Welcome to Sungyeon Guild
She had grown a lot in the meantime, but the features were unmistakably the same.
“Huh? I like you best, Jeyeon-unnie.”
“……Jena?”
The crybaby youngest summoner of Sungyeon Guild, who used to trail after her every step like a duckling.
“How do you know my name?”
Jena laughed in wonder and came closer.
Jeyeon swallowed dryly as an older, younger face overlaid the one before her.
She could see it so clearly—the girl showing off the new school uniform she'd bought for her first year of middle school. And now that same little brat was looking down at her.
……So it really has been that long.
Only then did ten years register as time, not just a number.
And come to think of it, that interview must be ancient history to kids like these too.
“Student?”
When no answer came, the smile drained from Jena's face.
“Student, that blood……. Where are you hurt?”
“…….”
“Here, read this over slowly. And if you need any help, just say so.”
Jeyeon opened her mouth on impulse.
“Why are you still in the guild Sung Jeyeon built?”
“……What?”
“Guild or no guild—he was a traitor who tried to kill everyone in the world, wasn't he? Human trash, would you call it?”
At that, Jena, who had been unfailingly courteous the whole time, went stone-faced.
“Excuse me?”
“If I were you, I'd have run without even a backward glance. It's disgusting.”
“……And what would you know about it?”
Jena's voice turned glacial.
“You've never even seen Sung Jeyeon with your own eyes. Don't go believing everything you've overheard from other people is the whole world, kid.”
Jeyeon had never once seen Jena angry like this.
Her heart had always been far too soft and her eyes far too quick to well up for her to live as a hunter. Jeyeon used to fret constantly about when to toughen her up enough to send her into the tower.
Well, well, little brat. You're actually kind of terrifying.
Her old worry had been pointless. She was plenty fierce already.
The smile Jeyeon had been about to let slip died on her lips.
Because this girl was still on my side.
Ki Taewon. Why aren't you?
“That man was already protecting the world at your age. Do you even understand whose sacrifice it is that you get to run your mouth in a world this safe—!”
Raising her voice, Jena choked on her words mid-sentence.
Huh?
The student in front of her had, at some point, clamped her mouth shut.
And she was wearing the expression of someone one poke away from bursting into tears.
Only then did Jena come back to her senses and open her mouth with a horrified oh.
……What do I do about this?
The girl was an insufferable little brat—but an adult had just been browbeaten to the brink of crying in front of a child.
Worse still, the student bowed her head deeply.
“No, hey, um…….”
Because honestly, the one who should be crying here isn't me.
Jena couldn't quite bring herself to pat the student on the head, and her hand—half-extended toward the girl—closed awkwardly on empty air and opened again.
Grab!
The hand was suddenly seized by the other party.
“Whoa, that startled me!”
Jena found herself meeting the eyes of the student, who had already lifted her head again.
With eyes still puffy and red, the student flashed a bright grin.
“……Worth it, then.”
“What?”
“Those words. They're actually a pretty big strength to me right now.”
Jena blinked at her, utterly baffled. The student roughly wiped the remaining dampness from her face with her sleeve, then re-gripped Jena's still-dazed hand like a firm handshake and pumped it up and down with vigor.
“I'll join the guild.”
“What?”
“I'm saying I'm joining Sungyeon Guild. I'm an awakened one, you know.”
“After cursing him out like that?”
“Trash-talking is just what love looks like when it's working.”
Jena stared at the student, dumbfounded, then hurriedly added a caveat.
“Ah—let me say this up front. If you're looking for a guild to get into some survival competition, we're in no shape to be backing anyone like that.”
“Survival? I'm not joining for any of that.”
The student tipped her chin toward the stack of flyers dangling from Jena's hand.
“Anyway, I won't be needing to hand these out anymore. Because I'm going to make sure that never has to happen again. So let's just stamp the paperwork, shall we?”
……What is this kid?
Jena had never met her kind before. An unshakable confidence with no discernible source—and it was absolutely colossal.
“When did you awaken? What's your class, rank, level?”
“Awakened just earlier today. And my class is a Summoner, obviously.”
“……Earlier today?”
Jena's gaze swept once more over the bloodstains on the school uniform.
“That blood—it's yours?”
“Ah, I got hurt a bit while awakening. My recovery ability has me good as new now, though.”
Jena fell silent for a moment.
A blood-soaked uniform. A claim of having awakened mere hours ago.
But whatever had actually happened, not prying into the circumstances a person was trying to gloss over was a long-standing unwritten rule among hunters.
And then—wait.
What had she just said?
“A Summoner? How on earth did you end up a Summoner?”
“How on earth? I just awakened as one, that's all.”
“Oh—a natural awakening, then.”
Jena nodded, satisfied.
Made sense. If she'd been aiming to become a Mage, maybe—but no one deliberately set out to awaken as a Summoner.
