By Zephyria The laws regarding Awakened in South Korea were strict. Especially the Awakened Registration Act.
If one didn’t visit the center and register as an Awakened within a month of their Awakening, they would be fined at least hundreds of millions of won. So, while there might be Hidden Strength Hunters who concealed their rank and power when registering, there couldn’t be any who didn’t register at all. That was South Korea.
Lost in thought, Jung-bin rubbed his chin.
“Lee Sa-young, are you sure that Awakened is at least a B-rank?”
“Yeah.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He blocked my attack.”
“Lee Sa-young’s attack?”
Sa-young nodded, and Jung-bin quickly understood.
“In that case, he’s definitely above B-rank.”
“He even deflected the thorns that suddenly shot out of the Addicts’ bodies.”
“Then he must not have Awakened recently. He seems quite familiar with handling his ability.”
Sa-young agreed and nodded again. Then, he added briefly,
“With a ladle.”
“Excuse me? A ladle?”
Wearing an apron like a crazy brat couldn’t be a fashion statement. Lee Sa-young guessed that ‘Hyung’ was either a part-time worker or the son of a store owner. He said he was older than him, but he looked like he was only in his early twenties. He probably didn’t have the money to pay the fine, so what kind of guts did he have to risk all kinds of disadvantages and not even register?
Lee Sa-young couldn’t understand this series of facts. He couldn’t understand it, and his mood was getting worse and worse. He wasn’t this annoyed even when the guys he’d sent after ‘Hyung’ returned on stretchers with only their business cards in hand. He was confident that he could find him quickly, and he had reaffirmed his skills by seeing him take down four elite Guild members at once.
Touch me and you die.
Sa-young looked at the crooked handwriting on the crumpled business card ten times a day. At this point, Sa-young’s patience was slowly running out. Eventually, he turned on the microphone connected to the secretary’s office.
“Very Small Miracle Mingi Seo Hunter, I want you to come to the Guild Master’s office. As soon as possible. No, just call him over the broadcast.”
—Hunter name Very Small Miracle Mingi Seo, real name Seo Min-gi Hunter, please come to the Guild Master’s office immediately. I repeat, Hunter name Very Small Miracle Mingi Seo, real name Seo Min-gi Hunter…
With 40 minutes left before quitting time, Sa-young summoned Seo Min-gi to the Guild Master’s office.
A little later, Very Small Miracle Mingi Seo, real name Seo Min-gi, who opened the door to the Guild Master’s office, had a haggard face with dark circles reaching his chin. He bowed his head gloomily and greeted.
“You called?”
“Why does your face look like that?”
“…Didn’t you call me to harass me?”
At his words, Lee Sa-young replied with an innocent face.
“Harass you? Are you busy right now?”
“…You’d call me even if I was busy, wouldn’t you?”
“You know me well.”
It was a natural tone. In fact, Seo Min-gi also felt a very small pang of conscience whenever the Guild members asked, ‘Why is 240 so twisted?’ because he knew he was guilty. He muttered in a sighing voice.
“I can do anything except hacking into the Bureau of Rift Management database.”
Lee Sa-young smiled leisurely like a satisfied cat.
“The guy I told you to find last time. What was his name again?”
“Are you talking about Park Ha-eun, second grade, second class, Saetbyeol Elementary School?”
“Yeah, her.”
Sa-young glanced at the business card on the corner of the table and clasped his hands together.
“I think I told you to investigate her family relations…”
Oh, my god. Seo Min-gi’s face turned pale. He had completely forgotten about it because he was focused on hacking into the Awakened Management Bureau database. Moreover, he had failed to hack it, so in the end, he hadn’t done anything.
As Seo Min-gi began to tremble, Sa-young said coldly.
“Investigate it right now.”
“…Yes! I’ll go right now.”
After Seo Min-gi ran out. Sa-young picked up the business card again. A moment later, the phone screen that had been lying beyond the hand that was fidgeting with the crumpled paper lit up and a call screen appeared.
[Seowon Guild Nam Woo-jin]
Sa-young, who had identified the caller, pressed the call button.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
—Jung-bin contacted me saying he collected the Addicts’ bodies. Someone reported it.
“……”
—I’ve taken over the case for now, but it’s quite interesting… I thought it would be better if you came and saw it yourself, so I called.
Sa-young glanced at his watch. 5:25 PM. He put the crumpled business card in his Inventory and got up from his seat.
“I’ll be there soon, so wait.”
On the same day, at 2:40 PM, the Hanover Soup Restaurant, which had a ‘Preparing Ingredients’ sign hanging, was enjoying the most leisurely time of the day. Ha-eun, who was sitting at the green table and hadn’t been able to turn the first page of her workbook for 20 minutes, rolled her eyes and looked up at Eui-jae. And pointed to his head with her hand.
“Uncle, the inside of your hair is getting lighter.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Yeah. You need to dye it.”
Eui-jae glanced at Ha-eun’s workbook. Instead of the answer to question number 1, a picture of two earthworms sitting side by side on a leaf was inexplicably drawn in the answer box. Eui-jae rested his chin on his hand with a serious face.
“I’m really curious, but is the answer to question number 1 an earthworm?”
“Yeah. And Uncle, I’m telling you on purpose because you don’t look in the mirror. Dye your hair.”
“Okay. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go look in the mirror, so try solving number 1 again.”
“Tch, okay.”
Ha-eun pouted and started scribbling something in her workbook again. Eui-jae got up from his seat and stood in front of the mirror on the wall, lifting his hair to show the inside. He wondered if he had seen it wrong because of the fluorescent light, but the gray hair that had been covered in black was starting to show again from the roots. He sullenly pulled on the ends of his hair.
