Chapter ANOTHER — XIV. Temperance
After seeing Jeanne off, Lee Jun set the prosthetic arm Seo Yoon had brought down in the living room and said, "Could you ask Jeong-hyeon to come down first?"
"Yes, understood."
With that, Seo Yoon headed upstairs. Up in her room on the second floor, Choi Jeong-hyeon was at that very moment detaching her old prosthetic — because Lee Jun had asked her to take the arm off up there and come down after. Having it attached or removed was, well... not exactly something you wanted an audience for.
"How does this thing open?"
Once Seo Yoon had gone up, Lee Jun gave the case he'd set on the living room table a careful once-over. An iron box with a rough, no-frills design, just about the size of a human forearm.
"Maybe this."
Whiiiir—
He pressed and slid the side panel, and the top split open. Before he knew it, the sides had folded away entirely, and the case had reshaped itself into a stand holding the arm upright.
"Oh."
The design of the prosthetic was, how to put it... spectacular. Set beside a flesh-and-blood arm, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. He couldn't imagine how they'd managed it, but even the texture of the skin was identical to the real thing.
{Impressive. Even where I came from, they never had tech this good.}
Was that because Jeanne had left? Silhouette's tone had brightened noticeably. Not having to watch her mouth around anyone was a good thing, he supposed.
{Wh-who was watching their mouth around that pipsqueak, huh?!}
"No need to get worked up. I get it."
Lee Jun soothed her, then left the arm on the table and sank into the sofa. All that remained was to wait for the two of them to come down.
Except that—
Clang-clatter—
"...?"
A commotion drifted down from upstairs. This was going to take a while, apparently. Lee Jun closed his eyes with a faint smile, and in the same breath, his consciousness slowly drifted backward — to a moment from a certain day.
"There we go. Go on — try it on."
Whirrrr—
Lee Jun flexed the prosthetic now fitted to his arm. A steel arm with a crude, workmanlike design. For some reason it made him feel like the hero of an action movie, and he couldn't quite suppress the thrill of it.
Watching him, the woman beside him asked, practically wringing her hands, "S-so? How is it? Can you move it all right?"
"Yeah. Feels about right."
"Still... I could make the other side too, you know? Getting by with one arm must be inconvenient..."
"I told you it's fine. I wouldn't have the time for it anyway."
Having said his piece, Lee Jun offered his thanks to the hulking, muscle-bound old man as well.
"Thank you, Mr. Kratos."
Design by Armea; fabrication by Kratos. A prosthetic built with the very best that could be engineered inside the gate — there was no way it wouldn't be comfortable. And even if it weren't, it hardly mattered. Once they cleared the gate and walked out, he'd have little use for it again. It would probably end up something like a keepsake.
"Kahahah! Your wrist got lopped off last time, remember? You never know — might end up needing this one too!"
"...Pablo."
"Hah, kidding, kidding. And I told you — call me Judgement!"
Pablo laughed heartily and clapped him on the back. This, too, was her own brand of consolation. He had volunteered for the inconvenience, after all — all for the sake of clearing the gate.
"Hmm. If that be the case, then this girl believes she, too, is owed a proper word of thanks."
The woman beside him, a cloth bound over her eyes, spoke up. Blindfolded as she was, she still turned her head and shifted her gaze just like any ordinary person would.
Lee Jun smiled at her. "That's right — Yongliu did her part too, didn't she?"
"Nay, my lord. Pray consider that remark merely this girl's jest."
"Right — and you always go around with your eyes covered anyway! If we're ranking inconvenience, Jeanne has it worse."
"...Lady Ar truly ought to learn to speak more prettily. And Lady Yoanna is much the same — she, too, sees perfectly well without eyes."
"Hmph, even so!"
It was a good kind of racket. Fitting, really — they'd finally grown used to clearing reproduction-type gates. Then again, they had already cleared more than five of them by now, so perhaps it was only natural. This gate didn't look to be particularly high in difficulty either, so it should go smoothly.
And as Lee Jun watched the group carry on, the old man called Kratos voiced a grievance of his own.
"Heh heh. So it's just me you won't talk easy to, is it?"
"Pardon? No, sir — how could I possibly speak casually to you of all people, Mr. Kratos?"
"Bah. After this old man comes Evra, and you speak plenty easy with that one, don't you?"
"You're more than thirty years older than Evra yourself, Mr. Kratos..."
