WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 35: Korean Awakening Alliance Kim Geuk - [2]

──────

"Go to the Incheon Awakened Persons New Home? You mean the awakened-person containment facility, right? Yes, I'm on my way..."

I was too exhausted to even attempt Spatial Teleportation, so I barely managed to get into a passing taxi.

When I reached the location the civil servant had given me, there was a loud commotion going on.

I looked up at the Incheon awakened-person containment facility. Despite its grand name, it was just an apartment complex surrounded by a wall.

On the balcony of an eighth-floor apartment, a middle-aged man had one leg hooked over the railing as if he could fall at any moment. Was this some kind of suicide scare?

The middle-aged man screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Come over here, you bastards! Try getting closer if you want to die! Want me to freeze your hearts solid?!"

Was that threat really so frightening? The police gathered there were waiting behind the wall without daring to approach him.

It looked like this was why I'd been called. I walked over to a police officer and asked,

"What's going on?"

The officers turned to look at me. One who recognized me widened his eyes.

"Hunter Kim Geuk? What are you doing here?"

"A civil servant told me to come here."

"They sent Hunter Kim Geuk instead of Cho E-un? No, Cho E-un needs to come..."

Cho E-un was a name I knew.

He was the Cambodian A-rank Hunter contracted by Incheon City. I'd never spoken to him in person, but I had seen his corpse.

"Cho E-un died in action during the last Incheon Gate incident."

"What? Cho E-un is dead?"

"Yes. He confronted the Force-Field Creature before I did, then got his stomach split open and his throat cut."

"No, it won't work unless it's Cho E-un..."

I had no idea why the officer was talking like that.

From what I'd investigated, Cho E-un was probably a Body Enhancement user like me. If so, I didn't see why he could do something I couldn't. Why did it have to be him?

"Just explain what's happening first. What were you planning to have Cho E-un do?"

The officers pointed at the middle-aged man still screaming from the balcony.

"You see that man causing a scene, right?"

"Yeah. Isn't it some kind of suicide scare?"

"It's not just a suicide scare. He's angry and making a scene so everyone will do what he says. He's not simply threatening to kill himself. He's threatening to kill anyone who gets in the way of him running wild. And he's an ice ability user..."

"So an awakened person has to step in if you don't want anyone getting hurt. Don't the police have any awakened people?"

"We have one. An ice ability user."

"Then shouldn't you call that person?"

The officer muttered awkwardly.

"That's him..."

The officer pointed at the middle-aged man on the balcony, and I narrowed my eyes.

Looking around, the soldiers didn't seem able to do anything either. Hadn't all the soldiers originally stationed here died in the last incident? The newly assigned personnel seemed unsure how to handle a situation like this.

Then there was no helping it. It felt wrong to just stand around watching, so I stepped forward.

I crossed the facility's main gate and walked closer. The middle-aged man, who had been yelling that he'd kill anyone who approached, seemed to recognize me.

"Kim Geuk?"

"Yes. Long live Incheon. I'm Hunter Kim Geuk."

The middle-aged man looked flustered when he saw me. With the sharp eyesight unique to a Body Enhancement user, I could see his eyes darting around. He clearly hadn't expected me to come and looked deeply troubled by it.

I didn't want to make things harder for him. Keeping my voice as calm as possible, I asked,

"Sir, is there a reason you're doing this? Are you protesting?"

The middle-aged man hesitated before answering.

"I am protesting!"

"Why are you protesting?"

"Since the day before yesterday, these bastards have been making us do roll call... Roll call!"

Roll call?

"Do you mean the roll call they do in prisons to check the headcount?"

"Yeah, the kind they do in the military and prisons! They make us do roll call every night before bed! All the residents have to come out into the hallway and go, one, two, three!"

"Is doing roll call really that bad?"

"Of course it is! Am I some prisoner? I came back from work, washed up, went out to smoke, and came back, then that duty officer bastard started giving me hell for missing roll call! Saying everyone was stuck waiting to lie down because of me, asking if I didn't feel sorry for them! Does that make any sense?!"

I'd heard that places like this considered it extremely important to make sure every ice ability user was present and accounted for.

