WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Arsène

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ How an A-Rank Hunter Lives ◈

Chapter 5: Academy Student Kim Geuk - [3]

──────

The instant I confirmed we had reached the front of the academy, I pulled back the mesh I'd spread through the surrounding area. Yang Taeja's voice reached me through a light wave of dizziness.

"That was incredible... Why do you look so bad?"

"Every time I use Spatial Teleportation, it puts strain on my nervous system. I get tired, can't concentrate, stuff like that."

"Like you just jerked off?"

What a crude bastard. I frowned, then nodded.

"More or less. Anyway, that's why I don't use it much. Super-Regeneration lets me recover from the fatigue quickly enough, but until I'm fully recovered, my whole body feels weak and it's hard to focus."

"You must not be used to using your ability yet. Should we look for a way to help you train it?"

"Is there any point? From what I've heard, even the high-end centers in Seoul have no idea how to train special abilities like this. They just make people do weird, heavily religious practices involving meditation and whatnot."

"Still, isn't it a waste? It's such a valuable ability. You can't just avoid using it because it tires you out."

"They say you improve the more you use it, so I figure it'll get better with time."

"You said you don't use it much."

"I use it a few times to practice before bed. It's fine if I get tired before sleeping."

"Does that even count as practice?"

"I think I'm getting a little better. I live my everyday life as though I don't have the ability, but..."

I explained that using Spatial Teleportation within my field of view was much easier and far less exhausting, but that I still walked or ran whenever possible. Yang Taeja still looked dissatisfied.

"Well, Body Enhancement alone guarantees you'll be A-rank..."

Even as he said it, his expression remained uneasy. Was he disappointed that I was letting an ability I already had go to waste?

There was nothing I could do about it. I'd looked into other cases of people with Spatial Teleportation, and it was the same for them. Apparently, that foreigner had also decided the ability was difficult to use in any practical way and continued working as an accountant.

Besides, I had another ability that grew every time I trained. That was where I focused my efforts.

"Kim Geuk, you really work hard. Are you going to work out at full tilt again?"

"I have Super-Regeneration. I build muscle every time I work out, so it'd be a waste to slack off, right?"

I went back to the academy with Yang Taeja and started strength training again without taking a break. I worked at full intensity without pushing myself far enough to get hurt, repeating the exercises until I was completely drained. Only then did I feel like I'd spent the day properly.

On my way home, I was walking instead of using Spatial Teleportation when I received a call.

It was Park Mihyeong. An auntie I had a lot to thank for.

「How is it? Are you managing okay?」

When I asked why she had called, her warm voice answered.

「I wanted to check whether you had enough money for tuition and living expenses! I can help if you need it.」

"Thanks, but I'm fine."

「Are you really? I remember you complaining that you were running out of money for living expenses.」

This auntie clearly didn't know how capable I was.

I bragged that my tuition had been fully waived, that I'd even been assigned a personal trainer today, and that the training was free too. At this rate, I was guaranteed a smooth path as an A-rank Hunter.

Then, proudly, I added this.

"Wouldn't it feel really reassuring if her older brother picked her up in a Porsche when she got out of prison?"

I'd actually given up long ago on getting that bitch, my little sister, released early, back when I was doing human-rights activism.

The new plan I'd made was to become an A-rank Hunter, get rich enough to earn more money than even doctors and lawyers could dream of, and support my little sister.

That pathetic bitch was probably sobbing in her cell, thinking her life was over because she had a murder conviction. When that bitch walked out of prison with the look of someone whose world had collapsed, I'd give her a fat bank account and a sports car registered in that bitch's name. Wouldn't a huge smile bloom across that ugly face?

It would. I was sure of it.

The plan was great because it seemed like it would come true on its own as long as I kept eating, going to the academy, and training.

「It would definitely feel reassuring if my older brother did that for me.」

"Right?"

「Of course! I'm sure it'll work out, Kim Geuk.」

Everything was going perfectly. I was certain of it.

* * *

That night, I had a dream.

I couldn't remember exactly what kind of dream it was. Still, it felt like it had been very long.

I vaguely remembered crying, getting angry, and shouting as though I were roaring in the dream.

What I remembered most clearly was the final scene.

A mushroom cloud.

In the dream, I detonated a nuclear bomb. Right in the middle of Seoul, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Was it an auspicious dream? I wondered, then shook my head.

Sometimes, the emotions you feel in a dream linger for a while after you wake up. That was what was happening now.

And the remnants of this dream were... horrible.

Fuck, I felt like I was going to throw up.

Something trickled down my cheek. When I wiped my face, I realized tears had been streaming down without me noticing.

I took deep breaths and waited for all the negative emotions raging through my head to settle.

Seriously, fuck...

I'd never had such a terrible dream in my life. Things had been going well lately, so what was this about?

A sudden sense of dread crept over me.

* * *

The first time I noticed something strange was when I had just entered the academy.

I made eye contact with the academy director, who was filling a paper cup with water. The director spotted me and greeted me with a broad smile.

"Oh, you're here early? Kim Geuk, you're so diligent!"

I was about to smile back when my eyes widened.

For a moment, it felt as though my consciousness had been sucked somewhere else...

