It’s stating the obvious, but I’m Class 13.

Which means there are twelve classes ahead of me.

Graduating class sizes vary year by year, but they generally number in the hundreds. It’s unrealistic to remember every single senior.

What’s more, by the time I entered school, information control had intensified to block Chinese scouting, so unless you had a direct connection to a senior, it was hard to learn anything about them.

What was popular back then was the so-called Call Sign Rule.

Jang Ki-young, a living witness to the school’s history and a power player from its very founding, wasn’t holding full authority from the start.

In the school’s early years, high-ranking military officers and former government officials filled the upper ranks, and Jang Ki-young served as an expert assisting them.

He became principal only after I graduated.

In his younger years, Jang Ki-young’s political maneuvering seems to have been decent.

Despite his ambition, he earned the trust of those in power, built a strong faction on that trust, checked his rivals, and in the end, drove them all out of the school.

In that sly era, he won the trust of the powers above by rarely showing any greed for ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ the school’s real authority — but even then, there was one thing he never gave up.

The naming rights for call signs.

From Class 1 to the last graduating class, Jang Ki-young personally assigned every single call sign.

Over time, I realized his “literary sensibility” consisted entirely of the books he’d read as a brief literature-loving youth, and much of his intellectual foundation leaned on the game StarCraft, which he loved in his younger days.

He wanted to write letters and show some sort of humanistic wit, but his shallowness came through clearly in the call signs he created.

Call signs for the earliest classes, which we rarely encounter, were simple.

Bravo, Alpha, Boramae... no different from the ones used in the military, with no personal flair.

Starting with Class 6, Jang Ki-young began trying to display the humanistic wit he fancied, which gave rise to the infamous “Greek–Roman Naming Convention.”

Meaning, if a graduate had both skill and his personal favor, he would assign them the name of a god or hero from Greek or Roman mythology.

For average students, he’d give something safe and neutral — names born from whatever short-lived thought popped into his head at the moment, without enough consistency to really call it a “naming convention.”

And if he didn’t like a student, we know he used the “Animal Naming Convention.”

The animals in question were not predators like tigers, lions, or bears, but weak-sounding animals.

There was even a particular rumor: if someone got an animal name so obscure you’d never even heard of it, it meant Jang Ki-young truly disliked them and was handing them a diploma grudgingly.

This quirky naming system lasted until he ran out of Greek–Roman names to use and animal names to assign.

As far as I know, that point was up through the class right before mine — Class 12.

Kim Min-young, Class 11, had the call sign “OKAPI.”

Unless you have an unusual interest in rare animals, you probably wouldn’t even recognize the name — something you’ve neither seen nor heard of before.

From memory, I recalled what it looked like: shaped like a deer, with distinct striped legs and unique coloring — a herbivore.

Kim Min-young now stood in the center of the banquet like the protagonist on a stage, drawing every eye and enjoying that attention and position.

Without a doubt, he was the main character of this small group.

Women with bare skin and heavy makeup, flitting among the men like butterflies, a flashy band, and dazzling neon lights — all of it seemed like stage props designed solely to highlight Kim Min-young.

At his gesture, music played, the melody shifted, and women and others gathered around him.

The guards on the perimeter, and the obviously young ones in particular, watched him not with jealousy, but with faces full of awe and respect.

“Moon-hee, pour me a drink.”

At his request, a woman — bare-legged despite the 2°C chill, wearing only a fur coat over her top — poured the drink.

Kim Min-young downed it in one bold gulp, turned the empty glass upside-down over his head, and finally looked our way.

“What’s this? Who are they?”

He clearly knew we had arrived, but acted as if noticing us only just now.

Chief Choi watched him with a cold face.

She had shown distrust toward Kim Min-young the entire time, and now, in front of him, she kept that same stance — if anything, letting her disgust show more openly.

“Oh? People sent by Park Penguin?”

One eye half-closed, Kim Min-young fiddled with the sunglasses in his shirt pocket.

“Shall we have a quick chat?”

