Human Sleeping Pill

‘How long has it been since I ate this much of something? Enough to feel like my stomach might burst.’

The soybean paste stew had been completely wiped clean.

Joo Jihye was still sitting there, savoring the lingering aftertaste.

She had been blessed with a constitution that meant she didn’t need to diet even as a hunter, but in this day and age, this was the first time she’d ever eaten so much at once.

It felt as though she’d been given an entirely new definition of the word delicious.

But that wasn’t all.

Once she had finished eating, followed by the other two, strawberries were brought out as dessert.

‘No way… How can something be this delicious?’

They were better than any fruit she’d ever tasted.

Even the natural strawberries from Hankyung Department Store that had recently turned the world upside down couldn’t dare compare.

Overwhelmed with excitement, she asked,

“Where did you get these? The stew we had earlier was incredible too, and these strawberries are unbelievably good.”

“Country food is supposed to taste good. It’s made with love and care.”

“What kind of nonsense is that…”

“Don’t get too curious. You might end up never being able to eat them again.”

Oh Hyeonseong gave her a brief answer.

Joo Jihye immediately shut her mouth.

All sorts of wild fantasies began racing through her mind.

Perhaps these were a secret variety supplied only to people far more powerful than herself.

Or perhaps Oh Hyeonseong had access to some terrifying network of connections that allowed him to obtain prototype food products from major corporations, just as he seemed to know Choi Jeongil and Han Suyeon.

“Hmm. These really are delicious.”

Han Suyeon was enjoying the strawberries as though she already knew what they were, which only fueled Joo Jihye’s wild imagination.

But she didn’t dare voice any of her thoughts.

She had an instinctive feeling that if she dug too deeply, she’d never get another strawberry—or anything else—from this place again.

Before long, the basket that had been filled with strawberries disappeared completely.

“Then let’s get up. We’ve finished eating!”

“Where are we going?”

Joo Jihye was dragged outside, told that it was time for the next part of her schedule.

They headed toward a large greenhouse located downhill from the house.

It was the strawberry farm.

“Wait, are the strawberries we just ate from here?”

“No. They’re a different variety.”

“Th-then why did we come here?”

“Why are you asking something so obvious? You have to work for what you eat.”

Thump.

Oh Hyeonseong answered as though it were the most natural thing in the world and handed her a pair of gloves.

‘Why… Why am I doing this?’

Joo Jihye was crouching between rows of strawberry plants, looking utterly miserable.

This was something she couldn’t have imagined happening even yesterday.

But when she turned her head, she saw Han Suyeon quietly working behind her as well.

‘The Deputy Director of the Management Bureau, someone who regularly goes in and out of the Blue House, is picking strawberries in the middle of this countryside… How does this make any sense?’

That was precisely why Joo Jihye continued harvesting despite her miserable expression.

Han Suyeon, on the other hand, was calmly filling her basket with strawberries.

She’d already held a hand hoe and dug through bare soil before, so this amount of farm work didn’t faze her in the slightest.

However, when she happened to make eye contact with Oh Hyeonseong across the field, she glanced briefly behind her before speaking.

“Senior, it’s nice that we’re working together, but… why did you bring Jihye to your house?”

“I told you earlier. She’s here to recuperate. I brought her here to help her get better.”

“You don’t seriously think she’ll improve just by breathing fresh air out here, do you?”

Han Suyeon let out a short sigh.

“If it’s already been a year since the warning symptoms first appeared, it wouldn’t be strange for psychosis to break out tonight. No matter how healthy she looks, she’s a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment. You know that better than anyone, Senior.”

“I heard about her from Choi Jeongil. He said she ate strawberries grown on my farm, and that her condition actually improved while she was eating them.”

“What…? Strawberries? You mean the strawberries we just ate?”

“No. The strawberries we’re picking right now.”

Oh Hyeonseong explained the circumstances to her.

The strawberries grown in this field were the downgraded version intended for delivery to the department store, and Joo Jihye’s physical condition had visibly improved after eating them.

“She showed noticeable improvement after eating those delivery strawberries for only a few days. If the spirits’ crops really do have that kind of effect, then Joo Jihye must either respond much more strongly than other people or have a constitution that’s particularly sensitive to the changes. That’s why I brought her here personally to find out.”

“Her symptoms improved after eating strawberries…”

Han Suyeon muttered with a serious expression.

But after thinking deeply about it, she fell silent.

“What are you thinking about so hard?”

“No. Nothing.”

Unlike Oh Hyeonseong’s expectation that she would dismiss the whole thing as ridiculous nonsense, Han Suyeon merely shook her head.

She, too, had recently experienced something strange.

That didn’t mean she accepted his explanation, though.

