April Fools' Day (1)
With a rattling roar, the motorcycle came to a stop.
We’d been going so fast I could smell scorched rubber rising off the pavement.
“How’s that? Pretty killer, right? Ten minutes flat!”
The courier puffed out his chest, breathing hard as if he’d just sprinted the whole way here. He looked absurdly pleased with himself.
I checked my phone.
He’d covered a distance that normally took more than thirty minutes in just thirteen. The way he’d threaded through the gridlocked stretches and driven with that hair-raising, acrobatic precision had honestly impressed me.
“You were three minutes over.”
“Tch. I’ve lost a lot of my edge. If this were the old days, I’d have made it.”
He said it with a shrug, but I was still grateful.
He was a complete stranger, and he’d given me a ride purely out of kindness.
I might be a miser, but I didn’t like taking things for free.
Nothing in this world came without a price.
“Give me your account number. I’ll pay you at least taxi fare.”
The courier stared at me.
“Doesn’t look like you’re some famous Hunter. Never seen your face before.”
“I awakened not long ago.”
“Ah. I see.”
He was still under the impression that I was a Hunter.
That had never happened to me in my previous life.
Once, when I’d been so hungry I lay down in a park, someone had mistaken me for a homeless man and pressed a few coins into my hand. Another time, while walking through a luxury apartment complex, I’d been reported as suspicious-looking and arrested by police who’d been called out to the scene.
That probably meant I looked that shabby and pitiful.
The factory jacket I wore every day was frayed in places and full of holes, and the greasy trousers beneath it were coated with a layer of old, stubborn dust.
“Hup.”
The courier leaned against the bike and slipped a cigarette between his lips.
He offered me one, but I shook my head.
“You don’t smoke?”
“I quit.”
Cigarettes, nightlife, games, luxuries—anything that bled money, I’d cut out long ago.
My only real hobby was buying old books from secondhand shops and reading them.
I’d even gotten friendly with one shop owner and managed to pick up some faded manga at a cheap price now and then.
The courier exhaled a stream of smoke.
“Remember that first guy I said was fast?”
I nodded, and he went on.
“He was my friend.”
He said that, aside from himself, everyone around him who rode motorcycles had died.
“He used to ride like a lunatic. One day he rammed his bike into Big Lava to save people, and died like an idiot. Tch.”
He drew a finger across his throat with his thumb.
He sounded cheerful enough, but somehow his voice still seemed sad.
“It’s already been over a year since that bastard died. Heh. I wonder if he’s doing all right.”
The courier’s gaze lifted.
Soft, cottony clouds drifted peacefully across a sky so blue it hurt to look at.
For a while, the two of us stood there side by side, watching them pass.
I didn’t say anything.
Complaining was something I could listen to.
“You know what he always used to say, ever since he was in the orphanage?”
The courier gave a crooked grin.
“He said he wanted to do work that actually helped people. Damn it. I guess hauling chicken around like a maniac that fast did help.”
He snorted and flicked his cigarette to the ground.
“Forget the money. If it were him, he probably would’ve given you a free ride.”
The courier climbed back onto the motorcycle.
Before leaving, he looked at me.
“I’m too stupid to know what I’m supposed to do even with the world this screwed up. I just... like that bastard.”
His expression was calm, but his voice was thick with emotion.
“Sometimes I want to do things that actually help people, too. Here.”
He held out a business card.
Dalbong Quick Bullet Service!
“Call me again if you need me.”
The motorcycle disappeared into the dust, growing smaller and smaller.
I was left alone in the desolate lot.
A faint curl of smoke rose from the cigarette he’d tossed away.
Seeing it for myself made one thing clear.
The public’s view of Hunters split neatly into two camps.
They either hated them and feared them, like Seo Gwang-pal, or they thanked them and treated them like national heroes.
When you thought about it, neither side was entirely wrong.
Seo Gwang-pal had been human trash, but he had still put his life on the line to fight monsters.
Which side am I looking at, then?
No. Which side do I want to see?
