Arcade's Dungeon

Hunter\Hero 2: School Days

"It's been reported that a new dungeon has opened in South Korea early yesterday morning that so far appears to be above A-rank in danger and warranted anxiety from all in Seoul-"

     "Can you turn that off?" I asked, leaning forward from the back seat to clutch on the side of the driver's seat. "That's been on the news for too long and I'm tired of listening to it."

     "This news just came out this morning." Reed was incredulous while glancing up and back in the rearview mirror towards me. "Just let me listen to it for a bit. Put your headphones in or something."

     I'd been about to counter his point, but decided to keep my mouth shut. Yeah, for civilians, that news only broke about thirty minutes ago or so. But for me, it'd been hours - because no one clearly had anything better to do from midnight till morning - of getting message after message on the message board of the company, people pinging each other back and forth about what South Korea would do if it really was above A-rank. They only had A-ranks in their country, so it was likely that they were going to call on hunters from other countries to help them.

     That was the overall consensus that some people came to, at least.

     It makes sense, I thought, digging around in the backpack at my feet and grabbing for my headphones case, fumbling around. Grabbing what felt like it, pulling it out, then shoving it right back in while glancing through my hair to see if Drake had seen. But my cousin, for once, wasn't playing games or watching videos on his phone, instead passed the heck out against the window with his mouth open. But they're better off either reevaluating all of their current hunters to see if any of them became S-rank or if they have more A-ranks since the new year, or playing a numbers game with what A-ranks they do have and seeing how they'd fare without assistance first.

     Reed pulled up to a stoplight as I finally did grab my wireless head phone case while making sure my buzzer stayed deep in my bag. No, no one would've recognized it, seeing how I was just a low-rank nobody in the company that only did patrols during the night when curfew took up quite a bit of the time, but still. Paranoia had kept me alive through every adversity that'd threatened my life, and kept it together when it was threatened.

     "-a statement from the chairman whose guild members were responsible for the discovery of this dungeon, the Frozen Land guild-"

     My headphones connected and began to play. I wasn't too worried about what was going to be said next or missing it. It was just the watered-down version of what I'd already heard anyway.

     So I closed my eyes and leaned against the window, turning off my passive listening skill and trying to fade out a little myself. My head hurt pretty badly after staying up too late doing econ. But well, at least my A would stand strong in that class.

     And today, after school, I'll go to club. And afterwards, straight to the company, so I can get this weekly check-in crap over with and then hit the hay.

     It'd not been the roughest week I'd ever seen, but sleep was precious to me. Four hours was not optimal. Friday night would not exist for me, and Saturday morning would not see me until it was the afternoon.

     But even I knew what that feeling was when Reed finally pulled to a stop that wasn't a stoplight, and killed the engine. I had to push up my glasses to rub my eyes and get the sleep out of them that had tried to pull some welcome, last-minute wool down, before popping the headphones out and putting them away. Sadly, I was not about to win myself points with Mr. Landon if I tried to go through the gate breaking school policy, and I very much aimed to be on everyone's good side by the time I graduated. No one was allowed to have anything bad to say about me even when the teachers gossiped in their lounge or in classrooms at lunch when they thought closed doors and a floor between us could stop me from hearing.