F-Rank Secretly Becomes Stronger - Chapter 48

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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48

“I’m going to find him.”

She had been wearing a frustrated expression for days on end.

One day, she suddenly stubbed out the cigarette she was smoking in the ashtray, stood up from her seat, and spoke.

“….”

Yeonho looked at her with a pathetic expression for a moment.

He rubbed his brow for a few seconds, barely holding back an escaping sigh as he spoke.

“Seong Jia, you know well that going to find him yourself will only complicate things, right?”

“As long as my identity isn’t discovered, it’s fine.”

“How are you going to avoid having your identity discovered?”

Especially when he’s probably already on high alert from being pushed around by various people recently.

He asked out of curiosity to hear what method she was thinking of using to break through that wariness.

“I’ll just pretend to be an elementary school classmate and approach him, then he’ll naturally come over.”

“…That’s really like you.”

Here, “like you” meant having no plan whatsoever.

It was absurd that she really thought that would work.

“Don’t go.”

“I’m going.”

Her stubbornness had begun.

Wondering what exactly had lit a fire in Jia’s heart, he asked.

“Why exactly do you want to meet him?”

“I need to see if that guy is really someone worth associating with us.”

“Ha.”

She’d been sulking ever since their last conversation, so this was the reason after all.

A troublesome situation.

He wanted to stop her, but seeing that expression armed with iron stubbornness, he didn’t have the confidence to successfully dissuade her.

‘No matter what I say to stop her, she won’t even pretend to listen.’

She was the type who would somehow escape and cause trouble even if he tied her up and locked her in a room.

Of course, that personality could be beneficial at times, but nine times out of ten, it always led to major incidents.

Yeonho was teamed up with her to handle the cleanup from such situations.

Though they were paired as a team to somehow prevent her reckless actions, even Yeonho was insufficient to stop her.

When it seemed like she might cause trouble, the best he could do was roughly predict the scope of damage and prepare for the aftermath.

However, this time he couldn’t just let her go ahead and cause trouble.

“This time it really can’t happen. He’s someone who handled even the boss alone in an A-rank Gate.”

According to the rumors he’d heard, Jung Juhyeok had dealt with an A-rank boss alone and immediately wiped out the robbers as well.

He already knew he was that strong, so that wasn’t particularly problematic, but the current point of concern lay elsewhere.

“He’s currently in a state where he’s cut off people’s hands and feet for the first time against the robbers, so there’s a high possibility he’s not mentally sound either.”

Seeing the report that none of them had lost their lives, it might not be such a dangerous state.

Still, from what he heard, all the robbers had one arm and one leg cut off each.

No matter how much of a Hunter he is, mentally he’s still just a twenty-year-old boy.

There’s no way such a kid could be unaffected after cutting off people’s hands and feet.

“If you go now and touch the wrong nerve, your head might fly off.”

“Do you think I’d lose to a kid like that?”

“Yeah, you’d lose.”

He could say it with certainty.

No matter how much of an Awakener with a demon contract she was, she was barely hanging onto A-rank.

Even with her experience, she couldn’t compare to Jung Juhyeok who could take down an A-rank boss alone.

At Yeonho’s firm answer, she seemed hurt in her pride and frowned while taking out a cigarette to put in her mouth.

“Wait quietly for the right time. You’ll meet him eventually.”

“…Huh.”

Jia irritably blew cigarette smoke toward the sky.

At his firm attitude, she seemed to acquiesce for a moment and continued smoking, then said loudly.

“I don’t want to.”

“….”

Right, he never thought he’d be able to stop her in the first place.

Usually, that guy would just quietly tap away at his keyboard, but whenever something caught his interest, he’d abandon all his work and rush out – that was his daily routine.

She roughly sensed that this level of persuasion would never be enough to satisfy him.

‘I really hate this.’

If he just didn’t get obsessed with things and act out, he had good abilities and was a reliable team member in every aspect.

But when something bothered him like this, he’d charge ahead without looking back, and it drove her crazy.

“If you get caught and die, I don’t know anything about it.”

“You’re not seriously going to slice someone up in the middle of the street, are you?”

Even if they encountered members of an illegal hunter organization, they wouldn’t immediately draw their blades and try to kill them.

Even if they do come out, they’ll only try to subdue us half-heartedly, so we can just run away when that happens.

While he was thinking so lightly about it, Yeonho spoke up.

“If it were someone else, I’d say no… but I’m not sure.”

Yeonho recalls that day once again.

The last conversation I had with Juhyeok.

[If you mess with anyone around me, I’ll kill every last one of you, Candy or whatever.]

He sneered.

A rookie who’s only killed monsters at best throws around talk of killing so casually.

[And you’ve never even killed a person.]

Killing your own kind is on a completely different level from hunting monsters.

The sensation of killing someone who spoke the same language and lived in the same world.

Even when cut with hatred, it does not fade.

No amount of hatred can make it smaller.

The weight of what it means to kill a person.

To someone who didn’t even know such things, threats of killing were nothing more than laughable empty words.

[If you work as a hunter, you’ll end up killing someone eventually.]

That is, until I saw the expression that changed after those words were spoken.

