I Became an NPC That Rankers Are Obsessed Over

A resume with Han Si-ho’s name fluttered in the wind.

Director Tolkien sent the paper flying out the window.

The resume drifted leisurely toward the horizon where an electric boat had passed.

The paper soon fell into the undulating waves of the sea.

Eventually, it became soaked and sank into the water.

Following the waves for a bit, a breakwater comes into view.

The waves crash against the breakwater and shatter.

Entering through the gap reveals a small harbor.

The electric boat that arrived there turned off its engine.

Soon, two girls disembarked from the boat.

In the foggy harbor, a man was waiting for the girls.

He was Lee Dae-hyuk, a friend of the man from the cafeteria.

With a work sword on his waist, he was smoking a cigarette.

He waved to the children.

“Are you kids the ones who escaped from the facility?”

He flicked the cigarette onto the harbor floor.

Then, he extended a hand to me, who had disembarked first.

“…”

But I did not respond to his handshake.

Because strangers were intolerable to me.

“What, you’re worried about the smell or something?”

The man awkwardly wiped his palm on his coat.

Then, he extended his hand toward me again.

“Haha… She’s really shy around strangers. Yes, it’s us, Dae-hyuk.”

Sun-ye linked arms with me and answered him.

“That’s understandable. Follow me. I’ve prepared a vehicle.”

He pointed to a blue truck faintly visible in the distance.

Sun-ye took the lead, following the man.

But I stood still, refusing to follow them.

“You go ahead. I’m not going.”

“What are you talking about? We have to go together…”

Sun-ye looked back and forth between me and the man, flustered by my reaction.

“I hate hanging around with people who’ve got shady pasts.”

I shook off her hand.

Then, I slowly started walking alone.

Sun-ye watched me with a hardened expression.

Of course, I was grateful to her.

Thanks to her, I escaped from that hellish facility and finally gained freedom.

But that was all.

Hanging out with someone who knows the facility’s director? I couldn’t predict what might happen next.

Ever since being injected with the drug, my ominous premonitions had never been wrong.

This time would undoubtedly be the same.

I slowly gazed at the horizon.

A city shrouded in fog stretched endlessly before me.

I didn’t know what lay at the end.

But I leisurely walked toward it alone.

“Let her go.”

I stopped briefly at the cynical voice.

It was the man who had been waiting for us.

With his arms crossed, he stared at me with an arrogant expression.

Then he spoke.

“If she wanders around like that, she’ll die in no time. There’s no need to care about someone determined to die early.”

The man talked as if he already knew what would happen to me.

Annoyed by his arrogance, I turned sharply toward him.

“You. How much do you even know about me to talk like that? You’re just a pig with a bulging belly.”

“What a rude mouth you’ve got. Do you have any idea what the outside world is like right now? I’d bet a pack of my cigarettes you’d be dead in three days.”

Ridiculous.

This man couldn’t even dodge a single bullet properly, yet he was meddling.

Sun-ye, this man—hypocrites, all of them.

“I could shove a hole in your belly right now. Watch your mouth.”

I said, glaring at his thick gut.

The man stepped forward as if daring me to try.

“Then how about this? If you can hit me even once, I’ll take back what I said. But if you can’t, why not take some training from me before leaving?”

His arrogant attitude made the corners of my lips twitch.

The man gestured with his palm, urging me to throw a punch.

“Thinks he’s something special, huh?”

I accepted his cheeky proposal.

I slowly closed the distance between us, step by step.

And when I reached striking distance.

I swiftly aimed my fist at the bridge of his nose.

“—!”

I thought I had landed a clean hit on his nose.

But at that moment, his bulky body twisted quickly, dodging my punch.

The man, entering a weaving stance, lunged at my solar plexus.

The sudden impact caused a ringing in my head.

But I gritted my teeth tightly.

Feigning a collapse, I twisted my body and launched a back kick.

“Impressive, as rumored, your physical abilities are exceptional.”

The man dodged my counterattack effortlessly, even making a remark.

Then he stepped on my supporting foot.

The impact made my body falter.

Soon, his dirty sneakers rushed toward my jaw.

I couldn’t avoid the attack.

No, I wasn’t able to.

Before my brain could even register the need to dodge, my jaw had already turned.

Even as I collapsed, my mind was flooded with thoughts.

How could someone move so fast with a body like that?

Even in the facility’s martial arts arena, I’d never seen anyone so agile.

The back of my head hit the asphalt.

At that moment, I couldn’t think of anything anymore.

“Dae-hyuk, stop it! She’s going to die at this rate!”

“Don’t worry. I’ve never seen someone who took that drug die easily.”

The man smiled leisurely, carrying the unconscious Anna on his shoulder.

Sun-ye clasped her hands tightly, looking worriedly at the fainted Anna.

The three of them got into the truck.

The blue truck headed toward the desolate city.

Crossing the long Incheon Bridge, it moved toward the mainland.

I didn’t know where on the mainland.

The fog was that thick.

“…”

When I woke up, it wasn’t the ceiling of the facility that I saw.

It was a strange light fixture I had never seen before.

I immediately sat up.

“Where is that pig…”

Waking up, I quickly looked around.

Sunlight poured in through the window.

The sight of sunlight after so long stung my eyes.

I had clearly been fighting that arrogant man…

What came to mind was my miserably trampled self behind his face.

Yes, I had been beaten terribly.

I, who had never lost in the facility’s martial arts arena, how did it come to this?

It was infuriating.

So infuriating, I wanted to grind his arrogant face into dust.

That anger gave me the strength to stand.

I left the room.

In the hallway, there was a staircase leading down.

Descending those stairs, I saw numerous tables and chairs.

I spotted Sun-ye diligently wiping a table.

“You’re awake?”

She greeted me with a bright smile.

