Chapter 69 – Retired Hunter (1)
First job after a business trip to England.
Seo Ji-yu bowed her head and delivered her coffee to me.
It’s probably not just because she’s ashamed that she can’t even see my face properly.
Either that or not.
I looked through the press release the Servants had put together to see if anything had happened in Korea.
Now, the frequency of appearances in dungeons has decreased noticeably, and hunters are also noticing the ominous omens.
Thanks to this, the occurrence of hunter crimes around the world was noticeably increasing.
However, even in the meantime, there were only two countries where the crime of hunters was decreasing rather than increasing…
It was China and Korea.
I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw China’s claim that the hunter crime rate was much lower than in Korea.
“These bastards are only open.”
“It could be real. Killing all the hunters that could be a problem…”
“… It could be.”
Certainly, this time my prejudice was too strong.
Alice tapped my press release file and said,
“Anyway, can we trust our country’s data?”
“What am I doing if hunter crime isn’t decreasing?”
“Yeah, but…”
Thanks to the activities of the special unit, the crime rate of hunters in our country has definitely decreased.
This wasn’t some fake statistic.
Previously, there was only one agency that could control the hunters, the Association, and even there was no formal investigation agency…
With the opening of the special unit, everything changed.
In particular, the fact that the current and former S-rank hunters and the guild’s executives were captured had a great effect.
The hunters became very quiet thanks to the good examples they showed.
“It is not necessary to punish every single hunter. Just thinking that they can be punished greatly reduces the crime rate. The perception of hunters has already changed.”
“Is that so…”
Hunters are a job that is recognized in society in their own way, and the income is quite decent.
There is no way they will be hasty in taking the risk of becoming criminals.
Until now, there was a widespread perception that even if you committed a crime, you would not be punished…
Now it no longer pays off.
Of course, this is just a temporary change, and we don’t know what will happen after the gate is completely closed.
We decided to do the best we could until then.
Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any major incidents today.
After seeing the bank robbery last time, it seems that the violent criminals are also reluctant.
Thanks to that, I was able to help a little with the reference investigation.
“Oops.”
While Tia was trying hard to make a scary expression in the back, the witnesses who received the attendance request entered one after another.
Before the appointment time, I quickly checked the reference person’s profile.
“Today’s opponent is… A former hunter.”
Retired hunters in Korea are not that rare.
Even if you look at Yeriel right away or Lee Jae-han, the big sea that he caught last time, he is a retired hunter.
It is also common for hunters to retire quickly after completing their compulsory service period if the life of a hunter does not suit their constitution.
Fortunately, Korea’s retirement hunter management was objectively very good.
Hunter’s pension comes out well, and I have to know the address well because I have to call an emergency in case of emergency.
They even do things like trauma treatment, which is common in foreign dramas.
Thanks to this, it was very rare for retired hunters to get involved in crime.
The big sea Lee Jae-han, who was caught last time, was too active to be a retired hunter.
On the other hand, the reference this time is a case where his ability was really weakened and he retired.
I don’t seem to have any lingering attachments to my Hunter life.
He is a great petit bourgeois who opened a restaurant after saving up money step by step during his active duty and then combining the Hunter pension.
I wondered why such a nobleman was suddenly summoned to the special unit, so I quickly checked the case file.
However, the more I read the file, the more my face hardened.
“What is this…”
“What’s the matter?”
“No, I don’t have a good reason to be called as a reference person?”
This time around, the background is quite long.
I explained it to Alice as simply as possible.
“It’s related to school violence.”
“Academic violence?”
Alice is already clenching her fists, probably because she has experienced bullying.
“The witness has a daughter, and it seems that her classmates have been bullying her.”
“That’s why the reference person took care of them with their hunter abilities?”
“No. We still have a long way to go.”
Before I could finish the story, today’s hero entered.
The man who arrived at the desk with a very timid gait collapsed as soon as I gave my permission.
Overall, the feeling of being harmless middle-aged.
Unlike active hunters, he was not even accompanied by a lawyer.
It’s a bit pitiful to see him being overly frightened.
“Hello. Jeong Tae-han, is that right? A B-rank hunter belonging to the JINK guild, and currently retired…”
“No, that’s right.”
“From my point of view, the situation is not that serious, so you don’t have to be nervous. From now on, just listen carefully to what I have to say and answer the truth. You understand?”
Tia looked at the distant mountain at the comment I had made several times.
Here, she finally learned that she would get scolded for walking away.
The witness nodded his head eagerly while carefully questioning.
“Well, but I’m not suspected of being the culprit, am I?”
“Jung Tae-han is being investigated as a witness. He is not a suspect.”
“Ah…”
With a slightly relieved face, he let out a small sigh and nodded his head.
“Thank you.”
