Meanwhile, two men in identical long puffers entered a narrow alleyway near the house. The one with the walkie-talkie muttered.

"I think this is the target house? But there's not much movement."

"What, Mr. Minki warned us so much...for something like this? Are you scared? Didn't he just go to bed?"

The man sitting on the lid of the garbage can chewed gum vigorously, curled up. The streetlight spilled over his back, revealing the back of his long puffer jacket and the words "PADO" written in white letters.

"Dude, it's cold. Let's give him another half hour...and if he doesn't move, we'll come back."

"Okay."

"Pick up some taiyaki on the way."

"Okay. Whew, that's extra work for nothing."

"It is."

The last answer was a voice they had never heard before. Before the two embarrassed men could react, a plastic bag was whipped over their heads.

Puk! Something heavy hit one of them in the stomach. The man with the walkie-talkie went down with a thud. He broke into a cold sweat with every kick. Fuck... But the pain was so intense that he couldn't even struggle.

An unfamiliar voice murmured, "That's enough..."

"Keuk, wh, who..."

"Oh, sorry."

This time, a sharp pain hit him in the back of his head. The unfamiliar voice faded in and out of his mind.

"I hit him too softly."

Fuxk, you said I only had to watch...

You can't hit me again just because you hit me lightly the first time. I don't need such kindness. The man fainted with that last fleeting thought.

"Are they okay?"

I checked the condition of the two fallen men. Pulse... Beating well. Breathing... They're also breathing well, judging by the way the outside of their coats moved up and down naturally. Confirming that they were properly stunned, I removed the 'Family of Deliveries' plastic bag I'd placed on them before the crime.

I thought I could hit them as lightly as possible, but they were stronger than I thought, so I had to hit them again. I crouched down beside the men.

"I'm sorry. I'll go through your wallet."

I turned to the men, who couldn't hear me, and dug into his long, padded pocket. Fortunately, without much effort, I found his wallet in the first padded pocket. Does he have a business card? I rummaged through the contents and smiled. There it was.

-Pado Guild Combat Support Team 1

-Rank B Woo Changhyuk

Pado Guild ....?

The name 'PADO' was also written on the men's long padded coats, so I knew it wasn't a fake business card. It was a familiar name that had come out of the mouths of Haejang-guk's regular hunters many times.

I put the wallet back in my pocket and put the business card on the floor. Then I took a pen from his apron pocket,

Click. I scribbled with my left hand.

-If you touch it, you'll lose.

Where can I put it so they can see it right away? After looking around, I decided to just put it in the man's hand. I leaned the two stunned men against the wall in a friendly manner and then walked away.

When I returned to the shop, the old clock was already showing 11:45.

"Oh, I'm in more of a hurry than I thought."

With all the unexpected customers coming in, I had to be ready by opening time. Luckily, staying up all night wasn't a problem. After putting on a hygienic hat and mask, I suddenly looked down at the apron I was wearing.

Like CherX, the logo showed its white presence in the middle. Of course, Lee Sayoung's rude appearance came to mind.

"I saw it, the apron, just like CherX."

"And a ladle."

Damn. I nervously took off my CherX-like apron. Instead, I pulled out an apron with a cute toad on it, put it on, and slapped both cheeks with my palms. It was a rush to get the store ready to open. I washed my hands three times in quick succession, then drained the blood from the soaked meat.

As I mechanically went about my familiar tasks, all my thoughts turned to Lee Sayoung, whose name had suddenly come to me in waves. Why had he bothered to tell me his name? Was it an assurance that we would meet again? An invitation to learn more about him? Either way, I didn't like it.

I shivered and brushed my hair from my face.

For some reason, I feel like I'm losing.

It was also strange that he let me go so easily when I'd expected him to stick around. It was as if he was sure he could find me no matter where I hid.

Look for me for a hundred days and I'll find you.

He's tracked me before, but that was to the house where Grandma and Haeun lived. It's unlikely that a hunter would mess with normal people, but it was best not to go there unless absolutely necessary.

He wouldn't think that I would cook Haejang-guk in Haejang-guk House. I poured blood all the way down and shook off the water. The most important thing for me now was to gather information. You have to know the enemy so that you can find a way to deal with him.

I poured fresh water into the pot where I'd poured the blood and spoke with a precise pronunciation.

"Hello Nexby, look for Lee Sayoung."

-Search for Lee Sayoung on the Internet.

Soon after, Nexby displayed the search results on my phone's screen.

"What?"

My eyes widened and I stared at the screen for a while, moving my hand mechanically. There were so many search results that the scroll bar became infinitesimally small. Who the hell was that guy?