Since the soldiers managing the containment facility had themselves died in such large numbers last time, they probably felt they needed to look stricter, even if only for appearances. It seemed they had added another tedious, irritating procedure, which was why this man had gotten furious and started making a scene.

As I quietly tried to understand the situation, a police officer behind me spoke softly.

"Can't you just use Spatial Teleportation and drag him down?"

"No. He's protesting because he feels he's been wronged. We shouldn't drag him down and humiliate him. And if he gets angry and starts firing his ability at all of you, it's not like I can stop him."

"Ah... That's true..."

I looked back up at the middle-aged man.

"Then how can I help? You seem to be doing this because you feel you've been treated unfairly. Want me to call a reporter I know? Though I know from my time with Korean Awakened Solidarity that reporters don't properly cover stories involving ice ability users."

"Forget reporters. Get me out of this fucking place! Or make them stop this fucking roll call bullshit!"

I considered how I could grant that request. I wasn't a soldier, so I didn't think I had the authority to make them stop the roll calls...

I tried to think as hard as I could, but I was so tired that my brain wouldn't work properly. So I suggested the simple solution that came to mind.

"If you're feeling stifled living here, do you want to stay at my place for a while? I've got an unused room right now!"

The middle-aged man seemed flustered by my offer.

"No, I wasn't asking you to go that far... Where did that come from...?"

"No, you can come! I live alone! Want to pack your things now?"

When I shouted that, the middle-aged man seemed very uncomfortable with my offer. Or maybe he felt bad about making a Hunter who had nearly had his throat cut in half protecting them last time go to more trouble so late at night.

In the end, after being at a loss for a while, the middle-aged man surrendered.

"Fuck... I'm sorry..."

He soon stopped causing a scene. He took his leg off the railing and went back inside his apartment.

After that, the police went in and persuaded him, and the situation was resolved.

"Mr. Kim Geuk, thank you so much for helping. You're better than the police..."

I suddenly remembered something and asked the officer thanking me.

"By the way, is this really my job?"

"Pardon?"

"I mean, no matter how I look at it, this doesn't seem like something Hunters do. Why did they even call me? Is it really okay for me to get involved in police work like this? If something goes wrong, do I at least have some legal justification?"

I wasn't the kind of guy who openly slept through criminal law class. At first, I let criminal law lectures go in one ear and out the other, but the instructor bought me a cup of coffee after saying they hadn't realized I studied this hard. After that, I felt too bad to mess around in class, so I started listening properly.

That was how I learned that a Hunter like me shouldn't step into things like this.

Hunters might carry guns, but under criminal law, we were still private citizens. We weren't supposed to act like we were police officers.

At least, that was what I had learned. Still, I had been too tired to argue, and I figured the civil servant wouldn't have called me for no reason, so I stepped in anyway.

Now that I thought about it, something still felt off. When I tried to confirm it, the officer trailed off without giving me a proper answer.

"Well... I don't really..."

Just as I was wondering whether I should ask the civil servant in charge, I heard a familiar voice.

"What is this? Why is Mr. Kim Geuk here?"

It was Park Mihyeong. She really looked like she was asking why the hell I was there, so I simply told her the truth.

"The civil servant in charge told me to come here."

"A civil servant? Why would a civil servant call Mr. Kim Geuk?"

"How would I know? I came because I thought it must be important, but the civil servant who called me isn't even here... I have no idea what's going on."

Park Mihyeong fell silent for a moment after hearing that.

Then that lady clenched her fist. For some reason, she seemed angry.

Still angry, Park Mihyeong forced a smile and said to me,

"Mr. Kim Geuk, you hunted today too, right? I heard you worked until quite late..."

"Yeah, I did."

"Then you must be dead tired right now. Go home. Go on, hurry. I'll tell the driver of the car I came in to take you..."

That forced smile was gradually stiffening, but I decided not to ask why she was so angry. It was too late, and I was too exhausted to stick my nose into anything else.

I got into the car Park Mihyeong had arranged for me. As I leaned back against the seat, I heard her shout behind me.

It was an angry roar I'd never heard from Park Mihyeong before.

