novelraw Chapter 164 : Intern Jae-hee (5)
Chapter 164 : Intern Jae-hee (5)
The glowing dinosaur seemed to help Miss Never calm down.
After a moment, she caught her breath, and the trembling in her body subsided. She let out a long, slow exhale.
“I was born the first year the Gates opened, you know.”
She fiddled with the dinosaur in her hands, her words coming out in a disjointed mumble.
“From the time I was little, my dad always said I had to be strong. He taught me how to shoot.”
Jae-hee kept an eye on the monsters outside, but he answered her anyway. “Your father must have been a good shot.”
“My dad was a custom gunsmith.”
In a broken world with monsters at your doorstep, guns were the only weapon a non-Awakened could rely on. Custom firearms, the kind you could buy with cash on the spot, were always in high demand.
“He was a good shot, but he was an even better craftsman. Business was pretty good.”
“Is that so.”
“And he gave me the best gun he ever made. He said that to survive in a world like this, you had to be able to protect yourself… so he taught me marksmanship.”
Miss Never said she started target practice on her seventh birthday. At first, she couldn’t get the hang of it, and her father yelled at her constantly.
“I got sick of target practice and told him I wanted to quit… I think that’s when it started. Whenever I didn’t listen, Dad would lock me in a small box.”
“…”
“He’d leave me locked in that small, dark box, and after I’d cried for an hour or so, he’d let me out.”
Jae-hee listened, unable to say a word.
“Then one day… the year I turned ten. My dad died.”
Miss Never gave a hollow laugh.
“It wasn’t even monsters. He was murdered by gangsters who came to steal his guns.”
“…”
“He told me it was dangerous and shoved me into that same small box he always used… I didn’t cry that day.”
The gunshots stopped, and then the chaotic footsteps faded away.
It was a long time before Miss Never finally climbed out of the box.
“When I escaped, the first thing I saw was my dad’s body, riddled with bullets.”
“…”
“The gangsters had cleaned out every weapon from his shop… but they left just one behind.”
Miss Never stroked the sniper rifle she carried.
“The heaviest one. An anti-materiel rifle.”
“Then that rifle is…?”
“Yeah. This is it.” Miss Never sighed. “I Awakened as a Marksman-class that day. For the next ten years, I hunted those bastards down and shot every last one of them dead.”
“…”
“I didn’t leave a single one. Blew the head off every last one of them.”
On the day she finished her revenge—the day she single-handedly wiped out the gang that had come to rule the provincial city—she Awakened her Domain Break and became an S-Ranker.
“It’s strange, isn’t it? I hated my dad. I really hated the man who abused me in the name of discipline.”
Miss Never smiled bitterly. She was still terrified of small, dark spaces, a side effect of her father’s training.
“But if anyone was going to get revenge on him, it should have been me. I should have been the one to beat him in a shooting match, then lock him in that same small box and torment him.”
“…”
“They stole that right from me, so I had no choice but to take my revenge on those fuckers instead…”
After finally getting the fragmented story out, she pressed the glowing dinosaur to her forehead and let out a long breath.
“Phew… Still, it feels good to get that off my chest. I’ve never told anyone that story.”
“Then I’m glad.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking to you just now. I was talking to this dinosaur.”
“R-right.” A cold sweat prickled at his neck. “Anyway, I’m glad you seem to be feeling a little better.”
“I’m not okay because of you. I’m okay because of this dinosaur.”
“I get it, I get it. In any case…”
It was then.
Scrape, scraaape.
The sound of cloth dragging on the floor drew closer.
Miss Never shuffled over to Jae-hee’s side and peered through the crack in the door, clicking her tongue.
“Dammit, of all the things… it’s the Singing Angels.”
“Singing Angels?”
“A real pain-in-the-ass monster species that likes to nest in dark, gloomy buildings like this.”
When Jae-hee looked, he saw monsters resembling angel statues: small children floating in long, white robes. Each held an instrument, like a flute or a trumpet, to its lips.
“When they spot an enemy, they swarm, circle them, and blast music from those trumpets. If you hear their song, it corrupts your mind.”
“What the heck kinda monster is that?!”
“Plus, they’re like ghosts—they have no physical form. Physical attacks don’t work on them at all.”
“What? Then how do you kill them?”
“Well… there are ways.”
As she spoke, Miss Never pulled a magazine from her bag and gave it a shake.
“I always keep special rounds on hand for situations like this.”
The bullets in the magazine had silver tips.
Silver bullets.
“Without these, how the hell is a marksman supposed to deal with shits like them?”
“You’re amazing! Just what I’d expect from an S-Ranker! Always prepared!”
“But… dammit.”
Miss Never clicked her tongue. Her fingertips were trembling.
“I can’t shoot straight like this…”
Just then, the angelic monsters circling the hallway all turned to look in their direction.
Jae-hee swallowed a gasp. “I think they noticed us!”
“Tch… No choice. Hey, Boy! Get over here!”
“Huh?”
Jae-hee, who had been drawing his sword to charge out, turned back in confusion.
“Shouldn’t I be the one to go out and fight?”
“Not with the weapon you were issued.”
“Ah.”
Jae-hee’s usual swords, Mountain Lord and Mountain Child—a set made from the Phantom Tyrant’s bones—had been returned to the Black Parade.
The weapon he’d been issued was a simple long knife made of ordinary iron, not even a Gate-derived material. It would be useless against ghost-type monsters.
In the end, Jae-hee gave up on fighting and quickly sat down in front of Miss Never as she’d instructed.
And then, Miss Never…
“…Are you sure this position is going to help?”
