WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Dionysus
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Newbie Civil Servant Hunts Villains Before Going Home ◈
Chapter 2: Job Hunting
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* * *
Bang!
Someone slammed a clenched fist onto the conference room floor.
His already wrinkled face creased even deeper as he vented his frustration, his expression sharp.
“Does this make any sense?!”
Bang!
Veins stood out along his thick forearm as his fist came down again.
A Black Eagle emblem was printed on his clothing.
“We found where that bastard was, only for it to be fake! Fake...!”
“Old Man, keep that up and you’ll keel over.”
The woman glanced at the middle-aged man while fiddling with her phone.
“Who plays on their phone during a meeting?”
“Old Man, as long as you can hear, what does it matter? Why are you being such a fossil today?”
Click.
The woman winked and took a picture.
“What...? Isn’t that because your Team Seven didn’t do its job properly?”
“Watch what you say, Old Man. You were the one leading this operation to catch Shin Daeho. Who could’ve known that place was bait? All we did was destroy an innocent building.”
As a smile spread across the woman’s face, the middle-aged man began to tremble.
“Do you even know who gave us that information?”
“Oh, it was our Team Seven. Sorry.”
The woman stuck out her tongue slightly at him.
A star-shaped mark adorned her face.
“Now, now, both of you, calm down. Getting worked up won’t bring Shin Daeho back.”
The woman with the light brown hippie perm smiled pleasantly.
“We lost Shin Daeho, but we haven’t lost Shin Daeho’s trail yet. It may have been bait, but didn’t we capture Shin Daeho’s subordinates at that building? That was the result of Team Seven and Team Two working together.”
She tried to change the mood.
If this kept up, the relationship between Team Seven and Team Two would only worsen.
Since the teams frequently had to cooperate, they needed to get along.
But the two team leaders were always at each other’s throats.
“You heard Haeryeon, right, Old Man?”
“You heard what Haeryeon said too, didn’t you?”
“Old Man, I spoke first.”
“This is why children won’t do. So immature.”
“You want to go at it? Right, Old Man?”
“Fine. Let’s.”
As the conflict escalated again, Haeryeon stepped in.
She set something down.
It was a bottle filled with thick green liquid.
“If I force this down your throats, you’ll get along for about three minutes. Would you rather that, or will you stop fighting?”
Haeryeon’s eyes narrowed.
She was the sort of person who would actually do it, so the two let out dry coughs.
Ahem. Ahem.
“Still, are we really allowed to decide this among ourselves? Not every team is here.”
Team Two, Team Three, and Team Seven.
Those were the teams gathered here.
“Didn’t you hear, unni?”
The woman looked at Haeryeon.
“Hear what?”
“Since the Old Man and I started fighting again, everyone said they were sick of it and left us to handle it ourselves. They handed over the authority for us to decide whatever we want.”
“Hmph. Those youngsters should be stopping a fight, not leaving!”
“Isn’t it because you keep acting like such a fossil, Old Man?”
The woman raised an eyebrow, and the middle-aged man looked at her with displeasure.
By age alone, she could have been his granddaughter.
Her constant backtalk annoyed him, yet he could not quite dislike her.
“How is that my fault? It’s those people’s fault for saying nothing but nasty things now that the mission has been assigned.”
The man added what the woman had left out.
“So we can decide anything among ourselves? Anything at all.”
The corners of Haeryeon’s mouth rose.
At that suspicious smile, the woman and middle-aged man shouted at once.
“That’s not what it means, unni!”
“That’s not it, Haeryeon!”
“That is what it means. They handed over their authority too, so what does it matter what we do? We all know perfectly well how busy we are.”
Haeryeon smiled and flexed her fingers.
Maybe she should take this opportunity to loosen some of these suffocating regulations.
“What should we start with? Should we figure out how to fill our understaffed ranks? Since we’re at it, maybe we should raid the national coffers too...”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Then came urgent knocking.
All three looked at the door at once.
“I’ll see what it is.”
Haeryeon got up and opened the door.
“W-we have a problem! There’s, there’s a madman outside!”
“Pardon?”
Haeryeon looked confused.
A madman?
This was the Nest, home to the Black Eagles who hunted villains.
Who would do something crazy here?
“H-he says he brought Shin Daeho’s head.”
“...?”
Question marks flooded Haeryeon’s mind.
* * *
“...My goodness.”
Haeryeon could not close her mouth as she looked at the test report in her hand.
The results matched Shin Daeho.
It really was Shin Daeho’s head.
A strange man had just brought in a severed head.
It was enough to call him a madman.
“Hahaha!”
The middle-aged man burst out laughing beside her.
“Old Man. Is this really the time to laugh?”
The leader of Team Seven narrowed her eyes.
“How can I not laugh? He brought Shin Daeho’s head.”
“How is that even possible? We tried so hard to catch him.”
Holding her phone, the Team Seven leader moved her thumb rapidly.
