Job Search (2)
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Seung-ho almost reached out to strike the reporter’s mouth but endured with superhuman patience.
“Let’s go outside.”
The reporter cheered after hearing his answer.
“I wanted to delete the article I wrote right now. I added it to Seung-ho’s interview and scrambled it up.” Said the reporter as he hurried to follow Seung-ho, who had already gone out of the resident center.
He stood up, holding a laptop and a coat in his hand.
“Everyone suffers.”
While trying to get out of the community center, the reporter left the employees a grateful look. They have had a great deal since morning.
After saying hello to a resident center staff, the reporter came out and looked with an unpleasant expression.
“Where do you want to go and talk? Is it okay in a secluded place?”
“Please take the lead.”
The reporter asked bluntly, Seung-ho’s answer the same. The reporter was quite uncomfortable, but he couldn’t miss this interview.
The reporter took Seung-ho to where the car was parked and opened its door.
“I will strictly adhere to the secret. You don’t have to worry. Even if I die, I will keep my promise.”
He got in the car, thinking he should be done with the interview and return as soon as possible.
The reporter hurried to the driver’s seat and started.
“I am Choi Min-jong. You are older than me, but you can comfortably speak.”
“Where are we going?”
Min-jong found it difficult to answer.
“If you don’t have a place to go, let’s go to the coffee shop near the Hunter Association Seoul Central Branch. I have work to do there.”
After seeing that Min-jong did not know where to go, Seung-ho made up a story to go near the association. He has to get a registration certificate for the Adjunct hunter and wanted to save taxi fare.
“Ah! Okay.”
Even when he asked to go to Busan, Min-jong was excited to step on the accelerator.
The cafe at a time just past ten in the morning was quite awkward.
“What would you like?”
“Coffee with milk.”
“Okay.”
Seung-ho then entered the corner and sat down, while Min-jong went to the counter and ordered two cups of cafe latte and returned to his seat.
“If you have any questions, ask them quickly. I’m going to eat lunch at home.”
If he usually has lunch at one, less than three hours will be remaining.
He wanted the reporter to think that since the association said there was work to be done, the time to talk would have to be even shorter.
The reporter hurriedly opened the question file he wrote in his notebook.
“I think the situation will be very unpleasant right now. I apologize for the delay.”
“Okay.”
Looking at Seung-ho, who bluntly responded, Min-jong thought he had to solve the misunderstanding.
“It’s not a simple story. I’m curious about your survival beyond the gate, but what I want to know is something else.”
“What?”
“What happened after the nucleus got destroyed in the last raid?”
Seung-ho did not immediately answer the question and looked as if he was stuck.
“Why are you curious?”
“The last raid was sure to close the gate successfully… Like you, most of the hunters who were porters couldn’t get over it.”
“I heard a story.”
“But do you know what truly happened?”
Min-jong, like a meerkat standing on the border to protect himself and his family’s lives from natural enemies, swarmed his head from side to side to see if anyone was listening.
Min-jong looks around and judges that there is no one to see or hear, then he went closer to Seung-ho and started to whisper:
“Actually, Drax…”
Wow ~~~ Wow ~~~
The ringing, vibrating bell caught them by surprise. Min-jong picked up the bell and walked toward the counter.
He soon returned to his seat with two cups of cafe latte on the tray.
He pulled his chair and sat down to continue with his words to Seung-ho.
“I think Drax killed all the porters.”
As Min-jong’s words spoken with convincing eyes, Seung-ho’s eyebrows knotted on his forehead.
“Why do you think so?”
“All the porters who came back from the last raid were killed, except you.”
Min-jong’s hips were already leaning toward Seung-ho that he was halfway away from the chair.
As Min-jong’s face was somewhat burdensome, Seung-ho shook his head back and forth, hardened his body in a moment, as if shocked.
“What?!”
“They were all dead. Each of the 12 porters who returned was included in accidents, suicides, terrorism, etc., They all died in different methods within a year and six months. Among them, suicide was the most common.”
“Then that means…” Seung-ho also lowered his voice.
“Yes, that’s right. Suicide.”
“What is the evidence?”
“There’s none.”
At that end, Seung-ho laughed while losing his hardened expression.
“What, then, you wrote a novel?”
“So far, everything is hypothetical… Did you notice anything strange on the day you entered the gate?”
When Min-jong brought up the nightmare he didn’t want to recall, Seung-ho’s smiley face crumpled like a piece of paper.
