Free Web NovelI often recall the past, but I don’t let myself get pulled into it.
The past is just a collection of events that have already happened, a pile of outcomes.
Especially for someone like me, where the past itself is a shackle, the act of reminiscing is like sailing through a sea full of reefs and fog.
So when I do recall, it’s always in relation to something—tied to a current matter.
At some point, Woo Min-hee had come to settle into my surroundings, taking up a significant space—but we were, truthfully, just strangers with barely any points of contact.
But that doesn’t mean there weren’t any episodes between us.
A string of incidents triggered by Kang Han-min’s erratic behavior dragged us back into the distant past—over ten years ago.
*
“What is a Hunter? One who looks into the eyes of death. What is a Hunter? One who stares into death itself. Yes. Death is the dark twin of us Hunters, our brother, our partner, and a part of ourselves. To fear death is to fear your own self.”
In my hazy memories, mornings were always dominated by the endless rambling of my mentor, Instructor Jang Ki-young.
There were many instructors who clung to old-school, rigid, military discipline, but Jang Ki-young was on another level.
“I know. I know some of you see this ‘Hunter’ thing as just a way to get famous. I don’t criticize that. Go ahead. Get famous. But before that, you’ll have to become famous among us Hunters first.”
To talk for a full hour every day without repeating a single nonsense line—that’s a talent in itself.
A sad truth, though—no one ever really listened to him seriously.
Even me—Park Gyu—who was called Jang Ki-young’s top student, wasn’t an exception.
Whenever Jang Ki-young turned his gaze to the distance while pacing between our ranks, standing at attention with hands behind our backs, my eyes would naturally wander to students outside his line of sight.
Some were goofing off, zoning out, listening to music through wireless earbuds. Some even had mini mics tucked into their collars, whispering to friends or lovers over the phone.
The only one listening to him attentively, standing slightly hunched in the front, was—
Kang Han-min.
He had made a critical mistake in the last exam, dragging down the overall score of his team.
There were even rumors that he got rejected during the paperwork stage of the China dispatch selection.
For someone from our academy—allegedly the best elite institution in Northeast Asia—to be eliminated at the document review stage was absurd by normal standards, but no one questioned it. They just nodded and said, “It’s Kang Han-min, after all.”
Rumor had it that Kang Han-min would leave the academy after this semester.
That, per Jang Ki-young’s wish, he would be kicked out without even receiving a diploma.
As for me, my China dispatch had already been confirmed.
Recognized for my excellent grades, I was assigned to complete brief field training before assembling a team of my own.
I won’t deny that Jang Ki-young’s influence had something to do with that privilege.
I was, after all, the living proof of his ideals—the avatar through which his passionate rants about what a Hunter should be were to be realized.
“Oh, Park Gyu. There you are.”
Lee Sang-hoon—who had once desperately tried to beat me at everything—had mellowed out by the time of graduation, now approaching me with a relaxed attitude.
“What are you doing? Still hacking away with those axes?”
He looked at the pair of blunted axes I’d left on the bench while changing into my training gear and sighed.
“You know you can’t actually use those in real combat, right?”
He gave me a bemused look, but I didn’t flinch. freёweɓnovel.com
I quietly went through my routine—taping up my fingers, sharpening the dulled axes just enough to be usable for training.
“I’ve said this before, but about Instructor Jang Ki-young... there’s no actual proof he’s ever taken down a monster. He talks a lot, but there’s no evidence. Even the seniors in China say none of what he preached turned out to be accurate.”
“......”
“Hand-to-hand combat with cold weapons? That’s a myth. Back when it was just exotic beasts, maybe it made sense as a circus act. But swinging a sword or a spear at a monster? Even the smallest ones are over three meters tall. Chinese Hunters with their guandaos and spears? They’re just military-made showmen. The real guys handle things with standard firearms—clean and simple. But that doesn’t look good on camera, so they never get any attention.”
I finished prepping.
I looked at Lee Sang-hoon.
“You’re not training?”
“...What?”
“Training.”
Lee Sang-hoon had also been selected for dispatch to China.