“Haa… I think I understand why you’ve gone this far now, Senior. In truth… it’s not Joo Jihye you’re worried about. It’s Choi Jeongil, isn’t it?”

“I just thought it’d be good to do something worthwhile while testing this.”

“I’m warning you in advance. The disposal of high-ranking hunters isn’t under our jurisdiction. That’s the National Security Bureau’s responsibility.”

Han Suyeon spoke with an unusually serious expression.

“If it looks like she can’t be treated, don’t keep her here for too long. You could get dragged into something troublesome yourself, Senior. Even I wouldn’t be able to cover for you in that situation.”

“Don’t worry. It’s only a week anyway.”

Oh Hyeonseong replied.

If Joo Jihye continued consuming the produce from this place without showing any effect within a week, then the improvement she’d experienced from eating the strawberries supplied externally could simply have been a coincidence or a misunderstanding.

Still, there might be other variables involved.

Oh Hyeonseong intended to push Joo Jihye hard enough to make sure she saw a real effect within the short time she had.

It wasn’t enough to simply feed her.

“You’ll have to help me out too.”

“We’re going to do rehabilitation training. Come outside.”

“What? It’s barely been any time since I harvested the strawberries! And what kind of rehabilitation can you even do in a place like this…?”

Joo Jihye, who had been lying down in her room, shot upright.

But Oh Hyeonseong casually dismissed her objections.

“I brought you here in the first place to cure your condition. And while you’re here, you agreed to follow my instructions without complaint, didn’t you? Come out.”

Oh Hyeonseong closed the door and left.

His tone had been so firm that Joo Jihye could only grumble as she got up.

But even as she moved, her mind was filled with doubts.

‘Rehabilitation training? There’s no way something like that can cure my condition when even Representative Choi Jeongil couldn’t solve it.’

Choi Jeongil was the head of a world-class hunter management company.

With the hunter industry growing as rapidly as it was these days, it wouldn’t have been an exaggeration to say he was making money hand over fist.

Yet he invested a considerable portion of those enormous global earnings into running a single nonprofit organization.

It was a research and treatment institution dedicated to reducing the burden placed on hunters who traveled through Gates and helping them regain the recovery abilities they had lost.

Its direct treatment facilities in particular were famous for being comparable in scale to hospitals operated under the Management Bureau.

And yet, despite pouring that much money into it, Choi Jeongil had failed to find even the slightest answer to the psychological damage suffered by hunters.

The various treatments Joo Jihye had undergone had also produced absolutely no results.

There was no way some rehabilitation exercises in a rural area without even basic equipment could cure her.

“Huh?”

But when she stepped outside, it wasn’t Oh Hyeonseong standing there.

It was Han Suyeon.

She was waiting for Joo Jihye in an empty patch of land, as though she’d been expecting her.

“Don’t tell me you’re the one who’s going to conduct the rehabilitation training…”

“That’s right. Senior asked me to. He wanted me to give you some advice on how to control your mana.”

“Advice?”

Joo Jihye swallowed hard.

She was a hunter who specialized in mana rather than physical abilities.

If someone had approached her and offered to teach her how to control mana, she would normally have reacted with fierce resistance.

After all, this was the field she’d mastered as a Grade 10 high-ranking hunter.

She couldn’t possibly lack pride in it.

And she shouldn’t.

Unlike those who simply relied on unusual constitutions and hastily built their skills through experience alone, Joo Jihye possessed solid fundamentals in addition to her talent.

She had even received several one-on-one lessons from Choi Jeongil himself.

Yet this time, she didn’t feel even the slightest bit of resistance.

Instead, her heart was simply pounding.

“Before we begin in earnest, could you demonstrate your ability once?”

“Yes…!”

After taking a deep breath, Joo Jihye activated her telekinesis.

There was nothing around her to manipulate in the empty field, yet in an instant, mana seemed to fill the surrounding space.

Han Suyeon’s head nodded at the sheer intensity of her control, which exceeded her expectations.

‘At this level, she’s already at the very top when it comes to handling mana. A realm impossible to reach without both talent and effort… But that’s to be expected at this level. Even among them, there are still differences.’

Unlike ordinary hunters, whose abilities were generally similar in quality, the world of top-tier hunters above Grade 10 was different.

Even within the same grade, there could be such extreme differences in ability that you might wonder whether the people in question really belonged in the same category.

The larger the population, the greater the possible gap between individuals.

“Your mana output and the scale of what you can manipulate are unusually large. But compared to the firepower you can produce, you’re lacking in finesse.”

“I received advice from Representative Choi Jeongil. He said it would be better to accept some loss in that area in order to maximize the strengths of my ability.”

“That makes sense for efficiency, but since we’re here, let’s refine it a little more. Once you get the knack for it, it’s simpler than you might think.”

