The World's Greatest Raid Team (1)
I straightened my tie in front of the mirror.
"Hmm..."
Back in Korea, I had never wasted time on this sort of thing. When I first became a hunter, I threw on the suit the Association had issued me, raked a hand through my hair a few times, and called it done. Outside of the work itself, I hadn't had much of a life anyway. You stepped into a Gate and strapped on gear to fight monsters—why fuss over clothes? That was what I had thought.
"You really went around like that in Korea?"
"It isn't that I care about clothes. There was no point dressing up. People already knew my face, and they already knew what I did."
"If they know your face, that's all the more reason to care."
The first time Hannah said it, I honestly hadn't understood. But she had explained it kindly. Even if I didn't care what I wore, other people judged me by it. Wherever you went, dressing well was simple courtesy, and those small things stacked up until they became an opportunity. Opportunity, more often than not, came from people.
"...You're right."
So these days I spent a little time each morning. Every suit in the closet was one Hannah had chosen. The clothes I had bought in a rush the moment I arrived in America—the ones that had never quite fit—were gone.
Last of all, I fastened my watch. A Swiss piece, from a brand everyone knew by the name alone. Had I still been in Korea, I never would have bought it. I wouldn't even have thought to.
The money I'd already earned had nowhere to go, anyway.
In Korea I had made a great deal as an S-Rank hunter, and most of it had simply piled up in the account. I hadn't known a reason to spend it. Now I did. This wasn't luxury. It was preparation.
"Dohyeon? Are you ready?"
"Yes. I'm coming out."
I checked the mirror once more and stepped out of the room.
And stopped.
"..."
Hannah was there in a dress, her hair swept up beautifully. It felt like looking at a painting. I still couldn't quite believe this woman was mine.
"Dohyeon, you didn't forget anything?"
"Of course not."
"What about the wallet you left behind last time?"
"I've got it. More importantly, you look even more beautiful today, Hannah."
"And he didn't forget to compliment his woman. But."
Hannah drifted in close.
"There's one thing you forgot, isn't there?"
"..."
She looked up at me and smiled.
I could read a hint that obvious. I brushed a light kiss against her lips. Before I went to meet strangers in a strange place, I charged my happiness back up to a full hundred percent.
Seoul, Republic of Korea.
"Mmm..."
So Yumi opened her eyes face-down on the bed. She had cleared an A-Rank Gate that broke out in the city of Daejeon the day before and come home at dawn. The raid itself had been a success. These days in Korea, though, clearing a single A-Rank Gate hardly seemed to mean anything.
"..."
She rolled over and stared at the ceiling. For a woman living alone, the place was absurdly large. She hadn't come from a poor house, and both her parents were perfectly fine, but only a few years ago she never would have imagined living somewhere like this. Back then all she'd had was the bare fact of her Awakening, and the Association had dragged her around while she knew nothing at all.
Sunbae.
And with that, the one who had taught her in those days came back.
"So Yumi, you're half a beat early."
"What? Isn't faster better?"
"If you go in before the tanker has landed the taunt, in that moment the tanker cannot protect you."
"..."
"You certainly have talent. But until you can restrain it and control it yourself, you cannot call yourself a true hunter."
The first time Lee Dohyeon coached her, So Yumi had been only nineteen. The man teaching her was twenty-one. Two years. And yet those two years had felt impossibly vast to her then. Other hunters, even with a full twelve years between them, had never seemed nearly so far above her.
"Hey. You want us to change the whole formation over one rookie?"
"Yes."
"Now look here, Lee Dohyeon. S-Rank or not, you're a hell of a lot younger than the rest of us, and your record's short. What would you know?"
"Then I'll calculate it for you. One point at a time."
"Ahem..."
Every hunter in that room had been more than ten years older than So Yumi. They were men with a reputation for pride, and some of them had openly scorned the young raid leader. Lee Dohyeon had not raised his voice in front of them. He had cited numbers instead—how long the last raid had run, the injuries in each sector, the projected cost if the formation changed. All of it had been in his head. In the end, no one could refute him. That day's raid ended without a single injury, and after that, no one talked back to his orders.
"So Yumi."
"Yes!"
"You did better today than last time."
"...That's all? I thought I was perfect."
"All? If you've improved on before, isn't that enough?"
"Next time will be the same. Improve just a little. That's all it takes."
She thought Lee Dohyeon had smiled a little then. A sigh escaped her. Caught in the old days, So Yumi pulled the blanket up over her face. She didn't know why that time kept coming back.
Lee Dohyeon had been a strict man. Sometimes he was so exacting she wondered whether it had really needed to go that far, and praise did not come often. But the rare compliment, when it did come, had made her happy, and it had felt sincere. He also could not bear to watch a rookie under his charge get hurt. When a raid ended, the first thing he checked was the condition of the hunters beside him. His own injuries, he hardly noticed.
"..."
