The journey from Kansai International Airport to Osaka was an endless exercise in managing reporters.

From the moment they stepped off the plane, camera flashes erupted without pause, and people shoved one another aside trying to snag even a single line for an interview—enough to make one worry that someone might get hurt in the chaos.

Even after they finally boarded their vehicle, helicopters launched by media outlets trailed them beyond the escort perimeter, visible through the windows and shadowing them at every turn, making it impossible to let down their guard.

It was a testament to how high their standing had risen—and how desperate these people were.

Jung-woo could fully understand that sentiment.

After all, Hikaru, sitting right there in the same car, was radiating an unmistakable stiffness.

“Big Sister, how old are you?”

“I… 17 years old. You… how old?”

“Se-gi is five! Big Sister is seventeen but can’t even talk properly!”

“Ugh…?”

Se-gi seemed thoroughly taken with Hikaru, chattering away nonstop from the seat beside her.

Children, after all, were nothing if not honest about what they saw.

By any conventional standard, Hikaru was a striking beauty. It appeared Se-gi had taken a liking to her purely on the basis of her appearance.

The amusing part was that Se-gi had apparently categorized Hikaru as “a deficient person who couldn’t speak properly.”

To a five-year-old, foreign languages were a concept that hadn’t even begun to take shape.

There were daycare centers that taught a second language from an early age, to be sure, but Se-gi attended an ordinary childcare facility—there was no reason she would know such things.

She was still too young to grasp concepts she had never been taught on her own.

Still, rather than mocking her companion, her effort to choose words Hikaru might understand showed a touching thoughtfulness.

Of course, Hikaru seemed consumed solely by the thought that every single word had to be carefully weighed, given that she was dealing with the child of an honored guest.

Jung-woo spoke up.

“There’s no need to be so tense. You’ll be joining us on subjugations as a colleague from here on out.”

“Ah, yes…”

“I’m sorry if my daughter made things awkward for you.”

“Oh, no, not at all. It’s just that I’m… not very good with children…”

“Gasp! Daddy and Big Sister are speaking alien language!”

“Foreign language, Se-gi. And why don’t you come over to Daddy?”

“Why?”

“Big Sister ran out of words she knows. She’s Japanese, so she doesn’t speak Korean very well.”

“Really? Then can Big Sister talk well normally?”

“Yeah, she’s really good at foreign languages. Even better than Daddy.”

“Whoa…!”

Se-gi seemed to think alien language and foreign language were essentially the same thing.

Her eyes sparkled, apparently impressed that Hikaru was “better at alien language than Daddy.”

Jung-woo slipped his hands under Se-gi’s arms and scooped her up, settling her into his lap.

Even then, her admiring gaze showed no sign of fading.

That, too, seemed to be a burden for Hikaru.

Her posture grew even more rigid, and she looked utterly at a loss.

She looked like someone crushed under the weight of pressure.

He couldn’t help but see it that way.

Because he had ten years of future knowledge that no one else possessed.

The Japanese archipelago—in the original history, while there had been no disaster called Jormungandr, it wasn’t as if incidents had been absent either.

Exactly four years from now, right around this time, during the year-end period.

‘A suicide attempt.’

Japan’s strongest hunter, Ichijomodori Hikaru, would attempt suicide at twenty-one—and fail.

It was an incident that made headlines worldwide, and it was the last public news Jung-woo had about Hikaru.

[“‘I am sorry to be this kind of person.’ The suicide note found in Ichijomodori Hikaru’s room contained only that single line. Some have suggested…”]

The news had been so profoundly shocking that the reporter’s voice on broadcast that day still felt vivid in his memory.

Japan was a wasteland for hunters.

To be precise, it had become a wasteland for hunters.

That hadn’t always been the case.

Compared to Korea, Japan had twice the population and territory.

Combined with its island geography, the evolution of aptitudes necessary to survive the environmental changes following the Millennium Shock had developed in diverse directions, and at one point, Japan had boasted a total of six S-Rank hunters.

That was on par with Korea’s number of S-Rank hunters at the time, excluding the currently slumbering Chun Jun-ho.

Now, that same nation possessed only two S-ranks.

