There was a strange dream I used to have as a child.
In the dream, I wore a translucent blue cloak and gazed proudly at the battlefield before me.
Countless enemy soldiers were advancing toward me.
Hundreds? Thousands?
There were far too many to count.
THUD! THUD!
Their march was so immense that it shook the very foundations of the earth.
And I was alone.
There was no one else on my side. I simply watched the approaching enemy and walked calmly toward them.
WHOOOOOSH!
A fierce wind suddenly swept through.
My cloak fluttered in the wind.
I raised my sword.
Blue Aura rose from the blade.
The Aura, undulating like flames, gradually began to take the shape of a broad-bladed greatsword.
It grew larger and larger, until the tip of the sword formed a pillar that reached the sky.
THUD!
The enemy army stopped advancing.
Every enemy soldier stared at the towering pillar of sword Aura I had raised.
They looked as though they were gazing upon something beyond their comprehension.
Fear, tension, perhaps even awe.
Those were the emotions written on their faces.
And without hesitation, I took that sword and…….
“H-huh?”
I woke from the dream.
I was seven when I first had that dream.
One thing was certain: ever since that dream, something had been wrong with my vision.
“What is this?”
I could see a thin black line.
I immediately told the director of the orphanage about it.
The director took me to the hospital, where a doctor examined my eyes and found nothing seriously wrong with them.
“Kim Ji-han, you're not pretending to be sick, are you?”
That was what the director asked, but I couldn't deny it.
The black line that had looked so clear was no longer visible.
Time passed after that, and I went on living an ordinary life.
The black line appeared and disappeared again, but only very rarely.
Sometimes an entire year would go by without it appearing.
Once, out of curiosity, I tried following the black line to wherever it led.
That was when I got into my first traffic accident.
After that incident, I realized something.
The black line was a warning that danger was near.
From then on, I never went anywhere near the black line.
Thanks to that, after that one traffic accident, I managed to reach the age of seventeen without getting hurt again.
***
Every school has its delinquents.
The kind of kids who smoke one cigarette after another during breaks, give up on studying as though they've given up on life, and talk back to teachers without a second thought.
At seventeen, I entered high school and went to my assigned classroom. Unfortunately, there were kids like that in my class.
Worse, they were seated directly in front of me, behind me, and beside me.
The problem was that my randomly assigned seat happened to be by the window.
And one member of their gang was seated at the very front, right by the blackboard.
“Hey. Switch seats with me.”
“Okay.”
I didn't want any trouble with them, so I readily agreed to switch.
I think that was where the trouble started.
Those bully bastards began seeing me as an easy target.
“Kim Ji-han~ Sorry to ask, but can you lend me some money? I'll pay you back tomorrow.”
Ha Jeong-tae, the bully I'd switched seats with, approached me as though we were friends.
Ha Jeong-tae had been a notorious delinquent since middle school.
From what I'd heard, he'd already formed his own gang. He'd beaten up a teacher in middle school and even assaulted a middle school girl so badly that she was hospitalized…….
He'd been let off in the case involving the girl due to insufficient evidence, but I'd heard that was all thanks to the people backing him.
Wasn't one of his parents a member of the National Assembly?
Whatever the truth, he was a dangerous bastard I couldn't afford to get involved with.
I scratched my head and said,
“Um…… Sorry. I don't have any money.”
If I lent him money, I'd obviously end up being his personal cash machine, so I refused while trying to look as apologetic as possible.
“Is that so?”
At least he wasn't completely shameless. When he saw me shrinking back and acting submissive, he let it go without making a fuss.
The trouble started at lunchtime.
“Wow…… What kind of shameless bastard does that?”
“Ah.”
Ha Jeong-tae had caught me buying bread at the school store during lunch.
“Hey, didn't you say you had no money?”
“Uh…… I borrowed this money too?”
“BullshXt! You think I'm a pushover, you bastard? You fXcking bastard, you've got money to buy bread but none to lend me?”
I almost nodded without thinking.
Seriously, I couldn't understand why the son of a National Assembly member was extorting money from other kids.
I figured anything I said would only make him angrier, so I kept quiet.
“Follow me, you fXcking bastard.”
Ha Jeong-tae went ahead of me, and three other delinquents surrounded me.
Strangely enough, their positions were much like when I'd been sitting in the window seat.
When we reached the bathroom, Ha Jeong-tae suddenly threw a punch.
WHOOSH!
I turned my head and dodged it before I even realized what I was doing.
It wasn't that I'd seen his fist coming and reacted.
The black line had appeared before he'd thrown the punch.
To me, the black line was a warning of danger, so my body reacted first and moved out of the way.
To be honest, I was just as bewildered as he was that I'd managed to dodge his punch.
“Huh? What the hell? Did you do boxing or something?”
