The Villain Hunter Only Lets the E-Rank Healer Touch Him novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Rank Test

Seon-ho is mocked at the Association clinic for his E-rank, then Tae-hwan waits outside and hires him as his only healer at an ordinary salary; at the flat Tae-hwan peels off one glove and shows a ruined palm.

The Association clinic in Jongno opened at nine, and by ten past, Seon-ho knew the news had reached it.

The woman at the registration desk would not look at his face.

She looked at his hands instead.

"You treated Hunter Yoon Tae-hwan last night," she said.

"I washed a cut for him."

"Gate crews aren't permitted to treat S-rank hunters without a licensed supervisor."

"There wasn't a supervisor. There was a B-rank, and she'd just burned her hands."

"Rank E has no authority to treat an S-rank," the woman said, as if reading it off a wall.

"You'll take the closing test again today, so the incident file is complete."

He sat in a small gray room with a plastic pad on the table.

The pad held a standard cut, an inch long, the same cut every healer in Korea was measured against.

A B-rank closed it in twenty seconds.

An A-rank closed it before you finished blinking.

Seon-ho put his hands over it, and his light came up pale green.

It cleaned the cut thoroughly and drew out the gray dust the pad's makers put in on purpose.

Then it waited politely for the edges to close on their own.

They took nine minutes.

"Rank E confirmed," said the examiner, and clicked her pen. "Please don't tell anyone else the Deserter's wound closed. He's under review. Rumors hurt people."

"It did close."

"Rank E," she said again, and handed him a form.

He walked out into a gray morning with the form in his fist and his stomach in his shoes.

A black car was parked across the street.

Its rear door was open.

Yoon Tae-hwan sat inside with one long leg crossed over the other, in the same charcoal coat, with clean black gloves on both hands.

In daylight he looked younger than he had in the tunnel.

He also looked as though he had not slept in two years.

"Get in," he said.

"I don't get in cars with strangers."

"Then get in with a patient."

Seon-ho thought about the rent, the three weeks, the landlady's face.

He got in.

The door closed.

The car smelled faintly of rain and clean leather.

Tae-hwan did not say anything for a moment.

Then he held out his gloved hand, palm up, between them on the seat.

"Show me your hand," he said.

"What?"

"The left one. The one the blood touched."

Seon-ho held it out.

Tae-hwan took it, very carefully, by the fingertips.

Even through the leather his fingers were warm.

He turned the palm toward the window light and searched it.

There was nothing there.

No gray shadow, no black thread.

Tae-hwan let out a long, slow breath, and for one second his shoulders came down from where they had been all night.

"Did you wash it?" he asked.

"I forgot. I went home and ate cold noodles."

"You forgot."

"Is that bad?"

"No," said Tae-hwan, still holding his hand. "No. It isn't bad."

He realized he was holding it, and let go.

"I'll hire you," he said. "As my healer. Only mine."

Seon-ho blinked.

"The Association says nobody can treat you."

"The Association is wrong about one thing, and it matters."

"I'll pay three million two hundred thousand won a month, and a share of every gate."

"It's in writing, and you can bring a lawyer. You do the work I tell you, and nothing else."

"What work?"

"Wash what I show you. Come when I call. Keep your mouth shut about what you see."

"That's not a lot of detail."

"It's the only detail I have."

Seon-ho should have said no.

He had been lied to by plenty of rich people, and the last employer who spoke this politely had skipped town owing him two weeks.

But the offer was real, and the pay was three times what he made on a good month.

And last night this man had held onto his wrist.

"Why me?" he asked.

"Because yesterday I was bleeding, and today I'm not," said Tae-hwan. "That's never happened before."

The car pulled out into traffic.

They crossed the river and climbed a hill in Mapo.

The car stopped in front of an old brick building with a flat roof and an iron stair at the side.

Tae-hwan's home was on the top floor, under the sky.

There was one bed, one long table, one chair, and a rack of cups that looked as if no one had ever used them.

Tae-hwan shut the door and stood very still beside it.

"Sit," he said. "And one rule."

"What's the rule?"

"You don't touch my hands unless I say."

"You grabbed mine, twice."

"I know," Tae-hwan said. "That is why I'm telling you."

He seemed to take a breath for courage.

Then he took hold of the fingertips of his right glove, and slowly, one finger at a time, he peeled it off.

Seon-ho's breath stopped.

The palm underneath was one long open wound.

The skin had split from the heel of the hand to the base of the fingers, raw and wet.

A thin black thread was weeping out of it and down his wrist.

It looked two years old.

It looked as if it had never once been allowed to close.

"That's the one that's never healed," said Tae-hwan, very evenly. "I need you to try."

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