Descend the Mountain

One year ago, there had been an S-rank Gate in Busan.

Joo Jihye had entered it with her team and suffered a severe injury to her back while fighting the boss.

She had barely survived after intensive treatment and surgery.

But the real problem was the psychological aftereffects that followed.

The very thing she’d thought would have nothing to do with her for her entire life.

For a hunter, it was practically a death sentence.

Once she learned that it was a precursor to Awakened Psychosis, anxiety began to consume her.

After the insomnia suddenly appeared, the less she slept, the worse her symptoms seemed to become.

And the worse they became, the more anxious she grew.

Joo Jihye, who had remained perfectly fine even on blood-soaked battlefields, felt as though her insides were twisting themselves into knots whenever night came.

At some point, her mind gradually began filling with noise.

Even though she could think and live normally, it felt as though something hazy and indistinct had filled her head.

The noise only continued to grow.

And as it did, she could feel herself becoming increasingly irritable.

But the most frightening part was that she no longer felt any guilt about treating people harshly or intimidating them.

It was as though the noise had covered up her emotions.

“Gasp…!”

But why?

Why was her mind so clear now?

Only vivid, unmistakable pain remained etched throughout her body.

The pain of muscles begging her to stop.

The scream of her lungs demanding oxygen.

“Haaah…! Haaah…!”

Joo Jihye collapsed onto the ground and lay there, staring up at the sky.

She was covered from head to toe in filthy dust, but even someone as neat and tidy as her didn’t have the energy to care.

Tears streamed from her eyes.

Sweat poured from her body.

“Good work. It’s your first day, so we’ll stop here for today. Starting tomorrow, we’ll begin the actual training, so you’d better adapt quickly.”

“I-I can’t believe this…”

Joo Jihye looked up at Oh Hyeonseong with tears welling in her eyes.

They were the kind of tears that had made countless male viewers melt when she appeared in dramas.

But Oh Hyeonseong didn’t even spare her a glance.

He simply turned around and walked inside.

“Lying around is fine, but if you don’t go inside and get proper rest soon, tomorrow will be even harder.”

“Y-you… bad… Hng…”

Joo Jihye planted her trembling arms against the ground.

She barely managed to stand and dragged her shaking legs toward the house.

Once inside the detached house, she didn’t even have the strength to wash the dirt off herself.

She simply collapsed.

“…Snooore.”

She fell completely asleep.

A basket filled with roasted sweet potatoes and roasted potatoes sat between them.

Han Suyeon once again picked out potatoes one after another.

Oh Hyeonseong reluctantly chose a sweet potato for the sake of balance.

And he had not the slightest regret about that decision.

“…This is insane.”

“Shouldn’t you be used to it by now, Senior?”

“Getting used to a taste like this? I don’t think that’ll happen even by the time I die.”

Gulp!

With a manly flourish, Oh Hyeonseong swallowed the remaining sweet potato in one bite.

Han Suyeon spread the documents she’d brought across the table in front of him.

Time had passed surprisingly quickly.

They were the compiled results from the data collected during the seven days of rehabilitation and training.

“The insomnia has definitely improved. Her average time to fall asleep over the past week was only 3.18 seconds. At this point, that’s not treatment. It’s torture.”

“The most effective and excellent form of rehabilitation, then. What about the other data?”

Insomnia was only one symptom.

And since she’d been forcibly put to sleep by exhaustion, the numbers themselves weren’t particularly reliable.

Of course, because she fell asleep immediately, the anxiety that had been eating away at her whenever bedtime approached had disappeared, which would have contributed to her recovery.

Sleeping properly would also have improved her overall physical condition.

Regardless, the important thing now was the other categories.

Han Suyeon pulled out Joo Jihye’s self-assessment report.

“She says that because she slept properly at set times for several days, she barely felt any fatigue. The trembling in her hands has disappeared, and the anxiety she felt has decreased significantly. She never lost control or displayed aggressive behavior even during that extreme training, so overall, we should consider her psychological state to be stabilizing.”

Every symptom had improved significantly during the week she’d spent here.

However, anxiety was ultimately subjective.

Because the problem was psychological, it was difficult to judge or diagnose simply by looking at someone.

But there was another way.

Her mana had become rougher, and her physical condition had deteriorated.

Those were the common phenomena that occurred as hunters approached psychosis.

That was why Oh Hyeonseong had spent the past seven days disguising measurements and quantification as rehabilitation.

“All of her indicators improved significantly during training. Someone whose psychosis was progressing couldn’t possibly show this kind of increase.”

“So the underlying cause has been addressed.”

The precursor symptoms of psychosis that had been eating away at her body and mind had improved.

For Joo Jihye, who had been on a steady downward slope ever since her injury a year ago, this was a complete reversal.

That allowed them to be certain.

This wasn’t merely a halt in her deterioration.

Her psychological aftereffects had visibly improved.

“The mind of a hunter who was breaking down… actually recovered?”

It was something that should have been impossible according to everything they knew.

And yet, it had happened.

Training alone could never have produced such a result.

Which meant Oh Hyeonseong’s hypothesis that the spirits’ crops might possess healing properties had proven correct.

“I can’t believe it. I never thought something like this was possible.”

“Thanks for helping me, too.”

Of course, the training they had conducted wasn’t merely for show, either.

Joo Jihye had been extraordinarily lucky.

The two hunters assigned to her were both legends of the first generation.

Even in such a short period, the stability of her mana had improved noticeably, while her physical stamina—which had only declined since her injury—had improved dramatically.