With a wave of his hand, the music stopped.

The sudden silence that fell over the noisy camp felt, to me, like a stage spotlight focusing entirely on us.

With a swaggering gait, Kim Min-young walked into the neon-lit vehicle — a converted bus — from which he had stepped out.

One of his men gestured for us to follow.

Not everyone could enter.

When I tried to step in, an armed guard at the door stopped me.

“Only the representative.”

Chief Choi, who had gone in first, spoke up.

“This person is also a representative. Park Penguin specifically named him.”

From inside, Kim Min-young’s voice called out.

“Let him in.”

What I had suspected from the start was now confirmed.

I didn’t know Kim Min-young, and he didn’t know me.

Sticking only to the warlord side was part of the reason, but the main one was that he hadn’t worked in China long.

If you spend much time in China, you’ll inevitably meet — or at least see — people from other teams and affiliations once or twice. The fact that we’d never even had that chance encounter meant his career had been short. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Especially for a famous junior like me — there had been people who would go out of their way just to see my face.

Inside, the bus felt calm and orderly, in contrast to its flashy exterior.

All show, nothing inside — all hat and no cattle, as they say.

You could dress it up as minimalism, but fittingly for someone who always had women around him, beyond a partitioned-off living space, I caught a glimpse of a bed with a half-naked woman lying face-down under a blanket.

The air was thick with perfume strong enough to numb the nose as the conversation began.

Chief Choi spoke for us.

In a calm yet firm tone, she conveyed Park Penguin’s position.

Polite words, but not pleasant content.

We were indeed interested in Kim Min-young, but there were bad rumors, and we only wanted someone whose skill was certain — so we wanted him to show us something.

At first, he listened with a faint smile, but his face gradually hardened.

By the time the smile was gone entirely, he finally spoke.

“So.”

He toyed with his sunglasses.

“You’re saying you don’t trust Kim Min-young?”

He didn’t raise his voice, but it was heavy with displeasure.

One thing was certain — he had been a boss over people for a long time.

That kind of natural arrogance and condescension doesn’t appear overnight.

“Our situation isn’t easy either. It’s not just one person — taking in your whole group, plus supplying all the materials you asked for, is a burden, and it wouldn’t look good to the others with us. As you know, we’re not a dictatorship like Jeon Si-hoon or the warlords — we’re a coalition of the Incheon refugee shelters.”

While the talk dragged on, I glanced out the window.

A face.

It was the young guy with the .22 pistol from earlier.

If nothing else, his loyalty to Kim Min-young was clear — maybe this watchfulness was itself proof of that loyalty and admiration.

Listening to the exchange, I started to see where the advantage lay.

At first, I thought Kim Min-young had the upper hand.

Even setting aside his negative reputation, his initial entrance had been so striking even I was impressed.

His sophisticated attire was one thing, but the way he moved, even the resonance of each syllable he spoke, felt artfully self-crafted — exaggerated just enough to be stylish.

Like an actor playing the role of Kim Min-young.

But this woman, Chief Choi, was no ordinary person.

More precisely, it was Park Penguin’s judgment in sending her that played the biggest role.

To sum up the situation:

The more desperate side here was Kim Min-young.

Park Penguin considered him a strong candidate for recruitment, but had no absolute intention to sign him, and gave Chief Choi full authority over the decision.

“If that’s the case, we’ll just have to look for someone else.”

“I doubt there are many better than me. Do you even know what the hunter death rate is in the Chinese war zone?”

“We’ll take that into account.”

As the conversation neared collapse, Kim Min-young sighed and yielded first.

“So what do I have to do? What would make Park Penguin happy?”

Chief Choi thought for a moment before answering.

“Simply take down one monster nearby. We’ll decide after watching that.”

“Hunting a monster costs money.”

“We brought supplies for that. We heard the legion’s usual rate and brought about one and a half times that amount.”

Kim Min-young stood.

Pacing the bus like a caged predator, he soon gave a cold, amused smile.