‘How long has it been since I dyed it that the color is already fading?’
From the moment he escaped the Rift, his hair had been gray. He periodically dyed it black to avoid being noticed by others as much as possible, but whether it was because of his recovery ability or for some other unknown reason, it quickly turned gray again no matter how much he dyed it.
‘The cost of hair dye is no joke.’
His hair didn’t take dye well, so he had to use two or three bottles of dye each time, and the dyeing cycle was short. He dyed his hair more often than celebrities who tried to change their image by changing their hair color.
He had prepared a lot of ingredients today, so he was planning to spend a relatively leisurely afternoon. Should he dye his roots while he was at it? He untied his apron strings.
“Ha-eun, Uncle’s going to dye his hair. I’ve hung up the sign, so don’t open the door even if someone comes.”
“Even if they hang on the door?”
Sometimes, even when he hung up the ‘Preparing Ingredients’ sign, there were Hunters who clung to the door begging for just one bowl of Hangover Soup. Most of them were Hunters who had just finished raiding a Dungeon and had gone crazy. Eui-jae nodded firmly.
“Yeah. You must never open it, even if they hang on it. If they seem like too much of a pain, call Uncle right away. Try your best to solve the workbook. Promise.”
“Yeah. Promise.”
Ha-eun answered as if she was only half listening and didn’t look at Eui-jae. Judging by the movement of the pencil, she wasn’t writing letters but drawing pictures. It seemed like she was burning with creative desire rather than solving problems… Eui-jae laughed with a deflating sound and hung his apron on the wall.
He took out two bottles of squid ink dye from the side room attached to the Hanover Soup Restaurant and headed to the bathroom attached to the store.
[Unique trait, Hand of the Skilled (S+), is activated.]
Eui-jae’s hands, wearing plastic gloves, moved nimbly and applied the dye to every corner of his hair. His unique trait, ‘Hand of the Skilled,’ was a trait that allowed him to do even things he was doing for the first time skillfully and meticulously.
Not only could he handle weapons he was using for the first time skillfully, but with this trait, he could cook Hangover Soup that he was trying to cook for the first time as if he were The Artisan who had been walking the path of Hangover Soup for 30 years. It was all thanks to Hand of the Skilled that Eui-jae was able to run the Hanover Soup Restaurant alone without Grandmother.
It was the best trait that everyone would covet, but Cha Eui-jae, the owner, was using it to dye his hair faster and more neatly. It was a sight that would make others shed tears of blood.
Eui-jae put down the comb and looked at his face in the mirror. He smiled proudly as he looked at the dye that was evenly applied without any missing spots. Perfect.
‘If I can’t work at the Hanover Soup Restaurant… should I work as a hairdresser?’
Eui-jae, who had come up with a new career path following zombie simultaneous interpretation, hummed a pleasant tune. Whatever it was, thanks to his excellent trait, he had many ways to make a living even if he didn’t work as a Hunter. Eui-jae took off the gloves covered in dye and checked the time on his phone. He had to leave the dye on for the next 30 minutes.
The moment he organized the dye and grabbed the bathroom doorknob, his phone vibrated twice briefly.
Ha-eun: Uncle
Ha-eun: theres a weird person at the door
‘…A weird person?’
Ha-eun is the granddaughter of the Hanover Soup Restaurant, a Hunter-certified restaurant. She grew up seeing all kinds of Hunters, so her threshold for weirdness was high, and she wouldn’t attach the adjective ‘weird’ unless someone was really weird.
In other words, if Ha-eun said someone was weird… it meant they weren’t a human being within the bounds of common sense. Eui-jae’s face hardened. A strange energy was swirling nearby.
Eui-jae used the skill to eliminate his presence and carefully opened the door. And he only poked his head out to check the entrance of the Hanover Soup Restaurant.
A wretched man with his head bowed was standing close to the door. Hunched shoulders, trembling body, muttering incomprehensible words, and biting his nails. The man intermittently banged his head against the glass.
Eui-jae found the man’s appearance… strangely familiar. Eui-jae frowned and rummaged through his memories. Where had he seen him before? The wheezing breath and the aura that didn’t seem human.
“Sorry. This crazy brat doesn’t know anything. His brain is fried from drugs.”
Ah.
The strange Gas mask, the guy who attacked with thorns the day he met Lee Sa-young! The moment he realized, Eui-jae ran out of the bathroom and shouted loudly.
“Park Ha-eun, lock the door as soon as Uncle goes out!”
And without hesitation, he ran out the door and delivered a flying kick to the man’s face.
Thwack! The man, who had been hit squarely in the face by the kick, rolled away and was buried in a pile of garbage. Eui-jae grabbed the broom he had placed in front of the door and strode towards the man. The man was struggling to get up, but he kept grinning. Blood was streaming down his crushed face, but the laughter showed no signs of stopping. Blood soaked the volume-based garbage bag.
“Kheu… Hehe, hit…. Hick!”
“Stop laughing, you crazy brat. The kid can hear you.”
Eui-jae glanced back at the Hanover Soup Restaurant. Fortunately, it was in a position where he couldn’t be seen unless he opened the door and came out. Ha-eun was a smart kid, so she would be hiding well inside on her own. But the sound might be heard, so he had to deal with it as quietly as possible… No.
‘It would be faster to just break his neck.’
He was about to reach out and grab the man’s neck. The man’s body twitched greatly, but Eui-jae could only see the face and neck covered in blood. The grinning man stopped moving for a moment.
And…
Swae-aek!
Black thorns that pierced through the man’s body in various places poured fiercely towards Eui-jae.