Chapter 169

"...Seo Han Gyeol? The Seo Han Gyeol I know?"

At Yeonwoo’s dumb question, Roy snorted.

"Is there some other Seo Han Gyeol? Hyung, what are you doing? Come sit."

"Huh? Oh, yeah."

Han Gyeol nodded without thinking and hurried into the empty seat. Then he quickly took off his mask and cap.

Only then did the familiar face appear, and small gasps slipped out here and there.

Everyone looked like they hadn’t even imagined this, and Roy felt secretly pleased.

"You know Han Gyeol hyung awakened this time as an Elemental, D-grade, right? So I recruited him."

"Re... recruited him? Then now he’s with us...?"

Hojin looked back and forth between Han Gyeol and Roy, trailing off as if he couldn’t believe it.

The show had ended. He’d thought they’d never run into each other again, so he hadn’t expected to get tied together like this.

Of course, Han Gyeol couldn’t hide his discomfort either. Their first impressions of each other weren’t exactly good.

But awkwardness would only last a moment. Roy believed time would smooth it out naturally.

In the idol world where business runs wild, at least the Shooting Star members had truly cherished and trusted one another.

So it would be the same in the Wasteland.

"Yeah. I want our team to be something special."

A special team made up entirely of Elemental awakeners.

Every Elemental awakener in Korea was gathering under the name Shooting Star.

Their grades were different for now, but in the end they’d be the same.

They had to be, if they were going to hunt Chaos Evil.

"I’m going to raise you hyungs into top-tier awakeners. We’re on the same team now, so you’ll climb up to where I am, right? If anyone lacks confidence, say it now."

Not that he’d let them go even if they said it.

With a crooked smile, Roy swept his eyes over the members one by one.

Yeonwoo, Hojin, and Taeon met Roy’s gaze without wavering. The three knew Roy wasn’t bluffing.

But Han Gyeol didn’t.

He didn’t even understand why a D-grade like him was in this lineup, and now he was supposed to climb?

‘...Does he mean the grade?’

As Han Gyeol’s thoughts knotted up and his eyes wavered, Roy, meeting his gaze, spoke first.

"Why. Not confident?"

In the silence where everyone seemed to understand except him, Han Gyeol stole glances at the others and finally managed to speak.

"When you say climb up to where you are... what exactly do you mean?"

"I mean reawaken to S-grade."

"...Grade?"

"Obviously."

Han Gyeol was so dumbfounded he was at a loss for words.

Reawakening wasn’t some pet’s name. And all of them, S-grade?

Frozen in a serious expression for a beat, Han Gyeol suddenly clapped like he’d realized something and grinned wide.

"Ahaha! Ah, now I get it. This is a hidden camera prank, right?"

Roy answered dead serious.

"Do I look like I’m joking?"

As the room froze in an instant, Han Gyeol’s laughter dwindled, and a deathly silence settled.

He glanced to Yeonwoo and Taeon for help, but the moment he met their eyes, both looked away.

At that, Han Gyeol could only answer in a small, cowed voice.

"...No. But I heard reawakening is even harder than awakening..."

Still, he seemed determined to say his piece; carefully, he finished his thought.

"Of course it is. I never said it was easy."

Roy continued, saying they’d seen the training the three Guild Masters had put the contestants through on .

"You saw it too, hyung. What the guild masters made them do. We might have to train even harder than that."

Still, they had to. What else could they do? It was reawakening, of all things.

Roy said confidently this wasn’t an opportunity that came to just anyone.

But unlike the three who accepted it readily, Han Gyeol still looked unconvinced.

"So on what basis..."

He seemed to want to confirm what Roy’s certainty was based on.

As he kept pressing, Hojin glanced back, annoyed, and jerked his chin at Yeonwoo.

"Right there. Yeonwoo."

"Why Yeonwoo...?"

"Well, he’s shy about saying it himself~ haha! Yeah. I reawakened."

"...What?"

For the umpteenth shock today, Han Gyeol’s eyes went wide again.

As he looked between Yeonwoo and Taeon with unsteady eyes, Taeon gave a small nod, like it was true.

"Then was it the Blue Gate..."

"Nah, not that. I mean, sure, back then something hit me hard right in the chest, like bam, you know, something... something?"

"...Sorry?"

"Anyway, the reawakening was before that."

All thanks to our team leader.

Yeonwoo clasped his hands and pointed primly at Roy in fawning praise.

Then, as if something struck him, he suddenly widened his eyes and turned to Han Gyeol.

"Oh! But this is a secret, okay? Promise me now you won’t tell anyone."

