Chapter 337: Seoul (5)

Seoul (5)

“Damn it,” Kim Min-hyuk muttered in the car.

The driver in the front seat shrugged his shoulders as if he were helpless. It wasn’t his fault. Traffic jammed the road, so they were stuck on the street, wasting their time.

A traffic jam occurred at an inconvenient time. The streets typically weren’t this busy, but today was an exception.

“This is for Seoul Station, right?”

“Uh… Uhm… Yeah, I think so.”

The driver confirmed Kim Min-hyuk’s suspicions. Kim Min-hyuk’s cell phone buzzed with text messages. It was challenging enough to deal with the situation here, let alone reply to everyone else’s texts.

The flood of text messages made it clear the Seoul Station portal had opened to the public. And somehow, people were convinced that there was a new challenger, so they flocked around Seoul Station.

Ignoring the dozens of incoming messages, he opened a single text. The text was from Lee Cheol-min, an S-class Awakened who was waiting at Seoul Station.

It was a message to confirm Lee Ho-jae’s appearance at Seoul Station. As he read the text, Kim Min-hyuk felt like his world grew dark. As if it hadn’t already been tough enough.

Lee Ho-jae’s appearance was a big problem, but thankfully, Kim Min-hyuk had already prepared for it a long time ago.

However, the busy roads were unexpected. It was scary.

Lee Cheol-min was an S-class Awakened. Even within the guild, it was hard to find someone more powerful. But there was Lee Joon-suk—one of the most talented people in the world.

Kim Min-hyuk sent a text saying, “Stop being such a coward and hurry home.”

Subsequently, he scolded the driver off. Kim Min-hyuk knew it wasn’t the driver’s fault, but he couldn’t stand the wait.

After a while, a text message came from Lee Chul-min. It said, “When on earth will you arrive?”

“I can’t do this,” Kim Min-hyuk muttered when he saw Lee Chul-min’s text message.

Kim Min-hyuk was impatient. If anything were to piss Lee Ho-Jae off, not only would Seoul Station be obliterated, but the entire city would reduce to atoms.

He felt like his life-span would be cut in half if he sat in the car and waited for the jam to clear. Kim Min-hyuk opened the car door on an impulse.

He peeked outside the door for a while before stepping out of the car. After telling the driver that he would go first, Kim Min-hyuk started running on the road.

* * *

Kim Min-hyuk finally managed to reach the building in front of Seoul Station. He couldn’t be any happier that he was an Awakened.

One thing he wasn’t happy about was the number of people gathered near Seoul Station. Watching from afar, Kim Min-hyuk felt his heart pounding.

He considered the probability of people entering the building. Fortunately, guild members stood guard at the entrance.

“Keep the people out of the way, and if the reporters come in, kick them out. We’re not having a press conference today. Push people as far away as possible. Even if you have to use force.”

“It’s not easy. These people are civilians. It’s a little…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

A child who knew nothing should be kept as far away from knives and fires as possible, even if they hated the restriction. It was what was right for the child.

After issuing the order, Kim Min-hyuk entered the building and heard voices from the dressing room.

As he stood in front of the door, Kim Min-hyuk could see what Lee Cheol-min meant. He shuddered, and his body spasmed, rejecting the thought of entering.

Kim Min-hyuk had a similar experience to this before. There was a famous stage in Normal difficulty at the 7th-floor stage.

It was a stage whose information was slowly released and passed along, but it was a different challenge in the early days when there was no information at all.

Kim Min-hyuk had been the first ranker to attempt the stage. There was a monster on the seventh floor he didn’t know anything about: a hippo-like creature with a giant lion’s head.

It wasn’t until after people learned that the monster invoked the opponent’s fear with a mental attack that Kim Min-hyuk came to know its fighting power was nothing exceptional. But it had been a terrible incident when he first met it.

It was a feeling akin to that time. Kim Min-hyuk took a deep breath and placed his hand on the door handle. On an impulse similar to when he opened the car door a little while ago, he twisted the doorknob.