It was chilling.

Until a second ago, the director had been grinning from ear to ear. Now, the director stared blankly at me with an expression that looked like it would never smile again. It would not have been wrong to say the director was crying without any expression at all.

The people who had been coming and going through the academy moments ago were gone too, except for the director. The academy was empty, with only the two of us left inside. Why?

I had no time to think deeply about it. In the uncomfortable silence, a sudden wave of depression left me standing there blankly.

All the while, the director kept staring at me. Vacantly. Expressionlessly. As if there was something to say but no energy left to say it.

I closed my eyes, opened them, and blinked several times.

The academy director was smiling at me as before. The academy was bustling again with instructors and students making and drinking coffee.

What the hell was that?

"Just now..."

When I finally managed to speak, the director grinned and asked,

"Just now what?"

I almost asked what that expression had been, but stopped myself.

Could that have been a hallucination?

It was possible. I'd trained pretty hard yesterday. Even with Super-Regeneration, suddenly overexerting myself could lead to something like this. Maybe the terrible dream had been caused by that too.

"It's nothing."

"You're such a goof!"

I forced a smile and entered the classroom.

A few students greeted me again. I made eye contact with one of them, the oldest student here.

"Hey, Kim Geuk, you're here? Come sit over here!"

The moment his voice reached my ears, it felt as though my consciousness was pulled somewhere else again.

And for a moment, I couldn't breathe.

That skinny student was Im Hyeongtaek.

He was a man in his forties, but his thinning hair made him look like he was in his fifties. Like many people, he had lost his job after the world became this way. He said the stress back then had given him alopecia areata.

The reason that frail-looking man attended a Hunter academy that clearly didn't suit him was to support his family. To feed his wife and daughter.

A white-collar intellectual from a general trading company, who had probably never done a day of real physical labor in his life, had joined a crowd of young people to trade Monsters' blood and flesh for money to support his family.

The reason I knew all this in such detail was that he acted especially friendly toward me.

He had clearly picked up industry information in advance and was trying to make connections with awakened people. I could tell from the way he poured out a long story about his life without anyone asking, trying to earn my sympathy.

It looked like all his efforts to suck up to a kid more than ten years younger than him and act pitiful had been for nothing.

Im Hyeongtaek, that miserable family man, lay on the concrete floor with his neck broken.

It was horrifying just to look at him.

His neck had stretched out like a deer's and twisted like a pretzel. The skin that had wrapped around it had snapped apart here and there like an overstretched rubber band, exposing the bones and tendons inside.

It didn't look like he would be returning to his family.

The reason I didn't scream wasn't because I stayed calm. I was too shocked to move. Fuck, what was that this time?

When I blinked, Im Hyeongtaek was still gesturing to me.

"What are you doing? I said sit!"

He was clearly not dead. His neck wasn't broken or stretched to the point of tearing.

That must have been another hallucination.

As I sat beside Im Hyeongtaek, I cursed to myself.

Fuck. Fucking hell. I was going to lose my mind at this rate.

An unknown fury that seemed to have come from the hallucination filled my head, but I tried my best to accept that this situation was normal.

I'd experienced hallucinations a few times when I was too exhausted during my athlete days. Things like this could happen.

Though this was the first time I'd seen hallucinations this vivid and detailed over and over again...

Class began while my heart was still pounding.

"When you were in the military, you all practiced mostly aimed fire, right? Prone, standing, seated. You had plenty of time to steady your breathing, focus, and shoot... You can't shoot like that when you go hunting. When you see a Monster, you need to either aim incredibly fast or use Point Shooting in a pinch. Just shoot first."

That instructor was a former Hunter. Apparently, the instructor had retired after about nine months, and while I wondered how someone with only nine months of experience could become an instructor, that was apparently enough to count as a veteran.

"You hesitate because you want to aim precisely? Then you die. You will absolutely die! You see that a Monster is big, so you figure it's slow and take your time aiming? You'll still die! I saw a Monster the size of a bus once, and I'm not kidding, the bastard was as fast as a Sonata. You can't think of them like creatures from Earth! For some reason, the big bastards are faster..."

The lesson itself was ordinary. Then why?

A strange feeling came over me, something I could only call déjà vu.

I felt as though I had already taken that class. If I had, when?

In last night's dream...

Of course, feeling that something which had just happened had occurred in a dream was a common form of déjà vu. Feeling déjà vu when tired wasn't particularly strange either.

Still, that damned feeling of déjà vu plagued me for the entire class.

I hadn't expected it to continue through the next criminal-law class, on the way home, and even after I washed up and lay down in bed.

* * *

Then I had that dream again.

The dream ended in a nuclear explosion again, but this time, the events leading up to it came to mind a little more clearly.

The academy director and Im Hyeongtaek appeared in this dream. No, they had probably appeared in the previous dream too. I just couldn't remember it.

They looked exactly as they had in the hallucinations. Im Hyeongtaek was dead with his neck broken, while the academy director stared at me expressionlessly, as if about to shed tears of blood.

It was only the second time I had seen them like that, and I retched the instant I saw them.

I hadn't known I could retch in a dream.

* * *

Footnotes:

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