Translator: Vine
Translated At: Nyx Scans
Chapter: 98
It had been a month and a half since Eunha entered the training center.
Under the low-hanging clouds, that day too, Eunha didn't stop training until the scarecrow was demolished.
"Good work."
Training Center Director Kyun Wonchul spoke from behind her, as if he had been there all along.
As if he knew Eunha had remained here training until this hour.
Wonchul glanced at the pitiful scarecrow, now reduced to ashes.
"The quartermaster will be grumbling again."
Despite his admonishing tone, he casually tossed a shiny apple towards Eunha.
As Eunha, who had reflexively caught it, stared blankly at the apple, he chuckled and said.
"You skipped dinner too, didn't you."
Only then did Eunha realize that the sun had set.
Lifting her chin to look at the sky, the night sky was packed with constellations unseen in Seoul.
"...Thank you."
Bowing her head briefly, Eunha took a bite of the apple.
The moderately sweet and crisp texture filled her dry and parched mouth.
"How is it?"
"It's sweet and delicious."
"Yes, it is, isn't it?"
Wonchul laughed heartily.
Eunha, taking another bite of the ripe apple, unconsciously laughed along.
Without either initiating, the two sat side by side and gazed at the night sky for a very long time.
Suddenly, Wonchul shifted his gaze sideways.
Eunha's hand, clutching the apple with only the stem remaining, was covered in wounds even at a glance.
The wounds had only increased with continued training, to the point where her self-healing ability couldn't keep up.
Looking at her battered hands, Wonchul spoke in a sigh-laden tone.
"You won't even be able to hold chopsticks properly with those hands."
"..."
Eunha, after indifferently looking at her own hands, quickly hid them behind her back along with the apple stem.
"Is there a reason you train so harshly? Once the training here is over, you'll have to repeat life-threatening battles even if you don't want to."
"Once I leave this place, it's not just my life I'll be betting on."
She intended to finish all possible preparations here before leaving.
Because she didn't want to see anyone die before her eyes anymore.
"Still, you must learn to take care of your own body. That is our duty too. September 1997, the day the world changed. We survived, didn't we?"
"..."
Eunha, without answering, merely lowered her eyelashes quietly.
Nameless insects were burrowing into the dry, moistureless soil.
September 1997.
How could Eunha possibly forget the nightmare of that time?
Eunha, recalling the unforgettable memory once more, slowly brushed herself off and stood up.
"Indeed, there's no time for this."
Now she had the 'strength' to kill them.
So, by honing that strength, eventually, she would—
"That day, I once told you I lost my daughter too."
Suddenly, Wonchul's voice came from behind.
"..."
Eunha stopped dead in her tracks.
A dry wind swept between them.
Their hair fluttered in the same direction.
Taking out a cigarette pack from his front pocket, he put a thick cigarette to his lips.
Flick.
Along with the sound of lighting it, he spoke again.
"The house collapsed, and an ominous vortex appeared. My daughter, who was lying in the living room reading a book, was sucked right in. Right before my eyes."
Like water being sucked down a drain, Wonchul murmured lowly.
Witnessing his young daughter being swept into a gate before his eyes, he risked danger and threw himself into the vortex.
There, he encountered a scythe-wielding demon-type monster, and just before dying, he suddenly awakened due to the system window that appeared before his eyes.
"Thanks to that, I was able to save my life, but."
...In the end, I couldn't save my daughter.
He added with a wretched laugh.
Afterward, his wife, shocked by their daughter's death, sickened and eventually took her own life, and he, feigning ignorance of his only remaining family, his son, fell into alcoholism.
"I thought my life ended there. I thought it couldn't get any worse than this."
It was the same for Eunha.
Her mother's sudden death.
For Eunha, who had lost her home, family, and even her dreams in an instant, not a single person extended a helping hand.
"I even thought it would be better to just fight monsters and die with my stomach pierced than to live like this."
Having said that, Wonchul lifted his head.
"But one day, my son came to me with a crumpled career aspiration form."
The high school he attended was indefinitely closed, and even remote classes were impossible.
The career aspiration form his son brought was one he had received from school just before the nightmare began.
