Chapter 8

Call me noona

“Huh?”

A dumbfounded sound slipped out before I knew it.

Who said I could go?

Did I have some schedule promised with her after this?

‘There wasn’t anything like that...’

In the first place, I had only come out today because she suddenly called and asked me to eat with her.

Then she suddenly dragged me to where her relatives were gathered, and I even got a front-row seat to a horror show.

‘... Ah. Could it be.’

Don’t tell me there’s something else?

“N-No, I mean...”

“Hey. Relax your face.”

“Huh?”

“I’m joking, joking. Why would you need my permission?”

Baek Seorin spun her sword around in the air as though it were nothing.

... That’s one hell of a terrifying joke.

Just an hour ago, she had shown me the sight of that sword being pointed at people’s necks.

How was I supposed to know she was joking and relax when she said something like that?

“So. You want me to go with you? To find that kid.”

“...Yes. If possible, I’d like you to come with me. As you know, I can’t even enter a gate by myself yet.”

“Hmm. What should I do?”

Baek Seorin’s eyes moved from side to side.

Each time they did, the sword also sharply followed her gaze.

“Fine. I’ll help you, just this once.”

The sword came to a stop in midair.

“Follow me right away.”

Baek Seorin gestured for me to follow and left the treatment room.

Huh?

‘I wasn’t planning to go right now...’

“Um... Hunter Baek Seorin. Are we going right now?”

“You said you wanted to go to the Yeonhwa Gate. We should go immediately. Weren’t you trying to check before the trail disappeared?”

“That’s true, but...”

“Then we should go right away. That kid is probably waiting for someone to come quickly.”

“Ah...”

The weight behind the end of her words sounded a little different.

Baek Seorin must have been the same.

She must have waited in that place where no one came, hoping someone would come looking for her.

“...Yes. Let’s hurry.”

My answer came out more urgently than I intended.

I heard a quiet laugh from behind me.

“Why?”

“No. Nothing.”

When I turned around, Baek Seorin was looking at me with the corners of her lips raised.

“I just like that.”

“...”

I didn’t bother asking what she liked.

Judging from her expression, it felt like asking unnecessarily might get me subjected to something terrifying.

“Ah. There he is.”

At the end of the corridor, the Association employee who had called Baek Seorin out earlier was waiting.

Baek Seorin tapped the tablet in his hand twice with her finger.

“You have the Yeonhwa Gate records, right?”

“Huh? Ah, yes. You mean the B-rank gate that was sealed after the rampage five years ago?”

“Yeah. That one. I’m going there right now, so organize the entry procedures and all the information on the old accident and send it to my phone within 10 minutes.”

“Ten minutes?”

“Why? Is that difficult?”

“N-No.”

The employee bowed almost reflexively.

“I’ll handle it immediately.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he pulled out his phone and ran toward the end of the corridor.

A moment later, the sound of an urgent call came through.

“Hey! Submit an emergency entry request for the Yeonhwa Gate first! Under Hunter Baek Seorin’s name!”

“And gather every accident record from five years ago and all the investigation materials from when it was sealed. Get every entry record you can find too!”

“What? Approval will take time? Hey. Just do it when I tell you to! Do you know whose order this is?!”

The shouting gradually faded down the corridor.

... This reminds me of when I was in the military.

Baek Seorin entered first, then poked her head back out when I didn’t follow.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming?”

While I was spacing out for a moment, Baek Seorin had already entered the elevator and called me.

A chill inexplicably ran down my spine.

“I-I’m coming!”

I hurriedly ran into the elevator.

_________

“You’ve arrived! We’ll take you straight to the Yeonhwa Gate.”

An Association vehicle was waiting behind the hospital.

The employee from earlier was already sitting in the passenger seat.

“Hey. Did I tell you to handle it fast or to make a complete mess of it? You think this makes sense when you look at these materials?”

The sound of him making calls from the passenger seat continued without pause.

‘Ah... I’m getting PTSD.’

In the military, I was always the one hearing things like that.

Watching someone else get it right in front of me felt strange.

Hummm—.

At that moment, a transparent barrier rose between the front and back seats.

At the same time, the voices from the phone calls that had been hammering my ears abruptly disappeared as if they had been cut off.

“Better, right? It’s a sound barrier.”

Then she pointed at the pocket of my hoodie.

“Give me that for a second.”

“Ah. Yes. Here.”

When I handed over the penlight, Baek Seorin first pressed the lifted rabbit ear firmly back down.

After checking the name written on the side, she gave a small nod.

“Han Doa... That’s a name I haven’t seen in a while.”

“You knew her?”

“I saw her a few times at Association events. She was pretty cute.”

After turning the penlight around once, Baek Seorin asked.

“Did it appear when you touched this, like it did with me?”

“Similar. Like with you, I could see footprints, but they only went about three steps before cutting off midway.”

“Seorin noona.”

“... What?”

“Don’t call me Hunter. Call me Seorin noona.”

Noona? All of a sudden?

I was momentarily flustered by the sudden request, but quickly came to my senses and spoke.

“Y-Yes! Seorin noona.”

“... Good. Well done.”

She looked satisfied.

After narrowly surviving that sudden life-or-death crisis, we went over everything we had confirmed so far.

At present, the only thing I could tell from my ability was that the penlight was the medium.

Since the footprints had also cut off midway, there was no way to know where they led afterward.

