Hunter Apartment Security Guard
Hunter Apartment — no. The full name was definitely…
"The Central Raffine Signature Hills Prestige Xi-el."
What a ridiculously long name.
It lived up to the length, though — Hunters really did flock here in droves.
Even so, despite landing a job that paid three million won a month, the reason I was already living on a steady diet of sighs after just one month was nothing complicated.
—Riiing!
"Yes, security office spea—"
"Security office, right? I specifically asked for my package to be left at the security office, but the delivery guy rang my doorbell instead…"
"Ah, well, packages aren't actually allowed to be left at the security office…"
"What kind of rule is that?! From now on, leave them at the security office. Do it that way! Oh, and why are delivery trucks even coming into the apartment complex? We clearly decided at the last residents' meeting that they weren't allowed in."
"Some items are too heavy to carry without the truck coming in… I'll make sure they don't enter from now on."
"If you know that, then handle it properly ahead of time!"
That was why. This place was packed to the gills with entitled assholes who'd clearly eaten common sense for breakfast and shit it out the other end.
Haa… I should've known the second they said three million a month.
When I first got the job handover, I'd thought, Three million a month just for this kind of work? Reality, as it turned out, was a sewer.
Getting told to sort the recycling only when residents weren't looking was the bare minimum. Then there were the ones who'd call you over claiming it was an emergency just so you'd take out their trash for them, or the drunks who'd summon you just to lecture you about how a young man shouldn't be doing this kind of work.
I was starting to seriously wonder if this entire apartment complex was just a den of human garbage.
At least the night and day shifts are separate…
The one silver lining was that the complex was large enough — and image-conscious enough — that security duty was split between overnight and morning shifts. If they'd made me work nights on top of everything else, I would've just killed myself.
Anyway, for all those reasons, a month into this job I was living with a permanent sigh on my lips.
No — not just sighs.
"Hoo… finally, a breather…"
Cigarettes, too.
I used to smoke only occasionally, but working here, I felt myself turning into a chain-smoker at alarming speed. These days there was a decent brand called Mana Leaf that barely smelled, so I was going through them pretty freely.
I was just finishing a light smoke at the designated smoking area, about to head back to work, when—
"Oh? Little bro?"
A familiar silhouette of a woman stepped into the smoking area. Healthy tanned skin, short hair that suited her perfectly, a glossy, magnetic kind of beauty.
"Noona. Didn't expect to see you smoking here today."
More precisely, she was the A-class Hunter I called Noona — Han Seoyoung.
She was one of the few residents in the entire complex who'd approached me kindly when my sighing started ramping up not long after I arrived.
"Got caught sneaking smokes at my usual spot, so I'm back here."
"That's why I told you not to smoke near the playground."
"Gotta smoke right outside my place. That's half the point."
She pulled a cigarette from her pocket as she said it and stuck it between her lips. Then she patted her pockets, and a moment later muttered in mild panic:
"Ah, right — no lighter."
She looked at me with a mischievous grin.
"Lend me a light, little bro."
"Of course. Just a sec, it's in my pock—"
"No. Not that."
Before I could even process it, she closed the distance so fast my eyes could barely track her, pressed the tip of her cigarette against the one already lit in my mouth, and lit hers off mine.
I flinched at the sudden closeness and tried to pull back, but—
"Sss— hoo~ Thanks for the light, little bro~"
—she'd already finished lighting up, leaving me with nothing to do but stare at her in blank disbelief.
Seoyoung caught my look and smirked.
"Whaat~ Can't escape this Noona's charms, can you~?"
I answered flatly.
"I know you're just messing with me."
"Aww, no fun~ Our Taejin's gotten too big for his britches~"
"We've only known each other for a month, you know."
I kept the banter going with Seoyoung after that, but—
Aigoo. That was flirting. What the hell.
—my heart was hammering like crazy.
Couldn't be helped. In my entire life, the only woman I'd ever really known was my mother. I'd gone to co-ed schools, sure, but my contact with girls had been absolute zero. And even without any experience, the woman standing in front of me — Seoyoung — had the kind of looks that made this reaction inevitable.
"Aren't you being a little cold~?"
