Hunting Lesson (3)
Elenor Andersen had a personal creed.
There is no such thing as friendship between a man and a woman.
There exist only males and females who crave love, and nothing more.
And so, Elenor found the relationship between Cheon Yuha and Choi Gangjun deeply, endlessly suspicious.
Sure, they'd been introduced as friends — but realistically speaking, how could a man and a woman grow that close in a single week, and then go on a trip together for a full two days and one night at that?
And she was supposed to believe there wasn't a single romantic feeling between them?
"As if!"
Seventeen years old by human reckoning — but with a hundred and seventy years of real time spent utterly alone, Elenor simply could not accept it.
……There was definitely something going on.
She carried that certainty — a conviction that felt nothing like mere doubt.
Only, since this was Cheon Yuha's romance to win, she trusted her friend to handle it well and simply waited. Wasn't listening from the sidelines and cheering someone on exactly what a friend was for?
"All I need to do is stop her from bulldozing through everything without reading the room."
That was what she believed, right up until Saturday.
But when Cheon Yuha went silent for twenty-four straight hours, every ominous possibility imaginable flooded Elenor's mind.
……What is this? Why hasn't she contacted me?
She only managed to relax much later, when a belated three-letter text finally arrived — and even then, part of her felt hurt, and the worry never quite went away.
Just what on earth had happened, that there'd been no contact at all for twenty-four hours?
What in the world happened between those two?!
Of course, even at that point, her every thought was nothing but pure concern for her friend. What if something had gone wrong?
It was an old woman's fretting, spun entirely out of her own wild imaginings as she cycled through one possibility after another. Elenor was well aware of that fact herself, and she never once felt disgusted with anyone over it.
"Who keeps leaving my texts on read, huh?!"
"Gahk! Kkh! E-Elenor! I never once ignored you on purpose, there were circumstances! Circumstances!"
"Whaaat?! Circumstaaances?!"
"No, wait! First let go of my throat!"
At that point, she was only thinking that she needed to keep a close watch on this Choi Gangjun fellow and find out whether he was really the kind of man who could make her precious friend cry.
That was all it would have been — if not for what happened the previous night.
"……Haaah."
The air of the small hours was still bitterly cold, and her breath crumbled to mist as it left her lips.
Having poured her heart out to Cheon Yuha, Elenor Andersen began to wonder — when, exactly, would she herself ever take a lover?
She started her walk through the park with every button of her coat done up, hiding the bruised ache along her side.
Breathing in the crisp night air, she sank into a long, winding meditation on her own future, her friend's future — and perhaps, someday, the future of the world itself.
Oh. I've come way too far.
The moment the thought struck her, Elenor turned back toward the dormitory, moving as quickly as she could.
She chose the fast route — the one that was less manicured and more deserted, running close to the third dormitory through an alley few people ever walked.
That she saw what she saw beneath the brilliantly lit streetlamp there was, after all, pure chance.
"……Huh?"
Elenor saw it, plain as day.
Choi Gangjun, holding a secret meeting with another woman. The image was burned into her vision, vivid and unmistakable.
For an instant, her heart plummeted — even though the man was not her lover.
……Ah.
Even as violent confusion tore through her, instinct told her to hide her body, and an equally powerful impulse demanded she watch these lunatics through to the very end — so she ducked behind a nearby patch of brush.
The dew-beaded leaves she'd always found so lovely felt sinister and clammy today.
And then Elenor saw, clearly.
Off in the distance — in a way that proved this could be no accidental encounter — two figures locked in a fierce embrace.
There'd been no time to make out a face, but one thing was certain: that head of hair had not been red.
It wasn't Cheon Yuha.
The face of her friend, smiling so brightly, rose in Elenor's mind. And over that lovely face of Cheon Yuha's, the image of that sinister man was laid — and then──
Elenor returned to herself almost instantly, composed again as if she'd never wilted at all, and led the way into the forest. Perhaps she'd been frustrated at only catching the goblin's ambush at the last possible second.