"You fucking lunatic! Are you in your right mind? Have you completely lost it?!"

The car started moving as I stared in surprise at Park Mihyeong yelling into her phone.

Even after we had gone quite far, her shouting continued to pierce my ears.

* * *

Even after waking up, I couldn't understand what had happened the day before. No one, including the civil servant in charge, had properly explained the situation.

To find out what the hell had happened, I logged onto Huntweb.

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: Big sisters, big brothers! Big sisters, big brothers! BabyMushroom has a question, nya!

I wrote a fairly detailed post about what had happened yesterday, and several comments appeared right away.

Ⓑ GoodHunter: Oh, that's a 9th-Grade Call...

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: What's a 9th-Grade Call, nya? Since it has the same sound as emergency aid, is it a system where Hunters are called in for emergencies, nya?

Ⓑ GoodHunter: No, it doesn't mean emergency aid, like an ambulance. It means ninth grade, as in a ninth-grade civil servant. It's called a 9th-Grade Call because ninth-grade civil servants summon Hunters.

I couldn't understand what the hell that meant.

Still, judging by the way Park Mihyeong had roared yesterday, it seemed like something anyone would have reason to be angry about.

Ⓐ syberMagneto: Have those non-awakened trash really lost their minds?

Anonymous: Is this real? It shouldn't even be possible.

Anonymous: A 9th-Grade Call on Kim Geuk? Has Incheon City lost its mind?

Comments were pouring in at an incredible speed, and all the reactions were similar. Everyone seemed either dumbfounded or angry.

It seemed the fact that I had been subjected to this 9th-Grade Call was what had made their reactions so intense.

So I looked up this 9th-Grade Call and roughly understood their reactions.

Ⓐ syberMagneto: I've always wanted to kill every civil servant at that city hall, but this time I really want to kill them all.

There was an awful practice called the 9th-Grade Call.

When a government office urgently needed awakened personnel, it would summon awakened Hunters contracted with the local government and make them work.

Unlike the past, these days, when an emergency happened, the local government, police, and fire department all had to work together to respond. So the agencies stayed in close contact and helped one another far more than before.

When the police or fire department urgently needed an awakened person, the local government sometimes sent one of its contracted awakened Hunters to work for them. For example, when they had to respond to crimes committed by awakened people or when a small number of Monsters appeared in a residential area.

I had already noticed this long ago, but naturally, all of that was illegal. Hunters didn't belong to the local government in the first place. They belonged to the Association, and they were outside personnel who wouldn't receive a single won in compensation if they died. Civil servants weren't supposed to directly give them orders.

That was especially true for police work like this. Just as my criminal law instructor had taught us, Hunters were private citizens, not public officials, so there could be legal trouble if they stepped into police work and hurt someone.

To prepare for something going wrong, the higher-ups in local government dumped the role of giving orders to Hunters onto lower-ranking civil servants. In other words, they shifted responsibility onto the lowest-ranking people who couldn't afford to take responsibility if things went wrong.

That was why eighth-grade or ninth-grade civil servants would contact awakened Hunters and give them illegal orders. Since the image of ninth-grade civil servants ordering awakened people around was so striking, it was called a 9th-Grade Call.

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: No one ever told BabyMushroom this existed, nya?!

Anonymous: That's because you're about as likely as Kang Jun-chi to be subjected to this, BabyMushroom. There was no reason to tell you...

Ⓐ StoneheadedYouth: Want to change your username to StoneheadedMushroom?

I also learned why everyone was so dumbfounded that this had happened to me. Not every awakened Hunter was subjected to this kind of abuse of power.

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: A 9th-Grade Call is a skill exclusive to Seoul civil servants in the first place. Why did they do it in Incheon?

Ⓐ BabyBerserker: Why, nya? Because the Seoul breed are devious, nya?

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: No. A-rank Hunters in Seoul want to keep extending their contracts, so they have to stay on the civil servants' good side.

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: And even then, they only abuse A-rank Hunters who are worried their contracts won't be renewed because they've missed hunting often or have poor results. Even Seoul can't try a 9th-Grade Call on an A-rank Hunter with good results.

