A loud crash rang out in the middle of the night.

Oh Hyunseong opened his bleary eyes, got up, and left his room.

“What was that noi—huh?”

The moment he entered the living room and saw the kitchen lights on, he froze.

The kitchen was already a complete wreck.

Joo Jihye lay sprawled on the floor, unconscious, while Han Sooyeon stood there despite having appeared out of nowhere.

“Ah... Hi, Hyunseong.”

Han Sooyeon gave an awkward smile and waved.

He rubbed his eyes once, but he had not imagined it.

“...What the hell are you two doing?”

“So... you came into my house without saying a word, found her rummaging through the kitchen, mistook her for a thief, and took her down?”

“Sorry. It was so late that I didn’t want to wake you. I was only going to park the car and go to sleep, but then I sensed someone clumsily concealing their presence inside. And I wouldn’t say I took her down. I counterattacked.”

Han Sooyeon sounded as though she were making excuses.

Oh Hyunseong glanced to the side.

Joo Jihye had been moved into the living room, but she was still unconscious.

“Why did you come to my house without even contacting me in the first place? Didn’t you say you’d be too busy to visit for a while?”

“Well... a gap suddenly opened in my schedule. I hadn’t made any plans, and you happened to cross my mind, so I came straight here.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“It was already too late to contact you in advance. This is my first vacation in a long time, and I couldn’t sleep, so it seemed like a waste to do nothing with the time. I’m sorry about the commotion.”

Han Sooyeon scratched her head as she apologized.

Even she knew her excuse was flimsy, but she could not help it.

The entire chain of events that had brought her here had been far too irrational for her to concoct a convincing explanation.

It was not that a gap had opened in her schedule. She had abruptly blown it off and come here.

After running out of the potatoes Oh Hyunseong had given her, she had somehow endured for a few days, but her patience had not lasted long.

Of course, it was not simply because she wanted more potatoes.

For some reason, she had felt increasingly suffocated at night. In the end, she had impulsively driven all the way here before dawn.

Even she had not known she could be this impulsive.

It was something she ordinarily never would have done.

“You said I could visit again. Can I impose on you for a few more days?”

“Well... I don’t mind. How long are you planning to stay?”

“Hmm, about a week?”

“All right.”

Oh Hyunseong smacked his lips and nodded.

The house was spacious, so it did not matter.

“Who is she, anyway?”

“Joo Jihye. She’s with Aegis.”

“Joo Jihye? Oh, the hunter Choi Jeongil was training?”

Startled, Han Sooyeon turned to look at Joo Jihye.

Now that she examined her closely, it really was her.

Even people with no interest in the hunter world knew the famous woman, given how active she was in so many fields.

More importantly, as the de facto head of the Administration Bureau, Han Sooyeon regularly received reports on every hunter above grade 10.

She simply had not recognized Joo Jihye at first because of the darkness.

“By the way, what was she doing in the kitchen?”

“She was eating stew.”

“...Stew? Already?”

Oh Hyunseong stared at her in disbelief after hearing Han Sooyeon’s account.

Now that he looked, there were even traces of it around Joo Jihye’s mouth.

“She didn’t even last a day. That’s rather disappointing.”

“Were you starving her?”

“Of course not.”

Oh Hyunseong was no petty man who would refuse someone a meal.

Guests ought to be fed properly.

“She secretly ate the stew and ended up like this. She’ll be mortified when she wakes up.”

“...What should we do? Should I wake her?”

Han Sooyeon looked at Joo Jihye uneasily.

Oh Hyunseong shook his head.

“She’s a hunter, so there’s no way this was enough to seriously injure her. I heard she’s been suffering from insomnia lately, so leave her alone and let her sleep. She looks perfectly comfortable.”

Joo Jihye’s eyes were peacefully closed.

In reality, she had been knocked unconscious by an impact powerful enough to incapacitate even a grade 10 hunter, but anyone unaware of that would have thought she was sleeping soundly.

“Yaaawn.”

A huge yawn escaped Oh Hyunseong.

He was still tired after being awakened so abruptly.

In the past, working through the night had been a routine part of his life, but he had begun sleeping far more since moving to the countryside.

His old self might even have despised himself for becoming so lazy.

The present Oh Hyunseong, however, regarded it as a pleasant change.

“Let’s leave it at that for tonight. It’s late. You must be tired after coming all this way, so pick any empty room and get some sleep.”

