Legally Seventeen
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin.
Now, as for what became of me after that whole "Blood Mouse Incident"...
I had barely managed to calm Se-ah down—she had been bawling and raising a fuss, swearing that from now on she would follow me wherever I went, even to the bathroom—and then, under my little sister's guidance, I slipped out of the Gate in secret.
Unable to hold back my bewilderment at why we had sneaked out without so much as linking up with the rescue teams, I asked Se-ah about it, and...
The truth was that I had wedged myself into the Iron Blood entry test's line without permission, so I carried a measure of responsibility. The Iron Blood Guild, for its part, bore its own share of blame for failing to keep proper control of the group even as its designated leader.
Since both sides had things that pricked their consciences...
"The guild master and I agreed to quietly let the whole thing go, like it never happened. It really was a blessing the guild master is a friend of mine."
For me—a sinner guilty of founding the Ratman Blood Cult—it was a most welcome relief as well.
If we had pointlessly squabbled over whose fault it was, all manner of testimonies would have surfaced, from the Golem Dungeon all the way to this Gate with its forest depths, and had those accounts gathered and gathered until they led, at long last, to Bonjwa...!
"Is that... the Blood Mouse?"
"I knew something was off ever since the Golem dungeon, waaaah!!!"
"How is that supposed to be the Blood Demon...?"
The instant I imagined the looks people would give me afterward, my body—amplified by the Forged Blood Art—sprang straight up into the air and whirled through somersaults, exactly like Ma-noe.
"Gyaaaaah—!!!"
An inhuman humiliation!
If it came to that, I would never again be able to style myself a Returnee and the Blood Demon, greatest under heaven...!
Not that a single soul had believed the Blood Demon claims all this time anyway. But whether they believed me or not was beside the point. Because without even that title, Bonjwa would be nothing more than an ordinary girl who had lost her mind...!
At that point, I truly would have no choice but to bolt from the homeland I had scarcely made it back to, return to the arms of the Ratmen, and live out my days as the Cult Master of the Blood Cult...!!!
And so I could only raise both hands and welcome this army-style solution of sweeping everything into the dark. I thought it a genuine blessing that the matter had been closed then and there.
But then.
"Oppa, but what about the exam?"
"Ah."
The Iron Blood entry test would be held once more for its applicants, the guild shouldering the responsibility itself—but in the most natural way imaginable, the hunter license exam, which I had missed through nothing more than my own blunder, went ahead without a hitch, ordinary as could be.
The hunter license exam was not a test you could sit whenever you pleased; it came around only in fixed seasons.
In that savage battle, I had achieved the first tier of the Forged Blood Art and at last reached a realm where I could truly fight—and yet, with my grand dream of becoming a hunter forcibly folded shut, I had returned to being a jobless freeloader sponging off Se-ah again.
"Huek, hueeeeh..."
"O-Oppa...!"
This time, of all times, I had meant to break free of this frail body's spell and pull my own weight. My mind was already being dragged along by this body's instincts, so this time I had truly, properly wanted to succeed. But somehow, ever since I had come home, not one thing had unfolded the way I intended.
No—seriously, what on earth was going on? Not a single one of my goals had ever properly come to pass...!
Without even registering the sorrow in Se-ah's eyes as she dabbed away the teardrop that plopped from their corner, and like any martial artist who has slammed into a high wall too steep to surmount, Bonjwa, too, failed to contain the grief and fury—and became one more drunkard.
Yes. A drunkard...!
"Huek, heh-heh-hek..."
Grinning foolishly in a voice that might have been moaning or laughing, Bonjwa slumped down against the wall with french fries clutched in the left hand and a cola bottle hugged in the right, legs sprawled indecently wide.
Se-ah pressed a hand to her forehead as if the sight alone had made her dizzy, but it didn't matter one bit...!
"Nom-nom, nom-nom, nom-nom-nom."
Unlike before, I didn't spare a glance for who might be watching; I heaped fries into my cheeks until they bulged, then swirled the bottle gently, whipping up a black whirlpool inside—all so that not one fry threatening to spill would go to waste on the way down my throat. Gulp, gulp.
"Puhah... Kyaaahhh!"
With no necktie to knot around my head, I simply undid the front of my hoodie and shook the cola bottle I had downed in one go upside down over my head—but not a single drop fell, naturally...!
It was the very picture of a stone-drunk drunkard, sprawled like a street-gambler's mat and defending the alley to the last. And then Se-ah covered her face with both palms and said,
"What is this... it's pitiful, and yet even as it's pitiful... it's just too cute..."
"...Huh?"
Impossible. Here I had believed I couldn't possibly degrade myself any further. Was Bonjwa's body now incapable of even playing one proper wretched drunkard...!
Meeting my expression head-on, Se-ah turned flustered and flailed her hands and feet.
"N-no! Oppa, I'm sorry. That's not what I meant... no, I mean—don't be so sad! Next exam, I'll help however I can so nothing like this happens again, okay?"
When I only stared back without a word, Se-ah stumbled on, more rattled than ever.
"Ah, right! Unlike the hunter exam, awakener registration just takes a fee, and you can keep taking it as long as you pay. And it's true you have some kind of awakening ability, isn't it?"
"Y-yeah..."
"The registration fee is nothing...! If you want, I'll cover it as many times as it takes, however much it costs! So... want to give it another try?"
