WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Arsène
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈
Chapter 34: Korean Awakening Alliance Kim Geuk - [1]
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「This is breaking news. Behemoth is projected to head toward Seoul...」
I still couldn't quite believe it whenever I saw news like that. A word like “Behemoth” was appearing on the news?
It was the name of some monster from the Bible, the kind that only showed up in RPGs in the twenty-first century. Yet here was this fantasy-sounding word being spoken in the serious voice of a well-dressed announcer in a suit. It made me feel as if I'd been sucked into a game world.
「...At around 4 p.m., Hunter Kang Jun-chi arrived in Seoul. Monsters inside a Gate are known to observe awakened people outside the Gate and alter their course accordingly.
We have received reports that, as soon as Hunter Kang Jun-chi arrived in Seoul, Behemoth and the Monster horde following it stopped moving inside the Gate. The military stated that it would continue making every effort to enter the Gate whenever an opportunity arose and keep a close watch on Behemoth's route...」
I was absentmindedly watching the news in the vehicle.
Baek Dambi, seated beside me, spoke.
“Thank you.”
I turned to her. My ring girl was looking at me too.
“What are you thanking me for?”
“For letting me report that Behemoth was heading toward Seoul. I was even listed among the top contributors...”
When the two of us entered the Gate that day, Baek Dambi discovered the giant Monster Behemoth moving in one direction and reported it through the Association.
All I'd done was nod along beside her and say everything she said was true. I left the detailed report and testimony entirely to her.
This time, she too was receiving people's attention. She'd wanted a chance to earn recognition as an awakened Hunter, so this seemed to mean a great deal to her.
To be honest, I couldn't have taken the lead in giving testimony even if I'd wanted to.
“I told you, I was too busy thinking about something else to get a proper look at Behemoth or anything else.”
Baek Dambi gave an awkward smile.
“Say something that makes sense. How could you not see something that huge moving around?”
She thought I'd deliberately yielded my chance to testify about the giant Monster.
Well, it couldn't be helped. I couldn't exactly tell her I was too busy swallowing down the resentment stirred up by that hallucination to care whether Behemoth was moving or a golden hamster was moving.
“I'll say it again. Thank you.”
Baek Dambi fell silent after that, and quiet settled over the vehicle.
It was awkward. Feeling like I had an obligation to say something, I opened my mouth after a while.
“This is random, but do you know Huntweb?”
Baek Dambi looked at me again.
“Hunting Web?”
“No, Huntweb.”
“What is it? I've never heard of it. Is it a blind-date site?”
At her flat response, I thought, This woman's shamelessness really lives up to her being called the Ice Princess.
“It's a site where Hunters gather to chat or post information. A lot of its users are active Hunters, so there's useful information there. Still, it'd be better if you didn't visit it. The users are especially awful.”
“Well, the internet is all like that.”
“That's true, but Huntweb is particularly bad. A lot of things there made me angry. There's this lunatic called Cyber Magneto who seems to be a huge X-Men fan, you know? The first post I saw on that site was from that lunatic arguing that all non-awakened people should be sent to gas chambers.”
“There are some ridiculous people out there...”
Her expression was hidden behind her sunglasses, so I couldn't get a proper look at it.
The urge to confiscate those damn sunglasses rose within me, but I continued.
“Ridiculous doesn't even cover it. That person's pure evil! One time, I complained that it was unfair because awakened people could break the site's rules without getting banned. Then that psycho Cyber Magneto got offended and started telling me to hang myself and die with my mother. I was so hurt that I shed a few tears.”
“Mm, you don't seem like someone who'd get hurt just because people insulted you online. Not you, Mr. Kim.”
“No, it's because my mother really is dead. It's not like I was some devoted son, but getting insulted over someone who'd already passed away made my hands and feet shake.”
I repeatedly warned her never to visit such a rotten site, where an insane user like that could keep posting for years without getting banned. Our Cyber Magneto merely answered in a reluctant voice.
“Yes...”
Only after a long while did she say something else.
“It feels strange to comfort you over something that happened so long ago... but don't take those words too much to heart. Stay strong.”
“Huh? How did you know it happened a long time ago? Did I say that?”
“You sounded so calm when you talked about it...”
The vehicle stopped. When I got out, Naito-san, who had arrived ahead of us on his bike, grinned broadly.
“Good hunting again today. Long live Incheon!”
I held back the urge to frown. Instead, I nodded without expression.
“Long live Incheon.”
That day's hunt lasted longer than usual, until 5:48 p.m. As a result, we succeeded in completely clearing out the Monsters lurking on Manwol Mountain.
That meant our operational area would now move elsewhere. In other words, it was time to hunt around Incheon's awakened-person containment facility.
It also meant that the nearby residents' attention would turn toward both me and that facility.
* * *
After the hunt, I worked out as usual, then continued training with Seong Munyeong to react to bullets. Even after finishing all that training, I didn't go home.
Before we parted, Seong Munyeong asked, “You're going there again today? To interfere with the protest?”
“Yeah.”
“This monster moves around all day and still doesn't get tired...”
“Tired or not, I have things to do.”
Seong Munyeong gave me a thumbs-up and called me admirable as I repeatedly used Spatial Teleportation. Its range had grown far greater than before, so using it instead of walking had become fairly manageable.
Before long, I reached my destination.
After enduring the dizziness, I looked at the awakened-person containment facility and the area around it. Then I frowned at what I saw.
Park Mihyeong and the nearby residents were facing off again today.
I was about to approach the residents when I noticed the signs they held.
After reading the slogans, I blinked.
‘Oppose maintaining a containment facility that violates awakened people's human rights!’
‘Awakened people want to live freely!’
What was this now? Why were they suddenly going on about human rights?
