An Unusual Summit (2)
Not long after the Great Calamity known as the Gate Crisis, a man had gathered several Initial Awakeners and formed a team.
Twenty-two members in all, that team had cleared countless gates and dungeons throughout the most chaotic period in history.
Few people remember it now, of course.
But a handful of the Initial Awakeners still do.
"...I miss those days."
Arcana.
Twenty-two Initial Awakeners that Kyle Rodrigo, their leader, had recruited from every corner of the world.
These days fewer than half of them survive... but those who do are counted among the very best the hunter world has to offer.
Well.
Except for the very first to join... Lee Jun.
"You really are something else, Assistant. You were the first one our dear leader snapped up, after all."
"Jun was with him before Arcana even existed."
"Oh, please. That's only because I happened to be in Korea at the time."
The living room of Lee Jun's house.
In what had all but turned into a boarding house for old comrades, the three of them sat around the table.
Number 0, Lee Jun.
Number 10, Ebra Rubenter.
Number 1, Yelena Nikolayevna Zaychik.
Every Initial Awakener is an S-Class hunter.
S-Class hunters are the object of every hunter's admiration — beings who transcend the very concept of 'hunter' itself.
Again, with the exception of Lee Jun.
But with all that presence shelved away, this room held only three hunters lost in old memories.
"'Happened to be'? That's an awfully convenient word for it, don't you think? Assistant isn't the type to have that kind of luck."
"...I'll agree with the second half, but not the first."
Kyle bringing Lee Jun into the fold had been pure coincidence.
No — it was pure coincidence.
They'd simply been in the same building when the Gate Crisis erupted.
"It was a department store, wasn't it?"
"That's right."
"Hm. But you hate places like that, don't you, Jun?"
"He does, he does. I've never once heard of the Assistant going shopping."
"...Which is exactly why I'm telling you it was a coincidence. Even I don't know why I ended up there that day of all days."
He didn't much care to recall what happened back then.
It wasn't a fond memory.
The building had collapsed, and people had died in droves.
In the very heart of that calamity, Lee Jun had met him.
"Well, Assistant may call it coincidence, but I see it differently."
"Differently how?"
"The world doesn't work that way, darling! Everything you can see is already woven into inevitability. The reason any of us survived at all was so we could meet each other. All of us!"
"...What kind of nonsense is that?"
"You don't have to understand it. I just believe it, that's all."
Lee Jun couldn't make heads or tails of Yelena's logic.
No — honestly, he could more or less guess.
She was a fatalist.
Her fondness for astrology and the like probably stemmed from the same place.
Back when the comrades used to read tarot cards together, she had put particular, absolute faith in the results.
"So what you're trying to say is, me being here right now is all destiny?"
"Exactly. That's what I'm saying."
"Sorry, but this time you're wrong."
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"I can't explain the details, but I'm certain of it."
Lee Jun had regressed.
If the previous timeline had been destiny, then in this one that destiny had been overturned.
And if it were the other way around, it would mean the previous timeline was never destiny at all.
Either way, it had all changed through the choices Lee Jun made after his regression.
Destiny is called destiny precisely because no human hand can bend it.
But.
Lee Jun had regressed, and at the fork in the road, he had turned aside by his own will.
And what he built there was Management.
"These days I don't put much stock in destiny."
Of course, if someone insisted that disbelief was also destiny, there'd be nothing to say.
If that's what fatalism means.
If you want to call it that.
Then fine, whatever.
"Assistant. Why do you look like a man who has achieved enlightenment?"
"Jun's been through a lot. I only wish you'd settle down like that someday yourself."
"Hahaha, come now, old man, what are you even saying? You're telling me I'm less composed than the Assistant? I, the prodigiously transcendentally genius beautiful magical girl, Yelena Nikolayevna Zaychik?"
"For starters, that string of titles alone is less mature than my granddaughter."
"Hehe, anyone who means to catch the eye is bound to stand out wherever they go. And to that end, one doesn't hesitate to wear a mask."