* * *

[Lee Ho-jae]

“Oh, you’re here?”

He came earlier than I thought. I thought he would take a while because of the people outside.

“Cute!”

Even before Kim Min-hyuk could answer my greeting, Yong-yong ran towards Kim Min-hyuk. He patted Kim Min-hyuk’s body.

That’s nice, my pretty son. But you can’t just say that everyone is cute. That’s too much.

Kim Min-hyuk smiled and stooped down to Yong-yong, who quickly clung to him. Yong-yong held on to him as if he meant to hug him.

Kim Min-hyuk hugged Yong-yong back, even though he looked embarrassed. His reaction was quite different from that of Lee Cheol-min.

I didn’t know if it was because he was bolder or more insensitive. Squeezed in a corner, Lee Cheol-min had kept his distance from Yong-yong since he first came in.

He shifted, picking up fallen clothes or touching the fluorescent switch on the wall.

Of course, it didn’t go unnoticed. Amid disappointment, a brave man appeared, and Yong-yong hugged him quietly.

He brightly smiled as if he was satisfied with the fact. Kim Min-hyuk approached me with Yong-yong in his arms, looking less nervous than before. “You came out. That’s amazing, Ho-jae.”

“Yeah, I came out. I’m not a fake.”

I felt sympathetic towards his attempt of making conversation. I decided to introduce the others to Kim Min-hyuk. Kim Min-hyuk once heard about them through a message in the Tutorial, but it was his first time seeing them in person, so I needed to introduce them.

“This is Hochi.”

“I remember that this guy has taken up a lot of your time. You’re going to lose a lot more in the future, so I apologise in advance for that.”

When I asked him to say hello, Hochi spoke nonsense, so I hit him. I decided to skip Hochi and introduce the rest.

“Hey, Old Man, Grandma. They’re from the 61st floor…”

I tried to introduce them, but they continued to pick clothes from the closet.

They were uninterested and turned their backs on me, not listening at all. Somehow, it felt embarrassing.

I skipped the two and saw Seregia. Seregia lay on the floor like a worm, and fortunately, her eyes were open, staring at us.

“Seregia? Why don’t you get up and say hello?”

She did not get up, but her eyes glanced at us while she lay on the floor. I knew it, yet I asked, just in case…

Damn it.

* * *

It took Old Man and Grandma quite a while to choose their clothes. I didn’t know they were interested in fashion. It was unexpected.

“Shall we get out?”

I think we had prepared enough. It was almost time for Yong-yong to sleep.

Kim Min-hyuk left the room with Lee Cheol-min, saying, “I will go out first and clean up the rush before you go out.”

He didn’t say exactly when to come out. Did we have to wait for about two or three more minutes before going out?

Yong-yong somehow looked anxious. I hugged Yong-yong. “What’s wrong, Yong-yong?”

He did not answer. I whispered to a mumbling Yong-yong, “Is it because of the man who just left?”

Yong-yong looked at me for a moment and gave a small nod. Was he nervous? I thought he might be.

“Does he look cute?”

“…Yes. What does Daddy think?” Yong-yong asked me.

This may be the reason for the anxiety. Yong-yong and I had different attitudes toward other humans.

“Dad thinks the same.”

After hearing my answer, Yong-yong finally let go of his anxiety. I hugged him tightly and patted him on the back. Nevermind whatever power and ability he had, Yong-yong was still young.

The fact that they’re different from their parents was a great fear for children.

It would’ve been a sight for Yong-yong to see me talking to a human being, who seemed cute and funny to him, at an equal level.

I understood. Anyone would be scared to see their parents clinging to a tree and communicating with the cicadas seriously.

If you’re just a child, you’ll be more scared, and even worried if you were doing wrong for your parents.

Unlike me who was born and raised as a human being, Yong-yong was born a dragon and quickly formed a different class.

Hochi and I lived alone, so we lacked communication experience with others. It was worth him being scared to see me talking to Kim Min-hyuk.

“Hey.”

“What?”

