The Hunter’s Gonna Lay Low

As far as I could tell, there was a restaurant tucked away in a corner of an old alley with no signage. The only clue as to what this place was the ‘Haejang-guk’ sticker on the iron sliding door that squeaked when it opened and closed, but the place was packed. The queue outside the door was just as long as the bustling interior.

The only menu items on offer are haejang-guk and alcoholic beverages, both priced at 10,000 won. On the wall near the menu board were faded posters and autograph sheets, crudely taped together. Of course, it’s not a celebrity autograph…

Haejang-guk Restaurant ᅳHunter Bae Won-woo

It’s a great place to eat! ᅳHunter Yang Hye-jin

It was Hunter’s autograph.

And then there was the dark-haired young man who deftly passed through the densely packed crowd. Dressed in a grey hoodie and a black front skirt emblazoned with the logo of a soju brand, he nimbly maneuvered through the narrow shop, even while carrying a tray full of boiling water in each hand.

“Your haejang-guk is ready.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Boss, we’ll have two haejang-guk!”

“Yes.”

“And two gonggimbap, please.”

“Yes, I’ll have them right away.”

The young man memorised the order with a wave of his hand and bustled off to the kitchen, when a dark-haired man called out from behind him in a booming voice.

“Excuse me, can we have extra soju?”

“No, you’re on your second bottle of soju.”

“What do you mean, I only bought one bottle?”

“I saw you put it in the empty bottle inventory earlier, no.”

The young man pointed his forefinger to the side of the short menu. The words, scrawled in black magic on an A4 sheet of paper, seemed to show the author’s determination.

Limit two bottles of soju per table

To prevent arguments and fights

The young man collected the empty bowls and pots from the next table and went into the kitchen. When he casually pulled an empty soju bottle out of thin air, the man sitting across from him said he knew it.

“See, I told you, no. That part-timer knows exactly how much he drank. Two bottles, no questions asked.”

“You’ve got a good eye, ghost. You’re quicker than I am at catching monsters. The part-timer kid is a hunter?”

That’s right.

But the man across from me shook his head.

“No, but one of the team leaders asked, and he said it was a normal person.”

“Well, that’s it. It’s trendy these days. I can’t wait to see how strong he is. You know, the unregistered?”

“Aye, how much strong for being unregistered, and if you’re a hunter with hidden powers, do you think you’re going to go around dungeons sucking honey and working a part-time job at a haejang-guk?”

The young man’s back twitched for a moment, but the dark-haired man didn’t seem to see it. He nodded in agreement.

“No way. Those who hide their power are crazy to take care of themselves somehow.”

“Team leader Han is trying to bring him back when he awakens. If he’s this good before he wakes up, he’ll be at least a B after awakens…”

The young man walked into the kitchen from the din of the hunters and smirked as he poured water into the dishwasher. I’ll bet I awakens before you did. Rather than bringing in some cranky hunter senior, I’d rather….

Young man. Name Cha Ui-jae. Possessed of the fuselage vision to snatch empty soju bottles like ghosts and the strength to carry several boiling pots at once. Despite being a hunter with hidden powers, there was a reason he’d settled down in this dilapidated old shop instead of sucking the honey of dungeons.

A few months ago, Ui-jae woke up in a garbage dump. He blinked his eyes for a long time, his mangled senses starting to come back to him.

“Where am I, ewww…!”

An unpleasant stench hit me, followed by a gurgle of gastric juices. I hadn’t eaten anything in particular, but my exhausted body was gulping down my stomach one after another like a crazy colic patient. The world was spinning, and I had no strength to lift a finger.

I remember fighting the last basilisk and plunging my sword into its head, but that was about it. And then….

I looked up and saw a giant black hole in the middle of the inky night sky. An entity that appeared as if it would bring about the end of the world but has now become so commonplace that we can’t imagine a sky without it. A black hole.

The black hole was invisible through the crack. That meant he was back in reality. Once his consciousness was somewhat clearer and he had a sense of the situation, the next thing he felt was a physiological need.

“I’m hungry….”

I need to eat something. Ui-jae pulled himself up by the rubbish that was piled haphazardly beneath him. Leaning against the dirty wall, he took a moment to catch his breath, and then, sapped of strength by the vomit from earlier, he pushed himself forward, sliding over the wall like a mollusk.

As he continued to walk, holding on to his wobbly legs, the smell of meat wafted in from somewhere. Ui-jae’s eyes flashed open instinctively, scanning his surroundings. There was a lone glint of light at the end of the alley. Ui-jae continued to trudge towards it.

He came to a ramshackle shop with no signage. Behind the glass of the iron sliding door, an old woman sat in an odokani. Sitting with her back to the door, an old woman peeled garlic and turned her head lazily in imitation. Ui-jae leaned his face against the glass and mumbled.
(Note: 오도카니 (odokani) = (of a person of small size or height) while standing or sitting, usually alone, as if lost in thought)

“Now… meal… Can I…?”

