The Actress Is a First-Generation Hunter
That evening, after I’d been dragged off under the pretense of giving “gate consultation,” Docheol still showed no signs of leaving.
He planted himself in the guest chair across from my civil complaints desk, set down two paper cups of Mocha Gold he’d apparently gotten from somewhere, and waited for me to clock out.
“Aren’t you going home, Docheol?”
“I was planning to leave after I saw you go.”
“Then you’ll be here forever. I’m the type who punches out on the dot.”
“You just worked ten minutes of overtime.”
“...That’s only because you wouldn’t leave.”
“When did I ever hold you here? You were the one who didn’t get up.”
“I was about to, and then you went and made coffee.”
Docheol pushed one of the paper cups toward me.
For someone who’d made it with his own hands, he sure liked taking credit for it.
I took it, pretending I was too weary to argue.
Somehow, mix coffee made by someone else always tasted sweeter.
“If you don’t have a reason to be here, just go already. I need to go home and lie down.”
“And do what lying down?”
“Lie there, obviously. That’s all. It’s the hardest thing in the world.”
“...How does a person live doing nothing?”
“You make it sound easy. It’s people like you, always creating work for everyone else, that make doing nothing such a pain.”
Docheol gave a disbelieving snort.
Then he drained a mouthful from his cup and, with all the subtlety of a man laying out bait, got to the point.
“That cobalt incident today. If it hadn’t been for you, a whole batch of Baekho rookies would’ve ended up with trauma.”
“So? You planning to give me a commendation?”
“Not a commendation. A favor.”
I set my cup down.
Any favor from Docheol always came with a weight that couldn’t be measured in boxes of Mocha Gold.
“I’m not hearing it.”
“The variants are increasing. You saw it too.”
“I did. Which is why I said it’s something the Association and the guilds need to sort out on their own.”
“That’s the problem. They can’t.”
Docheol slowly turned his paper cup in his hand.
Adjusting the leg resting on his prosthetic, he lowered his voice.
“The active hunters all grew up inside the System. Take away the answer key and they’ll wipe out three times before clearing a single D-grade gate. Once the variants really start pouring in, even those self-important S-grades will end up as bodies in a row.”
“And so?”
“The only ones who know how to fight outside the System are us first-generation hunters.”
Here it came.
I pressed a hand to my forehead.
My head had started to throb.
Caffeine from Mocha Gold wasn’t going to do a damn thing for this headache.
“So you want to round up the old men again? The ones who are dead, crippled, or half-buried in some hospital bed?”
“You’re the old man here.”
“And you’re leaning on a prosthetic.”
“Still, I’m standing on two feet.”
“One of them’s fake.”
Docheol set his cup down and stared at me.
He had the look of a man who knew he couldn’t win with words.
On that point, at least, I’d had the upper hand for twenty years straight.
“Listen seriously, Baekjeong. Do you know how many first-generation hunters are left after the Grand Hall incident?”
“I’ve never counted.”
“The ones still active enough to function? You can count them on one hand. The rest are either buried already or sitting in some care facility staring at the ceiling.”
His voice dropped a little.
Even when we were trading jokes, there were moments like this when both of us fell silent.
When you realized the number of people who’d survived after drowning in blood together had been whittled down to a handful.
“I just want to gather that handful. Not summon them right this second.”
“Gather them for what? To make a wheelchair brigade? It’d take half a day just to deploy.”
“Some of them are still perfectly fine.”
Docheol gave a faint grin and started counting off on his fingers.
“There are barely enough first-generation hunters left to count on one hand. And you know exactly who’s on those fingers.”
“I don’t know. I stopped caring a long time ago.”
“Han Bokhui.”
At that name, I nearly choked on my coffee.
“...Where are you dragging that name up from?”
“What do you mean? She’s on TV every day. Flip on any channel and she shows up sooner or later.”
Docheol jerked his chin toward the old lounge TV beside the guest chair.
Sure enough, a variety show rerun was playing.
On the screen, a woman in a bright dress was throwing her head back in laughter at some guest’s forgettable joke.
The caption introduced her as the nation’s MC.
People called her different things depending on her stage name, but her real name was Han Bokhui.
The same name she’d had twenty years ago, back when we were wading through the bodies of our dead comrades inside a gate, all of us soaked in blood together.
