The Way of Life for a Terminal S-Class Hunter - C24
$24
“Hyung, are you okay?”
Someone approached the bench silently and stroked my forehead. A gentle touch, a kind voice. It was Lee-han. Usually he seemed like just a child, but somehow he had an uncanny ability to find me when I was struggling. At one point I had acted as his guardian, so I felt ashamed to keep showing weakness, but today I didn’t have the energy for such sentiments.
“What is it?”
When I opened my eyes, Lee-han was standing there looking down at me. Was it because I was looking up at him? His face seemed full of concern.
“Whenever you’re having a hard time, you close your eyes and clasp your hands, hyung. Like you’re praying.”
Did I do that?
It was something I wasn’t consciously aware of, an unconscious behavior.
“Did something happen in the contaminated area?”
I expected him to ask if the reporters had asked unnecessary questions, so it was unexpected. And it hit quite close to the mark, making me hesitate to open my mouth.
“No. What could have happened?”
“Hyung…”
Lee-han looked straight into my eyes. Unlike me, his gaze was unwavering.
“The only things that trouble you are related to Kang Seo-heon, right?”
Lee-han was unusually sharp today. The normally gentle, easygoing kid was showing his claws, and the target was Seo-heon.
“I’m just busy with a lot of work lately, so I’m a bit overwhelmed. Maybe I’m just tired.”
A brief silence fell. A breeze blew in from somewhere. Even the gentle wind made the tree branches sway back and forth. The last leaf clinging on fell to the ground.
“Are you busy, hyung?”
Lee-han had a lot of questions today.
“I’m off now. I pushed through a tight schedule.”
“Then would you like to go drinking with me today?”
“Drinking? At this hour?”
It was a bit late for lunch, but too early for drinking.
“I want to drink with you, hyung.”
Come to think of it, I had never drunk with Lee-han before. I wasn’t the type to seek out alcohol or company when upset, and since I had known Lee-han since he was in high school, the thought of drinking together felt awkward. Some people might say “He’s all grown up now, let’s have a drink together,” but I still seemed to think of Lee-han as a child. That’s why I suddenly looked him over. I suddenly realized Lee-han was taller than I thought.
“With me?”
“Yes. I want to drink with you, hyung.”
It probably wouldn’t even be fun drinking with me. I was grateful to Lee-han for noticing I was struggling and being so considerate.
“Alright. Do you know a good place nearby?”
If I went home now, I’d probably just wallow in self-pity even though I had no right to. Having a drink after a long time didn’t sound bad.
“Yes. Let’s go together.”
Lee-han held out his hand. I slowly took it.
The bar Lee-han took me to looked like a Korean restaurant at first glance, but it had private rooms. I was impressed that he had grown up enough to frequent such upscale bars.
“Hyung, you’re quite good at drinking, aren’t you?”
Before I knew it, we were on our fifth bottle of soju served in fancy bottles. Lee-han’s face had a light flush, seemingly from the alcohol.
“Yeah. I learned the hard way in the army when I was twenty.”
You couldn’t drink in the regular army, but where I was was different. Actually, it wasn’t a place carefully managed by the state, and if our team supervisor was in a bad mood, he would make anyone drink like crazy and then punish them. Kids who couldn’t handle alcohol would throw up without being able to stand properly, so I would often drink in their place, keeping an eye on the situation. Maybe because of that experience, I had never gotten drunk until now.
“Without even knowing that.”
I thought I heard a curse for a moment, but looking at Lee-han’s impossibly innocent face, I must have heard wrong.
“Did you want to see me drunk?”
No matter what, I wouldn’t get drunk in front of a kid.
When I reached out to fix his disheveled hair, Lee-han rubbed his face against my palm like a puppy. His face must have been flushed from the alcohol, as I could feel warmth even on my hand, which was slightly warmer than the average person’s.
“Don’t treat me like a kid.”
“You were so small when I first met you.”
Lee-han seemed to have given up on drinking more and only poured alcohol into my empty glass. His slightly protruding lower lip in dissatisfaction was so cute that I wondered if this was how it felt to have a younger brother. If I had had a sibling, would life have been less difficult? No, the pain might have doubled.
“I’m taller than you now, hyung.”
“That’s right. What did you eat to grow so big?”
I patted his cheeks and tried to pull my hand away, but unexpectedly, Lee-han’s grip holding me was strong.
