KEG 18

“Kim Haeseon has been handed over to the police.”

Baek Yejun had been watching everything unfold. He sent me to the hospital while I was in a hallucinatory state at the right moment and handed Hunter Kim Haeseon over to the Awakeners Crimes Special Investigation Division, which brought the situation to a close.

“Why is the way kids talk these days like this? They speak so aggressively that I can’t tell if they like it or dislike it.”

“Ha Seongho-ssi, you sound like an old man~”

I shook my head as I looked at the comments on the video site.

The strange slang and speech patterns I had never seen before were dizzying, so I gave up on trying to gauge public opinion directly. My head was ringing, I couldn’t tell if it was a side effect of the hallucinations or because the unreadable alien language written in Korean. I raised my hand and massaged between my eyebrows.

“So Kim Haeseon is completely screwed?”

I decided to make the convenient choice of just asking Baek Yejun directly.

“Yes~ she completely failed~”

“So, since she didn’t commit the murder herself, she didn’t get charged [Read on]with aiding and abetting?”

“It was discovered that Hunter Kim Haeseon contributed to Gil Sangwook’s murders by inducing hallucinations in the 8th Hunter and the 9th missing victim. They judged that to be active involvement, so they are classifying her as a co-perpetrator.”

“So, while staying close to the 6th, Gil Sangwook, she induced hallucinations in the 8th Hunter to create an alibi and then dealt with the 9th.”

Baek Yejun smiled.

“We’ll only know the details once the investigation progresses.”

“If we had left her alone, another Gil Sangwook would have emerged.”

“Does this count as catching two people?”

“Hmm~I’m not sure~”

I began to feel uneasy as this man, who usually never boasted about money, started dragging things out.

“What is the problem?”

“I think I’m going to be disciplined by the Association too. It looks [visit our site]like my channel will be suspended soon.”

A problem I’d never even imagined while we were recklessly escalating things suddenly crashed down on me, and my mind went blank.

“A Hunter private retaliation isn’t just a simple crime. If things go wrong, you could end up with a criminal record.”

Baek Yejun added that a Hunter carrying out personal revenge went beyond a simple crime and was considered the unauthorized departure of strategic assets, entailing very severe measures. He also mentioned that the streaming site’s future prospects for maintaining the channel had become uncertain due to uploading content that encouraged acts capable of harming others.

“So you’re fucked?”

“Yeah~”

Seeing Baek Yejun answer so innocent even in this situation made me regret not beating him up a bit more when I was hallucinating.

“Do you have any savings?”

“I have expenses for it, so I don’t have a single penny right now~”

“What about my 2 billion won?”

It was the perfect timing to express regret or pity that things turned out this way, but my true f stolen content eelings just came right out.

At those words, Baek Yejun, whose sensitive laughter bell would ring at the slightest touch, let out a “Pfft!” as he turned his head, and covered his mouth to stifle his laughter.

But I didn’t find it funny at all.

It was serious.

“Do you have any assets that can be converted into cash right now?”

“Hehe, haa, well~”

“If you had money, why didn’t you buy a house, a car, or some gold bars? What did you do?”

“I didn’t have any spare cash because I gave it all to Ha Seongho-ssi~.”

I tried to gauge whether Baek Yejun was being sincere, as his words seemed to be both blaming and teasing.

Then, suddenly, a “Video not found” message appeared on the video of his channel on the phone screen I was holding. Following that, with the message “This channel does not exist,” the channel vanished into thin air in real time.

“Ah, it’s gone. My channel.”

My conscience pricked at the thought that Baek Yejun’s career – maintained by his obsessive “holy knight” persona, where he dressed up like he was at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and brandished a sword he never used whenever entering a gate – had vanished due to a single moment of poor judgment on my part.

No, it wasn’t just a prick; my conscience was butchered. It was beyond being butchered; I even felt that I had to clean up this mess and take full responsibility.

“Hunter Baek Yejun.”

“Yes~”

Normally, I would have been annoyed by that infuriating tone of his, but right now, I didn’t have the luxury of feeling annoyed. A vortex of guilt was swirling inside me, and my reason was being relentlessly beaten.

“I am sorry.”

First, I apologized, albeit belatedly.

I had no idea how I should compensate him. I thought that if I could just take a few good punches and be done with it, I would gladly do so.

“Are you sorry to me?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Besides feeling sorry, what else are you thinking?”

