5. Yoon Sol, and the Mask
Every eye in the tent—the hunters and officials who'd been hanging on the staffer's briefing—swung toward me, all at once.
"You—why are you—!"
Yoon Sol paid no mind to the stir around us. The problem was that no sound was coming out of her at all.
A low buzz of murmurs spread through the room.
"What the—? The guy who just walked in... Baek Dohyeon!? Don't tell me he's here to observe the raid?"
"Hold on, which hunter is that, then?"
"Oh, come on, you know. The Baek Dohyeon Hyunpi incident."
"Ohhh! Wait—is that actually him?"
By now, people weren't even pretending to whisper quietly.
"Uh, uhh... what on earth is..."
The director who'd brought me here could only gape around the room, utterly flustered.
"Excuse me!"
At that moment, the female staffer running the briefing shouted at the top of her lungs.
"Hunter Yoon Sol! What do you think you're doing in the middle of a briefing!"
"Oops... I-I'm sorry."
"And the rest of you, eyes front, please! We are in a briefing."
With the staffer stepping in to restore order and Yoon Sol scrambling back into her seat, the briefing resumed. But everyone's demeanor had changed completely—practically all of them spent the rest of it sneaking glances my way. And unsurprisingly, not one of those glances was friendly.
Ever since the founding of Revenant Guild had hit the press, the public reaction had been one and the same.
Not that I couldn't understand it. Until barely two months ago, I'd been nothing but a pathetic screwup picking fights—and then I'd suddenly shown up with Baekmyeong Group at my back, declaring I was going to found a hunter guild.
The hunter industry didn't welcome me any more than the public did. If anything, they knew the inner workings of the business better than anyone, so they flaunted their hostility toward me even more openly.
This post, pulled from a community for working professionals, captured a snapshot of exactly how the industry saw me.
Such was the situation: not one soul in Korea welcomed my entry into the hunter business.
Of course, me? As always, I lived by a so what? mindset. It wasn't as if getting cursed out was a fresh experience. Even in my past life, it took reaching my thirties—watching the people around me die one by one as Korea began to fall apart—before I finally came to my senses. Naturally, that meant close to fifteen years of swallowing every insult imaginable before that point. I couldn't even cry injustice to anyone, either. Why? Because I really had lived like scum. My younger self from my first life was garbage even by my own assessment.
But whatever the people around me said, I never let it get to me much. Honestly? If anything, I enjoyed confirming my own existence through that kind of attention. Same as now. Other people staring at me wasn't the issue here. My interest in this room came down to one person. One only.
Cha Yunha turned her head slightly—and her eyes met mine.
…
She narrowed her eyes, shot me a faint glare, then snapped her head away.
Great. This wasn't how I'd planned it—I hadn't meant to start pulling aggro from minute one. The plan for this observation visit was to make a light impression on Cha Yunha and, as a bonus, learn whatever I could about her or her manager. But thanks to Yoon Sol, it had turned into a full-blown "behold yours truly" entrance.
Well, no helping what had already happened. If anything—now that the aggro was mine, why not go talk to Cha Yunha directly?
"...And with that, we'll conclude the briefing."
"As mentioned earlier, the atmosphere inside this gate differs in composition from Earth's air, so an oxygen mask is essential for breathing! Please head to Tent B right away to receive your equipment."
With the briefing over, the hunters rose from their seats. As if on cue, each one heading for the rear exit threw me a final sidelong glance before filing out. Cha Yunha, too, stopped in front of me, lips parting as if to say something—
"Yunha! Come on, let's go. I brought your personal equipment separately from the guild."
And just like that, her manager swept her off toward the tents—glaring daggers at me the whole way, no less. With every hunter gone, the rest of the crowd began trickling out after them.
All except one. Yoon Sol.
"...Hey."
Arms crossed, she was glaring straight at me. ...Damn, she really was gorgeous. Cha Yunha was the cool, elegant type; Yoon Sol was the athletic one.
"It's been a while, Yoon Sol."
"Don't tell me you knew I'd be at this raid and came looking for me on purpose?"
"...? What kind of question is that? Any sane person has no reason to go looking for someone they ended up on the wrong side of, do they?"
"...Huh. Now that you mention it, true... no, wait! Whatever. It's a coincidence. Right?"
"Yes. The raid roster isn't public information to begin with."
"Something still feels off about this... fine, I'll buy it. Anyway—watch yourself. You."
"Is that another threat? I believe I already apologized personally, over the phone, for the last incident."
Of course, that apology had been anything but voluntary—Father had made it thunderously clear that if I didn't offer it myself, he'd reassign me to some Siberian branch of Baekmyeong Electronics.
"Fine. You apologized, so I won't bring that up again. This is something else."
"Something else?"
Yoon Sol glanced around, then lowered her voice.
"...You do know your image is a disaster, right? Hunters and industry people especially—everyone looks at you like you're filth."
"Yes, I'm well aware. I've searched my own name on Blabla."
"What? Why would you even do that? Is getting flamed a hobby of yours? ...No. Ah! Stop derailing me. Anyway! What I'm trying to say is."
"Yes."
"...Watch yourself, so you don't end up getting torn apart out there."
"!"
"Don't go pulling your usual nonsense—just observe quietly and head home. It's a large-scale raid with S-Rank Cha Yunha herself participating, so you're bound to learn something just from watching."
"...That's surprisingly considerate of you."
"What is?"