“I worked really hard to grow taller than you. You’d be surprised if you knew how much milk I drank.”
The words “Drinking a lot of milk doesn’t make you grow taller” rose to my throat but then sank back down. Lee-han’s mood was too serious to pass it off as a joke.
“What are you going to do now that you’re bigger than me?”
“I’m about the same height as Kang Seo-heon now.”
The fact that he called me “hyung” but always referred to Seo-heon as “Kang Seo-heon” made me think they really didn’t get along. Come to think of it, they seemed to have been at odds from the beginning.
***
I first met Lee-han five years ago. It was around the time I had just joined the Ihwa Guild, so I often worked in a team with Seo-heon.
“What kind of guild fails to conquer a B-rank dungeon and causes this mess?”
Seo-heon gritted his teeth while running his hand through his hair. Although it was an urgent call on our day off, as a guild expanding its influence, we had no choice.
“The contamination is spreading quickly, and monsters are even attacking civilian villages, so let’s hurry.”
The guild that caused the accident was a new guild established last year. They seemed to have been overly ambitious recently, and finally caused trouble. They were known for recklessly scouting hunters without guaranteed skills and buying up conquest rights for low-rank dungeons to exploit their guild members.
“It’s chaos from here.”
Seo-heon used his skill to survey the terrain and situation from the sky. The situation was quite bad. Although the dungeon itself wasn’t powerful, the affected village lacked infrastructure due to its small population, resulting in a failure to respond quickly. Moreover, evacuation was delayed compared to the speed of contamination.
“I’ll rescue people in the upper area, you go down.”
Seo-heon still hesitated to work separately from me, but this time he had no choice.
I mainly used skills that attacked omnidirectionally, while Seo-heon could use not only wide-range attacks but also delicate abilities, so we needed to be in different places. Seo-heon headed towards the apartment area where people were concentrated, and I moved to an area with scattered villas.
Most of the buildings had collapsed due to monster attacks, but fortunately, two were still intact. Hunters dispatched earlier had informed us that civilians had evacuated to the intact buildings through underground parking lots.
[A-rank skill, Rain of Fire is used. The blessing of flames imbues the rain you call forth.]
[Mana is consumed to enhance the skill, Rain of Fire.]
Hot fire fell over a wider range than usual. Monsters caught on fire writhed in agony, but the rain of fire didn’t extinguish. Unless I wished it or unless faced with a monster of at least equal strength to me, suppression was impossible. Monsters around the apartments quickly fell.
[A-rank skill, Wind of Fire is used. The wind becomes an information messenger at your request.]
The wind moved according to my will. I deliberately reduced its power to perform a supportive role. The wind passing by leaving a red light also conveyed information about nearby living beings, making it useful for rescuing people. However, skills using fire could harm people if not careful, so when searching, it had to be used extremely delicately and weakly.
“Ah.”
And along the path the wind had passed, a fluttering sound echoed. It was the presence of a child. I searched the surroundings, but there were no guardians, and the heartbeat was excessively loud. I raised my agility to the maximum and ran towards the direction of that sound.
In the meantime, a monster that had arrived was licking its lips while lifting the collapsed debris of the building where the child was hiding.
“Get away!”
[A-rank skill, Song of Flames is used. While the song continues, everything your hands touch will be burned.]
I hurriedly used the skill to blow up the monster. The child was in a gap between seriously collapsed stones, so much so that I wouldn’t have noticed without the Wind of Fire.
“Are you okay? Can you answer me once if you can hear me?”
There was still no response. I became anxious and broke the stones with my fists without even thinking of using a skill.
Inside was a child in a school uniform, curled up. The body was quite small, making me wonder if they were in middle school. However, the most surprising thing was that despite the major collapse, there wasn’t a speck of dust around the child.
“Are you alright?”
The child slowly raised their head, looked at my face, and then cried incessantly. Eyes mixed with relief and pain trembled delicately.
“Everything will be okay now. What’s your name?”
“…Lee-han.”
The sobbing sound hit my chest. It wasn’t my first time participating in a rescue, but I was usually tasked with dealing with monsters. This was the first time I had saved a child with my own hands. When I took the child out and hugged them, warm tears spread around my chest.
“Lee-han. Let’s go with hyung. I’ll take you to a safe place.”
The child, who seemed to be about 160cm tall, was thin and light even when I lifted them up.
“Um… Can I really go with you, hyung?”