How had that man killed Shin Daeho when none of them could?
With an incredulous look on her face, she took a picture of herself.
Click.
“Did you just take a picture of me?”
The voice of the man tied up in the interrogation room came through the speaker.
Even in this situation, he did not sound particularly affected.
“No. I took a picture of myself. Were you asking if you could take one of me?”
The Team Seven leader was rather pleased by the question.
Aside from the unusually numerous scars, he was quite her type.
His unkempt black hair covered his face, while the loose ponytail trailing behind him suited him well.
“I’d rather not.”
The man answered bluntly, shaking his head.
The hair that had lifted fell back down.
“But how can you hear us?”
The Team Seven leader asked in fascination.
They had not turned on the microphone yet.
When Haeryeon stepped out, the Team Seven leader looked at her in surprise.
“Where are you going, unni?”
“I want to see him myself.”
Haeryeon entered the interrogation room and sat down.
“I’m Oh Haeryeon, leader of Black Eagle Team Two.”
She introduced herself first.
That came before anything else.
“I’m Seo Hyeonyul. I’m currently job hunting.”
At Hyeonyul’s answer, Haeryeon gave a small smile.
She did not know whether he was joking, but she could at least tell that he was being very cooperative.
“First, I apologize for the inconvenience. We have you in temporary detention according to procedure. Do your wrists hurt?”
Whatever Hyeonyul’s intentions, he was an outsider.
Regardless of the reason, an outsider who arrived without an appointment could be held in temporary detention.
“I’m fine. I believe it’s appropriate procedure.”
Hyeonyul remained calm.
He had brought in a head, so it was understandable.
“Have you confirmed Shin Daeho’s identity and mine?”
He had cooperated as much as he could for their sake.
“Yes. The checks are complete.”
Haeryeon nodded.
He really was Seo Hyeonyul.
He had no criminal record.
The only unusual things were that he had not even completed the basic education course and that he had an excessive number of hospital visits.
She could not understand why he went to the hospital every other day.
‘Is he sickly, despite appearances?’
Haeryeon gave the matter little thought.
“First, I would like to ask whether you killed Shin Daeho.”
“I killed him alone.”
“Alone? You... did it alone?”
Haeryeon’s eye twitched slightly.
Did that make any sense?
Shin Daeho was, broadly speaking, a major villain.
“Yes.”
“...How did you kill him?”
“I cut off his head in one stroke with a dagger. Did you see his startled expression?”
“...I did.”
“He must not have expected to die.”
Hyeonyul smiled faintly, and Haeryeon focused on that expression.
It was quite chilling.
“Then why did you kill him?”
As she asked, Haeryeon recalled what she had heard earlier.
“He said it was Shin Daeho’s head. Then he asked about... the Four Major Social Insurances. Yes, he asked whether we offered them. He’s a madman.”
“I brought that bastard’s head here to help with my job search.”
“...”
Haeryeon blinked.
She could not understand the connection between job hunting and Shin Daeho’s head.
“I saw the Special Recruitment notice.”
“...Black Eagle’s recruitment notice?”
Haeryeon’s eyes began to waver.
“Yes. What other notice would it be?”
“It clearly says to apprehend the target, not kill them.”
Haeryeon’s voice rose slightly.
“Isn’t it the same thing? Black Eagle has the exceptional authority to kill villains, so you’ll kill them anyway.”
That much information was everywhere online.
The authority to kill people in modern society.
It showed how serious the Empire was about getting rid of villains.
Villains were not one large organization, but were closer to individual threats.
Deploying the army would clearly create greater chaos, yet leaving them alone would only let the problem grow. Black Eagle had been created to prevent that.
“Mr. Seo Hyeonyul, you are a civilian.”
“I know. However, I also know that the law goes easy on individuals who kill villains. So there won’t be a problem.”
Hyeonyul pointed out a legal loophole.
After looking through court rulings, even briefly, he had found them notably biased.
Since he was right, Haeryeon could not immediately respond.
It did not matter anyway.
“In any case, it never said I could not kill them, so I meet the requirements. Isn’t that right?”
“That is correct.”
Haeryeon hesitated for a moment before answering.
Broadly speaking, he could be said to meet the requirements.
“The qualifications said there were no restrictions. Does that mean it doesn’t matter what I did in the past?”
Hyeonyul asked just in case.
There had been times when the terms changed during an interview.
“Yes. There are no restrictions in the qualifications.”
Haeryeon answered firmly.
They were already suffering from a labor shortage. They could not raise the requirements any further.
“The benefits are unchanged as well?”
“They are unchanged. Otherwise, why would we have written them down?”
“The terms and benefits often change at interviews.”
“What? Who does something so wicked?”
Haeryeon recoiled in horror.
Posting a recruitment notice with the intention of deceiving people from the start.
“Quite a few places.”
Hyeonyul did not elaborate.
