An Unavoidable Fate

A loud commotion echoed through the middle of the night.

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

“What the hell is that noise… Huh?”

The moment he stepped into the living room and looked toward the kitchen, he froze stiff.

The kitchen was already a complete mess.

Joo Jihye was sprawled unconscious on the floor, while Han Suyeon, who had appeared out of nowhere, was standing nearby.

“Ah… Senior, hi?”

Han Suyeon gave an awkward smile and waved.

Oh Hyeonseong rubbed his eyes once, but he wasn’t seeing things.

“…What are you two doing there?”

“So, let me get this straight… You suddenly came into my house without saying anything, found this girl rummaging around in the kitchen, and caught her because you thought she was a thief?”

“Sorry. It was too late at night, so I didn’t want to wake you. I was just going to leave my car outside and sleep, but then I sensed someone inside trying to hide their presence rather poorly. And I wouldn’t really call it ‘catching’ her. It was more like I counterattacked.”

Han Suyeon spoke as though she were making excuses.

Oh Hyeonseong immediately turned to look beside her.

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

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

“Well… I suddenly had some free time in my schedule. I didn’t have any plans prepared, and you happened to cross my mind, so I just came straight here.”

“At this hour?”

“It was already too late to contact you in advance. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a vacation, and I couldn’t sleep anyway. It felt like a waste to just let the time pass. I’m sorry for causing a commotion.”

Han Suyeon scratched her head apologetically.

Even she knew it was a flimsy excuse, but she couldn’t help it.

From the very beginning, the process that had brought her here had been so utterly irrational that coming up with a convincing excuse was impossible.

She hadn’t actually gotten a sudden opening in her schedule.

She had simply dropped everything and come here.

After the potatoes Oh Hyeonseong had given her ran out, she’d managed to hold herself back for a few days somehow, but her patience hadn’t lasted long.

Of course, it wasn’t simply because she wanted to eat potatoes.

For some reason, she’d begun feeling as though she couldn’t breathe properly in the middle of the night.

And eventually, on an impulse, she’d driven all the way down here in the early hours of the morning.

Even she found herself wondering if she’d always been this impulsive.

The Han Suyeon she knew would never have done something like this.

“You said last time that I could come visit again. Would it be okay if I stayed for a few more days?”

“Well… I don’t really mind. How long are you thinking?”

“Hmm. About a week?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

Oh Hyeonseong clicked his tongue and nodded.

The house was spacious enough that it didn’t really matter.

“But who is she?”

“Her name is Joo Jihye. She’s with Aegis.”

“Joo Jihye? Ah, the hunter Choi Jeongil was raising?”

Han Suyeon flinched and looked at Joo Jihye.

Now that she could see her properly, it really was her.

Even someone who wasn’t interested in this field would have trouble not knowing her, considering how active she was in so many areas.

But regardless of that, as the de facto head of the Management Bureau, Han Suyeon regularly received reports on hunters Grade 10 and above.

She simply hadn’t recognized Joo Jihye at first because it had been so dark.

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

“Eating stew, apparently.”

“…Stew? Already?”

Han Suyeon looked at Oh Hyeonseong in disbelief.

Now that he looked closely, there was even a tiny trace of stew around Joo Jihye’s mouth.

“She couldn’t even last a single day. That’s a little disappointing.”

“Did you starve her or something?”

“Would I do that?”

Oh Hyeonseong was a man.

He wasn’t the kind of stingy man who wouldn’t even feed a guest.

If someone was a guest, you were supposed to treat them properly.

“She sneaked in to eat the stew and ended up like this. She’s going to be kicking herself when she wakes up.”

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

Han Suyeon looked at Joo Jihye uncertainly.

But Oh Hyeonseong shook his head.

“There’s no way a hunter could get seriously injured from something like this. I heard she’s been suffering from insomnia lately, so just let her sleep. She’s sleeping quite soundly.”

Joo Jihye had her eyes peacefully closed.

She had actually been knocked unconscious by an impact that even a Grade 10 hunter couldn’t endure, but if you didn’t know that, she simply looked like she was sleeping peacefully.

Yawn.

A huge yawn escaped Oh Hyeonseong.

He was still tired because he’d been suddenly woken up in the middle of the night.

Back in the past, working through the night had been a normal part of his routine.

But ever since moving to the countryside, he’d started sleeping considerably more.

The old Oh Hyeonseong probably would have felt even self-loathing over such laziness.

But the Oh Hyeonseong of today welcomed it as a pleasant change.