As he spoke, Ha Jeong-tae assumed a boxer's stance.
“Die!”
Then he immediately threw another punch.
But the black line appeared first, so I crouched and dodged. Ha Jeong-tae's fist struck the innocent bathroom mirror instead.
SHATTER—!!
The bathroom mirror broke into pieces, scattering shards of glass across the floor.
Blood streamed down Ha Jeong-tae's hand as well.
“You…… You fXcking bastard!?”
I'd dodged his punches twice, and now he'd injured his own hand. He seemed absolutely furious.
With his face twisted into something like a demon's, Ha Jeong-tae charged at me and swung his fist.
At that moment, my gaze was fixed on the broken mirror scattered across the floor.
“…….”
My mind went blank.
The shards of mirror lying on the floor.
One particularly long shard looked strangely like a sword.
I picked it up.
The instant I gripped the shard, I saw something I'd never seen before.
It wasn't a black line. It was a blue one.
Instinctively, I swung the shard of mirror along the blue line.
SLASH—
‘……Huh?’
The blue line extended all the way to Ha Jeong-tae's neck.
A red line appeared across his throat.
THUMP— ROLL, ROLL, ROLL.
His severed head rolled across the bathroom floor.
And after rolling along the floor, Ha Jeong-tae's head came to rest at the feet of one of the delinquents.
“A-a-aaaaaaagh!!!!”
“Aaaaaagh!!”
The school descended into chaos.
***
I was arrested on the spot and locked in a detention cell.
I was taken out of the cell a few times for questioning, but no matter how I explained what had happened, the detective interrogating me refused to believe it.
“How the hell is that possible, you bastard!!”
“No, I'm telling you the truth.”
Without realizing it, I lowered my head and hunched my shoulders.
I really did feel wronged.
I'd sensed danger, instinctively grabbed a shard of glass, and swung it. How was I supposed to know his head would come clean off?
The problem was that the detective wouldn't believe me, even when I told him exactly what happened.
“It was just a piece of glass! A piece of glass!! Are you telling me you can cut a person's head clean off with a piece of glass?!! Not even a Hunter could do that, you bastard! And you're saying it wasn't intentional, that it was an accident?”
That was the problem.
Because the cut had been so clean, the detective was convinced I'd deliberately killed Ha Jeong-tae.
I'd killed him, certainly, but there was a difference between doing it intentionally and doing it by accident.
He didn't even believe I'd severed his neck with a shard of glass.
“Ugh, you rotten bastard. You killed your friend, and now you keep spouting lies to get a lighter sentence? This is why you can't trust an orphan bastard with no parents. Tsk—”
That was a cruel thing to say.
I hadn't wanted to kill him in the first place, and he hadn't even been my friend.
But I kept quiet because I figured the detective would throw another fit if I corrected him.
That was when it happened.
-Where is he!! Where is that bastard!!
-Sir, you can't do this here!
-Where is that bastard!!
A commotion broke out outside.
Then the door to the police station flew open, and a middle-aged man in a suit entered.
The detective questioning me jumped in surprise and hurried over to the man.
“Assemblyman, sir! You can't do this here.”
“Let go of me, you bastard!! How the hell do you expect me to act?!! My son is dead!! Bring me the bastard who killed my son!!”
At that moment, the middle-aged man's eyes turned toward me.
Apparently, he was Ha Jeong-tae's father, the member of the National Assembly.
He shoved aside the detective trying to restrain him and strode toward me, his face contorted like a demon's.
“Was it you, you fXcking bastard?”
“Uh…… Well…….”
“You!! You!! You parentless orphan bastard!!”
WHOOSH!!
Unable to contain his rage, Ha Jeong-tae's father threw a punch.
He was built like a mountain, with thick, heavy fists.
It was a remarkably threatening punch for someone who was supposed to be a member of the National Assembly.
If it hit me squarely, I was sure I'd lose several teeth.
And I could sense murderous intent behind that fist.
‘Ah.’
That was why I moved.
No, I was already moving.
The black line had appeared before he threw his punch.
And I didn't stop there.
As though responding to his murderous intent, my survival instinct drove me beyond simply dodging and compelled me to do something else.
It was just like that time.
Instinctively, I grabbed the sharpest thing I could find on the desk.
It was a utility knife.
Although my hands were cuffed, that didn't present much of a problem when it came to swinging it.
The moment I gripped the utility knife, the blue line appeared again.
I swung the utility knife along the blue line.
SLICE—
THUMP—
The head of the National Assembly member, Ha Jeong-tae's father, fell to the floor.
“Ah.”
Realizing I'd done it again, I immediately dropped the utility knife from my hand.
THUD—
The detective who had watched the entire scene unfold collapsed onto the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
I'd caused a major disaster.
