The First Hesitation
"Aaaah! A p-person! A person!"
The instant she hit the ground, a scream tore out behind her.
"Yura, are you out of your mind?! N-no—are you all right?!"
A student who had just stuck her head out the fourth-floor window followed it with a shout.
She was not the only one. More students, drawn by the scream, came running and packed themselves along the windows to make sure Eunha was still in one piece. Every face had gone white.
They had reason to be shocked. Leaping from the fourth floor straight down to the first was a height an ordinary person would never even dare.
Eunha gave no answer. She simply brushed off a body that did not bear a single scratch and rose.
A shriek of sirens washed over the road. Police cars and fire engines, only just dispatched, lined up in a row. She was about to cross the crosswalk, its warning lights blinking, when—
"Yura!"
Someone seized her wrist.
"Wh-where do you think you're going? That's where the gate appeared."
It was Yoonho. He looked more than a little startled to see her set off toward the gate without a moment's pause.
"I know."
Eunha slipped her wrist free of his grip without putting any strength into it at all.
"That's why I have to go."
"Go? What exactly are you planning to do if you go?"
Yoonho stared at her as if he could not believe what he was hearing.
"You did just jump from the fourth floor, right? I can tell you're an awakener. That still doesn't make you a hunter."
His words left her with nothing to say.
The age when an awakener was, by definition, a hunter had ended. This was an age in which even those who awakened were free to take up some profession other than hunter.
Eunha knew that perfectly well.
In place of an answer, she let her gaze slide down to the apron she was wearing.
The academy's logo was stamped dead center, plain for anyone to see. To Yoonho, the Eunha standing before him was surely nothing more than an ordinary young woman his own age, attending the same school.
And in truth, that was the life she had been living. She was searching for the thing her mother had called a life of my own.
Yoonho, who had been watching her closed mouth in silence, let out a small sigh.
"I understand how you feel, Yura. But you don't have to do something that reckless. Hunters will be here any minute. All we have to do is keep ourselves out of the way until they arrive."
Jehwi's words surfaced without warning, and for the first time Eunha hesitated where she stood. She, who had never once hesitated before a gate.
"Come on. There's nothing for us to do here."
"But I—"
The moment she lifted her eyes from the apron and her lips parted, a whistle cut through the wail of the sirens, and the police cars idling around them began to part like the Red Sea.
"W-whoa! Hunters! The hunters are here!"
"Where? Gasp—it's the Storm Guild!"
"What? No way, the Storm Guild? Did Sentinel Ray come too?"
Click. Click.
People who had been in the middle of evacuating stopped, pulled out their phones, and filmed the hunters, uploading the footage to their social media as fast as they could shoot it. A few of them even started live broadcasts.
Association agents, arrived in answer to the report, gathered as well, and so did the rival guilds that had sprung up as the bidding over gates grew fiercer, one guild after another.
"See? I told you."
Yoonho came to stand beside her.
Eunha said nothing. She only stared at the scene before her, stunned.
It was like a parade at an amusement park. The same people who had been shaking with fear were cheering and clapping as if they had never been afraid at all. There was no urgency to be found there, and no anxiety either.
Eunha stood as if her feet had been nailed to the spot, and she did not move for a long time. Not even after Yoonho had gone.
About five hours later, the world around her had returned to its ordinary self, as if the whole thing had been a lie.
The rift that had warped the air was gone without a trace, and the police who had been holding the perimeter withdrew one by one.
Yoonho had been right. Eunha had done nothing at all, and still nothing in particular had happened.
The scenery had come back far too quickly, far too matter-of-factly, as though all of it had been an illusion.
Returned to the academy building, she rested her arms on the windowsill, set her chin upon them, and looked down without a word. The dog-grooming apron she had meant to throw off was still on her.
"Whoa! It's the Storm Guild hunters!"
"Eek, I've never seen them in person."
Having succeeded in closing the gate, the Storm Guild hunters were taking a baptism of camera flashes amid the reporters and civilians swarming them like a cloud of gnats.
"Could you give the viewers just a little peek at the loot from this gate?"
"Haha, well. We can't show you all of it... We did pick up about three hero-grade items, though. Aside from those, the porters came back with their bags stuffed full of monster carcasses and horns that weren't too badly damaged."
He added that everything except the hero-grade items would be supplied to Hammer, their partner and an outstanding crafting guild.
The reporters bent over their notebooks, determined not to miss a single word. Even so, the cheers of the civilians around them never stopped.
Eunha watched them for a long while.
Street trees patched here and there with autumn color. Cars passing the intersection in orderly lines. A child toddling across the crosswalk, holding their mother's hand. People at the bus stop with earbuds in, fiddling with their phones.
All of it was only the usual scenery, settled back into its proper place as if that were the most natural thing in the world. So why did it feel so unbearably unfamiliar?
She could not tell.
The next day the sun rose as if nothing had happened, and another peaceful day began. The view was so ordinary it was hard to believe a gate had opened only yesterday.
While she waited for the next class and came down to the cafeteria on the academy's first floor to wet her throat, a call arrived from Bae Junhwan, vice master of the Legion.
Eunha sat alone on the terrace, sipping her drink, and let the call go on.
"The master is recovering, little by little. The spots on her body are almost gone, and at this rate she should open her eyes soon."
Through the speaker, Junhwan's voice was far brighter than it had been the last time they spoke.
"That's a relief."
Eunha answered while stirring her drink. Clink, clink—the ice striking the glass rang clear.
"And how are you, Yura? Yesterday's gate—it was near your academy, wasn't it?"
