Chapter 3

Chapter 3

His Place, and Hers

"Mom!"

Before Kim Eun-ji awakened as a hunter. When she had just turned ten. A gate rampage brought her everyday life down in an instant.

"Eun-ji! Run!"

"No! We go together!"

Kim Eun-ji shook her head, tears falling, toward her mother pinned under the wreckage of the building.

"Get out, quick! Mom!"

"Listen to Mom! Kim Eun-ji! Why won't you listen?!"

"No!! We go together! If you're not there either, what am I supposed to do alone!"

Apart from the desperate exchange between mother and daughter, the monsters slaughtering humans without mercy through the gate rampage were spreading in every direction.

"Kiririk!"

Then a beast of about two meters, shaped like a mantis, began to close in on the two of them. Even watching the shadow falling over the ground, Kim Eun-ji did not let go of the hand she held tight.

"If Mom's not here, I'll die here too! I don't want to be alone!"

"Eun-ji! Please! Go!!"

Even hearing her mother's scream, Kim Eun-ji's attitude did not change.

Even through her tears, as if she would never give up, she gripped with both hands and did everything she could to pull her mother out from under the wreckage.

"Kikikik?"

By then the shadow had grown large enough to cover her and her mother, and a grotesque cry she had never heard in her life. The moment terror-stricken Kim Eun-ji closed her eyes.

-Slash.

A pleasant wind swept over her. Like a gentle spring breeze blowing through the middle of a park on a fine day.

"Are you all right?"

Then came a young man's voice, one that had not yet passed the change.

"Uh...?"

"Please take my child! I'm fine!!"

Before Kim Eun-ji could grasp the situation, her mother shouted in a rush. And the man with the young voice answered in a soft tone.

"It's all right now. Rescue will be here soon. Don't worry."

"Ah..."

Relief at the sudden end of it dropped Kim Eun-ji to the ground. Her legs had given out and she could barely speak, when an unfamiliar touch settled on her head.

"You did everything you could to protect your mom. You did well. That's cool."

A man's touch, felt for the first time. Kind, but low. Was that why. Kim Eun-ji lifted her head without knowing it.

And what she met was the familiar face of a hunter she had often seen on the internet.

"Lee Si-u?"

The awakening of a couple in the extreme of a gate rampage. It had plastered the news day after day as a story out of a movie, so she knew it well.

"Huh? You know me? That's not good..."

The boy smiled as if troubled, then raised his index finger to his lips.

"That I can fight is a secret, okay?"

"Why?"

"Mm... otherwise I take the spotlight my girlfriend is supposed to get."

Kim Eun-ji of that time did not properly understand his words. But she came to know later.

A parachute hire, a kept husband posing as a partner. There was something precious he wanted to protect, even if it meant taking every kind of blame.

And so, the day she awakened as a hunter, Kim Eun-ji's goal was set as one.

She wanted to become a shining hunter whom someone would want to support even if they gave up everything. She had worked on that single resolve alone.

**

When I went to the office at the time we had set by text, there was a woman who looked to be in her early thirties and a girl in her early twenties. One would be Guild Master Lee Mi-seon, and who was the other?

"I'm Lee Si-u."

"Please, sit comfortably."

After exchanging a few words with Lee Mi-seon, the moment I sat on the sofa and met the other woman's eyes.

"Hup!"

The girl with the black bob looked at me, eyes round, and covered her mouth.

"Eun-ji?"

Lee Mi-seon hardened her face and glared at the girl called Eun-ji. Even so, I was a guest, and a reaction like this at first meeting was a bit much.

Then the girl with the black bob met my eyes and suddenly shouted.

"H-hello! Second-year hunter Kim Eun-ji!"

At Kim Eun-ji's sudden greeting, I took the hand she held out with a flustered face.

"Ah. Nice to meet you. I'm Lee Si-u, a tenth-year hunter."

"Yes! I know!"

Still flushed red, Kim Eun-ji closed her mouth, then began to stare straight at me.

An unexpected situation, but girls that age swing one way and the other. It happens. Kim Seol-yeon used to be like that too.

"Shall we sit first?"

Lee Mi-seon smiled as if to settle things and offered me a seat. Nothing about it had been particularly rude.

"Sure."

Sitting on the sofa, I gave a bitter smile inwardly for a moment.

Ten years clung to me stubbornly. Kim Eun-ji's flustering attitude had made me think of Kim Seol-yeon.

Even trying to forget and live a new life, it comes back like this. Like a brand that won't come off.

On top of that, the last meeting with Kim Seol-yeon came back, my mood soured, and I looked out the window with my brow furrowed.

