TL: SHW
I did not avoid Hong Seok-young’s gaze.
“There’s nothing more to hide, is there?”
Hong Seok-young also looked straight in the eyes and spoke smoothly.
Nothing to hide?
Why wouldn’t there be?
Slowly, the rational part of my mind caught up to the senses that had been paralyzed by Hong Seok-young’s words.
Reason chewed over what Hong Seok-young had said and sneered at it.
, his successor? Nonsense.
Externally, the one most often ntioned as Hong Seok-young’s successor was Oh Hyun-wook. However, within the Ability Managent Agency, many voices speculated that it might be Yoo Ji-eun. I was one of those voices.
Oh Hyun-wook, being from an outside guild, was never going to be a perfect successor to Hong Seok-young. On the other hand, Yoo Ji-eun ca from within the Agency, and even during her days at Pilot High School, my father had kept her close and taught her. Among all the graduates of Pilot High, no one received as much of my father’s instruction as Yoo Ji-eun.
?
I wasn’t even a graduate of Pilot High.
...This is a joke.
No, actually it's not a joke. What I was able to learn from father had nothing to do with Pilot High School at all.
Why do you think I learned from him? Because I was his son.
And putting aside whether it was because of Pilot High or because I was his son, could soone beco a successor simply because their movents resembled those of Hunter Hong Seok-young?
Hong Seok-young’s status in South Korea isn’t that insignificant.
The reason Yoo Ji-eun was treated as his successor instead of Oh Hyun-wook?
Because she attacked dungeons at a terrifying pace like my father, made efforts to raid unexplored dungeons, and additionally led volunteer work whenever she had ti. At official events, it was always Yoo Ji-eun standing beside my father. Not .
Why do you think I called Yoo Ji-eun my father’s favorite disciple? All these circumstances led to that conclusion.
Yoo Ji-eun was the successor. That was decided the mont I chose not to beco a Hunter.
That’s why, when I entered the dungeon in place of Han Tae-kyung, whose license had been suspended due to disciplinary action, my father stepped in to divert attention away from . My Hunter rank was treated as classified information.
The reason Yoo Ji-eun called a nepo-baby was because of that. She said I received only my father’s protection without ever stepping forward myself.
…Maybe I really was my father’s favorite disciple. The disciple who inherited everything from him. But that was all. I had no other role. Because I didn’t want one.
'Hwijae. I’ll make sure you can do whatever you want.'
I relaxed my shoulders. Only now could I admit it.
I had a rough idea of what Hong Seok-young was expecting of right now. Around the ti Pilot High was turning into the Hunter Academy and the Agency was being established, my father often lanted about how he lacked enough hands. He frequently said he wished there were two of him.
Then suddenly, a man presud to be his successor appeared from the future?
If he were the successor, he’d probably understand his intentions well, right? If he ca from the future, he’d know the shortest route to achieving those goals, wouldn’t he? He’d know what not to do and what would be helpful, wouldn’t he?
Even I have to admit, it’s excellent labor. That’s what a successor is. Big Yoo Ji-eun also played substitute whenever father was away.
But I didn’t want to be treated like that. I was my father’s son. A child is supposed to rely on their parent, isn’t that right? I also wanted the assurance that no matter how I acted, my father wouldn’t abandon .
And now that I think about it, back then, I was plagued with a sense of inferiority, thinking my father was trying to achieve through what he couldn’t do for his biological son. That was also the root of my intense adolescence. Honestly, I was just… a kid.
My father said he saw himself in , not his biological son, but I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that at face value. Saying I wouldn’t beco a Hunter, yet still working by his side, both were part of the sa thread.
In the end, I realized sothing.
I am my father’s son. The son of Hong Seok-young.
A father who wanted to teach everything he knew to his son,
And a son who wanted to follow everything about that father.
Once I found myself in the position of teaching kids, I understood. How adorable it is when they squirm around trying their best to follow what I tell them.
Damn it.
Those things are ant to be expressed in words.
…No, now that I think about it, Father did express himself plenty. I just didn’t accept it properly.
'Uncle, is it okay if I'm not a Hunter?'
'Hm? Didn’t you say you didn’t want to be a Hunter?'
'Yes.'
'Then don't. It's a job that's good for dying early.'
'But you’re a Hunter too.'
'I keep doing this crap because I didn't learn anything else. Hwijae, you're smart, so you'll do well at whatever you do.'
That was probably his sincere belief too.
If my father had truly intended to make a Hunter to carry on after him, he would’ve convinced no matter what. Couldn’t he have coaxed a young teen into doing what he wanted?
Sohow, I looked at Hong Seok-young, who was watching with eyes full of expectation.
Successor. Successor, huh.
“What if I’m not the successor?”
“Hm?”
“If I’m not the successor, is that a problem?”
“Rather than a problem…”
Hong Seok-young blinked.
“You mimic my moves so well, and you're saying you’re not?”
“I could be a doppelgänger.”
A monster that imitates a person’s appearance and abilities exactly. A doppelgänger.
At my words, Hong Seok-young just kept blinking, then burst out laughing.
“So monsters of the future reveal they’re monsters themselves?”
“……”
“Or what, in the future, have you solved the monster lifespan problem? Can they live more than a month outside a dungeon? If so, let know in advance. It'll cause a lot of headaches."
