Chapter 50
Above, below, to the left, and to the right.
No matter where I looked, I saw thugs in black masks.
At the alley entrance.
Behind parked cars.
In the shadows of the buildings on either side.
Even near places that had looked like ordinary manholes until just moments ago.
We were surrounded on all sides, literally.
It was right then.
“Excuse me, Senior.”
“Huh?”
I had no time to answer.
Gaeun suddenly wrapped her arms tightly around my waist and lifted me straight into the air.
A princess carry.
No, by this world's standards, should I call it a prince carry?
Anyway, the name wasn't important right now.
“Hold on tight!”
Hop.
My view flipped upside down.
The ground receded, and the night sky drew closer.
“W-what?!”
“Get that bitch!”
“After them!”
Flustered shouts erupted from below as well.
It was understandable.
Gaeun had vaulted all the way to the building's rooftop, stepping on the alley wall while holding me in her arms.
“Gaeun, I had no idea you could do this!”
“I may not look it, but I was a C-rank Hunter! I even made it to the doorstep of becoming a professional Hunter. Grandma often said that speed was the one thing I had at a professional level.”
She really was fast.
Hop, hop.
Between buildings.
Across rooftop railings and signs.
Drainpipes and air-conditioning units.
Wherever her feet could reach, she stepped and sprang upward.
'The people chasing us all look like Hunters, too⋯.'
But Gaeun was faster.
Fast enough to widen the distance even while carrying me in her arms.
It felt less like running through the night streets and more like stepping on the gaps in the city and bouncing away.
“By the way, who do you think those people are?”
“I don't know. More than one possibility comes to mind.”
In a world where the gender ratio had been crushed down to 100 to 1.
Being born a man there meant being protected, but it also meant being targeted.
I'd been subjected to endless male-safety education since childhood.
Don't drink beverages given to you by strangers.
Don't walk alone along deserted roads.
If an unfamiliar woman suddenly pretends to be your guardian, report her immediately.
Looking back, it was damn awful education, but the problem was that it had been fairly practical.
I'd actually nearly been kidnapped several times since childhood.
The scarcity of men.
Beings the world loudly insisted had to be protected.
And at the same time, a resource someone might want to possess.
That dual nature always made men in this world vulnerable.
So naturally, the first thing that came to mind was the Life Resources Administration.
But.
“It doesn't seem to be the Life Resources Administration, at least.”
“Really? Why not? From what I heard from my grandmother, you've been targeted by those bitches once before, Senior Jihoo⋯”
It was true that a deputy branch director of the Life Resources Administration had once tried to drag me away right in front of the university, spouting nonsense about an emergency-protection zone and whatnot.
If Mi-hyeon hadn't happened to come looking for me then.
And if I hadn't been able to break the barrier with my ability.
Something quite troublesome would certainly have happened that day.
Then had they come secretly at night after failing during the day?
At first, I thought so, too.
But no matter how I looked at it, this didn't seem like their sort of thing.
“This isn't the Life Resources Administration's style.”
“Style?”
“Those bitches carry out kidnappings as if they were issuing administrative orders.”
They had branches all over the world.
They put men's genes, bloodlines, childbirth rights, and guardianship rights in their ledgers.
They were an organization that wrapped all of that up in the name of management.
That was the Life Resources Administration, an international organization.
And women like that usually didn't move in secret.
You could call it a kind of swagger.
When necessary, they shoved official documents in your face and cited legal clauses.
Emergency protection.
Genetic preservation.
International treaties.
They piled on all sorts of plausible-sounding words to crush their opponents.
And they continued believing to the very end that they were the righteous ones.
They were the sort who could ruin one man's life and still say they'd handled everything according to procedure.
So sneaking up on someone in a deserted alley wearing masks like this was, if anything, unlike the Life Resources Administration.
Because that was how people who knew they were doing something wrong behaved.
Whether or not they felt guilty.
Bitches with at least some common sense lodged somewhere in their heads.
Then who the hell were they?
It was just as I was about to think it over a little more.
“Fast.”
On the rooftop ahead.
A black shadow landed.
“But this is as far as you go.”
Gaeun came to a stop.
Her arms tightened around me, too.
The woman blocking our path was dressed similarly to the other masked figures.
A black combat uniform.
A long cloak.
A mask covering her face.
Except that a decoration shaped like an animal's horns jutted from the top of her mask.
She was practically announcing it.
I am the leader.
She slowly tilted her head.
The pressure of her mana emanating from beneath the cloak weighed down the air around us.
Gaeun swallowed softly.
“That person seems to be at the center of this whole incident.”
“Yeah. That's how it looks to me, too.”
Gaeun carefully set me down on the rooftop.
Then she stepped forward at once.
A small back.
But one that didn't look ready to retreat easily.
“I don't know who you are, but please back off now.”
“⋯⋯.”