What else am I thinking?

I looked at Baek Yejun, unable to decipher the intention behind the question.

He was looking at me as if I were something fascinating.

“I’m curious because you’re so unpredictable, Ha Seongho.”

What a ridiculous thing to be curious about.

Come to think of it, he’d been interrogating me like some question-mark serial killer from the very beginning. Just when I thought he was done, he’d stare at me with a creepy look, like a lab frog.

“What benefit would you get from knowing my thoughts?”

“I won’t know until I find out.”

I considered ignoring him. After all, I wasn’t living to satisfy Baek Yejun’s curiosity.

“I’m curious about your feelings regarding my channel being taken down and the temporary suspension of my domestic hunter activities, Ha Seongho~”

Fuck, I can’t ignore him.

He’s a real jerk when it comes to getting under people’s skin.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes~?”

“I feel sorry, worried, and at a loss…”

I had already run out of things to say. I couldn’t even think of a plausible idea that would satisfy the other person.

How was I supposed to put into words the feeling of my heart weighing so heavily that I felt like I was going to die from discomfort?

I closed my eyes in frustration.

I tried to organize my thoughts, but I gave up. And I simply defined the feeling I was currently stolen contenthaving toward Baek Yejun as a single emotion.

“You are pitiful.”

I felt sorry for him because it seemed like he would suffer because of me. That was why I was concerned about him. In the end, the core of it must have been pity.

“Why am I pitiful?”

Baek Yejun gave a strange answer to my question.

It sounded like he believed he shouldn’t look pitiful. Was he saying the harm I caused him didn’t even count as harm?

“If one person causes harm to another, do you think they like it?”

Whether the damage was minor or the victim suffered little, that kind of thing didn’t really matter to me. What I wanted was a resolution to the matter and a bit of self-satisfaction.

“I will compensate you to the best of my ability.”

I closed my eyes again. It was my way of saying, “Go ahead and hit me if you want.”

But without laying a hand on me, he simply said:

“You’re not someone who can do anything for me.”

The laughter faded slightly from his voice.

It wasn’t exactly wrong. The situation had simply turned out this way, but Baek Yejun was still Baek Yejun.

However, it was absurd to claim that I couldn’t do anything for Baek Yejun.

“A bastard with nothing can still destroy a channel and kill people.”

I can cause trouble even without having anything.

Having something might be proof of what a person is capable of, but it doesn’t represent everything.

“I could do anything. I might even change anything.”

I didn’t know what that anything would be. It might have no impact on my life, or it might become a huge variable.

At my words, Baek Yejun remained silent for a moment. Then, he spoke in a very low voice.

“Um, I have nowhere to go.”

“…Huh?”

Nowhere to go?

It was possible he didn’t have a penny right now, but could a famous Hunter who was that successful really be like that? I opened my eyes wide in disbelief, and looked at Baek Yejun’s face.

And then I saw the expression on his face, I was left speechless.

“It’s true.”

That successful, famous Hunter wore the face of a lost child.

***

Beep beep beep–beep beep beep–

The first thing I do after waking up to the sound of the alarm is brush my teeth.

Brushing my teeth in the morning, brushing them before meals, brushing them after meals, and brushing them before bed.

Since I was a man of few words and kept my mouth closed for a long time, if my mouth felt sticky, I would feel bad for the rest of the night.

So, even though I was a longtime smoker, my teeth were white and in good condition.

Whoosh–

Before I could even fully open my eyes, I habitually turned on the water at the sink and grabbed a toothbrush and toothpaste when I heard a voice from beside me.

“Hyung, toothpaste for me too.”

I barely managed to peek with one eye open and squeezed the toothpaste I was holding onto his toothbrush.

“That’s too much.”

I grabbed the wrist of the annoying bastard, scraped his toothbrush with mine to remove half the toothpaste, and started brushing.

Scritch scritch.

“Ugh–”

As I was brushing my teeth, the annoying bastard let out a groan this time. I looked over and saw he had dropped his toothbrush on the floor and didn’t know what to do. Seeing toothpaste splattered on the floor and the top of his foot, I crouched down and wiped it off with a tissue.

It hadn’t been that long since I had become a hospital janitor, and I had already developed an occupational disease.

I was lost in thought when I heard laughter from above and looked up.

“Hyung, I think you like pitiful people.”

Baek Yejun smiled brightly, bathed in the morning sunlight.