In the end, the best option for now was to first check the Yeonhwa Gate where Han Doa had gone missing.

“Hun— Seorin noona. You were in a different gate too, right?”

“Yeah. I ended up like that after entering an S-rank gate.”

“Then Hunter Han Doa might not be in the Yeonhwa Gate either.”

“That’s possible.”

Baek Seorin answered as though it were no big deal.

“Don’t worry. If she isn’t there, we can just clear the gate and come back out.”

“Is that really okay?”

“I was planning to clear one as a comeback celebration anyway.”

At those words, red mana slowly began rising from her body.

“I came back after so long. I should at least do one good deed.”

Treating the clearing of a B-rank gate like volunteer work.

The standards of an S-rank really were different.

Baek Seorin pressed the mana stone again to remove the barrier, then tapped the front seat a few times.

“Were Association cars always this slow?”

“Y-Yes, ma’am! I’ll step on it right away!”

The car shot forward as it accelerated.

“W-Wait— Ugh?!”

The seat belt dug into my freshly stitched side.

Ah.

___________

The mass disappearance of Hunters had once shaken all of South Korea.

The Yeonhwa Gate responsible for the incident was currently sealed behind a massive iron door.

Faded yellow sealing strips hung all over the front.

Association employees in fluorescent vests were busily moving equipment around nearby.

“Hunter Baek Seorin.”

A middle-aged man came running over as soon as we got out of the car.

His name tag identified him as the ‘Association On-Site Control Supervisor.’

“We received your request, but headquarters only authorized an on-site inspection. It’s been sealed for five years, so we can’t guarantee the conditions inside—”

“I know that much.”

“... As you know, even if this is your request, Hunter Baek Seorin, a formal reopening must be decided only after the danger level is measured again.”

“Request? Did you just call this a request?”

Red mana slowly rose, and the sword floating in the air began to move.

“Did I ever make a request?”

“E-Eek—?!”

As the sword circled near the middle-aged man’s shoulder, his Adam’s apple bobbed visibly.

“If anything, it was an order.”

“E-Even so, if you could just wait until the entry team arrives...”

“Entry team? Is another S-rank coming? Am I finally going to see those guys’ faces again after all this time?”

“Ugh... Th-That’s not what I meant...”

Baek Seorin gave a faint laugh at the speechless supervisor.

The sword returned to its original position.

“I’ll take responsibility for everything from this point on. So just open it.”

The middle-aged man hesitated for a moment, then finally turned around and shouted.

“Begin releasing the seal immediately!”

Warning alarms sounded, and the warning lights above the iron door began rotating.

The locking mechanisms that had been engaged for five years released one by one with metallic clangs.

I put the protective vest the Association employee handed me over my hoodie and attached a radio to my waist.

“We’ll check communications first after you enter.”

“Got it.”

Baek Seorin’s sword slid out of its sheath and stopped in front of the iron door.

“You just check whether those footprints appear. I’ll clear the way ahead.”

Rumble—.

A black membrane appeared inside the opening iron door.

The entrance to the Yeonhwa Gate that had swallowed dozens of Hunters.

Baek Seorin passed through the membrane first.

I adjusted my protective vest and followed behind her.

_____________

The inside of the gate looked like an underground waterway that had been drained.

Under extinguished mana lights, broken equipment and fragments of bone were half submerged in mud.

They didn’t look like things that had originally belonged here.

They were probably traces left behind by the Hunters who had entered before.

“Take it out and check right away.”

“Yes.”

Baek Seorin first checked the surroundings for safety, and I took the penlight out behind her.

Blue light spreading between my fingers flowed down to the floor.

[Rescue Target Tracking]

[Medium Confirmed: Penlight]

The footprints that had cut off at the hospital now extended far into the darkness.

“The footprints appeared.”

“Which way?”

“To the right.”

No sooner had I finished speaking than something came charging from the far end of the passage.

Three Blackfang Hounds.

Inside the gaping mouths of the black beasts, each about waist-high, were densely packed teeth the length of fingers.

“Step back.”

The moment she finished speaking, a single red line cut through the darkness, and all three heads flew into the air at once.

The headless bodies kept running several more steps before sliding to a stop at my feet.

Only then did I understand what had happened.

“Wow...”

“What are you doing? I told you to watch the path.”

“Ah, yes.”

After that, whenever I called out the direction, the sword flew ahead first and cleared the way.

All I had to do was look at the trail of footprints and walk.

‘This is incredibly convenient.’

It didn’t even feel like I had entered a gate.

It felt more like I had come to visit another world.

Of course, I wouldn’t actually come sightseeing in a place that looked like an underground waterway.

That was just how it felt.

After moving forward for about ten minutes, a collapsed ceiling and twisted steel beams completely blocked the passage.

The blue footprints continued beyond them.

“Here.”

Baek Seorin flicked her finger.

The sword swept once through the debris, and the rocks and steel beams split into small pieces.

Then the severed chunks were pushed aside, creating a path wide enough for a person to pass through easily.

“Let’s go.”

Baek Seorin walked through without a care.

As I followed behind her, I noticed a silver metal plate half buried between the rocks.

A broken chain stretched through the mud.

“This is...”

“A dog tag.”

Baek Seorin glanced down at it.

“You served in the military. You should know that well, right?”

“Of course I do.”

I picked up the dog tag and rubbed away the mud with my thumb.

Then the name engraved on the back came into view.

“... Han Doa.”