Uncle Hands Out Elixirs Like Candy
Oh Sejun drummed his fingers against the marble table for the entire duration of the report.
The steady, rhythmic tapping filled the office with a suffocating heaviness.
"Say that again."
"W-well, you see, we went to Choi Seoyeon's place, but there was this other guy there. Some stranger."
"Right. I got that far."
Oh Sejun stopped his fingers and leveled a frosty stare at his underlings.
"What I don't understand is why guys wearing the Blood Bird Guild mark got beaten half to death out on the street."
"W-we're sorry. But he really wasn't an ordinary man—"
"Shut it, you idiots."
Oh Sejun grabbed the liquor bottle beside him and hurled it. It shattered against the wall, and the flying shards grazed his men's cheeks.
The Guro district belonged to the Blood Bird Guild, lock, stock, and barrel.
The Blood Bird Guild wasn't the strongest guild in South Korea, but inside Guro, no one dared cross them.
And the man who had built that guild was Oh Sejun's own father, Oh Pilsang.
Thanks to that, Oh Sejun had never once in his life been denied anything he wanted.
Except for one thing.
Choi Seoyeon, who kept turning him down at every turn.
"So who the hell is that bastard?"
Oh Sejun demanded, his eyes twitching toward his man. More than the stranger's identity, the mere fact that some other man had been in Seoyeon's home—a man who wasn't him—made his blood boil.
"We couldn't identify him. He doesn't seem to belong to any guild, and his face isn't on any registry of Awakened."
"You're telling me he's not even an Awakened?"
"He's definitely not a registered one, at least—"
"So you useless bastards are saying you got collectively stomped into the dirt by some random civilian?"
When Oh Sejun rose from his seat, his men's faces drained white.
"It's the truth, I swear. That man wasn't a civilian. He just reached out into empty air, and our weapons were ripped from our hands. Like he was casting magic or something."
"What a load of crap."
Oh Sejun's face twisted. He assumed his frightened lackeys were simply spouting excuses.
Granted, ever since the gates appeared, all the old rules had come apart at the seams. It was true that Awakened capable of using magic existed in Korea as well—but there was no way such an Awakened could have remained completely unknown until now.
"Let's go."
"Sir?"
"I'll go see for myself whether your story holds water."
Oh Sejun said this to his men with a cruel little smile.
He was a C-Rank Hunter in his own right, regardless of the Blood Bird Guild name. He had no reason to fear some nameless nobody.
And beneath it all lay another calculation: even if the man truly were an unregistered Awakened with real skill, surely he wouldn't dare lay a hand on the son of Oh Pilsang.
"Boss, if we just wait, he said he'd come to us himself—"
Smack.
Oh Sejun slapped the cheek of the man who'd dared say it.
"Am I supposed to wait because that bastard tells me to?"
"N-no, of course not, but he's genuinely dangerous. And he swore he'd collect for what you did to Seoyeon, so maybe it'd be wiser to report to your father first—"
"Have you bastards all lost your minds?"
Oh Sejun ground his teeth at the sight of his subordinate rolling his eyes and scrambling for excuses even in the face of a direct order. It felt as though his men feared not him, but that man supposedly sitting in Choi Seoyeon's house.
Besides, that comment about collecting for what he'd done to Seoyeon had made him itch to know what exactly the two of them were to each other.
"Round up every man who can move. We leave now."
It was only a short while later that Oh Sejun came to understand he should not have ignored his men's advice.
Ever since the Blood Bird Guild thugs had vanished, an oppressive silence had settled over the house. I sat on the living room sofa while Seoyeon had shut herself in her room.
Only Seojun, the youngest, remained—hiding behind his bedroom door, peering out at me as if under a spell.
"Seojun, have you eaten?"
At my question, he slowly shook his head. The sight made my chest tighten all over again.
I went to the kitchen and opened the fridge, only to find a few shriveled side dishes and nothing more.
Come to think of it, what could two kids have been living on?
"Seojun, is there anything you want to eat?"
He hurriedly shook his head at my words, but the honest growl of his stomach betrayed him.