“…No. Even in the future I ca from, they still can’t live more than a month.”
That’s the reason humanity is still the dominant predator on this planet, despite dungeon breaks happening like eating als.
Monster lifespan.
In Korea, since the land is small, when a dungeon breaks open, Hunters quickly clean it up. But in the US, Africa, or even Japan where there are lots of untouched mountains, monsters often slip through.
If monsters don’t attack civilians, people leave them be. They’ll die on their own in a month anyway. It’s a blessing, really. Without that, half of humanity would’ve beco monster food by now.
“From what I can tell, what happened in Myeong-dong seems to have been right after you arrived in the past. So… it’s been about four months? Monsters can’t survive that long.”
“……”
Why… is he being so logical?
It's really annoying.
Of course it’s better to believe I’m a human, his successor, even, rather than a monster. It’s better, but for so reason, looking at that smiling face, sothing welled up inside .
"What if I'm a monster and stole this human's body?"
"Did you?"
“……”
Damn it!
“I don’t even know if there’s a monster that wears a human body like a disguise…”
I don’t know either.
“…But the first thing that monster does upon arriving in the past is save fifty or so civilians and aspiring Hunters? Whether it’s a monster or a human, it doesn’t matter. Either way, I’m grateful.”
“……”
Is that so.
In the end, saving those kids back then was the right choice. Not that there was ever a choice to not save them to begin with.
Even so, if that act, done while following Father’s teachings, led to his trust, then it’s enough.
Of course, I know well that the man in front of is not my father. Just as Mini- can’t grow up to be a version of with Hong Seok-young as his father, this man also cannot beco soone who has Woo Hwijae as a son.
That’s why I will not beco Hong Seok-young’s son.
I won’t say I beca your son and inherited everything from you.
Because I can never have it again.
I let out a sigh. Like soone who had realized that arguing further was pointless.
“Yes.”
“Hm?”
“Well… I was sothing like a successor. You never said it outright, though.”
“Really?”
“To be honest, I didn’t want to do it either…”
“Did I make you?”
“Rather than making , you just handed over the work.”
“That’s exactly sothing I’d do!”
Hong Seok-young laughed heartily, completely oblivious to what was going on inside .
***
I got caught up into talking nonsense because of Hong Seok-young’s talk about successors.
But in truth, that wasn’t the real issue.
"Please tell in detail about the monsters that ca from the future."
Father never talked about such things even once.
“I didn’t tell you that?”
“You didn’t.”
"Really? In the future, I might have solved it sohow. What year did you co from?"
“…2041.”
“Twenty years ahead, huh. I only got bits and pieces from them myself, so I don’t know much. Most of them treated like a mortal enemy and tried to kill .”
Hong Seok-young said it casually, like assassins from the future didn’t even phase him.
“Were there none other than fairies?”
“There were. Fairies were the most common. Aside from them… there was a dragon. There were ghost types, too...”
A surprisingly diverse group of monsters were nad by Hong Seok-young. He had said he only encountered them in a handful of dungeons, maybe ten or so. For that, the variety was extensive.
I glanced at my mana watch. I didn’t have information on foreign Hunters, but it was different when it ca to dungeons. Information on conquered dungeons is usually made public as a good reference source. Since these dungeons were cleared when Hong Seok-young was young, I didn’t know if data still existed… but there’s no harm in looking.
No. Thinking about it, I don’t even need to hide the mana watch.
I don’t want to reveal the fact that I’m an adopted son, but aside from that, there’s no need to hide any information. In fact, sharing more from my side makes it easier to prepare for what’s ahead.
For example… like the Bangi-dong Dungeon with the centipedes.
“Still, I haven’t seen them for a while. Maybe they changed their strategy…”
Hong Seok-young grinned slyly.
“Maybe, thanks to you coming to the past, they lost the way to co back themselves.”
“……”
That’s probably not it.
I debated whether or not to correct Hong Seok-young.
There’s another plausible reason, isn’t there?
They might have had no more need to co to the past.
They succeeded in killing the father they so desperately wanted to destroy, and humanity was essentially facing extinction. What had that mysterious clock told again?
The last survivor?
Since it said it was a confird qualification, so there must’ve been more survivors at that point. But it was all the sa.
“Just before I ca to the past.”
“Hm?”
“Everything was destroyed.”
“…Hm?”
“Isn’t that obvious? Would I have co to the past if the future was peaceful? I ca because it was in ruins. No, to be precise, I had no intention of coming back in ti.”
That day cos back to . The acrid sll clinging to my nose. The pilot’s face who dropped off. The charred black bodies strewn across the streets. And in the middle of it all, quietly exhaling…
Yoo Ji-eun.
"Everyone died. You too, Yoo Ji-eun too."
I closed my eyes.
“I wanted to run away. Even in that situation, I didn’t want to die. The bastard that burned Seoul saw , but there was no way I alone could stop it.”
“……”
“I didn’t know if I could escape or not, but I took a desperate chance. If I had known it would send to the past, I wouldn’t have done it.”
For the first ti since arriving in the past, I spoke honestly from my heart.
“It would’ve been more peaceful for to just die there.”
Slap.
“Don’t say things like that so carelessly.”
Then I got slapped across the face by Hong Seok-young.
***
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