Chapter 52

35. Alma Mater (3)

Once hailed as the shield of the Republic of Korea, the Hunter training institution, The Guard, met a pitiful end. Only a handful of people had gathered. A man ascended the podium to give a speech.

"Those who were supposed to protect us have abandoned us and fled to save themselves. They haven't even planned a counterattack. Literally, they have abandoned us. They are the stains of this era. I intend to clear away these stains and build a new future in their place."

The face seemed familiar.

Was it Park Sangmin?

The one who used to strut around as a congressman.

I hadn't seen him since working with Jeungpho, but it seemed that people like him always lived long.

Dissatisfied voices began to murmur from the crowd.

"That guy. He's the one who insisted on demolishing the school building, which has nothing left."

"He must have some plan. The election is coming up, right?"

"National representative? The one where they elect 500 people?"

"Why are the number of freeloaders increasing when the population of the Republic of Korea has been reduced by more than half? For whose benefit?"

Half of the crowd was criticizing Park Sangmin, but the other half seemed to be people he had brought.

"What does he know?"

"Be quiet. Who are you to talk, a discarded relic?"

"Don't you know that the more representatives there are, the more rights the people have?"

"Yeah. If you want to complain, complain to the congressmen who abandoned you. You can't even say a word to those on leashes."

Park Sangmin watched the scene from a distance and concluded his speech.

"The dirty era will end. A new era will come. I, Park Sangmin, will sprint with all my might today to open a new era with you all."

As Park Sangmin got into his car and left, half of the already few people dispersed.

A desolate scene with a sandy wind remained, with about twenty people left.

They all looked older than me.

Most were in their forties, and occasionally some in their fifties.

I couldn't find anyone younger than me, not even someone my age.

I looked for a woman with lingering hope.

Was Kim Daran here?

She was one of the reasons I accepted Woo Minhee's invitation.

I thought she might appear here.

This place was precious to both her and me.

Even though others call my mentor a fraud, I have been grateful for his kindness.

Kim Daran felt the same way.

Jang Gi-yeong treated orphans like us and children from wealthy families equally.

He never looked down on us for not having parents or treated us unfairly.

I have always been thankful for that.

Other instructors were not like that.

But Kim Daran did not show up.

Neither did Baek Seung-hyun, who tried to use her name to bring me down.

"..."

Two small goals had come to nothing.

If either of them had appeared, it might have resolved some of my long-standing questions.

Next to the school was a small memorial hall.

It was Jang Gi-yeong's memorial hall.

I didn't understand why a memorial hall for a living person was placed next to the school, but now I think I do.

It was Woo Minhee's doing.

Her pathological sensitivity added a dramatic touch.

The first page of the guestbook was written in an unnecessarily elegant hand by the person who planned this event.

[ Woo Minhee ]

Behind it were a few names of instructors I only vaguely remembered and a few names of seniors, but the total number did not exceed ten.

I wrote my name on the tenth page of the guestbook.

"..."

I hesitated for a moment.

Should I write Park Kyu?

In fact, here it should be Park Kyu.

Writing my real name and surname is a sign of respect for the deceased, both officially and personally.

But an inexplicable whim strongly suggested another option.

The fact that no one was guarding the memorial hall gave me the courage to make a new choice.

I slowly and respectfully left my existence in the guestbook of the still-living deceased.

[ Professor ]

Perhaps this name would resonate more with my mentor, who is already dead and will die again.

Thinking of the moment when my mentor, despite everyone's objections, strongly advocated and pushed through a decision, I felt this was the right choice.

I heard the conversation of middle-aged men next to the memorial hall.

"Jang Gi-yeong said he had a trump card to stop the school's demolition. What was that one thing? He said if it succeeded, the demolition could be stopped."

"I don't know. No matter what, Jang Dae-wi will always be a patriot. He remained loyal to the state until the end. When he retired as principal and got involved in a lawsuit, he received a recruitment offer from China but rejected it outright. There's no one like him."

Jang Gi-yeong was more respected and admirable than Yoo Sang-hoon, regardless of being a favored student.