When I was ready to go out, I spoke to Hochi, who was lifting Seregia.

“You.. your powers are leaking.”

“Huh? No? This is…”

“It’s dangerous enough.”

Lee Cheol-min and Kim Min-hyuk were Awakened, so they just ended up feeling uneasy. If it was someone normal, they might have felt drowsy.

“Really…? It’s very weak.”

Hochi shared my memories, but only in the Tutorial. There was no experience of me facing humans or being human, so he couldn’t get the hang of it.

In fact, by our standards, it would be similar for any being, not just humans. It just hit me that we’d spent a long time locked up.

“Yes, weak. Let’s go out now to meet those weak humans.”

By now, Kim Min-hyuk must have prepared the necessities. We left the dressing room and exited the building together towards a weak and cute world.

* * *

“This is the worst.” Kim Min-hyuk had no choice but to mutter this.

A large crowd of too many people gathered. He wondered if everyone in Seoul had gathered.

The people gathered under the stairs obscured the floor. People approached the building right in front of them.

Guild members were trying to stop the rush, but even that didn’t faze them. As guild members said, they were civilians without power, and there was a limit to pushing them away by force.

They forced them to step down with threats, but it became meaningless when the number of people exceeded 10,000. People gained strength in numbers.

Even though guild members shouted, “Stay back,” people courageously pushed closer. Perhaps because of the recent anti-guild sentiment, people threw harsh words at the guild members, trying to anger them.

Now, he was worried that the guild members would use their strength. The number of guild members blocking the building was smaller than before.

He saw some of the guild members far away. There seemed to be a quarrel, but they were too distant for Kim Min-hyuk to accurately discern the situation.

There were no members of the association and no police officers who should have arrived by now.

“Hey, you done?”

Kim Min-hyuk looked back, his heart contracting painfully. Lee Ho-jae and his party were coming out. If he knew this would happen, he’d have told him to come out later.

No, he would’ve made an escape route for the people to sneak out. Regrets filled Kim Min-hyuks’s head. And now, he felt like he’d f*cked up.

“What’s wrong with the air? It’s even worse out here.”

Kim Min-hyuk was speechless on seeing Lee Ho-jae frowning. People became noisier as they saw him walk out. He could hear cheers and applause but shouts more than anything else.

They wanted to get closer to Ho-jae, to see better. The noise also contained many questions.

They were reporters. The questions, mixed in with the loud noises, were inaudible. However, Lee Ho-jae heard them.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Do you know about the G-class that showed up in Pyongyang?”

“What do you think was the driving force behind Hell difficulty?”

“What food do you want to eat the most now?”

“Did you know that your real sister, Lee Myung-sook, died three years ago? If you do, what do you think about that? How do you feel?”

“A word to the people…”

“It’s so noisy.”

Ttuk. The square, which had been clamoring loudly, fell silent.

Those who had been shouting and running forward stood still and shut their mouths.

There was no noticeable power, but people remained silent as if it were only natural. Only the distant sound of honking cars echoed. Silence enveloped the square.

Kim Min-hyuk hadn’t asked anyone to do that, but all those gathered quietly closed their mouths.

Standing in front of the building, Lee Ho-jae breathed out quietly. The sound let out through the slow exhalation was like abdominal breathing.

It was akin to a whistle that a zookeeper made to calm down a wild animal. While everyone had stopped, there was one person who desperately tried to move.

It was Kim Min-hyuk. Lee Ho-jae released the binding on him and asked, “Why?”

Kim Min-hyuk said, trying to calm his trembling body, “…Hey, don’t-“

“Why? I even waited on purpose.”

It had always been this way.

Lee Ho-jae, whom Kim Min-hyuk knew, always chose to steer away the problems he didn’t want to touch.

“People…”

Kim Min-hyuk managed to open his mouth, but he couldn’t think of anything to persuade Lee Ho-jae.

Glancing at Kim Min-hyuk, Lee Ho-jae mumbled, “You know what? The main character doesn’t need to hide his strength.” [1]