April Fools' Day (3)
"Let's eat first!"
At the foreman’s shout, everyone dropped what they were doing and headed for the cafeteria.
Karki, as always, stayed plastered to my side.
"Boss, today's menu is crap-katsu, lol. Aigoo. It's crap-katsu every single day, man."
They said you learned to swear first no matter what country you went to.
Looks like Karki’s Korean patch was seriously broken.
"Did you see that boss bastard earlier? Watching him run with his tail between his legs was honestly refreshing."
I watched Karki chatter away.
As he rattled on, something I’d been curious about for a long time came back to me.
In my previous life, I’d never bothered asking, but this time I decided I would.
"Karki."
"Hm?"
His huge, innocent eyes turned toward me.
"Why do you like me?"
Karki took care of me, and even the people around me, with an almost meticulous thriftiness.
He’d always been a kind-hearted guy, but he didn’t act that way toward everyone in the factory.
I wanted to know why he singled me out with so much favor.
Karki blinked and scratched his head.
"Well..."
Before I could even guess at an answer, something completely unexpected came out of his mouth.
"Because you’re cool."
I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
Where on earth had this guy learned Korean?
Karki offered an explanation.
"On first day I come work, everybody curse me out. Bastard. Son of a bitch. Couldn’t do work worth crap."
Ah. So that was it.
Karki had become so good at swearing because he’d been verbally abused that much since the moment he arrived in Korea.
"But Boss taught me work quietly. Even when I make mistake, you show me again. That day I got moved! Boss is cool in that way. You got style!"
Had I really done that?
Back then, the younger guys who came to the factory for the first time often couldn’t even last a few days before running off.
That was why I didn’t bother talking much with newcomers.
Still, my first meeting with Karki had stuck in my memory.
He looked like he’d already been through a mountain of hardship somewhere else. His shoulders had been drooping under the weight of it all, and every time someone said anything to him, he’d hunch up and bow his head first.
The foreman had introduced me to him.
"Karki. This punk Choi Yongki here is your mentor."
"Mentor?"
"That means he’s the boss who teaches you the job."
"Boss? Ah!"
After that, Karki learned the work under me and followed me around like a puppy.
Even with the foreman standing there, he still called me the boss.
Karki went on,
"In Nepal, there’s a saying: what you sow, so shall you reap. Means if you scatter a ton of shit, you reap a ton of shit, yeah? Boss, you’ll definitely get your reward someday."
I’d died and been born again.
I’d gone back in time, awakened, and gained hero powers.
So was this life ruled by karma?
Or was it ruled by luck?
Kooorrrl.
A loud rumble rolled out of Karki’s stomach.
"Oh."
He rubbed his belly and gave an awkward laugh.
I patted him on the back and walked into the cafeteria.
"Let’s just eat the crap-katsu."
Karki raised his voice.
"I’ll eat well! Everybody eat lots!"
The foreman pointed at Karki with his spoon.
"Karki. You’re intentionally messing up your honorifics, aren’t you?"
"Nope? Foreman sir!"
Looking at the food laid out on the table, I let out a sigh.
The main dish was frozen pork cutlet, soaked through with grease and gone limp from sitting too long.
Beside it were tough strips of seaweed stem, pale radish salad, and rice. That was it.
And four people had to split that one tray.
Still, nobody complained.
If we didn’t eat this much, we wouldn’t make it through the afternoon.
In the middle of the meal, the foreman spoke up.
"By the way, Yongki. When did you awaken?"
Everyone’s eyes turned to me at once.
It made sense for them to be curious.
Getting a proper awakening was just like winning the lottery.
"This morning."
Gasps burst out all around me.
"Well damn, no wonder you got strong."
"Then you’ll be quitting the factory soon, huh? Man, I’m jealous."
For the second time, all eyes focused on me.
If you got a high ranking as an awakened and became a hunter, your life would turn 180 degrees from the one you had now.
For starters, the number on your bank statement would be completely different.
"No. I’m going to keep working here."
