The Law of Moderation
"Phew..."
Wiiing, the automatic door opened with a mechanical sound. A young man wearing a baseball cap pulled low walked out onto the street with heavy steps. He held a yellow document envelope in his hand. The young man passed the tax office sign and took out his cell phone. He pressed the number 0, and a name appeared on the call screen.
[Idiot]
Before the ringing tone could sound more than a few times, click, the other person answered the phone. A blunt voice snapped.
—Why are you calling so late? I almost broke my neck waiting.
"You're picking a fight as soon as you answer. Hey, do you know how many people there are? And the procedures are so damn complicated... Honestly, I didn't even understand half of it."
The young man, Cha Euijae, also replied bluntly. Across the phone, Sa-young clicked his tongue.
—That's why I told you to take Mingi-jeok with you. Don't suffer alone.
"I told you it's okay. Mr. Mingi-jeok is busy these days too. I saw him crying about not even having time to go to the cafe these days."
—Still, he'd come if you called him, Hyung. Anyway, is it over?
"Yeah. It's really over. I think?"
Euijae clutched the yellow envelope in his hand. A proud smile appeared on his face. A soft voice spoke from the other side of the phone.
—Congratulations, Hyung.
In a world where the system had disappeared, and rifts and monsters were gone, Cha Euijae, the former hero and current day laborer at the hangover soup restaurant...
—I should call you boss now. Boss Cha.
"Ah, don't call me that. It's awkward."
...Became the owner of the hangover soup restaurant.
Euijae tried to suppress the twitching corners of his mouth and began to walk with light, boundy steps.
***
Now, a year and several months after the system disappeared.
The past year had been a continuous chaos. The sudden disappearance of the White Hole and the system, the dungeons and the system that they had believed would be with them forever, caused society to temporarily shut down.
Magic stones! Eco-friendly and convenient!
That was all in the past. Society, which had replaced most of its energy sources with magic stones and dungeon byproducts, was turned upside down. Shortages of electricity and energy were reported everywhere, and electric Awakeners became two-legged generators, being called to all sorts of places.
Many companies went bankrupt. Factories that focused on byproduct processing, companies that made and sold products from byproducts, etc., any place that dealt with dungeon and monster-related items was left out on the street overnight, and the Rift Management Agency was merged with the Awakener Management Bureau.
Of course, the protagonists who eliminated the apocalypse, Cha Euijae and Lee Sa-young, were also incredibly busy. Finding a house with the view of the sea. Euijae's wish was postponed indefinitely.
Time to find a house? No way. Too busy beating up awakeners.
Awakeners and civilians alike lost their jobs, but awakeners had power. They began to commit various crimes using their abilities in a situation where it was already difficult to make a living. Public sentiment and the image of awakeners plummeted like a cliff.
Jung-bin, who was trying to manage the situation as best he could, eventually came to Euijae, handed him a box of vitamin drinks, and asked for help.
'Please... could you help me just a little bit.'
With a face as dark as Mingi-jeok's, with dark circles under his eyes.
Euijae readily agreed. Thus, J traveled around the country, beating up awakeners who committed crimes. Fortunately, his work was already finished. It was thanks to being asked to handle only the really difficult cases.
Soon, Cha Euijae quit his hunter life and returned to being a day laborer at the hangover soup restaurant. However, recently, his grandmother wanted to close the restaurant due to knee and stamina problems.
No, my sanctuary. Euijae said forcefully.
"Grandma, I'll take it over."
Thus, former hero Cha Euijae jumped into the path of a self-employed business owner. Of course, it was a difficult challenge for him, who knew nothing about administrative procedures and solved everything with his body.
Then, was Lee Sa-young free? No. He was struggling in his own way.
Rifts and dungeons disappeared. So what would the hunters do?
There was nothing to do.
Thus, the guild hunters all became unemployed together.
The Awakener Management Bureau was guaranteed a position as civil servants, but private company hunters were finished the moment the monsters disappeared. Now, it was no longer a guild but a gathering of unemployed people with some strength.
Bae Won-woo emptied his bowl of hangover soup and muttered with a troubled face.
"Sa-young, what are we going to do for a living now?"
No matter how rich Lee Sa-young was, he couldn't keep giving money to the unemployed in a situation where there was no source of income. It was time for them to go their separate ways. Sa-young had a duty to part with his guild members in a beautiful manner. After all, the guild was a company, and Sa-young was the representative of the company.