“So you just want to test us, huh?”

Chief Choi didn’t answer.

At that moment, the woman on the bed stirred and sat up, glancing our way.

Much of her bare skin showed, but she seemed used to this sort of scene, and lay back down, fiddling with her phone.

Not important — but the phone was plugged into a charger.

“Then I’ll send someone.”

Feigning reluctance, Kim Min-young agreed.

“I’ll send my most trusted hunter team. You can judge their skills through them. That’s the idea, right?”

But Chief Choi was no ordinary woman.

Even among the dozens of young women in his group, she had more steel in her than all of them combined.

Looking him straight in the eye, she said:

“No. You have to go yourself, Hunter Kim.”

Displeasure flared openly on his face.

The tension in him was ready to burst.

Perhaps sensing it, she finally turned to me.

“This man will verify you.”

Kim Min-young’s gaze burned into me as if it could ignite.

“And who’s he?”

“Professor.”

At that name, his eyes flickered roughly for a moment.

Then he composed himself, saying nothing, studying me as if trying to drag some memory to the surface.

Soon, with clear distaste, he nodded.

“Oh. Jang Ki-young’s protégé?”

One thing was certain:

He didn’t seem to like Jang Ki-young much.

Not that many people liked my mentor, but in his case, I could see why.

His call sign was Okapi.

*

The destination was already decided.

A small factory where zombies had been spotted.

It was more like a waste collection site than a factory.

Where there are zombies, it’s necromancer territory.

Necromancers are the most common small type, but that’s why they’re a good measure.

Basic skills show most clearly against the ordinary.

I wanted to see not only Kim Min-young’s fundamentals, but also how perfectly his hunter team functioned as a single organism.

I may be famous as a hunter representative, but I’ve always worked as part of a team, and I believe the honor I’ve received belongs equally to the whole team.

It’s not for nothing that I look after Kim Daram.

Whatever I thought of Kim Min-young as a person, his hunter organization itself was serious.

Including reserves, the core six-person hunter team was supported by a separate support unit with vehicles and equipment.

The gear was clearly high-grade, and unlike Kim Min-young, the gaunt, plain man carrying the hunter weapon known as the Janggunjeon — the last hunter weapon made in Korea — stood out.

It felt as if the remnants of the once-powerful Legion faction’s resources were reflected in their equipment.

While Kim Min-young was the nominal leader, the one effectively leading the hunter team was the gaunt man with the Janggunjeon.

Around 175 cm tall, with a thin build, a shadowed face, unkempt beard, and messy hair — unpresentable, but the way the other hunters and support staff treated him made it clear he was the real leader.

Our eyes met a couple of times — sharp, no doubt about it.

He felt like the real thing.

Yet Kim Min-young called him by a disparaging nickname.

“Hey. Hagwon.”

Apparently he was from a private academy background.

“Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll go have a word with this guy.”

The subtle discrimination school graduates showed toward academy graduates was nothing new, but in today’s world, displaying it so openly felt archaic.

Kim Min-young approached me.

From his expression, he had something to say.

I stayed quiet, watching him come.

He offered me a cigarette.

I shook my head.

Lighting one for himself, he spoke.

“I know you’re Jang Ki-young’s protégé, but—”

He exhaled a white cloud — sigh or smoke, hard to tell.

“I hate Jang Ki-young. That old fox ruined my life.”

“Is that so?”

“You know my call sign, right?”

He gave a white grin.

“Okapi. Okapi. What the hell is that?”

Behind the hollow laugh, the pent-up resentment and anger were plain enough that even a third party would empathize.

He dropped the smile.

With a now-cold face, he turned.

“I’ll show you.”

As in his first appearance, he walked toward the battlefield with elegance and polish.

The young man with the .22 pistol waited, then respectfully handed him a weapon.

Two pistols.

Not ordinary pistols — hunter weapons in pistol form.

With barrels far too heavy for regular pistols, he twirled them deftly in his fingers and said:

“Let’s go.”