“Thanks, Hyunseong.”

Oh Hyunseong effortlessly lifted Joo Jihye, carried her to the annex, and then returned to his room.

After watching him go, Han Sooyeon headed to the room where she had slept during her previous visit.

She took out the bedding, spread it across the floor, and lay down.

Objectively, it was a miserable place to sleep compared to the bed at her own home.

Yet it felt more comfortable than the house and bed she had slept in for nearly ten years.

She did not know why she felt so at ease. It was almost as though she had returned to her childhood home.

Han Sooyeon drifted into an exceptionally pleasant sleep.

The next morning.

Warm sunlight streamed through the window and tickled Joo Jihye’s eyes. She jolted awake and sat bolt upright.

“Gasp...! Wh-what?”

Joo Jihye sprang up as though suffering a seizure.

She whipped her head around, then instinctively curled in on herself.

Her head and arm throbbed faintly.

She vaguely remembered being attacked and losing consciousness.

Click.

Joo Jihye cautiously opened the door.

After leaving the room, she concealed her presence and poked only her head out of the annex.

“You’re awake.”

“Aah! You startled me.”

Oh Hyunseong had spotted her immediately and waved.

Assuming he had merely happened to turn around at exactly the right moment, she muttered about her rotten luck.

Then she noticed a woman standing beside him.

“You’re awake?”

“...Huh?”

The last traces of sleep vanished from Joo Jihye’s mind.

It was the same woman who had suddenly appeared before dawn and exchanged a single blow with her.

The problem was that Joo Jihye knew that face all too well.

“H-Han Sooyeon?!”

She stared blankly at Han Sooyeon in shock.

Oh Hyunseong spoke from between them.

“You recognized her immediately. Go on, introduce yourselves.”

“Ah! I-I’m sorry, Deputy Director.”

“Please call me Sooyeon. You’re Jihye from Aegis, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“It’s an honor...”

When Han Sooyeon extended her hand, Joo Jihye quickly shook it.

A blush rose to Joo Jihye’s cheeks.

She had been to countless battlefields, yet had never once met this legend of the hunter world. Now she had encountered her here of all places.

The experience left her dazed.

Is that really Han Sooyeon?

Joo Jihye glanced at Oh Hyunseong.

He was supposed to be a con man who had abducted her with some absurd story, so what was a figure of Han Sooyeon’s stature doing here?

What kind of relationship could they possibly have for her to be standing in the yard of his rural home rather than meeting him somewhere official?

“I’m truly sorry about last night. Your attack was stronger than I expected, so when I countered, I accidentally went too far.”

“N-no, it’s fine.”

Joo Jihye lowered her head.

She had never suffered such an overwhelming defeat in all the years it had taken her to reach her current position.

At least the identity of her opponent gave her some excuse, but she had never imagined she would be defeated without being able to do a thing.

“Um, what exactly is the relationship between you two?”

“We saw each other often while working at the Administration Bureau. He showed me the ropes when I first joined, and we became close over time—”

“You don’t have to lie.”

“Ah.”

At Oh Hyunseong’s blunt interruption, Han Sooyeon nodded.

“He was my direct senior. He was also my commanding officer, and we served on the same team.”

“What? There’s no way that man outranked the deputy director... I mean, outranked you, Sooyeon...”

“Never mind that. Why were you eating stew in the middle of the night?”

Oh Hyunseong cut in.

Joo Jihye looked puzzled for a moment.

But his question brought the rest of her memories from the previous night rushing back.

She remembered the moment when the great Joo Jihye had been caught sneaking into a kitchen like a petty thief to eat soybean paste stew.

Growl!

“Huh? Th-that was...”

As if on cue, her stomach growled.

Joo Jihye’s face turned so red it looked ready to burst.

Joo Jihye sat before the same meal that had been served the previous evening.

There was rice, soybean paste stew, and a few basic side dishes. Nothing more.

Her reaction, however, was the exact opposite of the day before.

She was so absorbed in eating that she seemed ready to bury her face in the table.

“Haaah...”

Joo Jihye’s expression melted into bliss.

The flavor was still absurdly good.

No, this freshly prepared soybean paste stew was warm, unlike the cold leftovers she had eaten before dawn, making it even more delicious.

Every spoonful of rice and every individual side dish was perfect as well.

