Chapter 159: Fa
A peaceful lunchti at Zero Academy.
Two days ago, I fought alongside heroes.
And just yesterday, I raided an underground illegal arena with a villain.
It felt like riding a roller coaster engineered for an insane drop, unreal enough to seem like a dream.
[Team Leader Kang Junyeong: Ryu Jinwoo, the settlent for the Mangwon Gate Incident has been paid! Please check!!!]
[Uncle: Keep. In. Touch. More. Often.]
The two ssages that arrived in quick succession on my smartphone proved that it was all real.
Compensation earned alongside heroes, and a villain masquerading as my uncle.
That bizarre harmony made my head throb.
And the turbulent events of the past two days had begun to affect reality as well.
“Jinwoo, welco.”
The mont I arrived, Do Haru played at being a butler and guided to my seat.
The mountain of bread and desserts stacked there was impressive.
“I prepared everything you said you wanted to eat. If you need anything else, please do not hesitate to ask……”
Do Haru slid a card across the table with exaggerated gravitas.
Honestly, this kid watched far too many strange dramas.
“That is your mom’s card, right? Drop the weird act already.”
“Ahem, correct. My mom said to buy you whatever you want. She said thank you for protecting Iri and Saul. too.”
Do Haru grinned and gestured at the desserts filling the table.
It was repaynt for looking after her siblings during the last Gate incident.
I did not refuse and downed my iced Aricano in one go.
Free food was always welco.
“You know my siblings only talk about you now, right? Iri keeps asking if you are okay, and Saul is going crazy saying he wants to be like you. He even begged Mom to buy him a sword.”
“Is that so.”
“It is! Our dad runs a taekwondo gym, but Saul is throwing a fit about switching to kendo. And honestly? I am in favor.”
It was easy to picture Do Saul throwing a tantrum.
Do Haru’s parents must be having a hard ti.
Having kids like Do Haru and Do Saul.
At least the younger one seed relatively calm.
“You should not be in favor of that.”
“I am into swords these days too. I swing one around at the training hall all the ti now. Cool, right?”
It was impressive that soone who used to ss around all day was actually training.
Unfortunately, you do not have any talent with the sword.
I sipped my Aricano and shook my head.
That was when—
“Oh, right. Jinwoo, you used family leave yesterday too, right? To see your uncle.”
Cough—!
At Do Haru’s casual ntion of my uncle, I let out a reflexive cough.
“Ah, are you okay? What is wrong?”
“No, just swallowed wrong.”
“Be careful. Is your uncle doing well? He must have been so proud of you this ti.”
He did act proud.
If you asked whether he was doing well, I would say he was doing great at slicing people up.
A lunatic who kidnapped his ‘nephew’ and dragged him into a cri scene.
But there was no way I could tell her any of that.
I decided to remain an ordinary cadet who had simply enjoyed a nice family outing.
“We just t after a long ti and had a al. Nothing special.”
“Your uncle still works at Beetle Comics, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That is nice. I want to visit again soti. It has been a while since I saw the author.”
I almost choked again.
Wanting to visit a Bren den was absolutely not happening.
“……Visiting too often would be a bother.”
“Ah, I know. I was just saying.”
As we returned to normalcy and chatted idly, the automatic doors of the academy café slid open, revealing a familiar silhouette.
“Oh, Hayun! Over here!”
Do Haru waved.
Seol Hayun approached with flawless posture.
Her disciplined stride and perfectly pressed uniform carried the dignity befitting the heir of the Fire of Annihilation Guild.
[Seol Hayun]
[Fatigue, Weariness, Gladness]
Appearances and inner states were different things.
Seeing her this exhausted was rare.
“Iced vanilla latte, extra shot, right?”
“……Thank you.”
Seol Hayun carefully accepted the cup Do Haru handed her.
“How was the shoot?”
“So-so.”
Seol Hayun closed her eyes and sipped through the straw.
By “shoot,” she ant a comrcial shoot.
In the hero industry, public recognition and star power mattered just as much as skill.
Though still a cadet, promising elites like Seol Hayun—those with ‘guaranteed success’—were already marketing their nas and faces.
Public admiration and fandom directly translated into value.
“So the life of a celebrity is not all sunshine and roses, huh~”
Do Haru tilted her head, then looked at .
“Right?”
“How would I know?”
Fa or not, I could not care less.
At my indifferent answer, Do Haru curled her lips into a grin.
“You do not know?”
A mischievous, suspicious smile.
I had a bad feeling.
“What are you looking at?”
“I am talking about you.”
“?”
“Yeah. You are pretty famous now too.”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
Why would the word “famous” apply to ?
When I just stared blankly, Do Haru shoved her phone screen right in front of my nose.
“This!”
The screen showed a portal site’s real-ti trending articles.
The number one headline caught my eye.
[Horrific scene beneath a luxury pet shop, illegal arena operators arrested]
‘What?’
My heart dropped.
It was a familiar title.
Word for word identical to the future article headline I had seen with Reporter’s Sense in the pet shop basent.
‘……So it was real.’
Seeing a concrete example of the ability to preview future articles right in front of sent a chill down my spine.
But the bigger issue was Do Haru showing this article to .
‘Why this?’
Had she noticed a connection between and the pet shop incident?
Did she find out about what I did with Jack yesterday?
