In an instant, the black thorns stretched out and rained down on him. Ignoring the thorns that threatened to overwhelm him, Ui-aje nonchalantly twisted the man's neck.
He could clearly feel the bones of the man's neck snap in his grip, and then the man's head snapped in a strange direction. His body went limp as the last of the light faded from his glassy eyes.
"This is the last straw."
Ui-jae muttered in an annoyed voice and inspected his body. His clothes were torn in places, but there was not a single scratch on his body. Some of the thorns that had tried to dig in had even bent outwards. After dusting off his bloodied hands, he stood and shook his head.
What is it? I thought they only came out at night.
If they were crawling around in broad daylight, their presence would surely be noticed. There was no way the normal hunters wouldn't talk about them as well.
But I've never heard of anything like them.
Suddenly, the image of a gas mask flashed through his mind. Ui-jae chuckled and murmured,
"I thought it meant not telling people about their existence..."
What if it meant not letting anyone know they existed? Controlling information to maintain confidentiality was a common occurrence, so he wasn't surprised, but ....
Ui-jae frowned. If that was the case, why did the gas mask let him go? It would have been easier to kill him without having to keep him alive.
At that moment, he heard small movements and gasps coming from the Haejang-guk house. Ha-eun must have noticed how quiet it had become outside, because she approached the door. Ui-jae hid the man's body in the trash just in case, then ran to the door and knocked with the back of his hand.
"Ha-eun, it's your uncle, can you open the door?"
He deliberately put his face close to the glass and waved his hand, and the lock came off with a small flourish. Ha-eun sat down, hugging her backpack and shivering slightly. After seeing him, her legs seemed to relax.
He bent down and squatted to her eye level.
"It's okay. There's no one here anymore. They're gone."
"Gone?"
Her tear-filled eyes turned to Ui-jae. Seeing the tear-stained face, he bit the inside of his mouth.
Did I kill him too kindly?
Ha-eun threw down her school bag and grabbed Ui-jae's hand. The bandaged hand he had once held covered her tiny hand.
The girl lay in bed, her whole body wrapped in bandages, unable to speak. The only way she could communicate was by snapping her fingers. When she moved her fingers, Ui-jae stroked her head or held her hand.
Shit...
His stomach rumbled. Ui-jae lowered his eyes, pulled Ha-eun into a hug and patted her back with his left hand.
"It's okay."
"...."
"It's all right now. You were scared, weren't you?"
Ha-eun sobbed instead of answering. Ui-jae tilted his head back, wondering if the dye in his hair had touched her skin, and spoke softly.
"Uncle will tell the others. It won't happen again."
"Yes..."
After patting her back for a while, she seemed to calm down a bit. Ha-eun mumbled through her nose.
"Tell Jung-bin and Honeybee about this."
...That's going to be a little difficult since they've never been to Haejang-guk's house. But he couldn't just coldly refuse, even if he couldn't appease the surprised girl, so he changed the subject with a trembling voice.
"Can I wash off my hair dye first?"
"Sure... It's actually kind of smelly."
"Make sure you say it smells like hair dye. If anyone else hears it, they'll misunderstand."
Ha-eun giggled. Ui-jae let out a short sigh and wondered what to do with the body in the dumpster. He also thought about the regulars of the Haejang-guk house who would arrive in an hour.
Bodies that ordinary people couldn't get rid of. The ones who would have to hide their identities.
I will have to ask a hunter to do that.
From now on, it was time to pretend to be a normal person.
A skinny man wearing a gas mask entered the pristine lobby of the Seowon Guild. The security guards did not stop him, as if the gas mask was some kind of identification. A boy in a white robe standing in front of the central staircase spotted the gas mask man and trotted over.
"Hello, Lee-ssi."
Sa-young looked down at the child with indifferent eyes.
"Nam Woo-jin."
"He's in the operating room. Let me show you."
The child went into the corridor to the right and Sa-young followed. The corridors of the Seowon Guild were as complex as a labyrinth and tangled like an anthill.