So Elenor is surprisingly emotional at times like these, I thought, following behind her.
Then I glanced down at my terminal. 10:20 a.m. With roughly an hour left before the lesson ended, factoring in the walk back, time was getting tight.
"Found it."
And just then, Elenor finally discovered the cave hidden beyond the undergrowth.
She stopped where she stood, took the bow off her back, and drew the string.
Creeeeak—
Could she really see all the way into the cave's depths, even at this distance? And even if she could see it — could she actually hit it?
I couldn't say for certain myself, but with a resolute gleam in her eyes, she pierced the darkness with her gaze.
Thwang. The string sang free.
And the arrow found its mark.
──GRRAAAAGH!
At the wail echoing out from the cave's depths, Team 2 scrambled into formation. Bang, bang, bang — furious footsteps thundered closer, and then the massive bulk of the beast emerged at last.
The thing came charging out on all fours, and the instant it spotted us, it reared up and let out a shriek.
──URRAAAAGH!
It's absurdly big.
A Horn Bear. A mid-grade magic beast with a bear-like build, distinguished by thick, tough hide and a great horn jutting from its forehead. And this particular one's body and mana reserves were overwhelmingly larger than any of its kind I'd seen.
We'd get it, no question — but forcing damage underneath that thick hide was going to take a while.
Close call, is it?
The answer showed in its right eye, where the arrow was buried and blood trickled down in a slow stream.
──URRAAAAGH!
The Horn Bear finally charged. A beast the size of a house barreling toward us — the pressure was considerable. Kim Jisu, our designated target, screamed.
And even as he screamed, he gripped his spear hard and finished readying his thrust.
Elenor immediately fired restraining shots.
Taang—taang—taang—!
But a wall of blue mana bloomed over the Horn Bear's black hide and knocked the arrows aside with ease. The horn on its forehead gleaming brilliantly, the beast had apparently awakened a defensive-type technique.
Glaring hard at the sight, Elenor nocked an arrow barely half the thickness of the others in her quiver — a shaft so pale and skeletal it might have been whittled from bone.
─Baegansi. The White Angler Arrow.
The arrow of the white, ravenous ghost — a famous specialty of the elven race, renowned for their forest rangers and their craft in making specialized arrows.
The moment I saw her draw that arrow, I readied myself to step into the fight.
If she was willing to burn a specialized arrow on a mere training exercise, then someone had better seize the opening, no?
─The trigram of wind.
I tore across the ground riding a gust.
"Hraaagh!"
Kim Jisu's spear snapped under the Horn Bear's brutal spike attack, and I took his place at the front line. The great lump of a bear greeted me by bringing its head-sized paw down in another spike, as if to say welcome.
I tilted my head slightly, slipped past it with room to spare, and closed in on its torso. Resting my palm against that thick hide, I drew my qi up and murmured quietly.
─The trigram of fire. "Fajing."
KWAAANG!
I detonated a bomb in its gut.
"──KKAEEEEK!"
The Horn Bear howled in agony and spewed black smoke from its mouth. It looked utterly miserable — though from the feel of it, my internal strike hadn't dealt nearly as much damage as the power behind it deserved. Not enough to kill it in one blow.
But it had certainly stolen the beast's attention.
Pak—! The pale, skeletal arrow drove deep into the Horn Bear's torso. And the blue barrier coating its hide began to thin, little by little.
True to the name gaki — the ravenous ghost — the arrow devoured the beast's mana at a terrifying rate.
Kiiing… kiiing…
Sensing something had gone terribly wrong, the Horn Bear began to cry out. Elenor loosed another arrow without a flicker of hesitation — and I was right there with her.
This time I stacked strikes from the blind spots, carving its stamina down piece by piece.
──KKUEEEEEK!
Who knows how long it had been since a pig-slaughtering shriek came ringing out of what was, technically, a bear hunt. Guuuuung……!
