Prologue: A Vicious Finale

It was a rather vicious finale.

"Let's pretend the engagement never happened."

Her voice was dry. Her face might as well have been looking at a piece of furniture. She had been cold like this ever since the engagement — cold enough that you had to wonder why she had chosen me as her fiancé in the first place.

"The deal-breaker is on your end, isn't it? You already know without me spelling it out."

I couldn't offer a single word in my own defense. I bit down on my lip and looked away, afraid of the expressionless face of the fiancée I now had to look up at.

"I'd also like you to walk yourself out of our guild as soon as possible. It's awkward for both of us."

The hunter guild her father ran. I had been a manager there, supporting the hunters on the roster. I had never received an ounce of special treatment as the prospective son-in-law. All I had were memories of clawing my way up from the very bottom, brutally. I had been desperate not to fall out of favor.

Now even that was over.

"…Why?"

The voice of a young girl spilled from my lips. From me, who had become a tiny little girl.

"If it was going to end like this, why did you choose me as your fiancé? Did you ever even like me? Even once?"

That was the question I had wanted to ask her all this time. Because I had never, not once, been loved by her.

"You really are pathetic. What, are you trying to pin the blame on me like that? Hoping I'll pay you off?"

"That's not it. I—!"

"Fine. I never liked you. Not even once."

She laid out the truth with complete indifference. I had vaguely understood it already, but it was still a cruel thing to hear.

"I used you. And even that — you were so incompetent I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠couldn't even use you properly."

"…"

"Satisfied? Have you finally figured out your place?"

I hadn't expected affection. But reality was crueler than that. I was the only one who had been clinging to a vain hope. This relationship had been wrong from the very beginning.

"You thought you were actually somebody, didn't you? Just because I kept up appearances for you at the company and took care of you."

"…Yeah. You're right."

For what it was worth, I had worked pretty damn hard. I had wanted to prove myself somehow. After I became a woman, I had been even more desperate — trying to prove I could go back to being a man. Trying to become someone the company couldn't do without.

"You never were. You were incompetent from start to finish. In our relationship, and at the company too."

"…I see."

You never even called me by my name, all the way to the end. I let out a hollow, bitter laugh. In the end, our relationship was a catastrophe.

"I think a month was more than enough time to wait. You're a person who can't even function as a man anymore."

"…"

"Goodbye. Once you've wrapped everything up in short order, we'll never have to see each other again."

She sneered at me, cold as ice. Looking at her, I let go of whatever lingering attachment I had left.

"Yeah. Got it."

I turned my back on her. In the end, I never told her — not even at the last moment. That I, who had become a girl, had obtained an ability in exchange. She would never know why the hunters belonging to the company had recently shown such remarkable growth.

Dumped, and handed a termination notice on top of it. As far as I was concerned, it was someone else's business now.

My footsteps leaving the company were lighter than I had expected. Maybe because I had given up on everything. The hunters I had been in charge of seemed to welcome my being kicked out. Now they could finally get a competent manager — that was how they mocked me, in so many words.

Hell. Things really do end in a single moment, don't they.

The place I had occupied vanished in the blink of an eye. The shape of me that had been held together for my fiancée's sake crumbled the instant I became a girl. But even that didn't feel all that bad. I had slipped free of every shackle. I could finally start over.

When I walked out of the company, I released the ability I had maintained all this time.

Affection's Touch, classified as EX — a rank beyond all standard measure. That was the ability I had obtained after becoming a girl.

To her, the engagement had been nothing more than a means to an end.

Her fiancé, Seol Siha, had S-Rank hunters in her personal network. She had wanted to use Siha as bait to recruit them.

There's no other reason I'd ever approach someone like that.

It had been a thoroughly calculated engagement from the start. Use Siha as a pretext to make connections with S-Rank hunters. Land a contract. And if she could seduce an S-Rank hunter into becoming her man — that would be the icing on the cake.

I can break off the engagement with that person whenever I want.

A hollow engagement could be dissolved at any time. There were plenty of excuses — something about love having faded. She had approached it with that intention from the very beginning.

She was the Vice Guild Master of the hunter guild her father ran. Her performance wasn't bad, but something was always lacking.

Compared to the so-called major hunter guilds, we don't have any top-tier talent.

Her guild had no S-Rank hunters. That was the single greatest reason they couldn't make the leap to major status. She had wanted to pull in an S-Rank hunter by any means necessary — even going so far as to get engaged to Siha, in whom she had not the slightest interest, and using her like a puppet.

Useless brat. Even after I granted you this much of my heart, you're still this incompetent.

