Mister President
Me, a man of the world—Oh Hyeon-seong.
It felt presumptuous to say it himself, but he was basically a living fossil of this industry.
Whether in a good sense or a bad one.
Only a handful of people remained who remembered the earliest days of the hunter industry and were still breathing.
Unofficially, the Gate crisis had actually begun roughly two decades ago.
At the time, however, the existence of Awakened ones was barely known at all.
The number of people who had suddenly acquired mysterious powers was extremely small, and the number of Gates was smaller still.
Back then, Gates appeared worldwide at a rate of a few dozen per year.
The first time the annual count of Gates exceeded three digits, government officials from around the world gathered for a gravely serious countermeasures summit.
Looking back now, those numbers were laughable.
At the height of things, a single Special Task Force hunter had been expected to clear that many Gates on his own.
Be that as it may, governments at the time concealed the existence of Gates entirely, under the banner of preventing social chaos.
With so few hunters and so few Gates to hide, it was a perfectly viable option in that era.
Soon after, each government began quietly forming covert units to operate in the shadows.
What fool would sit idle while holding such a superb asymmetric asset as Awakened humans?
Utterly unknown to the outside world, they were ideally suited for work in the dark, boasting efficiency and results that crushed every special forces unit ever assembled before them.
Once that effectiveness was proven, governments scrambled to identify and conscript Awakened individuals, desperate not to fall behind in the race.
It was amid that era that Oh Hyeon-seong was hauled off to an Awakened training facility.
A teenager who should have been buying bread at the corner store, he was pulled in as a 5th-batch cadet and formally became a member of the Special Mission Unit.
Looking back now, though, the internal structure of the unit at the time was an absolute mess.
They had only ever muddled through ad hoc; there had never been a proper gathering of Awakened ones planning operations together.
The upper ranks were stuffed with self-satisfied old fossils drunk on elitism, and they'd piled on a heap of bizarre rules that made no sense for hunters.
But the biggest problem, above all, was a lack of capability.
Measured against the stature the word Special Task Force would later come to carry, the unit's competitiveness was almost laughably pathetic.
Whenever they happened to collide with another country's Awakened forces, their instinct was to abort the operation or scramble to withdraw.
Of course, even amid all that, none of Oh Hyeon-seong's operations had ever failed.
Not until a certain mentally unhinged senior misaimed his own power mid-mission and blew a gaping hole in his own foot, that is.
Two years after that.
The newly arrived 5th batch of cadets earned themselves a reputation: the Golden Generation.
After displaying extraordinary talent in training, they went on to shine even more brilliantly once deployed into the field.
Even in hindsight, it was a generation packed with remarkable individuals of exceptional ability.
Han Su-yeon of the Disaster Management Bureau, Baek Ji-soo of the National Security Bureau, Kang Seok of the Special Operations Command.
The key figures of the 5th batch had each grown into powerhouses leading the nation's major institutions.
The old assessment, it seemed, had been dead-on.
It was from this point that the Special Task Force began operating on merit rather than seniority in earnest.
It was also the year Oh Hyeon-seong formally took over as its leader.
Two years after that.
While the 6th batch—forever held up unfavorable comparison to the Golden Generation—was living a bitter existence, the 7th batch arrived to fill the ranks.
By then, the organizational structure had already taken shape under the guidance of their predecessors.
Unfortunately for the 6th batch, this was also when a deep-rooted jinx took hold: the odd-numbered batches were the aces.
Though not quite on par with the Golden Generation, the 7th batch was unanimously hailed as exceptional, and they performed brilliantly.
At their core stood Choi Jeong-il, now the CEO of Aegis, and Yoon Seol-ha.
Both were possessors of one-of-a-kind unique constitutions, drawing attention from the very start and living up to it with their deeds.
They were also juniors Oh Hyeon-seong had been quite fond of.
Unlike the big-ego trio of the 5th batch, those two had been cooperative from day one, following orders without a word of complaint.
For someone leading a team, there could be no finer subordinates—so he had placed special trust in them and entrusted them with his missions.
But then one day, after a certain incident, Yoon Seol-ha's name became a taboo never to be spoken.
All the way up until the unit's final dissolution.
And now, that taboo had come looking for him at a moment he never could have foreseen.
"What... what are you talking about, all of a sudden?"
"Exactly what I said. Yoon Seol-ha is back."
Han Su-yeon said it plainly. But hearing it only deepened his confusion.
Why, and how, would a Yoon Seol-ha who should be dead come back?
"A few days ago, a high-tier hunter named Han Ki-young was murdered in his own home. Anyone Grade 10 or above is managed at the national level, so our bureau launched the investigation ourselves. Up until then, we suspected a radicalist group. Han Ki-young was an exceptional sensory-type, and he'd cooperated with government agencies on multiple occasions—he made a perfectly plausible target. But the findings told a different story."
Han Su-yeon handed over photographs she had drawn from inside her coat. Oh Hyeon-seong took them and gave a slight frown.
"Security camera footage from around the victim's home? The quality's terrible."
It showed a woman walking down a dark street at night—too blurry to make out her identity.
Granted, the silhouette matched his memory of Yoon Seol-ha to an uncanny degree, but he couldn't reach certainty from so thin a lead.
Coincidence was far more convincing than the name of a woman long dead resurfacing out of nowhere.
"It wasn't the photo that convinced us. We found other, decisive traces at the scene."
Yoon Seol-ha had been a single-ability user, wielding a power that existed nowhere else in the world.
