Chapter 3

“C-can I use your phone?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Thank you.”

Uijae went to the counter, grasped the old phone, and dialed the direct line to the director general of the Bureau of Awakened, which only he knew. His hands trembled as he pressed each number. Yet...

“The number you have dialed is not in service. After the beep...”

He tried calling again just in case, but the result was the same. Uijae slowly put down the phone. His heart was quiet, as if someone had doused it in ice water. It began to pick up pace until it was racing. He began to sweat.

Have I seriously fallen eight years into the future? Or did I... die?

He was sure of nothing. Perhaps the director general’s number had been changed. Uijae tried to be as positive as possible. He turned and was about to leave the restaurant when he realized an important truth.

He didn’t have a penny to his name. The only belongings he had packed before entering the fissure were things like potions, which were all gone. He had nothing left. He was perfectly empty-handed. He didn’t even have money to pay for his food.

Uijae eyed the old woman self-consciously. “Um,” he spoke. “Grandma.”

“What is it?”

“I... um.”

When Uijae failed to go on and simply rubbed his sleeve, the grandmother stared at him. Then she stood, ambled over to him, and took his wounded hand in her wrinkled one.

“That’s all right.”

“What?”

“Just come back to eat again sometime.”

She had slipped two wrinkled 10,000-won bills into Uijae’s hand. Uijae opened and closed his mouth, not knowing what to say. He bowed his head. The old woman opened a door next to the kitchen and went inside. She emerged again with a blue jacket and a black hat.

“Put these on.”

“No, I’m okay. I’m really okay.”

“If you go out in broad daylight in that state, they’re gonna lock you up. Wear them.”

She was right.

Uijae took off his tattered jacket and discovered a silver watch on his left wrist. He’d had it since he had awakened. This is it! Uijae quickly took it off and gave it to the old woman.

“Grandma, take this.”

“What is it?”

“A watch. This is all I have on me.”

“Enough. I don’t need it.”

“No, please take it. Or you can say I left it with you for safekeeping. I’ll come back for it.”

Uijae pressed the watch into the grandmother’s hands. He tucked the hat low on his forehead, bowed a few times, and left the store. The old woman rushed out after and tried to call him, but he did his best to ignore her as he ran.

After running quite a while, he looked up at the sky. The day was dawning. There was a long line at the bus stop. The road was packed with cars. People walked on the sidewalk with weary faces. Everyone was going on their way.

It was a peaceful sight, but to Uijae, it was unfamiliar.

This South Korea was so different from what he remembered—from what he presumed to be eight years ago. Uijae watched the everyday scene with vacant eyes. But it was all interrupted by a piercing beep.

People began to check their phones. Two boys wearing school uniforms tittered.

“Shit. A gate’s opening in thirty minutes.”

“You think we’ll get to see hunters? If rankers come, we can take a video and upload it to Utube.”

“Yeah. Damn it, I should’ve brought my drone.”

A gate’s opening? Uijae looked around uneasily. Everyone looked so calm despite the alarm about a gate. No one was surprised. They treated gate alarms like an everyday occurrence.

Confused, Uijae stopped a woman passing by. “Excuse me. I’m sorry, but is there a gate opening soon?”

“What? Yes. We just got an emergency alert. Did you not see it?”

“Oh... I see. I forgot my phone at home.”

“Ah, I see. If you look here...”

The woman showed him a message on her phone.

[Department of Fissure Management]

November 14th, 7:42 A.M.

Gate predicted east of Wirye-dong, Songpa-gu, Seoul. Citizens should evacuate to designated shelters. If evacuation is not possible, please contact the Bureau of Awakened.

A gate was a dungeon entrance that opened without warning. Normal dungeons had a designated entrance, but gates appeared at random. If the entrance was not controlled quickly, monsters could pour out.

They can figure out the location and time of gates before they open?

Uijae was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t even twitch.

The woman asked him cautiously, “Um, are you... okay?”

“Oh... Yes. Sorry. Thank you for showing me.”

The woman looked at him with concern, then bowed and left. Uijae, dazed, watched people pass. He started to walk.

He tried his best to ignore the auditory hallucinations he heard between the sounds of cars racing down the road: bones snapping; the piercing of flesh; necks breaking; voices begging for mercy...

The familiar screams juxtaposed the peaceful city landscape. The jarring contrast stopped Uijae in his tracks.

Were their deaths totally meaningless?

The world eight years after J disappeared was so peaceful and perfect. This was what he had hoped for.

