The Hunter’s Gonna Lay Low

South Korea’s Awakening laws were strict, especially when it came to awakening registration.

If you didn’t go to the center and register as an awakened within a month of your awakening, you were fined at least a billion units. So, while there may have been awakened who hid their rank and power when registering, there were no awakened who didn’t register at all. Korea was such a country.

Lost in thought, Jung-bin rubbed his chin.

“Lee-ssi are you sure that the awakened is a B-rank or higher?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“It blocked my attack.”

“Your attack?”

Sa-young nodded and Jung-bin was quickly convinced.

“If that’s the case, then he’s definitely a B or higher.”

”He even struck a spike that suddenly protruded from the addict’s body.”

“That’s not someone who’s just awakened, so he must be quite comfortable with his abilities.”

Sa-young nodded again, as he was inclined to agree. Then he added briefly.

“With a ladle.”

“What? With a ladle?”

It wasn’t fashionable to wear an apron like ChaX. Lee Sa-young expected his ‘hyung’ to be a part-timer or a shopkeeper’s son somewhere. He said he was older than him, but he still looked to be in his early 20s. He couldn’t afford to pay the fine, so why would he risk all sorts of penalties and not even register?

The sequence of facts didn’t make sense to him. He hadn’t been this irritated when his ‘hyung’s’ captors had returned on a stretcher, business cards in hand. He was confident he’d find him soon enough, and his ability to take out four elite guild members in one fell swoop proved it.

If you touch them, you’ll lose

For the tenth time in a day, Sa-young looked over the crumpled business card’s jagged handwriting. At this point, his patience was wearing thin. Finally, he turned on the microphone that connected him to the secretary’s office.

“Tell Hunter Very Little Miracle to come to the guild leader’s office. ASAP. No, just announce it on air.”

-Hunter Very Little Miracle, real name Hunter Seo Min-ki, please report to the Guild Leader’s office immediately. I repeat, Hunter Very Little Miracle, real name Hunter Seo Min-ki, real name Hunter Seo Min-ki…

Forty minutes before he was due to leave for the day, Sa-young summoned Min-ki to the Guild Leader’s office.

After a while, very small miracle, real name Seo Min-ki, who opened the door of the guild leader’s office, was a haggard face with dark circles down to his chin. He bowed his head grimly.

“You called for me.”

“Why does your face look like that?”

“…Didn’t you call me here to harass me?”

At his words, Lee Sa-young turned a naturally virtuous face.

“Harass you. Are you busy?”

“…Even if I were busy, you’d still call me.”

“I know.”

It was a matter of course. In fact, Seo Min-ki was also guilty of committing a crime, so whenever the guild members asked, ‘Why do you have to plant 240?’ he had a very small conscience. He murmured in a sigh.

”I can do all of that, except for getting into the government databases.”

“Mmm, good.”

Lee Sa-young laughed, as relaxed as a full cat.

“The kid I told you to find last time. What was her name?”

“You mean Park Ha-eun, second grade, second class, Saebyeol Elementary School?”

“Yes, her.”

Sa-young glanced at the business card on the table and clutched it with both hands.

“I think I told you to look into her family connections as well….”

Oh, my God. Min-ki’s face turned pale. He’d been so focused on cracking the awakeners database that he’d forgotten. He hadn’t even managed to crack it, so he hadn’t done anything.

As Min-ki began to tremble, Sa-young spoke coldly.

“Investigate now.”

“…Yes, I’ll go right away.”

After Min-ki stormed out. Sa-young grabbed the business card again. A moment later, the cell phone screen that had been lying beyond his hand fiddling with the crumpled paper flickered to life, revealing an incoming call.

[Seowon Guild Nam Woo-jin]

After recognizing the caller, Sa-young pressed the call button.

“Why.”

-Jung-bin called to say that they had collected the bodies of the addicts. He said there was a report.

“…….”

-First of all, I took it over here, because it’s pretty interesting…. I thought you should come and see for yourself.

Sa-young glanced at his watch. He tossed the crumpled business card into his inventory and stood up.

“Wait for me, I’ll be right there.”

At 2:40 p.m. the same day, Haejang-guk house, with a sign that readied the ingredients, was having the most relaxing time of the day. Ha-eun, who had been sitting at the green table, unable to turn the first page of her study guide for 20 minutes, rolled her eyes and looked up. She pointed to his head with her hand.

“Uncle, your hair is lighter inside.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah. I think you need to dye it.”

Ui-jae glanced at Ha-eun’s workbook. In the space for the answer to question 1, instead of the correct answer, there was a picture of two earthworms sitting side by side on a leaf. Ui-jae set his jaw in a serious line.

“I’m genuinely curious, but is the answer to question 1 earthworms?”

“Yes. And Uncle, you don’t look in the mirror, so I’m telling you on purpose. You should dye your hair.”

“Okay. Thanks for reminding me. I’m going to go look in the mirror, and I want you to undo number one again.”

“Tsk, okay.”

Ha-eun pouted and went back to scribbling in her notebook. Ui-jae got up from his seat and stood in front of the mirror on the wall, lifting his hair to look inside. He wondered if the fluorescent lighting was making him look wrong, but the ash-colored hair he’d covered with black was showing through at the roots. He shakily tugged at the ends of his hair.

