South Korea's S-Rank Hunter (2)

"Everyone, look over there!"

From within the crowd gathered before the Shanghai Gate, people thrust their fingers toward the portal.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our proud national team Hunters are coming out of the Gate!"

For years, South Korea's Hunters had delivered nothing but results. The Korean broadcast announcers, who had never once doubted they would pull it off, spoke with unrestrained excitement.

"Huh?"

"Wait..."

But puzzled looks began to spread through the crowd. Aside from raid leader Lee Dohyun, every Hunter behind him looked either furious or like they were nervously watching his face. No matter how you sliced it, this did not look like a victory.

"Dohyun—no, wait! Mr. Lee Dohyun, what on earth is this?"

Kim Mansoo, President of the Korea Hunter Association, asked in open bewilderment.

"We halted the raid in front of the Boss Room and withdrew."

"What? What did you just say?"

"That Gate is beyond what the Korean national raid party can handle on its own."

"Good heavens..."

Kim Mansoo trusted Dohyun's judgment, and he felt sweat bead along his spine. No amount of emphasis could overstate how critical this raid had been. He had been certain they could do it. And now this?

"All of you, thank you for your hard work."

But the thing was already done. The Association President offered what encouragement he could to the nation's most precious combat assets.

"What in the world is going on?"

"Uh, well..."

The announcers' hands trembled around their microphones. Even the civilians watching from the sidelines had begun to murmur. Had they failed? Was that monstrous Gate that had spawned in Shanghai going to remain standing?

The fear became fact soon enough. If they had truly slain the boss, the Gate's doors should have closed by now — and that window had already passed. In a single instant, the air froze to a degree that sent chills crawling over skin. Every gaze in the plaza swung toward raid leader Lee Dohyun, and toward Association President Kim Mansoo.

"Ah— ah—"

The raid party did the fighting, but delivering the news was the Association President's job.

It was an impossible position, but Kim Mansoo finished the briefing.

"What the hell is he talking about?"

"On hold?"

"That means the Korean raid party failed!"

"Did they even fight?"

"They stopped in front of the Boss Room, he said."

"Unbelievable."

"They said they could handle it without cooperating with us!"

The moment the Association President finished speaking, the Shanghai citizens who had pieced the situation together erupted into a low, spreading roar. Nobody had come out here for a pleasant afternoon — and though Hunters were treated as half-celebrities, the people who had shown up simply to fanboy a Korean national raid were a tiny minority. Most of the crowd had gathered on a single hope: that the S-Rank Gate would vanish from Shanghai as soon as humanly possible. Expectation curdled into rage in a heartbeat.

"Uh..."

"Hahaha, well, this is... how do we put this."

"It appears there's been a slight complication."

The Korean broadcast stations that had come to cover a historic leap in national prestige now found themselves equally stranded. The veteran announcers did what they could to salvage the coverage, but every staffer behind the cameras wore a face that could not hide its disappointment.

And through it all, one person stood under a uniquely scorching weight of stares. Raid leader Dohyun.

I have to endure this.

Halting a raid was, in practical terms, a failure. But he had steeled himself for this — for the moment when pouring applause and cheers would curdle into jeers. Even so, Dohyun believed this, too, was something he had to bear. As raid leader. As an S-Rank Hunter of a nation.

When South Korea's S-Rank raid party had challenged the Shanghai Gate, a great many people had expected them to succeed. They had not doubted for a second that it would be a coronation — the moment Korea was recognized, in name and in fact, as a Hunter superpower.

The result was failure.

The top of every portal site in China, Japan, and Taiwan — nations that nursed a rivalry with Korean Hunters — filled with news of the Korean collapse, and mocking comments poured in by the thousands. As death rates from Dungeon Breaks had steadily plummeted, Hunter raids had become a contest of national pride, or else a sport no different from the World Cup.

Korean community users, translating those posts in real time, were thoroughly, viscerally uncomfortable.

A raid that had commanded the entire nation's attention had, in the end, failed. When Korea would next have a chance to be recognized as East Asia's foremost Hunter power was anyone's guess. Naturally, this was not a problem that would stay confined to online discourse. Korea boiled over into a fury, and the public needed somewhere to put it.

The personal SNS photo that set the internet on fire was, in truth, a perfectly ordinary slice of daily life — Dohyun enjoying a game, a drink in hand. The only difference was how many people chose to read it as something else.

