The Line Between Realists and Dreamers
Master Hellick and Delnora stopped a few meters away.
Hellick smiled—small, cold.
“Sacrificing your team for results. You’re becoming more interesting, Dreamer.”
Dozai drew in a breath through his nose, slow, deliberate. His jaw locked, teeth pressing together until the tension stung.
“That’s not what I was—”
CLAP.
One sharp sound.
The word died in his throat.
“Run along,” Hellick said lightly. “Time’s ticking. You still have to beat Kota.”
Her gaze drifted past him, unhurried, and settled on Rei’s body.
“Now,” she added, as if commenting on the weather, “to decide what to do with her.”
Something snapped tight inside him.
For half a heartbeat, his vision swam. His shoulders twitched before he caught himself, fingers curling hard at his sides. He stepped forward anyway—just enough to matter, not enough to be defiance.
His mouth opened. Closed.
He swallowed once, forcing the words into order.
When he met Hellick’s eyes again, his voice came out low, measured, thin with strain.
“She lasted longer than anyone thought.”
A pause. He inhaled, steadying himself.
“Fought harder than most hunters. Even outmatched, she didn’t fall back. She fought till the bitter end.”
His thumb dug into his palm. He didn’t look away.
“I don’t know what happened.” The admission scraped out of him. “But… knowing Rei…”
His voice faltered, just for a breath. He pulled it back.
“She didn’t fight to win. She fought to remind him of something.”
Another pause.
“Of who he is,” he finished quietly. “That courage isn’t weakness.”
Silence spread, heavy and dry, like ash settling after a fire. Delnora, who had been humming the entire time, stopped.
Hellick exhaled through her nose.
“So?”
The word shattered him more than any scream.
Everything he’d held in place shuddered, but he didn’t let it fall.
“Galvara did the same,” she said, a blink of annoyance. “Fought harder. Sero too. Fought better.”
She smiled. “You think I care if they were desperate? If you think I’m just about spectacle, you’ve read me wrong.”
She stepped closer.
“Desperation is for those too weak to take what’s theirs.” And then, softer, colder. “Desperation with no results… is just delusion.”
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Something gave way along his spine, a quiet buckling. The argument he’d built slipped out of alignment.
But he fought it, teeth gritted, fists shaking.
“You said it yourself,” he argued, too fast, his voice climbing before he could rein it in. “This whole structure is built on desperation. Fighting Kota, this bonus round... We’re all desperate to win. How is her desperation different from ours?”
“Desperation with purpose and results builds nations,” she said calmly. “She had purpose…”
A pause.
Her smile thinned, as her eyes traced him—not his stance, but his breathing, the hesitation in his shoulders, the way his weight shifted half a beat too late.
“Results, however…”
She let the thought hang, unfinished, already answered.
For a moment, she said nothing. Just watched.
Then her gaze lifted to his eyes, and the smile returned.
Smaller. Sharper.
"Besides... Are you even really trying to win?"
Silence.
That question.
It wasn’t an insult. It was a scalpel.
It sliced through every half-truth and justification he’d crafted for himself.
His whole body flinched, a reaction he couldn't contain.
Her expression didn’t change.
Her voice stayed quiet. But her words turned arctic,
“I know you’re smart enough to see the difference between what you’re doing,” Her head tilted, taking another step towards him. “and what the others died for.”
Each word a nail in his bones.
“Watch yourself now, Dreamer. Realize the game you're playing before spouting nonsense.”
The temperature of her presence dropped like icewater poured over his soul.
Dozai opened his mouth, trying to come up with anything.
"I— She—"
But nothing came.
Even if it was logical, she’d dismantle it.
And in that moment, he finally understood the true danger of Master Hellick.
She didn’t need power to dominate a room.
She was the room.
His plan was based on her wanting a spectacle. Now he saw something darker, something that didn’t need an audience.
His mind, racing over a cliff edge, grasped for the only handhold left: her own twisted economics.
He spoke again, voice tightened with adjustment. A recalibration.
He let the grief drain from it, scraped the fluff until only function remained.
“She proved herself in previous matches. Without her, we wouldn’t have beaten Galvara or Sero." he said evenly, "She's a resource you haven't fully utilized. Are you really going to dispose of her because she lost a one on one with the 2nd Rank Hunter? All of us would have lost that.”
He continued, refusing to look away. The words tasted like ash. He was selling Rei's soul to the devil, using the devil's own currency. His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles whitening, but his tone stayed level. “Rei can still be useful... As a hunter.”
They held each other’s gaze. Then he saw it.
No smile.
No mockery.
Just empty, surgical attention.
Her eyes widened just enough to fully settle on him.
Unblinking. Unwavering. The air between them seemed to thin, sharpen.
Something cold slid down Dozai’s spine, and he had to fight the instinctive shiver that followed.
“…You’re still here?” The words were quiet, flat.
His stomach dropped, not from threat, but from dismissal.
“Didn’t I tell you,” Hellick continued mildly, already looking past him, “that you should be fighting Kota right now?”
Dozai stood frozen for a moment. His breathing slowed, each inhale measured, deliberate, as if he were locking something down behind his ribs. His hands hung at his sides, fingers curled just enough for the knuckles to pale.
Then he turned.
One step.
Then another.
Each footfall even.
Unhurried.
Just before the treeline swallowed him, he stopped, but didn’t turn.
“If I come back,” he said, voice quiet, stripped of heat, “and find you didn’t spare her…”
He angled his head, only slightly.
From the side, his face was still calm. But his eyes had changed.
In its place burned something colder, a steady, unblinking focus, like a mark already chosen.
“It might not be today,” he continued. “Or tomorrow. Or even years from now.”
A breath.
“…But I will make sure you regret it.”
Delnora tilted her head, eyes lighting with interest. Her smile widened, eager like someone watching a fuse burn shorter.
Hellick tilted her head as well, but the motion lacked curiosity. Her smile was the curve of a scythe resting against a stone, waiting for the wheat to grow just a little taller.
“Cute.” She flicked her wrist, the gesture careless, as if brushing dust from her sleeve.
“Continue to surprise me,”
she added, already turning away.
“…Dreamer.”