The phone by her pillow buzzed. So Yumi reached out and checked the screen.
"Hmph."
She had forgotten to silence it. Messages from men had piled up from every direction. So Yumi simply turned the screen off. An A-Rank hunter, and famous for her looks besides—of course the messages never stopped. She had no interest in them at all. Hunters, celebrities, heirs to the great conglomerates. All of them men who thought they were something special. Meet one and you knew how it would go. They talked only about themselves, went on about how remarkable they were, and finished with next time, just the two of us—I'm interested in you. Too obvious. Nothing in it that felt like real interest.
Annoying.
So Yumi kicked the blanket off and got up. She hated this country. People with no spine, who had caught fire over who ought to be driven out, and then, once he was gone, said it shouldn't have been that way. She hated the ones who gathered in conference rooms, calling themselves S-Rank hunters, and did nothing but complain. They saved all their boasting for one another, but when someone asked what they would do if an S-Rank Gate opened inside the country, not one of them could answer.
And.
I hate Sunbae, too.
So Yumi bit her lip. In Shanghai, he had been right. It was only proven after two people died, but he had been right from the very start. That made her angrier. That night she had gone all the way to his door and said terrible things.
"You're not the Sunbae Lee Dohyeon I knew. You're a coward."
Lee Dohyeon had not even gotten angry. He had not explained himself.
"Go home."
That was all he left her, as if she were a nuisance, before he walked on past.
Just once.
If he had stopped her even once and explained—not the canned lines he gave the press, but something a little more careful. Then she would have believed him. Even if no one else had, she would have. Because he was someone she could trust that far. But Dohyeon's attitude had not been what So Yumi wanted. The look, and the tone, of a man who could not have cared less what someone like her thought of him. That was what had made her angry.
"...This is seriously pissing me off."
So Yumi sat there for a long while. There wasn't even anyone nearby who would take this anger off her hands.
"How are you finding New York?"
"Hard to say. It's certainly glamorous, but I'm sure LA suits me better."
"Ha ha ha! Is that right?"
The East Branch of the US Hunter Association, in New York. As expected for an occasion this important, James Jordan, head of the Hunter Management Division, was there as well.
"Shall we?"
"Yes."
I went in with James Jordan, whom I knew well, to the hall where the hunters and the Association's senior officials had gathered.
"Mm..."
I took an appropriate seat and waited for the event to begin. Today they would first honor the sitting 1st Raid Team and congratulate them on their service, then welcome the hunters on the rise. After that would come the decision on whether to change the team's roster. The hall was spacious for the number of people in it. If I said the place reeked of intrigue, that might have been laying it on too thick. Vested interests, then.
"..."
Time seemed to be up. I held my breath and took in the faces of the people I would be meeting in the near future.
Applause cracked through the hall, sharp and unbroken.
So that's them.
The 1st Raid Team, representing America. All ten came out impeccably dressed, and maybe it was the backdrop, but the feeling was entirely different. In practice, you could call them the single raid team that represented the Earth. A smile pulled at my mouth before I knew it. Once, as raid leader of Korea's representative team, I had wanted to test myself against them. And in the end, this was how it had turned out.
I rose from my seat.
This part of the program introduced the S-Rank hunters in attendance, aside from the 1st Raid Team. Two had come from the 2nd Raid Team. From the 3rd, only I was there. And yet my turn had come first.
Hm?
But the two hunters from the 2nd were smiling and clapping, with no sign of being put out. Comrades I had raided beside, after a fashion, and we had tipped glasses together. If Russell Brooks had been in the room—the man with no intention whatsoever of joining the 1st Raid Team—he would have applauded the loudest.
I let out a long breath. The short ceremony was over. Once I came down from the stage, the time turned dull. I wanted to get back to the hotel we were using as lodging. Hannah had said she would show me New York at night, so the evening ought to be enjoyable enough.
Hm?
But was that a commotion in the lobby?
"P-please, this puts me in a difficult position. I don't have the authority to decide."
"Then bring me whoever does. How is a hunter who only passed through the 3rd Raid Team for a little while introduced as far more important than I am? I held out because I had no intention of joining the 3rd—no, not even the 2nd."
A familiar scene. Some bastard taking his anger out on a person who had done nothing wrong.
That one.
The male S-Rank hunter who had been introduced much later. It wasn't only people out of the 2nd and 3rd Raid Teams. Several S-Rank hunters who belonged to neither, and had made their names on their own, were here as well. There were even plenty of A-Rank hunters from the East Branch who had come simply because they happened to be nearby. Anyway, he was an eyesore.
"You don't seem to be understanding me..."
"Heh heh. Hmm?"
"Haaah?"
I walked up to the white male hunter making a scene.
"If you have something to say, say it to me. Don't take your temper out on someone who's busy."
"What?"
He looked a little older than I was, and he glared at me like a boy stuck in adolescence.
Tiring.
Wherever I went, a clash was waiting.