The SSS-Class Hunter’s Garden Log Chapter 21

“Oh? Hunter Seo Kanghyun! You’re awake!” 

 

The moment Kanghyun regained consciousness, his brow furrowed at the sight of the gray ceiling filling his vision. 

 

It didn’t take long to figure out where this place was.

 

Because as he rolled his eyes, he saw the sign for the Red Moon Guild Yangpyeong Branch hanging on the door.

 

In a cramped office thickly stained with the musty aura of humans who had suffered through overnight shifts for days, Seo Kanghyun barely managed to raise his upper body.

 

His body felt heavy, as if it didn’t belong to him.

 

Fatigue and pain rushed in all at once, requiring time just to catch his breath for a moment.

 

“Hunter Seo Kanghyun, how is your body? We were worried because you wouldn’t wake up.” 

 

Reflexively turning his head, a young-looking Hunter caught his eye.

 

“Why am I here?”

 

The words tumbled out in a raspy voice. 

 

He definitely seemed to have entered the Gangnam Station Gate, but his memory was sparsely cut off after that.

 

Kanghyun rummaged through his inner pocket. The smooth hilt of the dagger touched his hand.

 

He had been poisoned at the same time he pulled this out. It seemed he had collapsed after that.

 

“Damn it.”

 

Kanghyun swept his dry hand over his face.

 

Even setting that aside, why was he here instead of inside the Gate? 

 

Sneaking a glance at such Kanghyun, the young Hunter answered in a voice that trailed off.

 

“We don’t really know what happened either, but the doorbell rang, so we went out and found you asleep inside a handcart.”

 

“…A handcart?”

 

“Yes. You know, you came hugging cherry tomatoes and popcorn tightly in your arms like this.”

 

The Hunter, who had been reenacting the fallen Kanghyun, snapped his mouth shut at the menacing aura.

 

Then he pointed to the handcart carefully enshrined in one corner of the office.

 

A green handcart that looked like it would be used on a farm.

 

Looking at that, a memory suddenly flashed by.

 

Come to think of it, it felt as though someone had carried him out of the Gate after he collapsed. 

 

“Ah.”

 

At that moment, Kanghyun’s expression crumpled menacingly as brown objects fell pitter-patter at his feet.

 

“Right. The garden patch.”

 

Right, he remembered being shoved into the dirt ground thanks to some crazy human.

 

What did that human look like again?

 

They were wearing something like a strange sack over their face…

 

“It was exactly a sack like that.”

 

Absentmindedly looking at the phone video the young Hunter had turned on, Kanghyun muttered coldly.

 

The video showed the entrance of the Gate that had burst a short while ago. 

 

Perhaps because it was taken from beyond the barrier, the image quality was blurry, and the screen was slightly distorted.

 

Kanghyun’s gaze was instantly sucked into the center of the screen.

 

A person wearing overalls, with a fertilizer bag pulled over their head.

 

The person filming appearing in the video was broadcasting in an excited voice.

 

[Everyone, do you see? Over there! That Hunter defeated the Shrieking Bird all alone! Oh my goodness. Has a new S-rank Hunter appeared in South Korea?]

 

“…”

 

Kanghyun recalled the scene he had seen when he briefly opened his eyes in the garden patch.

 

The light of a signboard that had brushed past his blurry vision.

 

The letters that had been exceptionally clear even in the night air.

 

Yangpyeong Convalescent Hospital.

 

The moment his memory reached that point, Kanghyun deliberated no further.

 

He sprang up from his seat.

 

“Uh-uh? Where are you going? You can’t. You haven’t been fully detoxified yet. You need to finish eating this too—.” 

 

The young Hunter hurriedly got up and held out the bag of popcorn.

 

Without even looking at it, Kanghyun shoved the handcart into a subspace opened with a skill, then drew his sword and made a long slash through the air.

 

【SYSTEM】 

<Skill ‘Spatial Slash (S-rank)’ is activated.>

 

CRACK. 

 

As if tearing through a wall by force, a crack formed in the air, and the gap gradually widened.

 

Beyond the open rift, a landscape that looked like a garden patch—completely different from this dreary office—came into brief view. 

 

Towards the Hunter who was blankly admiring Kanghyun’s skill, Kanghyun handed a Haechi Guild business card.

 

“If you come with this, Haechi will compensate you for the debt I owe you today.”

 

With those final words, Kanghyun walked into the gap.

 

Then, though he had only taken a single step, the scenery had already changed to the empty lot in front of the hospital.

 

After looking around briefly, Kanghyun soon found the garden patch from his memory behind the hospital.

