Hunter License (2)
I still had no idea what was what, but one fact hadn't changed. I came home dead exhausted and slept.
My parents didn't say a word when they saw me, either. Unless I spoke first, they seemed set on leaving the whole thing in my hands, and that, if anything, set me more at ease.
Which left the question of how I was supposed to endure any of this.
"...Hah."
I couldn't take it to my parents. Stewing over it alone felt pathetic, too. I picked up my phone and opened the group chat where my friends were.
It was late, but the two of them were college students on break. Late night was just morning to them.
And sure enough.
You burn it to death,
torture it by ripping off one leg at a time,
and choke it out in the smoke.
Right?
I hate mosquitoes just as much—hate them enough to kill one the instant it shows up. A mosquito is a living thing, and I still loathe them past all reason.
"...Ha. Haha."
But today.
I wasn't sure what good it would do, but these were friends I'd known for a long time. Surely it was all right to tell them.
Even so, I could still see it, right there in front of my eyes: the moment I had killed that pig with a knife. It was terrifying. Far, far too terrifying.
It was way too scary.
My hands are still shaking.
I felt like I'd drop the phone just trying to answer. I hadn't eaten a thing, and still a wave of nausea was climbing up from inside me. I held it down.
The replies came.
But it's a pig, not a person.
You're scared 'cause you killed it?
Chicken?
"........."
Sungjun, that bastard, only talked like that because he'd never killed a pig himself. Put the knife in his hand and he'd be exactly where I was. Would he ever actually go through it?
But it's a pig, not a person, right?
Honestly, long as it ain't a person, you're golden, no?
Soonjae was the same as Sungjun.
Fuck.
I can still see it, clear as day.
The scene where I killed the pig.
It's fucking terrifying!
...This guy?
You wouldn't be scared?!
you thinking about that pig?
He'd just eat more 'cause it tastes good.
Facts? Yeah, facts.
I had absolutely no comeback for either of them.
Killing the pig was scary. Terrifying beyond words. But the meat? I love meat. Deeply. Is there really anyone out there who hates it? And yet, for people like us to eat meat means, put bluntly, that a pig was killed, butchered, and carried all the way to our table.
Guess you don't even see the other stuff as alive?
Those are all alive too, aren't they?
A mosquito, I kill the moment I see it. I've stomped whole colonies of ants before. Earthworms were accidents, but I've crushed them underfoot just walking past. And the roaches—I even remember beating the hell out of them with an electric bug zapper.
A life is a life. The worth is the same. So why was I supposed to be frightened because the thing I'd killed was a pig?
Guess I got too emotional.
If someone told me to kill a pig,
honestly, it'd be hard for me too.
Nah—wanna meet right now?
Drinks. You in?
They were just angling for a chance to meet up and drink, same as last time.
"Ah."
The tremor in my hands, the feeling that I might be sick—all of it was gone.
Could unloading it in a chat really settle a problem this easily? I didn't think so. Which only proved how simple I was.
But my parents are home, and I have to go to the Hunter Association tomorrow,
so I can't right now. Sucks.
Instead—
The two of them sent their thanks.
As always, chicken is the answer.
The next day I called the instructor, set a time, and went to the Hunter Association when it came.
The fear of killing a living thing—I'd spilled it to my friends the night before, slept on it, and woken to find it settled. Not perfectly, maybe. But I'd get used to it little by little, wouldn't I?
"I was worried once you got your real feelings off your chest, but I'm glad to see you're in one piece."
"...At first I didn't think I could handle it, but I managed to work through it somehow. ...You're not going to tell me to kill another pig or something today, are you...?"
"Hahaha. I won't. If you think about it, what happened yesterday was a kind of test. And you passed, Kim Haseong."
...A test.
It sounded like the work of a hunter was something you could never do without resolve to match.
"Yes."
"Then shall we get to the main point?"
"The main point?"
"Yes. Well, calling it the main point is generous. It's theory time—learning what you'll actually be doing as a hunter. This part is simple, so just watching is perfectly fine."
"...Yes."
"All right. Shall we watch, then?"
