WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

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◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 21: Younger Sister Kim Seon - [1]

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I went into a supermarket for the first time in a while and couldn't help sighing.

The store was called Singsing Produce, but there wasn't a single fruit or vegetable in sight. All I could see were rice, ramen, canned food, and other processed foods with long shelf lives.

I looked over the prices.

Rice and ramen had both doubled in price since before the Gates opened, but they were unusually cheap compared to everything else. Apparently, the government had fought tooth and nail to keep their prices fixed.

The prices of goods the government didn't control were enough to make my head spin. Rubber gloves cost seventeen thousand won, and a thirty-roll pack of toilet paper cost sixty-eight thousand won...

Flour-based foods had become especially expensive. Korea relied on imports for most of its flour, but Water Elementals swarming the seas had driven maritime shipping costs through the roof.

The countries that exported wheat were in bad shape too. India had officially stopped exporting grain because of its food shortage, Ukraine had been invaded by Russia without any justification, and Australia was no longer human territory.

For those reasons, rice had become the main ingredient in ramen these days, while anything made with flour had been classified as a luxury good and priced absurdly high.

Snacks were sold at market price now. You could tell just by looking at that one-hundred-twenty-thousand-won bag of MatXsan on the shelf over there.

Huh. That really was insanely expensive.

Most other snacks were around sixty-six thousand won. Why was this one so much more expensive? I was so dumbfounded that I asked.

“Why has this gotten so expensive?”

The store owner, who I usually got along with, answered in a tired voice.

“There are rumors that the factory has stopped operating and the snack will be discontinued, so the price went up again. I saw on the news that some lawmaker got caught stockpiling three boxes of MatXsan.”

“A lawmaker was hoarding snacks? Do they have some kind of side business?”

“They weren't planning to stash them away and sell them for more later. It was just their favorite snack, but they thought they might not get to eat it anymore, so they bought them all for themselves.”

The owner muttered that it was the first time they'd seen a lawmaker get cursed at for buying snacks instead of committing corruption, and that it really made the country going to hell feel real.

While they were saying that, I picked up a bag of MatXsan.

When I brought it to the register, the owner looked surprised.

“Wait, you're really buying it? You must be loaded, kid.”

“I can afford a bag of snacks.”

Before long, I left the store with a bag of MatXsan in hand. I hummed on the way home.

I could buy something that supposedly only lawmakers ate without giving it much thought? It really hit me that I'd made something of myself.

I hadn't bought the one-hundred-twenty-thousand-won snack for myself. I was planning to take it with me to visit someone in prison.

This afternoon, I was going to see my younger sister.

It wasn't like I was looking forward to it already.

* * *

I looked at my younger sister through the bars.

She had lost a lot of weight since I last saw her. She had always been fat, so seeing her like that didn't make me feel good.

Still, just as I was about to offer some comforting words, she spoke first in a sulky voice.

“Why are you here, you fucking bastard?”

With a voice like Mom's, she got under my skin.

“I heard the pig bitch finally succeeded at dieting, so I came to take a look. Damn, the country even made you lose weight. It's a good thing you got locked up, right?”

I realized my mistake as soon as I said it. What an idiotic fucking psycho.

Before another curse could fly out of her mouth, I hurriedly held out what I'd brought.

“Here, eat your feed, pig bitch.”

She probably wanted to shove away the food I offered to protect her pride.

But she had always had a hell of an appetite. When she saw the bag of MatXsan and the plate of flounder sashimi, raised in an indoor fish farm and ridiculously expensive, a look of intense inner conflict crossed her face.

Even ordinary people were chewing uncooked ramen to get through a meal these days. It wasn't hard to imagine what prison food was like.

Her appetite won in the end. She picked up her chopsticks and put a few slices of sashimi in her mouth, then grabbed a piece of MatXsan. Her chopsticks soon started moving faster.

When she had eaten about half of it, I asked,

“Is it good?”

Maybe she took that as mockery. She stopped eating, glared at me, and repeated what she'd said earlier.

“So why are you here, you fucking bastard?”

“Why are you acting up after stuffing your face?”

“Did you think I'd bow down and thank you? Who do you think got me into this mess... huh?”

“Who do you think got you into this mess?”

“You, you fucking bastard. You! If you hadn't beaten the shit out of me and ruined my personality...!”