Among the events that had most stunned the world since the appearance of Gates and the Awakened, one stood near the top: the collapse of the North Korean regime under Dungeon Breaks. North Korean territory had been officially incorporated into the Republic of Korea, but once the Korean and Chinese borders connected, East Asian tensions had grown worse than before. Antipathy toward neighboring countries was, without exaggeration, at the highest point since the nation's founding.

Influencers who got tangled up with Japan, China, or Taiwan occasionally paid the price for it. Lee Dohyun was no exception.

Not every citizen in the country was cursing Lee Dohyun. But the direction of public opinion was unmistakably pointing one way. A fire that could not be put out. People began to demand action.

The petition went up. The number of signatures climbed at a terrifying speed.

While the Republic of Korea seethed over the Shanghai Gate affair, a private meeting was underway at the Korea Hunter Association headquarters.

"Now that you're back in Korea, have you been getting some rest?"

"Yeah, more or less."

Association President Kim Mansoo had arranged a one-on-one with S-Rank Hunter Lee Dohyun. Even for someone as composed and mature as Dohyun was for his age, his state of mind right now could hardly be anything but a wreck. Kim Mansoo spoke to the young man twenty years his junior in a gentle, kindly tone.

"As for the Shanghai Gate, it looks like they'll handle it the way it was originally discussed — before we stepped in. An East Asian joint team."

"That's good."

"China seems to be taking it quite seriously. They may put on a show of posturing, but they clearly rate our national raid party highly. The competence you've demonstrated up to now must have played a large part in that."

"Yes. Thank you."

Dohyun answered in a voice emptied of anything resembling a soul, and reached for the teacup that had been set beside him. A bloodless, bureaucratic exchange. There was nothing in it that could have generated interest even if he'd tried. He drank with hard, unblinking eyes, and Kim Mansoo watched him for a long moment.

Lee Dohyun.

Twenty years younger, and genuinely remarkable. Not simply because he was an S-Rank Hunter, and not simply because, even among S-Ranks, his sensory detection and his swordsmanship were both of the highest caliber. As raid leader, this young man was carrying a great deal. He enjoyed the money and the fame that came with being an S-Rank celebrity, but that was not the whole of it. The pressure that settled on anyone in a high position. The constraints. The absurd controversies now erupting over a handful of photographs and old remarks were proof enough — an S-Rank Hunter was a being under constant surveillance, constantly judged.

He's a twenty-five-year-old man. That makes it harder.

Kim Mansoo found himself thinking of things that had come before. In the years when the Hunter system had still been taking shape, South Korea had put the decades of unrestrained sexual conduct and attitudes toward women among its top-tier Hunters under a very public microscope. On top of that, the voices calling for the state to take an especially active role in protecting female Hunters who entered Gates had grown steadily louder.

The decisive incident had come four years ago. A Supreme Court ruling in a case where a C-Rank female Hunter had charged a B-Rank male Hunter with sexual assault. There had been no evidence of assault. Motel CCTV had captured the two of them walking into the room in a warm embrace and walking back out the same way. And yet, on the basis of a one-sided statement, a guilty verdict had been handed down, and the man had lost everything.

When there was a rank gap between Hunters, could a woman saying "all right" in the moment to a man's request for sex truly be considered consent? If she had held a refusal in her heart, could it be called anything other than assault simply because she had not spoken it aloud? Was the state supposed to turn its back on a woman's tears? That had been the reasoning.

There had been fierce debate at the time. In the end, the ruling had fastened an invisible shackle around male Hunters — especially the high-ranked, famous ones. How hard must it be? Kim Mansoo did not believe he could fully take the measure of the pressure Dohyun was under.

"Dohyun. About that national petition people have been talking about lately."

"Yes. I know about it."

"Ignore it. You know it doesn't mean anything, don't you?"

Dohyun said nothing.

"The people at the top need you too much to ever touch you. How many times have they praised our raid party as world-class until they ran out of spit?"

Watching Kim Mansoo speak with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a smile, Dohyun nodded. Of course, Kim Mansoo could not quite bring himself to say that the Association would protect him. The National Assembly and the government were another matter. But the Hunter industry, as in every other developed nation, was a state-backed enterprise. Assembly members — even presidential candidates on the campaign trail — seized every opportunity to declare that our Hunters were the best in the world. Were they really going to make an issue of this? At the absolute worst, Dohyun would sit through a hearing, absorb a scolding from a few legislators who needed the public's attention, and that would be the end of it.

"Dohyun. It's all going to be fine."

"Yes, Mr. President."

Dohyun had wanted to try a smile. It would not come.

And not long after, a headline appeared.

Something was going badly wrong for the man who, until only recently, had been called the pride of the Republic of Korea.