"He said he wanted to become a firefighter. A hero who saves people in danger; that was his younger sister's dream, so he would achieve it in her stead."
On the day of the disaster, unlike Wonchul, who had awakened faster than anyone, his son was a non-Awakened.
Since a non-Awakened couldn't become a hunter, he said that when peace eventually came, he wanted to become a firefighter instead of a hunter and save people.
"That young kid is better than me."
Laughing lowly, he exhaled a puff of cigarette smoke.
The acrid and harsh smoke that spewed from his mouth, after thoroughly stirring his insides, disappeared into the air.
Eunha didn't know what to say.
So she just quietly listened to his story.
"Seeing you, it's like seeing myself back then. But you know."
After a brief silence, he pressed the remaining cigarette butt into the soil, extinguishing it, and then spoke in a much lighter voice.
"As I've lived, I've found that a person... a person's life is like a single tree.
Whenever a strong wind blows, it sheds its leaves, one by one, then another. So when an unbearably cold and harsh winter comes, perhaps only bare branches will remain. But Eunha."
I hope you remember at least this.
He added quietly.
"───"
Eunha slowly closed her eyes and then opened them.
What did the director end up saying back then?
She couldn't remember well.
However, he had smiled.
Even under the black and white sky, it seemed he had just smiled.
A corridor lined with pure white funeral wreaths.
Eunha, who had been lost in thought, slowly lifted her head.
<Funeral Hall>
The Late **Kyun Wonchul** / Chief Mourner: **Kyun Doochul**
Eunha stared blankly at the name 'Kyun Wonchul' for a long time, then slowly took off her shoes.
Even after entering, not a single mourner was visible.
Since it was quite late, most might have already visited, or perhaps, like Eunha's mother, there were few people to visit in the first place.
A desk where no one was sitting.
On it, a condolence book lay open.
Glancing at it, at most two people had visited before Eunha.
'Why?'
The director was a selfless and considerate person.
Even during her training center days, many colleagues sincerely respected him.
Eunha was one of them too.
But why were there so few mourners at the director's funeral?
Eunha, finding it strange, nevertheless picked up a pen to write her name in the condolence book.
However.
"..."
She froze in that state.
Cha Eunha.
She couldn't bring herself to write those three characters.
Her hand wouldn't move.
Only then did Eunha recall the 'restriction' she had forgotten all this time.
About her name being taken when she contracted with the cat.
"You are..."
Suddenly, a low voice came from behind.
Eunha, who had frozen like stone holding the pen, turned her head towards the source of the voice.
A middle-aged man she had never seen before.
His attire, for a mourner...
'Firefighter's uniform?'
Vivid orange clothes.
That was definitely a firefighter's uniform.
However, the black-striped armband he wore on his left arm was clearly the mark of a chief mourner.
Then he must be...
"Father liked this appearance the most."
Reading Eunha's expression, he smiled awkwardly and adjusted his clothes.
Eyes that closely resembled the director's.
The man before her was undoubtedly his son.
He who had lost his younger sister in a gate accident, and then his mother who couldn't overcome the grief.
The young son who had brought a career aspiration form, saying he would become a firefighter instead of a hunter, was now a middle-aged man wearing a dust-covered firefighter's uniform.
"..."
In front of him, Eunha hesitated, unsure what to say.
"My deepest condolences for your loss."
Even those set words wouldn't come out.
Because.
'Right. I happen to be on my way to meet Instructor Jang. You remember him, right? How about it? If you're not busy, shall we go together.'
If she hadn't pretended not to know the director back then, if she hadn't refused his invitation.
—He might not have died.
Towards Eunha, who stood silently blinking with the pen in her hand, he smiled faintly.
"If I had known someone was coming, I would have worn proper mourning clothes."
His tone was as if he had expected no one to come.
"Father used to say it like a habit, both to me and to those around him. That when he eventually died, he wished no one would come to his funeral."
"Why..."
As Eunha muttered lowly, the man's eyes, recalling his father, grew deep.
"Father suffered for a long time from the guilt of pushing innocent, unknowing people into deadly situations in his youth."
"..."
"His former disciples and colleagues who met tragic deaths within gates, unable to return to their families, closed their eyes alone in the cold ground. Would I, who am to be seen off by everyone to the afterlife, have that right?... He used to say that."
