episode_0012

“When you open your eyes like that, the world suddenly looks like this? Puhaha!”

She held her stomach and laughed for a while, then sighed and drank another glass of whiskey.

There’s nothing funny about it at all.

Still, she laughed alone until her eyes filled with water.

“Ha… I feel relieved inside. I’ve never told anyone this before… It’s really refreshing to spit out everything I have to say and what I shouldn’t say. I feel sick to my stomach… Hehe.”

“……”

Looking at her smiling face, I couldn’t say anything.

Because she looks like she’s crying, not smiling.

“Hey, Hyunseong oppa.”

She waved her hand as if nothing was wrong.

“It’s okay, I’m not unhappy. There are so many people less fortunate than me. It’s quite common to have a family where the parents don’t get along, right?”

There are more houses like that than you might think. However, it is rare to find such a home where the parents use themselves to make money.

“Where else can you stay in such a nice place without starving? It’s also popular. I’m really thankful to my parents. And again… ”

She earned it all on her own. Both a nice home and her popularity.

What should I say to her?

Good job? Otherwise, why did you just endure it like a fool?

I just listened to her without saying anything.

I feel like everything I’m saying right now feels like hypocrisy. I just kept my mouth shut and listened to her.

Han Se-ra, who had been talking for a while as if listing the happy points of her life, now lay down completely.

The white short-sleeved t-shirt she had changed into did not hide her body, but rather highlighted it, and the skin sticking out from under the shirt was smooth and without any flab.

Whether or not he noticed that I kept glancing at her body, Han Se-ra calmly continued talking to me.

“How are you? Do you get along well with your family?”

“Hmm… We get along well and there is no need to talk about anything, but I.”

“Huh? What is that… ”

“They are all dead. Everyone but me.”

Sera Han, who had cast Tallulah in an instant, hurriedly corrected her posture. Oh, look at those boobs shaking. That’s awesome.

“I’m sorry! No, I’m sorry! I couldn’t think at all… that… No, in such a dangerous world, I should have thought that such a case would happen… !”

“Don’t worry. It’s not that common around here, but it happens often.”

It’s not particularly rude. I never said anything in the first place.

It is said that due to Dungeon Break, the number of civilian casualties is much lower than before, but I know that there are still hundreds of people like me every year. It’s not just me that’s special.

“And maybe it’s because I don’t have a family, but there are parts of what you said that I really sympathize with.”

“…What is that?”

“First, speak informally again. Because it sounds better that way. hmm… ”

I got up and sat down on the chair next to her.

“Um, oppa over there… ?”

“No, that… I’m somehow embarrassed to talk to him while looking him in the eyes. If I don’t like it, I’ll go back.”

“Oh, no, I definitely don’t like it… ”

Han Se-ra, whose face was bright red, denied my trivial and manipulative behavior with warm consideration, but I myself find myself laughing now. I can’t go so far as to say that there was no such intention at all.

But what if it is true? If I look into her eyes right now, I don’t know if I’ll be able to properly say what’s on my mind. I don’t know why I’m doing this either. Childishly.

I feel a little regret about whether I did something pointless like Ada, and to forget about it, I think about the family I talked about earlier.

Because it’s family… Umm…

“First of all, I don’t have much memory of my family. I think it was just an ordinary house. Both father and mother go to work and return in the evening? And go have some fun on the weekend?”

“……”

“Then an accident happened. By some unlucky chance, on the day I went to visit my friend’s house, Dungeon Break would happen near my house. ”

I received a call about my parents’ death from a friend’s house that I don’t even remember anymore.

A dungeon break occurred near my house, and the hunters took care of it quickly, but it was already too late.

I was so sad that I cried. And he cried and lived with a lot of anger even in the orphanage.

“Of course I was very sad at that time. The anger towards things like monsters was also enormous.”

Even now, so much time has passed, that anger still remains to some extent.

When working as a hunter, the hunter’s attitude toward monsters is divided into two types.

One is the attitude of disposing of dangerous waste that simply needs to be disposed of.

And another thing is the attitude as if you have met the enemy of Bulbuldaecheon. Most of them are people with stories like mine. Those who share the tragedy of losing a family member, friend, or lover.

And I was so consumed with revenge that I used it as fuel to pursue my path as a hunter.