The cracked asphalt roads. The buses crushed under monsters’ feet. The collapsed buildings. The roadside trees either engulfed in flames or toppled. People trembling in fear, never knowing when the next monster would appear.

These images were as vivid to him as if he had seen them just yesterday.

Uijae had hoped desperately. He had hoped for a world where people didn’t have to live in fear every day, even if it was a world he didn’t get to see. Now that he was beholding it, he didn’t know what to feel.

What would change if J, who everyone thought was dead, returned?

The moment it was declared, it would probably shatter the peace. They would run at him with bulging eyes. They would ask him what happened in the fissure, why only he had survived, and why it had taken eight years for him to come back.

Their questions would bury him alive.

Uijae slowly wiped his cold sweat away. His stomach was beginning to turn.

He knew he should tell everyone his comrades had died, sacrificing themselves for this world. He remembered their names, faces, and final moments.

But...

“Uijae. You have to remember.”

“The world has changed. You are strong, so everyone is going to try to lean on you. They’re going to want you to save them.”

“But, Uijae, you’re still young...”

“You don’t need to save everyone.”

“It’s okay to run away.”

His aunt’s words flashed in his mind. She had given him that advice with her hands gripping his shoulders.

She had lost her two sons and awakened as a class-B hunter, just like how Uijae had awakened the second he was swept into the fissure and lost his family.

The two of them had also been the only survivors inside the hellish fissure. Though they were not actually aunt and nephew, just the only survivors, they had leaned on each other like family would. She was also the one who had advised him to hide his identity.

I understand what you meant now.

Uijae Cha rubbed his eyes even though they weren’t itchy.

Hunter J was dead. The human Uijae Cha didn’t know anyone. Everyone he knew was dead. Eight years had passed, but twenty-year-old Uijae Cha was still twenty years old. He could still picture his aunt congratulating him on becoming an adult. In this world, he was twenty-eight.

People brushed past him. He had been standing by himself in the crowd for a long time now.

Silently. Alone.

Then...

Uijae decided to run away for the first time.

* * *

A few months later, at the hangover soup restaurant, Uijae had been about to start on the pile of dirty dishes when he was pulled back to the floor by customers’ ceaseless outcries.

“The bill, please!”

“Just a moment.”

Uijae had realized one important truth in the food service industry. He may have changed careers from being a hunter to working part-time at a hangover soup restaurant, but he was unable to hide his abilities completely.

“More kimchi and pickled radish, please!”

“Can we also have more peppers?”

“Yes, I’ll be right there.”

The restaurant had way too many customers. Not just any customers, but hunters who ate quickly and plentifully. Thus, Uijae used bits and pieces of his abilities as an awakened, pretending to be a commoner who was just slightly stronger and more agile than average.

“Hey, our table doesn’t have pepper. Could we borrow some?”

“Oh. Yes, yes.”

“Thank you.”

“If everyone’s done eating, let’s clear out! We need to head to the dungeons soon!”

“We’ll wipe the table ourselves. Can we use that rag over there?”

“If you give us some peppers, we’ll slice them up for you.”

“I gotta tell you, this guy’s a class-B hunter. He uses a sword, so he’s the shit at cutting.”

As Uijae went back into the kitchen, the customers began to comfortably assign themselves roles. Having barely escaped the room that was as crowded as a newborn gate, he took a container of kimchi and pickled radish from the fridge. Then, he caught his breath. Uijae moved mechanically with empty eyes.

I need to make a self-serve bar for kimchi and peppers soon.

He came out of the kitchen with bowls of rice and two bags of peppers. He scanned the hunters and thought, I should leave the pepper slicing to the class-B hunter.

“Hey. If you could, slice these peppers, then you can take the kimchi, pickled radishes, and rice, and I’ll ring you up.”

As soon as he uttered these instructions, the exchange of labor began in an orderly fashion, as if they were conquering a dungeon together.

The class-B hunter sliced peppers with a dagger that looked to be at least a class-C weapon. A class-C hunter scooped kimchi and pickled radish with tongs. The other hunters stood in a line and waited for their portions with bowls in hand.

Uijae watched the lively scene as he swiped a card through the reader.

Is this... the peace that I’ve protected?

Hunter name: J. Formerly the highest-ranked hunter in South Korea and also South Korea’s first class-S hunter. A national hero who had died closing a class-1 fissure in the West Sea eight years ago. Nobody knew that his real name was Uijae Cha. He was...

“Thank you. Goodbye. Welcome. How many?”

...currently a part-timer at a hangover soup restaurant.