And even so, it was remarkable. In the last several years, Jena had never once heard of a Summoner appearing naturally.
Sungyeon was the only guild in the country with a Summoner on its roster. No—more precisely, it was the only guild that still had one, because no other guild would take a Summoner in.
So that's why she had no qualms about our guild.
Meanwhile, Jeyeon was chewing over that same remark from her own end.
A 'natural' awakening?
She'd phrased it as though there were other ways to awaken—as if those were, in fact, the norm.
“Or what, are there other methods?”
It was meant as a passing remark, but Jena echoed it back in genuine surprise.
“What? Kids of your generation usually awaken with an Awakening Helper. You know—the people who rig the whole board so you get whatever class you want.”
“…….”
“Where did this one even fall from, talking like that?”
This time it was Jeyeon's turn to be stunned.
Wait, they have that now?
Back in my day, your awakening and your class were an unavoidable fate!
“The survival thing earlier too—you're really not like kids these days, you know that?”
Rather than answer, Jeyeon simply gazed at Jena for a long moment.
Should I just tell her?
But the words wouldn't leave her mouth.
To these people, the name Sung Jeyeon might still be an unhealed wound. Dig at it carelessly, and it might fester all over again.
Not now.
At the very least, not until I've learned everything about how this world works.
Jeyeon deliberately thinned her voice into something meek.
“Ahem, well. I don't really use the internet or anything. I don't watch much TV either.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, my family's strict about that stuff. I'm a total bookworm, honestly.”
Jena's gaze traveled slowly between the bloodied uniform and the girl's face.
A bookworm. A bookworm who had cornered a total stranger on the street five minutes ago to harangue her about a traitor.
“……Well, that's a surprise.”
The retort climbed all the way up her throat, but Jena swallowed it back down.
“Fine. Sure. Anything's possible.”
“Also—what do you mean, 'how on earth'?”
“What?”
“It's not 'how on earth.' I've never wanted to be anything but a Summoner. Summoners were always the best, the strongest—everyone knows that.”
Jena's eyes went three times wider than before.
And they seemed to be reddening at the edges, too. Like someone who had just heard those words for the first time in far, far too long, and was moved to tears by it.
“That's right. Summoners were always the best.”
Jena strode over and seized Jeyeon's hand, her face suddenly transformed—as though she'd run into a friend of ten years on the street.
“I'm so glad you came to us. What's your name? How old are you?”
“I'm, uh—Yisi-hyun! Nineteen years old, and I want to join Sungyeon Guild!”
“Sihyun, welcome. Then will you come by our office right now? If we hurry, the whole guild should be gathered there for once.”
It was a refreshing offer, and Jeyeon matched it with a refreshing smile.
“Just what I was hoping for.”
She had to see with her own two eyes what had become of her guild.
Let's go. Time to take a look at our house.
But Jeyeon's smile did not last long.
Even after getting off at Sillim Station, they walked quite a while before arriving—and the building they reached was on its last legs.
“……This is the place?”
“It is a bit far from the station, yeah.”
That's the problem here? The distance?
Garbage bags ripening in the lingering late-summer heat were piled up by the building's entrance, and flies swarmed above them.
Even if the guild leader had turned traitor, how could it have fallen this far?
Sungyeon Guild had once been the wealthiest guild in all of Korea.
It owned every prime building in the heart of Gangnam, and the resources from the dungeons it controlled were so immense that there was a running joke it could sway the power of the state itself.
That guild, holed up in a dump like this?
“Ahem, Sihyun. However it looks from out here, the inside of the office is actually pretty decent.”
Jena was doing her best to clear the air.
“Right…….”
Wanting desperately to believe her, Jeyeon climbed the stairs.
“The lobby's on the first floor, I'm guessing?”
She pointed at the door half a flight up, and Jena gave a pained smile.
“Um, not sure what you mean by 'lobby.' Our office is in the basement.”
Jeyeon's eyes followed to where Jena's index finger pointed—and wavered.
So even this crumbling building isn't ours anymore.
“Come on down, Sihyun.”
One step, two—halfway down the stairs, Jeyeon swayed on her feet.
Strange. Why were her legs giving out like this?
Oblivious to any of it, Jena unlocked the door with a bright, excited face.
“Welcome to Sungyeon!”
As Jena flung the door wide and stepped back, the entire "office of Sungyeon Guild" came into view at a glance.
Jeyeon took a single step inside—and froze, white as a sheet.
The inside is fine, she says?
A desk with the laminate peeling up in strips. A water purifier gone yellow with age. A folding bed rusted at the hinges. A sofa scabbed all over with flaking leather.
And above all—an office so packed with that junk there wasn't a single square inch left to stand.
You've got to be kidding me!
Which one of those was supposed to be the "pretty decent" part?