How to Tame an S-Rank and an A-Rank (1)
At 7:30 in the morning, a brass can landed with a thud on my desk.
Maxing Mocha Gold Special Edition.
Yesterday’s promised off-the-books bribe.
"I’m clocking in, Senior."
Yu Seoa greeted me crisply. For someone who had just frozen a mutant dog to death, she sounded weirdly excited—like a freshman on the first day of school.
The problem was that she wasn’t the only one excited about it.
From the entrance of the Civil Affairs Office all the way down the hallway, Association employees were hiding behind pillars and spying on us. A few of them were brazen enough to hold up their phones in plain sight.
It was because of yesterday’s video.
Overnight, Hunter Gallery had gone completely feral over a single 0.3-second bait clip: the white-haired old man in the Association Civil Affairs Office had twitched a backscratcher, and an S-rank mutant had gone flying.
Of course, there wasn’t a single sane conclusion to be found anywhere.
Memes were multiplying and conspiracy theories were running wild, but I couldn’t have cared less.
Worrying about it would only make me tired.
I popped open the can and took a sip.
Fair enough—the beans they claimed had been grown on an imperial farm really did have a sweeter finish than the instant mix I usually drank.
"Good. You passed. Bring me the same thing tomorrow."
"And the lesson?"
"It already started. Tasting it and judging the flavor was your first assignment."
"……Senior."
"Kidding. Come on."
I rolled my wheelchair down toward the Association basement.
There was a sealed training room down there that almost nobody ever used.
No cameras, no spectators, and no employees drooling behind pillars.
I parked my wheelchair in the middle of the room and took a handful of pebbles from my pocket.
I’d picked them up from a flower bed on the way here.
"Close your eyes."
"Huh?"
"I said close them. And take this."
Yu Seoa looked confused, but she obediently shut her eyes.
I flicked a pebble at her.
It struck her square in the forehead and bounced off.
"……Senior?"
"Missed the catch. Again."
Tap.
Her nose bridge this time.
Tap.
Her shoulder.
Tap.
Her forehead again.
An S-rank hunter, one of the Baekho Guild’s crown jewels, was getting pelted one by one by pebbles I’d scavenged from a flower bed, all in a sealed training room.
If the gallery freaks had seen this, I had no idea what kind of fanfiction they would’ve written.
"What exactly is this training?" Yu Seoa asked, rubbing her forehead. Her tone was half irritation, half bafflement.
"Remember how you caught that dog yesterday?"
"I focused on its ankle joint and struck."
"Did you see it with your eyes?"
Yu Seoa shut her mouth.
She knew.
That moment yesterday, she hadn’t been seeing with her eyes. She’d found the opening through the prickling along her spine, through the tremor in the air against her skin, through beast instincts faster than thought.
"The problem is," I said, rolling another pebble across my fingertips, "you only know how to use that right before you die. You don’t open your eyes until a knife is at your throat. That isn’t talent. That’s luck."
Tap.
Her forehead again.
"If you want to get truly strong, you need to be able to turn that sense on even when your life isn’t on the line. If you can’t even feel a pebble coming at you, how are you supposed to read a mutant’s killing intent?"
Her brows drew together.
This time, I’d hit a nerve.
Good. That meant the potted plant was starting to get angry, which meant it was ready to leave the greenhouse.
She closed her eyes again.
This time, there was resolve in the motion.
Tap.
Her forehead again.
"Why couldn’t you catch it?"
"I…… tried to predict where your hand was coming from. If I calculated the trajectory……"
"You calculated. So you got hit."
I rolled the pebble around in my palm.
"You’re still running an invisible status window in your head. Angle, speed, time to impact. By the time you’re done calculating, the pebble’s already embedded in your forehead."
"Then what am I supposed to do……?"
"Don’t think. Just catch it. If you’re hungry, you eat. If you’re sleepy, you sleep. If something comes at you, you catch it."
It must have sounded absurd.
To a genius who’d spent her whole life inside numbers and formulas, being told to stop thinking was probably like being told to stop breathing.
I threw another pebble.
Tap, forehead.
Tap, nose bridge.
By the time I’d thrown about thirty, Yu Seoa’s breathing changed.
