"Even though you've become an S-rank hunter, you haven't made a single donation. It seems inevitable that the public will criticize you for being stingy. What are your thoughts on that?"
My eyes widened slightly.
It was a topic I had genuinely never even considered.
And yet, at that moment, something felt strangely off about assuming this journalist was simply following the Association president's orders to provoke me. His face was practically glowing with an odd sort of excitement.
One corner of his mouth curled upward, his cheekbones lifting into a smirk. The expression on his face was unmistakably mocking.
What could possibly be making Reporter Yang so happy that he was grinning like that?
"An orphanage, huh."
Come to think of it, the fact that hearing this left me completely indifferent was further proof that I really did think like someone from Alphauri.
I knew about the institution where Kim Giryeo had grown up, but the idea of making a donation—the very thing that reporter had brought up—had never once crossed my mind. Nor did I have any intention of doing so in the future.
Why would the state support an institution like an orphanage in the first place?
Out of sympathy for children who couldn't survive on their own?
At least, that sort of reasoning wouldn't work on Alphauri, where I grew up.
Every expenditure of resources needed a justification.
That was why Alphauri never cared for orphans out of pity. It did so purely on the pragmatic calculation that allowing a native infant to survive, grow up, and eventually contribute to the nation's strength was more beneficial than letting them die prematurely.
In the end, this country had already gained enough simply by having the younger Kim Giryeo counted among its population.
So why should I have to repay the money spent raising me?
"Are you not ashamed of ignoring your fellow orphans?"
Besides, being criticized for something like this made even less sense.
From the perspective of a pragmatic Alphaurian, the people he was referring to were nothing more than complete strangers.
If someone asked why I hadn't taken care of them, I felt like snapping back—
Do all of you go around donating money to every classmate you ever had in elementary, middle, and high school?
"Huh? Hunter Kim Giryeo is an orphan...?"
"Is that true?"
"Did you really grow up in an institution?"
But to my surprise.
The people around us focused on an entirely different part of the story than the donation issue I had been concerned about.
From their perspective, they'd just been handed a juicy piece of information that could drive up their views for free, so naturally, their interest was piqued.
Even then, Reporter Yang kept filming, carefully watching my reaction before throwing out another question.
"By the way, Hunter Kim Giryeo. If you'd obtained a family relationship certificate, you could easily have discovered that your mother is still alive. Why have you never made any effort to find your family, even after becoming a famous S-rank hunter?"
Oh my.
"Could it be that you simply had no intention of sharing any of your earnings, even with the biological mother who gave birth to you?"
The petty-looking man deliberately drew out his words, smirking all the while.
"Please, could you answer? Huh? Did you become an S-rank so suddenly that the thought simply never occurred to you until now?"
Silence fell in an instant.
The moment I heard the reporter's words, I stopped speaking.
But it wasn't because what he'd said had particularly hurt me.
To be perfectly precise, as far as an alien like me was concerned, the matter involving Lee Hwayoung was ultimately nothing more than the personal affairs of a dead stranger.
"This planet is doomed..."
How could a person ask such a stupid question...?
A creature who could mock someone else's misfortune without hesitation simply for his own amusement.
If beings like this were already mixed into Earth's gene pool, perhaps the planet truly was beyond saving.
Once again, I gazed upon the malice of Earthlings with sorrowful eyes.
As I'd said before, this place seemed destined to follow the same path as Alphauri. The atmosphere was all too familiar, and the realization filled me with such profound regret that my sadness unconsciously showed on my face.
"-_-"
But at that very moment.
"Hunter Kim Giryeo! Do you intend to stay silent like this? Shouldn't you at least say something—Keugh!"
Bang!
The reporter, who had been aggressively demanding an answer, suddenly reeled as if he'd been hit by a truck.
There was a heavy impact, followed by a spray of blood and bodily fluid bursting from his torn skin.
Reporter Yang didn't even have time to comprehend what had happened before collapsing onto the asphalt.
Thud. Thud.
A moment later, unidentified transparent shards rained down over the unconscious man.
The fragments, which appeared to be glass, continued falling one after another, as though they alone were moving through a scene frozen in time.
I slowly raised my eyes from the fallen reporter and traced the fragments back to their source.
A rectangular object hung in the air.
A small silver electronic device, its surface covered in spiderweb cracks.
"Huh."
It was Kang Changho.
He had been standing beside me this entire time, and without warning, he'd struck the reporter with the tablet PC he'd been fiddling with in his hand.
And just to be clear, what that S-rank hunter had done could hardly be described as merely 'slapping' the reporter.
