The Hunter’s Gonna Lay Low

“I want my hyung.”

Their gazes locked and Ui-jae forced the corners of his mouth up for once to smile awkwardly.

What? An unknown person? No one knows of his existence? Ui-jae thought back to the learning cartoons with masked caricatures of himself and the documentaries he’d glimpsed one day. No one was as famous as me, you bastard….

“Someone who is good but belongs nowhere. And someone who is not publicly known. Better if no one knows about it.”

“…….”

“You’re picky, aren’t you?”

Sa-young walked silently, circling slowly around Ui-jae’s side. It was like a snake slithering through the bushes.

“I was about to give up on finding the right person, but then you came along.”

“…….”

”Like fate.”

“Are you a fatalist?”

“I never believed in that X stuff, but I guess I’ll start believing in it now.”

By now, Sa-young was standing directly behind Ui-jae. He bent slightly at the waist.

“I did some research on you.”

A black finger curled around Ui-jae’s shoulder. The owner of the fingers whispered softly.

“The high school you attended was swept away by the rift, as well as your home, and I can’t find anything…. Your parents died on the day of the rift, and you have no other relatives left, so there’s nothing to dig up. If you worked somewhere, you’d have a contract, but there’s no contract, no bank records, and your mobile phone was only activated a few months ago, and I can’t find any records before that.”

“…….”

“You’re not really related to the owner’s grandmother or her nephew, are you? You’re strangers.”

Ui-jae was silent. Sa-young continued unperturbed.

“There was really nothing.”

It’s obvious. During his time as J, Ui-jae was J, not Cha Ui-jae. No wonder there was no trace of the ‘Cha Ui-jae’ Sa-young was looking for. He sighed heavily.

“Originally, I was going to be a good scout, giving you whatever you wanted, but….”

“…..”

“Right now, it seems like this shop is the only thing on your mind.”

The lazy-sounding voice leaned a little closer to his ear. Ui-jae held his breath for a moment.

“Do you want anything?”

What do I want?

There is no one in the world who doesn’t want something.

Even now, when he closes his eyes, he can still hear the desperate screams and wails. Hands clinging to his feet for dear life, the smell of blood on his nostrils, jerking his head up at unexpected moments. He can remember the gnarly sensation of digging through the corpse, trying to find every scrap of flesh and bone.

If he could, he’d pull out the bodies left behind in the cracks, abandoned as they were. He’d hide here as if he’d come back alive and run away, but he meant it. He wanted to send them back to where they belonged. He wanted to fulfil the last duty of a survivor. The place was… so lonely. too lonely.

But he knew it was impossible.

So he could only say that he didn’t want anything.

“Nothing.”

“…Really?”

When Ui-jae replied briefly, Sa-young blinked slowly and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

“Let me show you one, then.”

He pulled a tablet out of thin air and placed it in front of him. On the screen was a photograph of a bespectacled, sensitive-looking man. Sa-young reached over his shoulder as if to wrap his arms around Ui-jae from behind and slowly flipped the photo to the side. The man with grey hair tied low in one long ponytail was wearing a doctor’s coat.

“Do you recognise Nam Woo-jin? He’s an A-rank.”

He remembered seeing him when looking up Lee Sa-young.

-Nam Woo-jin, the sixth ranked librarian in the Republic of Korea. Head of the Seowon Guild. The only A-rank healer in the Republic of Korea. Prior to his awakening, he was an orthopedic surgeon at a university hospital, raising the question of whether his pre-awakening talents affected his awakening ability…

He nodded his head as if he had a vague recollection of him and Sa-young smirked.

“The owner’s grandmother’s leg, why don’t she go to Nam Woo-jin for treatment.”

“What?”

“I heard she have a bad leg.”

From the ability to float two centimeters in place to the ability to lift an entire building. Since the Day of the Rift, there have been as many different abilities as there have been Awakenings, but Awakenings with the skill to heal others have been very rare. During Cha Ui-jae’s time, there was only one B-rank Awakened in the United States.

And the only A-rank healer in Korea, a human being most people would never even meet. Ui-jae laughed briefly in disbelief.

“An A-class healer treating a commoner? SAy something that makes sense.”

“We have a co-operative relationship with the Seowon Guild, so I can ask them to heal one person and he was an orthopedic surgeon before his awakening, so he can do general practice.”

“…….”

“How about that?”

It was a terribly sweet deal. But Cha Ui-jae was not young enough to be intoxicated by the sweetness and not to look around. All these deals and conditions belonged to the periphery, not the essence.

“Lee Sa-young.”

“Yes, hyung.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“…….”

Ui-jae turned his head to meet Sa-young’s violet eyes, which were studying his face as if he were observing him. Instead of averting his gaze, Ui-jae raised the corner of his mouth and smiled.