This was essentially an interview.
“I will uphold Black Eagle’s will and wipe out the villains at the root.”
Hyeonyul put force into his voice.
They had promised to enroll him in the Four Major Social Insurances, then failed to do so.
They would not let him use annual leave or sick leave.
They made him work overtime as casually as eating meals, and they did not pay overtime wages.
Trash like that needed to disappear.
“I thought it would be better to prove myself through ability rather than talk.”
“What work have you done until now?”
Going along with Hyeonyul’s belief that this was an interview, Haeryeon asked.
There was no record of him attending school or working for a company.
“I worked for a company run by villains.”
“Was it voluntary? Were you forced to work there?”
Haeryeon was startled inwardly but tried to remain calm.
“Few companies could pay enough for me to cover my medical bills, and they recruited me.”
“...What did you say?”
It was not Haeryeon, but the Team Seven leader who asked in surprise.
Recruited?
“It is true. You may think of me as a villain, but my desire to become a Black Eagle is sincere.”
Hyeonyul handed them the decision.
Now it was up to them.
‘I hope they don’t reject me.’
This was the only workplace where killing villains was work and he would be paid for it.
Even if they rejected him, he planned to ask whether he could receive the wanted bounty.
“First, I need to ask.”
Haeryeon spoke calmly.
It was not a problem they had faced before, and perhaps not one they would face again.
It was troublesome, which only made her more agitated.
“If you are hired here, you may receive unfair treatment because you were once a villain. Are you all right with that?”
“What specifically would that unfair treatment involve? Would it affect my salary, sick leave, annual leave, or anything like that?”
Hyeonyul raised an eyebrow slightly.
Surely they would not be like the villains.
“No. I mean how people treat you, Mr. Seo Hyeonyul.”
“Oh, if it’s something like that, I’m fine. I can just ignore them.”
Hyeonyul felt relieved.
That was all?
“Good! That’s the spirit! I like it!”
A deep male voice rang out.
Hyeonyul did not miss that fact.
‘One more person.’
There were three people here in total.
“Old Man! I told you, this isn’t something we can decide so easily!”
The woman’s voice sounded aghast.
“Old Man! Where are you...?”
Bang.
The door opened.
A heavily muscled middle-aged man entered.
He was laughing heartily.
“We have seven teams in total. As luck would have it, only three team leaders are here today. We have been granted the authority to accept whatever result we reach. I don’t care whether you used to be a villain or not. I vote in favor.”
The Team Two leader spoke decisively.
At the promising start, the corners of Hyeonyul’s mouth rose slightly, as though it were only natural.
Thud.
The door opened urgently.
The Team Seven leader came out.
“I’m against it. He has no past work history, and I see no need to accept him simply because the head he brought was Shin Daeho’s.”
“You said it yourself. It was Shin Daeho. He faced that bastard alone. What more do you need to see? We are Black Eagle.”
The Team Two leader looked at the Team Seven leader, confronting her with reality.
Through their argument, Hyeonyul learned something he had not known.
‘Looks like Shin Daeho was more of a big shot than I thought.’
Who would have thought dying would make him useful?
“I understand what you mean. Being strong is good. But the fact that he did it alone makes me uneasy.”
The Team Seven leader put down her phone.
What kind of power did he possess to make that possible?
What if that power turned against them?
That was what unsettled the Team Seven leader.
Hyeonyul naturally looked at Haeryeon.
She was the only one left.
Just as Haeryeon, deep in thought, was about to speak, something rang.
Bzzzz.
Lights glowed on the smartwatches worn by Haeryeon and the leaders of Team Two and Team Seven.
“What is it?”
Haeryeon asked as she touched hers.
The wireless earpiece in her ear relayed the message from the smartwatch.
<One minute ago, we received word from a villain. They say they planted a bomb in a village about ten kilometers from here. The bomb appears large enough to wipe out an entire village.>
Grit.
Haeryeon clenched her teeth at those words.
What excellent timing, as though it had been choreographed.
“...Understood.”
She immediately cut off the communication and looked at the team leaders.
“Contact the Bomb Disposal Team. I’ll check whether a team has already been dispatched there.”
“...Unni.”
The Team Seven leader spoke.
“What?”
“The Bomb Disposal Team isn’t here right now.”
“...?”
“She’s right. Bomb Maniac has appeared.”
Even the Team Two leader’s face hardened.
The timing was truly bad.
But since the opponent was Bomb Maniac, they had no choice.
A city could be blown away if they were careless.
“Are you in trouble?”
When Hyeonyul spoke, all eyes turned toward him.
Seeming satisfied, he continued.
“I can handle that.”
You can?
Every gaze said the same thing.
“Could you use some help?”
The corners of Hyeonyul’s mouth rose slightly.
Footnotes:
Four Major Social Insurances refers to Korea's mandatory pension, health, employment, and industrial accident insurance programs.
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