"Yes. The building right in front."
She answered, and then added at once.
"I'm fine. Nothing much happened."
Nothing at all. Absurdly so. She swept her hair back, indifferent.
"I thought you'd be all right, but even so, it must have been chaos. When a gate opens in the middle of the city, the subway and everything else just stops."
The fact that his first worry, on hearing a gate had appeared, was traffic told her Junhwan was unmistakably a man of this age.
Perhaps she really was the only one who was different.
She would be the only person who still remembered the world of thirty years ago as if it had been yesterday.
It felt like being left all alone in this wide world. The very same feeling she had known when she escaped the Unknown Gate.
"Anyway, that's a weight off my mind. It was a gate in the heart of the city, after all. I was worried that if you saw an ordinary person get caught up in it, you'd charge in without a second thought."
"Because that's the kind of person you are, Yura."
He said it with a laugh threaded through his voice.
"There was no need."
Clink...
The ice in the cold glass knocked together. Eunha drew a fingertip slowly through the beads of condensation gathered on its surface.
"Nothing happened, even though I never stepped in."
"What? That isn't—"
"Hold on. Let me talk to her."
"Ah—!"
In the space of a single swallow, the person on the other end seemed to change. It was a familiar woman's voice.
"Hello? Yura? It's me, Han Suhyeon. When are you coming to the hospital? Have you been busy lately?"
The voice had shoved its way through the speaker without so much as a by-your-leave, and before Eunha could answer, more voices began to pile over one another.
"Han Suhyeon! Move! Ahem. Yura, hello. This is Seok Gyeongho. Can you believe it—that bastard Bae Junhwan only told us yesterday that you got the Pixie Powder—"
"Hey, you move! I'm the one on the phone with Yura!"
"Ack! Have you lost your mind?!"
"What? You little shit, didn't I tell you to watch your mouth? Fuck."
"@!%%^$*?@^#—"
A crash.
Eunha drew her ear about three centimeters back from the receiver.
Slurp.
She drew on the straw and savored the deep aroma of the americano, and soon a solemn cough suggested the uproar had, for the moment, been settled.
"Ahem. My apologies. They overheard that I was speaking with you, and it seems they got a little excited. Um... one moment."
It was Junhwan again.
After asking her to wait, there came a sound like a palm clapped over the bottom of the phone. A shout followed right after.
"Shut your mouths!"
Eunha took her lips from the straw and smiled, faintly. Their faces had risen before her eyes, perfectly clear.
Even now, the racket of that place came through the receiver as if she were standing in the middle of it.
"Forgive me, haha. It's quite loud, isn't it?"
"No. It's all right."
"Um. What were we talking about?"
The embarrassment in his voice seemed to reach her all the way across the line, and in the end Eunha laughed aloud, softly.
"...Nothing. It was nothing."
None of that mattered now. Or perhaps she had simply forgotten, they had made such a commotion. She moved the phone from her left ear to her right and spoke again.
"More importantly—aren't you at the hospital?"
She knew very well how powerful their voices were. An incredible volume, even through the receiver. She was glad they sounded brighter, but was it really all right to carry on like that in a hospital?
"Ah, please don't worry. The master's condition has improved a great deal, so we've left that side to the Rose Guild. We've stepped out to the Association for a little while."
"The Association?"
"Yes. Not long ago the Association put out an emergency summons..."
All at once Junhwan stopped mid-sentence and fell silent.
"...Hello?"
Had the call dropped? Just as she moved to check the receiver, his urgent voice came, a beat late.
"Yura. Your specialty is Black Flame, isn't it? Darkness, and flame. Is that right?"
"...? Yes. Why?"
"Have you heard that the Association is summoning hunters with dark and fire attributes?"
"No."
"It seems they haven't contacted you yet. This isn't really something to say over the phone, but... there's talk that a national-level disaster may be about to strike Korea."
"A national-level disaster...?"
"Yes. It might even be—"
His voice dropped, heavier than before.
"It may be an Unknown Gate."
Eunha closed her mouth.
An Unknown Gate. If what he said was true, it would already be the third since she had come out into the modern world in 2031.
That was strange.
Even in the early 2000s, when she had been in the thick of her work as a hunter, an Unknown Gate had not been something one saw this often.
"Unknown Gates appearing one after another in less than a year is an ominous sign in itself."
It seemed people of this age felt the same.
Eunha, who had sunk into thought, asked in a level voice.
"Is the Association looking for dark- and fire-attribute hunters because of that?"
"Most likely. We'll hear the details at the Association from here."
Junhwan hesitated a moment, then added this.
"Yura, if you don't mind... would you come to the Association with us?"
At the unexpected offer, Eunha, who had been stirring her drink with the straw, went suddenly still.
"...Me?"
"Yes. If you were there, I think we would feel a great deal more secure."
"But my rank..."
"Your rank?"
Haha. A hearty laugh came down the line.
"You remember the oath I made to you that day, don't you?"
Not long ago—the day Junhwan had come to her officetel. Eunha recalled it.
"On behalf of the Legion, I offer you the oath of an army of sixty thousand."
"It is a vow that from this moment on, our Legion will never hesitate to be your sword."
Laying his clenched fist over his left breast, he had said it plainly.
"No one will be able to look down on you."
His voice came through the receiver once more.
After that, Junhwan said nothing.
The boisterous shouting that had been spilling through the receiver only a moment before had gone quiet as well. They seemed to be waiting in silence until she answered.
The army of sixty thousand, on the other end of the line.