"Tell me, Hunters. Did you feel fear?"
His voice wasn't a question. It was a statement he had proven in twenty seconds.
The rain pelted down on the trio, the sound now echoing like the ticking of a clock counting down their failures.
Mika was the first to move, though it was a pathetic shadow of her usual explosive speed. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, her lungs burning as they desperately clawed for oxygen. Her dark red hair was plastered to her face, masking the tears of frustration that mixed with the cold rainwater. She looked at her katana, lying several feet away—the weapon that was supposed to be her soul, now just a piece of discarded steel. She didn't reach for it. Her fingers simply clawed at the wet asphalt.
"I..." Mika started, her voice a raspy, broken husk of its former fiery self. She looked up at Kei, and for the first time since they met, the murderous rage in her eyes had been replaced by a hollow, haunting void. "I couldn't... I couldn't even see you."
Beside her, Vivian remained motionless on the ground, staring blankly at a puddle. The tactical leader of MUSE, the woman who took pride in being five steps ahead of every monster, was experiencing a total system failure. The pressure of Kei's hand on her throat had vanished, but the weight of her own incompetence felt like it was crushing her chest. She had been handled like a child.
"Fear?" Vivian whispered, her voice devoid of its usual clinical edge. She slowly sat up, her tactical gear heavy and sodden. She didn't look at Kei; she couldn't. "No. It wasn't just fear. It was... irrelevance. You didn't even consider us threats. We were just... obstacles to be moved."
Reina's response was the most visceral. She was still curled into a ball, her blonde hair matted with mud. Her golden gauntlets, once symbols of her bright, "sunshine" power, were dimmed and scratched from the pavement. Her sobbing had quieted into a rhythmic, trembling shudder.
"I thought I was going to die," Reina whimpered, finally turning her tear-streaked face toward Kei. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated. The idol who smiled for thousands of fans now looked like a terrified girl caught in a nightmare. "When you grabbed me... everything just went dark. I felt... nothing. Just how small I was."
The three of them sat or lay in the mud of the industrial district, their "Count Rank" status feeling like a cruel joke. The silence between them was heavy, the pride of the nation's top idols completely eviscerated.
Mika finally looked Kei directly in the silver eyes, her lip trembling despite her best efforts to remain stoic.
"Yes," Mika finally admitted, the word a bitter confession. "I felt fear. I felt like a 'defective weapon' about to be snapped in half."
Vivian lowered her head, her voice came in shaky tremors. "Did.. did you do all of that just to humiliate us and show just how misplaced our confidence were?"
Kei buttoned up his cufflink which came undone from the confrontation. "You still don't get it, do you?"
"The fear and helplessness you felt just now was only a fraction of what the Hunters who perished had experienced before having their souls mercilessly rooted out by those monsters. Reckless and prideful Hunters such as yourselves."
Kei stood motionless, the neon glow from a nearby billboard casting long, distorted shadows of the defeated idols across the wet asphalt. He didn't look like a hero, nor a villain; he looked like a machine that had just finished a routine calibration. The silver of his eyes seemed to catch the light, reflecting the rain and their despair with an indifference that was more chilling than his earlier violence.
Mika flinched as if his words were physical blows. The realization that their "bad night" was a mercy compared to the actual fate of fallen Hunters hit her harder than the pipe. She looked at her hands—hands that signed autographs, hands that held a katana—and saw them trembling. She wasn't shaking from the cold anymore.
"I..." Mika started, her voice cracking as she struggled to find her pride, only to find it had been hollowed out. "I thought we were... I thought we were doing enough. We win our fights. We get the job done." She looked up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and hollow. "But we've been playing at being Hunters, haven't we? Just like we play at being idols on a stage."
Vivian slowly pulled herself into a sitting position, her tactical suit heavy and sodden with mud. She was the strategist, the one who lived in the numbers and the data. The "death tolls" the Chairwoman mentioned were just statistics on a screen until twenty seconds ago. Now, they were the cold pressure of a hand on a throat. They were the sound of a body hitting the pavement.
"We were arrogant," Vivian whispered, her voice barely audible over the rain. She looked at the rusted pipe Kei had discarded. "We treated the Association's records as suggestions instead of survival. I... I thought my rank made me an expert. But a Grade 2 could have killed us because I was too lazy to check a page number." She gripped her knees, her knuckles white. "One wrong approach... Reina could have been the first to go."
Reina let out a small, choked sob at Vivian's words. She looked at her gauntlets, the golden light now completely extinguished. She wasn't the "sunshine" of the group right now; she was a girl who had just realized she was standing on the edge of a bottomless abyss.
"I don't want to die," Reina whimpered, burying her face in her hands. "I don't want us to disappear like those other Hunters. I thought... I thought because we were MUSE, we were special. That the universe wouldn't let anything happen to us."
Kei didn't offer a hand to help them up. He didn't offer words of comfort. He simply watched them, his expression as unreadable as a marble statue. The distance between his "Overseer" status and their "Idol-Hunter" reality felt like a vast, unbridgeable canyon.
"The abyss doesn't care about your popularity, your rank, or your dreams," Kei said, his voice dropping into that low, terrifyingly calm register. "It only cares about the opening you give it. And tonight, you gave it several."
He looked at his watch, the time ticking close to three. "Hand over your Hunter licenses." he commanded, opening his palm up to retrieve them.