“We're in the city. Even if we're above an alley right now, we're only a short distance from a main road. With this much commotion, the police or a Hunter response team will be on the move soon.”
She was right.
This was the heart of Seoul, South Korea.
A country so safe that even if you drank until dawn and collapsed on the street, you were unlikely to be kidnapped.
Though I was an exception because I was a man.
Anyway, if a group of Hunters staged a kidnapping in a place like this, it wouldn't end as a simple crime.
At worst, the Ministry of Men and Family Affairs, a police special-response team, and the forces of nearby guilds could all come rushing in at once.
Even so, the horned-mask woman didn't smile.
She didn't panic, either.
She merely opened her mouth calmly.
“Yoon Gaeun.”
“⋯!”
“The direct granddaughter of Madam Yoon Mi-ja, founder and guild master of the Hyeonmu Guild. You made your debut as a child actor thanks to your innate acting talent, then trained as a Hunter alongside your career and were once called Korea's rookie sensation, but three years ago, you suddenly stopped both your broadcasting and Hunter activities.”
Gaeun's shoulders stiffened.
“I wondered what you were up to, and I never imagined you'd enroll in medical school and fool around with a man.”
“W-who are you? Are you some kind of stalker?”
“You've gotten rusty after taking a break from your life as a Hunter.”
“What?”
“Where are the police and civilians you mentioned?”
At her words, Gaeun and I looked around at the same time.
And realized it.
It was quiet.
Too quiet.
It wasn't even deep into the night yet.
The sun had only just gone down.
It was the time when office workers were heading home, the bars around the university were lighting up, and delivery motorcycles were tearing madly down the roads.
Yet there wasn't a sound.
Not the sound of cars.
Not people's voices.
Not store music.
Not even the honking that should have been audible in the distance.
The buildings weren't lit up, either.
Only the streetlights were lit here and there; the windows of every surrounding building were dark, as if dead.
“⋯Could it be a barrier?”
At my mutter, Gaeun gritted her teeth.
“Yes. It may be hard to believe, but I think we're inside a barrier. And not an ordinary combat barrier, either⋯ One that overlays itself directly onto reality.”
“Onto reality?”
“It almost perfectly copies the surrounding terrain and traps only the people inside it. It's much more complicated than creating a new space. The terrain, buildings, distances, even the lighting all have to match.”
If that was true, this was no ordinary matter.
The barrier Deputy Branch Director Gwon Doyeon of the Life Resources Administration had tried to trap me in before had been formidable, too.
But compared to that one, this barrier was far more sophisticated.
It had been virtually indistinguishable from reality until moments ago, so I hadn't noticed it at all.
In other words.
The woman in front of us was at least A-rank.
And not merely a Hunter with high combat power, but a true professional among professionals specialized in operating barriers.
“You had no chance of winning from the moment you entered this place.”
At the same time.
Tap.
Tap-tap.
The masked figures who had been chasing us climbed back onto the rooftop.
To the left.
To the right.
Behind us.
Even at the entrance to the stairs leading down.
We were completely surrounded.
Escaping from rooftop to rooftop was impossible now, too.
“Yoon Gaeun.”
The horned mask held up two fingers.
“You have two choices. Either you quietly put that male doctor down and withdraw.”
“Don't make me laugh.”
Gaeun's voice trembled.
But she didn't retreat.
“Do you think I'll hand Senior over to a bunch of unknown bitches like you?”
“Or I'll knock you down and take the man by force.”
“⋯!”
“There is only one difference: whether you get hurt less or more.”
The situation was as bad as it could get.
Outnumbered.
Inside a barrier.
And facing professional Hunters who appeared to be A-rank or higher.
To prevent needless casualties, it might be best for me to go along willingly at this point.
Rationally speaking.
“But there's a third option.”
“⋯What?”
Gaeun turned to me with a startled look.
The masked figures' eyes all turned toward me at once.
The horned mask gave a low laugh.
“If you're thinking of asking for help from outside, you'd better give up, man. A Hunter's barrier blocks radio waves, too. You can't do anything with the device you have.”
“I know.”
I had learned that much the hard way last time, whether I liked it or not.
A Hunter's barrier isn't simply a technique for erecting a wall.
It separates the inside from the outside and cuts off not only entry and exit but also communication signals, making it a kind of isolation field.
In other words, taking out my phone in here wouldn't do any good.
Texts wouldn't go out.
Calls wouldn't connect.
Location tracking would be cut off, too.
But.
“Why would I need to contact anyone?”
“⋯What?”
There was only one reason I was so calm.
“I had made a separate request in case something like this happened.”
I slowly looked up at the sky.
A fake night sky where even the starlight was barely visible because we were inside a barrier.
Somewhere beyond it.
On the real side of the sky, eyes were still trained on us.
“For the time being, I asked them to track my movements via a 'satellite' linked to the men-only mail link.”
“What?????”