When someone who looks like that does that, what am I supposed to do?
Honestly, Seoyoung's looks were outstanding. Most Awakened had above-average faces, but she was a full tier above even that. You only had to search the internet to find gif after gif of her — that was how striking she was. Of course my heart went haywire when a woman like that pulled a stunt like that on me.
That didn't mean I planned to cross any lines, though. Setting aside how much it'd hurt to confess and get rejected, if I mistook a little teasing for real interest and actually confessed, the fallout would be unmanageable. You might say, It's just a confession, what's the big deal? — but she was a high-ranking Hunter. Whether I liked it or not, getting on her bad side wouldn't end well for me.
So I clutched my thrashing heart and kept talking to her like nothing was wrong. The fact that a strange mix of her perfume and cigarette smoke still lingered at the tip of my nose was a secret I'd take to the grave.
After finishing the smoke with Noona, I pulled myself together and headed back to the security office to get the day's assignments.
"Taejin. You're on recycling today. I'll hold down the office."
"Yes, hyung. Take it easy."
"Haha. You're the one who should be taking it easy."
I gave a crisp greeting to Cheol-yong, a guy in his thirties who'd been hired a few months before me, and headed off to sort the recycling.
The state of the bins…
Thankfully not a total disaster.
Not the worst. Today it looked like I just needed to peel the plastic labels off the PET bottles and pull out whatever trash had been tossed in the wrong bin.
And so Taejin's morning shift began.
What exactly is a Hunter Apartment?
Ask most people and they'll say it's an apartment complex where Hunters live. That's not wrong. But if you then ask what percentage of residents actually need to be Hunters for a place to earn the title "Hunter Apartment," most people just tilt their heads.
The truth is, it's rare for that many Hunters to live in a single complex. Even counting all Awakened, it's almost unheard of. The ratio required to qualify as a Hunter Apartment is roughly eight-to-two. Only then can a complex register as one and receive various benefits from the state.
This Central Raffine Signature Hills Prestige Xi-el — whatever that endless name is — sits at about a six-to-four ratio. Six civilians, four Hunters. So why call it a Hunter Apartment when Hunters are the minority? Because Hunters are a tiny fraction of the population to begin with. For a complex to hit even those numbers is remarkable enough to earn the name.
And why am I telling you all this?
"Haa… fuck."
"I-I'm so sorry!"
Because right now, I was getting verbally eviscerated by one of the apex predators that made up a Hunter Apartment.
"I don't want an apology. How are you going to take responsibility, you incompetent little shit?"
More precisely — by an S-class Hunter, the kind of person called a national strategic asset, a woman who carried the terrifying moniker of Divine Punishment.
To explain how things got to this point, I need to rewind a little.
Having finished sorting the recycling for the day, Taejin was looking around for something else to do. Finding nothing, he was about to head out for another smoke — until the phone in the corner of the security office started ringing.
—Riiing!
The Hunter Call Phone.
Taejin answered it with a tense expression. Of course he did. The people who used this phone were the ones who kept this apartment complex running — people who, even as low-rank Hunters, even as slender women, could tear someone like him apart without breaking a sweat. Being nervous was only natural.
"H-hello?"
"This is 101 Dong, Unit 201."
The beautiful voice on the other end made him twice as tense. And for good reason.
101 Dong… that's the building only A-class Hunters and above can move into!
The call was coming from the building reserved for high-ranking Hunters. For reference, Seoyoung Noona lived in one of the regular residential buildings with the ordinary residents. A call from there — and with that much attitude already — meant something had almost certainly gone wrong.
"Ah, yes, yes. How can I help you?"
"Looks like a water pipe's broken. Come take a look, would you?"
"Understood. I'll be right up. Please wait just a moment."
—Click.
Unit 201 hung up without so much as a reply. I muttered under my breath.
"No manners at all, huh?"
Still, manners or not, I had a job to do. I quickly checked the resident info for 101 Dong, Unit 201, grabbed my tools, and ran.
Aigoo, they could at least let us ride electric scooters indoors…
I sprinted with the heavy toolbox in hand, thinking that. What I didn't know was that a simple broken water pipe was about to flip my entire life one hundred and eighty degrees.