In other words, what she was saying was this:
"So the immaturity is all an act?"
"Hehehe! Precisely! See, you understand me perfectly, don't you, Assistant? Meanwhile the old man has absolutely no sense at all."
"If the 'sense' you mean is yours, then having none of it is probably the better option."
So saying, Ebra chuckled and raised his glass.
Harsh whiskey.
As he sipped the strong liquor with a single lone ice cube floating in it, he added his piece.
"Still. On this one point, I happen to agree with Yelena."
"Huh? Well, well, the old man actually taking my side for once?"
"It's not about taking sides. It's a matter of conviction."
Ebra was a gambler.
Or rather, he had been one.
Before becoming a hunter, he had made his living gambling his way through the casinos of Las Vegas, Macau, Monaco, and the Philippines.
Since a card sharp couldn't afford to have his skill show on the surface, he'd deliberately throw hands to lose gracefully — apparently never taking home even half of what he actually won.
But given that he'd managed to comfortably feed a family on that remainder, he must have been a truly exceptional sharp.
"It was back when I was in Macau. I dropped into a mid-sized establishment — the kind of place where the so-called sharps rigged the tables."
"Sharps, as in... cheats?"
"Right. Fraudulent gamblers."
He loved diving headfirst into openly rigged games.
That was where he tested his own skill.
When he put his mind to it, Ebra's win rate was remarkably good.
"Old man, why bring that up out of nowhere?"
"Because drifting from table to table like that is where my conviction came from."
Living as a gambler had taught him one belief.
Luck does not exist.
Everything moves within the bounds of calculation and technique.
The ones calculating are the gamblers; the ones employing technique are the cheats.
Those who dip their toes into a game as idle amusement may believe in luck, but in the end they lose everything they have.
Which is to say: luck is a fiction.
"Hold on, doesn't that make you a sharp too? I heard somewhere you were basically the same breed."
"I was a specialist in fleecing the ones with technique. I never touched an ordinary table."
"Either way, the origins are rotten, as they say."
"I'm telling you they're not."
Ebra denied it, but... well.
Honestly, his sleight of hand went far beyond the ordinary.
He could personally vouch for that, having been taught a few of the tricks himself.
If Ebra ever got serious about using technique, there would be no one alive who could catch him at it.
"But out of conviction alone, you never stooped to that?"
"Exactly right. That's our Jun — you always catch on in one go."
"But old man, you're the unlucky type, remember? So you're just denying it out of embarrassment. Assistant, don't nod along with this either."
Somewhere along the way, the three of them had slipped deep into reminiscence.
Perhaps because the years they'd shared were simply that long.
The topics of conversation scattered off in every direction without end, and the three of them recalled the past with laughter, groans, and everything in between.
"......"
Watching Lee Jun, Seo Yoon read a quiet loneliness in him, and an old ache beneath it.
Memories of people he could never see again... carried longing with them.
And so, on impulse, she called out to him.
"...Sir."
"Ah, Seo Yoon."
"It's gotten very late. You have a schedule tomorrow, so perhaps it's time everyone turned in for the night?"
"You're right. Has it really gotten that late?"
At her words, Lee Jun glanced at the clock.
It was already pointing to two in the morning.
"There you've heard it. Everyone, off to bed."
"Mmm, Assistant. I'd like to stay a while longer."
"Jun, you've never needed much sleep anyway, have you?"
"I'm weaker than the two of you, I'm afraid. Sleep and meals are kind of required for survival, you know? So — meeting adjourned."
Lee Jun ushered the two grumbling stragglers upstairs.
It was late; better to call it a night and reconvene in the morning.
Come daybreak, they'd have to start investigating the problem Yelena had brought in earnest.
With that, Lee Jun deposited the pair into their respective rooms and came back down to the first floor.
He wanted to talk with Seo Yoon before he slept.
He'd spent the whole day absorbed in his old comrades — had he been neglecting his own hunter a little too much?
"Seo Yoon."
"Yes, Sir."
She was clearing the table.
Coffee cups the three of them had drained, plates of snacks, and so on.