“If you think about what happened that day, was there anything strange?”
At the end of Min-jong’s words, Seung-ho sighed deeply; his mouth began to open slowly, with his lips hanging open for a long time.
“That day……”
* * *
“The nucleus is broken! Porters, run tightly behind the front.”
After destroying the gate nucleus, there was not even a small gap to cheer.
The gate master is a monster with an ugly appearance and colossal size, powerful in melee combat. This time, it was Balrog, the master of the abyss with insane horsepower.
When the gate nucleus, mentally connected to the gate master, was destroyed, Balrog released all the magical power and sprinkled it all over the gate, causing all monsters to attack the Drax’s raid towards the entrance.
Seung-ho moved away from the center of the raid as safely as possible, trying to avoid the monsters coming from all directions.
“Drop all your luggage!”
Following the command of Drax coming from behind, the porters threw all the loads on their back off. Seung-ho did the same thing as well.
With the luggage removed, he ran with a lighter body, but the monsters that followed them began to narrow the distance.
Drax hurriedly moved back nearer to the nucleus, perhaps wanting to make sure that it is entirely destroyed. He began to attack the monsters that were chasing them, breaking through numerous monsters alone.
“I’ll stop them; everyone, don’t look back! Run!”
Seung-ho couldn’t hear what Drax was saying, as monsters blocked his view from all directions.
However, the will contained in Drax’s voice was delivered to the heart, not the ears.
He wanted to add a little bit of strength to their leader, but he couldn’t, knowing that it would be a terrible death.
There was a constant scream coming from Drax.
Seung-ho suddenly fell and rolled the ground; his foot got twisted while he was trying to get up. He couldn’t even stand properly – it felt like nails were being hammered in his left foot.
He tried to run with one foot, but the distance to the gate was too far, so he quickly turned his eyes to find a place to hide around.
Not far from him, there was a toilet made by vampires. It was a pit filled to the brim with feces, with two wooden boards on top.
He said to himself, “Lee Seung-ho is good,” and jumped in.
Everyone wanted to survive. Seung-ho decided to soak in shit, all but the head, his eyes watering with the foul smell engulfing his body, hoping that the monsters would not notice him.
He watched monsters flocking around Drax. Drax was successful in blocking them, but only a handful of the monsters are dead. They continued their attacks.
He was clenching his fists in the shit bin and staring at him until he couldn’t watch any more.
He could hear Balrog flapping his wings. It seemed impossible that a creature with such size could fly.
Seung-ho shuddered with trembling fear, soaked in the shit to the neck, and could no longer see the raid.
Intermittent screams, tearing cries, and the sound of Balrog’s flapping wings could be heard.
He couldn’t bear to hear Drax’s screams anymore, so he raised his hand, which was covered with shit, and covered his ears.
* * *
“…that’s all I’ve seen. Until the last time I saw it, Drax was a dedicated hero in the story.” Seung-ho finished.
Min-jong slowly opened his mouth, his eyes still closed.
“Incredible.”
“Yeah, Drax was the most amazing person I have ever seen.”
“No, you are the greatest. You thought you would go into the shit and survive …”
At the end of Min-jong’s words, Seung-ho was instantly frustrated and opened his eyes.
“What?”
“It’s not sarcastic. It’s great to come back alive after being in that situation.”
Seung-ho asked Min-jong to repeat himself, but there was no sarcasm in Min-jong’s tone.
“And Drax is great. Even if he was left alone.”
“Why are you still trying to cut down Drax?”
In his memory, Drax tried to protect everyone and willing to fade away as a dedicated hero in an old story, but Min-jong seemed to disapprove.
In response to Seung-ho’s reaction, Min-jong lifted his four fingers.
“First and foremost, why did he make the porter the second-class concept? Class A said that hunters lacked at the time, but probably the number should have been enough not to organize the porters.”
“Second, why did he bring the porter near the nucleus?”
“If you leave them behind the gate and the monsters attack…”
Seung-ho tried to answer, but his words were blurred.
If the porter wasn’t D class, would it matter if he left them behind the gate?
Inside the last gate, the porter was not a porter, but the baggage itself.
“Third! Why did Drax remain alone behind to destroy the core? It would have been much safer for Drax to protect the porters from behind.”
That was correct. Drax’s body was one, and the way to escape was broad. No matter how quickly Drax moved, he couldn’t stop all the monsters.
“Fourth! Why won’t Drax grow old?”
“What?”