Just like Oh Hyeon-seong, the sole holder of the rare constitution known as Spirit Affinity.
And traces of an ability that only she could have possessed were left untouched at the murder scene.
No one else had noticed, but Han Su-yeon knew it the instant she laid eyes on them.
"Han Ki-young was a first-rate sensory hunter. He could read the movements of a single ant from kilometers away. That's why we'd worked with him so many times. And yet an ability user of that caliber died without lifting a finger."
There wasn't a single trace of resistance at the murder scene.
However great one's skill at ambushes, this case was different.
He had owned such hypersensitive Gi-gam that his own senses were a constant headache—a flawless, silent assassination of a man like that bordered on the impossible.
Unless, of course, the killer possessed the caliber of ability that Yoon Seol-ha once had.
"I doubt that's everything. What other evidence is there? Any location pinned on her?"
"I'm sorry. That's all I'm authorized to tell you."
"Then why did you call me here at all?"
"In case you'd heard something from Baek Ji-soo or any of the others. Thankfully, it seems you haven't. But regardless—Senior, don't even think about stepping into this one. It's a matter on an entirely different scale from clearing a Gate or two."
Han Su-yeon said it with real firmness. Oh Hyeon-seong, who had been lost in thought for a moment, finally spoke.
"If what you're saying is true, then let me just ask one thing: what's the plan?"
"Don't worry. I'll capture her alive if I can."
"You think you can subdue Yoon Seol-ha with soft, sentimental thinking like that? You'll get yourself killed."
Oh Hyeon-seong's eyes went cold as he said it.
If it really was her, the opponent was no amateur.
If Han Su-yeon allowed even an ounce of mercy in her handling, it could cost her her life just as easily as not.
Real combat had never been a matter of lining hunters up by grade and duking it out accordingly.
"How she survived, why she killed a hunter, whether she's slipped free of her psychosis—I don't know a single thing about her right now. I can't just kill her outright. Not like... not like last time."
Han Su-yeon's voice trembled slightly.
Just as Oh Hyeon-seong had, she too had watched Yoon Seol-ha die before her very eyes.
It felt as though that blood-stained past, too unspeakable to cleanse and buried in time, was blooming once more.
"Hey. You look off."
"Don't worry about me. Thanks to your crops, Senior, I'm in peak condition."
"...That's not what I meant."
Oh Hyeon-seong fell silent for a moment before continuing.
"Forget it. Go show your face to Choi Jeong-il before you leave. Don't come all the way here and then bolt just because you're busy."
"Got it. And you shouldn't stay in Seoul any longer than you have to. You might get caught up in this."
Han Su-yeon left the rooftop first.
Even then, she kept trying every angle to send him back to Changyeong-ri, and all he did was toss back a noncommittal "sure, sure."
"Phew."
Leaning on the railing, he let out a long, tangled sigh, then descended the hospital stairs and stepped out through the main entrance.
He'd told Choi Jeong-il he'd be right back, but it seemed his bedside visit would have to end there, unfortunately.
"Oh...! Teacher?"
Just then, Joo Ji-hye appeared in front of him.
Wearing that ridiculous furry hat, her face flushed bright red.
Well, how convenient, in more ways than one.
It was a chance encounter with Joo Ji-hye, who had come to visit the hospital.
But what Oh Hyeon-seong heard from her was genuinely interesting.
On her way here, she said, she had crossed paths with a terrifying woman.
Someone strong enough to momentarily overwhelm even Joo Ji-hye, an Grade 11 hunter—yet whose face she couldn't recognize at all.
That alone was strange. A fighter of that caliber would ordinarily have been famous; her face would have been known everywhere.
A strong instinct stirred in him. After getting a rough description of the woman's appearance and clothing, Oh Hyeon-seong headed alone toward the alley where Joo Ji-hye had encountered the mystery woman.
"So this is the place..."
Standing in the alley, Oh Hyeon-seong looked around.
By Joo Ji-hye's testimony, the woman had vanished without leaving a single footprint, despite snow pouring down thick enough to blur one's vision.
Oh Hyeon-seong examined the surroundings carefully as well, but found no notable trace.
Nothing physical, nothing of any ability. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder if she was a ghost.
But no. This wasn't the work of a ghost.
Woof!
Merz, who had been sniffing at the ground beside him, suddenly sprang up.
He had read a trace left in the earth.
Merz set off running along the long, unbroken trail, and Oh Hyeon-seong followed hard on his heels.
The closer they drew to the trail, the stronger his intuition grew that it belonged to his old junior.
But then why...
Tap.
Oh Hyeon-seong finally reached the trail's end.
The last traces led across the street toward a glittering, opulent high-rise.
Thankfully, no accident seemed to have occurred, but a dense crowd had gathered, and something about the atmosphere felt deeply off.
Why does this feel so ominous?
Circling around the gathered throng, he approached the building from the opposite side.
He was heading toward the rear entrance, where a row of dark, heavily tinted vehicles was parked, when a man in a suit cut him off well in advance.
He was blocking the way before Oh Hyeon-seong had even come near the building.
"Entry isn't possible right now. Please turn back."
"Is there some important event going on here?"
"Do you not watch the news, sir? There's a summit taking place in there right now."
"A—a summit? Wait, so you're telling me the President is here right now?"
The man gave a wry chuckle and nodded. And at that, Oh Hyeon-seong felt the world tilt before his eyes for an instant.
"...Unbelievable."