“Let’s call it a night for now. It’s late. You must be tired from coming all the way here, so go sleep in whichever spare room you want.”

“Thanks, Senior.”

Oh Hyeonseong effortlessly picked up Joo Jihye and carried her over to the detached house before returning to his room.

Han Suyeon watched him leave before heading toward the room she’d slept in during her previous visit.

She took out a blanket, spread it over the bed, and lay down.

Objectively speaking, the bed was terrible compared to the one in her own home.

And yet, she felt a level of comfort she’d never experienced in the house and bed she’d slept in for nearly a decade.

Why was it so comfortable?

It almost felt as though she’d returned to her childhood home.

Han Suyeon drifted into a wonderfully peaceful sleep.

The next morning.

Warm sunlight slipped through the window and tickled the corners of Joo Jihye’s eyes.

She suddenly woke up and raised her upper body.

“Hng…! Wh-what?”

Joo Jihye shot upright as though she’d been startled awake by a nightmare.

She frantically looked around before instinctively shrinking back.

Her head and arm were aching slightly.

She vaguely remembered being knocked unconscious by something.

Click.

She left the room and quietly poked her head out of the detached house.

Joo Jihye carefully opened the door.

“You’re awake.”

“Ah! Y-you scared me.”

Oh Hyeonseong, who happened to be turning around at exactly that moment, waved at her.

Thinking the timing had simply been terribly unlucky, she muttered something under her breath about how irritating it was.

But then she noticed a woman standing beside Oh Hyeonseong.

“Are you awake?”

“…Huh?”

Joo Jihye, who had only just woken up and was still groggy, instantly came fully awake.

It was the very same woman who had suddenly appeared in the middle of the night yesterday and exchanged a single attack with her.

But the problem was that the woman’s face was far too familiar.

“H-Han Suyeon?!”

Joo Jihye stared at her in shock.

Oh Hyeonseong spoke from between them.

“You recognize her right away. Come on, say hello to each other.”

“Ah! I-I’m sorry, Deputy Director!”

“Just call me by my name. You’re Jihye from Aegis, right? I’ve heard quite a bit about you.”

“It’s an honor…”

When Han Suyeon held out her hand, Joo Jihye hurriedly accepted the handshake.

Her cheeks immediately flushed red.

After going out on countless missions, she had never once had the chance to meet one of the legends of the hunter world.

And now she had encountered one here.

She felt completely dazed.

‘Is she really that Han Suyeon?’

Joo Jihye stole a glance at Oh Hyeonseong.

He was clearly some fraudster who had abducted her under the pretense of curing her, so what on earth was this influential figure doing here?

What kind of relationship did the two of them have for her to come all the way to this rural house instead of meeting somewhere official?

“I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday. Your attack was stronger than I expected, so when I countered it…”

“Oh, n-no, it’s fine.”

Joo Jihye lowered her head deeply.

She had never experienced such an outright defeat in all the years she’d risen to her current position.

Granted, considering who her opponent had been, there was plenty of room for understanding.

But she still couldn’t believe she’d been completely helpless.

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

“We used to see each other often while working at the Management Bureau. She also taught me various things when I first joined, and eventually we became quite close—”

“You don’t have to lie.”

“Ah.”

At Oh Hyeonseong’s blunt interruption, Han Suyeon nodded.

“She was my direct senior. She was also my superior, and we worked on the same team.”

“What? There’s no way that person could have been your superior… I mean, Senior Suyeon—”

“Forget that. Why were you eating stew in the middle of the night yesterday?”

Oh Hyeonseong cut in.

Joo Jihye stared at him blankly for a moment.

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

The moment when the great Joo Jihye had sneaked into the kitchen like a petty thief and been caught eating soybean paste stew.

Grrrrooowwl!

“Huh? Th-that…”

The sound came from her stomach at exactly the wrong moment.

Joo Jihye’s face turned bright red, as though it were about to explode.

Joo Jihye sat before the exact same meal she’d been served the previous evening.

Rice, soybean paste stew, and a few basic side dishes.

But her reaction was the complete opposite of yesterday.

She was so focused on eating that it looked as though she might bury her face straight into the table.

“Haaah…”

Joo Jihye’s expression melted into bliss.

It was still absurdly delicious.

No, unlike the cold stew she’d eaten in the middle of the night, this was freshly made and warm, making it even better.

The rice was perfect.

Every single side dish was perfect.

And because she’d never properly finished her meal the night before, her starving body devoured the food almost ravenously.

