After Hye-eun's mother temporarily became my guardian, everything started going pretty smoothly.
She properly stood up to the insurance company that had been trying to shove weird clauses down my throat to cut my payout, and ended up getting me even more than what I was originally owed. Sure, she was retired now, but she'd once been an S-Rank Hunter, after all.
Just thinking about the ripple effect one word from her could cause was enough to make the insurance folks back down. Of course, changing their attitude didn't magically restore my trust in them, so I canceled not just my parents' life insurance but my own personal damage insurance policy while I was at it.
"Thank you so much, Hye-eun's mom. You saved my life."
"You're welcome, Tae-kyung. So, on the way, should we stop by the post office first?"
"Huh?"
"Let's check if your parents had any more savings accounts in other banks. They might have left deposits somewhere besides your main bank. And while we're at it, we can handle those monthly utility auto-payments..."
Even after wrangling the insurance payout, Hye-eun's mother taught me all sorts of ways to live on my own, and there were no strings attached—no favors owed or anything like that.
She consolidated all the leftover savings from my parents' accounts in other banks—not our main one—into a single account for me to use easily. She cleared up the utility bills that had piled up after they passed and showed me how to handle them going forward.
On top of that, she explained all the support funds and benefits I qualified for as someone who'd lost their parents to a monster. Thanks to her devoted help, I made it through the latter half of my childhood unscathed.
She must have worked in a related field back in the day, because she knew this stuff inside and out. Thanks to her, I handled everything piling up in front of me without getting fleeced or stumbling over a single thing.
I was always deeply grateful to Hye-eun's mother for helping me—body and soul—like this, even though I wasn't her kid. And along with that gratitude, I quietly nurtured a new dream that had taken root in my heart.
The dream that, once I grew up, I'd become a Hunter like her and make sure no one else had to lose family to monsters like me or Auntie had.
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Once I set my mind on becoming a Hunter, when it was time to move from elementary to middle school, I enrolled in a Hunter training vocational school right near my place in Seoul's Gangdong-gu. It was the kind that took you straight through middle and high school like an escalator, guaranteeing you'd make a living as a Hunter upon graduation.
Despite the objections from Hye-eun's mom and my homeroom teacher, I pushed through and got into the Hunter training school. There were two reasons for that.
One was that I couldn't let go of the dream born from all the crap I'd been through as a kid.
The other was that, back then, I figured being a male Hunter was doable somehow.
Of course, I'd done my market research before committing. I'd naturally learned that male Hunters were overwhelmingly outnumbered by females. But from that self-satisfying info-gathering, all I'd concluded was that male Hunters "did exist," however pathetically few they were.
This world I'd been reborn into wasn't one where I could freely exploit knowledge from my past life, but I'd lived more years than anyone else here. I was confident I could snap out of it quick and hustle harder, earlier than the rest.
Luckily, this world had affirmative action for minorities or whatever, so even as a guy, getting into Hunter training school wasn't too tough. A few years back, some group called the Men's Rights Protection Alliance had pushed for male-only admissions tracks.
Thanks to that, I got into Hunter training school way easier than my childhood friend Kang Hye-eun, who was grinding through regular exams at the time. Back then, I was sure I'd overcome whatever penalties male Hunters faced and make a name for myself as one.
...Of course, that hope shattered to pieces by the time I'd spent three years there.
The reality hit hard: almost all the few male Hunters were D-Rank at best, and only a handful ever climbed to C-Rank. When I realized that, I despaired at my own stupid judgment.
And get this—not a single one of those rare male Hunters had ever successfully awakened an ability. Female Hunters all fought with their awakening powers, without exception. Male Hunters? They had to brute-force monsters with raw physical specs.
Guys whose bodies were so ridiculously jacked with muscle they were basically "human weapons," pushing their frames to the limit just to Hunter it up.
Or the ones who were basically idols—just putting a name on the roster for quota perks like that "male Hunter affirmative action" I mentioned, without any real power. No matter how much they trained, they were a joke against awakened female Hunters. That was the reality for male Hunters in this world.