Her meal the previous night had ended before she could eat properly, so her starving body devoured the food with even greater desperation.

“It’s so delicious!”

“...That’s why you should’ve eaten when I told you to.”

Oh Hyunseong shook his head from where he sat on the porch outside.

Joo Jihye had looked so mortified that her red face seemed ready to explode, so he had merely set the table and then gone outside with Han Sooyeon to give her some privacy.

Judging by the sounds coming from behind them, she appeared to be enjoying the meal.

“Ha ha. Anyone tasting your cooking for the first time would react that way.”

Han Sooyeon laughed.

But she was hungry as well.

She had not eaten a single meal since the previous day, and the powerful aroma of soybean paste stew drifting from inside was enough to make her mouth water.

She did not show it, but Oh Hyunseong somehow noticed anyway.

“You’re hungry too, aren’t you? We’ll make our meal separately later. It looks like she’s going to finish everything on that table... For now, have this.”

Oh Hyunseong brought out a basket.

The moment he removed the cloth covering it, a delicious aroma rose with billowing steam.

“...Potatoes.”

Han Sooyeon’s face instantly brightened.

She thanked him without hesitation, immediately picked up a potato, and began eating it with relish.

She had received plenty as a gift and eaten them constantly at home, yet their exquisite flavor never grew tiresome.

“You guys come out too. Let’s eat.”

Oh Hyunseong gave a faint chuckle and lowered the basket beneath the porch.

The spirits hiding underneath emerged one by one, carried away the potatoes, and shared them among themselves.

The potatoes had originally been steamed for them, but Oh Hyunseong was hungry too, so he took one for himself.

“I didn’t get the chance to ask last night, but why is Jihye here? It isn’t as if Choi Jeongil is staying with you, and you’ve never even met her before, have you?”

Han Sooyeon asked as she chewed her potato.

After spending five years in treatment and rehabilitation, Oh Hyunseong could not possibly have had any connection to Joo Jihye, yet she had suddenly appeared in his home.

Naturally, Han Sooyeon was curious.

“It’s a long story... She developed psychological problems after being injured during a Gate clearing. She came here to recuperate.”

“Recuperate?”

Han Sooyeon tilted her head.

“More importantly, if she developed a psychological disorder because of an injury... that’s not good.”

Hunters possessed greater mental resilience than ordinary people.

More precisely, regardless of their ability to regulate emotions such as depression, they had a high resistance to external stress.

It was what allowed them to enter Gates, environments completely unlike Earth, without mentally collapsing and to fight monsters there.

Yet there were cases in which severe physical injuries inflicted by monsters led to psychological aftereffects, as they had with Joo Jihye.

Of course, such cases were rare.

Oh Hyunseong himself had suffered injuries that left him hovering between life and death several times, yet he was still alive and sane.

But once a problem emerged, the situation became severe.

“I don’t know what you mean by recuperation, but you know this too, don’t you? A hunter who develops psychological aftereffects will ‘never’ recover.”

Unlike ordinary cases, once a hunter’s mind began to collapse, it could not be restored.

The longer a hunter served, the greater their chance of developing such psychological aftereffects. Yet modern medicine could not even determine the phenomenon’s precise cause.

Some claimed it was caused by an alien virus that had traveled through Gates from beyond their dimension. Others claimed microscopic parasites from another world had invaded their brains. There were countless rumors.

But none of them were credible.

Then as now, all anyone knew was how it began, what resulted from it, and how to respond.

Its cause remained a blank.

“I was hoping something might have changed while I was unconscious.”

Oh Hyunseong smiled bitterly.

A hunter who developed psychological problems never remained in the same condition.

A human mind incapable of recovery was like a human body whose cells could no longer regenerate. Its gradual collapse was inevitable.

“How long has it been?”

“She said the injury that caused the aftereffects happened a year ago. Considering that, she’s shown relatively little aggression.”

The greatest problem was that the further a hunter’s mind deteriorated, the more aggressive they became.

If it completely collapsed past the point where they could endure it, their aggression reached its peak and they lost all reason.

The condition was commonly called awakened psychosis.

Its official designation was Awaken Psychosis.

Once an awakened person entered a psychotic state, there was no way back.

And because their very existence could become a catastrophe, only one fate awaited them in the end.

“Disposal.”

“...She has six months left at most.”

Han Sooyeon turned and regarded Joo Jihye with a detached expression.

Chapter 18

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