Chapter 17 – Butterfly Effect

May 17th, 2023

It’s after business hours and the restaurant is empty. Ui-jae is sitting on a neatly wiped table, staring intently at his mobile phone. On the screen, a thread of Knowledge ON questions and answers with multiple responses and comments was popping up.

“If the hunter is a well-known hunter and the evidence is strong, the bureau will come directly.”

Ui-jae slumped down on the table. Damn it, Korean officials were working too hard. If he reported Lee Sa-young for obstruction of business, he wouldn’t be surprised if the director of the Awakening Management Bureau itself showed up.

His face crumpled into a grimace, and he stroked his fingertips down the screen. The ramblings beneath the kind words he’d just read were mostly unrealistic. What? You want me to tell you his first name? I’m sorry, but that bastard could cut Korea in half if he wants it.

That’s what you get for being number one. His every move is met with a constant battle between detractors and defenders. Ui-jae has been there and done that before. No matter how bad he was, he wasn’t going to start a volcanic eruption on the internet just to make it easier on himself.

Mana stone recorders were too expensive, and interviews were something you couldn’t do without going crazy. As he scrolled down, he involuntarily banged his head on the table. The sound startled him and he checked the table, but luckily it wasn’t cracked. After rubbing his forehead furiously with his hand, he put his mobile phone back down.

‘I’m stuck….’

Cha Ui-jae’s anguish is not for any other reason…

It’s all because of a nasty bastard who bursts into the quiet life of a part-time haejang-guk house.

The Haejang-guk house had a reputation as a hunter’s restaurant, so there were quite a few people who paid in advance. There were many hunters who didn’t bother to carry their cards, and it was not uncommon for them to run out of the restaurant without paying, let alone putting down their spoon.

When Ui-jae was first learning the trade, he was given the responsibility of taking over the prepayment books, so prepayment was no big deal, but Ui-jae swears, Sa-young was the first crazy person to come in and offer to pay 15 million won in advance since the shop opened. No, you mean 15 million is the name of your dog?

In the end, Cha Ui-jae glared at Bae Won-woo, who had come in with a useless hump, and lost what little life he had left.

‘Stop this crazy bastard.’

That’s roughly what he meant.

However, Bae Won-woo, who jumped about 0.5cm from the spot, stopped Lee Sa-young with sharp eyes like an updated artificial intelligence.

“Hurry up and pay up and get back to the guild. You said you’re fucking busy.”

“I’m not really busy.”

“You said you had to go to the bureau office. Weren’t you supposed to meet with Jung-bin?”

“We can postpone it.”

Lee Sa-young was nonchalant in the face of a meeting with the government, something most people would never want to do in their lives. Bae Won-woo didn’t think it would work, so he changed tactics and spoke selflessly.

”Hey, exchange my armour for the 15 million yuan upfront. I heard there’s an auction for Hongye Castle equipment in Songdo.”

“How can you buy equipment for only 15 million? Are you a beggar?”

Wow… What a bastard.

Every word that comes out of that hateful mouth was art. It was clear that not only Ui-jae but also all the hunters who heard the conversation on the spot thought the same. May Lee Sa-young’s card melt like a precious 6,900 won ladle that died heroically that night… That’s when Ui-jae thought about it and refused to pick up the card in front of him.

Bae Won-woo stretched out his right hand and shouted valiantly.

“…Five hundred!”

“Huh?”

“Just five million. I’ll come to the company dinner often with my team members. Fifteen million is too much.”

“Hmm.”

“If it’s fifteen million, you’ll have to eat heajang-guk three meals a days for 333 days!”

I’m sure I can eat enough, you’re already doing it, thought Lee Sa-young, who was looking at Bae Won-woo in disbelief, then glanced at Ui-jae. When their eyes met, Ui-jae smiled a cold, socially awkward part-timer smile. Pay quickly and get lost. Something like that.

After pretending to consider for a moment, Sa-young soon nodded.

“Well, okay….”

He plunged the card into the calculator, locked eyes with Ui-jae, and added.

“Let me know when it run outs, and I’ll prepay you again.”

Please fuck off.

As if to pay for ruining the day’s business, Lee Sa-young pay off the five million won advance payment and left the restaurant more easily than he expected. It was a boring farewell compared to the intense meeting. He waited all night in the side room with a ladle, just in case. If he saw a single hair on his head, he was going to kill him.

Luckily or unluckily, he didn’t have the misfortune to come back in the middle of the night. Instead,

“Yup, it’s hot.”

“Sorry, what?”

“The haejang-guk is hot.”

“Yeah, right.”