 

And he discovered a box of cherry tomatoes stacked on one side of that garden.

 

The leaflet tucked into the box lid was familiar.

 

It was the leaflet Yoon Taegyeom had once waved around while praising the cherry tomatoes he bought on the Hunter Exchange.

 

“Well, this is an unexpected harvest.” 

 

It seemed the seller on the Hunter Exchange, about whom there was no news no matter how much Yoon Taegyeom searched, was the owner of this garden patch.

 

Just as Kanghyun was about to look around the garden, a circle with a blue light formed in the air, and something dropped right out of it.

 

“Ouch, ouch.” 

 

At the groaning sound ringing through the dark garden, Kanghyun reflexively held his breath.

 

It was a very familiar blue light.

 

‘1’.

 

Because it was that blue light his sunbae left behind every time she used a skill.

 

Could it be? 

 

Kanghyun approached the figure who was grumbling and getting up unconsciously. 

 

A faint trace of anticipation swelled within him.

 

However, as soon as the other person took off and threw away the sack they were wearing on their head, that fleeting anticipation was swept away like a wave.

 

The person with light brown bobbed hair swaying below her ears was the F-rank Hunter he had seen in the simulation room the other day.

 

‘It’s not Sunbae.’

 

The strength drained from Kanghyun’s fingertips.

 

The tension that had tightly wound up snapped in an instant. 

 

But at the same time, a sense of déjà vu still remained.

 

An inexplicable sense of déjà vu that wouldn’t fade even after confirming she wasn’t his sunbae.

 

Back to the present.

 

A brief silence flowed in the garden patch.

 

Coming out of his thoughts, Kanghyun was quietly looking down at Yoon Hana standing before his eyes.

 

Normally, it would be right to take Hana to the Hunter Association as she was.

 

Because the abnormal biological reaction detected in the gate that the higher-ups were talking about was undoubtedly due to the plants grown in the gate garden.

 

But Kanghyun had no intention of doing so.

 

‘There’s no reason to do something that would benefit those old geezers.’

 

Then what should he do with Yoon Hana.

 

It was when calculations were running in Kanghyun’s head.

 

“…?”

 

Suddenly, two small hands smack grabbed both of Kanghyun’s cheeks.

 

At the unexpected force, Kanghyun’s upper body tilted straight forward.

 

“Wait—.”

 

Losing his balance, Kanghyun ended up dropping down with a thud, taking a posture with one knee kneeling on the garden floor.

 

Recognizing the situation a beat late, Kanghyun widened his eyes. 

 

With all signs of being intimidated completely gone, Yoon Hana was pressing Kanghyun’s cheeks with a face full of scowls.

 

“Seo Kanghyun-ssi. You didn’t finish the popcorn, did you?”

 

…What did you say?

 

Before Kanghyun could answer, Hana was already examining his face here and there.

 

She pressed under his eyes and slightly tilted his head to change the angle, checking his condition.

 

“I thought you were fine…”

 

Hana clicked her tongue.

 

“Looking at it up close, your condition is still not great.”

 

At the same time as those words, Hana quickly rummaged through her back pocket.

 

Taking out a few popcorn kernels she had kept in the bag earlier, she popped them straight into Kanghyun’s mouth without hesitation.

 

“Here, eat this first.”

 

Kanghyun reflexively closed his mouth.

 

He hadn’t said anything, but the poisoning symptoms were just rearing their head again.

 

He thought he had hidden it quite well. How on earth did Yoon Hana notice his condition?

 

Furthermore, as the savory taste spread from his mouth down his esophagus into his body, blood flowed to his fingertips that had been growing cold like a lie, and breathing was becoming easier.

 

At a loss for words for a moment, Kanghyun merely blinked.

 

And only then did he realize.

 

That this woman was treating him right now.

 

“Is this a bribe? Asking me to overlook the violations Yoon Hana-ssi committed?”

 

“Are you going to turn a blind eye? Then I’d like to consider it a bribe.”

 

Was she bold, or was she just naive? 

 

Feeling that there was no need to be on edge against Hana’s triviality, Kanghyun relaxed his body.

 

“…Where on earth do you keep pulling all these different things from?” 

 

Hana shrugged her shoulders as if it were nothing.

 

“This outfit has quite a few more pockets than it looks.”

 

The corner of Kanghyun’s mouth twitched ever so slightly. 

 

After a moment of silence, he threw out a question that suddenly came to mind.

 

“The seller who posted those cherry tomatoes on the Hunter Exchange—that’s you, isn’t it?”