At eight in the morning, people were standing outside the gosiwon.
It wasn't just one person.
A line stretched from the bottom of the stairs all the way to the entrance of the alley. I started counting, then gave up. There were definitely more than twenty. Park Seung-woo had said there were nineteen last night, but apparently more had arrived overnight.
The landlady looked at me, a garbage bag in her hand.
"Young man, who are all these people?"
"I didn't call them here."
"Then why are they all staring at you?"
I had no answer to that.
Park Seung-woo raised his hand from somewhere in the middle of the line. He no longer wore the expression he'd had yesterday when he pulled three hundred thousand won from his wallet.
Now he looked like someone who had only just realized what he'd done.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha, I'm really sorry about this."
"How many are there?"
"……Twenty-six."
＊
We moved to the public parking lot at the end of the alley.
I borrowed a plastic chair and sat down. Twenty-six people stood in a semicircle before me.
Their ranks varied. E-rank Hunters made up the majority, followed by D-rank Hunters, with three C-rank Hunters among them. Most were in their thirties.
"There's something I need to explain first."
My voice cracked. I cleared my throat.
"I can only use my ability twice a day."
A murmur spread through the semicircle.
"Twice?"
"If I use it a third time, I collapse. I actually collapsed yesterday, and someone here witnessed it."
Jeong Tae-sik nodded, holding his helmet.
"That means I can only help two of the twenty-six people here today."
"Are you joking?"
A voice came from the back.
"I've been here since four in the morning."
"I'm sorry."
"Then just charge more. I'll pay a million. A million won."
He was telling me to raise my price.
Seven years ago, I wouldn't even have understood what that meant. Now I did. Raising the price would shorten the line. Only those who could afford a million won would remain, and everyone else would disappear on their own.
The market would sort itself out.
That was why Han Do-gyeong had demanded thirty million won.
I'd seen what happened to those who couldn't afford that price in the records. There was a waiting list for procedures, and names disappeared from that list in one of two ways.
Either they found the money, or they died inside a Gate.
"I'm not raising the price."
I spoke firmly.
"Even if you're offering a million won, I'll only charge you three hundred thousand."
"……Then how are you going to decide who goes first?"
"I'll prioritize those in the greatest danger."
"I'm going to ask just three questions."
I pulled my chair forward.
"First, where do you feel discomfort after using your skill? Second, how many seconds does it take for your skill to activate after you raise your hand? Third, how many years has it been since you awakened?"
"What's the point of asking all that?"
The man in the front row spoke up. He was an E-rank Hunter around forty years old. His skill was called [Smoke Screen].
"My shoulder gets stiff after I use it."
"Which shoulder?"
"The right one."
"How quickly does it activate?"
"Immediately. All at once."
"And how long has it been since you awakened?"
"Six years."
I didn't close my eyes.
The standard version of [Smoke Screen]. I'd dismantled it eight times at the research institute.
Its Conversion Unit was connected to the muscles behind the shoulder, so if the angle at which Mana was expelled shifted, the shoulder would bear the strain.
Six years was more than enough time for that angle to become misaligned.
And if the stiffness was in his right shoulder, I knew which direction it had shifted.
"Your smoke only spreads forward, doesn't it?"
The man's eyes widened.
"……How did you know?"
"Normally, it should spread backward as well. Right now, it's only going forward, and the Mana meant to spread behind you is putting pressure on your shoulder instead. That's why your right shoulder feels stiff."
"Can you fix it?"
"When you raise your hand, spread your arm out to the side. Right now, you're probably extending it forward. If you move it to the side, the angle should return to normal."
The man spread his arm out right there and activated [Smoke Screen].
Gray smoke expanded in a circle across the parking lot. It spread evenly in every direction, both forward and backward.
The man touched his shoulder.
"……It doesn't feel stiff."
The semicircle fell silent.
"What you just did."
Jeong Tae-sik spoke up.
"You didn't inspect it, did you? You never closed your eyes."
"No, I didn't."
"Then how did you know?"
I'd never prepared an answer to that question.
For seven years, I'd received requests, opened up the designated targets, and drawn their blueprints. Nobody had ever asked me why I did things that way.
There had been no one in that room who could ask.
"I've dismantled hundreds of them."
That was my answer.
"Skills with the same name generally have the same blueprint. That means the places where they malfunction are usually the same, too. And the symptoms those malfunctions cause are fairly predictable. When someone tells me their shoulder hurts, I can make an educated guess about where the Mana is leaking."
"An educated guess?"
"Yes, a guess."
I needed to be precise about this.
"It's different from opening the structure directly. When I inspect it, I can see problems unique to that individual. Guesswork only lets me identify common problems. I wouldn't have been able to identify Mr. Park Seung-woo's problem yesterday through guesswork. His was a misalignment unique to him."
Park Seung-woo touched his wrist.
"So here's what I'm going to do."
I took out a sheet of A4 paper I'd bought at the convenience store and wrote on it with a ballpoint pen.
Consultation: 50,000 won.
Structure Inspection: 300,000 won. Two people per day.
I taped the paper to the wall. The blue tape refused to stick properly, and it took three attempts before the notice stayed in place.
"Fifty thousand won?"
"I'll identify common malfunctions for fifty thousand won. If I can't find the problem, I won't charge you. You'll know the result right here, so there's no way for me to deceive you."
I'd already worked out the numbers in my notebook yesterday.
An E-rank Hunter earned between three hundred and five hundred thousand won for entering a Gate once. At roughly eight runs a month, that came to a little over two million won. A D-rank Hunter earned around three million, while a C-rank Hunter earned between five and seven million.
Equipment maintenance costs and Hunter Association registration fees had to be deducted from those amounts.
As a Hunter's rank increased, the range of Gates they could enter expanded. And as that range expanded, so did their chances of dying.
