Mutually Assured Suspicion
Kim Jinhu and Cheon Se-ah.
It had all started at a survival camp built around the high school they attended, where the two of them happened to awaken around the same time. Until the Gate War was brought to an end, they fought side by side across every front imaginable, partners who carved legend after legend into the record — truly a bond they were heartily sick of by now. On an ordinary day they traded jabs and swore at each other outright, looking for all the world like they could barely stand each other. But ask either of them to name the comrade they trusted most, and they would point at the other without a moment's hesitation.
But.
'This bastard, this….'
'This crazy bitch, this….'
The two friends, who trusted each other more than anyone alive, looked at each other and thought the very same thing.
'Something here is so fucking suspicious……?'
What even was trust? Ten years of friendship and the faith built on top of it were, here and now, one breath away from crumbling to pieces and scattering on the wind…!
Kim Jinhu, in particular, felt wronged. Wronged to an almost offensive degree. Cheon Se-ah, that rude little brat — she was the one who had sneered at his "sorry state" over a pair of black sunglasses, and now…!
"Ah, my eyes hurt, so, so bad. Ah, cough, cough. The autumn air's! A little chilly today, so I keep! Coughing! Cough!"
The moment they had entered the Lake of Holy Water, with acting so flimsy it made him want to drive a fist into the crown of her head, she had produced sunglasses and a mask as though she'd been waiting for exactly this and hidden her face completely. If she genuinely believed that performance would pass, she wasn't stupid — she was simply the most shameless creature under heaven…!
"Hey, what are you looking at? I'm cold, okay? Cold. You're wearing sunglasses too."
"No, you little shit…."
An awakener, cold? For Kim Jinhu, who knew better than anyone what Cheon Se-ah's awakening ability actually was, it was an excuse that didn't even come close to holding water. Coming to a tourist gate armored in a protective coat — fine, he'd grant that much as the sound combat readiness of a career hunter.
But a coat, sunglasses, and a mask stacked on top? That was just a suspicious person, wasn't it…? If someone dressed like that went strolling through his guild's territory, Kim Jinhu would have reported them to the police first, man or woman, then rolled out his guild members to pin them down on the spot. Measured against that standard, his own current appearance barely cleared the bar of "huh, someone who takes care of their eyes"…!
Of course, that was Kim Jinhu's opinion and no one else's. A ponytailed man was already a novelty; add the protective coat and the sunglasses… and then, above all, the kid's bamboo sword hanging at his hip. Yes — that kid's bamboo sword was the crowning touch. Save for the missing mask, his suspiciousness was already dead even with Cheon Se-ah's, locked in a dragon-and-tiger standoff of its own.
Naturally, in the eyes of the tourists around them, the two of them were simply a matched pair of suspicious individuals whose ranking could not be determined.
Kim Jinhu and Cheon Se-ah hid their rolling pupils behind their sunglasses and trained ever-deepening looks of suspicion on each other. More than anything—
'Cheon Se-ah, this….'
'Kim Jincarp, you bastard….'
The only reason neither had pressed the other for an explanation was that they'd both assumed that once inside the gate, they would naturally split off to pursue their own goals.
'Why do our… routes keep overlapping?'
And. At the end of those routes….
…were the Awakener Academy students on a field trip to the Lake of Holy Water!
The two knew each other far too well. Each knew the other had no family or relatives of Academy age anywhere. And to any outside observer, they were quite blatantly shadowing a crowd of underage high schoolers. So the two decade-long friends, each mentally tallying how many times they'd reported the other to the police by now, had been lying in wait for a chance to furtively fiddle with their smartwatches when—
—Kim Jinhu suddenly narrowed his eyes and reinforced his vision with mana. He was a Martial Arts Awakener, and a sword master who had long since left the pinnacle realm far behind even by Murim's yardstick. From hundreds of meters away, his sight was keen enough to sneak a peek at the belly button of a sparrow in midflight.
"Hey, Cheon Se-ah."
Kim Jinhu's face went grave, and he dropped his voice.
"Wh-what. What is it?"
"That kid over there — she looks a little like… no, not a little, she's your spitting image? The name tag says… Cheon Yujin? That name sounds really familiar?"
What Kim Jinhu was pointing at was the black-haired, crimson-eyed girl. Kim Jinhu was one of the few people left in this world who remembered what Cheon Se-ah had looked like back in high school. Granted, the girl looked considerably younger even than the gawky high-school-era Cheon Se-ah. But the resemblance blew straight past "family" or "little sister" — it was close enough that he half wondered whether someone had spun a clone directly out of Cheon Se-ah…!
And. Kim Jinhu was not only one of the few who remembered Cheon Se-ah's high school days — he was the only person alive who had shared them with her.
"Hey, Cheon Se-ah. You've been doing weird stuff on and off for a while now. Don't tell me…."
"N-no… it's just…."
Cold sweat trickled down, and her lips began to tremble. This could not happen. Kim Jinhu was her high school classmate before he was ever her comrade in the hunter business. There was a good chance he still remembered who she had been before the Gate crisis — and a fair amount about her family besides. Even as guilt needled at her, Cheon Se-ah racked her brain desperately for a way to wrench the conversation somewhere else. The result:
"Y-you're one to talk… stalking high schoolers! Kim Jinhu, you perverted bastard!"
"Wh-what? P… pervert?!"
Cheon Se-ah, an idiot with a middle-school diploma, was naturally hopeless at improvising under pressure, and the only attack she could mount was a personal one built on the single fact she had: the stalking…!