Turning on my heel, the bleak stretch of industrial land came into view.
Ilsan Hunter Industrial Complex
The rusty iron sign hanging over my head creaked every time the wind blew.
After that long, miserable commute, I finally walked back to my old workplace.
It was a place I’d worked at for more than thirty years, and yet coming back to it felt strangely fresh.
What I reached after walking along the unpaved road was Factory 4.
“Industrial complex” usually meant a place where factories were clustered together.
“Industrial zone” was actually the more accurate term, though it carried a slightly negative ring to it.
But nobody here ever used that sort of language.
Just as teasing Black people about dark skin wasn’t the same thing as racism, factory guys were just factory guys to one another.
“Boss!”
Someone came running over from afar like a puppy that had just spotted its owner.
A guy with tightly curled short hair and a dark complexion.
It was Karki from Nepal.
“Boss, you crazy? If you come in two hours late, what then? Boss gonna flip out and make a whole scene!”
Seeing him made me snort.
Karki and I had spent so much of my previous life side by side that our bond had become unusually deep.
Whenever I came to work with a fever burning through me, he’d lay down boxes in the warehouse and make me lie on top of them.
Then he’d quietly do my share of the work by himself.
He knew I wouldn’t go to the hospital even if he told me to, so he’d done it that way instead.
And when I’d been away on a business trip to the provinces, it was Karki who had actually lifted my grandmother onto his back after she’d fallen down the stairs and taken her to the hospital.
My younger brother had even grown so attached to him that he started treating Karki like a second older brother.
Once, my brother had caused some trouble and the school had called in a guardian. Without telling me or my grandmother, he’d gone and brought Karki instead.
In one way or another, I owed the guy a lot.
“What now? You only just got here? You hurt?”
Karki stopped in front of me, eyes widening.
“Huh? Boss. You bleeding from your forehead? You okay?”
“A monster rammed a bus into me. I almost died.”
“Whoa, for real?”
“I’m on my way back after killing Big Lava with my own hands. That’s why I’m late.”
“......”
Karki just blinked at me.
He didn’t believe a word of it.
“Heh. Nice try! I know it’s April Fools’ Day, boss!”
So it was April 1st.
I’d been reborn on April Fools’ Day, of all days.
What a vicious joke.
“I already got fooled by the boss. He said he’d raise my wages, so I was happy, but it was a lie. Damn boss bastard.”
Wait. April Fools’ Day?
While Karki was chattering away, a fierce memory flashed through my head.
It had been a long time ago, but it was still a nightmare I could never forget.
I held out my hand toward Karki.
“Your hand.”
“Huh?”
Karki gripped my hand awkwardly, as if we were about to shake on something.
A rough but warm touch settled against my palm.
Only then did I finally feel at ease.
Good. I wasn’t too late.
Today, something even more unbelievable than April Fools’ Day was going to happen.
A fatal accident caused by a press malfunction—Karki’s right hand getting caught in the machine.
The sensation of my head going hazy from the blood splattered around us still felt brutally vivid.
His injured hand had been crushed so badly it couldn’t even be reattached.
In the end, Karki had to have it amputated.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine the despair of losing part of your body.
I could still picture him lying in bed with a bandage wrapped around his hand.
Just thinking about it made a heavy black cloud settle over my chest.
“It’s fine, Boss. I can just wipe my ass with my left hand.”
Back then, he’d said something stupid like that and laughed brightly.
The moment I shut the hospital room door behind me, his heartbroken sobbing from inside had buzzed in my ears like a lingering ring of tinnitus for a long, long time.
Karki returned to his hometown six months later.
He left without ever realizing his dream of marrying off his younger sister and buying a house for his parents as the eldest son.
All the way here on the motorcycle, I kept thinking about it.
What meaning had God been trying to give me when He handed me a second life?
Maybe it was a chance to live again and do better with the life I’d wasted on regret.
Or maybe it was a demand that I finally repay debts I’d never managed to settle with my benefactors.
Yes. I did owe Karki a debt.
“Let’s go in.”