“Hey. Call her Han Bokhui like that and she’d hate it.”
“Of course she would. She’s terrified of anyone finding out she’s first generation. Just hearing her real name gives her a fit.”
Docheol emptied his paper cup.
“There aren’t many first-generation hunters who know how to make use of not aging the way she does. She’s been milking the young-looking beauty concept for twenty years straight. She’s planning to take the fact that she was a hunter to the grave.”
“Good for her. If it got out, her popularity would vanish overnight.”
“You sure like taking her side.”
“I’m not taking her side. I’m hiding just like she is.”
I glanced at Han Bokhui on the screen.
She was laughing.
The corners of her mouth rose at exactly the right angle, the skin around her eyes creased just enough, and her shoulders shook in perfect rhythm with the laughter. It was so perfect it only exposed itself to people who already knew it was fake.
“You know that isn’t real laughter, don’t you?” I asked quietly.
The teasing in Docheol’s face faded for a moment.
“...I know. Her brain fried the part that handles emotion. She doesn’t really feel happiness or sadness anymore, they say. So she fills in the blanks with acting.”
“I heard she even memorizes her reactions from a manual.”
“There’s a rumor she calculates the angle of every facial muscle before she smiles. Supposedly she works out in her head exactly when to laugh, and exactly when to let the tears fall.”
Docheol smiled wryly.
“Funny, isn’t it? She used to be the kind of person who never calculated a damn thing. She laughed better than anyone, talked better than anyone. Even on nights when the rest of the squad were dying in the gate, one joke from her could get everybody snickering and back on their feet.”
I listened in silence.
I remembered.
The ridiculous jokes she used to toss out in the corner of some gate trench, where everything was caked with blood and mud.
They really had saved people.
“She always said she wanted to be the kind of person who set the mood. And in the end, she even became a celebrity. I’d say she achieved her dream.”
Docheol nodded toward the screen.
“But now she can only create that mood through acting, not by feeling it for real. That was the price of making her dream come true.”
I didn’t add anything.
I had no right to criticize someone of my own kind for hiding who they were.
I was dead on paper too, after all, tucked away in the civil complaints office making mix coffee.
The difference was only that I lived without a face, while she lived by forcing one onto herself that no longer came naturally.
“Leave Han Bokhui out of it. She’ll never come.”
“No, she won’t. Not once her identity starts to crack.”
“That’s exactly why you should leave her out. If you’re going to wreck someone’s life to build your little force, count me out first.”
“...Fine. Fine.”
Docheol raised both hands in surrender.
Then he lifted a second finger.
“Then what about the other one? Do Hagyeong.”
I had just set my cup down when my hand stopped dead.
“...Do Hagyeong is even less likely.”
“Why? She’d be the best at dealing with variants. Her senses go completely insane, so she can catch variant energy first. A gate that looks perfectly normal to us, she can identify just by smelling it.”
“That’s why she shut herself away in the mountains.”
Do Hagyeong.
A first-generation hunter whose five senses had gone completely out of control as the price of being saturated in mana.
City lights stabbed at her like blades. Traffic noise scraped against her skull. The smell of other people rushed at her like something she might vomit from.
In the end, she retreated to a lonely mountainside and cut the world off entirely.
She didn’t even take phone calls.
Apparently even radio waves irritated her.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Docheol rubbed his chin.
“Seven years ago, maybe? Somewhere in Gangwon-do, deep in the mountains. I don’t know the exact spot. She doesn’t take mail either, and if a hiker so much as wanders near her place, she throws rocks to drive them off.”
“Nice personality.”
“From her point of view, what else can she do? The moment another person comes near, she gets hit all at once by their heartbeat, their sweat, the sound of their clothes brushing together. What’s a greeting to us is torture to her.”
I thought of Do Hagyeong.
Twenty years ago, she’d been the eyes and ears of our unit.
She could catch the sound of a demon catching its breath beyond the gate and read an ambush before it happened.
More than a few of us had survived because of that sense.
The problem was that the sense had never switched off after the war ended.
What had been a blessing to everyone else became a curse in a peaceful world.
“If you want to bring her back, you’ll have to climb the mountain yourself. You want me to do that from a wheelchair?”
