Misdirection (2)
Lee Jun kept staring at the dead TV screen.
His mind was a tangled mess.
"Hah..."
A sigh escaped him unbidden. It wasn't as if anything would go wrong just because things had changed, and yet... something about it still didn't sit right.
Wait. Maybe not.
Would Ebra have been the better choice after all?
"I don't see why you're worrying so much. Someone different showed up. That's all. Is that really such a catastrophe?"
It's not who came that matters. What matters is that a future that was supposed to happen... didn't.
"Even if it's something trivial?"
This... isn't trivial. That's the point.
"Hmm. I see. So that's how it is."
Silhouette answered with complete indifference. She seemed to have yet to grasp what an S-Class hunter actually signified.
Well, the concept hadn't existed in her homeland, so that was fair enough. Meaning to explain the weight of S-Class to her, Lee Jun turned to Seo Yoon instead.
"Miss Seo."
"Yes, sir."
"What are your thoughts on S-Class hunters?"
"I'm... not sure what you mean, sir."
"Anything works. Good things, bad things—whatever's been on your mind about them. Just tell me."
At the question, Seo Yoon fell into brief contemplation, carefully choosing her words. Understandable, perhaps—Lee Jun, sitting right in front of her, was himself an S-Class.
"Tell me exactly what you feel. No filtering."
"...Understood."
Seo Yoon nodded, then spoke. What S-Class hunters—the Initial Awakeners—felt like to her was this:
"My first thought was... that they all seem to do whatever they please."
"You've seen them exactly right."
Lee Jun couldn't have agreed more with those words. To truly understand a person, you need to spend a long time at their side. And by that measure, Lee Jun had eaten from the same pot as more Initial Awakeners than anyone alive at this point in time.
Setting aside the fact that he'd regressed, that is.
"The Initial Awakeners... I don't know why, but every last one of them had something loose upstairs. To be fair, that wasn't true of most of them at the start—but everyone who survived turned out to be one of those."
Come to think of it, that really was the case. Why did all the sane ones die, leaving only the lunatics behind? Was it connected to ability? Honestly, he couldn't say.
Either way, one thing was certain: most S-Classes were out of their minds.
This incident proved it. A hunter with the audacity to hold an S-Class rank, blowing off a government-requested schedule and sending a proxy instead. The government itself had extended the invitation for cooperation, no less.
"He does stand out even among S-Classes... but I can't exactly say the rest of them are innocent of it either."
At Lee Jun's words, Seo Yoon nodded. She, too, knew what kind of antics the S-Classes had been up to all this time.
Well, most of it had been splashed across the news, after all.
And then she added something more.
"And at the same time... I think they're all tremendous superstars."
"Super... stars?"
"Mm. How should I put it... they know how to raise their own market value. They know how to make people go wild for them."
"Ah—in that sense, you're exactly right. Like it or not, they're all superstars."
S-Class hunters carried immense symbolic weight. And of course, the power backing that symbolism was every bit as staggering.
Three years had passed since the Initial Awakeners first appeared, and still no one had emerged with strength rivaling theirs. A few had come close, but not a single one had fully closed the gap.
These were people like that. You could call them humanity's hope—
—and every last one of them was hopelessly self-absorbed.
They simply knew how to drive people crazy, you might say. Even if you assumed it was all calculated self-promotion, as Seo Yoon had, there was nothing to refute. But of course, they weren't acting that way on purpose.
Which made them all the more perfect as superstars, didn't it? Driving both fans and haters alike completely insane—without even trying.
"And one more thing..."
"And what's that?"
"I believe they serve as... the highest point every hunter aspires to reach."
The one hundred and three Initial Awakeners still breathing. They were idols to every hunter alive.
To the general public, hunters might all look the same—but that only held true up to about A-Class. People might tear into an S-Class over their personality, but never, ever over their skill.
Ah. Except for me, of course.
......
Depressing, when he thought about it. The one and only S-Class whose ability was openly doubted—seated at the very bottom of the table: Lee Jun.
Unique, if you wanted to be generous about it. More accurately: an absolute pain in the ass.
In any case, every hunter carried some S-Class hunter in their heart as a personal target. Combat styles didn't diverge all that many ways, and with over a hundred S-Classes in the world, anyone could find a model of their own ideal among them.
Some, like Yoon Seol, couldn't care less about any of it—but they were a peculiar minority. Which meant that aside from the rare genius, every hunter had a paragon to measure themselves against.
"Then let's try an example. Miss Seo, your class is assassin, correct? Which S-Class hunter's combat style would be most useful for you to study?"
"I would have to say... Madam Yelena, most likely."
"Correct."
Yes—the assassin class, with its pronounced trickster streak, prized mobility and dirty tricks above all. By that measure, Yelena was the perfect reference.
That was the kind of existence S-Class hunters were: their conduct, their combat style, every last detail of them became a lesson for the juniors who followed.
"And yet... they're all so utterly self-willed, as you've seen."
"...Forgive my ignorance, but—the person you called in this time. Was he one of your old comrades as well, sir?"
"You could say that. Ebra... and that one too."
Saying this, Lee Jun switched the TV back on. This time, the news showed Ebra stepping out of the airport.
He'd head straight for Seoul from there, presumably, to meet the president and the Association chairman. If Lee Jun hadn't retired, he'd have been in Seoul right now, being prepped for a VIP reception of his own.
Same as last timeline.
But there was one thing nagging at him.
"...Something's off."
Ebra was never a man who enjoyed the spotlight. Before awakening, he'd been a professional gambler—shrugging off the stares of strangers was practically second nature to him.
And yet, there he was...