"Please step back. The demolition will begin soon."

In the distance, gunshots rang out as people gathered.

A few people nodded to me, but I didn't recognize them.

Their faces were vaguely familiar, but it felt too distant to acknowledge and converse with them.

Any conversation would just be a hollow echo.

The countdown began, and soon the explosives set up around the school detonated with a loud noise.

Amid the dust, the courtyard and classrooms where I spent three years seemed to melt away.

At this moment, my mentor, who could be called the founder of the school, would also meet his eternal death.

I paid my respects to the school and my mentor, mourning a page of time that I would never return to, and left the place.

On the way back, I rode in an armored vehicle.

Unlike the soldiers in the helicopter, the soldiers in the armored vehicle did not put up a wall.

They were as curious as I was.

"What was it like being a Hunter? How did you feel standing in front of a monster?"

"Life is similar. You want to run away and give up."

"Do you know Kang Han-min and Na Hye-won?"

"I don't know them well. With 1,200 classmates, it's common not to see some faces."

A silent officer looked around and then asked me suddenly.

"Doesn't living like this cause depression?"

"Well, it's something to overcome."

"I heard about freelance Hunters. The pay isn't much, but it's enough to get by. With that, you could get a decent place to live near the docks instead of here."

It seemed he was worried about me.

The officer handed me something.

"This is something Mr. Woo asked me to give you."

It was a palm-sized notebook.

"He said it was your mentor's legacy. He thought it would be best for Mr. Park Kyu to have it."

The cover was worn out, and the pages were filled with strong, neat handwriting.

The first page had a drawing of a dragon with an old-fashioned feel and a powerful phrase in Chinese characters that caught my eye.

[ Even if this body is shattered, for the protection of the 祖國. ]

No doubt. It was my mentor, Jang Gi-yeong's handwriting.

I remembered him scribbling something with a pen that ran out of ink in his room.

I thanked him appropriately and got out of the armored vehicle.

The soldiers waved goodbye.

They were warm-hearted people.

But I had a long way to go to reach my bunker.

I walked 12 kilometers to avoid telling Woo Minhee my location.

Maybe I should have chosen 3 kilometers.

Still, I have one reliable support recently.

"Defender, do you have a brother?"

"The ribs you gave me were delicious. We could kill three people without noticing while eating them."

"I'll tell you my location. Can you do some reconnaissance around here?"

"Sure."

With the help of Defender's brother, I walked the desolate road and arrived at my territory.

The same eerie yet familiar landscape as always.

I opened the door to the bunker and threw myself onto the mattress.

"..."

Many things had happened, but once I was home, it felt like everything had slipped through my fingers like sand.

If I had to pick something, it was the pleasant sensation of waking up to the morning sun.

I thought about checking the internet but ended up lying there for over 30 minutes, doing nothing.

What woke me up was the K-walkie-talkie's incoming call.

Personal ID: REDMASK

It was Woo Minhee.

Why was she contacting me when she didn't show up in Incheon?

Should I ignore it? I thought for a moment but eventually got up and picked up the radio.

"Is it Woo Minhee?"

"Senior!"

Woo Minhee's voice was filled with an unsettling energy.

"Jang Gi-yeong said it!"

"What?"

"He suddenly had a seizure and defecated and urinated, but in the midst of all that, he was shouting your call sign! Professor! Professor!"

Woo Minhee's mocking and contemptuous tone in describing the situation was unfair to my mentor, who had many flaws but was not someone she could casually judge.

I reconstructed my mentor's final moments in my own way.

Jang Gi-yeong, who had been sitting like a still life, was placed in a variable chair that could be used as both a surgical chair and a bed by the research institute staff. They inserted a needle into his vein and administered a lethal drug.

Until then, my mentor had been staring blankly ahead, motionless like a dead person.

When the poison flowing through the tube reached his heart and tried to stop its beating, my mentor easily tore off the leather and metal restraints and stood up.

People gathered around, holding electric batons or guns, watching him with wary eyes in case of any unpleasant situation, but my mentor was looking at a different scene.