I looked more closely at the protesters holding signs. They were definitely the residents I remembered from this area, the people who wanted the Freezer moved somewhere else. So why?
“Did those people change their strategy?”
When I approached and asked, Park Mihyeong's eyes widened before she sighed.
“You really keep coming even when I tell you not to... Yeah. It looks like they changed strategies.”
“Why?”
“They know full well that you stick up for ice ability users. They're pretending to care about them so they can get the facility moved.”
I looked again at the signs with their slogans about awakened people's rights.
“But aren't their claims right?”
“What claims?”
“That the containment facility violates human rights. I worked with Korean Awakened Solidarity too, so I know. None of the ice ability users want to live in there.”
Maybe it was because the military managed the awakened-person containment facility, but it had the military's usual suffocating rigidity.
The people living there weren't even free to enter and leave the facility. Whenever they went out, they were required to write their destination and expected return time on the status board.
There was even a curfew. At nine o'clock, the iron gates shut tightly, preventing anyone from entering or leaving. There was a reason everyone refused to stay inside despite the free lodging.
Wasn't a certain person surnamed Sa, that awful Huntweb user who had insulted my mother, so unwilling to live in that facility that they left for another world altogether?
After seeing that hallucination, the way I looked at the facility had changed too. It made me uncomfortable to look at it now.
Park Mihyeong spoke with a complicated expression.
“That's true, but we still need a facility like that. It's a necessary evil.”
“The Freezer?”
“Yes. Of course, locking people up like that and restricting their freedom is horrible, but... if we got rid of that facility, where would all the people living there go?”
Park Mihyeong pointed at herself and continued.
“Look at me. I have money and a certain social standing, but I can't even buy an apartment, so I'm living in the villa I originally bought to rent out. Ordinary people have it even harder. They can't live even in crumbling multi-family housing, let alone an apartment.”
“Because the government wants all ice ability users to live in facilities like that. It's easier to manage them that way.”
“Right. So even if a landlord wants to rent to an ice ability user without thinking much of it, the government doesn't leave them alone. They harass landlords who rent to ice ability users until they give in.
“They keep making them report on conditions around the house, asking why they haven't prepared emergency elevators or evacuation supplies when there's such a high risk of Monsters appearing wherever an ice ability user lives. They send public officials to hound them. They make things inconvenient in every possible way until the landlord can't take it anymore and throws them out.”
It wasn't a story I was hearing for the first time, but it wasn't easy to listen to. Was that because of the hallucination too?
Park Mihyeong seemed to be getting angry as she spoke, and her voice rose.
“I know it's dangerous in all kinds of ways if ice ability users are scattered everywhere, but if you're going to gather them in one place half by force, at least make the facility decent! Look at that. Incheon somehow dug up apartments so old you'd think they were built when King Gojong fled to the Russian Legation, then hung up a sign calling them the Incheon Awakened Persons New Home. Is this a joke?”
“You're a city councilor now. Can't you improve it somehow?”
Park Mihyeong shook her head at my question.
“What can I do just because I'm a city councilor? Not a chance. Even if I were the mayor of Incheon, I couldn't secure more funding by saying I wanted to improve a facility the residents already hate. There are even people who say ice ability users should be grateful they aren't being killed like in India...”
Come to think of it, even when I worked with Korean Awakened Solidarity, I couldn't remember accomplishing anything for them. I couldn't remember passersby supporting us when we protested for persecuted awakened people either.
In zombie stories, weren't civic groups claiming zombies were people too and demanding zombie rights portrayed not as thoughtful people, but as idiots who brought contrived crises upon themselves?
That was exactly how people had looked at me when I worked for awakened people's rights. I could still remember the frowns and contemptuous stares from passersby. My self-esteem had been steadily worn down during those days.
Thinking about it, though, it wasn't strange at all. Awakened people made up around one in every two thousand people. That was far lower than even the roughly five percent of the population made up of people with disabilities.
And if facilities for people with disabilities weren't being improved, why would people care about the rights of awakened people, who were far fewer in number?
As long as awakened people were a minority, they could never wield meaningful political power, whether they voted or protested.
Whenever someone mentioned awakened people's rights, they'd only be scolded and asked why anyone should do more for awakened people who made tens of billions of won.
There was nothing that could be done in this democratic system.
In this hideous system, where the dregs who made up the overwhelming majority claimed every right simply because there were so many of them, awakened people like me couldn't change anything.
How could this terrible situation be overcome?
We needed to return to a system far older and far more proper than democracy, namely monarchy.
Better yet, we could introduce a refined feudal system.
Awakened people like me could each take positions as counts or dukes and look after the weak non-awakened commoners.
I even knew someone who could be elevated to king. Kang...
Anyway, stress made people have all kinds of strange delusions. Damn it.
After forcing the strange thoughts out of my head, I approached the protesters.
I stood there and kept looking at them. Unable to endure my silent pressure, they left, and the awakened-person containment facility finally returned to peace.
Park Mihyeong looked at me and nagged, “You worked so hard again today, but don't come tomorrow, okay? I know you work incredibly hard every day, but why are you making me feel so burdened...?”
That was when my day finally ended. When I returned home through Spatial Teleportation, the dizziness that hit me was nearly impossible to bear.
I somehow washed up and lay down, trying to sleep.
Then I got a call.
The caller was a familiar number. The Incheon City Hall official usually assigned to me. What could they want at this hour?
Tired as I was, I answered the phone.
“What is it at this hour?”
「I'm sorry to call so late, but could you come right now? It's urgent!」
I had no idea what was going on, but if a public official was calling me, I figured I should go.
I hurriedly sat up just as I was about to fall asleep.
* * *
Footnotes:
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