"Forget it—let's just eat something, anything."
I pulled out the phone Park Jaehyun had given me. I doubted this was what he'd handed it over for, but to me, nothing in the world mattered more than my nephew's next meal.
—Mr. Lee Jaeseong? Is something the matter, by any chance?
When I called the number saved in his contacts, Park Jaehyun's voice came through the receiver. I asked whether he could arrange for some food to be delivered to where I was staying.
—Understood. I'll see to it right away.
So even with the world falling apart, delivery still worked. Small mercies.
"Thanks."
I said this to Park Jaehyun and hung up. I could see Seojun watching me with wide, round eyes.
"Is that your friend, Uncle?"
"No."
I answered simply. I'd met Park Jaehyun for the first time today, and no matter how I turned it over in my head, our relationship could hardly be called friendship.
"Then what is he?"
"...Just someone I owe a debt to."
I hesitated over the question for a moment, but in the end, that was the only answer I could give.
About thirty minutes later, boxes of hamburgers and fried chicken arrived at the front door.
"Eat up."
I said this to Seoyeon, who sat at the table. She was still glaring at me with a cold face, but Seojun—giddy at the smell of fried chicken—begged her to eat with them, and she couldn't quite bring herself to refuse.
"This is so good, noona."
"...Yeah. Eat as much as you want, Seojun."
At her brother's words, I could see Seoyeon's expression soften, if only a little.
I studied her face quietly. She was trying hard to hide it, but her reddened eyes made it obvious she'd been crying alone.
I wanted to offer some comfort, at least of the ordinary kind—but having spent thirty years in the Blood Cult, I had no experience with such things to draw on at all.
An awkward silence hung over the table. A very thick one.
"...Where did this come from?"
Seoyeon stared at the hamburger set before her, then asked me.
"I asked someone I know."
"Someone you know? Ha. Where on earth have you been all this time, doing what?"
She must have taken my words the wrong way, because her face flared with anger. I looked at her slowly and spoke.
"For the past thirty years—no, from your side, I suppose it's been ten—I was in a different world from this one."
Her eyes went wide. Returnees were a fairly well-known phenomenon by now, so from those words alone, she seemed to grasp the rough shape of my situation.
"So you're saying you—Uncle, I mean, you—are a returnee?"
"That's right."
I answered her question plainly. Perhaps because he'd finally eaten his fill, Seojun had dozed off pressed against my side.
"...This is so unfair. How am I supposed to yell at you now?"
"You two, and your mother... a lot happened for you. It happened for me too."
I said this to Seoyeon, and felt a sudden surge of emotion rise in my throat. The fact that I could never see my sister again still refused to feel real.
"...Then you were on the Rudian Continent? That magic you used earlier, too."
"That wasn't magic. It's called martial arts. I was in Murim."
"Murim?"
I answered Seoyeon's questions as patiently as I could. Having learned everything I knew about dealing with people from my master, that was the only approach that came to mind.
"Idiots, the both of them. Mom and Dad never knew any of this."
"Now tell me. Your mother, and my brother-in-law—how did it come to this?"
She hesitated at my question, then slowly began to explain everything that had happened.
The story wasn't long, but it was bitter to hear.
Right after I disappeared, my sister had gone missing while searching for me. Missing was the word she used, but she said no one had ever believed my sister was still alive.
One thing did surprise me: shortly after my sister vanished, my brother-in-law had Awakened as a Hunter. And not just any Hunter—one of the handful most talked about in Korea's earliest days.
Which meant my brother-in-law was counted among those early Hunters who had died in the gate that opened at Yeouido—the very one Park Jaehyun had mentioned.
"And you?"
"Me? What about me?"
"When did you start going into gates?"
I asked, watching her. I had known for a long time that she was different from ordinary girls her age. Her stance in the moment she'd leveled a blade at me was nothing like that of a typical high schooler.
Though, to be fair, that was only in comparison to an ordinary girl. Measured against my own standard, there was more than one thing about her that needed fixing.
"About three years ago. After Dad disappeared, somebody had to do something. I was lucky enough to Awaken—otherwise we'd both have starved to death."
