🔊 TTS Settings
Episode 7
My heart heavy with complex thoughts, I took a deep breath.
Stepping into the entrance of the dilapidated building, a narrow set of stairs greeted me. It was so cramped that it felt completely cut off from the noisy street outside.
Ascending the cold, dust-laden stairs, I pushed open the small door.
The small brass bell attached to the iron door chimed merrily—ding-ling. Inside was a cafe furnished with outdated, retro-style chairs and tables.
It wasn’t a place chasing a retro aesthetic; it was the authentic, original deal.
A faded space that looked like it would serve coffee in a porcelain bowl the size of an earthenware pot.
“What the—?”
“Uh, I-I’m a customer.”
A raspy voice shouted from behind the counter. Caught off guard, I blurtingly replied that I was a customer.
An elderly woman with a stooped back and greying hair sat in an armchair, a blanket draped over her knees, staring intently at me. A tuxedo-patterned cat perched on her lap like a stuffed doll.
Her appearance didn’t give off the slightest impression of someone connected to illegal activities.
‘Strange. I thought facial features were a science.’
She looked like the kind of grandma who, if you gave up your seat on a bus or subway, would pull a ginseng candy out of her pocket and hand it to you with a smile.
The owner scanned me up and down before speaking up loudly.
“What are you doing here at this hour?”
“Well…”
“Did you come to drink coffee?”
“A-Ah, no!”
“Then why are you here?”
“I came to hire someone!”
“What did you say?”
The gentle-looking grandma’s eyes instantly turned sharp.
As she stared blankly at me without a word, tension began to set in.
Stay calm. I’m a rich F-rank who lives like there’s no tomorrow. There’s nothing wrong with dying today, so blabber all you want.
“I came here knowing what kind of place this is.”
“And so what?”
“I heard this is an unregistered hunter agency. I’m not looking for work. I came to ask you to introduce someone to work for me.”
Right now, the future where this place catches fire nagged at my mind the most, but either way, it was true that I needed to hire someone.
Now, even the tuxedo cat raised its head to stare at me. Its narrowed yellow eyes felt like they were piercing right through me, which unnerved me. Having never raised a pet before, I couldn’t help but feel self-conscious.
“What do I know about you to be introducing anyone to you?”
“Uh… th-that’s a good point?”
When I gave a foolish answer, the owner immediately set the cat down from her lap, rummaged through the blanket covering her knees, and pulled out a gun.
It was my first time seeing a handgun in person. Wait, so she’s a civilian?
Since the appearance of awakeners, illegal gun transactions among civilians had begun to rise in Korea.
Unawakened civil servants in military and hunter-related roles started using them for self-defense, but after that savage era…
“Talk straight from now on.”
…the government turned a blind eye to adults possessing firearms. Well, in the seedier parts of the world, that is.
Which meant this place was indeed illegal.
With the muzzle pointing right at me, my tongue loosened instantly.
“Ma’am! I’m not a weird person! Oh right, I can show you my Awakener Registration Card! Look at how squeaky clean it is!”
“That’s even weirder. Why would a young lady like you come to a place like this?”
“Only people with complicated circumstances come here, right? I have an important reason too!”
“Most of those ‘people with circumstances’ are weirdos and ex-cons.”
“Ah, I really don’t have a criminal record, but I do have my reasons! So please put the gun down, please! It’s scary!”
The owner paused in silence.
Ah. Now was the time to reveal the prophecy.
Not a single wrinkle on the owner’s face twitched; she maintained absolute composure. That alone proved how much battle-tested experience she had under her belt.
Seeing an elderly woman with a stooped back still making a living through dangerous work meant she must have quite a story of her own.
Facing someone like her, I decided to make my first gamble.
“If you have nothing more to say, buy your coffee quietly and scram.”
“I still have something to say! I’ll tell you about your future that I saw through my awakener skill!”
Before the owner’s glare—which seemed to say, go ahead and blabber—and the glinting gun barrel, I began speaking with utter seriousness.
“Uh… while passing by the train station earlier, I saw a vision of the future. A fire is going to break out here soon.”
Silence.
A suffocating silence began to settle into every corner of the cafe like late autumn frost.
The owner’s brow, which hadn’t twitched even a millimeter until a moment ago, gradually began to furrow.
“When?”
“I-I don’t know the exact date. My ability only awakened recently, so my rank is low… I haven’t even registered with the government yet…”
“Why is it going to happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“…”
I really came here without thinking things through.
“If you want to die a peaceful death, leave.”
The owner flicked her wrinkled, withered hand, pointing toward the exit. She added:
“It’s best not to frequent places like this. You look like a college student who’s completely lost her mind. Don’t make your parents worry—go home.”
“Wait a second. Is it really that hard to hire someone? I have plenty of money.”
“I’ve got plenty of money too. Get out.”
No! Coming here was my best option!
Still, hearing myself referred to as a student made me feel a bit better.
To elderly people, I guess I still look as young as a student. If you saw my bank balance, you’d know I’m not just a young-looking woman, I thought, reaching for my phone—
BANG—!
“Where is that crazy old hag—!”
A man slammed open the iron door and burst inside.