He saw the school he had established, the modest memorial hall next to it, and me, pondering and writing with a pen inside the memorial hall.

He saw the four-character word I wrote in the guestbook.

Feeling an unknown impulse, my mentor roared like a tiger.

"Professor!"

I reached out and picked up the notebook that had been thrown into the corner of the mattress.

The notebook left by my mentor contained strategies for dealing with different types of monsters, tactical plans, positions, and ideas for more efficient weapons.

To be honest, the content was not practical in real combat.

It was too flashy and meaningless.

As I turned the pages, I became more puzzled.

How could he write down such outdated and unrealistic fantasies on every page?

It made me laugh to think that such a person had taught us.

That's why, perhaps, Jang Gi-yeong had demanded perfection from us.

He knew that to bring his vague imagination to life, he needed the best actors or artists, so he treated students harshly and instilled the word "perfection."

But his imagination was too weak to capture reality.

Who would have known that the person he considered the most insignificant tool, Kang Han-min, would change the entire framework of the world?

On the other hand, I, Park Kyu, am the best tool to express Jang Gi-yeong's absurd imagination, an objective fact.

As if to emphasize this, the last page of the notebook had a drawing of a weapon that connected him and me.

A state-of-the-art axe designed by Jang Gi-yeong.

"Sir, instructor."

I found myself looking for him.

Absurdly, the end of the axe had a rocket attached.

[ Rocket-Propelled Impact Enhancement Attachment ]

Did he get inspiration from the robot anime that was popular in his childhood?

I felt a smile creeping onto my face as I looked at the axe, reflecting my mentor's childlike heart.

"?"

I felt a sense of dissonance.

The part of the axe handle that was shaded black suddenly had the shading removed, as if it had been cut out.

Looking closely, something was stuck on the part where the shading was removed.

I peeled it off.

It wasn't ordinary paper.

It was a psychometric test sheet.

The black paper I and Suu had stuck on the wall side by side.

But the color of this test sheet was unfamiliar.

It was white, pure white.

I remembered what the instructor's daughter had said.

Black - Blue - Red - Gray - White.

White.

Pure white, almost mournfully pale.

"..."

I closed the notebook and thought about my mentor's final moments again.

In the cruel experiment he proposed, Jang Gi-yeong was chosen by God.

With the same penetrating insight as Kang Han-min or Na Ye-won.

At that moment, Jang Gi-yeong understood everything.

His great success and his inevitable dark fate.

He must have known that, good or bad, he could not escape his fate as an experimental subject.

But now Jang Gi-yeong had the power to change the situation.

The power to break the restraints with God's strength and teach a harsh lesson to the disciple who disrespected him.

I knew he would not make such a choice.

He was a soldier and a patriot, as harsh to himself as he was to others.

He probably waited silently for the promised punishment to avoid hurting the Republic of Korea he had tried to protect.

It was not an easy decision.

He knew his daughter was waiting outside the corridor, hoping he would call her name.

Until the end, Jang Gi-yeong struggled between his duty as a soldier and his personal desires.

His anger towards Woo Minhee and the congressmen behind her also significantly influenced his judgment.

In the end, my mentor chose passive resistance—quiet death.

I don't really understand why he called my call sign at the end.

Why did he call my call sign, not his daughter, wife, or Kang Han-min?

After much contemplation, I came up with a clumsy reason.

Perhaps he wanted to give his favorite student a final lesson.

"Professor!"

To remind us, the unchosen ones, that there is still an "adverb" before us.

*

That night, I had a dream.

In a black-and-white dream, I was a teenager with lingering youth, and my mentor, standing in front of me, still had the remnants of his 30s.

"Park Kyu! This is how you use the axe!"

I sparred with my mentor tirelessly.

To the point of exhaustion.

I blocked attacks and countered in similar ways, chasing after trajectories that were hard to follow with the eye.

"Take a break!"

Jang Gi-yeong, who once had boundless energy, panted and caught his breath, then suddenly turned his head to the side.

His tiger-like eyes were filled with clear anger.

"Kang Han-min! What are you doing!"

Jang Gi-yeong looked at me again.

He smiled.