WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 37: Trashy Drama (1)

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Instead of replying, Eunyoung saved Hangyeol's number.

Now that she'd actually saved it, a strange feeling settled over her.

"I should've at least asked what kind of god it was."

Even before meeting Hangyeol, she'd had a few people cling to her, promising to introduce her to whatever god they served.

Most of them, no, all of them, had been scams.

Eunyoung had a decent eye for people.

Kang Hangyeol was suspicious by anyone's standards, but he didn't seem like the type to lie.

Which made her even more suspicious. Why her, of all people?

Whatever half-baked reasons Hangyeol had rattled off hadn't been enough to convince her.

She grabbed a passing taxi instead of taking the subway.

Too late.

If she'd gotten an offer like this a few years ago, she might have actually considered it seriously.

Choi Suhyun had a point.

Six years without being chosen by any god meant she had no qualifications to be a Hunter.

More than a hundred years had passed since Gates and Awakened first appeared.

There had been a time when people screamed about the world ending, but nothing like that ever happened.

Things might have changed a lot compared to before Gates showed up, but people who were alive kept living regardless.

People who weren't Awakened lived their days like normal.

Eunyoung was the same.

These days, Song Eunyoung wasn't a Hunter. She was just an ordinary office worker in her twenties.

I'm sick of everything to do with Hunters.

Eunyoung wanted to live quietly now.

Since that day at the cafe, Kang Hangyeol hadn't shown up in front of her again.

Work kept Eunyoung too busy to think about much else.

A week passed in what felt like no time at all.

She went in to work at dawn, same as always.

She yawned and changed clothes in the locker room.

While fixing her hair in the mirror taped to her locker, a junior coworker walked in.

"Good morning, Ms. Song. You're here early."

"Morning. Couldn't sleep so I just got up and came in. Speaking of, your makeup's pretty intense today."

Eunyoung, hair tied up, looked at the junior coworker's face as she approached.

Han Jieun was two years younger than Eunyoung and had just hit her one-year mark at the job.

"I put some effort in. How's my makeup look today?"

"Looks good, I think. Must've been rough getting up that early for this. Don't push yourself too hard at dawn."

Eunyoung left the locker room with Jieun, who'd already changed.

"I have plans tonight."

"Ooh. A guy?"

At Eunyoung's question, Jieun smiled and nodded.

For a brief moment, Eunyoung wondered, did Jieun even have a boyfriend?

Not my business.

Other people's love lives weren't Eunyoung's concern.

The store opened, customers started coming in, and time flew by fast.

When the store hit its break time, Eunyoung headed to the staff cafeteria for lunch.

Coworkers who'd gone down ahead of her spotted her and waved.

Eunyoung joined them without missing a beat.

They ate and talked about the difficult customer from that morning, and the usual office gossip.

Ordinary coworker talk.

"So anyway, get this, Manager Han told the floor manager..."

"Sorry, I need to take a call."

Eunyoung tilted her head slightly and answered her phone.

It was her boyfriend of three years calling.

He'd asked her to call him around lunchtime and she'd completely forgotten.

"Today? Isn't that kind of sudden? Fine, got it. I'll call you back."

Aware of the coworkers watching, she hung up quickly.

"Who was that?"

"Boyfriend. Wants to meet up today. Ugh, feels like today's gonna be brutal."

Eunyoung swallowed a spoonful of seaweed soup and ran through the list of things still left to do at the store.

The morning had been a whirlwind, and the evening had back to back event reservations lined up in the private rooms.

Being an Awakened gave her better stamina than the average person, but mental stamina was a different problem entirely.

Eunyoung muttered, half resigned.

"Guess I'll just meet him. Been a while since we last saw each other anyway."

"Fair enough. Your boyfriend works at Han Sung Group headquarters, right? So jealous. I was gonna suggest we all grab drinks after work today, but guess you can't make it. Oh, didn't Jieun say she had plans tonight too?"

Jieun, sitting diagonally across from Eunyoung, looked up from her food.

Being the youngest on staff, Jieun answered a beat late, glancing at the others at the table.

"My plans got canceled."

"Oh really? Then wanna come drink with us? What do you say?"

The conversation shifted instantly to after-work bar plans.

Eunyoung caught what felt like Jieun glancing her way for just a second.

The dinner spot wasn't far from the hotel where Eunyoung worked.

Her boyfriend's headquarters was also in Gangnam, so they often met up there for meals.

Eunyoung found out only after arriving that he'd booked somewhere pricier than their usual spot, and wondered if she should have dressed up a bit more.

"I'll go to the bathroom real quick."

After the main course wrapped up and before dessert arrived, Eunyoung got up from the table.

The bathroom sat at the very back of the restaurant.

She washed her hands and stepped out.

Rounding the corner, she bumped into someone.

"Sorry about that."

"It's fine... wait. You."

Choi Suhyun pulled his hand from his pocket and pointed at her.

Why is that guy here?

There was no mistaking him. It was Choi Suhyun.

He hadn't shown up in the media that often since joining the Association, but anyone with even a passing interest in Hunters had probably seen his name and face at least once.

Kang Hangyeol and Choi Suhyun knew each other.

More than knew each other, they seemed pretty close.

Choi Suhyun showed up in Gangnam often enough.

Given that guild headquarters were clustered in Gangnam, high-ranking Association officials frequently had reason to visit the major guilds.

Even before he'd brought Hangyeol around, Choi Suhyun had occasionally stayed at, or eaten at, the hotel where Eunyoung worked.