Both the owner’s and my eyes locked onto the translucent PET bottle he was holding.
Filled to the brim with a sloshing liquid, the bottle looked like a makgeolli container.
Out of nowhere, harsh curses echoed through the cozy cafe on a bright morning.
“Wh-What…?”
Unlike me, who was flustered by the sudden turn of events, the owner acted as if this was just a daily routine. She calmly stood up and swept the cat at her feet into the counter area.
Seeing the cat slide like liquid into a box behind the counter to hide, she tapped her knee with the hand holding the handgun and clicked her tongue in irritation.
“Sigh, damn it, what is this first thing in the morning…?”
“Hey! Even if you assign people to a team, how could you pair me up with a bastard like that?! As soon as we stepped into the dungeon, that guy wasn’t hunting magic beasts—he was hunting people! What? ‘He does his job well’?!”
Looks like there was a psychopath among the people who went into the gate dungeon with him. The taxi driver’s words from yesterday suddenly flashed through my mind, sending a chill down my spine.
‘It wasn’t an urban legend; it was real.’
I knew that people getting killed inside gates happened all the time. I’d seen urban legends floating around the internet and occasional news reports on illegal raids.
But this was my first time coming so close to the dark underbelly of society.
‘I need to get used to this now.’
There was no other way. First, I had to help the owner, who might become a useful ally to me.
“You and everyone else who comes here know what kind of place this is. What do you expect me to do by barging in and shouting like this?”
“There still should be a limit to it—!”
The man who had been shouting threateningly began crying out, his aggressive momentum deflating. Every time he opened his mouth, a heavy reek of alcohol wafted out. He must have gotten drunk and made up his mind to do this.
“You said you’d filter out the weirdos beforehand! But that bastard made it look like he was waiting for us on purpose…! My friend died because of you! This isn’t a matter of compensation!”
“Did you come here thinking it was a joke that things like that happen often? What, did you not even bother putting what people told you into your ears? And now it’s my fault?”
Lacking any comeback, the man just huffed and puffed, red veins popping in his eyes as rage rushed up to his neck. The intermittent sounds of him sniffling were grating.
“Who was that weird guy who killed your friend anyway? Good grief. No matter how much I filter them out, these scumbags never decrease in number.”
“Who? That decent-looking guy! He looked so neat and handsome… but once we entered the dungeon, his eyes went completely insane!”
Only now did I notice that the hands of the man in the shabby windbreaker and hiking pants were trembling violently.
As he started describing the psychopath’s appearance, he shook like a washing machine in a spin cycle.
“…Even when I was in the slammer, I never saw a bastard like that…”
Ah, so he was a criminal. Would it be rude to ask why he went to prison or what his charge was?
“Tsk. Coming from a guy who beat up and killed someone.”
The owner mumbled in disbelief, satisfying my curiosity.
“What?! I’m trying to pull my life together now! How can you compare me to that psychopath?!”
“Pulling your life together? Everyone in this market knows about the trouble you caused drinking around here a few days ago! I let it slide once, and look at how you talk! Why do people like you always neatly forget what they’ve done on the spot?”
“I told you I made a mistake because I was drunk! Are you done talking?!”
I had no idea which part of that triggered the man’s rage button. Maybe it was a mindset a normal person like me couldn’t fathom.
In the brief moment I stood there helpless, the increasingly agitated man roughly yanked off the cap of the bottle and began splashing the liquid all around.
A nauseating, headache-inducing stench rushed over me along with sheer terror.
‘Gasoline!’
I involuntarily scowled and stepped back.
“Y-You crazy bastard!”
“I’m going to sacrifice myself, got it?! So that no other victims like me are created—that’s what I’m saying!”
In his bloodshot eyes, there was nothing left except the determination to drag everyone down with him.
I guess it’s my turn to step in now. Standing beside the owner, I positioned myself to use my unique ability while subtly egging on the criminal.
“Excuse me, if I die while you’re ‘sacrificing yourself,’ aren’t you going to end up back in prison?”
“What?”
As if realizing my presence only now, he opened his bloodshot eyes wide, glared straight at me, and stammered out a shout.
“Who the hell are you? Are you waiting to get a job too?”
“I’m one of the people who stands to lose if this place burns down.”
“I don’t know how a girl like you ended up in a place like this, but go somewhere else! At least that’ll lower your chances of dying a meaningless death.”
What a completely useless piece of advice…
‘Wait a second.’
Even if this cafe burns to ashes, I’m the only one who survives.
It was a fact I had implicitly known, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
However… as that assumption struck home with cold clarity, goosebumps erupted across my entire body.
‘This wasn’t something to take lightly at all.’
Until a moment ago, I had felt nothing thinking about death, talking casually about ending my own life quickly.
But now, facing a life-and-death crisis right before my eyes, it was on a completely different level.
Even though a man about to set a fire was standing right in front of me…
Rather than scared, I felt insanely hollowed out, the tiny hairs all over my body refusing to settle.
It felt as if the life-and-death struggles of others were happening in a completely different dimension.
I stared blankly at the gasoline splashing everywhere, then flicked a Magic Bullet—the ability I obtained upon awakening as an F-rank—from the tip of my finger.
