The Hunter’s Gonna Lay Low

Meanwhile, in a narrow alleyway near the house, two men in identical long puffers entered. The one with the walkie-talkie muttered.

“I think this is the target house? But there’s not much movement.”

“What, Mr. Min-ki warned us so much…. for something like that? Are you scared? Didn’t he just go to bed?”

The man sitting on the lid of the garbage can, chewing gum vigorously, curled up. The streetlight spilled over his back, revealing the back of his long puffer jacket, the words “PADO” written in white letters.

“Dude, it’s cold. Let’s give it another half hour… and if he doesn’t move, let’s return.”

“Okay.”

“Pick up some taiyaki on the way.”

“Okay. Whew, this is extra work for nothing.”

“It is.”

The last response was a voice they had never heard before. Before the two embarrassed men could react, a plastic was whipped over their heads.

Puk! Something heavy hit them in the stomach. The man with the walkie-talkie went down with a thud. He broke out in a cold sweat with each kick. Fuck… But the pain was so intense that he couldn’t even struggle. An unfamiliar voice muttered.

“This is enough….”

“Keuk, wh, who….”

“Oh, sorry.”

This time, a strong pain hit him in the back of his head. The unfamiliar voice faded in and out of his mind.

“I hit him too softly.”

‘Fuxk, you said I only needed to monitor….’

You can’t hit me one more time just because you hit me lightly. I don’t need such kindness. The man fainted with one last glance at that thought.

“…Are they good?”

Ui-jae checked the condition of the two fallen men. Pulse… Beating well. Breathing… They’re breathing well, judging by the way the outside of the coat is moving up and down. Confirming that they’re properly stunned, Ui-jae removes the ‘Family of Deliveries’ plastic that he’d put on them before the crime.

I thought I could hit them as lightly as possible, but they were stronger than I thought they are after being awakened, so I had to give them another punch. Ui-jae froze as he crouched next to the men.

“I’m sorry. I’ll go through your wallet.”

He turned to the men, who couldn’t hear him, and dug into his long-padded pocket. Luckily, without much effort, he found his wallet in the first padded pocket. Does he have a business card? He rifled through the contents and smiled. There it is.

Pado Guild Combat Support Team 1

Rank B Woo Chang-hyuk

‘Pado Guild….?’

The name ‘PADO’ was also written on the men’s long padded coats, so he knew it wasn’t a fake business card. It was a familiar name that had come out of the mouths of Haejang-guk’s regular hunters many times.

Ui-jae first put the wallet back in the pocket and then put the business card on the floor. Then he took a ballpoint pen from his apron pocket,

Click. He scribbled with his left hand.

If you touch them, you’ll lose

Where can I put it so they can see it right away? After looking around, Ui-jae decided to just put it in the man’s hand. He leaned the two stunned men against the wall in a friendly manner and then walked away.

When he got back to the store, the old clock was already showing 11:45.

“Oh, I’m more rushed than I thought.”

With all the unexpected customers coming in, he had to be ready by opening time. Luckily for him, staying up all night wasn’t a problem. After putting on a sanitary hat and mask, he suddenly looked down at the apron he was wearing.

Like CherX, the logo showed off its white presence in the center. Naturally, Lee Sa-young’s rude appearance came to mind.

“I saw it, the apron, just like CherX.”

“And a ladle.”

Damn. Ui-jae nervously took off his apron like CherX. Instead, he pulled out an apron with a cute toad on it, put it on, and slapped both of his cheeks with his palms. It was a rush to get the store ready for opening. He washed his hands three times in quick succession, then drained the blood from the meat he had soaked.

As he mechanically went about his familiar tasks, all of his thoughts turned to Lee Sa-young, whose name had suddenly come to him in waves. Why had he bothered to give him his name? An assurance that they would meet again? An invitation to find out more about himself? Either way, he didn’t like it.

Ui-jae shivered and brushed his hair out of his face.

‘For some reason, I feel like I’m losing.’

It was also strange that he’d let him go so easily, even though he’d expected him to stick around. It was like he was confident he could find him wherever he was hiding.

‘Look for me for a hundred days, I’ll find you.’

He’s already put a tail on it once, but it’s the house where Grandma and Ha-eun live. It’s unlikely that a hunter would mess with normal people, so it was best not to go there except when absolutely necessary.

He wouldn’t think I’d be boiling Haejang-guk at Haejang-guk house. Ui-jae poured blood all the way down and shook off the water. The important thing for me now is collecting information. You need to know the enemy so you can find a way to deal with it.

Ui-jae poured fresh water into the pot where he’d dumped the blood and spoke with a precise pronunciation.

“Hi Nexby, search for Lee Sa-young.”

-Searching for Lee Sa-young on the internet.

Soon after, Nexby popped up the search results on my phone’s screen.

“…What?”

His eyes widened and he stared at the screen for a while, mechanically moving his hand. There were so many search results that the scroll bar became infinitesimally small. Who the hell is this guy?

[Korea’s third S-class awakening is born!]