Catching a glimpse of his face in passing wasn't anything to be surprised about.

But in all the dozen-plus times Eunyoung had walked past Choi Suhyun before, he'd never once reacted like this.

Eunyoung pretended not to notice, dipped her head, and turned her back on him.

Choi Suhyun called out to Song Eunyoung like he'd been waiting for exactly this chance.

"Hold on. Hey. I need to talk to you."

Running into Song Eunyoung was purely a coincidence.

Ever since hearing about her from Kang Hangyeol, Suhyun hadn't been able to stop thinking about her.

Reaching out first felt like a blow to his pride.

But leaving it alone left him uneasy, and now here she was.

Eunyoung, back still turned, spoke.

"I'm not interested in becoming a Hunter. I already told your friend that clearly enough."

"That's a separate matter. Don't you think there's some kind of misunderstanding between us? Because of it, I've been losing sleep lately."

"How is your lack of sleep my problem? Go see a doctor if you can't sleep."

She had no idea how relentlessly Hangyeol had been pestering Suhyun since then, so Eunyoung found his tone, like this was somehow her fault, irritating.

"And what misunderstanding? You mean the thing where you told me I didn't have what it takes to be a Hunter? I don't really think that was a misunderstanding."

Saying it hadn't hurt would have been a lie. But there had been some truth to what Suhyun said back then.

Someone without real ability, running around calling themselves a Hunter, was just asking for a pointless death.

No one would remember Eunyoung.

Given that, living an ordinary life might have been the smarter choice.

Bringing up her qualifications and pinning it on Suhyun had just been an excuse to get rid of Hangyeol.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, it was a misunderstanding. When did I ever tell you not to become a Hunter?"

"You said I didn't have what it takes. Same thing."

"By that logic, do you know how many people in this field don't have what it takes?"

"Is that all you wanted to say? I'll get going then."

Suhyun grabbed Eunyoung's arm as she walked away.

With her own strength, she could have shaken off a grip like that without a second thought, but Suhyun wasn't an ordinary man.

He held her wrist, carefully controlling his grip.

"Five minutes. That's all."

A few people leaving the bathroom recognized Suhyun and flinched in surprise.

Eunyoung didn't want to make a scene.

"Come outside."

Suhyun pointed past the window.

He let go of her hand and walked out of the restaurant.

"Wait here a second."

Eunyoung returned to the table.

Phone in hand, she put on a calm act.

"Sorry, I got an urgent call. I'll be back in a minute."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing, just a family thing."

Eunyoung strode out of the restaurant.

She glanced around and spotted Suhyun waving from between two corners of the building.

He was standing between the staff corridor and the regular hallway.

"I need to get back in soon."

"Boyfriend?"

"That's none of your business."

Eunyoung crossed her arms and looked down at him.

A strange silence settled between Suhyun and Eunyoung.

Suhyun remembered clearly the day he'd first met Song Eunyoung.

Back then, he'd been dispatched to Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, to help contain a B-Rank rift.

There, he'd found Song Eunyoung fighting off a dozen or more monsters, alone.

Her instincts had been sharper than anyone would have expected from an Unaffiliated Awakened.

Even Suhyun had no idea why the gods had turned their backs on her. But that was as far as it went.

Song Eunyoung was like a bird without wings. Capable of flight, but grounded because she had no wings to fly with.

"You weren't in your right mind back then. You know that, don't you?"

For the first few years after awakening, she'd fought desperately not to forget she was a bird.

As time passed, reality caught up with her.

Maybe she hadn't been a bird at all. Maybe she'd just been a chicken staring up at the sky.

Kang Hangyeol had been right.

Eunyoung had loved her parents deeply.

She'd been proud that they were Hunters.

When she heard they'd died, it hurt, but she'd told herself they had kept their convictions to the end.

Repeated failure had a way of eroding even that belief.

Her parents had spent their whole lives helping others and died a brutal death for it, and somewhere along the way, Eunyoung had convinced herself she'd gotten nothing from them at all.

No matter how talented Song Eunyoung was, taking on a dozen or more B-Rank monsters alone had been impossible.

Suhyun knew better than anyone why she'd been there that day.

If he hadn't said what he did to her back then, she would have kept fighting there until she died.

"I'll admit I was maybe going through some kind of phase and said it harsher than I should have. If it hurt you, I'm sorry."

Suhyun bowed his head, and Song Eunyoung faltered, caught off guard.

Choi Suhyun was known, even to ordinary people, for being a Hunter with serious pride.

For him to bow his head over some old grudge like this was almost unthinkable.

She didn't know him well, but she could tell something about this whole situation wasn't normal.

"Grab the chance while you still have it."

Suhyun wasn't lying to lure her in.

Eunyoung was thinking about marrying her boyfriend, who wasn't an Awakened.

She had no intention of asking him to understand her wanting to become a Hunter.

The Song Eunyoung standing here now wasn't the Eunyoung who'd once wanted to be a Hunter. She was the Song Eunyoung who'd given up on that dream.

"It's too late. I'm..."

"Hey! Do you even know where you are right now?"

"Oppa, I swear, I'm just having dinner with a friend. I had no idea you'd be eating here too. Wait, are you actually going to marry that coworker of yours? Weren't you just telling me you loved me?"

"Who said anything about marriage? I told you, I'm just here for dinner. How did you even find out I was here..."

Sensing something was off, Eunyoung turned her face toward the voices.

Footnotes:

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