The Hunter’s Gonna Lay Low Chapter 2

At a glance, in a corner of an old alley, there was a restaurant operating without even a sign. The only clue as to what kind of place it was, was a “Hangover Soup” sticker attached to the steel sliding door that creaked every time it opened and closed, but the inside of the shop was packed. Just as busy as the interior, there were quite a few people lined up outside the door as well.

The only menu items offered were hangover soup for 15,000 won and alcohol. On the wall near the menu board, faded posters and laminated autographs were haphazardly attached with tape. Of course, they weren’t celebrity autographs but…

Hangover Soup Restaurant – Hunter Bae Wonwoo

It’s a great taffy soup restaurant! – Hunter Yang Hyejin

They were hunter autographs, though.

And there was a black-haired young man skillfully weaving between the densely packed people. Wearing a gray hoodie and a black apron with a soju brand logo, he nimbly navigated the narrow shop even while holding trays full of boiling ttukbaegi pots in both hands.

“Hangover soup is served.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“Owner, two hangover soups for us!”

“Yes.”

“Please add two bowls of rice too.”

“Yes, I’ll bring them right away.”

The young man memorized the seats with a glance and busily headed to the kitchen. Just then, a bald man asked in a booming voice from behind.

“Excuse me, can we get another bottle of soju?”

“No. You’re already on your second bottle.”

“What are you talking about? This is only the first bottle?”

“I saw you put the empty bottle in the inventory earlier. No.”

The young man pointed his index finger next to the simple menu board. The words scrawled in black marker on A4 paper seemed to show the writer’s firmness.

Soju limited to two bottles per table

※To prevent unreasonable customers and fights

The young man collected the empty bowls and ttukbaegi from the next table and went into the kitchen. As the man awkwardly pulled an empty soju bottle out of thin air, the man sitting across from him scolded him as if he knew it would happen.

“See, I told you it wouldn’t work. That part-timer catches exactly how much anyone has drunk like a knife. It’s always two bottles.”

“His intuition is like a ghost, a ghost. I put it in faster than when I catch monsters. Is that kid a hunter?”

He was right.

However, the man across from him shook his head.

“Actually, Team Leader Han asked, and he’s a regular person.”

“What’s that? Is that the trend these days? Hidden-strongman-hunter. Or is he an unregistered one?”

“Come on, the fine for unregistered hunters is huge. And if he were a hunter hiding his strength, he’d be honey-sucking while running dungeons, why would he be crazy enough to work part-time at a hangover soup restaurant?”

The young man’s back flinched for a moment, but the bald man didn’t seem to notice. He nodded in agreement.

“True. The ones hiding their strength are desperate to look cool somehow.”

“Team Leader Han is waiting to recruit that friend if he awakens. Even before awakening, at this level, after awakening he’d be at least B-rank, so…”

Leaving behind the murmuring voices of the hunters, the young man entered the kitchen, poured water into the dishwashing tub, and let out a small laugh. I probably awakened before you did. Bringing in some distant hunter sunbae or whatever…

The young man. Name: Cha Wijae. Possessor of ghost-like dynamic vision that catches empty soju bottles being snuck away, and monstrous strength that can carry several boiling ttukbaegi at once. Even though he was a hunter hiding his strength, there was a reason he settled in this old, worn-out shop instead of honey-sucking while running dungeons.

∞ ∞ ∞

A few months ago, the place where Wijae opened his eyes was some garbage dump. How long had he been unconscious? He blinked his barely-opening eyes for a long while, and his terribly twisted senses began to slowly return.

“Where is this, ugh…!”

As soon as a unpleasant stench hit him, vomit surged up from inside. He hadn’t even eaten anything special, but his thoroughly exhausted body retched continuously like a mad obsessive-compulsive. The world was spinning so much he didn’t have the strength to move a single finger.

From the whitely collapsed ruins, unfamiliar monsters poured out endlessly. Right, he remembers fighting the Basilisk that appeared at the end and driving his sword into its head. And then…

When he barely raised his eyes, he saw a massive black hole situated in the middle of the dark blue night sky. It had appeared as if to bring about the end of this world, but now it was an existence so natural that one couldn’t imagine the sky without it. Commonly known as the Black Hole.

The Black Hole is not visible from inside a Rift. Which meant that he had returned to reality. Once his consciousness was somewhat clear and he grasped the situation, what rushed in next was a physiological need.

“Hungry…”

He needed to eat something. Wijae pushed against the garbage haphazardly piled beneath him and raised his body. Leaning against a dirty wall to catch his breath was brief; having lost all strength from the earlier vomiting, he oozed along the wall like a mollusk, pushing his body forward.

When he forced his stumbling legs to keep walking, the savory smell of meat wafted from somewhere. Wijae instinctively snapped his eyes open and looked around. At the end of an alley over there, a solitary light was shining. Wijae continued to ooze and roll toward it.

The place he reached was some shabby shop without even a sign. Beyond the glass of the steel sliding door, an elderly person was sitting all alone. The grandmother, who had been sitting with her back to the door peeling garlic, slowly turned her head at the presence. Wijae, his face pressed flat against the glass, mumbled.