"Could it be that you're interested in me?"
"WHAT!?"
"If not, there'd be no reason to give such friendly advice to someone you once took things as far as an actual Hyunpi with, would there?"
"Wh-what nonsense! I'm just looking out for you as your senior in the industry, that's all. And the way you usually carry yourself—something told me you were bound to cause a scene, so I'm a little on edge too."
Yoon Sol pointed at my face one last time with her index finger.
"Don't get any weird ideas! You are not my type."
And with that, she marched out of the tent, steps brisk and confident.
"...Haha."
At the sight of her retreating back, I found myself smiling before I knew it.
The twenty-year-old Yoon Sol wasn't so different from the Yoon Sol of the future.
"Hey, Silver Spoon! Let's do a 1v1 in Underwatch. No mercy this time!"
In an instant, the time I'd spent in the Resistance with the Yoon Sol of the future came flooding back. S-Rank, ninth in the nation—Yoon Sol. When I'd first joined the Resistance, she was the one who thrust out her hand first, laughing heartily, saying she'd put the past behind us. The Yoon Sol of today was just like her: straightforward, big-hearted, and unexpectedly attentive to the people around her.
"Hey... I'm sorry. Looks like we won't be playing Underwatch together anymore..."
And in the same breath, the image of Yoon Sol dying in my arms came alive in my mind all over again.
"...Just wait."
Because after Cha Yunha, you're next.
I left the tent as well and made my way to the gate alongside Director Kim. The hunters had already gathered in front of it, each making their own final preparations. Along with their usual gear, every one of them now held a transparent mask.
"That equipment..."
"Ah, those are the oxygen masks issued by the Association. As explained in the briefing, this gate's atmosphere is apparently made up of elements quite different from Earth's air."
"Oh, is that so."
"From what I hear, breathing in even a little triggers immediate symptoms like dizziness, and lingering a few minutes longer deals direct damage to the lungs. So a separate oxygen supply is required to breathe in there. That's what these masks are for."
And on top of that, the Director kept rattling off tidbits of trivia—and those masks are domestically produced, you know.
I already knew exactly what that equipment was. A special-purpose oxygen mask designed exclusively for hunters. Oxygen was supplied by a tiny runestone built into the mask itself, so there was no need to lug around a tank—simply wearing the mask was enough. It was gear I'd handled until I was sick of it. It was what the Resistance had worn against the poison-emitting ones, and managing the Resistance's supplies had been my job. When the engineers were swamped, I'd even handled the simple repairs myself. Encountering something so steeped in memories in such an unexpected place, I found myself growing a little nostalgic. Of course, the models I'd handled had been the cutting-edge versions from ten years in the future.
"...Hm?"
As I ran my eyes over the masks the hunters were holding, I noticed that Cha Yunha alone held a different one. Where every other hunter carried a transparent mask, hers was coated in matte black—and it somehow looked expensive.
"Ah, it looks like Hunter Cha Yunha will be using personal equipment rather than the issued supplies. Well, to be fair—this is Black Sword we're talking about. They'd have fitted her with nothing but the finest gear."
"I see."
Offering the Director a suitably vague murmur of agreement, I watched Cha Yunha prepare to put on her mask. Just like the others, she raised it to her mouth, took the strap attached to one side that fixed it to the face, wrapped it once around the back of her head, and moved to fasten it to the other side—
—and couldn't.
The square component hanging from the end of the strap didn't seem to be working properly. No matter how many times Yunha pressed the end against the mask, it simply kept falling away. Tilting her head in mounting confusion, she finally called over her manager, who stood nearby talking on his phone. The manager took the mask and tried attaching it himself, again and again, but he didn't seem to be having any more luck.
…
I watched the two of them closely. For roughly two minutes, the manager threw every effort into coupling the strap to the mask—until, apparently succeeding at last, he flashed a bright smile and handed it back to Cha Yunha. She put the mask on without further fuss and struck up a conversation with her manager.
"...Hm."
"Is something the matter?"
"No. Nothing at all."
It was nothing more than a hunch. Pure speculation, drawn from watching from a distance. But... I couldn't bring myself to ignore the warning my intuition was sending me. Cha Yunha's mask—something about it felt off.
"Oh, by the way—did you hear the news, Director?"
Keeping the conversation going with the Director on some suitably bland topic, I shifted my walking path toward Cha Yunha—all to manufacture the excuse that I'd simply happened to pass by mid-chat. And so, careful not to attract the attention of either of them, I slowed my pace and passed as close to her side as I could manage. Outwardly, I was still chatting away with the Director. But my eyes stayed locked on her mask, and my ears, tuning out the Director's answers, focused on any sound coming from her direction.
Hissssss—
There it was: a truly tiny sound of escaping air. So faint that unless you already knew to listen for it and were standing close by, you would never catch it. My ominous hunch had been right.
So. What now?
Pretending not to notice was one option. If the future hadn't changed, then even if something went wrong for Cha Yunha during this raid, it wouldn't be enough to seriously injure her. Besides—just as Yoon Sol had warned me earlier, I was already drowning in aggro as it was. There was no need to pull some pointless stunt and draw even more attention—
"Excuse me a moment, Cha Yunha."
?
But before my reason could even finish its calculus, the words had already left my mouth. Ridiculous. Equipment was life to a hunter—and I was supposed to play dumb about a fault in hers?
"That mask of yours seems to have developed a problem. I'd recommend using a different one."