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: But a 9th-Grade Call on Kim Geuk, not just some other Hunter, in Incheon? I'd like to explain what kind of situation this is as your senior, but even to me, this makes no sense.

That senior Hunter added that civil servants in regional areas like Incheon couldn't attempt a 9th-Grade Call against A-rank Hunters.

Unlike Seoul, regional areas offered poor conditions to awakened Hunters. It wasn't the awakened Hunters who had to watch their behavior to get their contracts renewed. The local governments had to cater to the Hunters.

Yet in Incheon, infamous as the place awakened Hunters avoided more than anywhere else, it was impossible to understand how they could even dare use a 9th-Grade Call on me. They should have been treating me like a king for next year's contract renewal, so how could they possibly do something like that?

Ⓐ StoneheadedYouth: I heard they do use 9th-Grade Calls in regional areas sometimes.

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: I've never heard of that.

Ⓐ StoneheadedYouth: You'd be unlikely to know because you're Korean. They can't do it to Korean A-rank Hunters, so they abuse foreign A-rank Hunters instead.

Ⓐ ElmayaKaeyo: They do that to foreign A-rank Hunters?

Ⓐ StoneheadedYouth: Foreigners don't know what's what, right? Even if it's not Hunter work, when a civil servant tells them to do something, they assume it must be part of their contract and follow orders. That makes them easy to order around.

Ⓐ StoneheadedYouth: Come to think of it, didn't that Cambodian A-rank Hunter in Incheon die? Were they originally using that Cambodian awakened person, then called this guy this time instead?

Ⓐ syberMagneto: Have those non-awakened trash really gone insane??

As comments poured in, all trying to interpret the situation, I sighed from mental exhaustion.

By then, I was starting to understand what had happened.

Judging by how the police had asked why I was there instead of Cho E-un, Incheon must have originally called in the Cambodian A-rank Hunter Cho E-un whenever something like this happened and made him do the work. Even without checking, there was no need to explain that it was probably the work of those Seoul bastards who had infiltrated Incheon.

But as everyone knew, he had died gloriously in the last Gate incident. So when the police contacted them, the civil servant assigned to me, who happened to be on night duty, couldn't send Cho E-un. They must have felt obligated to send another awakened Hunter instead.

The civil servant assigned to me was around twenty years old. A high-school graduate just starting out in society who hadn't even served in the military. I had been the same at that age, but young people often acted first without permission when they didn't really know what was what.

Maybe they didn't even know whether what they were doing was legal or just an awful practice that had become customary. They might have simply assumed any Hunter contracted with Incheon City could naturally be sent out.

Whatever the real reason was, my civil servant had sent me to the scene in place of the already-dead Cho E-un.

That was why the police who saw me must have felt something was wrong, but they didn't know exactly what was wrong or how. The situation just drifted along until it ended in a muddle.

Then Park Mihyeong had arrived late, realized what was happening, and let out that furious roar.

Ⓑ GoodHunter: No, this is too serious. We were hunting until nearly 18:00 yesterday, weren't we? It would be infuriating enough to call someone in on their day off. Calling someone who needs proper rest after risking their life hunting makes no sense.

Ⓐ syberMagneto: A gas chamber isn't enough. They should execute their three kinship groups by slicing them to pieces.

Ⓐ syberMagneto: Or behead their nine kinship groups and display their heads in Gwanghwamun.

Anonymous: That persona-obsessed freak says the right thing sometimes too T_T

Ⓐ syberMagneto: Anyway, I never imagined that high-and-mighty person would be subjected to something not even that icehead Baek Dambi has suffered. This is seriously ridiculous.

Ⓢ Kang: Seeing what those sea roaches are still doing makes me so frustrated I can barely breathe...

Ⓢ Kang: If I weren't being paid to stay in Seoul, I'd charge in there and turn the whole place upside down. Anyone want to stop Behemoth for me for a little while?

Even a major figure like Kang Jun-chi had appeared and was denouncing what had happened to me.

As all kinds of posts about what I had gone through kept appearing on Huntweb, another post went up.

Anonymous: An article about this is already out. Holy shit.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried