BXBX NOVEL Chapter 51 - Piglet (2)
Chapter 51: Piglet (2)
When was it?
There was a day when the old man had to urgently leave for a dungeon raid.
‘I came because it was urgent….’
‘Hyun-wook! You’re the only one!’
‘Who is this kid?’
A flushed face and a faint smell of alcohol. Although he was a bit chubby, he wasn’t a mass of flab back then. Underneath his sturdy frame, firm muscles were twitching.
‘This kid? He’s my son.’
‘Your son? Did you kidnap him from somewhere?’
‘Kidnap? I told you he’s my son! He’s been my son for years now!’
The old man moved busily. After stuffing the last pair of shoes into his packed bag, he suddenly stood up, approached the man, and grabbed his shoulders tightly.
‘I’ll raid and come back as quickly as possible. Take care of him in the meantime.’
‘What?’
‘Ji-eun is in the dungeon, and Hunter Lee is out of the country, so it’s a tricky situation.’
‘What?’
‘Then suddenly! I thought of you. You raided an A-rank recently, right? Knowing your personality, you’ll rest for at least a week.’
‘Well… yes but wait, Teacher. You don’t mean…’
‘Take good care of my kid. There’s my card on the table, so buy whatever you need. Got it?’
‘Ah, wait, teacher!’
‘Hyun-wook. You’re my only hope.’
‘Do you think I’m going to fall for that?’
‘Seems like you will.’
‘…….’
‘Then I’ll leave him in your care!’
The old man gathered his belongings and left.
At that time, the man, who looked more like a wild boar than a pig, scratched his head with an awkward face and looked at me.
‘Um… I’m Oh Hyun-wook, the teacher’s disciple. What’s your name?’
* * *
‘Bleurgh…’
The man snored and slept throughout the briefing and ended up vomiting. It was right after we passed through the gate.
‘Kuaack, ptoo. Ah, I feel better now.’
The fighters of the Guild Memorial turned their backs as if used to the scene and began to check the weather and terrain inside the dungeon. That was even more absurd.
‘Hey guys. What did you say comes out here?’
‘Master. Have some water.’
‘Oh, right.’
That man is one of the top Hunters in Korea and the guild master.
That ridiculous guy, yes, really.
The country is doomed.
The man scratched his flabby belly. I could smell the nauseating stench of vomit as he approached. The smell worsened as he got closer.
‘Kaak!’
He rinsed his mouth with water and spat it out pathetically. If it wasn’t for work, I would never have gotten close. A former promising talent of the Hunter Academy, now a pig with alcohol dependency.
…He does have a reputation befitting a former prodigy. But I simply couldn’t acknowledge this pig.
He graduated from the Hunter Academy and easily built his career by flaunting the name of being Hong Seok-young’s disciple. How long do you think it took for a freshly graduated kid to establish a guild? Just two years, two years!
How long did it take for Guild Memorial to become well-known? Only one year!
In other words, within about three years of his Hunter debut, Oh Hyun-wook became a Hunter that Korea could proudly present.
‘So… Hunter from the Management Agency? What’s your name again?’
As much as I hate to admit it, he’s a remarkable man. Even though he looks like this now.
‘Wait, haven’t we met before? Right? Your face seems familiar.’
‘This is our first meeting. My name is Woo Hwijae.’
‘Woo Hwijae? Woo Hwijae… I’ve heard that somewhere, surely.’
The man mumbled and then burped. The mouth that had just spat out vomit emitted a horrible smell.
‘We’ve already wasted a lot of time. Let’s start right away.’
‘Ha! You don’t have to be so strict. Leave it to me, and I’ll handle everything. Don’t you trust me?’
His eyes, buried in a mass of fat, grinned.
The man pulled out an aluminum flask from his pocket. When he opened the lid, the scent of alcohol wafted out.
‘Is that alcohol? Are you out of your mind? We’ve just entered the gate!’
‘Hunter from the Management Agency, would you like a drink too?’
Before I could stop him, the man gulped down the alcohol. The liquor that he couldn’t drink spilled down his chin.
‘No. It’s fine.’
‘Really? Then I’ll drink it all.’
He drank the alcohol again. As I watched in silence, the man awkwardly wiped his chin and smiled.
‘You see, if I don’t drink this, my brain doesn’t work well. Gotta drink like this before a raid, you know?’
The man chuckled.
‘Let’s finish quickly and go for a drink.’
‘…….’
The sharp-eyed man who once looked after me for a short time when I was young was no longer there.
If they ever make me work with this pig again, I’d rather stab the department head with a knife and resign.
Grinding my teeth, I followed the man, Oh Hyun-wook, into the dungeon.
* * *
“…….”
I briefly recalled those old memories.
When Oh Hyun-wook was just starting to build his career right after graduating from high school, his condition wasn’t this severe. He did drink, though.
When did Oh Hyun-wook start drinking like this? After he became an adult? Or when he was a student at the pilot high school?
Anyway, since he’s awakened, he wouldn’t die from drinking alcohol like water, unlike civilians. Even if he couldn’t help but gain weight.
After that, as I stopped entering dungeons, my encounters with Oh Hyun-wook drastically decreased. I sometimes saw him at the Management Agency, but Oh Hyun-wook wasn’t attentive enough to remember the face of a non-Hunter agency employee. Every time we met, he would ask who I was, and I would answer indifferently.
About one in three times, he would say, ‘Oh, Chief Woo?’ while acting familiar, patting my back with a snorting laugh.
“Urgh…”
Hearing that pig-like scream made my back, which had been hit back then, ache for no reason.
“Student Oh Hyun-wook.”
“…Hic.”
I waited, hoping he would calm down on his own, but there was no sign of the tears stopping.
“…….”
“Hic… Hic…”
I don’t like people who cry easily.
There are kids who well up with tears even if they hear a bit of harsh words. Even if I didn’t say anything unnecessary, they make me look like the bad guy.
Sure, if you’re sensitive, that can happen. Even if you don’t want to cry, tears might flow.
What I really hate are those who don’t realize their faults and shamelessly argue.
So if you can’t stop the tears you can’t control, at least make an effort to stop. At least say some insincere words about correcting your mistakes.
“…….”
If he were a Management Agency employee, he would have been harshly criticized by now.
There’s only one reason I’m dealing with him.
I need to coax him and turn him into a proper human being.
Oh Hyun-wook was sobbing, which is too cute a term… it was more like he was wailing.
And the things he said were truly ridiculous.
“I-I… I shouldn’t become a Hunter, I’m, hic, not, hic, fit, hic, to be one, hic.”
…Is it wrong to think the kid’s crying sound resembles a pig when he can’t even breathe properly?
I sighed. The only thing increasing is my sighs.
“Student Oh Hyun-wook.”
“…Hic. Y-Yes.”
“First, calm down….”
I picked up a water bottle rolling around in the front seat and handed it to Oh Hyun-wook.
“Drink some water.”
“T-Thank you…”
“Let’s start from the beginning….”
Just like Park Seo-hyun, why do they all cry and claim they’re not qualified? Are all kids of that age like this?
“Why do you think you’re not fit to be a Hunter?”
“…….”
Oh Hyun-wook gulped down the water. His breathing calmed, but his eyes were still filled with tears.
Was the question too difficult?
“…Why did you act like that in the dungeon?”
“…….”
Is this question even more difficult?
I pointed outside. Hong Seok-young and Kim Chae-min were talking while looking this way.
“Should I call the principal?”
“Ah, no…”
Hong Seok-young noticed my gaze and turned his head. When our eyes met, he gave me a thumbs-up.
This old man, really.
“I….”
“…Hmm.”
“Hic, hiccup. Teacher, how much do you know about the guild I was in?”
Ah, so you do call me teacher when it’s just the two of us? This should be normal, but somehow it feels touching.
“Well, I heard about it.”
“That you were from a guild? Yes.”
Oh Hyun-wook gave a bitter smile.
“When you say it like that, it sounds really impressive, doesn’t it?”
“…….”
“I was bait. A living, moving bait.”
Oh Hyun-wook started speaking haltingly.
From my perspective, it was a predictably tedious story, enough to guess what had happened as soon as he began. Isn’t it just the typical tale of a young kid scammed into a fraudulent contract?
However, for Oh Hyun-wook, it was a serious story, and no matter how common or predictable it was, it didn’t change the fact that it was unfair for a kid barely in their teens to go through it.
The old man knew he couldn’t control everything inside the dungeon, but he at least wanted to prevent awakened individuals from dying in such a manner.
And it was the same for Oh Hyun-wook.
“Later, I decided to gather people who were in the same situation as me and create a guild when I became a proper Hunter.”
The story transitioned from the past to the future. The crying stopped, and his breathing calmed. His eyes, still wet, sparkled with determination. It showed just how precious this future was to Oh Hyun-wook.
“To help people… and to prevent such things from happening again.”
Probably, even twenty years later, Oh Hyun-wook wrestled with the same thoughts when he established his guild.
“When the principal took me out, there were a few friends who got out with me. They didn’t want to enter the dungeon anymore, but they said they’d help with this kind of work as much as they could.”
I thought about Memorial, the guild of Pig Hyun-wook.
Among the founding members of Memorial, there were non-Hunters. One of them was even the guild’s deputy master, which I found surprising. When I first heard about it, I wondered what kind of bizarre things that pig was up to.
They were friends who lived in the guild together. If I had known, I wouldn’t have cursed him. Why didn’t he say anything?
“But!”
Oh Hyun-wook buried his face in his hands. A half-dead voice squeezed out from between his clenched teeth.
“Earlier… in the dungeon. When the pixies swarmed, I had that thought.”
“What thought?”
“…That it would be much easier to get through this situation if I threw someone who wasn’t helpful in the fight as bait.”
“…….”
“I said I’d never become the kind of person who does that, but in a crisis….”
Oh Hyun-wook sniffled. His eyes were red and swollen, looking quite pitiful. If I thought of him not as a dirty pig but as a piglet…. Hmm. It wasn’t entirely intolerable.
Kim Chae-min had told me that Oh Hyun-wook had been held by the guild for a little over three years. He was the longest surviving bait in that guild. Considering he endured that for three years, it’s strange he was even this functional. In my opinion, he needed psychological therapy more than anything else, Hunter or not.
When Hong Seok-young first adopted me, he dragged me to every highly recommended counselor. He didn’t even listen to my complaints that I’d had enough therapy to last a lifetime while at the orphanage.
It didn’t seem like he took Oh Hyun-wook or Seo Han-seong to counseling…. Maybe he learned the importance of therapy belatedly.
“I thought I hated my former guild master more than anyone else. But in the end, the most familiar method to me was that… that kind of thing. And I loathe it….”
“Of the people I knew.”
I cut off Oh Hyun-wook before he, like Park Seo-hyun, dug himself into a hole.
I built up Park Seo-hyun’s confidence with praise, but… Oh Hyun-wook needed a different approach. Unlike Park Seo-hyun, he needed something other than praise.
Well.
Pig bastard. He had a bad personality. Even now, the piglet was crying, but that personality wouldn’t have changed. Look at how he didn’t say a word to me for two months.
“There’s someone who grew up similarly to you.”
I ran a hand through my hair.
“Like you, they made a bad contract when they didn’t know anything… They escaped with the help of a kind passerby. That person also wanted to help others in similar situations.”
“…Were they a hunter?”
I almost answered casually but managed to swallow it. Although I had temporarily blocked the sound with magic, someone of Hong Seok-young’s caliber wouldn’t miss it. He was likely listening closely and might track down anyone I identified as a Hunter.
If he asks later, I’ll just sell out Ark again, like I always did.
“No. Not a Hunter. Just… someone like that.”
To be honest, I had seen that person crawl on all fours more often than not, but still.
I looked at the piglet. His hollow eyes.
So, if you had such a past, you could have given me a hint. Don’t just make an innocent person look like a bad guy.
“That person wanted to help kids who suffered like he did.”