"Fuck..."
Thus, he was crushed by numerous administrative procedures in order to part with the unemployed people with some strength in a beautiful manner. At least he had to give them severance pay before letting them go. He continued to eat and sleep in the guild leader's office, unable to leave the guild building.
Was that all? He also had to take responsibility for the research team in Incheon. They were wandering around, having lost their research subject overnight. To open a rift, there had to be a rift, but the rift had disappeared. The research team members asked once a day by email.
—Guild Leader, are we all going to be unemployed?
—Are we going back to the narrow, cold laboratory?
—Should we pack our bags?
They were all depressing emails. The youngest member of the research team even sent Sa-young an email that he was supposed to send to his professor.
—Professor, my thesis topic has disappeared...
Did this bastard send it to me on purpose? Sa-young suspected. And he replied in bulk with copy and paste. To summarize the long answer in one sentence:
[Ah, fuck, I'm busy, so wait a bit.]
Fortunately, the research team began to study the timing of the disappearance of awakeners' abilities in connection with the Awakener Management Bureau, and they avoided becoming unemployed.
Anyway, Sa-young worked like a dog for about a year and managed to part with his guild members in a beautiful manner. The guild members who were given generous severance pay left to find their own places. Bae Won-woo got a job as an instructor at his brother's Taekwondo gym, Mingi-jeok was scouted by the Awakener Management Bureau, Kang Ji-soo returned to university, and Choi Go-yo was preparing for the college entrance exam. The other guild members also dispersed well.
In the midst of all this, time to share love? There was no way. They were living such busy lives that they didn't even have time to see each other's faces, and they had finally returned to normal orbit. It was fortunate if they could see each other's faces for a moment and check on each other.
Fortunately, Euijae had good cost-effectiveness. Occasionally, meeting Lee Sa-young, hugging him, kissing him, and spending time together was enough to get by.
However, Sa-young's situation was different. According to Bae's testimony, the longer he was away from Euijae, the worse he became and the more of a personality destroyer he became. In fact, when they met after being apart for a long time, his kisses and groping hands were particularly persistent.
Finally, today, on the monumental day that Cha Euijae became the owner of the hangover soup restaurant. Sa-young exploded.
"I want to quit everything and have sex with Hyung."
He blurted out the words while walking side by side on the way home after closing the hangover soup restaurant. When Euijae first heard it, he doubted his ears. So he asked again.
"What?"
Sa-young repeated in an even clearer voice.
"Fuck, I said I want to quit everything and have sex with Hyung."
Damn it, he heard it right. Euijae gagged Sa-young before he could explode any further and headed home as if flying. And they sat facing each other in the living room and had a serious conversation.
Sa-young's argument can be summarized as follows:
[Didn't we promise to be together for life, and even the life after that? But we're both too busy. It's been a year since we dealt with the apocalypse, but is it even possible that we haven't progressed beyond kissing? I want to (censored) (censored) (censored) (censored) (censored) with Hyung, but fuck, I'm so damn busy that I don't even have time to go get rings, and I don't even have time to go see land to build a house. It's like (censorship of profanity). (Profanity continues at length thereafter.)]
It sounded like a reasonable opinion. Well, he also wanted to spend a little more time with Sa-young. It would be nice to make more progress too... Euijae nodded with a serious face.
"Well, yeah... then, should we do it a little, moderately, today? You don't have any work for a while."
Euijae was also horny, though he didn't realize it. At those words, Sa-young's face, which had been crumpled like an angry pretzel, bloomed like a bright flower. Euijae patted the back of Sa-young, who was quickly hugging him and rubbing his head against him, and felt proud.
Of course, the pride didn't last long. After showering first, he fell into thought.
'Hmm, this is a bit difficult.'
He bravely blurted it out, but Euijae had no experience. He went back through the memories of the past world one by one, but not once! He had no experience with women, let alone men. Even kissing was the first time he had done it with Lee Sa-young in this world.
He had basic knowledge, but the relationship between men was a little different, wasn't it?
'I'm the Hyung, so shouldn't I teach him a little? It's a little weird to just lie down and receive. But it's also a little weird to pretend to be good.'
The older person has to do something. I have to lead Sa-young. As a result of the collision between the mindset of an old-fashioned person and an inexperienced body, Cha Euijae entered a state of a wooden doll where his body and head were separate.
'I'm screwed...'