The Difference Between Hunters (2)
The instant I slipped into the brush, the footsteps hunting me drew closer still.
But those were not the irregular hoofbeats of a four-legged beast.
Two—no, maybe three. The measured, rhythmic tread of several people. This was human work. No question.
I had thrown myself down so fast that dirt and grass-stain covered me from head to toe, but that was a blessing in disguise. It would make for excellent camouflage. I stripped off the blaze-orange hunting vest first—the thing might as well have been a beacon—then unslung the shotgun from my back and fed it shells. The cold metallic click of the action settling into place steadied my nerves in a way that felt almost indecent, given the circumstances.
I dropped even lower and slid into the thicker undergrowth.
A moment later, their silhouettes entered my field of view.
Two of them. Those same relentlessly stupid kids.
I kept myself as low as I could and trained the cold muzzle in their direction. Idiots or not, they were still Awakened. A few lumps of lead might not kill them. It might just make them angry.
They were scanning hard, trying to pick me out. Chins tipped up to check the branches. Eyes rolling left and right. So they had learned something, at least. But not a single one of them looked down at his own feet.
A true huntsman, searching for quarry, checks the ground for sign first. The most basic thing there is—and they still had not learned it from experience.
I could not tell where the third one was, but having only two enemies in sight was luck enough. Judging by their gear, they had not come here to kill me. No firearms. Just a few daggers that looked more like they were in the way than anything else.
Then one of them spotted my vest on the ground and picked it up.
I took that as my signal and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The shotgun roared, and the kid holding the vest went flying a good distance before he slammed into the dirt.
As a Hunter, he would have taken a harder hit than a rubber bullet, but nothing life-threatening. The pain ringing through to the bone, though—that he would not have escaped. It had to hurt like hell.
The kid still was not used to pain. He lay there shrieking, his voice tearing itself to pieces. At the sound, the remaining one's gaze snapped instinctively toward his fallen partner.
And that was the second proof he was still a greenhorn.
I pulled the trigger again. The shotgun roared, and the second one tumbled down right beside where his buddy had landed, the two of them laid out in a matching pair. Swearing up a storm and flopping around on the ground, he looked exactly like a little kid thrashing in shallow water.
I had no reason to stick around and watch them milk it. I turned without a second thought and slipped quietly downhill along the watercourse.
I tore down the mountain for several minutes. But leave it to Hunters—before long, a stream of curses came pouring from behind me. They had the reflexes and the recovery you would expect from their kind, sure. But that only mattered when I was standing right in front of them. All that screaming and swearing just meant they had lost me and were taking it out on the trees.
I used those voices as a perfectly serviceable rangefinder, keeping my distance as I eased naturally through the brush.
Up ahead, a very welcome sign came into view. I never thought I would be this glad to see a boundary marker the other huntsmen had driven in to keep their routes from overlapping. From here on, I was more likely to catch a bullet from another huntsman than a knife from those kids—so my nerves wound even tighter.
There was only one thing I could do. Get down the mountain to where the government people were waiting, without catching anyone's round.
Fortunately, this sector seemed to have already been searched. I could not hear any other huntsmen moving. A timely breeze set the grass swaying, the blades dancing this way and that as if they were trying to hide me from those idiots. Whether I had fully left their line of sight or not, the enraged voices had stopped.
But I could not relax. They might have pulled themselves together and started searching again. Unlikely—but if they had, I would be in a real mess.
That was when Lady Luck decided to smile on me.
Gunshots cracked through the trees again, and a familiar scream came echoing after them. The sound came from the opposite direction of where I was heading. They had done exactly what the textbook said—figured I had fled for high ground, gone tearing through that area, and run straight into another huntsman team.
I clicked my tongue inwardly. I just hoped those idiots would stay down for a long time—and that my fellow huntsmen would be safe. With that silent prayer, I kept moving downhill.
After a long descent, I finally spotted police officers and civil servants in work uniforms beyond the yellow caution tape. Part of me wanted to run over and kiss every last one of them, but first I had to let them know I was in danger.
I burst out of the forest and sprinted toward them. The officials looked terrified, as if they thought a monster was chasing me out of the trees.
"There are some freak Hunter bastards waving daggers around up the mountain!"
I gasped it out between breaths. The first police officer to collect himself came over and looked me up and down.
"Are you injured?"
"Details later! We need to get out of here!"
The words were barely out of my mouth before the official in charge and the officer pulled open the door of the cruiser sitting right in front of us. I squeezed in between them and climbed aboard. The moment the car peeled away from the scene, a sigh of relief finally broke loose.
With hands gone slack from the release of tension, I ejected every shell from the gun. Only after I heard the hollow click of the empty shotgun did it truly hit me—that it was over.
When the cruiser reached the trailhead, I climbed out carefully. The summer air felt unusually cool and sweet today. But before I could savor it, I had to go to the makeshift command post where the officials and police were gathered and explain everything.
From the run-in with those idiots at the shelter, to them getting handsy with Hana and Poppy, to crossing paths with them when they came looking for payback—only after I had laid it all out could I finally put a bottle of water from the table to my lips.
The police officers in charge, and a Hunter who looked like he was with the Ministry of Environment, listened to my story with extraordinarily grave expressions. Only after I had drained the entire bottle did I have room to breathe. I looked at the officer sitting across from me and asked,
"So? We got a read on those morons yet?"