It was an abrupt, glaring pivot. But the fact that Kim Jinhu, at this very moment, looked like a sunglasses-wearing suspicious individual tailing a group of students was undeniable. Objectively speaking, Kim Jinhu was the more suspicious of the two — that he looked every inch the pervert was self-evident…!
It had hit a sore spot, sure. But unlike Cheon Se-ah, Kim Jinhu didn't actually have much to be ashamed of. He had chased them all the way here out of worry for Bukgung Seol's first-ever field trip — a girl who lacked common sense to a truly alarming degree. Pathetic? A little. But at bottom it was the commendable devotion of a guardian. And he had the absolutely invincible justification of protecting a child with nowhere else to go besides. So Kim Jinhu resolved to clear up this pervert misunderstanding while he was at it — and to use it as his lever to press Cheon Se-ah about the suspicious trail she'd been leaving lately.
"Hey, Cheon Se-ah… look over there. You can read a name tag from this distance, can't you? Over there — Bukgung Seol, the tiny one with the snow-white hair."
"…?"
Ohmygod, adorable.
That was the impression that hit her the instant she laid eyes on the girl. A tiny little thing like her big brother Cheon Yujin, white-haired and blue-eyed, and no matter how she looked at her, impossible to mistake for seventeen. Then, abruptly, Cheon Se-ah's eyes narrowed as she studied the girl Kim Jinhu had pointed out.
"I haven't had a chance to tell you this until now… that kid over there? She's the little one I've been looking after for some time. No home, no identity. In this age of Gates, kids like that are hardly rare."
"Hey, Kim Jinhu."
"Look, we've been living together, so we've gotten a bit closer… but I came purely because I was worried about her, so don't go getting any weird ideas—"
"Hey, Kim Jinhu?"
"Come on! Would it kill you to let a person finish a sentence?"
"No, just look over there."
"Ugh, what?!"
And. Following the line of Cheon Se-ah's pointing finger, Kim Jinhu turned his gaze — and saw. The Awakener Academy students. And in front of them, a unicorn pacing back and forth. The white-haired, blue-eyed girl kept reaching for the unicorn's horn, over and over, and the unicorn was very clearly dodging her every touch.
"…Huh?"
Thud. In his shock, Kim Jinhu dropped even his sunglasses into the dirt. But he quickly re-registered the decade-long friend standing beside him, and with a creak like rusted hinges he barely managed to turn his head — straight into the eyes of Cheon Se-ah, whose expression had vanished entirely.
"W-wait a second."
"No home… no identity…."
"N-no! Hey, Cheon Se-ah. It's not — I'm telling you it's not. You know who I am. Right?"
"You're living together…?"
"Whatever you're imagining, I can explain every last bit of it—"
"Purely…?"
"Okay, you're clearly misunderstanding something, so please, just hear me out…!!!"
"Misunderstanding…?"
Cheon Se-ah smiled. It was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen from her. And her fingers were already darting across the smartwatch on her wrist.
"HEY! HANDS OFF THE SMARTWATCH—!!!"
Somewhere among the unicorns' cries, what sounded like one particularly wretched scream seemed to have been mixed in. But more than that—
"She's a unicorn!"
"Unicorn punch! Unicorn punch!"
"Phrrrb! Phrrb-phrrrb!"
Bonjwa. The Blood Demon, Cheon Yujin. Back in the days when Bonjwa walked Murim, Bonjwa had often drawn awed, terrified gasps — "That is no mortal's martial art…!" or "Can this truly be a human being?!" But ever since returning home, Bonjwa couldn't shake the feeling of drifting away from humanity in an entirely different sense. Or was that just Bonjwa's imagination…?
Bonjwa had gone and grown a horn on Bonjwa's forehead. And apparently nothing in the world had ever delighted the unicorns more, because they had now gathered into a vast herd and were practically frothing with excitement.
"Please, every last one of you, just drop dead…."
Voice wobbling on the edge of tears, Bonjwa muttered while stroking the hard horn jutting from Bonjwa's forehead. If it were up to Bonjwa, a single flourish of martial arts would flatten the whole stampeding lot and chase them out on the spot. But that was….
There were already so many unicorns that their numbers had to be well past three digits — far, far too many…!!!
Just then — VRRROOOM — with the roar of a rough engine, a mana-driven armored vehicle came tearing in from the distance, the kind hunters used inside gates with open terrain.
"O-ohhh…! Bonjwa believed in you!"
Right — a bizarre phenomenon like unicorns collectively carrying on as if they were strung out on drugs was, naturally, a disturbance for the guild managing this gate to step in and resolve! Bonjwa alone could do nothing about these crazed horned horses. But if the guild — an organization of equally massive scale — moved, there was bound to be a way! And just as Bonjwa had predicted, there on top of the armored vehicle stood a hunter with a megaphone, about to resolve this situation on the spot…!
Emergency, emergency! Attention all tourists! This is an emergency situation. A herd of rampaging Baikons has appeared inside the gate. Please evacuate to the exit immediately….
Emergency! Emergency! Do not panic. Follow the guidance of the safety personnel inside the gate and evacuate in an orderly fashion!
Resolve this situation….
"Huh?"
What the corn?
"H… huhhh?"
And then — doom-doom-doom-doom-doom — along with a familiar sense of déjà vu, the earth quaked violently, and beyond the distance a thick cloud of dust billowed upward.