None of it was her responsibility, really.
"Leave it. I'll clean up in a bit."
"That won't do. Tonight it's my—"
"Oh come on, it's fine. Looking after things like this is literally what I'm here for."
Keeping his hunters comfortable was part of a CEO's duty, too.
He couldn't have them picking up after his messes.
Lee Jun took the empty coffee cups from Seo Yoon's hands and headed for the sink.
And behind him trailed Seo Yoon, shuffling along a little hesitantly.
Her expressions were still faint, but they seemed undeniably richer than before, which put his mind at ease.
He asked her as gently as he could.
"Seo Yoon, is there something you're curious about?"
"......"
At his question, she hesitated for a moment before speaking.
"...Seeing you with your old comrades, you seemed very happy."
"I wouldn't say that. These are people I was glued to twenty-four hours a day, every day. Honestly? I'm sick to death of them by now."
"And still... you looked happy."
Lee Jun, wrapped up in old memories, had looked genuinely content.
An openness she'd never seen from him when it was just the two of them.
And yet, at the same time, an inexplicable loneliness and grief kept peeking through the cracks of it.
Seo Yoon didn't know why.
But... she didn't want to ask.
Somehow, she felt that asking would only make him sad.
So she asked something a little different instead.
"How long were you with them, Sir?"
"Counting from when the final roster was complete... about a year, give or take. Of course, plenty of them joined before that. Ebra would be around a year and nine months, Yelena about a year and eleven."
Since Lee Jun had been there from the very beginning, he remembered the order of every arrival.
Ebra had joined in Hong Kong, Yelena in China — so roughly around those times, he supposed.
But Seo Yoon's curiosity didn't seem satisfied yet.
"Hm... only, from what I could see, you seemed like comrades who had spent a decade or more together."
"Ah, that?"
Fair enough — it had only been a little over a year.
But that one year held time that no number could accurately express.
"You know about the gates that contain history, don't you, Seo Yoon?"
"You mean the ones where the history of a particular dimension is reproduced inside?"
"Right. And those gates run on a different flow of time."
"Then you spent far more time together inside them."
"Far more," she said.
She was right.
Gates that contain history.
Commonly known as Reproduction Gates.
They weren't given that name simply because a segment of the original world's history played out inside them.
By that standard, the S-Class gate in Gangneung — the one that had brought him Silhouette — had reflected another dimension's history as well.
For a gate to be classified as a Reproduction Gate, at the very least the flow of time inside had to differ from the outside, and the clear conditions had to be complex.
Reproduction Gates of that kind were vanishingly rare.
They never appeared below A-Class, and even among S-Class gates, maybe one in ten qualified.
And yet, in the past, Arcana had cleared these Reproduction Gates by the dozen.
That was thanks to Kyle's uncanny knack for sniffing them out.
Come to think of it now, maybe that was some kind of unique ability of his.
Lee Jun looked over at Seo Yoon, who was listening intently.
She was nodding along, absorbed in every word, and paired with her glasses, the look gave her a strangely scholarly air.
At that point, he decided to throw a question her way — half in jest.
"How many Reproduction Gates do you think we cleared, Seo Yoon?"
At the throwaway question, she pondered it with complete seriousness.
She glanced sidelong at Lee Jun, then produced what she considered a reasonable estimate.
"Hm... perhaps ten or so?"
Ten.
Which would be a lot, actually.
Now that Reproduction Gates had grown scarce, roughly four were reported worldwide per year.
But in that first year after the Gates emerged, their numbers had been overwhelming.
Not that the world knew that.
Why?
Because the majority of them had been swept up and swallowed whole by Arcana.
And that number was...
"Thirty-seven."
......
A brief silence.
Then, after a moment had passed, Seo Yoon let out a voice caught somewhere between disbelief and awe.
"...I'm sorry — what?"
"The time multipliers were all over the place, so an exact count is hard to pin down, but roughly? Eleven years or so."
"......"
At that, Seo Yoon was left utterly speechless.
Well...
Anyone would have been.