Today the sunlight was unusually clear, shining into the office through the window.

If my future from here could be this bright too. With that thought, just as I was gathering my mood.

"Si-u. Sorry. Shall we talk a little now?"

Then Lee Mi-seon, seated beside Kim Eun-ji, smiled and looked at me.

"The kind of work, and the pay. Those two matter most, right?"

"Guild Master Lee Mi-seon?"

"Ah. Look at me. It's been a while, Si-u. I'm Lee Mi-seon, guild master of Saebit."

When I calmly looked over the face of the woman who folded her eyes neatly and held out a card, the memory finally came.

Until not long ago, she had been Deputy Director Lee, in charge of gate-clear processing at the Hunter Association.

"You left the Association?"

"Yes, that's right. We talked briefly last time, but you were so busy you might have forgotten. Hoho."

It had been over five years since I took on the small clerical work while supporting Kim Seol-yeon. It was a time when administrative work outside mattered more than help inside a gate.

I had seen guilds and hunters fall to ruin over every kind of tax-evasion charge and illegal-commission suspicion, so I had handled the work all the more carefully.

Thanks to that, Kim Seol-yeon had become an A-rank hunter without a single suspicion.

A tie I came to know while doing the guild's administrative work. Come to think of it, I remembered talking at the Hunter Association's founding anniversary not long ago. That she was starting a new company.

"I remember now. Thank you for calling me in like this."

"Oh. I'm the one who's more grateful you came."

We carried the talk on in a good mood for a while. Then the girl seated beside Lee Mi-seon opened her mouth.

"Did you come alone?"

"Uh... yes. Just me."

"What about Hunter Kim Seol-yeon? You were always together."

When Kim Seol-yeon's name reached me, the memory I wanted to forget rose again. An expression of hers I was seeing for the first time, and that pitiful air. Even the sneer of S-rank Hunter Kwon Do-hyeok, looking down on me.

The feeling I thought I had thrown up entirely that day began to well up again.

"Ah..."

If it had been an arm cut off, I could have endured it. I had been through that more than once. I can bear guts tearing and the throat burning too.

A full ten years. I sacrificed everything for her. For the promise of that day, ten years ago. Full support until she became an S-rank hunter.

I never once doubted what was between us. I believed a brightly shining happy ending waited in a future not far off.

And yet.

"I'm alone."

Always together, she had whispered. Love, like that. Ten years. The feeling piled up over that time could not be cleared in a single night.

Even so, I had to live. I had to move. Money is needed if you want to eat.

So I came here, but the tag is still on me. Kim Seol-yeon's partner. Parachute hire. Kept husband. A shameless hunter petitioner.

"Even so, I'm a fairly useful guy. Try believing me once."

I forced the corners of my mouth up and smiled. These would be coworkers I'd be working with from here. I couldn't show a weak face.

"...Of course! Your work ability has been proven well enough, hasn't it?"

Sensing something off in me, Lee Mi-seon changed the air with a lively voice. At that, the black-haired girl who had questioned me worked her lips as if awkward.

"I know you're someone I can trust."

At the girl speaking as if she had known me, curiosity rose in me again, but I didn't ask.

We were meeting for the first time today. I thought it was early to ask something private already.

"Then shall we start with the work?"

At Lee Mi-seon's question, carefully watching my face, I nodded. Where in the world is a person without a story. I am only one of them.

Poor me. I had not the slightest thought of going around advertising it.

"Sure."

**

"I wish."

White breath leaked from Kim Seol-yeon's mouth. The world, answering her mana, had begun to change sharply.

"I open the white night and raise the ice palace."

With an uneasy feeling, Kim Seol-yeon spoke the signature line she had recited for ten years. What should obviously have been in the skill list was not there.

"Not even death shall reach those who enter my palace...!"

She had never heard of a skill disappearing. There would be some error. She had never heard of an error in the system window either.

It couldn't be.

"Why...?"

Nothing happened. With Kim Seol-yeon's panic, the party members' voices grew.

"Leader! Hurry! We can't hold!"

The boss of an A-rank gate. A tiger the size of a house was driving the party back, spewing lightning.

When the party pulled aggro like this, Kim Seol-yeon had always manifested the White Night Ice Palace and brought the boss down.

"I wish!"

Just speaking the line, she could reach a realm beyond her limit, as always. Brief, but its destructive power surpassed S-rank.

Other hunters threw skills around without needing a line like this, so why only her. That complaint had not lasted long.

She could use a powerful skill of which there were only a few in the whole world.

And yet, why.

"Why won't it activate...!"

Kim Seol-yeon had not yet realized the empty place Lee Si-u had left.