The Tone-Deaf Healer Kills with a Song - Chapter 1

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

Tone-Deaf Healer Kills with Song – Episode 001
“That comes to 4,700 won. Ah, please scan your Hunter card at the barcode reader over there.”
“Thank you for your business.”
“Have a good day.”
Ten years ago, a colossal gate—colloquially known as Ragnarok—suddenly manifested.
The creatures that poured forth from within slaughtered people indiscriminately, and in response, awakened individuals bearing extraordinary abilities began to emerge.
What should have existed only in modern fantasy novels became reality, and at the suggestion of a certain author, the term “Hunter” became widely adopted to describe these individuals.
Ranks were established, abilities were classified, and people threw themselves into the fray to manage Ragnarok and the countless gates that sprouted in its wake.
It took approximately three years for all the chaos to be brought under control.
“Do you have any strawberry flavor?”
“Ah, that one doesn’t come in the Hunter line. There’s a conflict with potions, they say. Yes, yes.”
Hunters earned astronomical sums of money under the justification that they risked their lives to protect people. Naturally, awakening meant choosing that path became the obvious choice.
Hunter-exclusive websites, shops, apartments, and Convenience Stores sprouted like complexes in areas where gates frequently appeared, and it was a world where you could spot awakening academies or Hunter prep schools in nearly every building.
Excluding those who chose not to become Hunters for religious reasons, retirement, physical limitations, personal beliefs, or circumstances.
[Out of Potions Today!!]
“Did you sell out?”
“Yes, I’m so sorry.”
In such a world, I was simply an ordinary part-time worker at a Hunter-exclusive Convenience Store.
Hunters themselves were divided into categories: offense-type, production-type, and healing-type. Of course, offense-types overwhelmingly dominated.
Healing-types, rarer than S-rank Hunters in the overall population. Healers—so expensive that even dedicated Hunters couldn’t afford private ones, let alone join guilds.
Every awakened individual desperately prayed for at least one healing-type skill.
With late bloomers awakening so frequently, I, at twenty-three, thought I would do anything if I could awaken and unfold my life anew.
Paying interest on emergency loans once a month, scraping together money to cover additional loans taken for household debts, and after deducting rent, making do with Convenience Store food for meals had become routine.
“No potions.”
“Ah, none today either!”
Until afternoon, I was someone who could only mutter curses under my breath at the backs of those who stormed out irritably, unable to say them to their faces.
And the moment I had so desperately longed for came suddenly as I was walking home, exchanging shifts with my replacement and gathering my half-loose hair.
Static crackled before my eyes as noise appeared, and at some point the image distorted before a blue window materialized.
An awakening window—something I had only heard about. The very thing those around me would gaze at as if staring into empty space, something that had never been visible to me.
Yeom Ye-ah, congratulations on acquiring a new ability.
From this day forward, all of Yeom Ye-ah’s abilities are placed under the jurisdiction of the Ragnarok Countermeasures Committee, colloquially known as Baldur, and you are requested to comply with the terms of the contract until the resolution of Ragnarok.
Below, I present Yeom Ye-ah’s abilities.
It was unmistakably an awakening window.
The bag I was holding slipped from my fingers and fell to the ground.
I didn’t even hear the sound of my phone screen cracking. Light scattered in all directions, and at twenty-three, I became an awakened one.

* * *
“That’s the story so far, Yeom Ye-ah. But I notice you haven’t registered officially as a Hunter?”
“They said Awakening notification is mandatory, but Hunter registration isn’t. To register as a Hunter, I’d have to demonstrate my skill directly….”
The interviewer across from me nodded, but his expression remained unconvinced.
He lifted his gaze after reviewing the Awakened resume I’d submitted.
“If you’re a Healer, there should have been plenty of people calling for you besides here. It’s been nearly a year since you Awakened—why haven’t you? And it seems you’re struggling financially right now.”
“I… did write that down.”
“That’s precisely what I don’t understand. I know that different skills require different casting methods. Some require dancing, others involve manipulating one’s own blood. So singing as a requirement seems quite standard to me.”
Moreover, if it involves using your voice, there are plenty of ways to amplify it. He was stating the obvious, the kind of common sense anyone would know.
And then came the utterly absurd silence that followed.
I already know what comes next. Truly, every single person I’ve met so far has asked this same reasonable question.
“Yes.”
“But….”
He asked exactly the same question.
“You’re serious that you can’t heal because you’re tone-deaf?”

