Im Yeonhwa, deputy leader of Songhwa Guild, was waiting on the man who'd been decorating every news outlet lately.
Seon Hanul.
Deputy leader of Seonmyeong Guild, and a black-rank hunter suffering from that chronic affliction, a dungeon aftereffect.
Ever since word got out that Hanul's amnesia had recurred, the media had been recycling stories about him without pause.
He's handling guild work, they say, so when's he coming back to hunter duty?
Guild work in name only. Isn't it just the people under him doing all the grunting?
Can even a black-rank hunter do nothing about a dungeon aftereffect, or is Seon Hanul weak for a black-rank?
Poor Myeong Dojun. What's he supposed to do?
And on and on.
Some of them were surely worried in earnest, but most just wanted to run their mouths about a successful hunter's misfortune.
“It was a problem he had no choice but to disclose, but...”
At twenty-two, when he went through his first bout of amnesia, Hanul had made it public.
He drew far too much public attention for hiding it to be feasible, and more than that, he was a hunter actively clearing dungeons.
A dungeon wasn't easy ground even for a hunter, and a hunter always went in prepared to lose his life.
Which was why the rule was that hunters communicated their physical condition clearly to those around them, not only for their colleagues' sake but for their own survival.
It wasn't as though no hunter ever concealed an aftereffect to avoid handing anyone a weakness, but Hanul, who had no memory whatsoever of the colleagues walking into the dungeon beside him, couldn't have made that choice.
“If it were an aftereffect that faded in a year or two at the outside, things would've gone differently.”
In that case he'd have shared the information among the upper ranks and taken a leave of absence. But for a Hanul saddled with a permanent aftereffect, only two options remained.
Retire, or disclose it.
Realistically, though, Hanul retiring was impossible.
Whenever the aftereffect manifested, Hanul reverted to twenty-one. He'd been working as a hunter since nineteen, and even at twenty-one he'd been a black-rank hunter, one of the handful of true powerhouses in Korea.
Some of his memories might be missing, but conditions in the hunter world weren't cushy enough to let someone that capable sit idle.
“It'd honestly have been better if he were only red-rank.”
Hunter ranks ran, in order, black, red, blue, yellow, and white. The gap in ability between them was stark, and the higher the rank, the more sharply the number of hunters dropped off.
So there was no chance people would welcome the retirement of one of the mere nine black-rank hunters in the country.
In the end, precisely because he was black-rank, Seon Hanul had been forced to expose his weakness to the world whether he wanted to or not.
“I couldn't live like that.”
It was a horrifying thing, truly.
You wake up like any other morning, and years have already slipped past, and every person in the world knows you've lost your memories.
Could you even step outside without your nerves eating you alive?
And how would you trust the people who came up to you?
Black-rank or not, wasn't he in a state where anyone around him could do him dirt if they set their mind to it?
In that sense, she respected Seon Hanul for weathering this situation for years on end.
“He's here.”
Knock, knock.
She'd left word that he was to be shown in without being announced, so her guest opened the conference room door and walked straight through it.
Im Yeonhwa rose from her seat for the visitor who had arrived exactly on time.
“Hunter Seon Hanul.”
A beauty prettier and more striking than any celebrity greeted her with a smile that looked painted on.
“It's been a while, Hunter Im Yeonhwa.”
Im Yeonhwa, who had reflexively stared at the empty space behind Hanul, gestured him toward a seat once the door shut.
“It must have been a sudden request. Thank you for coming right away.”
“It's Songhwa Guild, of all places. And you helped us out just a month ago, so of course I'd come.”
The smiling face was perfectly natural. So was the voice discussing a month ago that he couldn't remember, without a single tremor in it.
You'd think knowing the other party was aware of the gaps in your memory would leave you uncomfortable, or uneasy, but Hanul was always this relaxed, this unruffled.
Twenty-five wasn't old either, but Hanul's mental age at the moment was twenty-one. How did he manage it?
...Impressive as it is, this is exactly why he's a little unsettling.
Watching a twenty-one-year-old run a major guild he had no memory of founding without a hitch, absorbing several forgotten years at speed and living in the present without any trouble at all, stirred a faint aversion in her.
