The World's Greatest Raid Team (2)
"……"
The man raked his eyes over me from head to toe. The moment I stepped in, the Association staffer eased half a step back.
"Bruce Bogard."
"Yes?"
"That's my name. Don't tell me you picked a fight without knowing it."
He was the man who'd been introduced well after the others — one of the S-Rank hunters who operated without belonging to the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Raid Teams. Up close, the build was unmistakable. Not quite Russell Brooks, but the muscle stood out clean even through his shirt.
"Lee Dohyeon."
"I know. The Asian everybody's been running their mouth about lately."
Bogard snorted.
"How long's it been since you crossed over? More than half a year?"
"……"
"And you're still on the 3rd Raid Team, doing grunt work out west."
I didn't answer. I looked him straight in the eye. That was one of the things I'd learned since coming to this country: drop your gaze, and from that moment on they set you beneath them.
"Know your place, Asian. There's an order to these things."
"I'll decide my own place."
"What?"
"And don't grab the first person you see just to blow off steam. It's pathetic."
Bogard's face hardened.
"Pathetic?"
"Yes."
I felt the eyes in the lobby draw in on us. A knuckle cracked. Bogard closed his fist, and the vein-corded arm began to rise.
Come on, then.
This was outside a Gate. Lay a hand on me here, and the one who paid for it would be him. Not that he looked like a man running those numbers.
"Bruce!"
A woman's voice cut in from behind.
"……"
Bogard's arm stopped where it was.
A woman impossible to miss crossed the lobby — black hair, skin a natural copper-bronze.
Hispanic?
One of my teammates on the 3rd was from that background, so I could make a rough guess. And the figure under those clothes was more than the fabric could decently contain. Every eye in the room swung to her as she walked.
"Sofia."
"What are you doing here?"
"……Nothing."
The man who'd had his fist up a moment ago let the arm drop.
"I told you I booked the restaurant."
"Ahem. I was just about to head out."
Bogard turned. As he passed, he shot me a look.
"Hmph!"
That was the end of it.
I stayed where I was and watched the two of them leave the lobby.
Shame.
If he'd thrown the punch, I could have blown off some stress for the first time in a long while. He would have been the one to swing first, and I would have had self-defense on my side.
"……"
Still. Watching him go that tame in front of a woman, the answer wrote itself. A girlfriend, or a woman he was after. Was she the reason for the anger, too — attention sliding toward someone else, and not enough of it landing on him?
Korea or America, men were the same.
"Um, Hunter Lee Dohyeon—"
"I'm fine."
I cut the Association staffer off short. There was nothing worth dragging out. Getting tangled up with a child who'd only grown in years was embarrassing enough on its own.
The next morning.
I'd thought the New York schedule had ended yesterday, but James Jordan asked me to make time. Beyond the hotel lounge window, the buildings of New York stood packed shoulder to shoulder.
"Yesterday must have been rough."
"Hardly."
"I heard about the lobby as well. You handled it very well."
As expected, nothing got past this man.
"Hunter Lee Dohyeon."
"Yes."
"How long has it been now, since you came to America?"
"A few months. Time really does fly."
"When I think of what you've shown in that short a span, I still catch myself wondering if any of it can be real."
James Jordan set his coffee cup down.
"You've been the key to clearing every difficult raid so far. And yesterday, the only hunters introduced ahead of you were from the 1st Raid Team."
"I got lucky."
"Luck……"
That old-fox face smiled, just a little. I took the praise in moderation. In this country, swallowing every compliment whole and waving all of them off were both the wrong move.
"What I want to say today, however, is not praise."
"Then what is it?"
"I'd like you to step forward a little more."
James Jordan leaned in.
"Until now you have proven yourself through ability alone. That is admirable. It is not enough."
"……"
"Make your name. Stand before people. Stand before cameras. Say, yourself, what kind of man you are and what you can do."
I listened without a word.
"You are a man who deserves to be received at the top. But regard like that does not come rolling to you just because you sit still."
"……"
"And this is an important part of understanding this country."
James Jordan let the silence sit a moment.
"America is a nation that worships heroes."
"……"
"It is not that we simply like strong people. We like giving the strong a name, fastening a story to them, and setting them out in front. That is how we have run this country."
Then he looked straight at me.
There was sincerity in James Jordan's eyes — though the look seemed aimed less at me than at something that did not yet exist in the world.
Ah. Right.
I'd forgotten what kind of man he was. James Jordan had always been fiercely patriotic, and on top of that he was the one arguing that America's hunters should not stay inside their own borders — that they ought to go out more aggressively, project influence, and expand. Throwing his weight behind the 1st Raid Team, which often took the overseas expeditions, and trying to push me into it were both extensions of that same line.
Which meant he wasn't saying any of this purely for my sake.
But.
It didn't matter. The place I wanted and the place he meant to push me were exactly the same.
Why had I come to America? To do every last thing I hadn't been able to do in Korea.
"Understood."
"……I didn't expect you to answer that easily."
"I know now that modesty doesn't pay."
James Jordan laughed out loud.
"Ha ha ha! My eye hasn't failed me after all."
Underground, at the East Branch of the US Hunter Association.
"Today's schedule is a simulation raid."
The hunters attending the event had gathered in a wide waiting room. The 1st Raid Team was absent. They were people who no longer had anything left to prove.
