‘At least the food tastes good, so that’s a relief.’
If I had known it would be this hard, I wouldn’t have reincarnated so carelessly.
By the ti I finished the Korean al served in the VIP ward, the clock was already pointing to 10:30. Thanks to the top-grade potion I received intravenously, the lost flesh had long since regenerated. With no more reason to dawdle, I decided it was ti to head ho and began the discharge process.
But what surprised during this whole process was the weather.
‘Huh.’
It was still pouring rain outside.
‘...the dayti temperature in Seoul, which had risen to 22 degrees Celsius, has dropped to around 20 degrees. The monsoon rain that began on Sunday is expected to continue steadily until tomorrow.’
When I’d just been kidnapped, it was barely more than a drizzle gently soaking my shoulders. But now, that light rain has already turned this fierce.
Maybe it was thanks to the fact that there happened to be a SPA clothing store inside Neo Seoul Hospital’s anities wing. I managed to change into a one-size-fits-all cotton T-shirt that the third-ranked S-Rank Hunter had bought in advance, and safely left the building looking like an ordinary civilian.
However, it seed the guy hadn’t accounted for the weather—there was no umbrella on hand. And to make matters worse, by the ti I hurried over to the convenience store near the hospital’s main entrance, they were already sold out.
‘No umbrella to shield from the rain...’
A mont later.
Tak, tak, tak.
Just monts ago, a fellow Earthling who had been in the convenience store with dashed off, covering their head with a bag. Most people, like them, were willing to expend their energy just to minimize their exposure to the downpour, even by a little.
But despite clearly seeing their efforts, I ultimately walked out from under the eaves nonchalantly with my hands shoved in my pockets.
Swish.
Co to think of it, what use is a waterproof product to soone who’s spent their entire life in the ocean as a reincarnate?
‘Luckily, the hospital is located within Mapo District, so that’s good.’
This has been uncomfortable ever since I was first trapped in an F-rank body, but here, I’m not afraid of diving, and being surrounded by streams of water just feels joyful. Besides, I’ve finally resolved the contract that had been tornting for so long.
At last, I had achieved perfect freedom. I didn’t want to tarnish this refreshing sense of liberation even a little, so today, I stopped pretending. Unlike the Earthlings, I walked out into the pouring rain without an umbrella.
But around 30 minutes later, only after entering a familiar neighborhood scene did I suddenly rember the problem I had completely forgotten...
***
A few minutes after that—the park.
‘-_-’
A blond man sat on a bench. The rain was pouring down from the sky, but he was just staring blankly at the rain with his upper body bent over.
‘I’m dood.’
It was a ti when everyone else was busy going to work. Why was he hanging out in the park on a rainy day like this instead of going ho?
‘Co to think of it, I don’t have a ho.’
Swish.
While the rain continued to pour, the blond man who had taken over one side of the park muttered in a sowhat dejected voice.
‘Haa. To think I’d lose my residence over sothing like this...’
To put it bluntly, Giryeo’s ho was destroyed. If it had been a normal demolition, it might have been better—but the gate swallowed the entire building whole, leaving not even the front doorfra intact. Naturally, having nowhere to return to, he ended up wandering around public places like this.
‘Damn it! As if I didn’t already have enough to deal with because of that Lee Hayoung situation.’
Now, reduced to a holess vagabond with neither a ho nor a place to stay, the alien—who outwardly still looked roughly like a mammal—fell into a mont of despair.
However, upon careful reflection, the current situation wasn’t sothing to despair over so much. Regarding the small, rundown room that sank, the perpetrator had roughly promised compensation during a previous conversation.
[Hydra]
[Surprise Box]
[Screaming Stake]
After all, the precious items he cherished were already in his possession.
[Sacred Tree Seedling]
Ah, this was definitely left in the corner too. While rummaging through the recovered item box, Giryeo double-checked if the coral he had hastily grabbed during the evacuation. It hadn’t been found in the place where he first ca to his senses, so he wondered if the kidnapper might have discarded it.
‘As expected, to Earthlings, this just looks like an expensive air purifier.’
Kang Changho didn’t realize the true value of the [Sacred Tree Seedling] and therefore hadn’t taken any special asures with that magical item. Of course, he did wonder why soone living in a small five-pyeong (about 16.5 m²) studio would keep sothing like that around. Due to the lung condition of a certain blond man, the tug-of-war over suspicion ended shortly thereafter. It was all over.
Then there wouldn’t be much financial damage. From now on, all he had to do was plan for the future.
‘A house...’
Thinking this might be a good chance to buy a grand mansion or sothing, Giryeo took out his phone from his chest pocket, lost in thought.
