That's Your Role

The voice that came out of my throat was high and thin—mine, and yet so foreign that I bit my tongue in shock even as I answered.

"Kang Yu-eul. You are Korea's first S-class hunter. Congratulations!"

Kang Yu-eul. My original name. So it had come through unchanged. At least that confirmed the man in front of me was talking to me.

He was wearing a suit, and he didn't seem to notice my panic or the pain. He just kept congratulating me in that ringing, excited voice.

So I possessed a body and then sat through a rank assessment...

I'd read enough novels about this exact situation to piece it together quickly. Then the man spoke again.

"Would you come upstairs with me for a detailed examination?"

Still too stunned to think straight, I gave a small nod.

"Hah..."

The sun had already gone down by the time I found the address on my ID and made it home. The moment I stepped inside, I sank to the floor.

It had been a long, chaotic day, and now that it was over I let the whole of it wash back over me.

After the examination they told me what I could do. I was the world's first Support-type Hunter—a supporter, in plain terms. Heal, to mend my allies. Shield, to let them weather an attack. Buffs that raised strength and speed. Purify, to strip away status ailments.

In the games and novels of my old world, a supporter was the most ordinary thing in the party. In this one, the concept itself seemed to be unheard of.

Well. They did say I was the first in the world.

After that they walked me through the basics—how dungeons worked, how hunters lived. The place that had examined me was the Hunter Association, a government agency whose job, same as in every novel I'd ever read, was to manage the hunter population. They explained the guilds too, the outfits that processed dungeon byproducts and turned them into profit, and they even recommended a few I might join. I told them I'd think about it later. I just wanted to go home quietly.

Fortunately, the Association respected that. They let me leave without a fuss. They also told me they would announce my existence the next day, and offered me a secure residence under Association protection. I knew well enough that hunters in this world were treated like celebrities, and I had no confidence I could survive the attention that would hit me tomorrow. I accepted the offer and went home.

When the long spiral of thought finally ran itself out, I became aware of my own body. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

"Wow..."

A stranger looked back at me. Small, finely made features set just so. Black eyes. Black hair falling all the way to my waist.

I checked my face and hair, then let my gaze drop to my chest.

Is that... big?

The heroines in novels were almost always described as enormously endowed, so the modest presence I saw in the glass didn't strike me as large at all.

Yeah. This is more realistic, anyway.

Hunter work meant a lot of hard, sudden movement. A body that wouldn't get in the way of that seemed like a blessing. I stepped back from the bathroom mirror to take in the rest of myself.

Skin as white as my face. A waist that nipped in cleanly on both sides, a small navel set between. Hips that flared beneath it, and long legs. The kind of beauty I had only ever seen in dreams was standing in my mirror.

So I got gender-bent.

I'd picked up a few gender-bender novels in my original world. They hadn't been my taste, and I'd never finished one—but the part about waking up in a beautiful woman's body had, apparently, applied to me in full.

I finished looking and sat down on the floor to go over my abilities again. I tried to call up a status window. Nothing came. So I reviewed the skills the examination had confirmed.

Heal. Shield. Buff. Purify. A textbook supporter's kit.

Using them was simple enough: hold the will to cast on a target and speak the skill's name. I could even use them on myself. The moment a skill went off, something drained out of my body—mana, I assumed. Afterward I was left faintly winded, the way you get after a hard run, so there was clearly a limit to how freely I could spend them.

The skills only worked on hunters who had mana. Ordinary diseases—aging, cancer, diabetes—didn't answer to Heal at all. It seemed I could only mend the kinds of wounds you picked up inside a dungeon.

I sat with all of that for a moment. My honest reaction was simple.

What a waste.

S-class, and yet I had no real force of my own. I had always loved the kind of protagonist who held overwhelming power and still refused the easy path of cruelty, who forced the world to accept his own idea of justice. Being a supporter sat poorly next to that image.

That's just greed talking.

I changed my mind almost as soon as I had it, and muttered it under my breath.

"It's still S-class."