Ex-rank Ichijomodori Hikaru, and S-Rank Motoya Kenji, who was occupied defending the Hokkaido region—an area where her reach didn’t extend at all.

How had things come to this?

There was only one cause to point to.

‘Izanami.’

The Tokyo Incident had rewritten the history of Japan’s hunter community.

A bomb named Izanami had been dropped on Tokyo, the former capital where the greatest concentration of hunters had been gathered.

Five S-Rank hunters who had initially attempted an independent response and joined the subjugation were killed on the spot.

Ichijomodori Hasumi, who had been pregnant with Hikaru, and Motoya Kenji, who had been stretched thin dealing with the Hokkaido gate situation.

Only two survived—those who hadn’t participated in the subjugation.

With their fighting force reduced to a third, the only option left for the country’s survival was to request support.

Only after receiving aid from some of the Central Plains 16 Nations and Korea was Izanami finally subjugated.

The incident was brought to a close, but the true dark age began from that point.

The Japanese public’s fear of gates had reached its zenith.

The timing coincided with the completion of the gate creation induction process using Third gates, and with such national sentiment layered on top, Japan’s stance on density control had no choice but to become exceedingly conservative.

The maximum permitted grade was lowered to B-Rank.

A-Rank hunters who managed to break through that ceiling found themselves in a situation where combat risking their lives wasn’t even permitted.

Thanks to that, Japan’s gate problems entered a phase of stabilization—but it wasn’t an unmitigated good.

The overly stringent standards had stripped away their capacity to respond to external threats.

To advance from A-Rank to S-Rank, a hunter had to grow enough to undertake a Promotion Quest, and then throw themselves into a trial whose outcome couldn’t be guaranteed.

Having already experienced the annihilation of their top fighting force once, the country couldn’t help but become conservative in the face of such risk.

That was where all the problems began.

Even so, the existence of high-rank hunters was indispensable in international relations, and Japan didn’t hesitate to put Ichijomodori Hikaru’s name front and center.

Japan’s hope. Its future.

Far too many words had been inscribed upon a girl whose sense of self hadn’t even properly formed yet, and by the time she turned twenty-one—the year of the incident—it had reached its breaking point.

In a way, it was an entirely external factor.

Watching the upheaval unfold in neighboring Korea—the collapse of the Management Bureau, the establishment of the Association, and the subsequent shift in gate policies—the fear within Japan’s superhuman society had intensified to the extreme.

Newly come of age, Ichijomodori Hikaru had to represent that she would be the eternal guardian of this land, and she had to demonstrate it through action, not words.

That meant departing Osaka and embarking on a subjugation tour spanning all of Japan.

A fact that came to light only later.

‘It was impossible. At this point in time, Ichijomodori Hikaru couldn’t fully control her own abilities.’

The aptitude wasn’t even hers to begin with—it was one inherited from her mother in the womb.

The will to wield that power wasn’t something she had formed herself; it was merely something environmentally imposed upon her.

Everything was warped.

It was, in a sense, brainwashing.

She had to protect the nation. She had to become Japan’s guardian.

For a girl who had been crushed beneath that weight every moment since birth, acknowledging that she was someone incapable of fulfilling that duty was tantamount to denying her entire existence.

At the same time, she herself likely understood better than anyone what kind of disaster an ability she couldn’t wield as intended might unleash.

And so, one week before the national tour was to begin.

Ichijomodori Hikaru attempted suicide.

It was the point where her psychological stress had reached its absolute peak.

Afterward, she vanished completely from public view, and only her ability remained—fixed in a form that enveloped certain regions including Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto as a barrier.

Since the ability hadn’t disappeared, it proved she was still alive, but those in the industry who knew better understood.

She had become a husk.

Ichijomodori Hikaru was isolated in a sealed room deep within Osaka, functioning as the heart of the barrier in a state close to that of a living corpse.

Knowing such a future loomed ahead.

That was why he felt sympathy.

“I am simply filled with gratitude toward the heroes of our neighboring nation who so readily extended their hand.”

“Oh my, yes, well, what can I say. This old man doesn’t understand a word of all that Japanese.”

“…I’ll handle this.”

They had arrived at the banquet hall.

While Ho-jong and Kwon-seung engaged with Japan’s cabinet ministers, Jung-woo’s gaze drifted toward Hikaru from time to time.

