“I didn’t expect to see you here so soon.” Kim Sangshik said.

Standing in the lift lobby, still holding the empty duffel bag that had been used to store the clothes that he was now wearing, Shiwoon stared impatiently at the stream of numbers which indicated the floor the lift was on. It seemed like it would never go past the fourth floor. “I didn’t think I would be here so soon either.” He said.

Kim Sangshik was also staring at the tiny panel indicating where the lift was. He looked the same way he had yesterday, though he had swapped out his charcoal grey suit for one that was a lighter shade of grey. “How was it, getting discharged?” He asked dispassionately.

“Easy. Everything had already been taken care of. Finding your building wasn’t too hard either.” Shiwoon replied.

“That’s good to hear.”

Fortunately, the lift finally arrived, saving both men from having to continue the conversation in the lift lobby. Instead, they were now plunged into the equally awful situation of having to continue the conversation in the lift occupied only by the two men. For Shiwoon’s part, he was trying his best to affect a facade of cool detachment; how successful he was, he could not tell, but he could hear his heart thumping away, yelling at him to break the awkward silence. He hoped that Kim Sangshik couldn’t hear his heart thumping away.

Sneaking a peek at the man, Shiwoon discovered that Kim Sangshik looked as unaffected as he had been in the hospital. Cool detachment; the outward veneer that Shiwoon was trying so hard to portray seemed to come all too naturally to the man beside him. A part of him wondered if the man ever laughed, ever cried. It seemed so unlikely that Kim Sangshik could feel emotions at all, given his almost robotic personality. It was a suitable personality for a job in the civil service.

Before Kim Sangshik had come down to the reception to bring him in, Shiwoon had heard from the receptionist that Kim Sangshik had gotten a reputation of being an ‘Ice King’ in the building; no matter what happened, or who spoke to him, Kim Sangshik seemed to remain equally cold. Not uninterested, per se; more like everything was to be processed with ruthless logic to him. More than one woman in the Monitoring Bureau had found themselves attracted to him as a result.

Given her unusual enthusiasm in discussing Kim Sangshik, Shiwoon thought that the receptionist was likely one of them.

The ride in the lift felt like it took forever, though Shiwoon was certain that the lift had zoomed past the floors, not stopping even once. They stepped out on the eleventh floor, which looked exactly the same as the first floor’s lift lobby, though it welcomed much less light. On his right, exiting from the lift, there was only a staircase, which was marked helpfully by a green neon exit sign. Kim Sangshik made his way to the left. Shiwoon followed behind him. In front of them, only a few steps away, were a pair of frosted glass doors that broached none of the secrets behind them. Kim Sangshik raised his employee tag to the card reader perched on the wall next to the door. A satisfied beep resounded, and the sound of the door being unlocked followed soon after. Kim Sangshik walked in first, followed by Shiwoon.

They stepped into a world of noise. Conversations were happening everywhere, and from the bits and pieces he could pick up, they mostly had to do with Hunters. The office was a comfortable size. Everyone had their own table, with partitions to separate the ones that were joined together. There were also two offices, which stood separate from the tables and chairs by virtue of a staircase that led up to their glass doors. The office concept seemed to Shiwoon to be ‘open’. Privacy, evidently, was not a concern in the Monitoring Bureau. Kim Sangshik led Shiwoon past the tables, attracting brief glances along the way that were quickly stolen away by the people on the other side of whatever call the workers were on. They finally came to a table in the corner, bereft of crumbs and scattered papers, where a tidy plaque announced that it was Kim Sangshik’s.

Kim Sangshik sat down behind the table and gestured for Shiwoon to sit as well. He dug out a few lengthy looking papers from various drawers, which he opened and retrieved the documents from with familiarity.

“If you sign this contract, the Monitoring Bureau will register you for the Hunter Conversion Course. You will undergo training, after which you will be able to begin work as a Hunter. We will take 50% of your earnings to cover the training costs until the costs are fully paid off.” Kim Sangshik underlined a few lines in the documents using a pencil to highlight the clauses that matched what he spoke about.

It was a fair contract overall, from what Shiwoon could tell. They were certainly better terms than some of the employment contracts his college friends had signed. Then again, considering it was not the government but rather independent organisations which were largely responsible for Hunters at the higher ranks, it made sense that the government tried to maintain cordial relations with Hunters from the very beginning. Better to forego some profits now for a better working relationship later, after all. Shiwoon signed the contract easily.

“When do I start training?”

Kim Sangshik leafed through the papers before turning his gaze to Shiwoon. “Today, if you are willing.”

Shiwoon nodded. “I am. Please make the arrangements.” He knew that if he put it off by even a day, his current swell of ambition and drive could die all too easily and never return.

Kim Sangshik nodded. “Wait here. I’ll call for someone to bring you there.”

Left with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs as Kim Sangshik spoke to someone from the training center, Shiwoon took out his phone and called his manager at the convenience shop. Apologising as he announced his intention to resign, thanking his manager for the care she had shown him, ending with a promise to meet for dinner in the future; the conversation went exactly as he had expected and still left him surprised with how pleasant he felt after it was all over. He thought he would miss working at 7-Eleven, even if it was a dead end. When he turned his attention back to Kim Sangshik, the man was looking at something intently on his computer screen, not an iota of focus being diverted by Shiwoon’s moving head.

