This Is the Men's Restroom
"...It's real."
Oh Hyeon-seong crouched by the flower bed and stared at his phone screen.
News reports were trickling out from every outlet about a foreign head of state's visit and the summit talks. He'd switched his attention off from the way the world was turning these past month, and he hadn't even known about something of this scale — it made him feel a little sheepish.
At any rate, now that he understood the situation, it made sense why he'd been barred from even approaching the building.
The real problem is... Yoon Seol-ha's trail leads into that building.
His old junior, Yoon Seol-ha, had been a specialist in assassination operations against heads of state and in intelligence work.
She'd mostly operated abroad as an information agent, and she was a capable operative who handled even the trickiest assignments without breaking a sweat.
Being simply strong and good at fighting was one thing; getting the job done was another. She had checked both boxes — a junior you could trust with anything.
But then, a problem arose.
When the emergence of new Special Species devastated China, every member of the Special Task Force had been pulled from their posts and thrown onto the front lines.
It wasn't just Korea — every neighboring country faced the same predicament.
It was an era when hunters were ground up by the thousands. Whether it was Oh Hyeon-seong or Yoon Seol-ha, they fought wave after monstrous wave of unprecedented scale, again and again confronting Special Species that overturned everything the world thought it knew.
The front lines of those days had long since become a land of death, thick with miasma.
Even for veterans who had passed through countless battlefields, it was a hellish, savage place. Everywhere you looked, human corpses and monsters lay heaped together in a murky, blackened wasteland.
Yet even in those extreme conditions, they produced miraculous achievements, surviving stubbornly through the ebb and flow of the front lines within China.
But tragedy came for them in the end.
Back then, high-tier hunters were believed to be immune to Awakened Psychosis, the so-called 'Psychosis.'
High-tier hunters possessed far greater resistance to miasma and a much higher threshold — it had never once manifested in them.
But after relentless exposure to the brutal environment and the dense miasma, their bodies had reached their limits, and Yoon Seol-ha became the first high-tier hunter ever to be devoured by Awakened Psychosis.
When Psychosis took hold of a 12th Grade hunter — a national-level strategic asset — she became a catastrophe all on her own.
Her very existence blew a hole clean through an entire sector of the front line, and in the end, she was put down.
By the hands of the very comrades with whom she had staked her life, battle after battle.
But... if she were still consumed by Psychosis, every road along her route here should have been annihilated. And they weren't.
A hunter consumed by Psychosis loses all reason, her aggression maximized, attacking every human in her path.
Yet as he tracked her trail through the earth's memory all the way here, the streets hadn't merely been spared — not a single person lay dead.
Impossible, if she were in a psychotic state.
Of course... simply assuming she overcame the Psychosis doesn't explain anything either.
If her mind had truly recovered, why kill a hunter with no connection to her at all? Why head, of all places, to the site of an ongoing summit?
The questions kept piling up.
Proper speculation was impossible at this point, but either way, none of it sat well with him.
"Let's go."
Oh Hyeon-seong sprang to his feet, scooped up Merz, and headed for the building.
Somehow, he had to get inside.
Not that the security detail ringing the building like an iron wall was about to let him in.
"It's urgent. I need to go in right now."
"No, like I asked — who even are you?"
Some suspicious man cradling a puppy, insisting he had to get inside immediately. Naturally, they couldn't just wave him through.
Oh Hyeon-seong cast a quick glance around, then quietly tightened his grip.
Persuasion was clearly off the table, so he was preparing to force his way through.
A minor scuffle is something I can smooth over later. But if a real disaster breaks out here, no amount of smoothing over will fix it.
Just as Oh Hyeon-seong raised his hand, resolved to knock both guards out cold and bolt inside—
"Oh? Aren't you Hunter Oh?"
Seo Ho-yeon, Public Security Director of the National Security Bureau, appeared.
Baek Ji-soo's subordinate, the one who had helped him obtain the Original Seeds of rice that had been released into the black market a while back.
At her unexpected appearance, Oh Hyeon-seong's eyes went wide.
"The Security Bureau is here too?"
"Ah, yes. Normally this would be handled exclusively by the Presidential Security Service, but our work got entangled with this matter."
"Good timing, then. Get me inside, please. It's urgent."
"Urgent in what way...?"
"Something is about to happen in there. Right now."
"An incident...? I don't know how you could know that, but there's no need to worry. We've already identified the threat ourselves."
Oh Hyeon-seong was taken aback.
Did the Security Bureau already have eyes on Yoon Seol-ha's movements?
But as he listened, it turned out to be a different story entirely.
"...The IAE is targeting this place?"
The IAE was the extremist organization that preached 'Awakened supremacy and liberation.'
Awakened extremists spread through the underworld of every nation like a virus, but these were an international terrorist organization with overwhelming power.
Madmen with the scale and firepower no ordinary terror group could ever muster, wreaking havoc across the entire globe.
The reason they wielded such influence was their deep, corrupt alliances with the various third-world dictatorships where hunters held the reins of power.
"Korea and France are two of the most prominent non-awakened governments, so they were plotting to assassinate both heads of state at this summit. Of course, we identified the plot in advance and have already neutralized it."
They had arrested the IAE operatives who had infiltrated the country, and near the summit site itself, nineteen more had been killed or captured.
So quietly that the crowds outside and the press hadn't caught so much as a whisper of it.
That was why, beyond the Presidential Security Service's hunters, Security Bureau agents had been deployed all over the place.
Oh Hyeon-seong, at a loss for where to even begin his own explanation, shook his head once and spoke up.
