Two Hundred, on a Whim
Five? Did that mean a giant gate would open in five places?
And if every one of those five was an Unknown Gate—
Yu Hwan swallowed. His throat bobbed hard, and when he spoke, the words came out heavy.
"Did you pass that on to the Association?"
"Not yet. It's only my guess. You know as well as I do—the Korean Association doesn't move for anything as flimsy as a guess."
Rose smiled, bitter at the edges, and pulled loose the slackened hair tie. Violet hair slid down the line of her shoulders with a soft rustle. She caught the tie between her teeth and gathered the hair up in her fingers.
"Go Daeyun. A cautious man."
She twisted it high and bound it, then set her hands on her knees. A brief silence. Tucking a stray wisp behind her ear, she moved her lips again, slowly.
"I mean to prepare on my own. Apart from the Association."
"Anything you need from me?"
"I knew you'd say that, Hwan."
Rose smiled, bright and easy. Beyond the rimless glasses, wine-red eyes curved with a gentle kindness. They were one of Yu Hwan's weaknesses.
"You've heard the Association is looking for dark-attribute and fire-attribute hunters, haven't you? According to GIA's prophecy, the giant gate on the Namhae Coast should be weak to dark and fire. But as you know, among the S-ranks the only one with a dark-attribute skill line is the Phantom Thief."
The Phantom Thief, Kang Ayeon. A summons from the Association, or anything else they cared to shout, she would ignore outright. If the work paid, she might show her face—but the honor of guarding a nation, the duty of protecting its people? She would not spare a shred of interest for any of it.
"And fire..."
"The kid?"
Rose nodded at Yu Hwan's mutter.
Explosives, and firearms. Trickster's traits and skills ran mostly along those lines. His main weapon, the bazooka, for one—and the Pew Missiles he set off while calling the whole thing a fireworks show—those were fire-attribute.
But Trickster still had not recovered from the injuries he took in the Pohang Unknown Gate. He was improving, they said. Whether he would be fit to fight when the gate on the Namhae Coast arrived was another matter entirely.
Set the Phantom Thief and Trickster aside, and there was no S-rank of the fire or dark lines. Even Rose, sitting here, was wood. Yu Hwan was earth.
...Wait.
Sunk in thought, Yu Hwan jerked his head up all at once. Dark and fire. Black fire. Black Flame.
Wouldn't she join Bulmyeol?
...There's the contract.
The F-rank concept hunter Wolf had hired.
The Princess of Dark Flare.
Yu Hwan shot to his feet. The recoil was so violent that the chair beneath him clattered over onto the floor.
"Someone came to mind."
Rose lifted her eyes to him and smiled.
"The Princess of Dark Flare. I'm not certain, but if she uses black flame, she ought to have fire as well as dark."
The problem was that she was F-rank.
Yu Hwan glanced at Rose. At the Pohang Unknown Gate, he had recommended the Princess of Dark Flare for the deployment in Trickster's place, and he remembered Rose's answer then as thoroughly lukewarm. He expected another jab this time as well. That concept hunter again?
But.
"You thought of the same person I did."
What came back from her was nothing he had expected. Yu Hwan blinked, then spoke as if to himself.
"...So you've changed your mind."
"There was reason to."
Rose picked up a pen that had been rolling loose across the desk. Round and round she turned it in her fingers, and her voice dropped low.
"Pixie Powder. She's the one who obtained it."
"...What?"
Yu Hwan went rigid. His jaw hung slack, as if it might strike the floor.
The Princess of Dark Flare had Pixie Powder? Then she was the owner of those four hundred thousand coins the articles had been shouting about?
"You're sure?"
"She handed it to me herself. I asked, and she said she hadn't stolen it."
A short laugh escaped Rose. She looked at Yu Hwan.
"...Good news. May I look forward to it?"
"Of course."
Yu Hwan took hold of the door.
"It won't take long."
The latch clicked.
He shut the preparation-room door behind him, strode down the corridor, and pulled out his phone.
"Yeah. It's me."
First, there were things to prepare.
"I'll be away for a while, so run the kids' training yourselves. And dig through the headquarters storeroom—grab some expensive liquor. Doesn't have to be tidy about it."
He wedged the phone between shoulder and ear and jabbed the elevator button.
"Château Cheval Blanc, or Château Fuck-Blanc, whatever. That wine with the weird name. You know the one? Yeah. The 1947. No, I'm not the one drinking it..."
First floor.
"Well. Call it an investment."
Chairman Daeyun smiled at the welcome face across from him and offered a fragrant cup, steam curling up from the tea.
"Drink."
"Thank you."
A young man with blue-green hair and clear, water-pale eyes. Korea's sixth S-rank hunter. Baekrang. A face one rarely had the chance to see at all.
He had issued the summons, yes, but he had never expected the man to come to the Association so readily. Even after calling him in, Daeyun felt oddly dazed, and for a while he turned over where the conversation ought to begin.
"Your father... How does White Night fare?"
"..."
The choice of subject, it seemed, had been a mistake. The air froze in an instant.
Clack.
Cup met saucer, louder than it had any right to be. Siwoo set the tea down and lifted his gaze.
"Who can say. I hardly know myself."
The corner of his mouth drew a curve, but there was nothing graceful in it. A few steps off, Kim Gwanghyeon stood at attention and watched, cold sweat sliding down his back.
Chairman, please...
This chance had not come easily. If Siwoo changed his mind and walked out even now, all of it would be for nothing, and the worry of that gnawed at him.
