Not Merely a Monster
“…….”
“Hm? What is it.”
“…Hey, you idiot big brother….”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell is that.”
At Cha Ah-ra’s question, her older brother Cha Eun-hyeok tilted his head.
“…A jewel?”
“No, I can see that it’s a jewel. How did you even get it.”
“Ah, that….”
“Brother.”
He looked like he was gearing up for some long-winded excuse, and long-winded excuses were not Cha Ah-ra’s style.
“Look at this.”
“…It’s a jewel.”
“I got it as a gift from some humanoid monster.”
“…….”
The eldest, Cha Eun-hyeok, wordlessly pressed a hand to his forehead. The youngest, Cha I-sol, dropped his spoon.
Letting out a long, deep sigh, Cha Eun-hyeok spoke.
“…Sorry for trying to brush it off with a lie. Let’s take this one step at a time and talk without the bullshit.”
This had been two days before the youngest’s initiation ceremony.
“Ah, so….”
The eldest of the Cha household, Cha Eun-hyeok, nodded.
“That was the money you brought home talking about insurance payouts and whatever.”
“Yeah. The Collector Guild gave it to me as a kind of compensation for damages.”
“Thanks to that we could buy the youngest his priest robes, but why are you only telling us now.”
“Because I fucking wasn’t planning on saying anything….”
“Do you trust us that little.”
“What are you talking about. You’re ordinary people who’d bruise if I so much as poked you.”
Cha Ah-ra grumbled with her usual prickly edge. She wasn’t particularly angry or hurt; acting like a wary wildcat was simply her habit—if you could call it that. She herself had no idea.
Because she was talking to family, her expression softened a fraction as she went on.
“I wasn’t going to say anything. The youngest’s job has manifested, but who knows when he’ll actually get chosen. He’s a non-combatant… office work, not field work… that kind of vibe. And you’re a complete civilian.”
“That’s true enough.”
“The Collector Guild seemed to want me to keep quiet as much as possible, too. I just blabbed without thinking, but it honestly felt like some huge classified secret.”
“For something like that, they didn’t even make you sign an NDA, did they?”
“Yeah, that part was weird. It was more like, ‘We’d prefer you didn’t talk, but this story’s going to get out eventually anyway, so if your mouth’s really itching, go ahead and try’…? Even big corporations run looser than you’d think.”
“What are you even saying.”
Cha Eun-hyeok pressed hard at his throbbing temples.
“And you only told us because I saw you with that… that jewel?”
“They said there’s only one jewel in the world with that crystal structure. So what else could it mean—you’d already met that monster too. Once that was the case, hiding it didn’t seem to matter, so I just spilled.”
“The youngest is listening, you know.”
“So I’m supposed to leave him out of it? Hey, don’t make the kid feel left out.”
“That’s not what I meant….”
Whatever he’d been about to say, Cha Eun-hyeok soon nodded.
“I-sol.”
“Yeah, hyung.”
“You can’t go telling anyone about this, okay?”
“I’m good at that.”
“I’m a little worried you’re already good at that, but still—proud of you. If this goes wrong, your big brother and big sister might get hauled off to some huge guild in Seoul and end up as lab rats.”
“Then I really won’t say anything!”
“Aigoo, that’s my boy.”
Watching the youngest cheerfully flash a thumbs-up and the older brother praising him for it, Cha Ah-ra spent a moment reflecting on her life. What kind of karmic debt had they racked up in a past life to end up with nothing but denser-than-rocks like these.
I have to protect them.
Unaware that every member of the family saw every other member as someone to protect, Cha Ah-ra poked at her rice and muttered,
“Ah, this doesn’t taste right….”
“You said a monster dragged you off and fed you a full royal banquet, and now your palate’s gotten picky. Look at our youngest, eating everything without a single complaint. How precious is that.”
“This is so fucking unfair. When have I ever been a picky eater? And that kid’s my little brother too, you know? Why am I not precious? I rolled around all over the place and brought home insurance money!”
“It helped with the household, sure, but you should’ve noticed how much it inflated my self-loathing. I’d rather scrape by than live off your insurance payout.”
“You soft-hearted idiot. You gonna let the youngest starve? Live that nice and money falls from the sky? Grandpa’s gonna send lottery numbers from the afterlife?”
“Look who’s talking like she’s so much better.”
The Cha family had been soft-hearted for generations. Neither of them was in any position to claim superiority.