Everyone tilted their heads, bewildered, and started muttering.
"Huh? You’re not quitting?"
"Why not?"
"If it were me, I’d be out there raiding Gates immediately! Killing monsters and all that!"
At that, Karki clamped both hands around my arm.
"No! Why would Boss quit? You busybodies! Just eat your food!"
"What? Listen to this foreign worker bastard talk."
"Yeah? So what, you damn Koreans!"
With Karki’s reckless words flying around the table, pieces of pork cutlet started sailing through the air.
I looked at the foreman and said, "Thanks for earlier."
If he hadn’t stepped up for me, I would have left without a second thought.
The foreman stuffed another mouthful of food into his mouth and said, "What for? If you leave, Yongki, the factory’ll have to shut its doors. But more than that..."
He lifted his head.
"I saw the boss storming off toward Factory 7 earlier."
The Ilsan Hunter Industrial Complex was made up of Factory 1 through Factory 9.
The whole place ran on contracts from big corporations.
At a glance, it looked like there wasn’t much wrong with it.
But the hunter business was tangled up in all kinds of corruption.
One of the biggest was the gangs.
They threatened workers and extorted money, slowly taking control of the entire Ilsan industrial complex.
The conglomerates knew it, but they left the gangs alone anyway.
It was easier to keep their hands clean and control the laborers that way.
The government, too, pretended not to see the relationship between the corporations and the gangs.
The Factory 7 the foreman mentioned was on the side where the gang’s base was located.
"If I drag those bastards out here, I won’t be able to stop myself either. You understand that, right?"
He’d already lost his first child in this factory.
But he still had a young daughter and a wife at home.
For a laborer, the body was life itself.
Quitting and finding another job was one thing.
Getting badly injured and becoming unemployable for the rest of your life was something else entirely.
For the sake of feeding his wife and child, protecting himself came first.
"I know. Next time, don’t step in at all. I’ll handle it."
In my previous life, I’d tangled with gangs more than once.
It had always been when I went to complain about unpaid wages, and the boss inevitably called in the gang for backup.
Back then, I’d been beaten senseless by the mob that came at me all at once.
Karki, who had tried to shield me, got beaten too.
"Handle it? How?"
After finishing his meal, I gulped down a cup of water like it was beer.
I slammed the metal cup down on the floor.
In the noisy, chaotic cafeteria, everyone looked at me.
Only after half a day had passed did I finally understand something.
The second life was not some gift from God, and it didn’t come with any special meaning or duty attached to it.
If I wanted to turn a life full of regrets into a second chance.
If I wanted to repay the people I owed.
Then the meaning was something I had to find for myself.
So my goal this time was simple.
"I’m going to fight."
Everyone stared at me in open shock.
"W-What? You’re going to stand up to the gang?"
"Yongki, don’t go saying things like that so casually!"
"Yeah! If you get mixed up with those bastards, you’re in big trouble!"
There was a reason nobody dared stand up to the gangs.
Most of them were ex-convicts, and some were even former villains.
But that was fine.
I hadn’t had time to try it on the way here because my head had been elsewhere, but there was something I definitely wanted to test today.
"Just trust me. Thanks for the meal."
After lunch, everyone slumped down wherever they could.
Some used pieces of Styrofoam as makeshift beds and sank into deep sleep.
Some sipped mix coffee while smoking cigarettes.
About fifteen minutes.
It was the one sweet, precious stretch of rest in the entire day.
Karki sat pressed right against my side, munching on snacks.
Chocolate, jelly, candy—he especially loved sweet junk food.
Today’s pick was potato chips in a long, round canister.
Karki crunched away at them with a rhythmic, satisfying sound.
Then he looked down at his phone and held it out to me.
"Big news! Boss, you seen this?"
It was an article that had gone up three minutes earlier.
In the middle of downtown Eunpyeong District, a masked figure appeared and defeated Big Lava. He not only killed the monster, but also attacked a Dio Guild hunter before vanishing into thin air....