"Well... I can barely remember the last time I heard from my own boy. Fathers and sons are all like that these days. Isn't that so, Team Leader Kim?"
"Yes?! Ah—yes. Quite so."
Ha, ha, ha. Gwanghyeon and Daeyun laughed, thick-skinned and cheerful. Both of them pretended not to, and both stole a glance at Siwoo's face. Siwoo only went on smiling, then lifted the teacup again.
"Enough of that. Let's come straight to the point."
He brought the cup close to his mouth, though he did not drink, and spoke.
"You are planning a contingency force headed by S-ranks, Chairman, for the giant gate soon to come. Is that not so?"
The smile left Daeyun's mouth.
Baekrang—Shin Siwoo—had predicted exactly why he had been summoned, and to what end. He played at having not the slightest interest in the hunter world, and all the while he had grasped everything.
It did not matter whether a hunter's career was long or short, nor whether his experience in the field ran deep or shallow. Baekrang stood where such things were simply his to have. He could lay hands on every piece of information without lifting a finger.
Just as White Night was doing now, from a sickbed.
"...I don't know how the situation will turn. But I mean to do everything that can be done, so that whatever damage comes is as small as it can be."
Daeyun stirred the cup with a teaspoon and spoke, heavy with it.
"I'll be plain as well. This plan needs the aid of an S-rank hunter."
S-rank or not, here was a Korean steeped to the bone in Confucian propriety—the chairman of the Association, no less—readily taking a lower posture before someone young enough to be green.
Gwanghyeon saw it and was not surprised.
The age had changed.
Awakener conscription was gone. This was a time that set rights ahead of duty.
To throw the power of the state, unthinking, at a person of S-rank was a thing even the Blue House preferred to avoid. In the age of great hunters, an S-rank vested the nation with power simply by existing.
Korea had already lost one national treasure it could ill afford to lose: Maestro. That the Association should be so careful before an S-rank was, looked at one way, both the natural course of things and a karma of its own.
This is an age when even a star of the national team can change citizenship, if the mood takes them.
Would an S-rank be any different?
He knew that China had its eye on Yu Hwan, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. He knew, too, that four years ago the Vatican had quietly sent an envoy to Dr. Plant.
Lest they be robbed with their eyes wide open, not only the upper ranks of Korea's hunter world but the government itself had no choice but to mind their tempers.
All the more so now, when GIA might be hiding somewhere in Korea. He had long heard the rumors—that they plucked precious talent out of every nation, neat as picking fruit.
S-ranks were rare enough as it was. If the fashion was for a state to choose the part of a shield rather than stand over their heads, then let it be the fashion.
Pride? Prestige? None of that mattered. Please. I'll do better by you.
"I know you have no wish to walk a hunter's path. I know, too, that you do not want to show yourself before the public. Do not trouble yourself on that point."
A ripple crossed the black tea in the cup. Daeyun drew the teaspoon out, set it on the saucer, and spoke as gently as he could manage.
"To tell the people now of a thing that is not even certain would only work against us. The Blue House is of the same mind. All of it will proceed in thorough secrecy."
Baekrang. A vessel that might yet surpass even White Night, judged the strongest hunter in the history of Korea.
As chairman, Daeyun could gladly bow his head before this young and capable S-rank.
"Will you help us?"
"..."
Siwoo, who had listened without a word, leaned loosely into the back of his chair.
"Two hundred."
And he answered, flat.
"Wolf will send two hundred hunters."
Two—two hundred?! Daeyun's eyes flew wide at an offer he had never imagined. Even Gwanghyeon, silent at his side, whipped his head around fast enough that the air seemed to hiss.
Did I hear that wrong? He just said two hundred, didn't he?
Scrape together every combat operative under the Korean Hunter Association, from the whole of the country, and you would still have only about four hundred. Set beside that, the number Siwoo had named was staggering.
And these were not hunters of just any guild. A hunter of Wolf came with a guarantee attached, by that fact alone. For the Association, it was nothing short of a radical offer.
Unbelievably, Siwoo's proposal did not end there.
"I am told you are looking for hunters of the dark and fire attributes. You will have work more important than assembling the contingency force, Chairman. Why not leave this matter to me?"
"You... you would?"
"It is not a difficult thing."
Siwoo smiled.
Daeyun flicked a glance at Gwanghyeon. Their eyes met.
Something nameless surged up in them. Overcome, they wanted to leap from their seats and dance. And yet.
"There are, however, three conditions."
...Of course. He had thought it was going too easily.
The hips that had been fidgeting, eager to rise, went meek as if the urge had been a lie. Daeyun opened his mouth with composure.
"Speak. Whatever they are."
Whether the answer pleased him, Siwoo smiled faintly. He straightened the back that had been slumped against the chair and propped his chin on the desk.
"First: I will choose the members of the contingency force myself. Second: from this very hour until the last moment the plan is finished, I will move apart from the other S-ranks. And last, the third..."
His blue eyes narrowed, just slightly.
"You must understand that this is a whim of mine."
In other words, even if a situation like this came again, no one could promise that Baekrang would step forward. That was what Siwoo was saying.
A voice full of certainty, and that arrogant gaze. In them, Daeyun found White Night as he had been when he was young.
"...Very well."
When he came back to himself, Daeyun found that he had answered so.
The young wolf before him smiled, satisfied.
"Thank you."
Namhae Coast Giant Gate — Covert Operation
PARTICIPATION CONFIRMED