"Kahaha! Gramps ought to come back fifty years younger! He'd still be older than the rest of us, though!"
"You ill-mannered whelp! Is that any way for a child to speak?"
"..."
What was with these people? Why were they all so obsessed with getting Lee Jun to drop the formalities? The hunters' common tongue had that distinction, sure, but ordinary foreign languages barely bothered with casual and formal registers, did they? Bar Yelena, every last one of them was desperate to hear him speak casually. And Yelena was... well, she was simply in a league of her own.
"Haah... everyone, focus."
Lee Jun pressed a hand to his forehead and called the room back to order. The cold metal of the prosthetic lay along his skin. Only now did any of it start to feel real.
"The gate we're clearing this time is a reproduction type — and a Nezer-dimension one at that."
"All that formal speech? Doesn't suit you one bit."
"...Briefings are supposed to be formal, Pablo."
"Call me Judgement. I've told you a hundred times."
Lee Jun ignored her and pressed on.
"For this gate, we've split into three units. Kyle's team, clearing the Nezer Kingdom. The Bernadotte triplets' team, clearing Machia. And then there's us."
The unit under Lee Jun's command was headed for the far eastern edge of the Frillya continent. One of the Four Great Forbidden Lands — the nation of necromancers, Unvid.
"It's designated as forbidden ground, so even within the Nezer Kingdom there was little information to be had. I trust your skills, of course — but there's no harm in being careful."
"Don't worry. I'll protect you, Jun."
"This girl, too, shall gladly lend her strength."
"...I said watch out for yourselves, not me, you blockheads."
They were always this optimistic. He drew a real measure of strength from that side of them — but there was no helping it, either: once let loose, they were children playing at the water's edge.
"Phew~ our unit commander sure is popular, huh?"
"...I keep telling you, I'm not the unit commander."
"Kahah! Fine then — not unit commander. My partner, plain and simple. How's that sound?"
Pablo laughed grandly and slung an arm around Lee Jun's shoulders. Well... it was true that he and Pablo fought as a pair during clears. But put that way, it somehow came out sounding... off.
"Ahem."
The glare flying in from the side stung. Shao Yongliu was, how to put it — the very picture of a Confucian maiden. The mere sight of a man and woman standing close was enough to earn a lecture.
Ooh, look at that — she's already winding up.
"All right, all right, that's enough, everyone. Time we got to our own part."
Lee Jun said, peeling Pablo off of him. This unit's task was to support the main force so their half of the clear could go off without a hitch. If that side handled the fighting, this side handled the story. Judging by how a reproduction gate's clear mechanics worked, you could argue this side was the trickier of the two.
"Let's begin with a careful investigation, shall we?"
At Lee Jun's words, everyone nodded.
No. 9, the Hermit — Armea Eustokia.
No. 11, Justice — Shao Yongliu.
No. 14, Temperance — Kratos Papastatopoulos.
No. 20, Judgement — Pablo Cervantes.
And — No. 0, the Fool.
Last of all, Lee Jun himself.
Nationality, age, race, gender — every last detail different, and yet their hearts beat as one. People whose backs you could trust without a second thought, who would do anything for you if the need arose. In a word: comrades.
"Commencing the clear."
Back then —
he had been, he thought, quite happy.
"Boss?"
"...Ah. When did you two come down?"
Lee Jun's eyes opened at the voice that arrived abruptly at his side — Seo Yoon's. Dark eyes watched him through the lenses of her glasses. The words were delivered without expression, but the concern folded inside them came through all the same.
"You are still in recovery. It would be best not to push yourself."
"I'm fine. This body of mine is pretty sturdy, you know."
Lee Jun gave her a faint smile, then looked over at Choi Jeong-hyeon, who stood there missing one arm. She was gazing at the new prosthetic on the table, fascination written all over her face.
"What do you think? Practically identical to yourown skin, right?"
"Ooh... y-yes, it's amazing...!"
Her eyes sparkling, she gave the arm a thorough going-over — prodding it here and there, then giving it one long, careful stroke. She seemed quite taken with it, evidently. What a relief.
"Here you go. It attaches the same way as the old one. Just hold it against the stump and it seals itself on — there's a brief sting, and then it syncs up."
She fitted the prosthetic on exactly as he'd described. In the process, the wound showed through the loose sleeve of her short-sleeved shirt — a forearm severed a good handspan above the elbow. What remained of her right arm came to barely four inches.