She knew it was wrong to harbor feelings like that toward someone weathering a hard time, but she could tell that his public reputation and that face, which looked assembled out of every bright and clean thing in the world, weren't the whole picture. There was no helping it.
Fortunately, the aversion faded quickly whenever she saw Hanul beside one particular person.
Knock, knock.
Im Yeonhwa, who had caught the approaching footsteps, looked toward the opening door with a pleased expression.
“Hunter Myeong Dojun!”
He hadn't been behind Hanul, so she'd assumed he hadn't come along today. But where the needle went, the thread was bound to follow.
“My apologies. I'm a little late.”
“Don't apologize. We're the ones who called you in on no notice.”
As she'd said, this meeting had come out of a one-sided request from Songhwa Guild. It was rude enough to qualify as rude, and Seonmyeong Guild had agreed to the negotiation anyway, which was something she couldn't thank them for enough.
“I know something came up on your end recently, but this dungeon really does seem to be the best affinity match for Hunter Seon Hanul.”
Hanul pulled out a chair to offer Dojun the seat beside him and nodded to say he understood.
“Yes. I looked into it, and it does appear that way.”
In truth, she'd intended to ask somewhere other than Seonmyeong if there were any way around it.
Seonmyeong Guild had become the foremost guild in Korea over the last few years, and there was no room to doubt Hanul's or Dojun's ability, but it hadn't even been a week since Hanul lost his memories.
She'd heard he'd stopped a dungeon break on the very first day, but ethically she felt the right thing was to give him time until Seonmyeong formally announced his return to dungeon work.
But with no way to be certain whether the hunters who'd gone in earlier were still alive, she'd ended up contacting Seonmyeong Guild, home to a Hanul whose odds of bringing them back breathing were high and whose affinity for the dungeon fit.
Im Yeonhwa let out a small sigh and got to the point without circling it.
“This is the compensation we're able to offer.”
The information on the dungeon had already been sent ahead, so what remained was to lay out what Songhwa could give Seonmyeong in return.
Hanul reviewed the contract she held out, still smiling.
Im Yeonhwa didn't forget to hand Dojun an identical copy.
She'd known he would come along, so she'd prepared his in advance.
In the early stretch after Hunter Seon Hanul loses his memories, he's always right at his side.
Hanul was living through a wretched dungeon aftereffect and still holding on to his ordinary life like this, partly through his own effort, but also because a solid, trustworthy fence stood guard around him.
Reaching a memoryless Hanul meant getting past Dojun first, and under those conditions, who would dare try to swindle Hanul?
Having someone like that beside you is its own kind of luck.
Back when the two were known as friends and business partners, there had apparently been people who'd sidle up to Dojun with filthy propositions, but she'd heard those approaches had all but vanished after the relationship went public a year ago.
Nobody could fail to grasp what it meant for two men to date openly.
Even family betrayed family, so there were still those who nursed a hope that lovers could betray each other just as readily. Whatever the case, from then on Hanul and Dojun were treated as a single package.
Money never lies.
After they went public, in spite of the owner risk that the amnesia represented, Seonmyeong Guild's value climbed steeply, and now not just the public but the hunter world itself called it the best guild in Korea.
Through every bout of amnesia so far, neither Hanul nor Seonmyeong had caused a single problem, and Dojun was there at his side besides.
We feel bad about it, sure, but the only reason we're making a request like this is that we trust Seonmyeong.
Im Yeonhwa watched the two of them look up from the contract to meet each other's eyes, and smiled to herself, pleased.
When those two are together, even Hunter Seon Hanul develops a few cracks.
He was so flawless that he felt remote, and then he'd fail to hide his affection in a formal setting and suddenly look like any other young man his age.
One pretty, one handsome. They made a fine-looking couple.
And a very admirable one at that, trusting and leaning on and protecting each other.
Watching the two of them hold their relationship steady through something as hard as amnesia, she could almost feel her dormant romantic instincts stirring awake.
Not that she wouldn't choose sleep over dating if it came down to it.
I think this every time. They get along so well even when his memories are gone.
But that was a thought only someone ignorant of their private circumstances could have.