"He's drawing that attention on purpose, isn't he?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"He's deliberately pulling every camera onto himself. Like he's hiding something behind his back."
The man had shown up draped in an absurd number of ornaments—utterly unlike him—and in front of the cameras he'd pulled some kind of stunt, calling out Lee Jun's name.
He'd been too stunned earlier, reeling from the fact that a proxy had come at all, and missed it. But watching now, it was wrong. All of it was wrong.
That was... a script. The script of someone terribly familiar with this kind of theater.
"...Don't tell me you're off doing something somewhere again."
"I'm sorry—sir?"
Honestly, he was starting to suspect it. If it was that guy... he just might pull it off, laughing about how fun it would be.
Of course, if you pointed out that Ebra held a seat of his own in his own country and surely couldn't—
......
Ah. Right. The very top of S-Class absolutely could.
Threaten to emigrate, and the government would tremble in its boots—that was what a single-digit-ranked S-Class hunter was. The Magician was... ninth, currently.
"No way. He wouldn't actually..."
Seo Yoon, utterly unable to follow the chain of his reasoning, cautiously called out to him.
"Um... sir?"
"Ah. Yes."
"I've been meaning to ask... what exactly have you been saying, sir...?"
Had his explanations been that sparse? Lee Jun knew his old comrades down to the finest detail, but Seo Yoon didn't. And explaining all of it now would mean...
"PTSD?"
Where the hell did you even learn that word?
"It's one of the words left strongest in your head. Obviously."
......
There was no way. Not over something this small.
"Then why else have you been like this? Even now. You can't say his name properly."
......
I can say it.
Ebra Rubenter.
And...
And.
"See? You can't."
......
"Ah—I get it now. It depends on how it ended, doesn't it? In that timeline you keep calling 'last time.'"
Shut up.
"The comrades who died more horribly—the ones you're most afraid to remember. Isn't that it?"
Shut... up.
Vmmmm—
His skull was ringing.
What emotion was this thing trying to provoke in him?
Lee Jun... knew, of course. He knew perfectly well.
"Sir...?"
"...Yes."
"You look quite unwell, sir."
"No... I'm fine."
Seo Yoon came into view, seated across the table. She was watching him with concern.
Or—was it concern?
His head was too dizzy to read her properly. Everything was just... swimming.
"...I need to rest for a while."
"I believe you should, sir."
"Yes..."
"Shall I help you upstairs? If it's too much—"
"That won't be necessary. I'm all right. You should go get some rest too, Miss Seo."
Scrape—
He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. And at that moment, Silhouette's voice rang out again.
"Oh dear. How pitiful. Pitiful, pitiful."
"A soul divorced from the world, running alone through a different time. A heart sealed shut, crumbling, pushing away and rejecting everyone near. A poor child. Born to a fate with nowhere to stand. So very... pitiful."
His mind went numb.
Every time her voice sounded, his consciousness drifted away and snapped back, over and over. He couldn't tell what she was playing at—but whenever those words reached him, something cold coiled around his heart.
And within that cold, a faint warmth stirred—making his stomach lurch.
"Come away with me. What do you say?"
Was it a hallucination?
Her figure appeared before his eyes. She extended her hand toward him, slowly—
—as if to say: take this hand, and vanish forever.
......
He was dizzy. If he took that hand, would it all finally stop?
Maybe so. Maybe...
Grip—
"Sir."
Whoosh—
The instant his hand was seized, the hallucination shrouding the room shattered all at once, scattering like startled birds.
The hand that had caught his outstretched fingers... belonged to Seo Yoon.
"I believe you do need the support, sir."
"...Thank you."
"Hmph. That woman is a persistent nuisance."
"You should go up and rest, sir."
"......"
Lee Jun climbed to the second floor leaning on Seo Yoon's shoulder. Once he was in his room, she eased him down onto the bed and slipped out.
The door began to close.
Slowly.
So slowly.
Creeeak—
Thud—
Sitting on the bed in the darkened room, Lee Jun thought quietly.
Silhouette. What this creature actually wanted... he couldn't tell.
The mana oath was absolute. She'd mentioned before that there might be ways to route around it, but frankly, he doubted such a thing was even possible. And if it were possible—
"Are you doubting me?"
Of course I am.
"Why ever would you?"
Swoosh—
She spilled out of his shadow.
"I will always move for your sake. I swore it, didn't I?"
"Let me say it one more time. That doesn't mean I trust you completely."
"How sad? I gave you everything I have, and this is what I get back—distrust."
Her fingers stroked along his cheek. Her violet eyes, drawn close, glinted in the moonlight.
That eerie purple glow kindled some nameless unease in his chest.
"Get off."
"Hmph. I was planning to anyway."
With that, she peeled away from him in one fluid motion—then smiled, and added:
"An intruder just showed up, after all."
"What?"
"Well then, goodnight. I'm going back inside."
The instant she finished speaking, Silhouette dispersed—gone in the space of a blink, like a shadow deprived of its light.
More importantly, though.
An intruder?
Who on earth would come barging in at this hour—
Just as the thought formed—
Clack— clack— clack—
"......?"
With an unpleasant, rattling sound, the window swung open on its own.
Why?
"My, my. What a dumbfounded face."
A voice dripping with mischief. Blue hair and a white coat billowed on the night wind.
"You thought I wasn't coming, and you were disappointed, weren't you? Fufu—even that was part of the misdirection."
Perched atop the window frame, there she was.
"It's been a while, hasn't it? Assistant."
"...Yelena?"
Arcana Number One. The Magician.
"Well? Surprised to see me?"
Green eyes, shimmering with mystic power... curved into a sly, foxlike gleam.