A Red Over Sangmun

The alert came in at six forty in the morning, and it came from the youngest voice in the Ashline Guild.

"There's a red over Sangmun Bridge," Han Seo-jun said, breathless, standing in the doorway of the ready room with his scout jacket half zipped. "A big one. The boundary's already past the first pylon."

Yoon Dae-ho was lacing his boots on the bench under the window. He stopped with one lace still loose. A red. Six years as a hunter and he had only ever seen one from the far side of a police cordon.

"Say it properly, Seo-jun," said the woman beside him, who had the same narrow face and the same cowlick at the back of the head. Han Seo-jin was his older sister, three years ahead of him, and she said it the way she said everything, like a nurse correcting a chart. "Grade and colour both. The Gate Office doesn't log colours."

"A-grade gate," Seo-jun said. "Red boundary. Over Sangmun Bridge, about forty metres up."

Dae-ho pulled the lace tight. His hands were steadier than he expected.

Blue text slid across the inside of his vision, the way it had every morning for the last three weeks, and the way it did for nobody else he had ever asked.

He blinked it away before anyone could catch him staring at nothing. Nobody in Ashline knew about the windows. He had tried, once, to describe one to Seo-jin, and she had asked whether he had hit his head in the last gate. He had not pushed it after that. Hunters who saw things that were not there did not get put on raid rosters. They got put on leave.

By seven the whole guild was in the briefing hall on the third floor of the Ashline building in Mapo, forty-one hunters on folding chairs. At the front stood Cha Min-gyu, who had founded the Ashline Guild eight years ago and had been its Guild Master every day since. He was an A-rank hunter, broad across the shoulders, grey at the temples, and he did not raise his voice because he had never needed to.

"For the new members," he said, "and for the old ones who have forgotten, I will say the ladder once. The Gate Office assesses every hunter on the same scale. You start as Awakened, which is a state, not a rank. It means the mana took and nothing more. Then the ranks run E, D, C, B, A, and S. Six letters. Rank S is the top. There are nine S-rank hunters in the whole country and none of them are in this room."

A few people laughed. The Guild Master did not.

"Gates are graded on letters too, and this is where people die. A gate grade is not a hunter rank. An A-grade gate is not a gate for A-rank hunters. It is a gate that eats A-rank hunters. The colour of the boundary tells you the grade before the Office confirms it. Grey is E. Green is D. Blue is C. Violet is B. Red is A. Black is S, and if you ever see black you run and you keep running. The one over Sangmun Bridge is red. That is why everybody is here."

He let that sit.

"Second thing. The rule. A gate that is left unclosed for seven days breaks. The boundary tears and everything inside comes out at once. That is not a guess. That is what happened at Haeundae eleven years ago, in the First Break, when nobody knew what a gate was and the first one in Busan sat open for a week while people took photographs of it. The First Break is why the Gate Office exists, and it is why we count days. This gate opened this morning. Today is day one. It will be closed by day six or Ashline will be standing on the bridge when it breaks."

Dae-ho counted on his fingers before he could stop himself. Six days. Four of them, probably, inside.

"Raid structure," Cha Min-gyu went on. "The Ashline Guild runs four seats. Guild Master, that is me. Vice Master, Baek Ji-won, who is at the Gate Office right now getting our entry permit stamped. Below that, Raid Leaders, who run teams inside the gate and answer to the Vice Master. Below that, Members, which is everybody else in this room. Raid Leaders for Sangmun are Oh Tae-sung and Seo Ha-eun."

Two people stood up in the second row. Oh Tae-sung was B-rank, a shield user with a scar through one eyebrow. Seo Ha-eun, his wife, was also B-rank, a spear user, and she stood up a half second after her husband and looked over the room with an expression that suggested she had already decided who was going to be a problem. They had been married four years and had run raids together for six, and anyone who had been inside a gate with them knew that they argued in the field exactly as much as they argued at home, which was constantly and to good effect.

"Team assignments by noon," Seo Ha-eun said. "If you're D-rank or under, you're in the second wave or you're outside. No arguments."

Dae-ho looked at his boots. D-rank. Second wave. He had been D-rank for four years, assessed twice and held at the same letter both times, and the windows that only he could see had not changed that.

Beside him, Kang Il-woo leaned over. He was C-rank, forty-nine years old, and the oldest member in the guild who still went inside. "Second wave is still inside," he said quietly. "Don't sulk."

"I'm not sulking."

"You're sulking. My daughter sulks the same way." He nodded across the room, where Kang Mi-rae sat with her knees pulled up on the chair. She was twenty-two, D-rank like Dae-ho, and had joined Ashline the previous spring over her father's objections, which he had made loudly and then abandoned, because Kang Il-woo had never managed to say no to his daughter for longer than a week. "She'll be second wave too. Keep an eye on her for me. Not that she'll let you."

"I'll keep an eye on her."

"Good man."

The briefing broke up. Dae-ho stayed on his chair while the hall emptied around him, and when the last of the folding chairs had been stacked he let the blue text come back.

It did not show him anything new. Rank D. Level fourteen. Strength thirty-one, agility thirty-eight, mana twenty-two. One skill, Mana Sense, graded Common, which let him feel where a gate's boundary was thin and had never once helped him in a fight. The numbers had ticked up twice since the windows started. Nobody at the Gate Office had a machine that measured a hunter in numbers. They measured in letters, and the letter had stayed the same.

Three weeks ago, on the anniversary of the First Break, he had woken up with a line of blue text across the ceiling that said his name, and he had not slept properly since. Why him. Why a D-rank nobody from a mid-sized guild in Mapo, and not one of the nine S-ranks, and not the Guild Master, and not anyone who could have used it. He had no answer and nobody to ask.

Outside the window the sky over the Han River was clear, and if he leaned left he could see the top of the red boundary above Sangmun Bridge, a smear of colour like a wound that had not decided whether to close.

Han Seo-jin walked past the door, saw him, and came back. "Seo-jun says you went pale when he said red."

"Everyone went pale."

"Everyone else is pretending they didn't." She looked at him for a moment longer than was comfortable. "You're on my team in the second wave. Tae-sung's call, not mine. Try not to need healing."

"I'll do my best."

"That's what the dead ones say." She left.

Dae-ho stood, finally, and went down to the armoury to sign out a blade that was three years older than he was. Day one. Six to go.