The tension left her shoulders, and the eyes that had been chasing the System’s blue holograms went still behind closed lids.
She started setting down the numbers inside her head.
I threw the thirty-first pebble.
Her hand shot out into the air and caught it.
"……Got it."
Yu Seoa’s eyes flew open.
She stared at the pebble in her palm as if she couldn’t believe it was real.
"One. You caught one."
I finished the can.
"That means you’ve got thousands left. You’re already an S-rank and still got a long way to go."
"……"
Yu Seoa tightened her grip on the pebble.
Then the corner of her mouth lifted just slightly.
It was the face of someone whose fighting spirit had overtaken her humiliation.
That was enough.
Good enough for day one.
Then the steel door to the training room was shoved open with a rough clang.
"Yu Seoa. So you were here."
The man who came in was dressed stiffly in a mage coat.
The Baekho Guild crest was stitched over his shoulder, and his walk carried both military discipline and arrogance.
Yu Seoa’s expression stiffened a little.
"Vice-Captain Han."
"Han Segi, Vice-Captain of Baekho Attack Team 2."
The man gave his name while glancing at me.
Less an introduction than a notice.
"Yu Seoa, the whole headquarters is in an uproar. Our guild’s ace supposedly took credit for killing a mutant and handed the story to some wheelchair-bound Association civil servant, and now some video about a disciple and a teacher is going viral. What’s going to happen to the guild’s image?"
"I didn’t hand credit to anyone. I told the truth."
"The truth?"
Han Segi snorted.
"You were the one who killed it, Yu Seoa. That mutant yesterday was taken down by your ice magic. The measurements are all there. This nonsense about the old man waving a backscratcher and doing it was just some delusion made up by gallery shut-ins."
He nodded at me.
"Old man. I understand you’re a first-generation senior and all, but hitching your name to our ace like this and trying to cash in on her reputation is a problem. Let’s settle this nicely, shall we?"
I scratched my shoulder with the backscratcher.
I had no intention of arguing.
It was better for my peace and quiet if he believed what he wanted to believe.
"You’re right. I didn’t do anything. Seoa did it all."
"……Senior?"
Yu Seoa looked at me in confusion.
Han Segi wore a satisfied expression.
But the habit among young people these days was apparently that they couldn’t keep their mouths shut.
"See? Even he admits it. Yu Seoa, get a grip. I get that you’re trying to look after the first-generation veterans out of some sense of debt, but this is going too far. What’s there to learn from some washed-up relic?"
Relic.
The word itself didn’t bother me.
I heard it every day.
The problem was that he said it in front of my disciple, right after she’d just opened her eyes to the world on account of a single pebble.
Yu Seoa’s mana went cold.
"Vice-Captain Han. If you need verification, would you like to take a turn?"
"What?"
"I’ll personally confirm whether I learned anything from this washed-up relic."
Han Segi’s face twisted.
He was a vice-captain, all right, and he’d just been challenged publicly by an ace who wasn’t even under his command.
"Fine. Let’s see it. But no magic. No ice magic. Block me with whatever your new senses are supposed to be."
It was a cheap condition.
He was sealing off her specialty—ice.
But I didn’t stop her.
In fact, I thought it was perfect.
What I’d taught her today wasn’t magic anyway. It was sense.
Han Segi shed his coat and wrapped mana around his hands.
In front of his eyes, the familiar blue System window appeared.
Attack correction, accuracy, predicted impact point.
Just like Im Taejun yesterday, he clenched his fist while staring at the answer sheet the System had drawn for him.
Yu Seoa closed her eyes.
Then she shut off her own System window.
"Begin."
Han Segi kicked off the ground.
Fast and precise.
The strike aimed at her solar plexus was calculated by the System to be the shortest route, at the optimal angle.
A textbook blow.
The problem was that it had been read like a textbook.
With her eyes closed, Yu Seoa slid half a step to the side just before the fist could land.
It was the same movement she’d used to catch the pebble.
Han Segi’s fist cut through empty air.
"What……?"
He immediately followed up with a second attack.
The System’s chain bonus would have kindly displayed the next strike point for him.
A heel kick turning off the knee.
An honest trajectory.
Yu Seoa was already lowering her body before the foot even rose.
