A Gruesome Price (1)
Beep. Beep. Beep—then a long, rattling chirp as the lock released, the sound carrying through the entryway.
Han Yewon, an S-Rank Hunter of South Korea, slipped off her shoes and stepped inside.
The apartment sat in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Seoul. There were rooms to spare, and the place was so vast that a footstep rang down the hall. She switched on the lights, and all that empty space opened up at once. No one was there. Of course not. Han Yewon was the only person who lived here.
She had cut ties with her parents. She had always known they were a problem, but she had never managed to sever them—until someone helped her, and at last she did. If her Awakening had come even a little later, the life she had now would never have existed. So this was a fortunate thing. She tried, always, to think of it that way.
"Haa…"
She washed up, dried her hair, and opened the refrigerator. Inside was a meal kit from a famous department store's own line, the kind sold as the closest thing money could buy to a home-cooked meal. She cooked it well enough, set it out with rice, and sat down.
In that enormous kitchen, the only sound was her chopsticks.
Dohyeon.
The name rose while she ate. No—the truth was that no matter what she did, she could not keep from thinking of him. He had always been beside her when a raid ended. He looked after her before anyone else, and when she made a mistake he took the words for her in front of the other party members. Whenever she said she was scared, he stayed until she wasn't.
That person was on the far side of the Pacific now.
From now on, judge for yourself. Don't depend on other people.
The last thing she had heard from him kept circling in her head. Judge for yourself. He had said something like it before, only more gently, but the voice that came through the phone that day had been far too firm. Even so, she still did not know what she was supposed to do, or how. She had tried, more times than she could count. It never worked.
Vrrrt.
The phone on the table buzzed. Han Yewon checked the screen.
Han Yewon turned the screen off.
Messages like that came several times a day. At first she had refused them politely, and the next week they came again. Refuse twice, and some of them got angry. When Lee Dohyeon had been beside her, messages like these had hardly existed at all. Not anymore. From the very week he left Korea, they had multiplied, as if someone had given a signal.
An S-Rank Hunter was strong even outside a Gate. A Healer was only weaker by the measure of the same rank—never anything close to an ordinary person. But strength outside a Gate meant nothing without the will to actually put someone down. And Korea was a country where the higher a Hunter's rank, the less freely they could lay hands on anyone.
Vrrrt.
The phone buzzed again. This time it was the Association group chat. Messages cheering on the special team that had left for Shanghai kept piling up, and Han Yewon did not open the room. She had not gone to the farewell gathering either, so she could already guess, more or less, what was being said in there.
Not long ago, she had overheard it by chance. In a hallway at the Association, two women on the staff.
"Han Yewon's S-Rank, but she doesn't seem all that impressive."
"And don't you think she pretends otherwise, while she enjoys the attention from men?"
That sort of talk. Han Yewon had turned around on the spot. If she had been the kind of person who could walk in and say it wasn't true, she would never have heard words like that in the first place.
"…"
She set her chopsticks down with half the meal still left. The lights were on across the wide living room. It was a fine home, the kind no well-paid professional could afford even after working an entire life. Lately, though, she wanted nothing more than to move somewhere small. No—she wanted to quit being a Hunter altogether.
But a young S-Rank, body perfectly sound, announcing she would no longer enter raids would be treated as little different from a traitor to the nation.
"Haa…"
Han Yewon fiddled with her phone for a long while, and in the end she did nothing. She was lonely enough to lose her mind, and there was no one she could tell. She needed someone beside her, and yet people frightened her. A woman smiling to her face would, she was sure, tear her apart the moment her back was turned. Men seemed interested in nothing but toying with her, or trying to take things further. Just like the countless people she had met while growing up.
Dohyeon. When are you coming back?
Han Yewon held on to that hope, though nothing had ever promised it would be answered.
Shanghai, China—in a room where the S-Rank Hunters of four nations had gathered.
"Our side has the same number of people as yours. Why should we be the ones taking orders?"
Lee Mingi, seated in the conference room, said it through an interpreter.
The East Asia Joint Strike Force. To clear the Shanghai S-Rank Gate, Hunters drawn from China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan had been assembled: four from China, four from Korea, one from Japan, and one from Taiwan.
"This Gate occurred in our China. Isn't it only natural that we hold command?"
A man from the China Hunter Association said it, his voice low.
"Only natural? That's a rather strange way to put it."
"Strange, is it?"
"If it hadn't been for Korea, no one would have been able to lay a hand on this Gate. Not even now."
Lee Mingi folded his arms as he spoke. He was, by every formal measure, raid leader of Korea's representative strike team and the standing voice of the four Hunters sent from Korea. In this meeting, though, he was doing nothing but scraping the nerves of every other Hunter and official in the room.
"Couldn't lay a hand on it…"
The Chinese Hunter ground his teeth, barely hauled himself back under control, and spoke.
"Then which country was it that came all the way to this Gate a few months ago and simply turned around?"
"…"
"I heard there was a nation that gave up at the door of the boss room and abandoned the raid of its own accord. You were on that team, weren't you?"
In case they hadn't caught it the first time—twice. The conference room went still.
One of the Korean Hunters started to rise. Lee Mingi stopped him with a hand.
"That was the previous raid leader's decision. The raid leader of Korea's representative strike team, at present, is me."
"Ah. I see. So you're saying that this time, you won't retreat?"
"Of course not."
Lee Mingi smiled.
"If anyone ought to be worried, it's your side. A team that left its own country's Gate sitting for months—can you even keep up with our pace?"