“Shut it, meat-puppet.”
She sat him down in front of her, wrapped her arms around him from behind as if he were a giant teddy bear, and rested the anti-materiel rifle on his shoulder.
“You just need to be like the dinosaur. Provide warmth and mass. That’s it.”
With the glowing dinosaur perched on his head, Jae-hee muttered to himself, “Fluorescent dinosaur… I am a fluorescent dinosaur…”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
It was still a cramped, dark space.
But with the warmth of another person in her arms, the trembling in Miss Never’s hands stopped.
With a short exhale, she kicked the door wide open.
Kee-hee-hee-hee—
The monsters, shaped like baby angels, flew toward them in a swarm down the length of the hall.
“Cover your ears.”
Miss Never held the rifle at an unusual forty-five-degree angle, aiming with the eye hidden beneath her patch.
The Singing Angels simultaneously brought their trumpets and flutes to their lips.
Covering his ears, Jae-hee screamed, “There are too many of them!”
“You don’t know my Hunter name?”
Her finger on the trigger, Miss Never grinned with confidence.
“If I can shoot, I never miss.”
Click.
The eyepatch covering Miss Never’s left eye came undone.
Beneath it, a golden demonic eye, glowing with an X-shaped pupil, flashed open.
BOOM!
A thunderous gunshot echoed through the narrow hospital corridor, a roar far louder and more powerful than the music spilling from the monsters’ trumpets.
Silver bullets, fired like beams of light, pierced the heads of every single monster with perfect accuracy.
***
“A total of twenty-five Singing Angels appeared this time,” Chosen One said, signing a file. “And among them was a Gate Lord… the Gospel Leader, I’m told.”
“…”
“Well, your bullets took care of all of them.”
By the time Chosen One and Mu-gung had arrived to provide backup, the situation was already over. Miss Never had taken down all twenty-five Singing Angels, every shot a kill.
“Another case closed,” Chosen One declared after finishing the paperwork.
Miss Never let out a long sigh. “Yeah, but another Gate will just open in a few days. How long do we have to keep doing this…?”
“Until the world ends, of course.”
“Ugh…” Miss Never grumbled, fiddling with the glowing dinosaur toy in her hands. “I wonder how the dinosaurs felt when the world ended.”
As expected of a cheap toy, the dinosaur’s glow was already starting to fade.
“When the meteor was falling, did they go outside to watch, or did they hide in their rooms and bury their heads in the ground?”
Miss Never glanced to the side. “Boy, what would you do?”
“Huh?”
Jae-hee, who had been struggling to fill out a detailed report with Mu-gung, looked up.
He hummed for a moment, thinking, then answered, “Whether I was watching or hiding, I’d want to be with someone important to me.”
“…”
“I think it would be a little less scary that way.”
Jae-hee thought quietly to himself.
If the day the world ended ever came… whether they were sitting side-by-side on a beach or huddled in a cramped room on Deck 0…
He wanted to be with his master.
“…Indeed.”
With a small smirk, Miss Never tucked the glowing dinosaur into an inner pocket, slung her sniper rifle over her shoulder, and stood up.
“You can rest assured, Boy. You’re not my type.”
“Sorry?”
“Turns out I’m still not into nice guys.”
His mouth slightly agape, Jae-hee watched her retreating figure—the back of a Hunter riddled with weaknesses, yet whose skill with a rifle was second to none.
“Hmm.” Chosen One stroked his faceplate. “It seems Miss Never has taken quite a liking to you.”
“That’s the exact opposite of what she said…?”
Mu-gung clasped her hands together, exclaiming in excitement. “Ooooh! You’re gradually earning the respect of the New Five Heroes!”
“No, I really didn’t do anything this time…”
But Chosen One shook his head. “On this mission, you proved your ability to cooperate.”
“My ability to cooperate?”
“Indeed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have someone like you to act as a social lubricant? Especially among our New Five Heroes, a collection of completely fucked-up personalities!”
Apparently pleased with his cooperation with Miss Never, Chosen One laughed heartily and gave him a thumbs-up.
Jae-hee groaned. That’s part of the evaluation, too?
Come to think of it, Master did say all the New Five Heroes are assholes…
But for a bunch of assholes, they were all kind of… cute, weren’t they?
Lost in thought, Jae-hee’s shoulders slumped.
“Ughh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just buy another fluorescent dinosaur on the way home…”
But he was never able to buy another one.
The peddler who sold the toys was gone after that day. He ran all over the area, but he couldn’t find another merchant selling fluorescent dinosaurs.
In the end, the fluorescent Triceratops fossil toy in Hero Tower became one of a kind.
The one by Miss Never’s pillow was now the only one in existence.
***
“…Things were going pretty well up to that point.”
Aboard the prison cruise, Paradise Lost.
Deck 1. The so-called Newbie Hunting Ground.
Jae-hee, huddled on his bed, let out a deep sigh.
Razor, Status Window, and Patissier had been listening to Jae-hee’s story of how he almost made his hero debut. They all groaned in despair.
“But you were getting along so well with the New Five Heroes! Everything was going smoothly!”
“Your affection level with Miss Never totally shot up desu! She was prime heroine candidate material! Where did it all go wrong desu!”
“Why did you end up back in this shithole?! You should have become the New Sixth Hero! You should have made it big and let some of the scraps fall our way! Why are you a prisoner again?!”
“Hold on, hold on. There’s still more to the story.”
Jae-hee pressed his fingertips to the bridge of his nose and continued his recollection.
“Okay, I guess I should pick up with what happened a few days ago… on Christmas Eve, during the final test mission…”