Of course, he was soaked to the skin, and he was standing on wobbly legs, so the way he said it sounded like, “This… I’m eating…” Instead of shouting at me, the old woman stood up and held the door open for me, even though I looked like a homeless man who had just barely escaped from a psychopathic killer.

“What’s the use of standing there if you’re not coming in.”

Warmth and the smell of meat soup wafted out from inside, enveloping Ui-jae. Ui-jae looked down at the old woman with a dumbfounded expression.

“You look like shit. Where did you roll in the dirt? Did you go to a dungeon or something?”

“Eh….”

Dragging his tongue, the old woman gestured for him to sit anywhere and disappeared into the kitchen. Ui-jae sat down at a table in the far corner of the mess hall. A moment later, a bowl of fried rice and immaculate gomguk was placed in front of him.
(Note: Gomguk (곰국) = beef bone soup)

“Oh, my. Haejang-guk is still a long way off.”

“…….’

“If you don’t eat it, throw it away.”

Ui-jae looked at the bowl of rice with a puzzled expression, then bowed his head and looked at the grandmother again. The old woman turned away before he could finish speaking and went back to her seat on the road and began peeling garlic.

With the food in front of him, his appetite was incomparably greater than before. He emptied his bowl as if possessed by something. As the clear bone broth entered his stomach, he felt his body, which had been shivering with cold and hunger, slowly warming up. Ui-jae thought that maybe the light he saw in the alley was the old woman’s halo, and she scooped up the rice and rolled it into the soup.

After quenching his immediate appetite, Ui-jae’s eyes slowly took in the view of the shop. A brown tube TV on a shelf, a faded soju poster, old wall-mounted fans, and a large wall calendar given away by a union somewhere. It was an old shop that showed signs of age.

How much time had passed since he entered the rift? Ui-jae glanced at the calendar.

’20… what year?’

He squinted once in disbelief. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief, wondering if he was looking at the wrong year, but the words printed on the paper didn’t change.

He held his breath. His barely regained sense of reality was trying to get him out of the house again. He scooped up another bowl of soup from the tilted teapot, confused. His head was spinning, so he thought he might as well calm it down.

Just then, a soothing narration came from the brown tube TV on the shelf.

-…8 years ago today, there was a Grade 5 crack in the West Sea.

…8 years? Euijae swallowed the soup once again.

-When the rift was suddenly upgraded to Grade 1, the government sent S-class Hunter J, 14 more A-class Hunters, and 30 more B-class Hunters into the rift, and the rift dissipated a week later… but… the hunters sent there never returned.

The screen flashed a series of photographs of familiar faces, the ones he had been searching for as he sifted through the mountain of corpses.

Ui-jae felt a pang in the pit of his stomach, but he shrugged it off and continued to watch the TV with an impassive expression. Pictures of the B and A-level Hunters flashed past, until finally, a picture of S-level Hunter J, wearing a black mask that covered his entire face, appeared alone.

-The Awakeners Administration has admitted that three months after the rift’s disappearance, all of the hunters who entered the rift have died.

With those words, the screen changed. Ui-jae shoved an empty spoon of soup into his mouth.

‘All dead?’

Everyone was dead, including S-class Hunter J?

He continued spooning into thin air, his hands moving without realising it. On the next screen, a middle-aged man appeared, giving closing remarks.

– Song Jo-heon | Class S Awakener | Samra Guild Leader –

-Without J, our country would have no future. Eight years ago, we lost a hero in Incheon. J and the 44 Hunters who bravely entered the rift. They gave us a future. We have an obligation to look ahead and move forward.

The grim-faced man looked at the screen and spoke solemnly.

– [To J], a memorial documentary for the 8th anniversary of the West Sea First Grade Rift. This is the end of the programme.

The screen went black for a moment as the words ‘This programme was produced with the support of the Wave Guild and the Awakening Bureau’ appeared at the bottom of the brown tube. For the umpteenth time, Ui-jae checked his memory to make sure he had heard correctly.

-The hunters who entered the rift have all been declared dead.

-Eight years ago, we lost a hero in Incheon.

-The 8th anniversary memorial documentary, [To J].

Is this a dream? Will I wake up if I close my eyes again? But this place felt real to him. The black hole he’d seen earlier had filled up to the point where his stomach was as full as an empty pot, as evidenced by the spoon he’d dropped with a clatter.

Ui-jae grabbed his head, unable to hide his disbelief. All the hunters dispacthed to the Western Rift were dead, and as far as he knew, that was absolutely not true. No, it couldn’t be true.

Because Hunter J, Cha Ui-jae, was the only one alive, scooping up soup right here and now!