The person who came to get Shiwoon was a pleasantly energetic man who introduced himself as Oh Jinwoong. He was as immaculate in his appearance as Kim Sangshik - and so was everyone else Shiwoon had met in the Monitoring Bureau, now that he thought of it - but he smiled more easily and his words flowed more easily too. As Shiwoon prepared to leave, he realised.

“Thank you, Mr. Kim Sangshik.” It felt odd to him to be enthusiastic in front of a man as frosty as Kim Sangshik, and so he wasn’t, but he thought that it would be too rude to leave without a word of gratitude. Kim Sangshik waved him off, saying that it was no big deal, face painfully neutral.

Unlike the lift ride before, Oh Jinwoong managed to make the brief ride down a single floor pass by all too quickly with an easy conversation. “Training’s tough and all, but you will get used to it.”

“What’s it like?” Shiwoon asked.

Oh Jinwoong grinned. “Oh, you’ll see for yourself soon enough. Won’t spoil the surprise for you.”

The layout of the tenth floor seemed exactly the same as the floor above. A lift lobby, with a door that led to the staircase on one side and a similar looking pair of frosted glass doors. The interior designer for the project must have been an overwhelmingly practical man. Past the door, however, Shiwoon found himself looking at an endless expanse of blue floor instead of an office space. Wooden dummies stood in neat rows along the opposite wall, being viciously beaten by men and women, sending splinters of wood flying with every blow they made. Elsewhere, there were people sparring in scattered, elevated rings, using wooden versions of a myriad of weapons, from the traditional spear and sword to the more unconventional weapons like maces and axes. It was a dojang, a training hall for the martial arts. He had been in one a long time ago, when his father had brought him to a place where they taught kendo, insisting that learning a martial art was what men did.

Oh Jinwoong led the way towards a fierce looking old man, who had his hair tied up like a samurai, and who was currently speaking to a pair of trainees as they struck at a training dummy. Unlike some of the other trainees, Shiwoon noticed, these two did not seem to tear into the wooden dummy with excessive force.

“Harder! How are you going to cut a monster if you only use this much force!”

They nodded and tried again, only to receive the same comments. The old man continued to demand that they strike harder, even though Shiwoon already felt like wincing with every blow they struck.

“Hello, instructor.” Oh Jinwoong interrupted. “You have a new student.” He pointed to Shiwoon.

Shiwoon bowed. “Nice to meet you, instructor. My name is Kim Shiwoon.”

“Tch.” The old man grumbled under his breath, murmuring something about how he already had too many on his hands. He went to the side, motioning for Shiwoon to go to where he was. “Pick out a weapon.” He said.

Because he had at least used it once before in his life, Shiwoon naturally gravitated towards the wooden sword. Seeing this, however, the old man sighed. “Are you just picking the sword blindly?”

Shiwoon bristled with embarrassment for a moment before saying, “No, instructor. It’s because I’ve used a sword before.”

Raising an eyebrow, the old man walked back to the training dummy, and this time Shiwoon followed without needing the old man to gesture. “Swing at this thing for me.”

Shiwoon held the sword with both hands, tensed his muscles, swung, struck the wooden dummy as hard as he could. The blow reverberated throughout his arm, sending a tingly shock into him. Though no splinters had flown off, it had been a hard blow, and he was certain that most people could not manage such a blow on their first try. He looked at the old man expectantly.

The old man only scoffed when he met Shiwoon’s eyes. “You’re even worse than these two. Do it like this.” The old man snatched the wooden sword from Shiwoon’s grip, his strength surprising Shiwoon. He swung the sword downwards with only his right hand; where his sword landed, on one of the sticks that protruded from the dummy like a limb, the wood gave way cleanly. It was like an experienced lumberjack, needing only a single blow to fell a great oak tree. Shiwoon stared back at the instructor with newfound respect.

“You will repeat this slash for as long as I tell you. Either that, or you give up the sword.”

Shiwoon thought for a moment. “I will keep trying for now. But why do I have to give up the sword otherwise?”

“Because I can’t stand the thought of a scrub with the sword claiming to be my student!” The old man growled. He handed the sword back to Shiwoon. “I’ll come to see your progress again tomorrow.”

“He means it, you know.” One of the two who had been getting scolded said with a grin after the old man walked out of earshot. She had short hair, which she tied up into a neat little bun. “He hates it when people use the sword wrongly.”

The other of the two, a tall and well built man who reminded Shiwoon of a black bear, sighed. “That’s why we gave up.”

Looking at them properly, Shiwoon noticed that both of them were indeed not wielding a sword; the man held an axe in his hands while the woman held a club.

“What happens if you don’t give up?” Shiwoon asked.

“He only certifies you as ready to be a Hunter when he thinks you meet his standards.” The man said. “His standards are higher if you use a sword. So you train longer.”

