“How did you end up here...? Have you recovered?”

“As you can see, I’m fine. It doesn’t interfere with my daily life at all.”

“...That’s a relief. I never heard that you’d been discharged. When did you get out?”

“Not long ago. Have you been doing well?”

“Of course.”

Choi Jeongil nodded.

His appearance had changed somewhat, and the way he dressed was completely different from back then, but his distinctive manner of speaking remained the same.

“Do the others know you’ve been discharged? No, Sooyeon would have known.”

“Right. I was in a hospital affiliated with the Administration Bureau. Sooyeon visited me at home once. I haven’t been telling people, so the others probably don’t know. I take it you two haven’t kept in touch.”

“We’ve both been so busy that we haven’t had the chance. The last time I saw her was at an official event two years ago.”

Oh Hyunseong and Choi Jeongil continued their conversation.

But there was one forgotten person in the room.

Joo Jihye, a woman who drew attention wherever she went.

Ordinarily, she would have shrieked at the top of her lungs, but her mouth had been hanging open ever since she began watching the two of them.

“No... Why... How do you know each other...?”

Joo Jihye muttered blankly.

Only then did the two men, who had forgotten she was there, turn toward her.

“Ah, Jihye. Come and introduce yourself.”

“Introduce myself...? What kind of relationship do you have with that man, sir?”

“He’s my senior. Come to think of it, things looked rather tense in here earlier. You haven’t caused some kind of trouble already, have you?”

“Ah... No, that’s...”

Joo Jihye’s expression grew deeply troubled.

She had already caused an enormous scene, and realizing as much, Choi Jeongil let out a long sigh.

“If you were disrespectful, apologize to him at once. And mean it.”

“Wait. You’re seriously telling me that man is your senior? I’ve never seen his face anywhere. How does that make any sense?”

“He is the senior I respect most. Do you intend to disgrace me?”

“The... the person you respect most...?”

What kind of age were they living in?

These days, someone with a useful special constitution could be hailed as a rising star and have their face and name known nationwide without ever having participated in a single Gate clearing.

And Joo Jihye had never seen Oh Hyunseong anywhere.

His presence was no different from an ordinary person’s. Even if he was a hunter, she had assumed he was some third-rate nobody whose face had never become known.

Yet not only had he been a first-generation hunter who worked for the government, but he was also the senior Choi Jeongil respected most.

Th-this is impossible.

Joo Jihye’s face alternated between red and pale.

As she hesitated, unable to bring herself to speak, Oh Hyunseong stepped in.

“That’s enough. Let’s leave it there.”

“...We’ll talk about this later. For now, stop interrupting us and wait outside.”

Choi Jeongil spoke with a slight frown.

Joo Jihye bristled.

He was telling her to leave because she was getting in the way. Never once in her entire life had anyone treated her that way.

“I’m Joo Jihye! I practically built one of the pillars holding up your company! Who... Who the hell is a nobody like him for you to treat me this way...?! Ngh...!”

Joo Jihye’s eyes filled with tears as she poured out the words, then she ran outside.

The two men stood speechless for a moment after watching her hastily disappear.

“...Youth.”

“Indeed.”

The office was a complete wreck.

As though accustomed to such scenes, Choi Jeongil found some instant coffee scattered across the floor and prepared two cups using the water dispenser that had barely survived in one corner.

“Her manager contacted me in a panic and said she looked like she was about to cause trouble. I came straight here, but I didn’t expect her to have already done it. She’s one of mine, so allow me to apologize on her behalf for her disrespect.”

“Don’t worry about it. It isn’t even my office.”

“Haah... I’ll have to compensate the department store and make sure they keep quiet as well. Was anyone else hurt?”

“Fortunately, no. One employee got caught up in it, though, so make her apologize to them separately.”

“I will.”

Choi Jeongil stirred the instant coffee and presented a cup with both hands.

The two men leaned against a wall in the ruined office and sipped their coffee.

“...You took up farming in the countryside?”

“It’s not bad. You should consider it when you retire.”

“I’ll give it serious thought. Still, I never imagined you would move to the countryside.”

“Sooyeon said the same thing.”

Oh Hyunseong gave a quiet chuckle.

“But I could say the same about you. Of all the news I heard from the outside, yours surprised me the most.”

“You mean the hunter management business?”

“Yeah. After the team was disbanded, I assumed you’d join the military. I never expected you to have a talent for business.”

“One thing led to another, and here I am. Even I sometimes find it strange that I’m doing this.”

Choi Jeongil drained half his coffee in one gulp.

“I started the company to train my successors before I retired, but raising these kids has proven harder than I expected. It takes so much out of me that I barely go into the field these days.”

“Aren’t you exaggerating? I keep hearing about you successfully clearing S-rank Gates.”

“It may not compare to the condition you were left in after being injured there... but my body isn’t what it used to be either.”

With a smooth motion, Choi Jeongil removed the patch over his left eye.

The eye beneath it had turned completely white and stared straight ahead without focus.

Oh Hyunseong frowned in shock.

“You...?”

“As you can see, I’m completely blind in this eye. It wasn’t an injury inflicted by a monster. The strain kept accumulating until the side effects finally erupted, and my sight never recovered.”

Oh Hyunseong was speechless for a moment.

Choi Jeongil’s special constitution placed tremendous strain on his eyes.

That was why, even in the past, he had always worn a patch over his left eye whenever he was not using his ability.

But if the eye was completely blind, it meant he could no longer use the ability granted by his special constitution.

“Hunters are consumable resources for society. Use us long enough, and eventually we break. The more battlefields we enter and the more injuries we accumulate, the closer our capacity to recover approaches zero. It’s an unavoidable fate.”

Choi Jeongil spoke calmly.