There were still a few tests left, but given that our academy’s real goal was to send Hunters to China, once your placement was set, grades didn’t matter.
I guess that’s why he wasn’t interested in my offer.
“Nah. I’m done playing along. It’s not like we’ll be swinging axes in China.”
“Is that so?”
I got up from my seat.
As I turned to head to the training room, Lee Sang-hoon called out to me.
“Park Gyu.”
“?”
“Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“That a killer mutation is wreaking havoc in Yeoju. They say twelve people are already dead.”
“Don’t they have a Hunter assigned to that district?”
“They do. But it got him too.”
“Really?”
“Well... he was academy-trained.”
I turned my head. Lee Sang-hoon was watching me with a knowing, mischievous grin.
That’s when I realized what this cunning, competitive bastard was planning.
“They might send us. As a sort of live test before we head to China.”
“Yeah?”
“Might be the final test.”
My valedictorian status was already decided.
But Lee Sang-hoon clearly wanted to overturn that outcome with a completely different kind of test.
“......”
It doesn’t matter.
My future is already set in stone.
To kill, to be killed, or to be the killer.
A never-ending loop, until the flames of my hatred finally burn out.
Whatever lies in between means nothing to me.
My beginning and my end are already determined.
“Park Gyu.”
Jang Ki-young called my name.
He looked at my sweat-covered face and the axe in my hand with a detached gaze and said,
“You’ll be going to Yeoju.”
*
They say all lives are equal in value, but anyone paying attention to the world knows that’s not true.
Some deaths get a one-line obituary, written off as an accident. Others dominate every media outlet, becoming “a tragedy for all of us.”
This was one of those latter cases.
Among the victims was someone from a high-ranking family.
I didn’t catch the exact details, but apparently they were tied to local political bosses, land developers, senior civil servants, or a lawmaker—something along those lines.
“You know, usually you kill someone and get five years, right? With all the circumstances taken into account. But if you kill a judge under the same conditions, how many years do you think you’ll serve?”
As always, Gong Gyeong-min was blabbering nonsense inside the bus heading to Yeoju.
Because of the target involved, the students viewed the mission not so much as an operation, but as a warm-up before their China assignments.
In fact, the bus wasn’t just filled with graduates from our year—some underclassmen had come along too.
In the world of appearances, youth always carries weight.
“Hey. She’s kind of cute, isn’t she?”
There was one junior who drew all the attention.
Woo Min-hee.
Her body and mind were far less broken back then.
I knew of her even then.
Maybe not her face, but her name—impossible not to know.
Even setting aside her beauty, the legendary tales of her entanglements with men floated around like urban myths. You’d overhear them even eating alone in the cafeteria.
It was honestly a bit surprising when she got assigned to our team.
Woo Min-hee wasn’t part of Jang Ki-young’s faction.
She was a student of one of the strict instructors who often clashed with Jang.
Back then, I thought I understood Jang Ki-young well. So for him to assign someone from a rival faction to such a high-visibility mission—that threw me for a loop.
Still, as a junior, her role was strictly supportive.
As was typical for showpiece operations like this, journalists were on the bus with us.
It wasn’t a flashy press squad with dozens of cameras and flashes—just one reporter, one cameraman.
I found out later they weren’t even affiliated with a news outlet. They were freelancers who sold coverage materials to media companies for a living.
“Everyone. This is your first mission. Are you scared?”
The reporter’s name was Son Tae-gang. He was in his mid-thirties and known to be remarkably brave.
He had entered war zones, covered drug cartels, and most recently traveled to the Indian border in collapse, where he was forcibly deported by UN forces.
So coming to a dangerous area infested with live mutations wasn’t a fluke—it fit the pattern of his life.
Because of security concerns, filming the students was forbidden. So he only recorded audio, conducting interviews.
The reactions were split.
“Well... whatever’s waiting up ahead, we’ll do what we have to do. That’s why we’re here.”
Said the model student.
“Come on, like we’re really gonna die? It’s not even a monster—it’s just a mutation. What’s a mutation? Just a big wild animal. I can hit all five targets at 200 meters in under five seconds.”
Said the bragger.