“Until the issue of magical power awakening came out, he was quite a promising star. So much so that she is now compared to the daughter of a prestigious family who is an S-class hunter. There is talent and ability. Since people around me praised me like that, I thought I was the main character of the world. What? ”

A genius who loses his parents and works hard to get revenge on monsters. It was a perfect topic for the media to highlight.

He achieved achievements that a hunter who had not awakened his magic could never achieve.

“In addition, I somehow managed to conquer the D-class dungeon that suddenly appeared there alone and rescued my classmates from the Hunter Academy. Thanks to that, I became an E-level hunter even though I was a minor. I was really famous back then? High-ranking people come to see me from the United States, China, and Japan, and large guilds often send me love calls.”

That’s why I worked harder. There was pride, but also the fire of revenge that had not yet been extinguished.

I want to achieve my dream one day and allow my deceased parents to see my success proudly, even if only from heaven.

But I failed.

“But I really had no talent for magic awakening, and even when I woke up, I didn’t have any. I tried every method. The Academy and the people who supported me tried to do something for me by spending a lot of money.”

It is common for talented hunters to awaken their magical power from the age of 20 when they become adults, and most of them awaken from their early 20s, and at the latest by their mid-20s. The latest person to awaken their magical powers was officially 25 years old.

But even after I was 25, or even after I was 26 or 27, I didn’t have any magic power at all.

“I experienced a few different things in that situation. Well, there are many bad things that people experience in life. Betrayal or something like that.”

… I don’t want to talk about that in detail right now. But I guess I’ve changed a lot since then.

As time passed, the people around me became fewer and fewer, and even the people I thought would never leave got hurt… No, rather, those people left with bigger wounds than others.

In the place where everyone left, a duplicitous man was left who wanted a close family-like relationship, but was also easily suspicious and distrustful of others.

Nearly 20 years have given me enough time to cool down the anger in my heart. And the turbulence of the past eight years was enough to turn the boy into an old man who was tired of everything.

“Nowadays, the reason I work as a hunter is that my desire for revenge for my family has become much less intense than before. No, in fact, it may be pride and stubbornness that are holding me up right now.”

For me, being a hunter was no longer something noble to avenge my parents. I doubted whether it was something that would ignite all my passion in life.

It was just something I had to do every day to achieve success.

And incidentally, it was also a job that was likely to be somewhat popular with women I met casually. They make good money, but the death rate is high. There is a high probability that he is in good health.

I whispered to myself that my parents would also prefer me to live a normal life, rather than for me to become a crazy revenge demon or something.

Cowardly.

“As I got older, I began to yearn for things that were there for me but were no longer there. The family in my memories was definitely a happy one. So, I wanted to create people like that, but I wasn’t capable of anything and only had the habit of doubting others… really… It was ugly.”

He wants heavy love, but because of that, he is suspicious of others and has become a guy who only has light physical relationships.

I lifted my lowered head and turned to look at Han Se-ra who was next to me.

She was speechless. Just like me before.

He just stared at me endlessly with those blue eyes that I felt like I was falling in love with.

This is a woman I met for the first time today, with whom I have no relationship whatsoever. If you think about it, we met in a random chat. This is not an ordinary meeting. In some ways, it is a meeting between a man and a woman that is more embarrassing to talk about than dating in a bar.

But why did I reveal everything I had in my heart to this woman? Different from usual.

It is different from speaking under an anonymous mask in a random chat when you first meet. This time, Sera Han and I clearly recognize each other and are talking face to face.

And that too, with everything inside them taken out.

““……””

As I looked down in silence, I saw our hands almost touching.

Normally, I would have scratched the back of my hand while flirting, but I couldn’t do that now. No, I didn’t want to do that.

Sera Han and I were different yet the same.

She acted in love with her ‘family’ in order to bury her loneliness.

I also played the role of wandering around in search of ‘love’ to question my loneliness.

Is it because they are different yet similar?

Han Se-ra’s clear eyes, which had seemed far away for a while, now seemed closer.

And, to my delight, I was not mistaken.

Jjook…

Because she put her face towards me and brought me closer.

I felt her moist lips touching mine.

When I looked down at her face up close, she was more beautiful than when I first saw her.