“Yeah, it’s a bummer.” The woman said. “Though I guess it doesn’t matter for me.”

“Why?”

The man scowled. “Just because you have a healing Skill, doesn’t mean he’ll judge you with lower standards.”

“I know, I know. That’s why I’ve been using simple weapons, right?”

“Wow, how do you already know your Skill?” Shiwoon asked.

“You’ll know if you have one.” The woman said.

“Naturally?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” Shiwoon said.

“Putting all that aside,” the man said, “I’m Choi Minsik. This girl here is Park Sua.”

They extended their hands, which Shiwoon shook in turn. “My name is Kim Shiwoon. It’s nice to meet you.”

Choi Minsik smiled and slapped Shiwoon on the back. “We’d better get back to training now, or we’ll never become Hunters.”

Shiwoon nodded. The image of the sword that had flowed seamlessly through the wood remained in his mind, along with the face of the instructor which seemed to taunt him with the suggestion that he would never be able to meet the instructor’s standards for the sword.

‘Well, we’ll just see about that.’

He began to swing the sword, trying to mimic the sword the instructor had demonstrated. On his first attempt, he wielded it with none of the fluidity and power the instructor had. No matter, he thought, what I have is time. Even though his arm felt numb after every swing, even though some part of him thought that it was stupid to try so hard for someone else’s approval, he continued to swing, driven forward by stupid pride, bewitched by the memory of a beautiful cut.

At seven o’clock, on the dot, the instructor yelled that he was leaving, which was met with an even louder yell of ‘thank you, see you tomorrow’, somehow synchronised through the timing of the trainees’ bowing. He had been out of sync with them, and quickly noticed how a single errant voice was all too distinct when every other voice had been done in time with one another. There were a few dirty looks shot at him, though they did not linger, and everyone else went back to training after the instructor walked out.

An hour later, Choi Minsik and Park Sua came to Shiwoon to tell him that they were leaving. If they were in the same company, Shiwoon thought, this would be where they would ask him to go for dinner or for some drinks. But they didn’t have that kind of relationship and they knew it. Hunters often split up into different organisations after all, and as the pair had noted in the brief conversations during pockets of rest, the two would not have been so close if not for them coming into the course at the same time. Shiwoon nodded and wished them a good night, before returning to striking at the dummy.

He decided to end his training at nine, not because he wanted to, but because he remembered he needed to return home before it was too late. On the way, he would pick up some dinner and drink enough milk to regrow the muscles he had surely overworked today, he decided. Looking around, he saw that there were still other trainees around, including a man who looked like a gangster and swung his club like he was swinging at a baseball rather than the wooden dummy.

The next morning, Shiwoon went to the Monitoring Bureau building after washing up and eating breakfast, upon which he realised that he did not have an employee tag and therefore had no way to go into the building himself. Laughing to herself, the receptionist told him to stand near the entry gates and wait for someone he knew.

That someone turned out to be the instructor, who grumbled to Shiwoon that he detested the administrative procedures that the Bureau seemed to love so much. Case in point, he said, was how a simple pass to access the training hall needed to be approved by the men in the office above, and therefore fresh trainees often couldn’t enter by themselves for at least a week. Shiwoon had nodded and agreed and badmouthed the men above, and he could visibly notice the instructor’s favourability towards him rising. There were very few ways as effective in team bonding as insulting someone together, he thought.

Perhaps it was because of this positive impression he had created, but the instructor seemed, if not impressed, to be at least willing to allow him to continue training in the sword. He taught Shiwoon another stroke of the sword that day, noting that his downward slash was ‘satisfactory’.

In this way, Shiwoon’s days in the training course passed. He would go to the building, train from nine in the morning to nine at night, go home, eat dinner, sleep, and wake up to another day of training. His lessons in the sword began to pick up, with him having to translate the movements he had learned into faster, stronger strokes that would work when his enemy was a monster rather than a dummy. He trained not with the other trainees - the instructor claimed that he was still too precocious for a spar - but with the dummy as his eternal partner. Along the way, he was forced into using other weapons, with the instructor telling him that the world was not always so kind as to give him a good sword. He thought to himself that it did not matter whether it was a good or bad sword, that what mattered was the person wielding it. A good sword in the hands of a poor swordsman was a waste; a bad sword in the hands of a good swordsman was still deadly.

When he voiced his theory out loud to the instructor once, when he was feeling tired of wrestling with a chain scythe, the instructor had asked him to step up for a spar in one of the rings. Shiwoon would use a sword, while the instructor used the chain scythe Shiwoon had lambasted as impractical and unwieldy. The other trainees stopped whatever they were doing to gather around. There was an electrifying excitement in the air; he could hear someone giving him ten-to-one odds of falling within ten blows. He resolved to last eleven, if only to spite the man.

It took only seven for him to be left lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling, wondering how the instructor had been so fast with such a cumbersome weapon. It had felt like an extension of the instructor’s limbs, rather than the complex weapon that it was.

Standing above him with a smirk, the instructor said, “And a bad sword in the hands of a poor swordsman? What does that make?”

Shiwoon decided that he would never claim to be a good swordsman in front of the man again.