***
A member of the National Assembly and his son had both died in a single day.
The son's death was one thing, but the location of the assemblyman's death was the real problem.
It had been a murder committed inside a police station, of all places.
Someone had to take responsibility, and that responsibility fell on the detective who had interrogated Kim Ji-han.
Instead of conducting the interrogation in an interrogation room, the detective had questioned him at his own desk because he couldn't be bothered to keep changing locations for the repeated questioning.
That was more than enough reason to hold him responsible for the incident.
Meanwhile, Kim Ji-han received an aggravated sentence of forty years in prison.
The murders of a National Assembly member and his son became one of the most unprecedented incidents in South Korean history.
His remorse for the crimes and the fact that he was only seventeen had at least been taken into consideration, earning him forty years instead of life imprisonment. But from Ji-han's perspective, there wasn't much difference.
‘How did my life end up like this……?’
A week after the incident, I was riding in a prison transport vehicle on my way to a correctional facility.
I'd thought I'd live an ordinary life like everyone else, but my whole world had collapsed in a single day.
Even after killing them, I'd been in a daze.
I felt a strange disconnect, as though I couldn't quite believe I'd really done those things.
I mean, who could've known?
Who would've thought a person's head could come off so easily?
‘Sigh…….’
I'd thought I'd break down sobbing when I was sentenced to forty years, but my mind had gone blank instead.
It was still the same now.
Even as I was being transported to prison, I felt exactly as I had in the courtroom.
Maybe I was in denial about reality.
‘What's going to happen to me now?’
I'd heard that if I behaved myself in prison, stayed out of trouble, and worked hard, I might be eligible for parole. Would that be possible for me too?
SCREEECH—
The vehicle came to a stop.
It seemed we'd reached the prison while I'd been lost in thought.
I looked out the window.
“……?”
I'd thought we'd arrived at the prison, but we were in the middle of the city.
BANG—
Just then, the vehicle's middle door swung open.
A man stepped inside.
He wore a neat black suit and had narrow, almost closed eyes and a face that seemed perpetually amused.
“Oh, my apologies for the intrusion.”
He gave the two police officers in the driver's compartment a slight bow in greeting, then approached me.
For some reason, the officers who received his greeting looked tense.
Without the slightest hesitation, he sat down beside me.
“……?”
“…….”
We looked at each other. I gave him a puzzled look, but the man merely smiled in a way that suggested he knew something I didn't.
He was the first to speak.
“You are Kim Ji-han, correct?”
“Huh? Oh, yes.”
“A pleasure to meet you. I am Yoon Tae-hyun, director of the Hunter Training Swordsmanship Institute.”
“Ah, yes. Hello. But why would someone like you come to see me……?”
“Criminals who commit crimes involving awakened abilities have to go through a certain process before being transferred to prison. More precisely, they're given an offer.”
“An offer? More importantly, what do you mean by a crime involving awakened abilities?”
“Hmm? Nobody told you? Mr. Kim Ji-han, you are an Awakened. Besides—”
He made a chopping motion across his neck with the edge of his hand.
“There's no way an ordinary person could cut someone's head off with a shard of glass or a utility knife, is there?”
“I suppose you're right…….”
I'd had my suspicions.
That I'd awakened.
Otherwise, there was no way to explain what had happened.
“That's why I'd like to make you an offer.”
“To become a Hunter?”
“Yes. Would you be interested in becoming a Hunter?”
I couldn't answer right away.
I knew how dangerous that line of work was.
Being a Hunter was dangerous.
The government hailed Hunters as national heroes and promoted the profession with slogans about it being the highest-paying job, but Hunters had a profession that brought them closer to death than any other.
No matter how much the government advertised it, there couldn't be anyone who didn't know how dangerous being a Hunter was.
“……What happens if I refuse?”
Yoon Tae-hyun answered immediately.
“This vehicle will continue to the juvenile correctional facility, and you will serve your forty years before being released.”
“And if I accept?”
“You will live as a Hunter. You will also be guaranteed a certain degree of freedom.”
“Wouldn't my sentence be reduced?”
“Hmm…… Would that really be necessary? Once you become a Hunter, you will be living at the Swordsmanship Institute from now on. Still, if you want a reduced sentence…….”
His smile deepened as he continued.
“You would have to become famous. Famous enough to become someone this country simply cannot do without. Once that happens, you will be able to achieve anything you want.”
“…….”
“Well? Will you accept my offer?”
For all practical purposes, it was an offer I couldn't refuse.
I nodded and answered.
“Yes. I'll do it.”
At my answer, Yoon Tae-hyun broke into a bright smile that anyone could recognize as genuine.
He turned toward the driver's seat and said.
“Please take us to the Swordsmanship Institute.”