She was precarious.

Knowing the future, it was painfully obvious.

It had been the biggest concern even before coming to Japan.

On multiple fronts, Hikaru was an indispensable ally for Jung-woo.

From the impending Jormungandr subjugation onward, the difference in outcomes depending on whether Hikaru’s abilities could be utilized was enormous.

Even looking beyond that, she was an irreplaceable top-tier asset for securing Zero Gate exploration rights and breaching their interiors.

Ultimately, it was a matter of psychological pressure.

He had to relieve it—and even if that weren’t the case, he would have felt compelled to.

He had the heart of a father raising a daughter.

Their circumstances were different, yet there were things that inevitably projected onto one another.

In Hikaru’s solitary, precarious figure, he saw Se-gi—who had stood at the center of a catastrophe.

For Jung-woo, it was like touching a raw nerve.

He couldn’t simply dismiss it as someone else’s problem and stand by.

Patting Se-gi’s back, he fell into thought.

Whatever the case, nothing would be resolved with things as they were.

Whether counseling or ability management support, neither was his specialty.

But none of it would even be possible unless they reached a point where they could actually have a conversation.

He was deep in deliberation.

“Daddy~”

“Hm?”

“We’re having Se-gi’s birthday party the day after tomorrow, right~? We’re gonna go play, right~?”

Se-gi asked anxiously.

Everyone around was discussing difficult matters, and it seemed worry had surfaced unbidden in the child’s mind.

“Yeah, Daddy’s secretly preparing Se-gi’s birthday party.”

“Right~? We came here for Se-gi’s birthday party, right~?”

Her persistence had the air of someone who needed to hear a definitive answer.

Jung-woo chuckled and answered again.

“You know Daddy doesn’t lie. Really, really, starting tomorrow, I’m only gonna play with Se-gi.”

At that answer, Se-gi suddenly asked.

“Then can we invite Big Sister too???”

Her eyes instantly sparkled.

So that was the goal. She had liked Hikaru that much.

The absurdity of it nearly drew a laugh from him.

But come to think of it, it wasn’t a bad idea.

“…Were you perhaps calling for me?”

Hikaru asked cautiously, glancing back and forth between Se-gi and Jung-woo.

Though she wasn’t familiar with Korean, she had somehow managed to recognize that “Big Sister” was a term referring to her.

At her nervous, carefully posed question, Jung-woo decided to go with the idea he’d been turning over.

“Ah, yes. My daughter’s birthday is in two days. Christmas, actually. So we’re having a party, and she’s asking if it would be all right to bring you along, Ms. Ichijomodori.”

This was a fairly good pretext, wasn’t it?

Hikaru blinked.

She seemed to be debating whether she was actually allowed to go.

For a child of that age who was mature beyond her years, it wasn’t hard to deduce what she might be thinking.

Jung-woo had Se-gi as a reference guide, after all—it was only natural.

She set the bar for propriety far too high.

Even for someone her age, where a little leeway would be perfectly acceptable.

In moments like this, wasn’t it better to be a bit shrewd?

“May I ask you a favor? If it wouldn’t be too much trouble—my daughter seems to have taken quite a liking to you, Ms. Ichijomodori.”

At those words, Hikaru startled and shook her head vigorously.

“No, no, no! It’s not a bother at all…!”

I have to do this.

I have to do it well.

What should I prepare?

Those thoughts were written plainly across her tense face.

Her eyes seemed to spin in circles.

She scrunched her face up as if about to cry, then glanced around checking others’ reactions before composing her expression—the image etched itself into his memory.

Feeling like someone who had taken advantage of a good person, Jung-woo felt a pang of guilt after the fact.

Then Se-gi, blissfully unconcerned, asked.

“Daddy! Is Big Sister coming?!”

Jung-woo stroked Se-gi’s head and answered.

“Yeah, she’s coming. Big Sister wants to play with Se-gi too.”

“Yay! Then I can watch Biniping with Big Sister…! And draw Biniping…! And play hide-and-seek with Teddy Bear and Sea Otter and Shark…! And watch more Biniping…!”

The devil of Biniping.

The strongest five-year-old, Shin Se-gi.

At this rate, today’s MVP was confirmed.