What was so amusing that she was smiling?

Her foolish grin was laughable.

And contemptible at the same time.

Knowing that behind her face lay countless secrets.

She had already adapted to life in the outside world, wearing an apron.

Her neatly cut bob swayed.

I ignored her as best as I could, glancing around the shop.

The sea was vast.

At the counter was the man who had subdued me.

He was leisurely humming as he wiped glasses.

“You’ve got an incredible recovery. I definitely beat you up good.”

He laughed, pointing at my jaw.

“…”

I glared at him with half-open eyes.

Feigning fear, the man clasped his hands against his chest.

“Why so scary? Are you really that mad?”

Of course, I was.

The man, as if done joking, put down the cloth.

And looked at me with a suddenly serious expression.

“If your opponent had been a ranker sent from the facility instead of me, you’d be dead.”

“You seem to know a lot about the facility that imprisoned me.”

“How could I not? I used to be a hunter employed by that place.”

He rolled up the sleeves of his tight dress shirt.

And revealed a tattoo on his forearm.

‘07.’

A number.

A simple black tattoo.

“I witnessed all the experiments conducted at the facility. That’s why I quit and started helping the children who escaped.”

“Why? Those kids aren’t even your own.”

I couldn’t understand this meddlesome man at all.

I couldn’t understand the cafeteria man or Sun-ye either.

Why are they being so kind to me, to the point of risking their lives?

“Call it a guilty conscience. When I was hired at the facility, I was told it was just a training center. But when I went there, it was clearly more than just a training facility.”

He rolled up his other sleeve.

Then he crossed his arms confidently and looked at me.

“I have a daughter too. She’s only 15 years old and will soon be entering the academy. What if my daughter had been trapped in a place like that?”

The man pulled out a bottle of vodka.

“She would have probably endured hellish days.”

As if imagining that hell, or perhaps to forget it, he repeatedly drank the vodka.

“If something like that ever happens to my daughter someday, I hope someone, even a stranger, would save her. That’s why I do this.”

“That person can’t possibly be me.”

To shatter his vain fantasy, I spoke coldly to him.

“What if the person you saved ends up going berserk and kills your daughter?”

“Don’t worry. At least, you’re not someone who would do that.”

With eyes full of conviction, the man poured vodka into his glass.

Then he glanced at Sun-ye.

“As long as someone like Sun-ye is with you, you’ll never do that.”

Hearing his words, Sun-ye blushed.

She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, giggling as she looked at me.

“…”

She’s pretty.

Even with my brain dulled by the drugs, I could recognize that.

But that’s all it was.

“Now that you’re up, how about earning your keep?”

The man stretched his stiff shoulders.

Then he pulled out two longswords from beneath the counter.

“What’s with the swords all of a sudden?”

“Sun-ye decided to pursue bartending here at my shop. But you, just by looking at you, don’t seem interested in something like that… Fighting is probably the only thing you’ve got.”

I had no reason to refute, so I nodded.

“Then it’s better to learn how to be a hunter.”

He tossed one of the longswords to me.

I instinctively caught it and followed him outside.

It was an alleyway.

There was nothing here that seemed helpful for training.

“Alright, let’s start here.”

He yawned and sat on a bucket.

The bucket wobbled under his weight.

“Start what?”

I had no idea what he meant in this empty space.

“What else? Start with downward strikes. Since it’s the first day, let’s do just 2,000.”

I looked at the longsword in my hands.

It was a real sword, and its weight was significant.

“I’ll correct your posture up to 100 strikes. After that, I’ve got to go check on my daughter.”

I gripped the sword tightly.

Fine.

At least listening to him for now wouldn’t do me any harm.

Who would refuse free swordsmanship lessons?

I swung the blade with all my strength, cutting through the air.

I imagined killing Tolkien and that ranker.

The man watched me silently.

“You don’t swing a sword to kill someone. If you focus on murder, your blade will waver, and you’ll lose your composure.”

At his words, I suddenly stopped mid-swing.

If not to kill someone, then what do you swing a sword for?

As if answering, the man spoke in a low voice.

“For the sake of someone precious to you.”

“How cheesy.”

“It’s true. That mindset is what kept me alive all this time. It’s an important lesson drawn from experience.”

He shrugged as if he meant it sincerely.

“And who is this precious person of yours?”

When I asked abruptly, the man paused before answering.

He rubbed his chin with his hand, seemingly searching for the right words.

“Someone you can rely on and trust. It usually stems from mutual trust.”

Being able to trust and rely on someone.

I couldn’t help but laugh at his words.

“Why are you laughing?”

The man asked, looking displeased.

“It’s laughable. If it’s a relationship where you can rely on each other, shouldn’t there be no secrets between you? How can you risk your life for someone when you each have hidden motives?”

Hearing my words, the man closed his lips.

Then he took a deep breath.

I looked down at him quietly.

It felt good to have struck a nerve in this once arrogant man.

“Am I right?”

“Yeah, you’re not wrong…”

He silently took out a cigarette.

And calmly lit it.

“But… everyone has at least one tangled-up secret that’s hard to explain.”

Cigarette smoke rose into the air.

I stared at the smoke absentmindedly.

“Do you have such a secret?”

“Of course. I still haven’t told my daughter where I used to work.”

He tapped the ash off his cigarette onto the ground.

The red embers that fell slowly dimmed.

“But someday, I’ll definitely tell her.”

“…”

“So you should wait too. Trust that person.”

I briefly thought of Sun-ye.

Could her secret also be so complicated that she can’t tell me right now?

If it’s something that benefits all of us…

Should I wait a little longer?

With such thoughts, I swung the sword beyond 2,000 times—up to 4,000.

Ever since the drug injection dulled my mind, I needed more time than others to understand Sun-ye.