“It’s so good!”

“…I told you to eat when I offered it to you.”

Oh Hyeonseong shook his head while sitting on the wooden porch outside.

Since her face had turned so red from embarrassment that it looked like she might explode, he’d simply prepared the meal and then gone outside with Han Suyeon to give her some privacy.

Judging by the sounds coming from behind them, she seemed to be eating quite happily.

“Haha. If it’s her first time tasting Senior’s cooking, that’s understandable.”

Han Suyeon laughed.

But she was hungry too.

She hadn’t eaten a single proper meal since yesterday, and the power of the soybean paste stew’s aroma wafting out from inside was tremendous enough to make her swallow involuntarily.

She hadn’t shown it on her face, but somehow Oh Hyeonseong had noticed.

“You’re hungry too, aren’t you? We’ll make our own meal later. She’ll probably eat everything that’s been prepared anyway… For now, have this.”

Oh Hyeonseong took out a basket.

The moment he removed the cloth covering it, a delicious aroma escaped, accompanied by wisps of steam.

“…Potatoes.”

Han Suyeon’s face immediately brightened.

Without bothering to refuse, she thanked him and promptly picked up a potato and began eating.

She’d received enough potatoes as gifts to eat them constantly at home, yet their exquisite taste still hadn’t gotten old.

“You guys come out too. Let’s eat.”

Oh Hyeonseong chuckled and lowered the basket toward the ground.

One by one, the spirits hiding beneath the porch emerged and took potatoes for themselves.

He had originally steamed the potatoes specifically for them, but since he was hungry too, Oh Hyeonseong picked one up for himself.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask yesterday, but why is Jihye here? It’s not like Choi Jeongil is staying here, and she doesn’t have any connection with this place, does she?”

Han Suyeon asked while chewing on a potato.

After spending five years undergoing treatment and rehabilitation, there was no reason for Oh Hyeonseong to have any connection with Joo Jihye.

So naturally, she was curious.

“It’s a long story… She developed psychological problems because of an injury she suffered while clearing a Gate. That’s why she’s here to recuperate.”

“Recuperate?”

Han Suyeon tilted her head.

“More importantly, if it’s a mental disorder caused by an injury… that’s not good.”

A hunter’s mental strength was stronger than that of an ordinary person.

More precisely, this didn’t mean they were better at controlling emotions such as depression.

It meant they possessed an extremely strong resistance to external stress.

That was what allowed them to enter Gates—environments completely different from Earth—without their minds breaking down, and gave them the strength to fight monsters.

And yet, there were cases where severe physical injuries inflicted by monsters, like the one Joo Jihye had suffered, led to lasting psychological aftereffects.

Of course, such cases weren’t common.

Even Oh Hyeonseong himself had suffered injuries that had nearly killed him multiple times, yet he had survived without going insane.

But once a problem emerged, the situation became serious.

“I don’t know what you mean by recuperation, but you know this well too, don’t you, Senior? Hunters who develop psychological aftereffects never recover.”

Unlike ordinary cases, once a hunter’s mind began to break down, it did not recover.

The longer a hunter had worked, the greater the possibility of developing such psychological aftereffects.

Yet modern medicine couldn’t even determine the exact cause of the phenomenon.

Some claimed they were alien viruses that had come from another dimension through the Gates.

Others said microscopic parasites from another world had entered the brain.

There were countless rumors.

But none of them were particularly credible.

In the end, all anyone had were the occurrence, the results, and the methods of dealing with them.

The cause remained a blank space.

“I’d hoped something might have changed while I was laid up.”

Oh Hyeonseong gave a bitter smile.

A hunter who developed psychological problems did not simply remain in that state.

The human mind, unable to recover, was like the human body whose cells could no longer regenerate.

It inevitably and gradually deteriorated.

“How long has it been?”

“She said it’s already been a year since the injury that caused the aftereffects. For that amount of time, she’s actually less aggressive than you’d expect.”

The biggest problem of all was that as a hunter’s mind deteriorated, their aggression gradually increased.

And when their mind finally collapsed to the point where it could no longer sustain itself, their aggression reached its peak and they lost all reason.

It was known as Awakened Psychosis.

Its official term was Awaken Psychosis.

Once an Awakened entered a state of psychosis, there was no longer any way to reverse it.

And because their very existence could become a disaster, there was only one fate awaiting them in the end.

“Disposal.”

“…At most, she has six months left.”

Han Suyeon turned around and stared at Joo Jihye with a dry expression.