By around the third or fourth day, even Joo Jihye herself had begun to develop enough stamina to follow the training with some breathing room.

Oh Hyeonseong knew better than anyone how to push high-ranking hunters to their limits and extract the maximum possible growth from them.

‘Of course, we’ll need to observe her for a little longer to determine whether this is merely a temporary improvement or a fundamental cure. But one thing is certain… she’s gotten better.’

Joo Jihye sat curled up alone in her room.

If this had been the old Joo Jihye, she’d have been sulking and thinking only about how to escape.

But now she simply stared blankly out the window.

“…It’s beautiful.”

The clouds drifting gently across the sky.

The bluish mountains and forests stretching into the distance.

In the midst of the days that had passed in a blur of relentless training, she had gradually begun seeing things she’d stopped noticing somewhere along the way.

Rattle.

At that moment, Oh Hyeonseong opened the door and entered.

Joo Jihye immediately straightened her posture and sat upright.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Yes! I slept wonderfully!”

“Good. Pack your things and come outside.”

“…Pack my things?”

“Yeah. The training is over.”

“What? But… why?”

Joo Jihye asked in confusion without even realizing it.

Of course, she was happy that the hellish training was finally over.

But her days had passed by in such a frantic blur that she hadn’t even properly realized how many days had gone by.

Besides, part of her still felt that there was so much more she needed to learn.

“The date we agreed on has passed. And I heard from Jeongil. He needs to go back because of his schedule.”

Thud.

He returned the phone that had been confiscated from her.

A whole week had already passed?

Joo Jihye stared at him in a daze.

Yet her body was already moving according to Oh Hyeonseong’s instructions, packing her belongings.

When she stepped outside, Oh Hyeonseong and Han Suyeon were standing by the front gate.

“Jihye, you’ve worked hard.”

“You handled everything without complaining, far better than I expected. You should be proud of yourself. The time we promised is over. Now, descend the mountain.”

“Instructors…”

“I told you the training is over. Don’t call us instructors.”

“B-but can I really leave? What if my insomnia comes back?”

Joo Jihye hesitated.

It had been an incredibly difficult time for her.

But it had also been a time when she’d felt strangely at peace.

While she had been approaching her mental limit through an endless vicious cycle, this had been the only place where she could simply exist without worrying about anything.

Oh Hyeonseong stopped and handed the hesitant Joo Jihye a large box he’d been carrying.

When she lifted the lid, she found it packed full of fresh strawberries.

“If you start feeling anxious, eat one.”

Joo Jihye looked at him in surprise.

Oh Hyeonseong smiled.

“It may have been brief, but you went through my training. The ones I’ve trained have never been easy to kill, no matter where they went. So don’t let some stupid illness scare you.”

Rattle, rattle, rattle.

Her trembling legs wouldn’t stop.

Inside the waiting room at a drama filming set, Joo Jihye nervously bit her nails.

She had been told there was nothing to be anxious or afraid of.

But that was easier said than done.

After leaving Oh Hyeonseong’s home and returning to familiar surroundings, the anxiety that had seemed to disappear began slowly raising its head again.

“Hey, you’re not going to screw up today’s shoot too, are you?”

“We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t start giving us hell. Why did they even bring in the woman who completely tanked the last drama?”

“Exactly.”

The voices of the staff whispering outside the waiting room could be heard.

They thought they were keeping their voices down, but Joo Jihye could hear every word.

“At least insult me quietly enough that I can’t hear you.”

Joo Jihye muttered with a frown.

If this had happened only a few days ago, she would have stormed outside immediately and beaten those idiots senseless.

She would have turned the entire filming set upside down.

But Joo Jihye simply shook her head.

She couldn’t dismiss their words as complete nonsense.

After all, she’d actually received an enormous appearance fee for the previous drama, only to ruin it with what critics called the worst acting of her career since debut.

Her Gate performance had already become less frequent, and as an actress, she was being called a washed-up has-been whose career was completely over.

The higher her popularity and expectations had been, the steeper her fall had become.

“Hoo…”

Joo Jihye looked down at her trembling hands again.

Her heart refused to calm down.

And seeing herself becoming anxious only made her more anxious that her aftereffects might be worsening again.

“Huh?”

But then something caught her eye.

A single strawberry sitting inside a small package.

‘Come to think of it… he told me to eat one if I got anxious.’

After hesitating for a moment, Joo Jihye carefully reached out.

The moment she ate the strawberry, its incredible flavor burst across her tongue once again.

But it wasn’t simply the taste.

She remembered that single piece of strawberry she’d eaten after finishing the most grueling training of her life.

More importantly, she remembered the moment itself.

The place.

The sensations.

The memories expanded in her mind.

The cool night air.

The sky glittering with countless stars.

The quiet scenery.

The city lights she’d always longed for only served to obscure the stars in the sky.

And the sounds of insects that had disturbed her sleep on her first night had eventually made her hum along with them.

For some reason, simply thinking about that time caused the restless feeling in her heart to settle.

“Let’s begin.”

Joo Jihye stood up and walked out of the waiting room.

She confidently stepped before the numerous staff members and cameras.

The moment the director gave her the cue, her eyes changed.

As though she’d become an entirely different person.

No.

It was a shining moment that only actress Joo Jihye could create, captured perfectly within a single frame.

Faced with that powerful resonance everyone had forgotten she possessed, everyone on the set could do nothing but stare at her, completely spellbound.