Both the reporter's head and the seven-inch electronic device had been smashed in the impact.
Considering the state of the tablet PC, its internal components now exposed, it wasn't difficult to imagine the condition of the victim either.
Blood seeped into the rough asphalt.
The reporter lay motionless with his eyes closed, an unsettling crimson stain spreading across his scalp.
At the sight, the humans around him went pale and held their breath.
As silence settled over the scene, the man who had remained quiet until now finally spoke.
"Yang Hyeonggyu of Jeongseong Daily."
It was difficult to understand what he meant at first.
But when he began pointing at the people around him and reciting more names, I gradually caught on.
"And this one's a rookie from SBC. Next to them is Lee Jiyoung from YTN. And lastly, the one standing at the end—you're probably someone like Kim Woo, with a single-character name..."
Kang Changho swept his gaze over the reporters standing before him, identifying them one after another before adding casually,
"Anyway, I've read the articles all of you have written. Reading online news is something of a hobby of mine, actually."
"-_-"
"But after watching you for a while, I realized something fascinating. Every journalist gathered here seems to have remarkably similar tastes."
"-_-"
"[The Arrogant Attitude of Hunters, Is This Okay?] [The Moral Depravity of Awakened Ones Reaches a Critical Level.] Things along those lines. Or articles generally favorable toward the Association, and so on."
The hunter with dragon-like eyes blinked slowly.
Kang Changho glanced down at the fallen reporter for a moment, then raised his head again.
"By the way, why aren't any of you taking pictures?"
Even now, the shattered tablet PC remained clutched in his right hand.
Much like how I was rarely without my phone, it was a device Kang Changho carried around frequently.
"I just handed you some material for a story. You're journalists, aren't you? Do your jobs and investigate."
Of course, despite the polite wording of his suggestion, the reporters remained frozen in place, their expressions rigid with tension.
A few seconds later, one young reporter's trembling finger accidentally pressed the shutter button on his camera.
The flash went off with a sharp pop.
Kang Changho didn't so much as flinch at the burst of light.
He simply continued in the same calm voice.
"Just so you know, if you handle this the way you usually do... you'll probably all regret it."
"Yes?"
"I'm telling you not to leave out the part about how the man lying there was behaving."
"I... That's..."
"And if possible, you'd better avoid reporting too much about people's private lives. None of you earn enough money to casually throw it away on lawyers, do you?"
In short, it was a warning.
"Be careful."
A warning that if something they wrote displeased him, they wouldn't be safe.
With those words directed at the reporters, Kang Changho lowered his gaze once again and looked over the fallen man.
But no matter how long he watched, nothing changed.
The unconscious reporter remained completely unresponsive until the ambulance and police car summoned by the witnesses finally arrived.
***
A police station in Seoul.
Tak, tak, tak.
My footsteps echoed loudly through the spacious interior as I descended the stairs.
The moment I reached the lower floor, I immediately understood why the place was so eerily quiet.
Inside a semicircular enclosure sealed off by iron bars, a lone male awakener sat by himself.
"Ah, hello. Hunter Kim Giryeo."
When I entered the detention area, the officers on duty bowed their heads in greeting.
Their faces, however, were visibly tense.
The iron bars here had been specially reinforced to restrain awakened individuals more securely than ordinary cells, but even those would undoubtedly tear apart like paper in that hunter's hands.
The officers kept casting nervous sidelong glances at him, as though they were standing in front of an untethered wild beast.
Surprisingly, however, the man himself sat quietly inside, his wrists secured in handcuffs.
That's right.
In the end, Kang Changho had been arrested on suspicion of assault and was now being detained for questioning.
Perhaps because of the way he'd watched the reporters earlier while calling them out by name, not a single article about the incident had been published yet.
"Hunter Kang Changho."
I quickly walked up to the bars.
"Are you okay?"
It was a cliché question from the outset, but honestly, seeing him sitting there like that, I couldn't help asking how he was doing.
No, but seriously, what the hell was this guy thinking?
I'd been wondering about it the entire time—from the moment Yang was carried away to the moment Kang Changho quietly allowed himself to be arrested—but no matter how much I thought about it, I simply couldn't understand why he'd suddenly decided to cause such a scene.
"But why did you do that just now?"
The answer I received was unbelievably dry.
From behind the bars, Kang Changho explained that he simply hadn't liked what was happening back there.
When I pressed him again, asking exactly what part of the situation he'd disliked, his dragon-like eyes shifted toward me.
He thought for a moment before finally answering.
"You don't need to be criticized for something that isn't even your fault."