From that day on, they started coming and eating haejang-guk as if it were a stamp of attendance!

Ignoring what Bae Won-woo was whispering through clenched teeth, Lee Sa-young pulled a set of disposable cutlery out of thin air as he listened to Ui-jae’s equally clenched teeth. This bastard started carrying his own personal cutlery, saying that he couldn’t waste money on cutlery from the prepaid amount. I guess he couldn’t take it anymore? Bastard. Do you have any inventory left?

Okay, let’s just say I conceded a hundred times and had a spare pair of disposable cutlery. You could have flavoured your haejang-guk with it, you know.

But I couldn’t stand the fact that the tables around him would empty out whenever Lee Sa-young appeared. The hunters, famous for their needlessly strong egos and refusal to listen to anyone else, were practicing distancing so diligently when no one asked them to! Ui-jae laughed in disbelief.

‘Fuck, this should be an obvious business interruption.’

The Haejang-guk house’s pride was its high turnover rate and low prices, but when Lee Sa-young showed up, it was a disaster. Not only did the turnover rate plummet, but so did the sales. So far, thanks to the heavy haejang-guk maniacs… At this rate, he was about to lose even his regular customers.

Thanks to this, Ui-jae had recently been looking up a lot of things on the portal site, such as the Hunter Crime Reporting Act, and the Awakeners Special Act, and finally came to his conclusion.

‘In order to solve this… I’m either going to have to become a hunter again, or I’m going to have money!’

I know this is a bit of a radicalisation, but Ui-jae had his reasons.

In order to publicize Lee Sa-young’s behaviour, he need hard evidence. Vague testimonies are not enough, as they could backfire by accusing Korea’s number one ranked hunter of smearing him.

The most obvious way to do this is to release a recording of his atrocities. However, as a KnowledgeON respondent said, a regular recorder can’t even ‘sue’ the collected evidence against an S-class hunter. An S-rank hunter can easily detect and destroy recorders and cameras.

That means you’ll need an indestructible, dungeon byproduct, or undetectable recorder… Actually, those items are hard to come by,

‘Bargain.’

I didn’t really realise this when I was Hunter J, but dungeon byproduct items are incredibly expensive. Cha Ui-jae, a part-time worker at a humble Haejang-guk house, couldn’t buy them even if he saved his entire life!

He didn’t ask for much in salary, just a small portion of the shop’s profits, which was more than enough for his needs. He has nowhere to go but home and a few clean clothes and a pair of sneakers to keep him going, and he wouldn’t have to worry about any of this if Lee Sa-young hadn’t come into his life in the second act.

…Should I register as a hunter?

All he has to do is go to the Awakening Centre, have my powers measured, and get a rating… What if the data on J that he doesn’t know about remains intact? What if he somehow manages to get to the centre, but he loses control of his powers? What if he hit the weakest possible punch and the meter still shatters?

At that moment, the quiet life crosses the Jordan River. The only good thing was that there was no Awakening Management Bureau when he awakened, and when he went through the registration process afterwards, he was given the J privilege, so he didn’t have to fake an ID.

“If it wasn’t for that bastard Lee Sa-young….”

Lately, Ui-jae had been vaguely understanding why the other hunters didn’t want to go near him. He was a snake. A snake that slithers around its prey and slowly tightens its grip.

He could have blackmailed him outright about what happened that night, but instead, he kept coming back to the shop, subtly pressuring him. For some reason, Lee Sa-young hadn’t asked Ui-jae’s name since his first visit to Haejang-guk house. He doesn’t know if he’s already known his identity or not.

His current behaviour was akin to poking a finger into the still water. Even if there’s no big blow, it’s still enough to stir up the water. Even if there wasn’t a big blow, there was something unpleasant about constantly reminding yourself of it…

It’s unpleasant.

He felt like an animal whose territory had been violated. Staring off into space with a frown on his face, he suddenly reached into his inventory.

The inventory was filled with empty potion bottles. All of them had been used in the Incheon Rift. The black longsword from the Rift, the Fang of the Basilisk. Ui-jae glared at the Fang of the Basilisk, then turned his attention elsewhere. Something glinted among the rows of potion bottles.

A golden gem the size of half a thumb.

It was a mana stone.

In the past, he didn’t have anywhere to use or sell it, so he kept it in his inventory or somewhere in the corner of his house, but nowadays, there are a lot of magic stones here and there. From what the regulars at Haejang-guk house said, there seemed to be quite a few equipment to process magic stones.

“…Should I sell one?”

If he sells this, he can probably buy a pretty good recorder, right?

Ui-jae sneakily took out a magic stone from his inventory and began to polish it with his apron.