Her words stirred an absurd, indignant feeling in me.
My brother-in-law had surely left money behind, and if he'd been sacrificed so publicly in one of the earliest gates, then the nation itself should have looked after his children.
"The Blood Bird guys took all of it."
"...That can't be right."
"Dad was in the Blood Bird Guild too. One of the founding members, back when he started it with the current guildmaster. Don't misunderstand—it wasn't like this from the beginning."
I nodded at her words. I knew better than anyone what kind of man my brother-in-law had been.
"Give me your hand."
"Wh-why my hand, all of a sudden?"
I held my own hand out first to Seoyeon, who was watching me warily. Only then did she reluctantly extend her arm.
"Wh-what are you doing?"
"Hold still."
I took hold of her pulse and immediately channeled my qi into her, observing the state of her body.
Awakening, Hunters—I'd never seen anything of the sort in Murim. But thanks to my master—no, thanks to the Blood Cult—I was stuffed with all manner of scattered knowledge, and that alone let me gauge her general condition.
Just as I thought. Her qi and blood are a mess. It's as if someone crudely forced her meridians open.
I drew a single pill from my robes and placed it directly into Seoyeon's mouth. She jolted, eyes going huge and round as she stared at me, and I spoke to her quickly.
"That's a spirit elixir. On the other side, no amount of gold could buy one. If you make a single sound from now on, every last bit of its effect is gone. Understood?"
Seoyeon stared at me in astonishment, then gave a small nod. She'd worked as a Hunter for three years, after all—it seemed the longing to grow stronger had been burning in her all along.
"It's going to hurt a little."
With that warning, I began pouring my qi into her body—to widen those meridians that had been forced open so crudely.
"Mmph."
Startled by the sudden pain, Seoyeon sucked in a sharp breath. I could see resentment gathering in her eyes as they fixed on me, but there was nothing to be done. It would hurt, yes—but far better to endure this than to walk into a blade somewhere and die.
"...Endure it. I endured it too."
I'll say it again: nearly everything I knew about human relationships, I had learned from my master, the Blood Jade Demonic Lord Gal Junghyeok.
"Aagh—damn it! This hurts way too much!"
"Better than getting cut down and dying somewhere, isn't it?"
I said this to my niece, who greeted my declaration that it was over with a volley of curses. Her upbringing was clearly lacking, but that was something I could teach her slowly, in time.
"What was all that?! You should have explained properly first!"
"I did explain."
"You said it'd hurt a little! That was a little?! And you just shoved a pill straight into my mouth!"
"Check your body first."
I said this as I watched her glare at me, face flushed with fury—and despite myself, a foolish grin kept creeping onto my lips. For the first time, I could glimpse the cute niece I remembered.
"It hasn't even been that long since I took the pill, what could I possibly—huh?"
"You should be able to move at least twice as fast as before."
I told her as much. I had no idea how a Hunter's Awakening worked, but to my eyes, it looked like nothing so much as someone haphazardly retrofitting a human body. Now that I'd restored it to working order, her frame could move with proper efficiency at last.
"That's impossible. How is this—"
"Even so, you're still a wet-behind-the-ears chick. You'll be learning swordplay from the ground up."
"...So earlier it was 'I won't make you suffer,' huh?"
"If you want to stay home, you can. But that's not who you are, is it? You."
I said this to Seoyeon with a smile. If she truly wished it, I was confident I could arrange her life so that she never set foot near danger again for as long as she lived.
But remembering how the first thing she'd done on seeing me was draw a blade—somehow I doubted you could beat that temperament out of her with a stick.
"Wh-what's that supposed to mean? Acting like you know everything—"
"Shh."
I pressed a finger to my own lips, silencing her as she shouted at me with a scarlet face. Strange, hurried movements stirred outside the house—too many of them, all at once.
"Like I said, I'll go to them myself."
And I didn't need to check who it was. I'd been itching to hunt them down and kill every last one of them anyway—and now the vermin were coming to me on their own.
Without the faintest idea that this was where they were meant to die.