Cha Eun-hyeok and Cha Ah-ra both worried the youngest might get scammed somewhere, but Ah-ra was only a little better than that, and Eun-hyeok only a little better still—it was all measuring acorns against acorns.
“You threw the scarf the youngest knitted for you at a complete stranger last time.”
“Ah, fucking hell, he looked like he was going to freeze to death and I was supposed to just stand there and watch?! Are you a psychopath?!”
“Then maybe you should’ve just huddled up like penguins without spending any money, Hunter Cha Ah-ra! That would’ve been so much more economical!”
“He’s a complete stranger—what kind of disgusting huddling is that, cut the bullshit!”
“Yeah, and you still gave that complete stranger the scarf the youngest knitted for you, didn’t you?!”
Watching his two family members go at it, the youngest, Cha I-sol, simply dug into his long-awaited bowl of rice with pure enjoyment.
“This is really good.”
“Hyung made that.”
“I made the broth.”
“Yeah, it’s delicious! Awesome!”
Faced with the youngest’s pure double-thumbs-up, the two heads of household found the strength to drop their pointless fight.
“Once our little one moves into the dorms, we won’t get to see his face.”
“It’s gonna be hard.”
“Cha I-sol, don’t you already miss your noona’s face?”
“I’m looking at it right now, noona.”
“Fuck, there’s no talking to this kid.”
Cha Eun-hyeok scolded his sister.
“Don’t swear at the youngest.”
“Once the youngest goes into the dorms, I’m the youngest.”
“You met a monster and it put a hole in your head? The second child is the second child for life, and the youngest is the youngest for life….”
“Let’s fight.”
In the middle of the spreading chaos, the youngest, Cha I-sol, simply ate his rice.
“Hehe.”
The long-overdue rice was delicious. The monster his noona had met must have been a very kind monster.
“…….”
Stepping outside for a moment, Cha Eun-hyeok sank into thought.
…The person I saw that day was a monster?
It had been strange from the start.
I mean, when I met him at dawn, I thought he was some kind of… monster too.
In the empty dark of early morning, the man who appeared wrapped head to toe in a pitch-black cloak had looked nothing like a human being.
He had an atmosphere similar to those ghost-like things only I can see, so I figured he was one of that sort.
But other people could see him too—not just Cha Eun-hyeok. He was excessively blunt, sure, but that was a personal trait. The sense of otherness Eun-hyeok had felt, he’d decided, was simply the holy power of a devout believer.
“…….”
But if he had only been a humanoid monster?
“…Still doesn’t add up, does it?”
Something was off.
I’ve seen monsters before.
There were monsters you could only encounter by entering a dungeon, and then there were monsters you simply ran into while standing still on Earth. Even if they were weak enough for an ordinary person to catch, their viciousness never changed.
Cha Eun-hyeok was an ordinary person, not a hunter, but he had hunted monsters before—and that was how he knew the aura he’d felt from them was completely different from the black-cloaked man’s.
That wasn’t a monster’s aura.
Sitting in the yard, Cha Eun-hyeok looked up at the dim sky.
“…….”
Something like a huge black snake was undulating past beyond the rain clouds. It had human arms and legs; it was slow and vast.
“…He was definitely one of those.”
He couldn’t pin down what the black-cloaked man truly was.
Objectively speaking, calling him a humanoid monster is the right call. He even has his own personal dungeon. But the aura itself is strange, and to write him off as that kind of creature… he’s too….
He had acted like a person.
“It’s like someone threw a bunch of different things into a blender.”
He seemed like a monster, and also like the creatures only Eun-hyeok could see, and a little like a human too. So many traits layered together that it somehow felt more natural that way.
As if that black cloak were the origin of everything.
“…What am I even saying….”
If he were the origin that spawned monsters, spirits, and humans alike, that would make him no different from a god.
No—even a god would struggle with that.
It was a wild thought.
Looking into things for the youngest’s sake, I found out those so-called gods aren’t nearly as omnipotent as you’d think….
Cha Eun-hyeok thought to himself.
In that sense, maybe the black-cloaked man Ah-ra and I saw should be ranked higher than the gods the priests worship.
But.
“…….”
Thinking about it that way—
“Uuugh….”
—the holy power he’d felt last time snagged on him.
However ordinary he might be, Cha Eun-hyeok had enough experience that he couldn’t possibly fail to recognize a god’s holy power. That had unmistakably been a divine aura.
Something different again from the aura he’d felt from the black cloak itself.
“…Thinking about how warm it was, it had to be related to the sun or fire….”