The moment the interpreter carried the words across, the faces of the Chinese Hunters hardened.
"Haha."
Beside them, the Japanese Hunter let out a short laugh and spoke.
"Both of you, calm down. This Gate is a place even the United States hesitated to send people to. I don't believe this is the moment to argue over who among us is competent and who isn't."
"To my ear, that sounds like you're saying all of us are lacking."
"If that's how you heard it, there's nothing I can do."
The Japanese Hunter shrugged.
"…"
The Taiwanese Hunter in the corner said nothing at all, only looking from one country to the next.
What a shitshow.
Forty minutes into the strategy meeting, and not once had anyone mentioned a formation. The joint team had been snarled from the moment they tried to put it together. None of them had come to combine their strength and clear a powerful Gate. It was a fight over spoils, nothing more, and the friction ran especially hot between Korea and China, whose land borders faced one another. China was the side receiving help, and still unwilling to yield the lead. Korea meant to use the chance as a foothold and raise its voice as the Hunter power representing Asia. While the people of Shanghai trembled with anxiety and looked into moving away, this was the reality among the Hunters.
Japan and Taiwan had sent S-Rank Hunters of formidable individual ability, but they seemed to stand a few steps removed from all of it.
"We'll end the meeting here. I will say it again. This may be a matter on which the fate of all of Asia depends, so I ask you to stay alert. Only a few days remain. We need a command structure established quickly, and we need to begin preparations."
China's representative S-Rank Hunter said it. A Dungeon Break in a city the size of Shanghai would be no different from a nuclear bomb going off. A great depression would likely roll across the whole of Asia.
"Hmm…"
"Yes, yes."
A few of the Hunters answered in voices that could not have cared less. In a country of this size, at least, a Dungeon Break was something that existed only in the dictionary. That was what they believed.
"Hyung-nim, did you see those arrogant Chinese bastards?"
"Ignorant fools. What would they know? Preparations this, preparations that—their tongues are just long because they've got no confidence."
Coming out of the conference hall, Korea's S-Rank Hunters Oh Chulsoo and Lee Mingi fumed.
"I'm pissed at the Chinese bastards, so let's go work it off on the Chinese bitches."
"I like it. I can't stand a thing about this country, but the women are excellent."
Lee Mingi, thick as brothers with Oh Chulsoo, wore a leering smile. This was why he liked trips abroad. Cheating was so much easier. No need to look at that eyesore of a woman who didn't even keep up her appearance, and still tried to stop her husband from seeing other women.
"That Japanese guy and the one from Taiwan—they've got a record, haven't they?"
"They're definitely strong. You've got to give credit where it's due."
"Yeah, yeah. With a roster like this…"
Lee Mingi nodded. The conference room was infuriating, but the Hunters' strength was good.
Not much longer now.
The Republic of Korea is a Lee Mingi-armed nation. Before long, that line would be circulating as a meme. However China chose to treat him hardly mattered. The Korean Hunter Association and the media would make a hero of him.
"Great work, everyone!"
A B-Rank Gate in Suwon, South Korea. The mana sat on the high end of B-Rank, and a lavish roster had been fielded, so the raid ended without much difficulty.
"God, this is pissing me off."
So Yumi, an A-Rank melee Hunter, wiped the blood from her body and snapped. For months now, there had not been a single raid where her face wasn't twisted into a scowl.
"And there's a girl who's been on her period the entire month."
"Are you saying that about me?"
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
Their eyes met—Yoon Seong-ah, the A-Rank magic-type Hunter who had thrown the remark out because So Yumi was unpleasant to look at, and So Yumi herself. Contempt sat in Yoon Seong-ah's gaze no matter how you read it.
"Hmph."
So Yumi knew perfectly well the other woman was just as sharp-tempered, and she looked away. Then she asked the Tanker, a man old enough to be her uncle.
"Anyway, didn't they say that S-Rank woman was coming?"
"The S-Rank woman… Hunter Han Yewon? I heard she wasn't well, and that there were plenty of Healers to fill in, so she didn't come."
"Hmph. Good. She grosses me out. I didn't want to look at her."
"…"
Park Min-sik, the A-Rank Tanker, had nothing he could say. How can a person be this arrogant? She wasn't like this before, was she? Why?
Because Lee Dohyeon—the man So Yumi respected and followed—is gone? Even so. This is too much.
"I wonder if the results are out."
"What results?"
It was the hour when a finished raid meant everyone went their separate ways. Yoon Seong-ah answered as if So Yumi's words were absurd.
"Haah. You don't even know that? Today's the day of the Shanghai raid."
"I don't know. I hope that perverted old bastard just drops dead."
"Pfft."
Yoon Seong-ah snorted at So Yumi's words. She knew very well that Lee Mingi was the one who panted endlessly after pretty Hunters.
He is revolting.
Yoon Seong-ah disliked Lee Mingi too. Because he had made a pass at her? No. Because of her background, he had been excessively deferential, and that was even more sickening. Lee Dohyeon, by contrast, had treated her exactly the same as every other female Hunter. That had irritated her as well, in a different way.
"…Huh?"
There was a heavy thud. Yoon Seong-ah, curious about the results, had been about to look at her phone when Park Min-sik collapsed beside her. Next to him lay a phone with a shattered screen. Every eye turned to him.
"Th-this can't be."
The color drained from Park Min-sik's face. With uneasy eyes, Yoon Seong-ah checked the news.