How To Survive as a Class a Hunter

40. S-Class Hunter Kang Jun-chi – [3]

Kang Jun-chi, 28 years old. He’s a figure whose face often pops up on nationalistic YouTube channels without his consent, yet he himself is an overtly anti-Korean individual.

To be precise, Kang Jun-chi harbors disdain for all three countries of Korea, China, and Japan, with Korea being the one he despises the most.

According to Kang Jun-chi, the Japanese are, as one can tell from their history and social culture, monkeys that are hard to regard as human beings; Korea and China, having been defeated by these monkeys, are embarrassing to even consider as mammals, more like insects; and Chinese people, just by their sheer numbers, are likened to cockroaches, while Koreans are on par with them but are fewer in number, thus resembling some sort of cockroach-like creature.

The fact that all these statements were made by Kang Jun-chi after he became famous shows the extent of his animosity towards Korea.

Kang Jun-chi didn’t always harbor such hatred for Korea.

During his high school years, his internet records show that he frequently posted insults about Japan and China in a community with strong nationalist tendencies. At that time, he was just an ordinary Korean who despised neighboring countries.

The addition of Korea to the list of countries he hated came after he completed his military service.

As he revealed in an old internet post, Kang Jun-chi’s mother left home when he was young, and his father passed away when he was 15.

Believing himself to be an orphan, Kang Jun-chi never expected to be called up for active duty.

After graduating high school and working while learning welding, he was shocked to hear that he had to enlist. He had to cancel his one-room apartment contract midway, paying extra for the remaining rent, and leave his belongings with distant relatives before enlisting.

During his military service, he injured his back. After being discharged in pain, he was furious to find out that the relatives had thrown away the belongings he had left with them, that he could no longer work as a welder due to his back pain, and that he received no compensation from the state despite all this.

Thus, Kang Jun-chi began to post not only insults about China and Japan but also about Korea in the community he frequented.

After being expelled from that community, he dedicated the money he had saved to studying for the civil service exam and passed it in just a year.

However, the life of a civil servant was far from the idyllic routine he had imagined, filled with rules, rationality, and regular clocking out.

Suffering from the unique bad practices and overwork of public service, he often posted about suicide in the community (he frequently complained that even when he told his superiors about his back pain, they kept assigning him the task of moving things). Then, a gate opened, and Kang Jun-chi awakened.

At that time, what he wanted to do was neither hunting nor civil service, but rather unloading and loading packages. He believed he could safely and reliably earn income by utilizing his spatial manipulation abilities.

However, a national emergency led to the mobilization of reservists. Kang Jun-chi had to pick up a rifle again, and during this time, a colleague’s report revealed to the state that he was an awakened individual suitable for combat.

Ultimately, he became a subject of special management and was dragged into various operations.

At this point, both the state and Kang Jun-chi were unaware of a fact: his supernatural abilities were on par with natural disasters.

As both the state and Kang Jun-chi came to realize this through repeated operations, their positions reversed.

Until now, Kang Jun-chi had been oppressed by Korea, but he began to oppress Korea in return, sadistically relieving all the stress he had accumulated.

He reported his awakening, and on top of that, he would often invade the home of a senior civil servant who had treated him unfairly during his civil service, demanding lavish banquets in his honor, or forcing them to bring in his parents for massages, tormenting them until they attempted suicide and ended up in intensive care. There are even legendary true stories of him invading the Veterans Affairs office and tormenting the civil servant in charge of him until they attempted suicide.

According to some accounts, the fact that awakened individuals in Korea are not conscripted but rather given hunter business cards and large sums of money to be exploited is all thanks to Kang Jun-chi. Amidst the atmosphere of a proposed military service law for awakened individuals, Kang

However, when I actually met Kang Joon-chi, he seemed to be a different person from what I had imagined.

I thought Kang Joon-chi would be armed with a rebellious spirit against the state and society, but he was more ordinary than I had thought.

In other words, he was excessively ordinary. Even the sight of him whining about dying after being attacked by Deathclaw was far from the dignity of the awakened king I had imagined. That fact was disappointing me.

“Wait a moment, I’ll find the location of the nearest hospital…”

Kang Joon-chi shook his head at my words.

“The nearest hospital? No way!”

“No way?”

“If I wanted to go to the nearest hospital quickly, I would have called an ambulance. Why do you think I called you from Incheon?”

“Come to think of it, is there a reason you didn’t call an ambulance?”

“If I go to a hospital in Seoul, I’ll die!”

I raised one eyebrow, listening dully.

“Die?”

“The doctors will kill me. Under the government’s orders…”

I demanded a detailed explanation. Kang Joon-chi spoke.

“That’s because I’m a threat to the democratic system and a roughly corps-level force that can move to the capital in a single taxi. The country has no money, so why do you think they forcefully conscript awakened people under the guise of a national crisis and make them work as hunters for big money?”

“I heard it’s because you said something harsh.”

“It’s not that. It’s because if powerful people are starving and full of dissatisfaction with society, they won’t stay quietly at home but will aim to overthrow the state. They give them wealth and honor to keep them satisfied because they don’t know what they might do otherwise.”

