The Hunter’s Gonna Lay Low

With a ding, the sliding door opened and someone appeared in the shop, and the atmosphere, which had relaxed a little, froze again. The hunters who had been chewing on their grains of rice immediately stopped masticating, and the one who was nearly dying was barely able to hold it together with mental strength.

Even the gas masks that had come in, hunched over, stood still for a moment, as if taking stock of the situation. There was silence, not even the sound of breathing.

The first of the two to break the silence was the one standing against the door.

“Strange.”

He spat sarcastically, stalking across the hall.

“Why is an official here?”

Jung-bin said calmly.

“I’m here for dinner, of course. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yeah…. You look idle.”

“Haha, not really. Even if Lee Sa-young doesn’t bother, Korean civil servants are always busy.”

Despite the obviously thorny words, Sa-young snorted and went to the corner table and sat down. Hunter, who had been sitting at the table before Sa-young and was slurping down a bowl of haejang-guk, let out a huffing sound, threw the money on the table, and stomped out like a sledgehammer.

Damn, those bastards are kicking all our customers out. As he watched the other hunters’ arses begin to stir as one of them left, he froze in his tracks. As it turned out, the two uninvited guests were having a conversation of their own.

“Anyway, now that I’ve seen you… Lee-ssi, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“…….”

“It’s not something we can talk about in public like this. Could you please get back to me in private?”

“One haejang-guk.”

It was a complete disregard, but Jung-bin was undaunted and continued to speak impatiently.

“I went directly to Pado Guild, but you were absent every day, and when I sent a letter, the guild leader said that he couldn’t confirm it due to his outside schedule. However, I heard that he eats at the Haejang-guk restaurant in the neighborhood, so I came here just in case.”

“A lot.”

“Oh, I’d like some haejang-guk too, please.”

“…….”

Ui-jae, who was taking out a ballpoint pen to write the bill, opened his floundering eyes and glared at the two of them. If you guys are going to fight, go out and fight. Don’t make a part-timer’s back explode in a hunter fight. Ui-jae pressed hard on his temples with the ballpoint pen he was holding. His head ached from the sudden sight in front of him.

Glancing around, Jung-bin finished what he had been saying.

”And the commissioner said I must pay for the last one.”

“…….”

Lee Sa-young, who had been silent the entire time, not responding to Jung-bin’s words, tilted his head this time.

“Oh, and… Wait a minute.”

Jung-bin pulled out a round cotton ball from his inventory. He squeezed it with his thumb, and an opaque membrane formed, hiding the two of them beyond it. The flow of air that had been stagnant earlier opened up at once. The hunters who had been watching the conversation with bated breath let out a collective gasp.

“Wow, they’re even using a spatial separation item. They’re really talking about something important.”

“Oh, just out of curiosity, are you going to hang up here?”

“No, we don’t want to get caught up in this, or we’ll be X. Let’s just eat and get out of here.”

“These two aren’t going to have a fight here, are you?”

“No way, there are regular people here.”

“Lee Sa-young might.”

Don’t say horrible things. Ui-jae narrowed his eyes.

The Jung-bin he knew wasn’t the kind of person who would play games in a place like this, but from what the hunters were saying, nothing was safe as long as Lee Sa-young was involved. The last thing he needed was for Haejang-guk house to be on the news as the place where the number one ranked hunter and the signboards hunter met.

Ui-jae pressed his ballpoint pen firmly in thought. Although spatial separation items were often used to tell secret stories, they had one fatal flaw. An awakened of a higher rank than the item’s rank could easily see through it.

He couldn’t be sure if the item Jung-bin used is around A-rank, but there was no reason to use an S-rank item in a shabby haejang-guk house. When Ui-jae slowly lifted his eyelids, the membrane he’d seen earlier was nowhere to be seen, and he could see Jung-bin and Lee Sa-young clearly.

Bingo. Ui-jae sang a happy tune in his head and sat down on a nearby seat, pretending to be invisible, and began to peel garlic.

“Lee-ssi, you were looking for an unregistered person, weren’t you? In such a hurry that you flipped through the Awakening Management Bureau’s database.”

“…….”

