A Grown Adult, Allegedly
Just how, exactly, was this blasted body put together?
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. This was a body that had once waged ferocious battle for three days and nights straight — no food, no water, no sleep — even while caught in the inescapable net of Heaven and Earth spread by the hunting dogs of the orthodox sects. And yet that same Bonjwa, all because his internal energy had run a little low, and all because he happened to be wearing the shell of a mere girl, was now powerless from head to toe after one good tantrum!
"Hah... haaah..."
This wretched body sprawled boneless, letting out moans as pathetic as a puppy with heatstroke. I was soaked in sweat from head to toe. The dampness around my eyes, the wetness on my face — surely that, too, was nothing more than sweat smeared everywhere.
"You okay, oppa?"
"Yeah... I'm fine..."
Behind me, Se-ah was combing out my sweat-drenched hair. I shot her a look of protest — quit it — and shook my head the way a large dog shakes itself dry after a dip in the river.
"Ah, come on! Why are you wriggling like a toddler? Hold still, will you? Don't you want your confiscated allowance back?"
Yipe! Yipe!
So this was... the feeling of a dog defeated in a fight... a sensation I had never once experienced, not once in all my life, as the Greatest Under Heaven...
More to the point — where on earth had that comb she was grooming me with come from? The longer I thought about it, the more women seemed a genuinely mysterious species. God only knew what kept emerging from that tiny pouch, like some fourth-dimensional pocket.
Just then, Rachel fiddled with the frame of her glasses and addressed Se-ah.
"All right, the detailed examination starts now, so the guardian's visiting hours are over. Stop hovering and go wait outside."
"But, unnie... still, leaving oppa all alone is a bit..."
"Alone? I'm right here, aren't I? And Se-ah — 'oppa,' really? He's a grown adult. I understand the worrying, but you need to stop treating him like a child."
"Th-that's... phew... fine, okay, I get it. Sorry, oppa. See you in a bit."
Comb tucked back into her pouch, Se-ah slunk out with her shoulders sagging. Her retreating figure looked pitiful enough to tug at the heartstrings — but what mattered to me right now had nothing whatsoever to do with poor Se-ah's melancholy back.
A grown adult.
A grown adult... she said!
An adult! Oh, what a sweet, magnificent ring those words had!
Not once since my return home had anyone treated me like an adult. Not the hunter who first found me, not the agent assigned to Returnee affairs, and not even my own family — Se-ah! Lately I'd half-suspected Se-ah was coming to see me less and less as her older brother, and more and more as a little sister — or worse, as some pet freeloader whose whole existence revolved around mealtime! Only this body had gotten younger — my mind had not!
And now I — for the very first time...!
"Hoooo-waaah...!"
"Um, Cheon Yujin? Could you please not make me regret what I said, like, four seconds ago?"
"Bonjwa is a growwwn-up...!"
"Uh. Sure. Right..."
Left quivering with joy all by myself, I noticed Rachel's gaze cooling by the second. I cleared my throat and, obedient to her instructions, began the detailed examination — or whatever exactly it was called; I honestly had no idea. Not that it demanded anything of me. All I had to do was keep climbing into machines.
And frankly, the timing was perfect. Here at last was a chance to learn what this cursed body was actually built from — and whether there might be some way to make it better. Seeing with my own eyes how far the technology had come even gave me real hope that an answer might exist. The machines alone defied imagination; their exteriors alone were staggering.
What I'd expected, at the very most, was something like the MRI or CT scans I'd glimpsed on the internet back before I fell into Murim. Instead, I got packed into some enormous contraption bristling with every device imaginable, whereupon a blue laser-like beam swept across my entire body; then I was slid into a cylindrical machine that proceeded to spin round and round. Honestly? It was rather spectacular. It was there, in that strange little room, that I finally felt in my bones how radically the world had changed in the ten years since the Gates opened — beyond anything ordinary scientific progress alone could explain.
These days I was already being pushed around enough by the instincts of this childlike body. As if a fear of hospitals had been etched directly into a small child's instincts, I'd spent the beginning drenched in cold sweat and trembling on my feet. But true to form for this damn body — the one that can't surf the internet for five minutes without gravitating toward combining-robot toys and dolls—
"Heheh..."
After a few rides in the fascinating machines, my nerves had melted away completely, and by the end there I was, grinning like an absolute fool. Truthfully, even setting aside this clown of a body, my first taste of this new civilization's creations had been full of delights. The direction was different, but it somehow stirred up that old nostalgic feeling from the day I first tumbled into the world of Murim.
"Glad it looks like you're having fun."
"N-no, I'm not!"
"We're almost finished. Nothing left that hurts like the blood draw, so you can relax... Cheon Yujin, kiddo."
"Grrr..."
When I bared my teeth in a low growl at the needlessly teasing blonde physician, Rachel allowed herself the faintest of smiles and went on.
"I do know you're an adult, so there's no need to glower like that. Though, well, it was an excuse to chase Se-ah out for a little while."
"An excuse?"