“It’ll be fine. We’re students, yeah, but we’re graduates. There’s two whole buses—fifty people total.”
Said the optimist.
“......”
Me? I ignored him. freewёbnoνel.com
Son Tae-gang gave a wry smile and tried to coax a reply out of me, but I didn’t owe him anything. He wasn’t one of us.
And I wasn’t exactly responsive back then either. Way worse than now.
Maybe frustrated by my silence, maybe just feeling provocative, Son Tae-gang asked something completely unsolicited.
“Suppose the thing waiting ahead isn’t a mutation... but a human?”
“...What?”
“What if it’s a human pretending to be a mutation? Would you still pull the trigger?”
He really emphasized the word human.
I nodded.
Without the slightest hesitation.
Laughter came from the front.
It was Jang Ki-young, sitting alone up front, thumbing through his worn-out notebook.
Son Tae-gang held his breath and glanced toward him, then slowly pursed his lips.
That marked the end of the interview.
He turned to his next target.
“Hey, you back there. Why are you sitting alone?”
Kang Han-min.
“Oh, uh... I’ve just got a lot on my mind. You know, first real mission and all. Haha...”
Didn’t sound like anything important. I calmly turned my gaze to the passing scenery outside the window.
Lots of talk.
Mostly fear about the upcoming mission.
Back then, mutation mechanisms weren’t well understood. There was debate whether mutations were just altered animals or bioweapons created by rift phenomena like monsters.
We did know this: while mutations were technically less threatening than monsters, in the right conditions they could be even more deadly.
The one who really nailed down the idea that existing animals could mutate via mutation factors—that was Professor Lee, of course.
Whatever the case—whether it was an overgrown animal or an interdimensional mimic—twelve people were dead, and five more were missing.
That included a high-ranking family.
They found the wife’s body, but not the children.
Which meant our mission wasn’t just to kill a monster.
We’d likely be searching for horribly mutilated corpses as well. That was one of the tasks Jang Ki-young had quietly slipped into our mission outline.
Sure, we’d seen cadavers in anatomy labs, and corpses in combat footage. But encountering them in the field is different.
Like Lee Sang-hoon said, this could very well be the academy’s final exam in disguise.
Plenty of students with spotless academic records fell apart in the field, unable to handle battle—claiming PTSD after their first sight of death.
“......”
I stared at the back of Jang Ki-young’s head.
He was humming cheerfully.
I didn’t know what he was thinking, but it couldn’t be anything pleasant.
Then a bright voice came from the back.
“What? Am I dating someone? Nah. I’m not seeing anyone. Haven’t seriously dated anyone either. Things just got blown out of proportion.”
Woo Min-hee.
She was just a support member, yet all attention gravitated toward her—an exact contrast to Kang Han-min sitting quietly alone.
Of course, Lee Sang-hoon, who could never resist flirting with women and was filled with baseless confidence, started hitting on her.
“Wanna hang out after this? Make some memories with the juniors before we all head to China?”
“China?”
In my memory, Woo Min-hee always said “China,” not “Chung-gook” in that childish way.
“No. I’m in private training. Don’t think I’ll have the time.”
“Really? Anything I can help with? I’m not the valedictorian, but I am second-ranked.”
“It’s fine, sunbae. I’m vegan, so there’s a lot I can’t eat anyway. I appreciate the thought, though.”
A quiet laugh slipped out.
Lee Sang-hoon being so pushy was one thing, but Woo Min-hee’s utterly unmerciful wall made even the emotionally numbed version of myself back then feel something.
I pretended to check my phone and used «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» the black screen to reflect them.
“......”
My eyes met hers.
To be precise, she was staring straight at my reflection in the screen.
Jang Ki-young’s humming crept back into my ears.
And his offhand comment, too—
“Hey, Park Gyu. Don’t you want a girlfriend? I mean, with your looks, build, and skill—it’s a national tragedy you don’t have one. If there’s anyone you like, just say the word. There are plenty of pretty girls, you know?”
...Was that part of what he meant?
Doesn’t matter.
The bus is starting to slow down.
Even though harvest season is long over, wilted rice stalks still droop in the fields—rotting away.
It’s the battlefield.
