper ranks of Korea's hunter world unsettled.
Daeyun, who had been silent, drew a thick cigarette from the pack at his side. Gwanghyeon hurried over, lit it for him, and spoke.
"For now, I've put in a bulk commission with the Hammer Guild for equipment imbued with dark and fire attributes... but if their prophecy is wrong, the whole lot will be stuck gathering dust in a warehouse."
He seemed worried about the enormous budget the order had consumed. Shoving the lighter into his pocket, he went on, doubt plain in his voice.
"To begin with, does this thing called GIA even really exist?"
The worldwide fandom that hailed them as faceless heroes, a living Avengers, numbered in the tens of millions— but how many of those people had actually laid eyes on a GIA member?
There were only rumors that they appeared at disaster sites like comets and vanished like the wind. To this day, not a single person had ever learned their true names.
"Couldn't someone have been playing a prank?"
At Gwanghyeon's skeptical tone, Daeyun took the cigarette from his lips and slowly opened his mouth.
"...You remember the massive rift that opened on Santorini, in Greece, eleven years ago?"
"If you mean that, it was the world's first SSS-rank gate. Of course I remember."
The disaster had been so immense that even now, eleven years later, the island of Santorini was still closed to civilians.
"If GIA had not delivered its prophecy then, Santorini— no, Greece itself— would have vanished from the world map."
"Sir?"
Gwanghyeon blinked.
"You mean GIA went to Santorini back then?"
"Whether they went or not, I don't know either. But exactly three weeks before that massive rift opened, a white bird wearing a silver pendant visited the association there."
"......"
"I heard it myself, when I stopped in Santorini the year before last for the accord."
Since then, hunters from Europe had taken to calling the prophecies brought by GIA's white bird by the grandiose name of Holy Word.
"Most likely, one of the GIA members has the power of foresight."
How concrete a future that power could see, or how fragmentary, there was no way to know. Daeyun tapped the ash from his cigarette into the tray a couple of times, then spoke heavily.
"Team Leader Kim."
"Yes, President."
"Not long ago, I received a similar warning. You know about it."
"......"
Gwanghyeon closed his mouth.
With the cigarette between his lips, Daeyun turned a sunken gaze toward the window.
"President. An Unknown Gate is going to appear in Pohang."
Dr. Plant. She had warned him so.
Daeyun knew very well how capable she was, and how long she had spent researching Unknown Gates.
But from where he stood, Rose's claim had been closer to conjecture than to prophecy. An Unknown Gate was not a field one could research in the first place. In truth, the times her guesses had missed were beyond counting.
The gentle sovereign of the Rose Guild. The Nightingale of the hunter world. And also—
A pitiful woman who, in the grief of losing her daughter, goes on repeating research that means nothing.
A considerable number of people in Korea's hunter world assessed Rose that way. To be honest, Daeyun had been one of them.
"I understand what you're saying, but... hmm."
"No, President. This time it's real."
"......"
Standing at the peak of the Association, he had been in no position to rashly commit dozens, even hundreds, of high-ranking personnel to something that was not certain.
The Association was short of agents as it was, and even at that moment large and small rifts were opening all over the country.
But.
Daeyun had been gazing through the glass, puffing out smoke, when he crushed the burned-down cigarette into the ashtray. The ember scorched the white surface black before it finally went out.
"Because I ignored Dr. Plant's warning, Trickster was hurt. The kid is one of only six S-ranks in the whole of Korea... and by rights, he's just a middle-school boy."
Daeyun murmured it low, staring at the dead cigarette.
"President..."
Gwanghyeon let the word trail away.
Clouds drifted slowly across the moon. Darkness came into the conference room, where only the two of them sat, and silence came with it. Out of that stillness, Daeyun spoke, heavy.
"I feel a great responsibility for it. I've become Association President. How can I repeat the same foolishness a second time? Wouldn't you say so, Team Leader Kim?"
"......Yes."
Gwanghyeon bowed his head briefly. A faint smile caught in the wrinkles at the corners of Daeyun's eyes.
"Good. Call Maestro... no. Call Dr. Plant. I know she's looking after Trickster, but tell her we need her research. And a list of hunters with the dark attribute and the fire attribute."
Where the clouds had passed, the moon showed clear again. Daeyun gave the order in a voice that did not waver by so much as a breath.
"Prepare it as quickly as you can."