“Why do you have to strip a person down to the bare bones to investigate them, find a weak spot and beat them and then dangle a carrot in front of them?”

“…….”

“If I turn you down here, it’ll be known all over town that I’m an awakened.”

“…….”

“What do you really want?”

“What….”

Sa-young swept his cold, unsmiling eyes across Ui-jae’s face. The answer came out fairly quickly for someone who’d been twisting and turning all this time.

“I did consider that option.”

“…….”

“But simply threatening you is not the way to go….”

“…….”

“I decided you weren’t the kind of person for whom that would work.”

“Good judgement, then.”

”Thanks for the compliment. Anyway, to answer your question.”

There was a short silence. Sa-young asked in a low voice.

“That guy you beat with the ladle, remember?”

Of course he remembers. When Ui-jae nodded, Sa-young rubbed his index finger across the tablet’s screen and spoke.

“A few years ago, a suspicious drug started making the rounds.”

“…..”

“Of course, normal drugs or narcotics don’t have much effect on the Awakened, but that drug…. had some strange reactions.”

“Like what?”

“Increased aggression, addiction. And…”

A long finger brought up another photo on the screen. A grotesquely twisted body, with jet-black spikes protruding from every inch of it, like a dried-up tree… and something that had once been human. It looked like something he’d seen before.

“Body mutations.”

Suddenly, he remembered Lee Sa-young’s words from the day they first met.

‘Sorry. This bastard doesn’t know anything. His brain is fried.’

The man Lee Sa-young was beating was a drug-addicted awakened and the being in the photograph was more monster than a man. As he studied the unnaturally contorted body in the photograph, he muttered.

“Just a pill and this is what happens?”

“…That’s what bothers me.”

As if in response, Sa-young mumbled along and switched off the tablet screen.

“Anyway, I’m looking for the people who are spraying these drugs, by the way.”

“…….”

“I and my guildmates have already sold our faces too far… If we dig a little deeper, we’ll get our tails cut off.”

The Pado Guild was a small group, but each of its hunters was famous. Their small numbers meant that their every move was bound to be noticed. A fatal handicap if the target of your tracking or scouting was an awakened.

“You can’t just throw anybody in there, they’re either going to kill you or they’re going to be crawling around high on the same stuff.”

‘Someone who’s good but doesn’t belong anywhere. And someone who’s not publicly known. Better if no one knows about it.’

If you’re going to chase someone who is naturally stealthy, you’re going to have to be similarly stealthy. Moreover, the opponent is an awakened with enhanced aggression, so someone with the skills to fight an awakened and win must step forward.

As far as Cha Ui-jae was concerned, there was a good reason for Lee Sa-young’s demands and he was the one who fit the bill. But-

“But why?”

“Huh?”

”Why are you looking for them.”

Why on earth would Lee Sa-young want to find them?

For the awakened? No. To protect Korea, no. To protect the general population, no.

From what he’s seen so far, he’s not the kind of person who would go after them for a cause. Even though they’d only known each other for a short time, he could tell instinctively.

He’s a man driven solely by his own standards. No amount of pride in being number one in South Korea, no amount of accountability, and no amount of special laws for awakened people with the primary goal of protecting the public would motivate him.

“……”

After a moment of silence, he raised his index finger to his lips.

“More than that is a secret.”

“Hey.”

“I’ll tell you when hyung is willing to accept the deal.”

“…….”

“By the way, the drug story is confidential, so don’t tell anyone or Jung-bin will come here again.”

You bastard, didn’t you just shackle me for telling you a secret? Ui-jae’s expression turned cold. On the other hand, a smile returned to Sa-young’s face.

He put the tablet back into his inventory and lightly patted the shoulder of the man who had been so close to him earlier. He laughed out loud, unperturbed by the swatting action. Rising to his feet, he waved his hand in annoyance.

“Go quickly. I have to close.”

“Yeah.”

Lee Sa-young put on his gas mask. He suddenly stuck out his hand. What, are you saying let’s shake hands. Looking at it with suspicious eyes, the fingertips of the black gloves were flicked.

”Mobile phone.”

“Why?”

“Take my number.”

“I don’t need it.”

“My number is expensive.”

“I’ll sell your number to the tomato market.”

“Then you’ll see me a lot.”

Sa-young laughed at my non-threatening threats. Still, he didn’t want to withdraw his hand, so Ui-jae eventually handed over his phone. He figured that even if he refused the deal, he should have one last resort, just in case.

Quickly punching in the number, Sa-young left the store without a second thought. Alone, Ui-jae switched on his contacts app.

His contacts originally had only two numbers stored. The grandmother’s and Ha-eun’s home phone number and Ha-eun’s mobile phone number, because there was no need to save other numbers.

But now it was different. A new name was added under his only contact.

[Sa-young]