‘How long has it been since I dyed it, and it’s already losing color.’

His hair had been ash-colored since the moment he escaped from the rift. He’d periodically dyed it black to make it less conspicuous, but whether it was due to his resilience or some other unknown reason, it returned to its ashen color as soon as he tried to dye it.

‘The cost of hair dye is no joke.’

His hair doesn’t hold color very well, requiring him to use two or three tubes of dye per color, and his coloring cycles are short. He wondered if he dyed his hair more often than celebrities who try to change their image by changing their hair color.

Today, he was planning to have a relatively relaxing afternoon, as he had a lot of materials ready to go. Speaking of which, let’s dye the roots. He untied the straps of his apron.

“Ha-eun, I’ll dye my hair. I’ve put up a sign, so don’t open the door if anyone comes.”

“Even if it’s hanging on the door?”

Occasionally, I’d have hunters clinging to the door asking for a bowl of haejang-guk, even though I’d put up a sign while preparing ingredients. Most of them had just finished a dungeon run and their eyes were glazed over. Ui-jae nodded firmly.

“Yes. Even if they hang on, we mustn’t open it. If you think it’s too much, call Uncle immediately. You’ll do your best to solve the questions. Promise.”

“Yes. Promise.”

Ha-eun replied as if she was listening, but she didn’t look at Ui-jae. Judging from the movement of the pencil, it looked like she was drawing, not writing. It looks like she’s creating rather than solving problems…. Ui-jae laughed and hung his apron on the wall.

He retrieved two squid ink hair dyes from the side room attached to Haejang-guk and headed to the restroom attached to the shop.

[Unique Trait, Skilled Hand (S+) is activated]

His plastic-gloved hands moved nimbly as he applied the hair dye to every inch of his hair. His inherent trait, ‘skilled hand’, is a trait that allows him to perform tasks skillfully and meticulously, even if they are new to him.

In addition to being able to skillfully use a weapon for the first time, this trait allowed him to boil a pot of haejang-guk for the first time like a craftsman who had been making haejang-guk for 30 years. It is also thanks to the skillful hands that Ui-jae is able to run a haejang-guk house by himself without the help of the grandmother.

These were the best qualities that everyone coveted, but the owner, Cha Ui-jae, only used them to dye his hair faster and cleaner. It was a sight that would make others weep.

Ui-jae put down the comb and looked at himself in the mirror. He smiled with pride as he looked at his hair color, which was evenly applied. Perfect.

‘If I can’t work at Haejang-guk house… I’ll work as a hairdresser.’

A pleasant snort escaped his lips as he realized his new career path after zombie simultaneous translation. Whatever it was, there were plenty of ways to make a living without being a hunter, thanks to his great traits. Ui-jae took off his hair dye-stained gloves and checked the time on his phone. He had to stay in the dye for the next 30 minutes.

As he put the dye away and grabbed the bathroom doorknob, his phone vibrated twice briefly.

Ha-eun : Uncle
Ha-eun: There’s a strange person at the door.

‘…Strange person?’

Ha-eun is the granddaughter of Haejang-guk house, a hunter-certified restaurant. She grew up seeing all kinds of hunters, so her threshold for weirdness is high, and she doesn’t label people as weird unless they’re really weird.

In other words, if Ha-eun said it was a strange person… that meant he wasn’t a human being with common sense. Ui-jae stiffened his face. A strange aura was hovering nearby.

<Silent footsteps!>

Ui-jae carefully opened the door after using the skill to dispel the aura and poked his head out to see the entrance to the Haejang-guk house.

A raggedy man with his head bowed deeply was standing against the door. His hunched shoulders and shaking body, muttering unintelligible words and biting his nails. Intermittently, the man banged his head against the glass.

The man’s appearance was… strangely familiar. Ui-jae frowned and searched his memory. Where had he seen him before? The ragged breathing, the inhuman aura.

“I’m sorry. This asshole doesn’t know anything. His brain’s been drugged.”

Ah.

The strange gas mask, the same one that had attacked him with spikes the day he met Lee Sa-young! The moment he realized, Ui-jae rushed out of the bathroom and shouted.

“Park Ha-eun, lock the door as soon as Uncle leaves!”

Without hesitation, he darted out the door and delivered a flying kick to the man’s face.

The kick landed squarely in the man’s face, sending him tumbling to the ground and burying him in a pile of trash. Ui-jae grabbed the broom from the doorway and stalked toward the man. The man was struggling to get up, but he was still giggling. The man’s laughter showed no sign of stopping, even as blood trickled from his crushed face. Blood soaked the pay-as-you-go bag.

“Ugh… Heh, heh, heh…. Hic!”

“Shut up, shit. She can hear you.”

Ui-jae glanced back at the Haejang-guk house. Fortunately, he was out of sight unless he opened the door. Ha-eun is a fragile child, so she’ll hide well inside, but she might hear us, so we need to be as quiet as possible…. No.

‘It’d be quicker to just break his neck.’

He reached out and grabbed the man’s throat. The man’s body jerked violently, but all he could see was a bloodied face and neck. The laughing man stopped moving at once.

And then…

Swaaak!

Black thorns that penetrated throughout the man’s body poured fiercely toward the prosthetic.