[New No. 1, Lee Sa-young, who is he?]

[ [Chun Soo-jin’s column] Can the new No. 1 fill the J void?]

[Lee Sa-young opens his mouth for the first time after awakening… “PadoGuild will be operated by a small number of elite members”]

No way… he was this famous?

Ui-jae’s eyes scanned through the articles and post titles one by one.

[No. 1, Lee Sa-young, Controversy over Official Attitudes…]

The fact that the little gas masked conceptual bug was an S-class Hunter was no surprise to Ui-jae, as it matched what he felt with his whole body. But the current number one ranked hunter in the country?

‘Why do I have to meet the number one?’

Ui-jae touched his forehead with his wrist instead of his watery palm. Why was he beating up people in the back alleys when he was supposed to be the strongest in Korea?

In the past, Cha Ui-jae would have thought, ‘That bastard is number one, Korea is fucked!’ but now he was so selfish that he didn’t even have time to think about the future of Korea. In fact, eight years ago, Korea was worse off than it is now.

’That’s a lot to live up to.’

I was going to spend the rest of my life quietly boiling haejang-guk. Was it because it wasn’t just a haejang-guk house, but a haejang-guk house with a lot of hunter regulars? Like a salmon swimming backwards through a flowing river, Ui-jae groped his way through his memories toward the source of all evil.

No, who would have thought that there would be so many hunters at this haejang-guk house? Ui-jae had only gone here because he saw the sign on the door of his benefactor’s shop, “Looking for a part-timer’. It was a problem to go visit the grandmother when he wasn’t a part-timer.
(TL/N: ‘식당 이모 구함’ if anyone knows what this mean, you can comment below. Thanks in advance.)

After I started working, it seemed strange that every customer was a hunter, so I searched for it, and there were one or two posts saying that this haejang-guk house was a rumored restaurant among hunters. In hindsight, I should have searched beforehand, but by the time I did, I had already become a godsend and a master of horseshoe serving. After this incident, I made it a habit to look up everything I wanted to eat online.

“I’m so unlucky.”

In fact, it was unfair. He hadn’t expected a place like this, where he had taken a job to hide his power and live a normal life, and he hadn’t imagined that the opponent who had exposed his well-hidden power would be the current number one ranked hunter. Why should the coincidence of being struck by lightning on the road befall only him?

Letting out a deep sigh, Ui-jae took out the meat in time to rinse it with cold water a moment later. His thoughts about Lee Sa-young naturally led him to the events of today. As he thought back over the day, he paused.

‘That thorn guy, and the fact that the number one ranked hunter came to an alley like this to deal with it.’

He grabbed his phone again.

He kept putting keywords like thorns and hedgehogs into the search engine, but he couldn’t find what he was looking for. Clearly, the thorns weren’t the size or shape to be hidden, and they weren’t even turning up similar searches, let alone sightings.

If so, it was one of two things. Either the information was still circulating under the water, or the higher-ups were controlling it.

Either way, it was something Cha Ui-jae was used to. A time when hunters became the power of the nation. If a hunter’s information was deemed to be of national interest, it was not uncommon for everything related to that hunter to be classified as state secrets. You didn’t have to go far to find J himself.

His head spun rapidly.

‘The dangers that exist now are… Lee Sa-young finding me, and the safety of Grandma and Ha-eun being threatened.’

Regarding the latter, it bothered him that the Pado Guild had gotten the address of the grandmother’s and Ha-eun’s house in hopes of finding him. However, the Pado Guild was more famous than he thought, thanks to the name recognition of Guild Leader Lee Sa-young, and with as many eyes as they had, they wouldn’t be able to mess with normal people. He was probably being monitored by the Awakening Management Bureau right now.

‘Well, I did give a warning.’

All that remained was for him to find out where I was. Ui-jae stared at the radish and sighed again. The only good thing about my misfortune was that my mask hid more than half of my face, and I hadn’t given him my name.

Not that he knew… I glanced at the apron like it was some kind of CherX that Ui-jae had hung on the wall. All I had was that damn apron and the ladle I’d used for over five years at Haejang-guk house- a ladle that died a long death at the hands of Lee Sa-young today.

‘There’s a chance he can get information from Ha-eun, but… She’s not related to me, so there’s nothing on paper.’

He didn’t even sign a labor contract, so it would be impossible to trace him through official documents.

But… A nagging feeling of unease settled in the back of my mind. What if… by chance, just by chance… Lee Sa-young came to this Haejang-guk house? Ui-jae squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head as if to dispel the ominous feeling.

“Not likely.”

Ui-jae muttered to himself as he sliced the scallions. Yes, there’s no way he’s going to walk into a Haejang-guk house, a place where people who’ve realized the taste of alcohol in their lives are fascinated by a gas mask-wearing conceptual bug, right? But the cheerful slashing didn’t last long.

‘…I should have killed them instead of stunned them.’

He sighed briefly and looked out into the pitch-black darkness of dawn.

It’s only been a few months since I hid my powers, and already there’s a crisis. Life wasn’t going his way.