Han Suyeon approached Joo Jihye and corrected the flow of her mana.

“Try flowing your mana through the pathway I just showed you.”

“C-can you construct a spell like this? But it’s so complicated. I don’t know if I’d be able to use it in an actual battle…”

“This is a practice spell for developing your sense. In actual combat, you’d have to compress it into something much simpler. But that’s too much for you right now, so let’s start by getting a feel for it.”

“I’ll try.”

Joo Jihye swallowed and began circulating her mana.

She even closed her eyes, a technique she’d abandoned during her first year as an Awakened because she considered it useless in actual combat, and focused completely.

But it wasn’t going properly at all.

The true skill of an ability-type hunter lay in the compression of their spells.

And even this practice spell was so difficult that merely thinking about eventually compressing it made her head spin.

“Don’t rush to deploy it quickly just because you’re worried about speed. Focus on making the structure more stable and more tightly woven. Mana with greater density can produce much more powerful effects even at the same output. If you can do that, you won’t be so easily stripped of control over your mana and helplessly beaten like you were yesterday. No matter how large the difference in overall power may be.”

There was one thing hunters heading toward psychosis had in common.

Their mana became increasingly aggressive and unstable in its expression.

The mind and body were closely interconnected, and mana couldn’t escape being affected by that relationship.

But conversely, if she could calm that instability, she could strengthen her control over herself and potentially slow the rate of her mental deterioration, even if only slightly.

Tzzzt—!

“D-did I do it?”

“Well done. At least you’ve gotten a taste of it.”

After more than fifteen attempts, she finally succeeded.

Her forehead was drenched in sweat, but an enormous smile spread across Joo Jihye’s face.

Without Han Suyeon’s guidance, she wouldn’t have been able to succeed—or even conceived of using this method in the first place.

It was still far beyond her current ability, but if she could properly digest and master it, she could make tremendous progress.

“Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the theory in earnest. But first, let’s experience what happens when you properly deploy the spell you just learned.”

Wooooong—!

Han Suyeon brought her hands together and released her mana.

It was the exact same spell Joo Jihye had just used.

But the surrounding air trembled slightly as a bluish light spread brilliantly outward, swallowing the area around them.

Fwoooosh!

‘G-God…’

Joo Jihye stood there, dumbfounded.

It was as vast and deep as an ocean, with no end in sight.

Quiet, yet containing immense destructive power.

It was as though Han Suyeon were directly showing her what true mana was supposed to look like.

Without even using her unusual constitution, Han Suyeon’s pure deployment of mana alone filled Joo Jihye with awe.

Flash!

Han Suyeon withdrew her mana, bringing the demonstration to an end.

Joo Jihye remained dazed for a while before lowering her head deeply.

“Th-thank you so much. I learned a lot.”

“Don’t rush yourself. Take it slowly. A week isn’t a long time, but you should be able to stabilize yourself quite a bit.”

“A week?”

“Is that too long?”

“No! It’s wonderful!”

The content of this lesson was on an entirely different level.

Even Choi Jeongil, who had personally trained her several times, had only used mana as a supplementary tool and hadn’t reached this level.

No.

There was simply no comparison.

She never would have imagined that she’d come to some rural village and witness something like this.

Suddenly, Joo Jihye began feeling increasingly grateful to Oh Hyeonseong for dragging her all the way here.

“My part is over, but Senior will be coming for the next training session.”

“Training? But… what can he teach me? He’s been retired for a long time, and I couldn’t even sense any mana from him.”

“You’re joking, right? You’ll have far more to learn from him than from someone like me.”

Han Suyeon laughed.

She wasn’t saying it just to be polite.

Compared to him, it was almost laughable to even put herself forward as a point of comparison.

Back then, he had been the strongest hunter of his era.

But he had also been the greatest instructor of his time.

The only problem was that his reputation for being terrifyingly strict was just as legendary.

Thud.

Right on cue, Oh Hyeonseong appeared.

The moment Joo Jihye saw him, her mouth fell open.

“W-what’s with those weird sunglasses?”

“A strong body houses a strong mind. Trainee Joo Jihye, I will be conducting your rehabilitation and training program for the remainder of your stay. I expect you to follow my instructions.”

“No! I’m asking about those!”

“You don’t need to worry about being unable to sleep because of your insomnia. The moment you lie down in bed, I’ll have you sound asleep within one second.”

Oh Hyeonseong spoke in an absurdly stiff tone.

He had even pulled a hat down over his sunglasses, clearly having prepared an entire persona for the occasion.

“Ugh.”

Han Suyeon, watching from the side, involuntarily shuddered.

Then she shook her head and hurried back toward the house.

‘If I keep watching this… I feel like I’ll have a nightmare about boot camp when I go to bed tonight.’