Kang Joon-chi claimed that countries that couldn’t give wealth and honor to the awakened were all eaten up by the awakened, and in such countries, the awakened were doing everything from being generals to presidents.

He also claimed that even in China, known for its oppressive policies towards the awakened, they provide enough money and honor to the awakened hunters to prevent such situations. It was a strategy to fill their bellies because the rulers feared the awakened’s attempts to overthrow the system.

Kang Joon-chi continued to speak.

“You know there are many countries where the awakened are the bosses these days, right?”

“I heard it’s mainly in the third world.”

“Not just the third world, but also in quite well-known countries. Do you remember the Indonesian coup? It was known that a military general succeeded in the coup, but it was actually an S-class awakened and several awakened who joined forces to succeed, and now the awakened are the real power behind the scenes.

Do you know why North Korea is producing tactical nukes these days? It’s because it’s hard to eliminate those with force field exoskeleton abilities with ordinary firepower, so they plan to blow them up with tactical nukes to make sure they die. In this situation, do you think Korean politicians can feel at ease?”

“They must be anxious.”

“In this situation, I’m the one who constantly complains about hating Korea and the Korean government. If an opportunity to safely eliminate me is provided, those above won’t miss that chance…”

He added that he couldn’t call an ambulance because of such concerns. If he did, the government would find out that he was seriously injured, and he couldn’t trust what they might do during surgery.

So he had to call someone he knew personally. Feeling puzzled, I asked.

“Weren’t you close with Stonehead on Huntweb? That rock ability user’s name, Seok Jang-sil? I heard you two call each other brothers. Why didn’t you call him…”

“Jang-sil can’t be trusted.”

“Why?”

“The government already knows that I’m acquainted with that guy. How do I know what kind of work he might have done behind my back?”

This level of suspicion was a disease. Despite claiming to be on the verge of death, he talked so much that it made me doubt whether he was really in critical condition.

Moreover, it was hard to believe the claim that the government wanted to eliminate Kang Joon-chi.

As confirmed in the hallucination, Kang Joon-chi is Korea’s powerful shield that even drives away giant monsters.

Furthermore, Kang Joon-chi’s contribution to protecting Korea’s container ships from the threats of sea monsters and sea spirits, allowing them to safely travel to various countries, was enough to qualify him for a nationalistic YouTube appearance. Some even claimed that Korea’s current situation being better than other countries was not due to the government’s price control policy but solely because of Kang Joon-chi’s contribution.

Yet, the government wants to kill him? Does that make sense?

In my view, Kang Joon-chi was merely suffering from a kind of persecution complex.

The things he did to relieve stress were all at the level of crimes, and he was clearly aware that he was out of control, so he was definitely feeling guilty. He was convinced that he had fallen out of favor with the state and was naturally scared when a dangerous situation arose.

“Then how can I trust you?”

I asked, feeling a bit annoyed.

Kang Joon-chi’s answer surprised me.

“I can trust you.”

“Why?”

“I’ve watched all your interviews. You boldly said that you could sell out the country even if you couldn’t abandon Incheon, right? I liked that you had no patriotism at all. Since then, I’ve been keeping up with your news and reading your interviews regularly.”

He even said that he had a criminal record for beating up the school disciplinarian and the training camp instructor. When I enlisted, I also wanted to beat up the training camp instructors until they were disabled. I only imagined it, but someone actually did it, so I felt a strong sense of kinship.

I flinched at his words. He felt a sense of kinship with me for reasons very similar to why I felt it with him.

It was also a strange feeling. While I was watching all his videos, he was keeping up with my interviews? It felt like he was revealing that he was my fan while I was his fan.

I asked.

“So you trust me because you feel a sense of kinship with me?”

“No, you look like a genuine anti-social person with a criminal record. I figured the state wouldn’t recruit such an anti-social lunatic even if they were recruiting awakened individuals.”

“I’m not anti-social because I want to be, but because I didn’t receive proper family education. My mom and dad were both jerks.”

“Oh, me too.”

Despite claiming to be in pain, Kang Joon-chi smiled and asked.

“Do you know what kind of fish Kang Joon-chi is?”

“There’s a saying that even a rotten Joon-chi is still a Joon-chi, so maybe Kang Joon-chi is…”

“No, it’s a crappy fish. It smells, tastes bad, has a lot of bones, and is inedible. Even when caught, it doesn’t give a good feel, so fishermen hate catching it.”

Kang Joon-chi chuckled. He continued.

“And my dad was such a fishing enthusiast that he would close the shop and go fishing at the drop of a hat. It’s not hard to guess what kind of feeling he had when he named me after such a trashy fish when I popped out of my mom’s belly.”

It’s hard to explain how much kinship I felt with his unhesitatingly calling his father a ‘trash.’

To put it simply, the sense of familiarity I felt when I first learned about Kang Joon-chi’s past filled my heart once again, and Kang Joon-chi asked.

“By the way, how old are you?”

“28.”

“Same age. It’s awkward to keep using informal speech when I’m the one receiving help… Alright, friend? I’ll say it again, please help me.”

At this point, I had internally elevated this friend to my best friend of ten years. I asked.

“How exactly do you want me to help?”