On top of that, my middle school was a Hunter training vocational one, with a student gender ratio of 1:999. As the only guy in the whole school, it was a terrible environment for survival.
Girls that age are at peak mischief stage. With the entire school's pent-up interest in the opposite sex dumped on me, I naturally became the target of all sorts of sexual harassment.
Brushing past me in the halls or classroom and copping a feel on my butt or chest while pretending not to notice. Or suddenly plopping their ass on me while I was sitting. Or grabbing my hand to force me to grope them while asking whose boobs were bigger—hers or her friend's. That kind of thing happened constantly.
Yeah. At first, I kinda played along, pretending not to notice.
No matter that this reborn world had flipped chastity norms between men and women—my mind had spent more years in the old Korea. Rebirth or not, those ingrained ideas about purity don't flip overnight.
And yet my body was that of a middle-schooler who couldn't control his hormones. Every time the girls pulled their pranks, I'd get hard under the desk. Or replay the scenes at home while jerking off—not an insignificant number of times.
...I learned pretty late that half-assed reactions like that were the wrong move from the start.
Since I didn't resist their flirting or groping—just laughed it off without a word—they figured it was "fair game."
Soon it wasn't just my classmates. Girls from next door or other grades started popping into my classroom to grope me or make me touch them.
By then, I was starting to get sick of the sexual harassment. I figured I could play along once or twice a day, but when it happened every break, every day—even I started feeling pissed.
I was already an unawakened guy, scraping by in practicals by overcompensating in theory. Those girls eating up my breaks became annoying obstacles.
And as they started awakening their abilities one by one, even the little resistance I could muster grew weaker by comparison.
I survived those three years of middle school largely thanks to my childhood friend Kang Hye-eun. She'd step in and shut things down whenever the pranks got too intense.
"Hey! I told you not to keep messing with Tae-kyung!"
"Kang Hye-eun's here—scatter!"
"We were just getting to the fun part~!"
Kang Hye-eun was among the first in our age group to awaken. Rumor had it she was getting personal training from her mom at home, and inheriting S-Rank blood plus S-Rank coaching? She was bound to get strong.
The power gap between awakened and unawakened was huge, and even among peer awakeners, Hye-eun was near the top.
Finally fed up with the escalating pranks on me, she straight-up declared me her boyfriend. After that, the annoying stuff pretty much stopped. At that age, raw power spoke loudest to them.
Of course, "boyfriend" was just a public label—we weren't actually dating. I was too focused on awakening as a Hunter to waste time on dates.
For the record, I said it "pretty much" stopped because it didn't vanish entirely. The pool of culprits just shrank from the whole school to one person.
"Tae-kyung, Tae-kyung. My boobs got bigger again this morning, right?"
"Yeah, yeah. You told me that last time."
"Don't be so nonchalant—feel 'em. See how much bigger than last time."
"Ugh! Kang Hye-eun, cut it out! Aren't you embarrassed letting a guy touch your chest?"
"Why would I be embarrassed letting you touch me? It's not like we've just met yesterday."
For a guy, it'd be like bragging chest muscles to your childhood friend.
Honestly, even these pranks annoyed me back then, but once or twice a day was tolerable.
Since she'd publicly claimed me as her boyfriend, I had to play along a bit in front of other girls. And thanks to her, I didn't have to deal with anyone else.
Besides, if I was gonna get hassled anyway, better by long-time pal Kang Hye-eun than strangers. She'd inherited her mom's looks—prettiest girl our age, hands down.
More than anything, we'd known each other forever as childhood friends. I didn't show it, but I had a real soft spot for her back then.
She was the only one who backed my dream of going to Hunter vocational school when everyone else opposed it. Even setting aside success odds, her support for the dream itself meant the world to me.
"Hye-eun, you've got it good, huh? A boyfriend who's also Hunter-bound."
...Things got awkward between us toward the end of the last semester before moving up to high school in the vocational program.