“I never said you had to go.”
“You basically just did.”
“I didn’t. I’m just saying we should put her name on the list.”
Docheol shrugged.
That shamelessness was exactly the same as it had been twenty years ago.
“But honestly, once the variants really start pouring out, the first person we’ll go looking for is Do Hagyeong. The System can’t catch what she can smell ten miles away. She’s her own early warning system.”
“So you want to drag that early warning system down from the mountains?”
“If it comes to that.”
“If it does, you go. I’m not going.”
Docheol smiled thinly.
It was the kind of smile I hated most.
It made it obvious he was already planning to send me eventually.
“Anyway, let’s just make the list for now. I’m not saying summon them right away. If the variants cross the threshold, we need to know who we can pull in from where.”
“Pull in, my ass. They’re all old men and women with stories.”
“You got pulled out too, didn’t you? Tossing gravel and raising two disciples.”
I shut my mouth.
When I had nothing decent to say, keeping quiet was one of the old ways of the first generation.
Truthfully, Docheol wasn’t entirely wrong.
Once the variants started mocking the System, it was only a matter of time before people who knew how to operate outside it became necessary.
There was just no reason for that to be me.
Han Bokhui had her own reasons for hiding. So did Do Hagyeong.
Dragging those reasons out one by one would be exhausting just to think about.
“I told you I’m not doing it. I’m busy enough just throwing gravel.”
“Busy training two disciples?”
“Busy enough. I even have to carve out time to drink Mocha Gold.”
Docheol gave a dry laugh.
“Just think about it. That’s all I’m saying.”
He braced himself on his prosthetic and stood, taking his time.
He tossed the empty paper cup into the trash, then turned back once from the doorway.
“Han Bokhui or Do Hagyeong, they’re both in the same boat as you, Baekjeong. They’re living by pretending to be fine, pretending to enjoy it, pretending they don’t exist at all. How long do you think you can keep hiding like that?”
“Forever.”
“...You really are all mouth, aren’t you.”
“What else would still be alive? My legs are dead and my circuits are fried.”
Docheol snorted.
Then, dropping the joking air, he added one more thing.
“The variants won’t wait for us. Ready or not, when the time comes they’ll pour out on their own. If you go looking for those old folks then, it’ll already be too late.”
“Then I’ll think about it then.”
“You only ever wake up after something’s already happened.”
“If something can be solved while sitting down, there’s no reason to get up.”
Docheol shook his head and opened the door, leaving.
The sound of his prosthetic leg clicking away faded down the hallway.
I was left alone in the civil complaints office.
It was already dark outside.
My on-time escape had gone straight out the window, but for some reason I didn’t even feel angry.
It seemed talking nonsense with an old comrade hadn’t been as bad as I’d thought.
I finished the last of the now-cold Mocha Gold, rolled my wheelchair over to the TV, and reached for the remote.
I was planning to turn it off and go home.
The moment my fingers closed around the remote, the screen cut to a close-up.
Han Bokhui.
Her eyes were glistening as though she were about to cry over someone’s story, and she dabbed at the corners with a handkerchief.
The guest beside her patted her shoulder. The audience clapped.
A caption appeared.
Her warm sincerity.
I stared at the screen for a long while.
The angle of those tears. The rhythm of that trembling.
Everything was exact.
So exact it proved it wasn’t real.
Twenty years ago, she’d been the one who cried first every time a comrade died in the gate.
She’d laugh and cry better than anyone, and with nothing more than that smile she’d haul our dying unit back onto its feet.
That woman on the screen was now imitating the real tears from back then only as memory.
She probably wanted to cry, but nothing would come, so she had to calculate in her head exactly when to bring the handkerchief up for it to look natural.
The Han Bokhui on the screen flashed the camera another brilliant smile.
The audience cheered.
She looked like the brightest person in the world.
She also had the emptiest face in the world.
I lifted the remote and turned the TV off.
Just before the screen went black, the last thing it caught was her smiling face, swallowed by darkness.
“...Take care of yourself, Han Bokhui.”
I muttered the words to no one at all, then took hold of my wheelchair wheels.
As for the list and the little force and all the rest of it, I decided to shove it into a corner of my mind for now.
Today, for some reason, the coffee tasted even bitterer than usual.
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