"With the reorganization of the 1st Raid Team approaching, this is a chance to confirm the live-combat sense of the hunters present. Squads will be formed at random, and Gate difficulty is set at Low S-Rank."
Random, they said. That was only the official line.
"Hunter Lee Dohyeon."
"Yes."
"Please take command of Squad 1 as raid leader."
The waiting room went quiet for a moment.
So this is how they're playing it.
What James Jordan had said yesterday had already reached this far. They'd gone and built me the very stage he'd told me to step onto.
"Understood."
I stepped forward and took in the faces of the squad. One of them I knew.
"It's been a while, Dohyeon."
"Mr. Cogrigger. Unlike Mr. Brooks, your pronunciation has improved a great deal."
"Ha ha ha ha. Basic manners."
Magner Cogrigger, tanker of the 2nd Raid Team. In a practice spar I'd given him the pain of a severed ankle, but we got along now. With him here, the front was nothing to worry about.
And then—
"Hello, Raid Leader."
The woman from the lobby yesterday lifted a hand, just slightly.
"……"
"Sofia Morales. A-Rank. Magic-type."
Up close she was even more than yesterday — a bright, open beauty, high-bridged nose and a wide mouth. And the rest of her……
Even in combat gear the figure showed straight through, and I didn't know where to put my eyes. Of course, if it was the elegance of a line I was thinking of, Hannah was still the finest to me. Her face, especially, was my type.
"Lee Dohyeon."
"I know. I heard we're about the same age. Mind if I keep it casual?"
"……Suit yourself."
I answered short and looked away. Her personality was as open as her looks.
"I'll set the formation. Mr. Cogrigger takes point. I'll open the path beside him."
"Okay."
"Ms. Morales, the rear line. Don't cast anything big until I give the signal."
"Why?"
"Because I'll make you the opening."
Sofia Morales's eyes went round. I wasn't sure what she was reading into it.
"We're going in."
A low thrum, and the simulation Gate opened. Everything after that went smoothly enough.
"One hundred and sixty-three. A little many. They're waiting for us over there."
"Waiting?"
"Mr. Magner, just hold the front. I'll take the left."
A tearing slash. A crash.
Even a Low S-Rank Gate was a seriously powerful one. But I was sensing the monsters through mana, and I'd already committed the squad data from a few hours earlier to memory. Calling the fight off the movement of their mana, it couldn't help but be easy.
"Now."
Flame roared in, and Sofia Morales's magic drove straight into the opening I'd made.
"Whoa. That landed perfectly."
The time to the boss room wasn't even half the benchmark the Association had set. The crash of the boss going down took even less. No one was hurt.
"……Hah."
The simulation ended. I unstrapped my gear and caught my breath.
"Hunter Lee Dohyeon."
"Yes."
"Honestly, I don't have any complaints about Brooks, but……"
Magner Cogrigger rolled his neck as he spoke.
"Fighting under you isn't bad either. No — it was a lot more comfortable."
"Glad to hear it."
"Don't tell Brooks."
And then—
"That was seriously cool."
Sofia Morales had come right up beside me.
"……"
"I've run hundreds of raids since I hit A-Rank, and I've never had one that easy. And it was an S-Rank Gate. I can't believe it was that simple."
"You're too kind."
"No way. How do you know all of it? How far does that sensing of yours go?"
She was close. The questions were drifting toward things I couldn't answer in a neat line.
Standing like this with a woman who isn't Hannah is a little……
Hannah wasn't the type to make a fuss over something like this. I still was.
"I'll tell you if the chance comes."
"Then it has to be later. I'm looking forward to it."
"There's nothing worth looking forward to."
"Come on, I'm curious. With that ability, can you sneak a look inside a person's body, too?"
"What?"
"Ha ha ha. Kidding, kidding."
The wicked little joke made me flinch before I could stop it.
Well, now.
For an instant a sly look crossed Sofia's face — the face of a winner who'd succeeded in rattling a man. A little embarrassing. And was she always this free with it?
That was when I felt it.
"……"
A stare pinned me from the far side of the waiting room.
Bruce Bogard. He looked to be in Squad 2, up next, standing in his combat gear and glaring this way. More precisely, his eyes went back and forth between me and Sofia Morales, pressed right up against my side. A vicious look.
I knew it.
I met that face and smiled.
A vein stood out at Bogard's temple, but when a staffer called for him he ended up walking toward the Gate.
"Squad 2, cleared."
About an hour later, the squad Bruce Bogard had gone in with finished their raid and came out.
A clear was a clear. The faces coming out, though, were worn to a one. It was a simulation, so there were no injuries — but someone had felt real pain. More than one hunter was pouring sweat.
"Good work. We'll now announce the overall evaluation."
East Branch staff stood in front of us with tablets in hand.
"These are the results, combining clear time, scale of damage, formation integrity, and resource consumption."
The raid leader's advance reading of the field and his control of formation greatly exceeded the benchmark in every category.
The formation collapsed twice through the middle stretch. Minor injuries occurred inside.
"……"
The waiting room went quiet.
"Both squads entered Gates of identical difficulty. The gap is considerable."
The staffer's words ended there, but everyone present understood what they meant.
"Hunter Lee Dohyeon, that was impressive."
"Seeing it myself, I understand why people are talking."
Hunters around me offered a word each.
"……"
And through the middle of it, Bruce Bogard was looking at me.
He didn't say a word.