Sua's expression remained impassive despite the utter shock that rushed through her system at the sound of her brother's name.

There was every possibility that the similar name was nothing more than a coincidence. In fact, she put more stock in it being coincidence than her missing brother. 

Her voice was completely even when she asked, “Do you have pictures of them?"

Haneul laughed slightly, pulling out her phone, "I don't keep any, but since they're celebrities it's not hard to find their faces."

True to her word, Haneul was passing over her phone almost immediately, a split-screen photograph of Byun Kang-Dae and Park Jae-sung front and center.

Sua's memories of her childhood prior to the Abyss had grown a bit foggy over the years, but it was difficult to argue that the Park Jae-sung staring up at her wasn't her brother.

His hair was cropped cleaner than she'd ever seen it and he was dressed in a pristine suit, but there was no denying the minuscule star-shaped birthmark that sat just above his right eyebrow.

Despite the relative chaos of her return to Earth thus far, it was soothing in its own way to be able to verify how well he had been doing since he vanished from her life.

Even if going into gates was dangerous, his status as an S-rank hunter must mean that he was receiving the best resources money could buy to keep him safe. Unlike the gaunt cheeks and dry hair that Sua remembered from her childhood, the Jae-sung before her looked incredibly healthy: his frame having bulked out slightly, his hair and skin shining.

It was a relief that Sua's face had been stuck in the same impassive expression for nearly ten years: it kept any of her thoughts from her face as she passed the phone back after only a few moments of staring. "They must be impressive.”

Haneul nodded. “Hunter Park is an executive in the largest Korean Guild: Nightfall. He’s responsible for single-handedly containing a gate break in Dongjak-gu six years ago. Hunter Byun is an engineer, so while he doesn’t go into combat it’s his work that helps most hunters in Asia train, and his work has saved countless lives. Get strong enough and you’ll probably run into both of them sooner or later.”

Since celebrities were difficult to meet in-person, there was absolutely no question about what Sua's next step needed to be. “You said I need a license, right?”

“Yup.” Picking up a tablet, Haneul passed it over to Sua. “Fill out this form, we’ll use it for your civilian ID and your license after you complete the evaluation.”

Sua put her cup down and accepted the tablet, fortunate for the short stint of lessons she received from Jae-sung when it came to reading and writing.

She typed in her given name before hesitating briefly as she considered the next field: if Jae-sung was a public figure, the odds were that her existence and, by extension, her disappearance may also be public knowledge.
Fresh out of the Abyss, Sua was in no position to answer questions about where she had vanished to for twelve years and how she suddenly reappeared in Guryong Village. The lazy lie she had told Haneul on the drive to the Association would never stand up to additional scrutiny.

Sua didn’t have any interest in sharing details about the Abyss until she had a better handle of how the government and the people of South Korea would react. After all, the fact that creatures from other realms were appearing across the globe and killing humans meant that Sua’s background could be viewed as a threat depending on how willing people were to believe her motives at face value.

And if that wasn't enough of a problem, it was still difficult for Sua to picture Jae-sung intentionally abandoning her, especially considering the fact that he vanished from the shadows despite becoming famous.

If something odd had happened with Jae-sung’s disappearance, she hardly wanted to paint a target on her back. Putting her real name on her Hunter ID was simply out of the question.

After a moment, she settled on 'Ahn'—silently apologizing to the old woman she had stolen rice from for also taking her name—before immediately getting stumped on the next question. “...I don’t know when my birthday is.”

Haneul frowned slightly. “Do you know your age? What season you were born in?”

“I’m nineteen, and it was cold when I was born. My mother passed away from the flu a few weeks later.”

“Mmm, then I suppose you should pick a day in winter. January’s usually the coldest.”

“Alright.” Sua settled for a random day in January, listing the slum as her address before offering the tablet back.

Accepting it, Haneul made a few notes before hitting a button and setting the tablet aside. “Do you have anymore questions before we head for your evaluation? The last appointment should be wrapping up in a few minutes.”

“I still have a few dozen,” Sua laughed slightly, “But I guess I’ll settle with the two most pressing ones. Do hunters have to sign a contract?”

“No, there are plenty who don’t. The license will give you access to stasis gates—which are gates that never close or break—up to one level higher than your rank. There’s an exception for A-rank gates, those require at least one party member at the same rank. However, top-grade equipment is easier to pay for with a contract, and working under a guild or the Association makes it easier to find reliable party members. It’s also harder to get into vanishing gates without a contract, and those give better rewards than stasis gates.” Haneul’s brow quirked up as Sua nodded her understanding, “What’s pressing question number two?”

“Any chance I can take a quick nap? I want to do my best for the evaluation.”

That surprised a laugh out of Haneul and she reached for her phone, “I’ll tell them that we’ll be there in two hours. Do you want a blanket?”

“If you have one handy.”

Haneul reached underneath her seat, pulling out a blanket and tossing it to Sua with a smile, “Good thing I’m prepared. I’ll come back when it’s time to go.”

Catching the blanket, Sua tipped sideways on the couch, pulling it up against her. “See you in a bit, then. Thanks.”

The door closed firmly behind Haneul, Sua's eyes sliding shut as she listened to the woman's quiet footsteps head back down the hallway.

In her mind's eye, she sank back into the darkness of the shadows, her meditation breath as even as if she were truly asleep.

The darkness here was different than that of the Abyss: shallow, smaller, unable to seep into her core when her body was still physically in the living world.