Or had I unknowingly left a trail?
Cold sweat trickled down my back.
“Look here! Fifth place! This one is you!”
Just as tension was freezing my body, Do Haru’s finger pointed not at the top article, but the one below it.
[Hot topic! Who is the cadet that showed perfect synergy with Slashhamr?]
“……Ah.”
So it was not about the pet shop.
I cleared my throat in relief and reread the article.
But my relief was short-lived; this was confusing in its own way.
“An article ca out? And it is fifth?”
“Yeah! The video hit the algorithm. You did not know?”
“Video?”
According to Do Haru, this was what happened.
Slashhamr, whom I had fought alongside during the Mangwon Gate Incident, always operated with a sniper partner who wore a body cam and uploaded hero activity footage to her personal channel.
The footage from that day—including fighting alongside them—had been uploaded.
“……How many?”
“One million! No, wait, one point four million now. It went up again overnight.”
“…….”
One point four million views.
I stared blankly at the number on the screen, speechless.
“Look at the comnts. They are all about you. ‘Who is that guy,’ ‘His movent is insane,’ ‘He syncs perfectly with Slashhamr, this is crazy.’ It is total chaos.”
Do Haru puffed out her chest proudly, like it was her own achievent.
But as the person involved, I felt uneasy.
Was this a gain or a loss for ? I could not decide.
Fa could an money, or leverage to raise my standing.
It could be an opportunity.
But unnecessary attention was dangerous.
More importantly, I was bound to get entangled with Bren again in the future.
‘If soone recognizes my face while I am with those guys, I am screwed.’
My head was already starting to hurt.
I could hear risk piling up.
“You look like you do not know whether to be happy or not.”
Seol Hayun, who had been quiet, spoke softly.
“You do not know? Is it not obviously good? Everyone is desperate to beco famous.”
“People think differently. Personality matters too.”
“Is that so? I guess I would feel awkward too if strangers suddenly recognized .”
Do Haru and Seol Hayun bounced the conversation between themselves, voicing my thoughts for .
What I was worried about went far beyond re awkwardness, though.
“But it is still a good thing. Guilds will take interest, your value goes up! If you are famous, you get better contract terms— I an, not that money is everything. Ahem.”
Perhaps realizing how blatant her greed sounded, Do Haru cleared her throat and added:
“Anyway! Have guilds contacted you? With this kind of impact, your phone should be exploding.”
She asked hurriedly, as if she had found a breakthrough.
I recalled the flood of notifications that had filled my status bar over the past day.
“I did get contacted.”
Since then, my device had been flooded with ‘Cadet Record Access Notifications’ from various guilds.
They were checking whether I was worth recruiting—academy performance, training records, evaluations, personality reports.
“Cadet record access, fifty-nine tis.”
“Insane. Fifty-nine? You really blew up. So? Offers? How many recruitnt offers?”
“Zero.”
“Wow, that is— wait. What?”
“Not a single one. Zero.”
“Huh?”
Do Haru gaped in disbelief.
I calmly drank the rest of my coffee.
It was exactly the reaction and result I expected.
Whether the video hit 1.4 million views or I fought in perfect sync with Slashhamr, there was one unchanging condition.
[Non-Awakened]
The first, boldest label displayed the mont soone opened my profile.
A stigma bordering on filth for a hero cadet.
“No offers? How does that make sense? You are all over the news.”
“I am classified as Non-Awakened. It is natural.”
I shrugged as if it did not bother .
But honestly, it did.
No—it irritated .
Of course, as a first-year, I did not need to worry about affiliation yet.
My top priority was seeing this ga through to its ending and returning to my original world.
‘But I have to consider the worst case.’
There was no guarantee that seeing the ending ant I could return.
If I ended up stuck in this world forever, could I really afford to live at the bottom with no foundation?
Even as a contingency for old age, the number ‘zero’ left a bad taste in my mouth.
I understood the guild scouts’ perspective, too.
To prevent major guilds from monopolizing talent, the Korean Hero Association limited each guild to recruiting only two cadets per grade.
There were loopholes—dropouts recruited afterward, or transfers bought out—but those were exactly that: loopholes.
Most guilds used their recruitnt slots with extre caution.
‘And our grade is the so-called golden generation.’
Packed with monstrous talents.
In that environnt, would anyone gamble a precious slot on a Non-Awakened like ?
No investor bets on an asset with a clearly defined ceiling.
‘And I cannot reveal everything I can do.’
Most of my abilities were research material.
Turning pain and curses into power, changing forms without Magic Power.
Even I thought it was abnormal.
So I was stuck.
Show too much and get dissected, show too little and get ignored.
“This is ridiculous. Just because you have not Awakened, they ignore everything? What kind of world is that?”
“There may be no law, but there is perception.”
“That is not right! Look at how much you contributed!”
Do Haru slamd the table, fuming.
I appreciated her indignation, but there was nothing to be done.
That was how this industry worked.
“So in the end, perception is the problem.”
At that mont, Seol Hayun quietly set her empty cup down.
“Then you just flip that perception.”
“Huh?”
“There is one way.”
Her gaze locked onto mine without wavering.
“Buddy.”
“Buddy?”
“Form an official buddy partnership with a famous cadet.”
She added calmly:
“Then that buddy is effectively vouching for your potential.”
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