It landed like a slap. Unexpected. One thought in Seungho's mind, now on repeat.
F**k, the rest of my life is going to be like this, isn't it?!
Sucker-punched into clarity by his own thoughts, for a split second the world snapped into focus.
Through his shoes he surveyed the soft office rug to stand his ground...he then looked down, the sight of the rug dissolved into a view high above the ocean water, strong winds tussled his hair. He inhaled deeply the fresh air, the influx of oxygen went straight to his head, his senses opened up. Now alert and awake, the world seemed at his reach.
But the view was jarring. Confused he looked up...he now faced a massive sleek white gate. A force gently pulled him towards it, inviting him to enter.
...The Castle...?
Below, the scenery changed again. Under the calm surface of the Han-river, in central Seoul, something brooded.
...a hallucination?
And, it was already gone. The brain fog rushed back in relentlessly claiming his attention. His head throbbed begging for release.
He had had a few hallucinations recently. Ironically, a shake in his world of static.
***
Seungho hadn't slept. Again.
He sat down at his desk. His body drained of energy sank heavier into his chair. The world unapologetically muffled and distant.
A pile of old lunch boxes, his projects, slumped in the corner of his cubicle, a monument to his stagnation. The top one slid off to the floor as to mock him, spilling promotional leaflets. Seungho gnarled.
As he picked those up he glared at the hunter-idol event from years ago when both he and Jiyoon had just started working at the company. Sera's face, crisp and kind, on the paper smiling.
She'd liked the lunchbox he and Jiyoon had designed together for her event. She devoured five of those after all those blasts she had survived. No way those were enough for any hunter, they were for the fans. She had wanted to show her appreciation. He smiled to himself, and then remembered something else…
Up and coming combat superstar? She clang on his arm with such strength when they told her the name of the hunter she was pit against in the next round, she was trembling. She quickly apologized. Her clench didn't hurt Seungho, it had been human.
That time he was still a recent graduate from a top university, the son of the company's CEO came personally to introduce Seungho to the client, her agency, to explain the flavors in the design. At the time Seungho hadn't realized how privileged he had been.
Those days of elated taste designs...all gone. He shook his head and turned back to work in a calibrated manner, with the movements of a mechanical doll. He stared at the screen and wondered away with his mind.
***
"Yang Seungho-ssi! You alive in there?"
Minjae's voice swam through the pool to the bottom where Seungho's head retreated most of the day. His hand a heavy, friendly thwack on Seungho's back. Seungho gasped, brought back to reality. He saw his screen opened to the same page as earlier.
Minjae was laughing about some joke Seungho hadn't heard.
It was already mid-morning, Seungho hadn't even reviewed his tasks for the day yet.
"Barely," Seungho murmured with half a smile.
"Meeting! Let's go!" He lifted the tablet in his hand in triumph, walking ahead already talking to someone else, Yoon Taeil. Lee Dongchul just behind hurrying up to reach him before entering the meeting.
Minjae-ssi surely is popular…
Seungho rocked his body to gain momentum and peel himself off his chair. He passed by Jiyoon's desk, it was empty. Her desk, larger and tidier. It was hard to imagine they all started at the same time, including Minjae. He looked at all her lunchboxes carefully displayed in rows in an elegant way. All successes. Among those also Sera's lunchbox.
In the conference room, Seungho was a ghost of politeness. A practiced nod, a phantom smile. The static roared.
"We need a leader for the 'Summer on the Han River' lunchbox line," Taejun-sajangnim announced. "A biggie for someone's portfolio."
Biggie was code for promotion. A flicker of misplaced desperation cut through the fog. Seungho straightened, his hand shooting up. Other coworkers did the same. He looked with intention and focus straight at his boss. It was a modest, culturally relevant project—perfect for him. For a moment, he hoped.
The vote went as expected. He was passed over. How many times has it been already?
Their polite smiles were quiet verdicts. Dysfunctional. The man who'd once proposed wasabi chocolate for kids, the one who mixed up supplier codes on multiple occasions.
27-years old and I am still an entry-level employee. Ok, sure, I deserve it.
He smirked bitterly.
He crushed a paper cup and furiously launched it at the bin. He missed. Even the garbage can thought he couldn't manage.
He went to the lounge to get another coffee hoping it would lift his brain fog, although he knew it wouldn't.
Stirring the spoon in his cup had a calming effect. He glanced at the large TV screen. A documentary about hunters was on. Seungho scuffed, but kept watching.
It showed the grotesque: a statuesque angel had secured a human between its teeth and thrusting tongue. Its drooling mouth hidden beneath the chin, the angelic mask intact above. The angel-turned-monster bent over to the floor on its hands and feet and rattled away like an insect, dragging the human with it through the Castle's gate. How heinous.
That was from the first and only contact with the monsters. Since the Castle had been silent.
The human was Jeon Hyunsoo. Never returned.