[I don’t want to kill you outside, so be careful.]

A calm tone.

A voice that never changes.

A casual tone, as if talking about last night’s dinner side dishes.

Most importantly.

“Didn’t I tell you?”

That chilling expression as he glared at him back then.

“That bastard is seriously messed up in the head.”

The depth is unfathomable.

Something unfathomable in that shadowed face.

Even to himself, who had stabbed, slashed, and killed countless people with words until now, it was incomprehensible.

Humans have an instinctive aversion to the unknown.

Every time Yeonho recalls Juhyeok from that moment, his hair still stands on end.

That eerie feeling you get when looking into a well where you can’t tell where the bottom is.

“That’s why I said you fit in with us.”

That day, I was certain.

That guy is someone who needs to be with us no matter what.

“You know me well.”

How could someone who hadn’t experienced it give up their stubbornness just from hearing words?

He knew that throwing out warnings like this wouldn’t change her mind.

‘I just told her to be a bit careful.’

This was prevention.

A crack in the wall of a heart blocked by stubbornness.

He had planted a seed there.

This was as much as he could do.

This is as far as he can go.

“Take it easy and come back.”

“Why are you so scared? I’m just going to take a look.”

“You always say that and then bite off more than you can chew.”

Hearing that, Jia chuckled and didn’t deny it.

Soon she started gathering her bag and belongings.

“You’re going now?”

“I have to go right away.”

Footsteps packing up her few belongings and moving.

As she opened the door, Yeonho waved his hand lazily and said.

“Well, just don’t die.”

“Geez~ You worry too much.”

The door closed.

Yeonho turned on the ventilation fan he had specially installed to air out the cigarette smell and sat back down on the sofa.

‘She won’t make a big move on the first day.’

Based on her patterns he had observed so far, she never caused trouble within a day of declaring she would absolutely cause trouble.

She would approach carefully at first, then suddenly explode a few days later.

It was a pattern he had experienced so many times that he had long grown accustomed to it.

‘And you’ll understand when you see her too.’

Those deep eyes she would immediately face if she even slightly tested him.

No matter how stubborn Jia was, if she was human with survival instincts, she would never easily cross the line in front of him.

‘I hope this opportunity fixes her habits a bit.’

Yeonho began working on documents, hoping she would get scolded just enough to not die.

Tonight deepened alone.

*

“Huh? We meet again?”

“….”

The girl who claimed to be his classmate that he met yesterday.

The sight of this girl whose name he didn’t even know greeting him so familiarly was more awkward than expected.

As he looked at her awkwardly and was about to give a simple greeting, he noticed a familiar bag in her hand.

“You went to our shop?”

“I ate it when I was young but hardly ever since then, so I remembered it and tried some.”

A bag from Mother’s bakery.

Seeing how full it was, she seemed to have bought quite a lot.

“They even discount in the evening, so I ended up buying a ton.”

“Really? That’s good.”

The leftover bread never sold well even with discounts.

Mother always looked sad whenever she had to throw away such bread.

Seeing that she bought so much, Mother would probably be waiting at home with quite a happy expression today.

“Can you eat all of that? It looks like quite a lot.”

“I love bread. I ate a ton when I went to your shop for a birthday party in elementary school too.”

“Ah….”

“What, you still don’t remember even after I say this?”

She chuckled.

Looking at Jung Juhyeok who was awkwardly fiddling with the wireless earphone in one ear, she began grumbling in a playful tone.

“I’m hurt~ I thought you’d remember a bit if I said this.”

“…Sorry.”

The fact that she knew they all gathered at the shop for a birthday party certainly seemed to confirm she really was a classmate, but no matter how hard he tried to remember, that face didn’t match with anyone.

Since elementary school was already nearly 10 years ago, it was quite difficult to recognize someone unless they had been very close.

“Can’t you just tell me your name?”

“Hmm….”

She just made a thoughtful sound, pondering.

After a short while, she answered with a bright smile.

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“….”

“Since only I recognize you, it makes me seem like a weird person. I somehow don’t want to tell you.”

Saying that, she disappeared back on her original path.

“Think hard about it until we meet next time!”

With those words, she waves her arm and disappears.

Without revealing her identity, carrying only bags full of bread.

Juhyeok stares blankly at her retreating figure for a moment, lost in thought.

‘As expected, no response.’

His cell phone becomes visible as she disappears.

Inside, various contact numbers can be seen.

‘I called all the elementary school female classmates I was even slightly close with, but different people answered every call?’

Considering that her family runs a bakery and probing based on the assumption that the birthday party would have been held there was a sufficiently good plan.

However, she probably never dreamed that Juhyeok would contact his classmates to obtain all the phone numbers of the girls he had been close with.

‘What exactly is she plotting?’

She didn’t particularly try to get close to him, and really just bought bread from the shop and left.

If his prediction is correct, she’ll probably appear again tomorrow, timed to when his training ends.

‘Since Yena is standing guard at the bakery every day, there shouldn’t be any problems… but I should still be careful.’

Should he draw his sword immediately if he meets her again tomorrow?

It’s truly a night filled with many concerns.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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