Lee Jun watched in silence for a moment. Something about it left a bitter taste in his mouth. Yes — this was the job. This was what it meant to be a hunter. Walking away from wounds that severe with your life intact was already a mercy, and being grateful for nothing more than that was as good as it ever got.
Whirrr—
Before he knew it, the arm was fully attached, and Choi Jeong-hyeon was bending and flexing it every which way. She looked utterly delighted with the new prosthetic, and watching her, Lee Jun felt a soft smile steal across his face.
Ever since that day, Choi Jeong-hyeon had been winning her battles, one after another. Admirable, certainly — and somewhere underneath, he even felt proud of her. What was this? Was he getting old or something?
{You have gotten old.}
"Hey."
{Hmph, why? You called me old before, didn't you?}
"Are you and me the same thing? You're over three hundred years old."
{Hey!}
Lee Jun let out a quiet snort of laughter. Somehow... things felt pretty peaceful.
And then, cutting straight into that warm little scene, came the shrill ring of a telephone.
Rrriiing— Rrriiing—
Beep—
"Hello, this is S-Class Hunter Management."
— "Is this Mr. Lee Jun?"
"Yes, speaking. What can I do for you?"
A man's voice came through the line — one that felt somehow familiar, a voice he'd heard a few times before.
— "Hello. This is Kim Seong-hyun, Vice Guildmaster of HIM."
Ah, right. HIM's vice guildmaster. That guild's master was a rather unique specimen himself, so back in the day, most of the actual dealings had gone through his second-in-command.
"It's been a while. First time since the auction, isn't it?"
— "So it is. That PR stunt of yours left quite the impression, by the way. I hear you've been taking serious injuries rather often since then. Everything all right on that front?"
As Lee Jun remembered him, Kim Seong-hyun was quite the sly character — a man who thoroughly enjoyed probing and testing people. Which also made him, as ever, the type who made drawn-out small talk feel awkward.
Lee Jun decided this was the place to cut the pleasantries and get to the point.
"I'm always in perfect health. So — what business does HIM have with our management?"
Perhaps the man had read the intent threaded through those words. After a brief pause, Kim Seong-hyun brought out the real matter.
— "The thing is, we understand your management accepts commissions as well. Might you have some time on your hands?"
"A commission?"
The press conference Lee Jun had once held came back to him. The management's endgame was to operate like a PMC — nurturing capable hunters while, in the course of that training, taking on requests from other guilds to clear their gates. The guilds would be rid of the gates they couldn't handle, and the management would get to round out its trainee hunters' field experience. A win-win strategy, set as the long-term goal.
That said, he'd had no intention of accepting commissions this early. They were short on personnel, for one, and it hadn't been long since they'd pulled off a major operation, for another. Still, he decided to hear them out. Listening to a proposal wouldn't cost him anything, after all. No harm in it.
"Please, go ahead with the details."
— "One of our A-Class gates is running dangerously close to its deadline, you see. In truth, we'd meant to hand it over at the recent auction — but the whole event was interrupted midway."
"When's the estimated gate-break date?"
— "One week from now. Friday, October tenth."
"Hmm..."
Far less time than he'd expected. And the date wasn't good, either — it fell right on the heels of the Chuseok holidays.
Chapman had been dealt with and nailed down, yes — but that didn't mean he could let his guard down during the Chuseok event itself. Dolores had already been confirmed to have been in Korea, and other executives could be lurking there as well. Merely staying on guard against that much had his nerves wound tight; piling another job on top might be one burden too many.
But the other side, too, seemed to have called with its mind fully made up. Whether he'd caught wind of Lee Jun's hesitation or not, Kim Seong-hyun swiftly added:
— "Our guildmaster has also instructed me to spare no support on our end. If you'll simply accept the commission, we can even promise you a high-grade artifact."
"Present it first."
— "Pardon?"
"The artifact. Show me what it is first, and then I'll consider hearing you out."
— "Hmm..."
"We're stretched rather thin ourselves, you see. You know as well as I do — if we go in without thorough preparation and an accident happens, it's over for good."
Yes, this was him flexing sheer nerve — a dare for them to put an offer worth his while on the table. You could call it brazen... but frankly, from where Lee Jun stood, he had nothing to lose, which was exactly why the words came easily.
And Kim Seong-hyun...
put forward a reward that defied all reason.
— "Transcendent-grade."
"..."
— "We'll hand over Antilek's Bonfire."
This was...
an insane offer.