[Korea's Third S-Class Awakening Is Born!]

[New No. 1, Lee Sayoung, who is he?]

[Chun Soo-jin's column] Can the new No. 1 fill the void left by J?

[Lee Sayoung opens his mouth for the first time after his awakening... "Pado Guild will be run by a small number of elite members"]

No way... He was that famous?

I scanned the articles and post titles one by one.

[No. 1, Lee Sayoung, Controversy over official stance...]

The fact that the little gas-masked concept bug was an S-class hunter came as no surprise, as it matched what I felt after meeting him. But the current number one ranked hunter in the country?

Why did I have to meet the number one?

Avoiding my wet hands, I touched my forehead with my wrist. Why was he beating up people in the alleys when he was supposed to be the strongest in Korea?

In the past, I would have thought, 'That bastard is number one, Korea is fucked,' but now I was so selfish that I didn't even have time to think about the future of Korea. In fact, eight years ago Korea was worse off than it is now.

That's a lot to live up to.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life quietly cooking Haejang-guk. Was it because it wasn't just a haejang-guk house, but a haejang-guk house with a lot of regular hunters? Like a salmon swimming backwards in a flowing river, I felt my way through my memories toward the source of all evil.

No, who would have thought that there would be so many hunters in this Haejang-guk house? I'd only come here because I'd seen the sign on the door of my benefactor's shop, "Looking for a part-time worker. It was a problem to visit my grandmother when I wasn't a part-timer.

(TL/N: '식당 이모 구함' if anyone knows what this means, you can comment below. Thanks in advance.)

After I started working, it seemed strange that every customer was a hunter, so I did some research, and there were one or two posts saying that this Haejang-guk house was a rumored restaurant among hunters. In retrospect, I should have searched before, but by the time I did, I had already become a godsend and a master of horseshoe serving. After that incident, I made it a habit to look up anything I wanted to eat online.

"I'm so unlucky."

Actually, it was unfair. I hadn't expected a place like this, where I had taken a job to hide my power and live a normal life, and I hadn't imagined that the opponent who exposed my well-hidden power would be the current number one ranked hunter. Why should the coincidence of being struck by lightning on the street happen to me?

With a deep sigh, I took out the meat in time to rinse it with cold water a moment later. My thoughts about Lee Sayoung naturally led to today's events. As I thought back on the day, I paused.

That thorn guy and the fact that the number one hunter came to an alley like this to deal with it.

I grabbed my phone again.

I kept typing keywords like thorns and hedgehogs into the search engine, but I couldn't find what I was looking for. Clearly, the thorns weren't the size or shape to be hidden, and they weren't even turning up similar searches, let alone sightings.

If that was the case, it meant one of two things. Either the information was still circulating underwater, or the higher-ups were controlling it.

Either way, it was something I was used to. It was a time when the hunters became the power of the nation. If a hunter's information was considered of national interest, it was not uncommon for everything related to that hunter to be classified as a state secret. You didn't have to go far to find J himself.

My head spun rapidly.

The dangers that exist now are... Lee Sayoung finding me and the safety of Grandma and Haeun being threatened.

Regarding the latter, it bothered me that the Pado Guild had gotten the address of Grandma and Haeun's house in hopes of finding me. However, the Pado Guild was more famous than I thought, thanks to the fame of guild leader Lee Sayoung, and with so many eyes on them, they wouldn't be able to mess with ordinary people. He was probably being watched by the Awakening Bureau right now.

Well, I gave a warning.

All that was left was for him to find out where I was. I stared at the radish and sighed again. The only good thing about my misfortune was that my mask covered more than half of my face and I hadn't given him my name.

Not that he knew... I looked at the apron as if it were some kind of CherX I had hung on the wall. All I had was that damn apron and the ladle I'd been using at Haejang-guk House for over five years - a ladle that died a long death at Lee Sayoung's hands yesterday.

There's a chance he could get information from Haeun, but... she's not related to me, so there's nothing on paper.

I haven't even signed an employment contract, so it would be impossible to find me through official documents.

But... a nagging feeling of unease settled in the back of my mind. What if... by chance, just by chance... Lee Sayoung came to this Haejang-guk house? I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head to dispel the ominous feeling.

"Not likely," I muttered to myself as I cut the scallions. Yes, there was no way he was going to walk into a Haejang-guk house, a place where people who had realized the taste of alcohol in their lives would be fascinated by a gas mask-wearing concept bug, right? But the happy slashing didn't last long.

I should have killed her instead of stunning her.

I sighed briefly and looked out into the pitch black darkness of the dawn.

It had only been a few months since I had hidden my powers, and already there was a crisis. Life wasn't going my way.