"I-I will!"
Se-ah let out a sigh of relief. And so, after everything, Bonjwa had come full circle and gone right back to register as an awakener...!
And then. Standing before the mana detection machine, Bonjwa could wear a smile more confident than any before it.
Cheon Yujin, you fool!
This was no time to despair and put on a clumsy imitation of a drunkard. Back then, an utterly unforeseen variable had left me unable to respond, and I had been hauled off by the civil servants—but the Forged Blood Art had reached the Blood Flame Realm. Now that I had attained the stage where qi could be released beyond my body, a way to quietly slip through awakener registration had presented itself!
"Kuh-huh-huh...! As expected, Bonjwa is no fool...!!!"
The Forged Blood Art is pure.
Internal energy, by its nature, is drawn in with the breath from the qi adrift in nature, filtered through the Eight Extraordinary Meridians, and stored in the dantian. The Forged Blood Art was a self-generating art that produced no such accumulated result. It is the meridians that circulate one's internal energy and strain out impurities; the Forged Blood Art yielded no stored qi at all, and instead sent the internal energy of the Eight Extraordinary Meridians and the blood of the vessels around in an endless cycle, its purpose being to refine a vital energy purer than that of any cultivation method—a life force closer to its very essence. A slow discipline, but one that for that very reason forged the wellspring of one's power rock-solid.
If the original Blood Demon Art had sought its end by drinking in every manner of blood, together with the qi and the traces of martial arts carried within it, arriving at a chaos packed with nothing but impurity, then the Forged Blood Art was a technique created to stand at that art's exact opposite.
But what Bonjwa needed now was not the pristine power of the Forged Blood Art.
"Hoooooh..."
Forcing my breathing steady to slow the pulse of my heart, I clamped down on the Forged Blood Art's internal force as it coursed along my blood vessels, suppressing it to the very limit. With the vessels that had never once paused in their circulation forcibly dried up, I felt as though I had been plunged into a thirst so severe it was as if I hadn't drunk water in days.
But this way, at least the foreign-substance screening could be dodged.
"Ngh... cough, cough, kheh!"
Hearing "the qi of nature," one might think it referred to some terribly pure, essential energy—but nature is natural precisely because purity and impurity coexist within it. It is the excessively pure that is invariably artificial. And the mana drifting through this world's atmosphere was a part of nature, which meant the Forged Blood Art's pristine blood-qi could only be read as something entirely alien in nature to mana...!
And so. If I deliberately released the Forged Blood Art's internal force, deliberately laden with impurities, blended it with the mana in the air, and pushed the mixture into the machine...!
Beep-beep-beep! With a cheerful chime, a green light bloomed in the machine's crystal orb.
With every procedure complete, I drew a V with my fingers and held my awakener registration card out for Se-ah, who had been waiting.
"Congrats, Oppa! So you... finally grasped mana manipulation!"
"Heheh."
Even after such a long, long detour, I had gone and succeeded at awakener registration after all.
"Applaud me...!"
"Whee—! So cool, Cheon Yujin! So cute, Cheon Yujin!"
In my delight, I may have done something a touch embarrassing. Well. Anyway.
That this "registration" came with an actual printed card, exactly like a driver's license, was absurd in its own right. It even had an ID photo attached—no matter how I looked at it, it put me in mind of an ID card or a driver's license...
True, I would have to remain a bum until I could retake the hunter license exam. But at least I could now register as an awakener, official and proper. Soon, even Bonjwa would be living a life unashamed, as one full-fledged adult!
...Or so I thought.
"Um, Oppa... this..."
Not long after the registration was finished, Se-ah called me over, pale-faced and utterly at a loss, and a piece of mail sealed in a very proper envelope was held out before me.
"What is this...?"
"Um, Oppa. I'm really... really sorry, but... take a deep breath and hear me out calmly, okay..."
I had already noted that this body's habit of welling up with tears was remarkably like Se-ah's childhood self—but Se-ah, who used to start sniffling the moment her own fault grew too large, turned out to be exactly the same all grown up.
"Oppa... you knew I was hiding the fact that you're a Returnee, right...?"
"Y-yeah. I... heard the rough shape of it from Rachel."
"The truth is, back then, I was desperate to keep you out of Returnee registration somehow, so I consulted a high-ranking government official I'd once fought alongside... and had your identity entirely remade."
"You had it... remade?"
I had heard the old resident registration system had blown apart along with the opening of the Gates. And since I was a missing person returned after ten years, I figured it wouldn't much matter how I was processed.
But.
"The... the new identity officially makes us cousins, and it lists you as... a seventeen-year-old Cheon Yujin."
"Wait—huh, what."
"They said if it looked too different from your appearance, someone might come poking around with a background check...! And when they warned me that even seventeen was risky, I barely managed to talk them down...!"
So Bonjwa was, in fact... not an adult?
"Oppa, I'm really, really sorry. I honestly never imagined it would turn out like this. I was one of the very first awakeners, so I didn't even know things like this existed...!"
"S-so what is it, exactly...?"
The mail inside the envelope. Was it my imagination, or did the thing carry an ominous air?
Se-ah, looking utterly crestfallen, tore open the seal. The document inside the envelope. Its contents.
"I never dreamed they'd... set up something like compulsory education for underage awakeners...."
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin.
Had become... a high school girl?