How to Face the Past (1)
A long life, put another way, means a long stretch of boredom.
No one can spend every waking moment lost in pleasure, after all.
So the longer you live, the wider that empty span of time grows on its own.
Worse still, stimulation is the kind of thing you grow numb to — the longer you live, the higher your threshold climbs.
That came straight from Freya, who had two hundred-odd years under her belt, so it could be trusted.
"…Hmm."
Silhouette turned its head slowly and scanned the surroundings.
The air was thick with haze and ash.
And within it, the creature beheld a woman — a woman wearing the very same face it had copied.
"Far more information in here than I expected. Who would've thought the memories would swallow me. Looks like you've lived longer than you appear."
"Something like… that."
Lee Jun staggered and collapsed where he stood.
The bleeding was serious.
That final strike — the one he had driven in himself.
It must have gone deeper than he'd thought.
"Haah… haah…."
And yet even pain this sharp didn't register with him at all. His eyes were fixed on one place and one place only.
"Is that you? From the past?"
There stood another Lee Jun.
Himself, rendered in the reconstructed past that Silhouette had conjured.
So this was… two years ago, then.
"Mm. Now this is genuinely interesting."
"……."
The creature studied the scenes unfolding before it with careful attention.
The world around them was utterly silent, without so much as a whisper of sound.
Like a silent film left running.
Whether the sound had been deliberately stripped away, or it had simply come out that way, he couldn't tell.
Either way… for Lee Jun, silence was the mercy.
He had chosen to show it, yes — but none of these memories were ones their owner found pleasant to face.
And soon, one scene gave way to the next.
But the world did not stop.
The memories flowed on slowly, offering up their scenes in scattered, disordered fragments.
The moment gates first came into being.
The year that followed.
His return to Korea.
Founding the Association, building its institutions one by one.
The desperate struggle to raise everything that had crumbled back onto its feet.
And then — the memories crossed over into the years before his regression.
His final death.
Drifting from place to place, living out a tedious existence.
Cast aside by hunter society.
Relegated to a meaningless post within the Association.
And then, laying down the title of Vice-Chairman.
"Memories flowing backwards. How peculiar. I've never seen anything like this."
The creature was right.
The memories from before his regression ran in reverse, and somewhere along the way, they had arrived here — at this moment.
Lee Jun watched as yet another version of himself approached, and then, in an instant, merged into him.
No — felt it happen.
Then he looked up at the Shadow before him.
It still wore her face.
"Hmm. Entertaining."
"That's all you have to say?"
"Not about the memories. That praise goes to you — for resolving to show them at all."
She lowered herself slowly and stroked his cheek.
The space around them had, at some point, shifted back into the black cave.
A place where only the two of them existed.
He had no idea what state reality outside was drifting through… but here, inside Lee Jun's memories —
There was only the two of them.
"So? Feel anything?"
"All of this… is nothing but a meaningless illusion."
"So you feel nothing at all? I doubt that. You're in an extremely unstable state right now."
Tap.
She lowered her hand slowly and pressed it against his chest.
That one simple gesture made his heart beat just a little faster.
"See? It's been over two years now… and you're still like this. Ah, no — correction. Twelve years, wasn't it?"
"…Shut up."
"I may not truly understand the hearts of you humans, but I have seen a great many memories. And from where I stand… you are very, very broken."
The creature raised Lee Jun slowly to his feet.
Threads of shadow wound around him and held him upright.
Like a puppet.
"Hm-hm."
Letting out a low hum, she backed away from him.
And then… she smiled.
Like a child who had just remembered a mischievous prank.
"How about something like this?"
Shk—
A black blade punched through her own stomach.
But the target was not Lee Jun.
It was herself.
Wearing a face she did not want to see, she had driven the blade into her own body.
"…You."
"Well? Are you sad? Angry? If neither… then, hmm. Ironically enough, it seems you want to save me right now."
"Shut… up."
Swish—
"……!"
Thud—
Rumble—
The severed head rolled toward Lee Jun.
By the time it reached his feet, it was making an absurd, comical expression.
Was that mockery?
"Hey, you know… how about now?"
The head spoke to him.
Behind it, the headless body was slowly crumpling to the ground.
Drip—
Drip—
"Oh my? Are you crying?"
"……."
Pull yourself together.
Swallowing all of these memories whole… that was my choice. So endure it.
Endure it… and just follow the plan. That's all.
That's all it takes.
"Right. So what is this plan of yours?"
The one who said that… was Kyle.
Or rather, a Shadow wearing Kyle's face.
And it wasn't just him.
One.
Two.
His old comrades gathered around him, one after another.
"A gift. Isn't it nice, seeing each other again?"
Faces he had missed.
No.
No.
I don't miss them.
I mustn't… miss them.
"Why?"
Missing them was the same as death.
To long for those left behind in the past was to be trapped in the past all over again.
To survive, you had to move forward.
"Keep moving forward like that, and one day there'll be nothing left around you at all."
That's fine.
I don't care.
What I have to do is—
"Protect the world? Protect the people? What kind of idiotic nonsense is that?"
I…
"Get a grip. You're no hero. What do you even think a hunter is?"
Shut up.
You don't even know what a hunter is.
In the end, all you ever do is look at the memories and pass judgment.
"…Fine, I understand now. You're a pitiful creature. Bound to the past, tormented by the present, hunted by the future."
Lee Jun had left too much behind in the past.
Lee Jun had too much he must protect in the present.
And Lee Jun… was the only person in this world who knew the future.