After walking for a while, he came to a massive iron gate with a red 'in use' lamp above it. The child cautiously opened the door and stepped aside.
"Sir, Lee Sa-young is here."
The room looked more like a scientist's laboratory than an operating room. Books and documents lined the walls, surgical instruments and medical equipment cluttered the room, and a large operating table sat in the middle of the room.
The man sitting in the chair, his eyes closed, slowly opened them. He had a green surgical suit, a white gown, white hair, white eyes, and silver-rimmed glasses. It was an unusual appearance even in the hunter era when all colors of hair and eyes were covered. Sa-young shook her head and greeted her roughly.
"Nam Woo-jin."
Nam Woo-jin, South Korea's sixth-ranked hunter and the country's only A-ranked healer, stood up.
"I heard you've been busy lately, so I thought I'd have to wait three hours. You're early."
"I know. I'm in a hurry, so get to it."
"Sure."
Standing in front of the operating table, Woo-jin pulled back the white cloth that covered the bulging tabletop. It revealed the body of a man, his face drenched in blood and mangled, black thorns sprouting from every inch of his twisted body. It was what they called an 'addict'. Sa-young muttered indifferently.
"He's in terrible shape."
"Jung-bin said he was in this state when they found him. He was hit with such force that his face was crushed."
"That's not enough to kill him."
"No. The immediate cause of death is a broken neck. Someone broke his neck."
There was a hand-shaped mark on his neck. Sa-young's eyes lit up at the sight of the wound.
"This..."
"Yes. Grab it with your bare hands, all at once."
Nam Woo-jin made a gesture of grabbing something in the air and twisting it.
Their bodies are very strong when they're drugged, and their bodies begin to mutate. No amount of force would be able to break their bones and subdue them. Sa-young looked at the corpse and straightened his upper body.
"Who is the reporter?"
"Yang Hye-jin. A-rank hunter of the Rift Management Agency."
The name sounded familiar. Sa-young tapped the operating table with his fingertips.
"Did she handle it?"
"No. I don't know who it was. There was a first finder. A part-timer at Haejang-guk House found it while taking out the trash... and found it."
Woo-jin looked at the body with all the black spikes sticking out.
"He found it. He must have been very scared."
"......."
"Well, it's quite surprising to the average person. He was shaking and trembling, and then he asked Yang Hye-jin, who came to eat at Haejang-guk House, to call the police."
"Haejang-guk House?"
"Yes. I heard it's a good restaurant... .... I haven't been there, so I don't know the details."
When he said Haejang-guk house, I could only think of a place where Bae Won-woo was always going to work like he was obsessed with something. Sa-young frowned. The fingertips on the operating table slowly slowed down.
"Where exactly was he found?"
"That's kind of interesting. Boy."
"Yes, sir."
The child waiting by his side handed him a tablet with a map on it. He zoomed in on the map on the screen.
"Does this place look familiar? It's the separate collection dump near the alley where the addict was found last time."
"......."
"We need to see if there's a new supply in the area. Take note."
True to Woo-jin's word, the place was in the same alley where Sa-young had met his 'hyung'. Could it be a coincidence?
"Oh, and there's something else unusual... .... Check this out."
Woo-jin pointed with his medical gloved hand to several black thorns that protruded viciously from the corpse. Of the many thorns protruding from the body, several protruding from the stomach and heart were bent as if they had been hit by something solid.
He tilted his head slightly and fixed his gaze on the twisted tips of the thorns. A strange sense of clarity came over him.
"I've never seen thorns bent like that before. It looks like they've been hit by something very hard... Have you ever seen one?"
I have.
The thorns 'Hyung' bent with the ladle had looked like this... He'd thought about it so many times that he knew it immediately. The corners of his mouth, which had hardened, drew an arc.
When he searched the databases and found no trace, he nearly choked on his medication. After a while, he had the intention to kick his ass as soon as he found him, but when he did, he couldn't help but laugh. Woo-jin clenched his jaw and muttered.
"You look like you know something."
"Yeah."
Sa-young smiled with satisfaction.
"I finally caught the tail."