“That’s also why I left the field and started training the next generation. I wanted them to work in better conditions than we did, at the very least, and to keep them from being consumed by overuse.”

“Then you succeeded. The hunter world entered the public sphere because of the business you started.”

“That was bound to happen eventually. All I did was hasten it slightly. And the underlying reality still hasn’t changed.”

Choi Jeongil stood in silence for a moment, recalling the past.

The recruits who had been dragged into the training camp alongside him without knowing anything. The seniors and juniors who had been deployed to countless battlefields.

They were the hunters of the past, the ones now called the first generation.

With his excellent memory, he could still vividly recall countless faces, yet almost none of them had survived to the present day.

“I don’t believe the peace we enjoy now will last forever. Someday, a catastrophe like the one we faced back then will strike again. I’ve already begun to decline. All I can do now is train the next generation.”

“So we won’t be wiped out by the Gates?”

“Naturally, that’s the primary objective. But it’s also to keep hunters from being recklessly expended in the process, even if they manage to stop the crisis. We can’t allow them to be ground down by overuse because of a manpower shortage, the way we were.”

Choi Jeongil spoke bluntly.

Knowing what he had been through, Oh Hyunseong did not add anything.

A brief silence followed.

But then he recalled what Joo Jihye had done in the department store. Since he himself was the farmer she had been searching for, it would be troublesome if something like this happened again.

“Why was Joo Jihye causing such a commotion here? Did she really do all this just because she wanted to eat the strawberries sold here?”

“Ah, that... I’m not sure where to begin.”

Choi Jeongil smacked his lips, organized his thoughts for a moment, then began to explain.

“Jihye has always been difficult, but she never used to lose control of her emotions the way she does now. If she had, I wouldn’t have accepted her into my company. But many things changed after she was injured during the clearing of an S-rank Gate that appeared in Busan a year ago.”

“PTSD? Or did she suffer some direct mental aftereffects?”

“She hasn’t received a definitive diagnosis, but she’s been suffering from nervous exhaustion. Intermittent anxiety, trembling hands, excessive fatigue—the worst symptom is her insomnia. But not long ago, she ate some strawberries from Hankyung Department Store and claimed her insomnia improved.”

“What...? Eating strawberries alleviated her symptoms? Couldn’t she be imagining it? Maybe it was a placebo.”

“At least, she seems convinced. She’s impatient, but she isn’t foolish enough to misjudge her own condition over something like that.”

Hunters were highly sensitive to the condition of their own bodies.

Part of it was due to their naturally keen senses, but it was also because failing to properly assess their own condition in the field made them far more likely to end up as monster food.

“In any case, it does seem clear that something has changed recently... but we haven’t found a single clue through scientific methods. As you know, things like that happen often in this line of work. At this rate, though, she won’t last much longer. She knows that herself, which is probably why she became even more volatile.”

“Hmm...”

Oh Hyunseong let out a thoughtful hum.

He had seen plenty of hunters who complained of psychological issues even after making a complete physical recovery from severe trauma.

He had assumed she was simply an obnoxious woman, but it seemed she had circumstances of her own.

What concerned him more, however, was the story about the strawberries.

She ate strawberries from my farm, and her symptoms improved... Honestly, I find that hard to believe.

They had not even been the original fruit, but the downgraded strawberries being distributed commercially. The idea that merely eating them could cure something resembling an illness was unheard of.

If the same phenomenon had occurred on a wider scale, it would have caused an uproar by now.

According to Choi Jeongil, whose connections in the hunter world were extensive, Joo Jihye was the only one who had experienced such an effect.

But now that I think about it, my own physical condition improved to an unusual degree. And I’m still doing better. Could this really be connected to the crops the spirits grew?

Even on his way there, he had walked on both legs without limping, yet felt no pain.

There had only been a slight tingling sensation.

Until now, he had assumed his condition had improved because he had moved to the countryside, where the air was clean, and had begun living a more relaxed life.

But if—just perhaps—the spirits’ crops had some effect on a hunter’s body, that was no small matter.

I need to look into this.

Oh Hyunseong spoke to Choi Jeongil and had Joo Jihye brought back inside.

“Why...? If you two get along so well, why don’t you just keep talking by yourselves?”

Joo Jihye said as she entered the office.

She pretended nothing was wrong, but she could not hide the slight swelling around her eyes.

Not that Oh Hyunseong cared.

He strode toward her and asked,

“Do you want to get better?”

People filed out of the conference room amid a noisy bustle.

After the NSC meeting chaired by the president ended, Han Sooyeon remained seated for a while. Then she let out a deep sigh and rose from her seat.

As if he had been waiting for that moment, a man who had been watching her strode over.

“Director Han, good work today.”

“I’m the deputy director, Prime Minister.”

“Ha ha... As if I didn’t know that. I heard you haven’t eaten. Why don’t we have a meal together? I know an excellent place.”

The Prime Minister gave her an affable smile.

Han Sooyeon politely declined.

Of course, he was not going to give up after asking only once, so she had to refuse several more times as he persistently clung to her.

The only thing that ever improved here was her skill at turning people down.

Meals in this place often involved far more than simply eating.

“Well, I have another engagement, so I’ll be going.”

“Next time, we must have a meal together!”

Shaking her head, Han Sooyeon climbed into the back seat of her car.

Ordinarily, she would have gone to an expensive restaurant to get something to eat, but that was no longer necessary.

When she returned home, she quickly shed her heavy clothes and changed into something comfortable.

“What should I make today?”

Han Sooyeon headed toward the balcony with a spring in her step.

A faint smile—one that she rarely showed— even slipped across her lips.

“Oh...”

But the moment she opened the box, she froze.

It was empty, with nothing but crumbs remaining inside.

Han Sooyeon’s face immediately fell.

“I forgot... I’m out of potatoes.”

Chapter 16

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