The moment Han Segi bent his knee, she read the direction the dust on the floor shifted through the sole of her foot.
The System only flashed its warning after the kick had already begun, but her body had answered before it started.
The kick skimmed past the tips of her hair.
"Why…… won’t this hit?!"
When Han Segi staggered, losing his balance, Yu Seoa’s palm lightly touched his wrist.
It wasn’t a shove. It wasn’t a break.
She had simply helped the flow along by a fraction.
Han Segi, dragged along by his own momentum, pitched forward and slammed face-first into the training room floor.
"Ghk!"
Silence.
Yu Seoa slowly opened her eyes.
Inside her blue-gray gaze was something a little deeper than yesterday.
"Vice-Captain Han, you weren’t looking at my solar plexus. You were looking at the impact point the System displayed for you."
She spoke calmly.
"That’s why it didn’t tell you where I’d dodge, and why you couldn’t see it. I, however…… saw which way the wind leaned the moment you planted your foot."
Han Segi remained sprawled on the floor, unable to say a word.
More than the fact that he’d lost, what crushed him was that he couldn’t understand how.
The System he’d spent his life worshipping hadn’t been able to explain a single line of what had just happened.
That fist supposedly backed by a 98 percent hit rate had sliced only empty air, and nowhere in the data was there an answer for why.
I tossed the empty can into the trash.
Clean shot.
"Seoa."
"Yes, Senior."
"That’s two pebbles now."
Yu Seoa gave a small snort.
For the first time, there was no pity or obligation in that smile.
I gripped the wheelchair wheels.
That was enough for the first lesson.
I was just thinking of heading back upstairs for another lukewarm cup of instant coffee when applause sounded slowly from beyond the open steel door.
Clap, clap, clap.
It was slow, unhurried applause.
An old man stood in the doorway.
A man wrapped head to toe in a deep, weighty mana that made Han Segi look like child’s play.
His hair was white, but his back was straight, and one leg ended in a prosthetic.
The moment I saw that prosthetic, I swallowed the spit in my mouth.
A first-generation hunter.
And not just any one—I knew that face.
"Long time no see, Baekjeong."
The old man lifted the corners of his mouth.
"Didn’t expect to find you throwing pebbles around in a place like this."
Han Segi jerked his head up from the floor in a panic.
The instant he saw the old man, all the color drained from his face.
"V-vice Guild Leader……?!"
Yu Seoa’s eyes widened too.
She seemed unable to believe that the Baekho Guild’s number two had personally walked into a basement training room at the Association.
The old man was Docheol, vice-guild leader of the Baekho Guild, and one of the surviving first-generation hunters who could still be counted among the monsters.
He was a man who had once stood back-to-back with me on the same battlefield.
I scratched the nape of my neck with the backscratcher and put on the most annoying expression in the world.
"You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m just Section Chief Kang from Civil Affairs."
"Section Chief Kang, is it."
Docheol dragged his prosthetic leg forward and stepped in.
"And here I thought a man who’d been written off as dead twenty years ago would be spending his retirement making machine coffee in the Association Civil Affairs Office."
"Would a dead man even know what coffee tastes like? I’m alive and well, so of course I drink Mocha Gold."
Docheol gave a short laugh.
I didn’t like that laugh one bit.
It was the exact look of someone with a mountain of trouble to unload, who’d just found a gullible sucker willing to take it off his hands.
"I came to make you an offer."
"I’m not listening."
"Advisor on mutant cases. Generous pay. Under the Baekho Guild name, with a lifetime supply of off-the-books Mocha Gold."
I stopped my hand just as I was about to grab the wheelchair wheels.
"……"
"You stopped."
"I did not."
Docheol took another step, dragging the prosthetic leg along.
Then he lowered his voice just a little.
"Be honest, Baekjeong. You’re getting kind of addicted to throwing those pebbles, aren’t you?"
I didn’t answer.
Not answering was answer enough.
Beside me, Yu Seoa was watching me with bright eyes.
Han Segi was still face-down on the floor, apparently not yet ready to get up.
I let out a long sigh and thought of the instant coffee waiting to go cold upstairs.
Looks like an on-time clock-out had been doomed from the start.