It wasn't the first time I'd heard that claim. She had screamed something similar during my last visit, saying she was like this because of me.

She claimed that because I constantly beat her at home, her personality had become antisocial and warped. That led to her getting bullied at school, and that was why she ended up like this.

“That was because you didn't learn jiu-jitsu. If you'd learned jiu-jitsu, you could've fought back when I hit you, and broken the arms and legs of those punks who bullied you at school. You didn't learn jiu-jitsu and just kept stuffing your face, so isn't this exactly what you ended up with?”

She glared at me.

“You fucking bastard...”

“Wasn't it your fault for doing things that got you beaten in the first place?”

“What did I even do?!”

“I still can't forgive you for selling every book on my bookshelf to a used bookstore while I was on my school trip, then buying yourself shoes with the money. Why the hell did you even sell my workbooks? That bitch Mom was sitting there defending you, saying I should just think of it as buying my little sister a present instead of getting angry.”

“That was Mom! You took Dad's side when they were fighting the day before, so Mom got pissed, remember? She sold all your books while I was at school, then said she'd give me half the money if I told you I did it!”

“I figured it was something like that. I should've beaten that fucking bitch more before she became Monster food.”

“It was your fault for taking Dad's side in the first place! Why did you side with that piece of shit who never gave us enough living expenses and just went hiking all the time?”

“Maybe because if I hadn't taken Dad's side during their fights, the whole family would've been ganging up on him, and that fucking bastard would've definitely pulled all kinds of bullshit on me whenever we were alone?”

“What bullshit did Dad pull on you?”

“Do you know what that bastard did when I stayed quiet instead of taking his side during one of their fights? I was cooking OXgi soup for myself when he suddenly flipped the table over because I hadn't offered him any to try. The soup spilled on my thigh, and the burn scar stayed there until I got Super-Regeneration. I was screaming because it hurt so much, but he just stormed out of the house like he was the angry one.”

Even now, thinking about it made rage rise in my chest. Why had both of them ended up as Monster food together? If their bone ash had been left behind, I would've dumped it into a toilet. It was a shame I didn't get the chance.

“That's what Dad did, not me. Why are you mad at me?”

“Then should I keep listing what you did? You remember how you wouldn't give me money to buy my workbooks again, so I had to study for exams through internet sites? Then you ran crying to Mom because I wouldn't get off the computer, even though I'd only been using it for ten minutes. Mom ordered me to give it up too.”

“Stop milking that story! You used it as an excuse to keep me from using the computer for more than five minutes a day after that...”

I was about to pull out another story and fire back, but stopped myself. What an idiot. What was I doing, coming to visit her and then acting like this?

I hadn't originally been someone with such a fucked-up personality that I couldn't control my temper, but it had been like this since my third year of middle school. God damn it.

I took a deep breath and spoke in a calm voice.

“Let's stop. What's the point of talking about how awful we were to each other? We'll just get mad at each other... Keep eating. Finish it while you listen.”

She kept glaring at me as she chewed a piece of MatXsan. I continued.

“I can't say I regret how horribly I treated you. You probably don't regret anything either. Right?”

She looked like she was about to say something else. I didn't want to fight again, so I quickly continued.

“Still, if time went back... I don't think I'd want to do things the way I did then.”

“What?”

“If I went back in time, I'd only beat Mom and Dad again. Just those fucking bastards... I wouldn't hit you. I'd only hit those idiots.”

She seemed to understand what I meant. She stopped glaring at me, lowered her head, and picked up another slice of sashimi.

“When you got arrested, I felt bad. Didn't I hold protests to try to get you out?”

She finally opened her mouth.

“Even so, you only came to visit once.”

“I got kicked out of the UFC, so I had no pride left. I was miserable, and I didn't have the nerve to hear you say bad things to me.”

“What's different now?”

“Yeah. Your brother's making some money now.”

I started telling her that I was working as a Hunter these days, that just my signing bonus had been over fifty billion won. I told her what I'd been up to while trying not to sound like I was bragging, then said,

“So when you get out, I'll take care of you. Let's live together. I'll pay for everything...”

“I want to live alone.”

“I figured you'd say that, so I looked into it. It sounds difficult. Don't Gates open especially often around ice ability users? Monsters inside Gates can see the souls of intelligent beings in the outside world, and awakened people apparently shine especially brightly, so they stand out like lighthouses. On top of that, Monsters know ice ability users are weak...”