Her words echoed differently too, reverberating in her mind rather than leaving her lips. "Why didn't you tell me about the gates?"

The shadows swirled through her mind, carrying emotions rather than words: disbelief and confusion.

Perhaps that would have been her response, although: "It would have been better for me to know..."

Independence came next, rumbling through her chest as if she were falling from a bird's nest and being forced to fly.

She huffed softly at the admission. "So you'll help as you're asked but won't lead me yourselves?

The shadows brushed against her consciousness, swirling with affirmation of her words.

Dimly, she could feel the verge of a headache creeping against her skull. It seemed that things would be getting much more complicated than she had expected.

•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•

When Haneul slipped out of her office, she nearly ran head-first into a member of her team.

“Ah, I was just coming to give the final report. Are you heading out again?” Won Eun-Ae gave her a curious look.

“No, but I’m letting that rookie we met in the boss chamber take a nap for a few hours.” Haneul nodded toward the hallway, “We can walk and talk. What do you have?”

“Two-hundred and seven civilian casualties.” As one of the few healers that were awakened every year, Eun-Ae’s voice was always tense when she reported on deaths. “All of them lived in Guryong Village.”

Haneul sighed under her breath as she lead the way into the center building of the campus. This was the worst part of her job without contest: no matter how quickly they responded, it was never quick enough. “They’re packed in like sardines in that village now, it’s a miracle it wasn’t worse. Get the fiscal branch working on funeral arrangements for the people without families.”

“Gong Shin is already at their office, things will be moving before the sun sets.”

Stepping into the elevator, Haneul selected the basement level, “What about the rookies that we met outside the break?”

Eun-Ae’s eyebrow inched up at the floor selection, considering Haneul from the corner of her gaze, “Shaken up but they’ll be fine. I healed the tank and fighter, the mage wasn’t hurt. They agreed not to talk about the boss chamber for the time being, but word will get out that the boss was irregular sooner or later.”

“That thing was too strong for a D-rank gate…” Haneul mused, glaring at the elevator doors. “Hopefully the engineers can figure out how it went undetected.”

“Are you visiting the intelligence department because of the rookie in your office?” Eun-Ae asked, changing the subject without preamble. “She was too strong for a rookie.”

“Monstrous rookies aren’t unheard of.” The response was almost a reflex, but there certainly did seem to be something unique about Ahn Sua.

Slipping her hand into her pocket, Eun-Ae pulled out her phone, opening a video file and passing it over to Haneul. “That’s the footage we got from the highway.”

Haneul stared at it for a moment before looking at Eun-Ae, waiting for a joke that didn’t seem to be forthcoming, “There’s nothing on it.”

“Sure there is.” Skipping forward on the timeline, the healer stopped when mage lights illuminated the trio of rookies that had retreated from the boss.

“When the normal rookies show up, everything is fine, but it went pitch black when that other hunter attacked the ogres by herself. Whatever power she’s using, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Huh…” Haneul rewound the video back to the start, skipping around the timeline. Now that she was looking closely, she could tell that the black screen wasn't uniform, it almost gave the impression of swirling fog. “Send this to me.”

“Already did. You’re predictable, captain.” Eun-Ae laughed slightly, taking her phone back when the elevator door opened. “Are we doing a team debrief?”

“Not today, I get the feeling my hands will be full.” She stepped off the elevator with a nod, “Good work today.”

“You too, as always.” The doors closed again, Eun-Ae vanishing from sight as the elevator started back up.

Unlike the rest of the building, the basement level felt more like a military base than a corporate office. Cameras tracked Haneul’s movements as she strode through the empty white corridor, scanning her badge to bypass security doors every few meters until she was stepping into the operations center for the Association’s intelligence branch.

It was a large room filled with rows of tables, maps and documents covering most of the space as staff members rushed between them, comparing notes and watching any of the dozens of security footage playing on a wall of monitors directly opposite the entrance.

“Lee Haneul-ssi, it’s been a while since you interrupted my day.”

The sardonic greeting came as soon as she walked through the doors, the speaker looking at her from over the rim of his glasses. He was settled at the chief’s desk, slightly raised above the rest of the room to keep track of everything

“Most people just say hello, Chu Jii-ssi.” She countered with a bemused smile. “Busy?”

His attention was already back on his work. “We’re always busy, but since there was a sudden gate break today, we’re swamped. What do you want?”

Haneul huffed a laugh at how antisocial the man was, “I sent you a license application a few minutes ago. It’s for a young woman we found at the gate break: she was going against the irregular boss solo, and it looked like she could’ve beat it.”

As an A-rank himself—albeit a noncombatant—Jii’s initial reaction wasn’t a surprise. He didn’t so much as glance away from his computer. “So she awakened with a high-level combat skill. Why is that my problem?”

“I can’t find any record of her in any government database, she’s got a power capable of blacking out surveillance cameras, and another power capable of teleporting a group of four in an instant. Her face is also reminiscent of Park Jae-sung's.”

Jii’s gaze slid back over to Haneul at the last comment, considering her for a moment, “The man doesn't have the most unique facial features in Korea.”

“I’m aware, but they’re both from Guryong Village, both missing documentation, and they both appeared out of nowhere with their combat ability fully developed. I think it’s worth looking into.”

“… your hunches haven’t been completely useless. I’ll see what comes up.”

Haneul grinned, dipping a quick bow, “Thanks for your consideration, Jii-ssi~”

“Get going so we can work.” He replied, voice dry as he started typing again.

"You're a ray of sunshine like always," she laughed, trailing out of the room.