I stepped into the factory with Karki.
The workers were bustling around in full swing.
They were cutting metal and sending sparks flying, hosing down machines that had grown hot with use.
There weren’t even ten people working there.
The boss was one of them.
“Well, well. Look who it is. Choi Yongki, isn’t it?”
The white-haired man frowned, his dust-covered vest flapping as he turned toward me.
His eyes were fishlike, and just looking at them gave me a vaguely unpleasant feeling.
The boss sneered.
“Even if this is a crappy little hole of a place, what kind of bullshit is it to show up whenever you feel like it?”
The guy was exactly as I remembered.
Bad manners and profanity were his baseline.
When he got drunk at company dinners, he’d throw ashtrays at employees.
He’d even slapped Karki seven times when Karki tried to bring up the issue of unpaid wages.
“Boss. On the way here, Boss got in a traffic accident. Almost died because of monster! No choice.”
Apparently not believing me, Karki jumped in and defended me with all the passion he had.
“Quit your bullshit. Who here hasn’t almost died because of monsters? Move, bastard!”
The boss shoved Karki aside roughly.
“What are you all staring at? If we miss the deadline this time, you’ll all be sorry! Get back to work!”
A dejected Karki trudged off.
I looked at the boss and said, “I’m sorry I’m late. Deduct the morning hours from my pay.”
“Of course I will!”
“But last month’s overtime still hasn’t been paid either.”
“What?”
I walked toward him as he growled, veins bulging in his neck.
“You heard me. The overtime pay hasn’t come in.”
He didn’t need to check for himself. It was obvious enough.
Because they never punched in their time cards, his little trick was to quietly calculate everyone’s wages lower than what they were actually owed.
Karki lifted a sheet of metal and shoved it into the press.
Keeping my eyes fixed on him, I said, “Did you fix that sensor?”
The boss shook his head with a sour expression.
“Ahem. I’ve just had too much on my plate lately, so I haven’t gotten around to it... Besides, it works just fine.”
More accurately, he hadn’t fixed it on purpose.
He was the kind of human trash who’d rather run one more machine than spend time making repairs.
As I passed the boss, I muttered, “Nothing’s changed. Maybe you need to get your head caught in the press before you’ll start using it.”
“Hey. What did you just say?”
I ignored him and walked over to Karki.
Karki pressed both hands down on the button.
The heavy press crushed the thin sheet of steel beneath it.
The sensors were originally set up on both sides to trigger when a person’s hand came near the machine.
But the boss always kept them flattened and switched off.
That was how he got the work speed up and maximized production.
Besides, those sensors occasionally froze up anyway.
Under conditions this dangerous, where safety rules had been thrown to the dogs, my steps quickened.
The hero didn’t only appear on battlefields.
He could shine in ordinary life, too.
For example.
“Huh?”
Karki’s eyes widened as he sensed something wrong.
Before he’d even managed to press the button with both hands, the press came crashing down on his right hand without mercy.
Clang.
I caught it with one hand.
Judgment of the Superhuman has been activated.
Withdrawal: ₩1,000,000
Even though money had been deducted as always, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Only one million won.
At that price, it was a steal.
“B-Boss?”
I looked at Karki’s unharmed hand, which had narrowly escaped being crushed beneath the press.
Only then did Karki hurry and yank his hand free.
Work came to a stop, and everyone’s eyes turned toward us.
The boss ran over, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
Ridiculously enough, if I let go now, nothing would happen.
They’d use that insane machine again this afternoon.
Someone’s hand would be cut off.
Someone’s dream would be cut off.
“Hup!”
I seized the press with both hands and tore it apart, top and bottom.
With a sound like thunder crashing from the sky, the iron machine crumpled like a sheet of paper.
“......Huh? Huh.”
The boss toppled backward onto his ass and stared up at me from the ground.
I threw the broken pieces of the press down at his feet.
“Deduct this from my wages, too.”
I looked down at him.
“...is what I’d say if I were lying.”
It was the joke most fitting for April Fools’ Day.