"Can I go inside first? Please."
"Go right ahead."
He was already an acquaintance, and his identity had been vouched for by Baek Ji-soo herself, the head of the National Security Bureau — there was no reason to stop him. She nodded readily.
At her single word, the Presidential Security hunters who had been so obstinate a moment ago quietly stepped aside.
But just as they moved to enter, a man came rushing over to block their path.
"What the hell do you all think you're doing!"
Jeong Pil-ho, Chief of the Presidential Security Service.
A big man with a vicious face, flanked by several hunters, strode right up to him.
"Hey, you little punk! Who the hell are you? What are you, loitering in front of the summit hall?"
"..."
Spittle flew from the orating Jeong Pil-ho and landed on Oh Hyeon-seong's cheek.
And here he'd thought the day couldn't throw any more surprises at him. Wearing the expression of a man who'd just chewed on dirt, he wiped his cheek — and Seo Ho-yeon's face crumpled in disgust as she cut in.
"Jeong Pil-ho. Watch your mouth. Don't pull this crap with a guest of ours."
"Our guest? Since when is this place the Security Bureau's personal living room? You barged in out of nowhere and started stirring things up everywhere! You keep letting outsiders in, punching holes in the security detail — when something goes wrong, you'll be the one taking the fall!"
"Spare me. He's here on business related to our counter-terrorism operation. Go back to guarding the front gate where you belong."
"Ha... these bastards think we're pushovers just because we've been letting them run their mouths."
Tik.
Jeong Pil-ho shot Seo Ho-yeon a murderous glare.
Watching him quietly, Oh Hyeon-seong could more or less guess what was going on, but he was in no mood to play along with the rhythm.
"Let's stop there, shall we?"
"...What?"
"I don't have time to indulge your chest-thumping pissing contest. Your president's head is about to come off."
"You little...! How dare some gutter trash like you put His Excellency's neck in your mouth!"
Oh Hyeon-seong let out a hollow laugh at his furious bellowing.
This was supposed to be the era of the Seventh Republic, wasn't it?
He felt like he'd been teleported straight back to the days of the Fourth.
That reaction only stoked Jeong Pil-ho's fire further, and he marched right up to Oh Hyeon-seong.
Thud.
Then, someone seized Jeong Pil-ho by the shoulder.
Jeong Pil-ho irritably shook his shoulder, trying to fling the hand off, but under the crushing weight bearing down on it, his arm didn't budge an inch.
Only then did Jeong Pil-ho turn around — and froze on the spot.
"What are you doing here?"
Baek Ji-soo was looking down at Jeong Pil-ho with frost-cold eyes.
Jeong Pil-ho was a famous hunter.
He was one of the heavyweights of the hunter world — recognizable at a glance even to Oh Hyeon-seong, who had never once met him.
An 11th Grade powerhouse, holding the key post of Chief of Presidential Security on top of it.
But even he was nowhere near the level where he could go toe-to-toe with Baek Ji-soo, so sorting out the traffic jam was a truly simple affair.
"...Yoon Seol-ha's trail leads here?"
"Yeah. Just in case, the president needs to be evacuated."
Oh Hyeon-seong walked the corridor alongside Baek Ji-soo.
At his words, she immediately contacted the lower floors and ordered a vehicle put on standby.
Keeping up their brisk pace, the two spoke.
"I'll stay by the president's side while we evacuate him. What are you planning to do, Sunbae?"
"Find Yoon Seol-ha."
"Han Su-yeon would have a fit if she heard that."
Baek Ji-soo snorted.
"You're yielding faster than I expected. I thought you'd insist on going in there yourself. Surprising."
"I don't have any intention of smothering him the way she does. But if things go wrong — if it comes to it — I'll kill Yoon Seol-ha with my own hands. So whatever conclusion you reach, come back alive."
Bang!
They strode into the conference hall.
A few people flinched at her sudden entrance, a long blade gripped in her hand, but Baek Ji-soo paid them no mind and went straight to the president.
When she whispered something, the startled president rose from his seat.
Soon the hall was in uproar, everyone hurrying out. But as the president passed the door, he paused for a moment and stared straight at Oh Hyeon-seong.
"Haven't we... met somewhere before?"
"...I'm sure it's just your imagination, sir."
"You need to leave now, sir."
Baek Ji-soo ushered the president out of the conference hall.
The visiting head of state's own security soon swarmed in as well, and their delegation hastily departed too.
With Baek Ji-soo at his side, the president at least needs no worrying. Not that the real business — the part I actually have to handle — is done yet.
Oh Hyeon-seong emerged from the conference hall and scanned his surroundings.
He'd felt it on the way in, but with the world's heads of state gathered in one place, the security was indeed airtight.
No second-rate terrorist crew could ever punch through defenses like these.
But if it was Yoon Seol-ha's ability — then every scrap of security here was nothing more than a field of scarecrows.
Oh Hyeon-seong set down the Merz he'd been carrying.
The little spirit sniffed at the air, looked around, and then darted off toward the trail that had drawn near.
Even without borrowing the spirits' senses anymore, he could tell — she was somewhere close by.
Thud.
Hyeon-seong stepped into the restroom.
The air was thick with the reek of blood.
Hunters' bodies, carved open, sprawled across the floor.
It looked nothing like the work of human hands — as if a single surge of madness had swept through and passed on — and his face twisted of its own accord.
This is...
At the center of it all stood a woman.
Her face drenched in blood, a faint crimson glow smoldering in her eyes.
But when she looked at Oh Hyeon-seong, she slowly lowered the blade she held.
"S... Sunbae..."