The silence that followed his demand was broken only by the rhythmic splash of rain against the metal shipping containers. Mika stared at his open palm, her breath hitching. The Hunter license wasn't just a piece of identification; it was their legal shield, their access to the abyss, and the only thing that separated them from being vigilantes or victims.
"You're... you're taking them?" Mika's voice was a whisper, stripped of all its earlier heat. She looked down at her muddy tactical vest, where the encrypted card was tucked into a secure pocket. "But without those... we can't even enter our containment zones. We can't do our jobs."
Cryptids spawn at fixed specific places where a rift opens up every midnight until 3 AM before the Cryptids get forcefully sucked back into wherever hell they came from. These are containment zones a.k.a, the 'Abyss' that the Association covers up as restricted areas to the public.
"You aren't doing your jobs now," Kei replied, his voice devoid of even a hint of sympathy. "You are performing a play. And the curtain has just fallen. Another team of Hunters will be temporarily deployed in your area of jurisdiction."
Slowly, with hands that wouldn't stop trembling, Mika reached into her vest. Her fingers fumbled with the clasp, the cold plastic of the license feeling heavier than her katana. She pulled it out—the gold-embossed Count-rank emblem mocking her—and placed it into Kei's hand. She felt like she was handing over her soul.
Vivian followed, her movements mechanical and stiff. She didn't look at Kei as she handed hers over. Her analytical mind was already spiraling into the legalities—the Association protocols, the mandatory retraining, the potential for permanent revocation. She was a strategist who had lost her map.
Reina was the last. She wiped her eyes with the back of a muddy gauntlet, sniffing as she held out her license. "Are we... are we not Hunters anymore?" she asked, her voice small and heartbreakingly hopeful.
Kei tucked the three cards into the inner pocket of his suit, the movement as casual as if he were putting away a receipt. "You are 'Gifted' individuals under the supervision of the Association. Your authority to engage Cryptids is suspended until I deem you functional weapons again."
He stepped back, the neon light catching the silver of his eyes one last time before he turned his back on them. "I sent an address to each of your devices. Meet me there next week Monday——10 AM. And bring necessary luggage because you are going to be staying there for a while."
Kei began to walk away, his footsteps steady and rhythmic against the wet pavement. He didn't look back to see if they were standing or still huddled in the mud. To him, the evaluation was over; the results were recorded.
"Wait!" Mika called out, her voice cracking as she struggled to her feet. She leaned heavily against a rusted shipping container, her breath still coming in ragged hitches. "Our schedules... we have a comeback next month. Photo shoots, variety shows, dance practice... our manager, the fans... you can't just take us away for 'a while'."
Kei stopped, but he didn't turn around. The neon light from a flickering sign above caught the edges of his silhouette, making him look more like a shadow than a man.
"Your management has already been briefed," he stated, his voice carrying clearly over the rain. "The Association has informed them that MUSE is going on an 'intensive overseas training retreat' for their upcoming world tour. Your public personas will be maintained by the PR department. As far as the world is concerned, you are working on your choreography. As far as I am concerned, you are learning how not to die."
Vivian's eyes widened. The level of coordination was staggering. The Association hadn't just sent a supervisor; they had effectively seized control of their lives. "They agreed to this? Just like that?"
"Casualties are expensive, Hunter Vivian," Kei replied coldly. "Replacing a Count-rank team costs the Association millions in training, equipment, and public relations. It was a simple business decision. You are an investment that is currently underperforming."
He glanced over his shoulder, his silver eyes locking onto them one last time with a gaze that felt like a physical weight.
"Next Monday. 10 AM. If you are even a minute late, I will have your licenses permanently revocated."
With that final, chilling ultimatum, he vanished into the gloom of the warehouse district. The rain continued to fall, washing away the black ichor of the Cryptid and the dignity of the idols.
Reina finally stood up, her knees shaking as she wiped mud from her bleached hair. She looked at her sisters, her eyes reflecting the cold reality of their situation. "He... he really meant it. He's not just some manager or a coach. He's our owner now, isn't he?"
Mika didn't answer. She walked over to her discarded katana and picked it up. The blade was chipped from the impact with the asphalt—a permanent scar from her failure. She sheathed it with a hollow click, her fiery spirit replaced by a cold, simmering desperation.
"We're going," Mika said, her voice hard and flat.
"Mika?" Vivian looked at her, surprised.
"We're going to that address," Mika repeated, looking at the spot where Kei had disappeared. "I hate him. I want to kill him. But... he's right. I couldn't even touch him. If we don't do this, the next monster we meet won't give us a 'C'. It'll just eat us."
Vivian looked down at her hands, still trembling from the pressure of the chokehold. She thought of the page number she had missed, the structural weakness she hadn't seen, and the cold silver eyes of the man who had seen everything.
"We have to go," Vivian said, her voice hollow, regaining a ghost of her leadership role. "The cleanup crew will be here in ten minutes. We can't let them see us like this."
They limped toward their transport, three of the most famous women in the country, now reduced to shadows in the rain. Somewhere in the distance, a late-night radio station began playing their latest hit single—a song about being invincible. The upbeat tempo and the lyrics of confidence felt like a cruel joke, a haunting melody echoing through the labyrinth of the district as they disappeared into the night.