* * *
“Have you ever belted it out at a Karaoke Room machine and scored below 50?”
“Usually that’s a malfunction….”
“I have.”
He blinked as if he couldn’t possibly believe my answer.
It was the same reaction my friends had when they asked if you could even get that low a score just by leaving a song playing.
Yeom Ye-ah, twenty-four years old this year. The moment I pick up a microphone, everyone adopts an expression of grim resignation—a legendary tone-deaf disaster.
“Before, I just thought I was tone-deaf. But lately, it’s reached a level beyond even that.”
“You mean your singing has gotten worse over time?”
“It’s not so much that my singing got worse—it’s that people increasingly can’t tolerate it.”
I haven’t seen anyone actually faint yet,
but back then, people would laugh it off with a giggle when I sang poorly. During vocal evaluations, they’d try to match my pitch to help me out, then sigh and give up. That was the extent of it.
After I became an adult, I’d go to a coin Karaoke Room alone to soothe my melancholy.
So I rarely sang in front of others, but I thought that since I’d kept at it consistently, my voice wouldn’t deteriorate further from here.
“What happened?”
“Well, people who hear it say they’re genuinely suffering. That’s why I’ve checked multiple times whether my skill is actually an offensive one.”
“Ah….”
He nodded repeatedly, yet his expression remained thoroughly unconvinced. His eyes even began to take on a glint of suspicion.
The look that says I’m clearly hiding a flaw in my skill or its execution, scheming to join a guild anyway. I’ve received this gaze countless times over the past hours.
Now he’s going to ask me to demonstrate my skill.
“We’re not doubting you or anything, but we do need to verify things properly.”
“You mean demonstrate it right here and now?”
“Yes.”
He immediately picked up the ballpoint pen he’d been holding and lightly scratched the back of his hand. Watching blood beads well up there, I felt a chill run down my spine naturally.
I’ve already confirmed that my singing can heal people. This is an opportunity to turn my life around—isn’t a second verification only natural?
Standard Heal skills only cure wounds sustained inside Gates. Everything else is better handled with potions, profit-wise.
The fact that he was making me heal such trivial injuries this way was unmistakably looking down on me.
But what power did I have?
For six months, I couldn’t even quit my Convenience Store job, and to pay the rising rent on my Rental Room, I’d been skipping proper meals.
“Should I just use it right now?”
“Yes, feel free to try.”
That gaze was terribly familiar—the look of someone convinced I was desperately buying time. Familiarity didn’t make it acceptable.
I pushed myself upright and tensed my abdomen. I’d read somewhere that diaphragmatic breathing could improve singing slightly.
The song I chose was my signature piece. An old trot ballad called “Romantic You”—a song so obscure that almost no one knew it, yet it had become my favorite ever since I heard it at a rest stop in childhood.
“Oh my, one and only! My precious! That man!”
Skill activation conditions met. Currently outside Ragnarok’s domain. Forced output reduced to minimize the contractor’s mana consumption.
Searching for a skill matching the current vocal wave output.
Mermaid Out of Water! Activating. May Baldur’s divinity walk with you!
Warped musical staves began to materialize around me. Notes that looked as though they’d been battered senseless rose up in time with my singing, etching themselves into existence.
Every Hunter had their own exclusive effects like this.
Even when I’d performed alone in a Karaoke Room corner, these effects had appeared, and I’d sung while watching myself in the full-length mirror.
The staves swayed wildly before suddenly surging toward the interviewer before me—directly at his wound.
“I love you! …Hey! Hey!”
And what I saw was him convulsing, foam at his mouth, toppling backward.
His hand wound healed cleanly within seconds. But there was no doubt whatsoever that something far worse had gone wrong.
I rushed toward him, screaming.
“Hey! Is anyone here! Someone’s collapsed!”

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