“Can I… eat… now…?”

Of course, he was in a state where his whole body was a wreck and he was skin and bones, and since he was standing on trembling legs while speaking, it probably sounded like “Ugh… can I ea-eat…” but he had no time to be self-aware. Even seeing a appearance like a homeless person who had barely escaped a psychopath killer, the elderly person, instead of screaming, rose from her seat and opened the door.

“What are you doing standing there, hurry up and come in.”

Warm heat and the smell of meat soup wafted out from inside as if embracing Wijae. Wijae looked down at the owner grandmother with a blank face.

“What’s with that appearance? Did you roll in a dirt field? Did you go to something like a dungeon?”

“Uh… yes.”

The elderly person, clicking her tongue, gestured as if telling him to sit anywhere and disappeared into the kitchen. Wijae awkwardly went and sat at the table in the farthest corner. After a moment, a bowl of rice and milky white bone soup were placed before Wijae.

“Eat up quickly. The hangover soup isn’t ready yet.”

“…”

“If you’re not going to eat, I’ll throw it away.”

Wijae, who had been staring at the rice bowl with a bewildered expression, finally bowed his head and looked at the grandmother again. The elderly person turned around as soon as she finished speaking and went back to her seat to start peeling garlic.

With food before him, his appetite rose incomparably compared to before. As if possessed by something, he hurriedly emptied the bowl. As the milky white bone broth entered his empty stomach, he could feel his body, which had been shivering from cold and hunger, slowly warming up. Wijae thought that perhaps the light he had seen in the alley might have been that grandmother’s halo, and he scooped rice into the soup and ate heartily.

Once his immediate hunger was sated, the overall view of the shop slowly entered Wijae’s eyes. The brown tube TV on the shelf, the faded soju poster and old wall-mounted fan, the large wall calendar distributed by some association. It was an old establishment where the traces of time were fully felt.

How much time had passed since he entered the Rift? Wijae looked at the calendar carefully.

’20… what year?’

He blinked his eyes once widely as if in disbelief. The year written on the wall calendar was 8 years ahead. He rubbed his eyes hard wondering if he had seen wrong, but the printed letters on paper couldn’t change.

Wijae held his breath. The sense of reality he had barely regained was trying to leave home again. While confused, he took another spoonful of the broth pooled in the tilted ttukbaegi bowl. He thought he should at least calm his stomach since his head was dizzy.

Just then, a calm narration flowed from the brown tube TV on the shelf.

—…8 years ago today, a Grade 5 Rift occurred in the West Sea.

…8 years? Wijae swallowed the broth again with a slurp.

—As the Rift suddenly escalated to Grade 1, the government deployed S-rank Hunter J, 14 A-rank Hunters, and 30 B-rank Hunters additionally into the Rift, and the Rift disappeared a week later. However… the hunters dispatched there unfortunately did not return.

On the screen, identification photos of familiar people were listed in a row. People he had desperately searched for while pushing through mountain-like piles of corpses.

Wijae felt a brief pang in one corner of his chest, but he deliberately ignored it and continued watching TV with an indifferent expression. The photos of B-rank and A-rank hunters all passed, and finally the photo of S-rank Hunter J was displayed alone.

—The Awakened Management Agency acknowledged that all hunters who entered the Rift were dead, three months after the Rift’s disappearance.

With those words, the screen changed. Wijae put an empty spoon with no soup into his mouth.

‘All dead?’

Everyone including S-rank Hunter J was dead?

He kept moving his hand, spooning at empty air, without realizing it. On the changed screen, a middle-aged man was now giving a closing comment.

— Song Joheon │ S-rank Awakened │ Samra Guild Master —

—If it weren’t for J, our country would have no future. 8 years ago, we lost a hero in Incheon. J and 44 hunters who bravely entered the Rift. They gave us a future. We have a duty to look forward and move on.

The man with a somber expression spoke solemnly while looking at the screen.

—West Sea Grade 1 Rift 8th Anniversary Memorial Documentary, “To J.” This concludes.

At the bottom of the brown tube, the text “This program was produced with the support of Pado Guild and the Awakened Management Agency” appeared, and the screen went black for a moment. Wijae replayed his memory several times to check if he had heard correctly.

The Awakened Management Agency acknowledged that all hunters who entered the Rift were dead.

8 years ago, we lost a hero in Incheon.

8th Anniversary Memorial Documentary, “To J.”

Is this a dream? If I close my eyes tightly and open them again, will I wake up? But even to him, this place was definitely reality. The Black Hole he had seen earlier, his stomach as filled as the empty ttukbaegi, the spoon that had fallen with a clatter without him realizing—all were proving it.

Wijae couldn’t hide his bewilderment and clutched his head. All hunters dispatched to the Incheon Rift dead—as far as he knew, that was absolutely not true. No, it couldn’t be true.

Because Hunter J, Cha Wijae, was the sole survivor and was right here shoveling soup rice into his mouth!