The highest rank there was—and the only hunter of this type in the world. Being the one who kept her teammates alive, who covered their attacks and became the tower they all leaned on... that didn't sound so bad. I stood up.

"All right. Let's do this."

I said it out loud, and let myself dream a little of the future I'd just imagined.

"Unnie, get the buffs up on time. All you do is support from the back—if you can't even manage that, what's the point?"

The voice that tore into me was high, sharp, and ringing. Baek Hwa-yeon, our party's fire-attribute mage, was yelling at me again.

She was angry I hadn't timed a buff to her main skill. There had been too many monsters. I'd had to cover the front line.

"No—there are too many monsters right now, this is shield timing. I have to think about the front line—"

"If you'd just buff me I could wipe them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all in one shot. Why are you so slow?"

I tried to explain it calmly. She cut me off anyway.

She wasn't wrong, exactly. If you could bury the enemy under enough firepower before they ever swung, that would be cleaner. But—

"Your ultimate has a cooldown. The front line is going to take damage in the meantime, so I—"

"That's enough. We're still inside the dungeon."

I never got to finish. The voice that cut across mine was low and final, and it belonged to Yu Su-ho—our vanguard, our leader, the face of Korea's number-one guild, Taegeuk Guild. The noise died at once.

"Hah!"

Baek Hwa-yeon let out a hard, frustrated breath, the sound of someone who still had plenty left to say and no permission to say it, and stalked off.

Yu Su-ho's gaze followed her back for a moment. Then it came to rest on me.

"Just focus a little more. Your shield was late just now."

"...Understood."

I killed the feeling again. This was not what I had wanted.

I had wanted a party that ran clean and close, a team I could support with my whole ability and who would support me back. I let out a quiet breath and, not for the first time, regretted the choice that had brought me here.

The salary was high. The hours looked easy. And the man himself had that crisp, impeccably mannered presence I'd only ever seen in books. I signed, and I joined his party.

"Wow, this is actually comfortable?"

"They're going down in one hit."

"My output's way higher!"

With my support they could ignore incoming attacks and keep dealing damage. They could pull more power out of themselves than they had any right to. Combat got cleaner. The party's strength went up. At first, the others even acknowledged what I was doing for them.

And then, as the weeks wore on, my ability became something they simply expected.

"Your shield was late just now."

"Unnie, I couldn't get my full power out because of you!!"

The front line stopped ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bothering to dodge, trusting the shield to catch whatever came. The dealers blamed me the moment their damage dipped. All of them moved as if being cared for on their own private timing was a law of nature.

I got angry enough, once, to blow up.

"At some point you all started acting like my support is just... owed to you. I can't support every single one of you on your personal schedule, and besides—!! My ability is not something you get to take for granted..."

It came out of months of being choked on and talked over. I thought, if I said it, they might finally hear what it was costing me.

"Kang Yu-eul. You signed a contract to be here. Of course you're supposed to support us on our terms. That's your role. Are you seriously asking to be praised for doing the bare minimum?"

"..."

What I got back was Yu Su-ho's cold reprimand, and the equally cold eyes of everyone else in the party. Eyes that said the mood had soured because I was selfish enough to want recognition. The whole room seemed to agree that I was the one in the wrong. I swallowed back a dry heave and barely managed to open my mouth.

"No... urk... I'm sorry."

I wanted to break the contract after that. The penalty was twice my annual salary, and I didn't have that kind of money sitting around. So I was still here, three months later, still doing guild work.

I came home from the raid, walked straight to the bed, and unlocked my phone. News, then the usual communities. That was the ritual.

Reading about the raid I'd just finished—and the way ordinary people reacted to it—had become the one part of the day that actually healed anything.

After the news I opened a community board and searched my own name.

The comments here were rawer than the ones under the news—cruder, thirstier—and yet, for some reason, they didn't feel that bad.

The raid had scraped my self-worth down to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nothing. These comments poured something back into the hollow it left.

The people still cheered for me. They slept easier because I existed. They saw what I could do, and they were glad of it.

Holding on to that, I was able to forget how hard the day had been, and finally let myself sleep.