“That unregistered person is supposed to be a powerful person, and he was able to block your attack….”

The unregistered person who blocked Lee Sa-young’s attack. Even though there was no indication of who the subject was, Ui-jae could tell who the subject of this dialogue was. You’re telling me you searched the Awakening Management Bureau’s database just to get me? The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he realized there was a reason he’d let him go so gracefully.

”Have you found him?”

Ui-jae held his breath. For a moment, the violet gaze inside the gas mask seemed to reach beyond Jung-bin’s aura and into his own. Before he could wonder if it was an illusion or confusion, he heard a short reply.

“No.”

“Really?”

Jung-bin’s eyes swept across the face hidden by the gas mask, searching. His attitude was puzzling, and Sa-young set his jaw and asked coldly.

“Don’t you think you should explain the situation before you pry?”

“…….”

“I feel bad for you if you’re just asking for things.”

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. But it wasn’t long before Jung-bin raised his hands. It was a gesture of surrender.

“Okay, I’ll tell you.”

He didn’t make any movements, but you could tell he was listening. Jung-bin took out his mobile phone, flicked it a few times, and then flashed a picture on the screen in his direction.

“You do know that there was an A+ rank mana stone listed on the Tomato Market not long ago, right?”

“If you don’t know about that, you should fold hunter.”

Folding Hunter? Ui-jae wondered, feeling like he’d gotten himself into a tight knot. Maybe he was more famous than he thought.

“You know that Hong Ye-sung is up on Jirisan, locking doors and building equipment, and of course you know that it was you who laid the internet line to Jirisan.”

“Yeah, but?”

“Do you also know that Hong Ye-sung smoked a lot to get the mana stones?”

“Well, of course.”

“To conclude, I believe that the unregistered person you are looking for is the owner of the mana stone.”

Crazy, ghostly bastard. You’re so quick-witted.

Ui-jae calmly put on a blank face and crushed the garlic. Sa-young smiled, his eyes narrowing slightly. Then he spoke in a voice that was actually quite sweet, unlike his earlier sternness.

“That’s a big leap of logic.”

Jung-bin put his mobile phone back in his back pocket and continued.

“Anyone who can obtain this level of gems must be at least a top 100 ranked player, and such people naturally use the Hunter Market. The identities of both the seller and the buyer are guaranteed, so it’s safe to make large transactions.”

“…….”

“If you don’t want to pay the fees and taxes, and I hate to say this as a public servant, but you could sell it on the black market. That way, you don’t have to put it on a public app where the public can see it and make a fuss about it, because there are at least ten ways to do it quietly.”

Lee Sa-young began to drum lazily on the table with his gloved fingers.

“Then why was that mana stone listed on the Tomato Market, and for such a ridiculously low price.”

“…….”

“Probably because the seller doesn’t have a registration and can’t use the Hunter’s Market, so he posted it for sale on the Tomato Market, which means one of two things. A regular person and an amateur unregistered awakener. But the chances of a simple regular person having a stone like that… I’d say close to zero.”

‘Amateur.’ It was a word that struck a chord in the heart of the former number one ranked J. The pace of his pacing increased slightly. With rustling sounds as background music, Sa-young asked.

”So?”

“That narrows it down to one. The owner of the mana stone is unregistered.”

“Aaah….”

“My conclusion is that the only unregistered person who is good enough to obtain a magic stone of that caliber at this time… is the person you’re looking for.”

Jung-bin’s reasoning was pretty accurate. Being a former police officer and having spent some time in the hunter world, he seemed to have a better instinct than before. If he hadn’t listened, he would have been in trouble. Ui-jae felt the need to be more careful with his behavior in the future.

Tap, tap, tap.

The black fingers were still tapping on the table. As if drawn by something, Ui-jae’s gaze travelled to Sa-young’s fingertips. The slow movement of the black fingers as they drew the letters stuck in his mind like slow motion.

Did

you

hear

that?

Ui-jae’s head snapped up and he stared at Sa-young. The hand that had been mechanically peeling garlic fumbled in the air, but he was so startled that he didn’t even have time to think about whether the poker face trait was working.

The expression clearly visible through the gas mask.

Lee Sa-young was smiling.