He had just been too bothered to deal with the moving issue in his mind all this ti. In truth, he had always wanted to live like this cramped and worn down one-room apartnt. So now, he genuinely wanted to take this chance to change his place of residence.
‘Oh my, my hands keep slipping because of the rain...’
But then, all of a sudden, the phone screen went completely blank.
‘Huh!?’
He had definitely charged the battery to full back at the hospital, so for the screen to go dark without any warning was completely unexpected.
The phone displayed a black screen. In response, Giryeo pressed and held the side button, trying to power it back on. But it didn’t respond at all.
‘Hmm.’
The entire device was broken. It wasn’t quite at Aiphaut’s level, but still—how could they be selling mass-produced goods this vulnerable to moisture on a planet where water was at least sowhat common?
‘Is this the end even for this junk phone...?’
Anyway, they should’ve at least made it withstand this much rain. Damn those greedy manufacturers!
The alien wearing Kim Giryeo’s skin grumbled while clutching the broken phone. Of course, getting emotional wouldn’t solve anything—so his train of thought quickly shifted to sothing else.
‘Ha.’
Whoosh.
Originally, he had co out to enjoy the rain he liked so much, but sohow ended up looking utterly pathetic. Now without even a proper tool to gather information, Giryeo sat there deep in thought, wondering how on earth he was going to manage moving house.
‘Life in a foreign land sure is tough.’
If he’d known it’d be like this, he really should’ve taken learning how to buy a house more seriously.
Real estate office. Licensed realtor.
Even now, a few words co to mind, but honestly, how could an alien in an unfamiliar world secure a ho with just these vague clues? For an outsider, even recalling the concept of an internet café isn’t easy.
So for now, all he could do was let his shoulders droop as the rain poured down from the sky.
vroom...
But when he briefly looked away, a fairly familiar car was passing by on the road across the park.
‘Huh!?’
A white car. Until things got this tangled, it was at least a type of mass-produced product he used to see twice a week.
‘It looked similar to the one Haseong drove.’
In short, the vehicle famous as the national hero’s personal car was currently running on the road.
‘What was its na?’
He clearly rembered the car’s owner telling him about it before, but maybe because it was unimportant information, he couldn’t really recall it well...
Well, anyway. When a dostic car, roughly a model nad 070 or sothing, slowly passed by on the rainy road, just like how you can tell zebras apart after seeing them enough, the alien naturally fixed his gaze on the familiar vehicle that appeared for once. The car’s windows were heavily tinted, making it difficult to see who was inside with the naked eye.
‘Nese?’
But he wasn’t relying on eyesight, but rather his keen sixth sense as an archmage. The man slouched on the bench soon realized sothing. And it seed the other party felt the sa way, because the white mass-produced car driving along on the rainy road suddenly turned sideways at the next intersection. The vehicle abruptly changed its destination to this park.
‘Now that I think about it, seeing that car reminds —I’m pretty good at driving, so maybe I should buy a motorcycle while I’m at it.’
There aren’t any good parking spots right by that road, so the driver will probably have to circle around to find one.
‘Whatever happens, it’ll still be faster than an F-rank worm running around.’
Giryeo lowered his gaze back toward the ground and drifted into various daydreams alone. Not long after, a new figure appeared inside the park.
‘Hunter Kim!’
Even from afar, when he was still inside the car, he clearly recognized who it was. So, now that this hunter has appeared, he’s likely here for that purpose. From the learner’s perspective, the fairly sensed magical power, he suspected it—and sure enough, it was indeed that S-Rank hunter.
As soon as he heard that familiar voice, Giryeo lifted his head and greeted him right away.
‘Hello.’
The identity of the person who appeared was Jung Haseong.
‘Oh, Hunter Kim. How did you...’
But the other party seed quite surprised by this eting. As soon as Jung Haseong saw his fellow hunter sitting on the bench, he imdiately asked a question.
‘Why did the person who was hospitalized co out so quickly?’
‘Because I’m all better now.’
‘So this is why you told not to visit you at the hospital earlier, when I called?’
For reference, South Korea’s top-ranked Hunter had learned—while filing a certain report at the police station—that the other party had been injured in a gate-related incident.
‘Your ssage ca through just as I finished changing into regular clothes.’
Even so, the scene that greeted him was just as unfamiliar as ever.
‘That.’
Jung Haseong soon spoke, his expression clearly showing his confusion.
‘First of all, I heard everything that happened. Kang Changho attacked Hunter Kim and got in trouble. He even said the he would never bother Hunter Kim again in his life.’
‘-_-’
‘Even with the power of law enforcent behind us, we were just left spinning our wheels trying to catch him. Ha... well, I suppose beating him outright when he cos looking for a fight was another way to handle it.’