"Yes. Wait—what?"
I showed my confusion, but it was already too late. The instructor pulled down a screen, switched on the projector, and killed the lights. The video began to roll.
The subject was what a hunter had to know. I had never imagined studying would mean watching a video. I sorted it out in my own way as it played.
On January 1, 2000, Gates appeared all at once in ten places, islands along with them.
With the Gates came humans who awakened as hunters.
Only an awakened hunter can enter a Gate, and the interior of a Gate is called the Tower.
Inside the Tower, Portals appear at random, and through a Portal one can enter a Dungeon.
Each Portal has a color of its own. The meanings are as follows.
Blue: No one is in the dungeon. Anyone may enter.
Red: A hunter is inside the dungeon. Entry mid-raid is impossible.
Black: The dungeon has been cleared. The dungeon is collapsing.
Difficulty is also decided by the intensity of that color. In general, it runs from an easy Rank 1 to a difficult Rank 5.
As for the dungeons beyond the Portals—past a Portal lies a waiting area. From there, one may leave again, or enter the dungeon.
Once you cross the waiting area and step into the dungeon, the work is to subjugate every monster inside.
Hunt the last monster in the dungeon, and a new Portal appears nearby. Enter it, and there is a chest.
That place is what hunters call the reward space. Being a reward space, claim the reward and you may come back out.
Lastly, the reason the inside of a Gate is called a Tower: the Tower has floors.
At present, hunters have climbed as far as the fourth floor.
At the very least, this looked like the foundation a hunter needed to know.
"If I asked how it was—there's a fair amount in there, so it's hard to take in all at once, isn't it? Even if you've forgotten, reading this ought to bring it straight back."
What the instructor handed me was a book. A quick skim showed the same material I'd seen in the video.
...So what was the point of my notes?
"Thank you."
"Still, this is the basics. Common sense you pick up naturally, so grasping the broad shape of it is enough."
"Yes."
Me, convinced I had to memorize every line—embarrassing, in hindsight. The instructor paid it no mind, turned the lights back on, and put the projector away.
"All right. I'll take questions on anything you didn't catch, but honestly it's easy, so there aren't any, right?"
"...Right."
"Good. Then if you'd finish the paperwork you were working on yesterday—here—that should do it."
A form checking whether I could handle the odds and ends. Cooking, and things like that.
"Yes."
There wasn't much of it, so I finished quickly and handed it over to the instructor.
I took the documents from Kim Haseong.
I'd already looked over a few things he'd filled out yesterday, but to my surprise, he could handle the single most important task.
"Cooking. You can really do it?"
"Yes. I can, but...?"
"Then show me. The ingredients are all ready."
"Right now?"
"Yes. The dish can be anything you like."
"...Yes."
Still plainly full of questions, Kim Haseong moved to another station. The place was fitted out as a complete kitchen.
Hunters who had passed the hardest test right from the start had no choice but to harbor the same large doubt about cooking that Kim Haseong did now. They had no choice. On the face of it, a hunter and a kitchen seemed very far apart.
"Cooking out of nowhere. Caught you off guard, didn't it?"
"...Well, yeah. It was so out of the blue I was thrown."
"Haha. Of course it was. But cooking matters."
"Matters. Does it?"
"Yes. Later, when you enter a dungeon as a hunter, what do you plan to do?"
"Enter a dungeon and... well, hunt monsters? That's a hunter, isn't it?"
"That's right, too. But almost no one clears a first-floor dungeon and gets out in a single day. Which means you'll have to spend at least one night inside. So how do you plan to eat, and how do you plan to sleep?"
"—Ah. So that's why there was cooking. And tents."
"Exactly. In the end, a hunter has to look after their own survival, too."
"...Haha."
This is reality. What can you do? A hunter is a person in the end. You've got to eat something if you're going to live, don't you?
And with that, Kim Haseong's cooking was done. Even at a glance, it was a simple one-plate meal, the kind you throw together to get through a sitting. I took a bite. It was fine.
"The cooking's good. Then let's check the other items, too. Don't worry. It'll all be over quickly."