"So pitiful, so terribly pitiful. What could I do… to make you feel better?"
At some point, the head had found its way back to its body.
Whole again, she slowly drew Lee Jun into her arms.
Then, pressing her lips to his ear, she whispered with honeyed sweetness.
"There. I've changed my mind."
That voice slid into his ear and began to gnaw at his heart.
"I want to keep you by my side forever. As my puppet. You'll live in the shadows, forever."
There's nothing here that can hurt you.
You can relive only the joyful memories, over and over.
You'll pass countless hours that way.
Just the two of us.
Making me happy.
"Well? How about it?"
And then.
His gaze, fallen without thought… dropped to his knees.
— You've got dirt on your pants, sir.
Beeeeeeeeep—
Pull yourself together.
Pull yourself together.
Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together.
Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together.
— Wake up.
"…What?"
Snip—
Lee Jun severed the shadow bindings around his arms in one clean stroke.
Then he shoved the creature aside and rose to his feet.
It was hard to believe that, only moments ago, he had been sagging, barely upright.
"How…?!"
"You… know one thing about me, and not the other."
What he had to protect.
Whether it was the past, the present… or the future.
There had always been more of it than he could carry.
"However fast a person runs, they can never seize the past, and they can never reach the future."
And so, always —
Be faithful to the present.
That was the standard he had set for himself… after losing everything.
Lee Jun drew a weapon from his Pocket.
A single tonfa.
That familiar, long-unseen companion he had been watching only moments ago.
And the Shadow, having combed through his memories alongside him, knew this weapon too.
"Ha. You can't even use it properly, can you?"
No —
Perhaps because it had only skimmed the memories in patches. It knew one thing and not the other.
"We built all of our weapons assuming that, one day, each of us would end up wielding someone else's."
A hunter does not leave behind many relics.
And so they carved seals, to leave their names behind.
And they forged weapons, to leave their spirit behind.
"All twenty-two of us did. And I was among them."
Lee Jun never built a weapon of his own.
He had no abilities to speak of — and ironically, it was precisely because of that impotence that he had never relied on tools.
Instead, every one of the others had gone and made weapons that even he could wield.
This tonfa had belonged to Pablo Cervantes.
Her number was 21, her symbol Judgment.
She used her innate Gravity Manipulation to alter the tonfa's weight, amping its destructive force sky-high.
She'd begged them all to call her Judge, and to the very last, she'd raged across the battlefield in glorious, blazing fashion, sweeping her enemies aside.
"Ha, but so what? The moment you pick it up, it's just a hunk of scrap metal!"
"Then I wouldn't have pulled it out, would I?"
When mana was channeled into this tonfa, it detonated from the tip.
She had warped space itself with her Gravity Manipulation, bending those explosions to her will.
"And there's a special mechanism built in so that I can use it too."
Lee Jun raised something else from his Pocket, drawn out alongside the tonfa.
"…A syringe?"
"Does it look like one?"
A mana ampoule, crafted by Freya.
In the old days, wielding someone else's weapon had required a specialized artifact — and after acquiring these ampoules, he'd never had occasion to hold them at all.
He'd idly thought it would be convenient to use the ampoules like this, someday… but who knew that day would actually come.
"You. You've got your barrier completely down right now, don't you?"
"Kh…!"
Just now.
When that creature had embraced him, the strange sensation from before — the one that nullified every attack — had been absent.
That power, which turned all offense into nothing.
It was unquestionably deactivated now.
Which meant…
"What an idiot."
Swish—
In that instant.
Lee Jun's right hand — the one holding the tonfa — was severed at the wrist.
The hand, still locked white-knuckled around the weapon, rolled across the ground.
"Too bad. You talk too much."
"……."
No.
Even at that speed, it would have struggled to reach me in time. So this isn't a mistake — it's a choice.
A choice made to invite complacency.
Press.
Lee Jun brought the syringe down against the shadow-stuff stretching out from his fallen hand.
This was no mana ampoule.
It was a mana suppressant.
Or, put another way — a mana-hardening agent, the raw material of the hardened-mana rounds he'd fired at the creature earlier.
"What… is this…?!"
"Sorry, but that was a bluff."
He had meant to use the tonfa as a decoy from the very start.
Without Gravity Manipulation, firing it was nothing short of self-destruction.
A weapon that could be used, technically — designed as if to say, go ahead, try it.
Typical of her, really.
"Killing you was never the point. The whole reason I came to this gate was the hidden piece."
"You… bastard…"
"A shame. If you hadn't let your guard down, you could have sweated out a hardening agent of this caliber, no problem."
Earlier, the creature had absorbed a full barrage of hardened-mana rounds without so much as flinching.
But now, a single syringe's worth of mana suppressant was enough for its body to begin stiffening, slowly but surely.
That was partly because Lee Jun had entered the memory-space alongside it — but also because the creature had dropped its own barrier the moment it pulled him into its arms.
Perhaps it had decided that, to shake a heart, you needed warmth.
Either way, it was the price of carelessness.
When facing an intelligent being, psychological warfare is always on the table.
An opponent's desires are, always and forever, a tool waiting to be used.
Even your own emotions can be wielded as a weapon — and to win, you stop at nothing.
Sacrifice the right hand, so long as you win. That was all that mattered.
It was the modern age, after all — with mana-craft engineering and healing skills as advanced as they were, a hand was simply something you got reattached.
"This is how the weakest S-Class has stayed alive this long."
Although…
He had died once already.