The one who answered was not the police officer. It was the veteran Hunter attached to the Environment Ministry. He let out a long, heavy breath.
"Sexual offenses against a minor. Racial discrimination against Beastfolk. Aggravated intimidation and retaliatory crime. Unauthorized use of force. Attempted murder. Tally it all up and they're looking at thirty years, easy."
"In a prison?"
I had never been inside a Gate, but looking at his grim expression, it seemed there was a dedicated prison in there just for Hunters.
Once the conversation had wound down, I dug through my pockets for my phone. Nothing came to hand. I must have left it in the vest pocket when I threw the thing off for camouflage in the woods. Still—not a single call or text all day. The kids were probably still dead asleep.
I borrowed a phone from a nearby official and punched in a number I knew by heart. A moment later, a voice I was very glad to hear came through the receiver.
"Hello...?"
A voice still tangled up in sleep, half in a dream. Just as I had figured—they had played themselves out yesterday and were only now dragging themselves out of bed. I did not say a single word about the nightmare of a morning I had just lived through. I just spun a story about accidentally stepping on my smartphone and smashing it to pieces.
A deep sigh came down the line from Hana. That sigh pulled a smile onto my lips before I knew it.
That's right. To Hana and Poppy, things like this were nothing more than a midsummer night's dream—no more, no less.
No. They had to be.
On the walk from the command post out to the parking lot, I felt the strength go out of my legs. My hands trembled, just a little, and a cold sweat slid down my spine. I had been fine until a minute ago. Now my body was finally being honest about it.
The truth landed when I took the truck's wheel and turned the key. I had just shot people. Awakened or not, they were still people. The police were holding onto my firearm, so the only thing left for me to do was get back to the shelter as fast as I could—before those greenhorn moron bastards showed their faces again.
I gripped the wheel with unsteady hands and drove, slowly, toward the shelter.
I parked the truck and stepped inside, and the Hunters nearby started murmuring among themselves. I could not make out what they were saying, but one of them—someone who looked like he held a fairly high post—beckoned me over and led me into an office. He sat down across from me with a distinctly complicated expression.
Arriving at the shelter had taken the edge off a little, so I spoke first.
"Isn't this much of a fuss pretty standard after a day in the field?"
"If it were, we wouldn't have given you the time of day."
"Then what did you call me in for?"
What the Hunter had to tell me was, of course, about those kids. One of them had ignored a removal order and spent the night lurking around our quarters, only to get hauled off by security without a sound. The other two had decided that was me taking revenge, come looking for me this morning, and gotten themselves thoroughly wrecked. That was the whole tedious story.
In other words, I had been sitting still while they worked themselves into a lather and tripped over their own feet.
A hollow laugh broke out of me at a story that was not even funny. He slid a cup of coffee across the desk, as if to settle me down.
"You don't need to worry. That team are freelancers—no guild, no particular affiliation—and their reputation in the industry is already the worst. However..."
"However?"
When people this high up said however, it was almost always about face, or about money.
"...If word gets out that they lost to a civilian, we expect it will damage the Hunter Management Bureau's image."
"I'm a Semi-Awakened."
"A Semi-Awakened is still, on paper, an ordinary civilian. People see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear."
So what this man was asking, in so many words, was that I help bury the fact that Hunters had gotten beaten by a country bumpkin like me.
And why would I? This was drinking-story material I could live off for decades.
I kept my mouth shut and looked elsewhere. He seemed to have expected exactly that, because he got down to the real negotiation.
"Their punishment will be handled transparently and thoroughly. They're not even D-Rank—just small fry—so there's no strategic loss to us. We'll see to it they rot inside a Gate for the rest of their lives."
"And after that?"
That was just the ordinary legal process, and the way he said it—like he was granting me a special favor—was almost funny. The official, as if he had been waiting for me to finish, pulled a white envelope from a desk drawer and held it out.
Mm. When it came to buying a regular person's silence, this was still the fastest and surest way.
Without a word, he lifted two fingers into a V.
"Twice the compensation for this operation."
Twice what I was due for the Nonsan hunting work. That was the price of putting a lid on this.
I did not take the envelope. I sat with it for a moment. Honestly, it stung. Burying one of a huge organization's ugly secrets for a mere double of my field pay did not add up. But getting greedier than this would only bring headaches.
My mother always used to say it. Try to squeeze too much out of something and you'll only make yourself sick.
Getting mixed up deep with Hunters would only cost me. We might both make a living off the smell of blood, but those people walked around with human blood on their hands. Mixing with them would only make me filthier.
I might have bran in my coat, but those dogs are covered in shit.
And more than anything, things like this could not be allowed to reach Hana and Poppy.
"This should do."
I took the envelope. The official looked satisfied, and at the same time faintly puzzled, as if this was not quite what he had expected. He tilted his head.
"I thought you were going to ask for more."
"You thought I'd take more? I'm not that petty."
I gave him a bright little smile and started for the door. His voice caught me from behind.
"Ah—and we'll replace the phone and vest you lost with new ones."
I turned just far enough to tip my head at him, then went outside. I gave a light wave to the other Hunters glancing my way and headed back to the room where Hana and Poppy were waiting.
The job was not over yet. Washing up and getting some real rest came first.