There was no need to explain that, in RPG terms, killing an awakened person gave far more experience points than killing an ordinary person. Or that a weak ice ability user was basically a chance to farm experience points.

I didn't need to explain that when Monsters spotted the soul pattern of an awakened person and realized it belonged to an ice ability user, they would start drooling and open a Gate.

“I know. Every time a Gate opens near the prison, the bitches I share a cell with give me shit, saying it's because of me.”

Prison life didn't seem easy for her either. The people she shared a cell with seemed to bully her too. Seriously, why hadn't this stupid bitch learned jiu-jitsu and spared herself all this trouble?

“Anyway, it sounds like it's hard for an ice ability user to live alone. Buying a house is difficult, but even if they manage to buy one and move in, the neighbors won't leave them alone.”

She hesitated before asking in a completely subdued voice,

“Then would it be okay if I lived with you?”

“Probably... They say it's fine to live with someone who has Body Enhancement. Body Enhancement users aren't easy targets, so monsters try not to open Gates near them. If there's an ice ability user and a Body Enhancement user together, they more or less balance each other out. The neighbors are too scared of the Body Enhancement user to complain too...”

Her lips moved. She looked like she wanted to say something, but closed her mouth.

I kept talking by myself.

“So when you get out, let's live together. I haven't bought a house yet, but I have money to buy one. I have enough money to buy you a car too. Once you get your driver's license, I'll buy you a Porsche.”

“A Porsche?”

“Yeah, a Porsche. The only luxury cars I know are Benz and Porsche, so that's all I can say. If you know a better car, I'll buy you that too. So...”

My vision blurred. I closed my eyes, opened them again, and continued.

“Let's start over. We're each other's only family, so we'll live together. We don't have to do anything special for each other while we're in the same house. We can just live together, okay?”

After that, I told her she wouldn't have to cook or do the dishes. I said I planned to hire a housekeeper once she got out. I had more than enough money and ability for that, so all she had to do was get released. She didn't need to worry about anything else.

Then I wiped my eyes. Something was running down her cheeks too.

After the visit ended, I left the prison alone.

When I was in middle school, Mom and Dad fought all the time.

It would've been better if they had only fought each other, but they didn't. Every time they fought, they each picked one child to take their side so they could prove they were right, then started a full-blown family brawl.

During those long, exhausting fights, my younger sister always took Mom's side. Dad demanded that I take his side because I was another man. Every time I had no choice but to side with Dad, Mom looked at me like she wanted to kill me. I was just sick of all of it.

Then one day during my third year of middle school, I was sleeping soundly when they forced me awake at dawn to drag me into another fight. That was when I finally snapped.

Dad demanded I take his side, asking whether I thought he was right or that fucking bitch who always ignored what he said was right. I kicked him in the stomach.

I was already over 190 centimeters tall then. One kick from me left Dad unable to breathe properly. Even after he fell over, I kept kicking him for a long time.

I couldn't forgive Mom either, standing there with her eyes wide open. That bitch tormented me just as much. Instead of calling the police, she froze in shock. I beat her too.

Then peace came to our home. Mom and Dad were afraid of me now. They stopped fighting in the house and behaved themselves. I realized what it meant for fists to be closer than the law.

But misfortune came to my younger sister.

Whenever my sister and I fought before that, Mom always took her side. So despite the difference in our strength, our relationship as siblings had been more or less equal.

Once I stopped worrying about Mom's reaction, though, my sister was no longer my equal.

The difference in our strength became the difference in our standing.

Thinking about it now, my younger sister had only been an elementary school student forced into our parents' fights too. But as a middle school student myself, I didn't have the understanding to consider that.

At the time, I didn't see her as another victim of domestic violence like me. I saw her as some female Lee Wanyong, clinging to foreign powers and throwing her weight around.

I hit her whenever I felt like it, both for revenge and to vent my anger. Without Mom's protection, she had to take one-sided beatings.

That continued until I was sent to juvenile detention.

I couldn't go back and change all of that. It made no difference whether I had a supernatural ability to see the future or not.

But couldn't I change things from now on?

If I treated her well from now on and shared what I had with her without holding back, couldn't our twisted relationship get back on the right track?

I thought it could.

On the way home, I opened Huntweb to shake off my depressed mood.

Footnotes:

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