It was a mont that felt pitiful in many ways—seeing the top-ranked hunter completely taken in by fake news.
‘You got hit too.’
But how could he possibly correct the truth here and now? Back when that fierce, tiger versus dragon-level battle between real S-ranks unfolded on the sands, he had briefly considered being honest—thinking that, at least in that mont, it might be okay to reveal he was actually just an F-rank. But now that so ti passed, his judgnt had completely changed.
‘Co to think of it, wasn’t this guy supposed to have a pretty scary personality to begin with?’
The fact that soone is an alien—or that the so-called F-rank S-Rank Hunter had been taking it as a powerhouse all along—those kinds of revelations are, at the core, things you can only bring up if you fully trust the other person’s character.
Since he had a strong conflict with the national hero last sumr, he still found the other person sowhat difficult to deal with. So, fearing that his attitude might change if he was accused of deception, he hesitated to outright deny the new rumor about ‘subduing Kang Changho’.
‘As expected, you are a Hunter.’
‘Mhm.’
If there was any justification, it was that the magic training wasn’t over yet, so it was better to maintain the status of S-Rank, especially that purpose. From the learner’s perspective, the authority of the instructor and the trust toward him are important matters. The alien tutor wrapped his silence in this reasoning and turned his gaze away weakly, his expression naturally sour with self-disgust at his own cowardice.
However, Jung Haseong, unaware that the other was sending apologetic glances, rely shifted the position of the object he was holding. It was understandable, considering that the hunter sitting before him was bare-bodied without even an umbrella on the bench.
Sssk.
In a park where heavy rain was falling, a man in a light black T-shirt was thinking. Raindrops slid down the thick eyelids of one figure nearby. Startled by his colleague from the industry looked standing through, Jung Haseong hastily tilted his umbrella toward him. Of course, the man on the bench didn’t particularly appreciate the gesture.
‘I’m already like this, what’s the point of putting an umbrella on so late?’
Speaking with a blank expression might co off as sarcastic, so he quickly added a half-hearted smile and said,
‘That’s fine. Get rid of it.’
‘But...’
‘You use it more. Your back’s getting soaked.’
If he had trained his abilities a bit more, could he have selectively dried only the moisture clinging to a person’s clothing in situations like this?
The stray thought only lingered briefly in the mind of the pyromancer. As their conversation progressed, a certain doubt began to rise in Haseong’s heart.
‘But Hunter, why were you here?’
The alien creature answers.
‘I was just here.’
‘What? No, you’re still recovering—shouldn’t you go ho and get so rest?’
‘Haseong-ah, I don’t have a ho anymore.’
‘Yes?’
‘He doesn’t have a ho? What on earth is that supposed to an...?’
‘Ah.’
Jung Haseong realized the other person’s words a mont too late.
‘Co to think of it, the studio apartnt sank.’
Co to think of it, that blond hunter disappeared for a few hours after leaving just one ssage (Kang Changho ca etc). Thanks to various interviews, Kim Giryeo now knew that he had gone into hiding to relocate his fight to protect the citizens. Of course, looking back at the past, when Kim Giryeo rushed to help, the building had already been swallowed whole and vanished, leaving only a Break Monster with very low activity on the empty lot—sothing ambiguous and alarming enough to be starting.
Kim Giryeo briefly recalled the scene from the gate incident but quickly returned his focus to the current conversation.
‘Then instead of staying out here like this, why don’t you at least check into a hotel for now?’
‘Hotel?’
‘There’s no rush in finding a new place to move into anyway, right?’
He looked at the might-be-star-parking in worry at any mont. Even when the man on the bench refused, he kept trying to hold the umbrella over him.
‘A hotel, huh. Sounds pretty tempting, but now that I think about it, that’s not exactly easy either.’
‘Why?’
‘When the house sank, I only took the item box and left.’
‘Ah, then don’t tell ...’
‘I don’t have a wallet either.’
‘What about money?’
‘My money is in the bank account. But in a situation like this, with my phone falling on top of everything...’
To fix the phone linked to internet banking, he needed money. But to withdraw that money, he needed his debit card—and all those cards had vanished into the otherworld along with his wallet. To the alien, the situation felt like a complete checkmate.
And when the other person seed to figure out a solution for such a long ti, Jung Haseong looked sowhat surprised as he thought to himself.
‘It’s only around 10 o’clock. If he gets a testimony issued at the community center, shouldn’t that be enough ti to take care of everything at the bank today?’
It was strange. Inside a dungeon, he was flawless—so much that even a prodigy who had made it into veterinary school could be reduced to just another unremarkable hunter in comparison. And yet, the sa man who handled that kind of situation was now struggling with sothing as trivial as a bank account.
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