There was a Sun Temple nearby, so he’d assumed the man was a follower of the Sun God. There was no way someone with the occupation of Tamer could also hold a second occupation as a Priest, so he must simply have been a devout enough believer to receive holy power.
But if the other party was neither a believer nor even human, then what on earth had that aura been.
“A god’s power….”
There was no way a mere monster could carry that, was there?
“…….”
The more he thought about it, the more it felt like a subject Cha Eun-hyeok himself had no business wrestling with.
“…At the very least, it’s clear he’s not a simple monster. The Collector Guild only confirmed he wasn’t human, too.”
A monster that could wield a god’s power could no longer be called a monster.
If I have to pick the most plausible option, it’s those creatures I’ve always been able to see.
He knew a fair amount about monsters and humans on a common-sense level, but he knew almost nothing about those “creatures.” Maybe among them there were ones that could use a god’s power.
I’ve never seen one, though.
A creature with manners that refined. And even if he was a humanoid monster instead, he’d personally picked up Eun-hyeok’s lost, abandoned little sister, fed her, and sent her home—so he was an unusually benevolent counterpart either way.
But if I keep thinking along these lines, he could even be a higher existence than Earth’s gods. The black cloak I saw that day carried a god’s power, but a god never carried the black cloak’s power….
The thought chain snapped off there. He had no desire to exhaust himself over nothing.
“…There’s nothing more I can figure out about his identity by stewing over it.”
So Cha Eun-hyeok simply turned his mind toward the future.
“Ah-ra said she even went into that man’s dungeon.”
Ah-ra was openly treating the black-cloaked man as a monster, but for some reason Cha Eun-hyeok kept referring to him as a “person.” Even he hadn’t noticed it himself.
“So we might run into him again someday.”
For one thing, Cha Eun-hyeok had already invited him to the initiation ceremony. Now that the youngest’s initiation was set, the odds of meeting again were high.
He seemed pretty interested, so I don’t think he won’t come.
The misunderstanding that he was a follower of the Sun God was gone, but either way, he was someone who handled holy power close to the sun. They would definitely cross paths at the ceremony.
“…I just hope I haven’t invited something too dangerous….”
He spent the whole night fretting like that, and the next morning—
“…….”
“…….”
Cha Eun-hyeok’s head spun for a second.
“…Hello.”
“Yes, hello.”
For the first time in their lives, the entire Cha family had come up to Seoul together—and found themselves face-to-face with none other than Ji-oh.
The strange man wrapped in a pitch-black cloak.
“It’s been a while.”
The greeting was perfectly casual.
I knew the odds were high, but I didn’t think we’d meet this soon.
The black-cloaked man they met again still wore that uncanny atmosphere. It hadn’t been for nothing that Cha Eun-hyeok had thought, from the very first meeting, This isn’t human.
Beside the black cloak, a white-haired man offered his own greeting.
“Good to see you again. The whole family came up together, huh?”
“What, you know Yu Seong-un, oppa?”
“We run into each other sometimes when he buys bungeoppang.”
“Ah, bungeoppang….”
Cha Ah-ra nodded, then looked at the black-cloaked man with a faintly complicated expression.
“…….”
“Is there a problem?”
“…I’ll buy you bungeoppang later too.”
Cha Eun-hyeok finally wondered if their little flower pig had lost her mind. Offering bungeoppang outright to someone that oppressive—sure, the black-cloaked man had bought bungeoppang from Eun-hyeok himself once, but that had probably been a form of social practice….
Surprisingly, the black-cloaked man accepted it without fuss.
“I don’t fully understand the reason, but thank you.”
“Uh… yeah.”
He likes bungeoppang?
…More easygoing than I expected… is he?
With an atmosphere like that?
He looks like he’s about to drag a criminal up to the gallows and pass judgment.
The black-cloaked man was a presence that wore a conspicuous air. Maybe it was the pitch-black cloak, but he resembled an evil spirit or a reaper.
He was less human than ghost—ominous, cold, hollow. He looked beautiful, like a meticulously crafted ornament, and at the same time gave off a strange, creeping revulsion.
It wasn’t only Cha Eun-hyeok.
“…….”
Looking around, he saw the gazes of people on their way to work catching on the black-cloaked man every so often.
“Don’t worry about it too much.”
“…Ah, yes.”
“He’s always like that.”
“I see.”
At Yu Seong-un’s words, Cha Eun-hyeok felt a strange unease.
It’s the youngest’s initiation ceremony.
This is going to end okay… right?
(To be continued)