Attached beneath the article was a crooked video that looked like it had been taken from a car dashcam.
Karki hit play on the video.
The quality was so bad I could barely make out the shape of anything, but the content was still clear enough to understand.
It showed Big Lava being smashed to pieces and Seo Gwang-pal getting knocked senseless.
Karki stared at the screen and muttered, "Witness says the guy was wearing a purple mask and went wild like some terrifying demon, so they called him the Purple Devil."
I let out a dry laugh.
Purple Devil, huh.
What a terrible naming sense.
"Oh! Right! Boss, you ride this bus to work too!"
Karki’s eyes went wide with excitement.
"Boss was here too?"
Maybe it was because I’d grown more relaxed about life now.
For some reason, even April Fools’ Day, which I’d never paid attention to in my life, suddenly felt fun.
If you spend too long at a factory, your brain does get a little dull.
You work and work like a machine part, until you stop thinking about anything too deeply.
And once that happens, life gets boring.
Karki had thrown the topic wide open first, so maybe I’d tease him a little.
What kind of joke would make him squirm?
Ironically, the most effective thing was telling the truth.
"Yeah. I was there."
"Whoa! Then this bastard saw it too?"
Karki pointed at the person in the video and muttered, "Going after a hunter with no fear at all. What a crazy thing to do."
To increase a hunter’s rank, the rating system took achievements into account.
Clearing Gates, killing monsters, and taking down villains all added to your record.
So attacking another hunter was basically useless.
"What was he like in person? That purple sweet-potato-looking bastard?"
Karki held out a purple snack to me.
So that wasn’t potato chips after all.
I took it and chewed.
The crisp texture and nutty sweetness spread over my tongue, lighter and more pleasant than the pork cutlet.
Keeping my eyes fixed on the blue sky, I said, "He was handsome, tall, had a great voice, a straightforward personality, acted like a real man, and apparently had a billion won in cash, too..."
By then, Karki had started to notice something was off.
I was rarely this blatant when praising someone.
And I wasn’t the type to ramble on pointlessly either.
"No way."
Karki hurriedly set the snack canister down.
Then he zoomed in on the video.
The face was hidden by a handkerchief, but the clothes were the same as mine.
The shabby factory jacket I wore rain or shine was basically my trademark.
Karki looked back and forth between the phone and my face with exaggerated movements.
He glanced around nervously, then leaned close and lowered his voice.
"This you, Boss?"
He had his eyes opened so wide they looked ready to pop out of his head.
At this point, April Fools’ Day was a total success.
I was about to answer when a group came striding over from far away.
"Choi Yongki! You bastard! Get out here!"
The boss shouted arrogantly, a smug expression on his face.
Behind him, a bunch of broad-shouldered gangsters came lumbering along.
The fifteen minutes of peace were over.
The workers lounging lazily in front of the cafeteria got to their feet.
"Damn it. Here it comes."
"That rotten boss bastard. He actually brought those vicious assholes with him."
I tapped Karki on the shoulder.
"We’ll finish this later."
I brushed my hands off and stood.
Then I walked forward to represent the factory workers.
The boss flinched back a step and pointed at me.
"That’s the one."
Then the man who looked like the gang’s leader came up and stopped in front of me.
Me and the workers.
The boss and the gangsters stood off against each other.
"Hey. You the one causing trouble since this morning?"
The tall, skin-and-bones gang leader sneered as if he owned the place.
This guy was the gang boss’s right hand, and a former villain.
Back in the day, he loved bragging that he’d once beaten down an A-class hunter with his bare hands.
"Who do you think you are, acting all tough? Huh?"
The bastard shoved a knuckled fist up in front of my face.
"Want me to knock your jaw clean off?"
What I wanted to test was simple.
Just how far would the hero powers I had actually go?
In other words, I needed a way to measure my combat strength.
And by pure luck, a human sandbag had walked right up to me on his own.
Perfect.
I pressed my chin against his fist, almost like I was offering it to him.
"Go on."