At last, the Horn Bear collapsed onto the ground.
I pulled out my terminal and checked the time. 10:50 a.m. Thankfully, we had a little breathing room.
After calling Kaiba over from keeping watch for other beasts, we set about skinning the hide. The handsome young man peeling bear pelt away with metal cards was, in fact, the son of a Hokkaido taxidermist.
……How on earth does he even do that?
The hide he stripped away in moments with those thin cards came off astonishingly clean, without a single wound. Truly a master of cards — no, wait, the son of a taxidermist.
Whatever anyone said, it was top-quality work. Hoisting the freshly skinned bear pelt with all the swagger we could muster, we headed back to the forest's entrance.
The pelt was so enormous it took all four of us to carry it, so the visual was nothing short of spectacular. While the other cadets came back with the orcs and goblins they'd been playing around with, we arrived hauling that monstrosity. First place among the teams was ours, naturally.
"……No, hold on. I caught an ogre, you know."
Cheon Yuha wore the expression of someone profoundly wronged, apparently having assumed first place would be hers — but what could she do? Our Horn Bear had been judged, by the slimmest of margins, an evolved variant, earning us the higher evaluation.
Besides, Team 1 had barely managed to lug back an ogre's severed head — and they'd overrun the time limit on top of it.
Not that that wasn't impressive in its own right, of course.
"Tsk tsk. Children who can't keep their time commitments don't get to be first place, I'm afraid."
"……Ugh."
Thanks to that, I got to tease Cheon Yuha to my heart's content, and she — fresh from her brutal battle, apparently out of strength even to argue — ate her lunch with a sulky, defeated look on her face.
Still, how did these two manage a hunt without a guide?
Just as I was about to offer Cheon Yuha some words of encouragement — it must have been an enormous ordeal — Elenor beside us shut her eyes tight and set her spoon down on the table with a clack!
This was the table we'd gathered at under the pretext of introducing me as her lunch partner and Elenor as her dinner partner. So why did this woman look angry again?
Elenor chewed on her lip as if wrestling with something, and at last, she let it out.
"Choi Gangjun. Come with me for a moment. I have something to say to you."
"……What?"
"……Hm?"
Cheon Yuha and I both blinked.
Astoundingly, those words Elenor had just spoken were the first she and I had ever exchanged in this life.
What is this — a challenge match right out of the gate?
But her voice was so grimly determined that I couldn't bring myself to refuse, and so I found myself summoned behind the school building.
What am I supposed to do?
The more Elenor agonized, the more she felt her composure being ground away. Why? Why on earth?
She'd peered at Choi Gangjun's face and murmured the question over and over, but no clear answer came. That blockhead of a man — why did Cheon Yuha keep him close? Why did the woman in the park?
After agonizing countless times, she finally made up her mind.
I have to say it to his face.
That was why she had arranged to be alone with Choi Gangjun. They were in the middle of a meal, yes — but she couldn't hold it in any longer.
She declared:
"I know your secret."
"……What?"
Choi Gangjun's eyes went wide with a look of utter foolishness, and then he began rolling his eyeballs around in circles. Watching him, Elenor felt her bewilderment deepen — and forced out the words she'd been turning over and over since the small hours of the morning.
"……I know who you met last night! Do you admit it?! No — you must admit it!"
At the outburst she'd been swallowing all day, Choi Gangjun wore a surprised look for a moment — then chuckled.
"Oh. So that's what this is about."
So she really did see everything, he murmured to himself — and then he finally spat out the truth.
"I did step out to meet your older sister, briefly."
"……Pardon?"
For an instant, Elenor doubted her own ears and simply blinked.
My older sister? What did he just say?
She pressed a hand to her forehead and thought. She carefully replayed the words she'd just heard. So then — the woman Choi Gangjun had been cheating with last night… was my own sister……?
"……Aaaagh."
THUD!
Elenor, fainted from shock.
With no time left to sort truth from falsehood, the sheer psychological blow knocked her clean out.