"There's something I'd like to talk over with you, Cheon Yujin. Ah — I'll be drinking my coffee, but your examination isn't finished, so none for you."
Drawling it all out in a sly, crooning tone, Rachel raised a steaming mug — when on earth had she even made coffee? Perched on the edge of the desk, the white-coated researcher sipped away. Quite the picturesque sight, really.
Despite this being our very first meeting, her manner was remarkably warm. Was that simply because she was Se-ah's closest friend? Or was it—
I must have been staring with eyes gone dark and heavy, because Rachel waved a hand briskly, as if to clear the air.
"Don't get the wrong idea. It's nothing serious. But Se-ah, as you can plainly see... has a bit of an overprotective streak. You came back after ten years with a mountain of things you don't know, and I doubted she'd told you everything you ought to know."
"That's... well, that may be true, but..."
Rachel Lee. Winning arguments with facts — so this woman, too, belonged to those dastardly orthodox sects! With nothing but orthodox foxes crowding me on every side, the Unorthodox Path was a candle guttering in the wind, one step from 'service termination'...!
Though, in all fairness, Rachel was right. In over a month home, Se-ah hadn't told me a single thing about how the world had changed. Which was why everything I knew — about hunters, about the state of the world — had been scraped together through shallow trawling on the internet.
"Isn't it a little strange, how Awakened and 'hunter' get used interchangeably? Think about it coldly, and the two words share nothing at all. But people hear 'Awakened' and assume 'hunter,' automatically. Even though hunters who aren't Awakened do exist."
That had, in fact, been one of the questions I'd chewed over shortly after my return. Rachel herself, sitting right before me, was an Awakened person who wasn't a hunter. And yet this world was so steeped in the assumption that Awakened meant hunter that no one but an outsider would ever think to question it.
Rachel set her mug down on the desk and spoke, a sigh threaded through her voice.
"In the early days, everything hung by a thread. So the powers that be rooted in a piece of propaganda: anyone Awakened would be sent to the front lines without exception — those who hunt monsters, 'hunters.' That's where the word comes from."
"..."
"Humanity was being shoved to the very edge of a cliff. And the ones who put an end to that era were the first-generation hunters."
However.
But.
"Unlike the first generation, who got a bare few years of real combat, returnees came out of nowhere — people who had spent decades in other worlds building their strength. And right after the crisis ended, at that. How do you think that felt?"
From the internet I knew that people like me — come home from other worlds — existed, and that the known returnees had generally ridden their overwhelming power straight to the top ranks of hunter society. Why do they get to be like that, and I end up like this? I'd wailed, rolling around on the floor in the sheer injustice of it all. As it turned out, there were people with even more right to feel cheated than I had.
And Cheon Se-ah, my little sister, was — by her own account — a first-generation hunter herself. Understanding at last what Rachel was driving at, I nodded.
"Glad it got through. Do be careful. The relationship between first-generation hunters and returnees is hanging by a thread. Like a rubber band that could snap at any moment."
"But you're first-generation yourself, Rachel. Why would you... give me advice?"
"Because my husband is a returnee too. Just like you, Cheon Yujin."
Rachel said it with a bitter smile. Only then could I begin to guess why she had retired from hunting. And I understood, too, why Se-ah had found it so hard to tell me any of this.
By every measure, my hometown had turned into quite the mess while I was away. Had everything simply changed too fast, in a mere ten years? Not that they lacked laws or common sense here — it was nothing like Murim, where pinning a 'man of Murim' title on yourself made both of those things irrelevant.
At the very least, in this world, restaurants didn't get smashed to splinters the way Murim inns did. In Murim, the guesthouse was a creature born for one purpose alone: to be smashed.
"Like I said — you're a grown adult, Cheon Yujin. At the very least, I felt you should be aware of your own situation as a returnee. And..."
Rachel was about to continue in a lower voice when—
"Um... unnie? Still not done? I felt bad for oppa, so I bought him some donkatsu... I got some for you too, unnie!"
What the—.
Se-ah's cautious voice drifted in from beyond the door.
"Donkatsu...!"
That's my Se-ah. I never doubted you, my beloved little sister!
Thick, golden, crackling donkatsu. In Murim, the environment made fried food all but impossible. Which meant that the fresh-fried crunch of a thick, batter-laden crust was nothing short of a supreme treasure of the age.
Nom-nomm.
"Right. Cheon Yujin is a grown adult, after all... an adult, hmm?"
Rachel stared straight at my face, then suddenly pressed a finger to her chin and, wearing an expression of profound gravity, began saying things that crossed every line.
Today's ration of humiliation was already filled to the brim.
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. Even if I had to stake the honor of Ma-noe, my right hand and chief strategist, no further disgrace would be forgiven!
Yes — as a grown adult!
"St-stop it, I said...! I'm not a child, so stop... treating me like one...!"
"Your examination isn't finished yet. And since you're not a child, you can surely hold out on one little donkatsu? It might go slightly soggy, but then again — you're not a child, after all..."
"St-stop... st, st... st...op it."
Waaah... waaah...