The screams, limbs shaking wildly. The scene bathed in blood, human blood. Seungho couldn't take his eyes away.
Seungho didn't want to admit it, but there was something satisfying in watching another human rendered helpless by the world around him. He didn't talk about that pleasure with others, no one was interested in hearing his point of view.
He bit the inside of his cheek.
The segment then cut to an interview with the Duke, a prodigious hunter. Charismatic, the cameras loved him. He turned to his best three-quarter angle, a natural. "The powers grant hyperfocus," the Duke said, his voice soft, hypnotic. "It lets you strike faster, harder."
A gut feeling kicked Seungho in his stomach, into paying attention.
"more precise?"
"Exactly...if you know how to use them properly, and that requires intense training." The Duke's tone had changed to a matter-of-fact, like someone who had mastered their powers and didn't need to brag.
"How did you develop your powers?" asked the interviewer lifting her glasses while getting slightly closer to increase intimacy.
The Duke raised his hand to his mouth in a feminine way. Lifting his face to the lights above, his gray-green eyes shone of a mesmerizing color.
How beautiful...
Then the Duke smiled. With a complicit wink he added "you know I can't answer that, I am afraid." Suddenly he brought the gaze to look straight at the interviewer. The interviewer's expression in between intimidated and flustered.
But everyone knew the rumors: the angel's bites, the strange infection, the way the United Earth Coalition locked down every Castle raid report before anyone could ask questions.
The interviewer asked "does getting hit like that hurt? I mean actual pain?" she sniffed losing composure.
The Duke's smile faded. "Do you mean hunters feel pain? Of course we do...we are human." He said with a soft voice, the tone not accusatory, but seeking compassion.
The interviewer pulled away, the fun was over.
Seungho thought of Sera again.
After the lunchbox event, he had seen her get hurt on TV, being crushed by an attack and her blood gushing out of her arm… That must have hurt. It seemed to him she has never become ready. He stared at his arm, immersed into the memory of the pain he had felt in his own body while watching the onslaught, and the urge to vomit that followed.
Minjae appeared, bottle of white peach juice in hand. He loved those things. He stood quietly watching alongside Seungho. "Shhhheesh, it must be nice to be a hunter. It is crazy how much money they make. Being a celebrity sure has its benefits." He smiled at Seungho.
On camera, the Duke flipped over forming a perfectly rounded curve with his body, releasing a medieval lance in the process. The lance shot into a laser straight line as if the trajectory had been calculated by a machine.
"wow! That is amazing!" Minjae replayed the launch with his arm like it has been a throw worth remembering at a baseball championship.
Seungho gasped. A delay. He saw it! The split second delay of the tip remaining in place and the pressure from the weight of the body of the lance behind crushing the tip...that caused the split of the tip in two. The shock wave traveling from tip to end and back reverberating the lance, caused the split tips to twist around each other.
"Did you see that???" Seungho told Minjae pointing at the screen in a childish manner.
Minjae shrugged.
Seungho's eyes shined.
There, hunters could defy the principles of physics.
The lance hit the long-distance target with a crushing blast.
The crush eliminated every evidence of a mistake. But the excess delay deformed it, it had lost power.
Does the Duke know he has taken too long?
"What about the powers, the hyperfocus?" Seungho asked in a decisive voice startling them both. Seungho glued to the screen with the mouth halfway open in awe.
Minjae looked at Seungho intently. Then he relaxed his shoulders and with a calm voice explained to Seungho with sincerity "not really. The thrill's for watching. This is not a life for me. I don't like those kind of risks."
Seungho turned to looked at Minjae and then looked down at the cup in his hands. "What do you mean?"
"Oh...risking my life." Minjae paused for a while. "You know, the day will come when the monster-angels will attack...and I am not sure we are ready for that..." said Minjae sucking on his straw.
He nodded at the screen now showing glamorous footage of another performance by Entre, the Duke's agency. This time a group of five hunters, four young and one clearly older, performing attacks on the Duke.
True, it was risky. There had been many stories of people dying horrible deaths in the attempt at turning into a hunter, due to a self-administered infection gone wrong.
On the screen, without moving the Duke imperceptibly pivoted on the ball of his right foot. And he was already out of the way. He rose behind the older hunter and struck him to the floor, enough to make him unconscious.
Seungho tried to replicate the pivot of the foot, to feel how it worked.
"I wouldn't become a hunter for money or fame. But the powers...hyperfocused, capable and functional, that is what I want." Seungho whispered, his eyes glued on the screen.
"Did you say something?" Said Minjae from a distance.
"See you later." Seungho smiled like he hadn't done in a long time. He was feeling excited.
Back at his desk, the static returned was a physical pressure. He rubbed his temples, his gaze falling to the fallen leaflet, to Sera's smiling face, his mind to the Duke's hyperfocus. That is what he needed.