“Okay, then let’s begin.”
I started fact-checking as calmly as I could in front of him.
“I’ll start by checking family relations. Mr. Jeong Tae-hwan’s parents died, his wife died five years ago, and he has a daughter in high school. Is that correct?”
“You’re right.”
He already looks uncomfortable, but if we are going to discuss this incident, we can’t help but mention his daughter.
Unfortunately, Jeong Tae-han’s daughter is an introvert and is in a perfect position to be bullied.
A relatively easy average score for students. In addition to being a single parent family, the remaining father was also a retired Hunter.
Her classmates, who thought her hunters were living her glamorous life, bullied her for their own way, feeling betrayed by her.
So far, it’s just a common school tragedy, but…
The problem was then.
Her goons, who were so bold even for her so-called ilks, had even touched her father, her only blood relative.
She, of course, even though she was retired, she did not directly attack the man who was a former hunter.
“I heard they came to the store.”
“No, that’s right.”
At first, she broke a bottle of alcohol in the refrigerator, pretending it was a mistake, and reported it to the police for selling alcohol to them…
Later, he brought red food coloring from somewhere, stuffed it in his mouth, and vomited it up in front of a store where people were passing by.
Thanks to their ingenious performances, the number of frequent visitors plummeted.
The guys I saw last time were still there, so even the police complained, but they got angry at the police who were reported and dispatched.
But the really worst problem was something else.
Jeong Tae-han said with his fists clenched and his whole body shaking.
“Because of those bastards, my child…”
“Oh, I know that part too. If you don’t want to talk, don’t.”
Suicide… Is not an expression.
These days it should be called ‘extreme choice’.
It is because of the bad habit of public officials who try to minimize any problems.
Anyway, Jeong Tae-han’s daughter tried an extreme choice.
Perhaps it was because she couldn’t accept the fact that her father had done that to her.
As is often the case with tragedies of this kind.
The school and the Ministry of Education downplayed the incident absurdly.
The perpetrators were not even properly punished, and the victims were forced to transfer schools.
Unfortunately or fortunately, the case did not end there.
If that had happened, there would have been no need for the man in front of him to come for an investigation as a witness.
Wasn’t the sky just indifferent?
Some time after the deliberation of the school violence committee was over.
The accident happened to the perpetrator students.
No. In fact, it was too righteous to be an accident.
I usually use the expression ‘accident of injustice’, but I don’t call it the other way around.
I have identified the content of the most important accident.
“The perpetrators who were referred to the school violence commission suffered an explosion at school. The battery of their smartphones exploded on their own. This is an accident that rarely happens these days.”
“… I heard that too.”
“Two of them had all their right fingers blown off, and one of them died from excessive bleeding when shrapnel got stuck in his blood vessels… One student even had his genitals amputated. He said he kept his smartphone in his pocket.”
Jeong Tae-han, the reference person, nodded her head as if she was slightly relieved of my calm confirmation.
“Wouldn’t it be that you got hurt doing something mean again? You can’t believe anything they say.”
“I don’t believe in their testimony either. But I have to believe in objective evidence. All of my classmates as well as teachers testified.”
“Evidence… Thanks to their testimony, the Student Violence Committee made a very fair verdict.”
Jeong Tae-han was openly disgusted by the stories of her daughter’s classmates and teachers.
No wonder he was offended.
Police identified him as the culprit in the explosion and turned the case over to the special forces.
Despite my obligatory tone, he was furious.
“Are you so foolish about what I’ve done to my family, and you’re treating me like a criminal because I injured my finger? What’s their law? If only I’d punished them properly for messing around with my store.. .”
“Calm down a bit. Jeong Tae-han is misunderstanding two things.”
“Are you wrong?”
The reference person softened his tone a little as I spoke politely.
I nodded and explained step by step.
No matter how much I am, I can’t bully a person who has been through this kind of thing, and there was no need to do that in the first place.
“First. I don’t suspect Jeong Tae-han as the culprit, even if the police don’t know it. I think it’s physically impossible for Jung Tae-han to explode the victims’ smartphones.”
“What…”
Jeong Tae-han barely calmed down at my calm tone.
Smartphone batteries originally prevent explosions from occurring properly, and even if they do explode, the splashing of fragments is minimized.
Jeong Tae-han is a flame-type person, but…
The flame system is usually powerful, but it is slow and flashy.
If you want to make an accident using a smartphone battery, it’s much easier to have an electronic field ability.
“That’s the second misunderstanding. The law doesn’t punish them, it ‘fails’ to punish them.”
“Can’t you… Punish? Did you even commit such a thing?”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t even commit such a thing. Crimes like that are too common.”
“Yes?”
I hushed my voice a bit and continued talking.
Jeong Tae-han’s forehead narrowed noticeably.