Fifty thousand won was what an E-rank Hunter could earn in half a day's work.
Three hundred thousand won was the pay for one Gate run.
Thirty million won was an amount a C-rank Hunter would have to work six straight months to earn.
Yet the research institute affiliated with the Hunter Association charged thirty million won to fix the very same malfunction.
If someone asked what justified that price, nobody would be able to answer.
Because nobody had ever asked.
But I knew what that price was based on.
Because I was the one who'd drawn those blueprints on Basement Level Four.
"I'll provide consultations for everyone here today."
I continued.
"As for the two Structure Inspection slots, I'll give them to the two people in the greatest danger whose problems can't be identified through consultation."
＊
The consultations continued until two in the afternoon.
I'd managed to see fifteen of the twenty-six people. Most of their problems were minor.
Activation posture, where they applied force, the timing of their breathing.
They were people who hadn't been using their skills the way the original blueprints intended.
By then, my throat was giving out.
I'd talked too much.
Eleven people remained.
Six agreed to return tomorrow. I had the remaining five sit down so I could at least hear their symptoms first.
One of them was in particularly bad condition.
Yoo Ji-su.
The Healer whose skill I'd tried to inspect yesterday, only to end up vomiting. She'd come again today, but she'd stood at the very back and hadn't stepped forward even once.
"I can come back tomorrow."
"Just tell me your symptoms."
"……When I use my healing skill, I feel pain too."
The semicircle fell silent.
"Where?"
"Wherever the other person is hurt. The pain from their injury transfers to me. Only for a little while, though."
"Since when?"
"Since last year. At first, it only lasted a moment, but lately it's been lasting around ten seconds."
This wasn't something I could diagnose through consultation.
Recovery-Type Skills had different blueprints. Unlike [Flame Projection], which I'd dismantled sixteen times, I'd only examined Recovery-Type Skills three times.
And in two of those cases, the test subjects hadn't survived long enough for me to finish drawing the blueprints.
"I'm going to use one of today's two Structure Inspection slots."
I told the remaining four people that only one slot was left.
Nobody walked away.
I had Yoo Ji-su sit in the chair.
"If it turns out like yesterday, please stop."
Yoo Ji-su spoke quietly.
"I pushed myself too far yesterday."
I closed my eyes.
[Structure Inspection].
The colors drained away.
The structure I'd seen yesterday appeared again. It looked as though there were four layers, with one overlapping another.
Yesterday, I'd tried to force my way through that overlapping layer.
Today, I didn't.
I simply examined the overlap. From above, from the side, changing nothing but the angle of my view.
Three seconds.
Then I understood.
The layers weren't overlapping because something was wrong.
Recovery-Type Skills were designed with two layers occupying the same space. The layer that read the target's condition and the layer that restored what it had read were superimposed.
That was why a healing skill had to sense the target's condition before it could repair the damage.
That part was normal.
The problem lay above it.
There was a thin partition separating the layer that read the target's condition from the caster's own senses.
That partition had worn away.
It had become as thin as a sheet of paper.
I opened my eyes.
Four seconds.
There was pressure against my temples, but it was bearable.
"One of your membranes has worn thin."
"A membrane?"
"It's the partition that separates the part of your skill that reads someone else's pain from your own senses, Ms. Yoo Ji-su. It's supposed to be there, but it's grown thin. That's why the pain is getting through."
"……Can you fix it?"
"No."
The parking lot fell silent.
"Once it's worn away, I can't make it thicker again. All I can do is move parts of the structure, and there's nowhere I can move this one."
Yoo Ji-su clenched her hands in her lap.
"Then……"
"There are two things I need to tell you."
I leaned forward.
"First, this is common among people who use Recovery-Type Skills. You haven't been using your skill incorrectly. The more people you heal, the more that partition wears down. That's how the structure was designed."
"……."
"Second, you can slow the rate of deterioration. The partition wears down fastest when you heal several people at once. Heal them one at a time, taking a break between each use. If your party complains, you can tell them I said so."
After a long silence, Yoo Ji-su asked a question.
"How many years do I have left?"
I didn't answer.
In seven years, nobody had ever asked me a question like that.
On Basement Level Four, nobody asked about their own bodies.
There was no point asking when no answer would ever come.
"I don't know."
I answered honestly.
"I've only examined three cases, so I genuinely don't know. Once I've seen more, I should be able to figure it out. I'll tell you then."
"……All right."
Yoo Ji-su held out fifty thousand won.
"The Structure Inspection costs three hundred thousand won."
"But you couldn't fix it."
"I told you what was wrong."
I accepted the money.
＊
By the time the sun began to set, the crowd had dispersed.
I was about to take down the A4 notice from the wall, but decided to leave it there.
I'd probably need it again tomorrow.
Park Seung-woo returned with two cans of coffee and handed me one.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha, how much did you make today?"
"About 1.4 million won."
"In one day?"
"In one day."
Seung-woo stood there for a long while with his coffee can open.
"I'm a C-rank Hunter, and I make six million won a month."
"I know."
"……Can I call you hyung?"
"I'm twenty-one."
"I'm twenty-nine."
The canned coffee was cold.
＊
As I was leaving the parking lot, I noticed someone standing at the entrance to the alley.
She hadn't been among the people waiting in line. She'd stood there all afternoon without approaching me once.
A Hunter ID hung around her neck.
Mine was gray.
E-rank IDs were green, D-rank IDs were blue, and C-rank IDs were red.
Hers was gold.
There was only one rank that used gold.
"Mr. Yoon Jae-ha."
It was a woman around thirty years old. She wore a coat, with no equipment visible underneath.
"That fifty-thousand-won service."
She gestured with her chin toward the A4 notice taped to the wall.
"Can I get one too?"