Under the pretext that the prospective son-in-law would inherit the family business, she had worked Siha as a manager at the hunter guild. She had demanded results — get an S-Rank hunter under contract. But in the end, Siha had failed to recruit a single one. The idiot, buckling under the pressure, had reached for a forbidden awakening.

And as the Price of Awakening, even her sex changed to female.

She had grown sick of someone from whom there was nothing left to expect. This incident had been a convenient opportunity to dissolve the engagement.

I don't know what ability she awakened in exchange for her sex being reversed, but it must be some worthless thing anyway.

An ability so trivial she wouldn't even reveal it to her own fiancée. Otherwise there would have been no reason to stay silent about it.

I didn't manage to recruit an S-Rank hunter through that brat, but the guild's recent performance has been excellent.

Lately, the growth of their promising talents had been dazzling. The skill of the affiliated hunters had risen across the board. A remarkable upward trend. She had glimpsed hope.

At this rate, it's possible.

Her guild could break into the majors. Several of the internal A-Rank hunters were facing promotion evaluations. If they showed just a little more outstanding performance, even S-Rank wasn't out of the question.

So she had kicked Siha out. An incompetent who didn't even have any remaining juice left to squeeze.

I thought she'd cling pathetically, begging me to reconsider the breakup. It's a relief she left so obediently.

She had wrapped up the relationship with Siha cleanly. She had thought everything would go smoothly from there.

But the situation reversed overnight.

The moment she drove Siha out, everything went downhill. The affiliated hunters' performance plummeted. The promising talents all started declining as one.

Why? I assigned them personnel far more competent than that brat!

Siha had a terrible internal reputation as a manager. She had often been ignored even by the hunters she was assigned to — the result of the Vice Guild Master tearing her down through office politics to keep the performance pressure on. If the assigned manager was replaced, morale would rise. There was no way performance would get worse than it already was.

But performance plunged to the worst it had ever been. A coincidence, perhaps — except that it happened the instant she kicked Siha out.

Now that it's come to this, it's about selection and concentration.

The promising talents stalling was unavoidable. The guild was pouring everything into the S-Rank promotion evaluations.

If just our internal hunters get promoted to S-Rank, we can more than make up for it.

The affiliated hunters hitting a slump was a coincidence. It just happened to overlap with the fiancé's resignation.

There's no way that brat had that much influence on the guild.

There were dozens of hunters on the roster. It wasn't a major hunter guild, but it was a solid mid-tier one. It was just one incompetent person gone, that was all. There was no way her guild would falter over something like that.

There are plenty of people ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠who can fill that position.

The vacancy the fiancé had left was already filled. But every last one of them turned out to be just as incompetent.

"How am I supposed to do all this work by myself? I can't work until the job descriptions are restructured."

A personnel interview with the employee who had taken over the fiancé's workload. They had already gone through three people. That was why even she, the Vice Guild Master, had personally stepped in.

"The previous ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠person did all of this."

"Then why don't you just have that person do it?"

"What's with that attitude? Even that incompetent brat handled all the work without a single complaint—!!!"

This wasn't something that would be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠solved by issuing new job descriptions. Her pride was on the line. The fiancé had to remain an incompetent person. The void she had left could not be felt — not even for a moment.

"Ha… I can see why the previous person left."

A mutter thrown out loud enough to be heard on purpose. She ground her teeth.

"Forget it. This industry has plenty of people who can work besides you. If you can't handle it, just get out."

A maggot of a brat who didn't even have any grit. Even the incompetent fiancé had scraped and clawed and gotten it done. She couldn't understand the complaining.

This is just a minor inconvenience. As long as the S-Rank promotion evaluations go well, everything will work out.

Most of the A-Rank hunters were locked in with long-term contracts. They were the talents the guild had been investing in intensively. If they just got promoted, the guild's fate would change. That was why she had to prove it — that the misfortune in front of her eyes was not the fiancé's fault. She had just removed a stumbling block. Everything would work out. It had to.

But her expectations turned out to be in vain.

The affiliated A-Rank hunters failed their dungeon raids, one after another. They couldn't even sit for the promotion evaluation, falling short of the minimum standards.

It was a free fall. From the moment that person left, it had been a free fall all the way down.

I can't accept this. Absolutely, absolutely not…!

A reality she could not come to terms with. The fiancé was an unnecessary, meaningless, worthless person. Siha's absence and the guild's consecutive failures — there could not be a correlation between the two.

She would succeed in the hunter industry. She was certain of it.

She hungered for it with all the greed of a villainess.