Eunha, quietly listening to the man's words, ultimately remained silent.
If it was the director Eunha knew, he was certainly someone who would say such things.
Thinking so, this empty funeral hall felt even more desolate.
The man, as if to lighten the heavy atmosphere, smiled faintly and turned around.
"Would you like to come this way? You don't have to write in the condolence book. It's alright. As you can see, there's no one here anyway."
I'm dressed like this too, he added, then turned around.
He even gestured with his eyes as if to say, follow me.
His tone and attitude were as if he knew who Eunha was.
Eunha, letting go of the pen, decided to follow him first.
The rustling sound of clothes walked over the quiet stillness.
Upon entering, that place too was empty.
Only a few incense sticks stuck in the incense burner barely proved that someone had visited.
A portrait, placed forlornly amidst abundantly decorated white chrysanthemums.
'Director.'
There, Eunha faced the training center director from her memories, a slightly younger version.
Eunha, hesitantly approaching the incense altar, picked up an incense stick and lit it with a burning candle.
Only then did she realize her hand was faintly trembling.
Holding the incense with both hands and respectfully placing it in the incense burner, white smoke gently rose.
Eunha looked at the portrait again beyond it.
"Thank you."
A low voice came from beside her.
It was Wonchul's son.
Eunha realized a step too late that she hadn't properly greeted the chief mourner yet.
And she hadn't been able to write in the condolence book either.
"Ah, I am—"
The moment she parted her lips for a belated introduction, he cut her off as if it wasn't necessary.
"On the day Father passed away, I heard over the phone that he had met you."
...Ah.
With a short groan, Eunha closed her mouth.
Indeed, he seemed to know who Eunha was.
While contemplating what to say, the man maintained his smile and spoke gently.
"It was a very excited voice, after a long time. It makes sense. To coincidentally meet his most cherished disciple after several decades."
"...It was, so."
"Yes. A few months ago, I watched a program you were on, on TV. With Father. I remember it was a concept hunter special broadcast."
A concept hunter special broadcast.
Eunha had indeed appeared on such a program.
Not as Cha Eunha, but as the Princess of Dark Flare.
"Father, after watching that broadcast, jumped up from the sofa, called the broadcasting station, and made quite a fuss. In the end, he couldn't get your contact information... but he did find out that your name was Lee Yura. It was different from the name Father remembered.
But he said.
That the name wasn't important."
He smiled faintly.
"That child hadn't changed at all. That was all that mattered... he said."
A gentle smile, not befitting someone who had lost their only family.
It was as if she were seeing the director from her memories.
Perhaps because of that.
"I'm sorry."
Eunha suddenly apologized to him.
What was she apologizing for?
Perhaps, everything.
For some reason, it was difficult to look him straight in the eye, so Eunha lowered her gaze.
The feeling of being stared at blankly lingered for a long time.
"...Only three people came to visit today."
One was the high school student Father had saved by throwing himself in front of danger, another was that student's mother, and the last one was Eunha.
The few mourners had all said the same thing.
"All three of them told me they were sorry."
"..."
"Actually, isn't it Father who should apologize to me? He left me all alone without even a word of goodbye."
Isn't that right?
He laughed lightly.
"But I don't think you need to apologize. Neither you, nor Father."
His gaze turned towards the portrait beyond the white smoke.
"I'm not even an Awakened, let alone a hunter, but I will live like Father from now on."
Because to me, Father was the best hunter.
He added.
At that moment, a voice of a similar tone brushed past Eunha's ear.
'A person is like a tree; whenever a strong wind blows, it sheds its leaves, one by one, then another. So when an unbearably cold and harsh winter comes, perhaps only bare branches will remain.'
...Ah.
A feeling as if her hazy mind was gradually clearing.
Eunha slowly blinked her eyes.
The forgotten memory now finally rushed into her mind like a receding tide.
'But Eunha. Nevertheless, if the roots are planted there, if there is no wavering there.'
Their eyes met.
The white smoke rising from the incense broadly enveloped the two of them.
'—It will bloom again next spring.'
"To me too..."
Eunha slowly parted her lips.
"To me too, he was the same."