Han Gyeol didn’t know why they had to hide the reawakening, but he ended up hooking pinkies with Yeonwoo.

Surrounded by awakeners, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d gotten himself into something he really shouldn’t have.

✧

Round two was at a Lot*eria near the station.

They’d come because Yeonwoo insisted he wanted soft-serve ice cream, but Han Gyeol started to sweat, wondering if it was okay to talk about something this serious in such an open place.

"Right now we need to take down over a hundred blood fiends. For Hojin hyung it’s ten thousand."

Blood fiends?

Ten thousand—did he mean the number of blood fiends?

‘...Are they out of their minds?’

As words he didn’t want to believe kept flying around, Han Gyeol’s heart started pounding.

To the point he worried it might burst out of his mouth.

And as if their faces alone didn’t already draw enough attention, look at the lineup gathered here.

It wouldn’t be strange if crowds of citizens swarmed them.

First—

"Gasp. So now we’ll, like, roll out on calls too?"

Park Yeonwoo, the unlucky national-team awakener turned co-protagonist of .

Thanks to his performance in the final, the public currently suspected he’d reawakened.

‘Right, it was true, wasn’t it?’

He didn’t know why they weren’t announcing it, but anyway, Yeonwoo was the hottest rookie right now.

And the other man, chewing through a burger beside him—

"What about your school then?"

After just eating a full meal, he could still fit that in...?

The man taking a huge bite of burger was Kim Taeon, son of Gangwon.

From that famous meme—“Even if you don’t know the governor of Gangwon, you know the Coffee King”—he was the guy playing the Coffee King.

Taeon had shone no less than Yeonwoo, and when the show ended he’d gotten love calls from both Daehan and Pluton.

‘I’d been curious what he’d choose, but to think he signed the contract before me...’

Since he’d graduated business at Korea National University, at least it probably wasn’t a scam—Roy secretly felt relieved, not that he’d admit it.

Next, the man across from them spoke up with an awkward look.

"Yeah. We’re not allowed out on weekdays. Do we... have to climb the wall too?"

Covering the end of his sentence with a hand, Hojin lowered his voice and whispered.

First known as the Hongdae Boyfriend Guy, he was now a creator working as an influencer under the name Kim Butler.

‘I heard his field is categorized as beauty...’

Since their first impressions of each other weren’t good, he was a bit awkward for Han Gyeol to deal with.

Unable to really focus on the conversation, Han Gyeol kept, in his head, evaluating each colleague he’d end up working with.

Then he heard something that made him doubt his ears.

‘Climb the wall?’

These guys... what are they plotting?

Looking at this unbelievable lineup, all wearing serious faces, his heart dropped—isn’t this the sort of thing people could mistake for plotting an insurrection?

Just as Han Gyeol gulped in secret, Roy finally spoke.

"Nope. We don’t need to climb walls anymore. We’re switched to always-on permission to go out."

"Really?"

"For real! So if a call comes in during class, we can just head out? Legal hooky time, right? Am I right!"

At the news they could go out freely, Yeonwoo’s eyes sparkled and he fired off questions.

But instead of sharing his excitement, Roy frowned like it was ridiculous.

"Run ride-hails? What calls."

Roy had already gotten a stand-alone mission for the Shooting Star team from Heo Ho.

If a big accident or emergency broke out, they would deploy with Special Team 1 to rescue citizens and stabilize the scene, of course, but Shooting Star’s main mission was “blood-fiend investigation.”

It was an assignment tailored to a team that couldn’t be on standby around the clock, since half the members were minors.

And the bureau’s consideration didn’t end there.

"You hyungs can just come to our school starting tomorrow."

"Us?"

"...Why?"

Not just Taeon and Han Gyeol—Yeonwoo and Hojin also looked blankly at Roy.

"The awakener schools don’t have an excused-absence policy right now. But they said they’ll make a new one for this."

They just needed a bit of time for the administrative process, and until then, they’d set up a temporary base for them inside the school.

They’d said they wouldn’t spare full support, and honestly it was nice having everything spoon-fed from A to Z.

So this is what walking a flower path feels like?

Roy was quietly satisfied—treatment they wouldn’t have gotten if they’d gone to one of the Big Three guilds.

"Is... that even possible?"

"Apparently it is."

With his calm what’s-the-problem tone, it was the team who ended up flustered instead.

"Alright, then let’s wrap the first team dinner here and meet tomorrow."

Then as if something occurred to him, Roy hurried to add:

"Oh! And he won’t be an official member, but I figure a team needs at least one brain. I’ll bring him tomorrow."

"A brain? Wasn’t that me?"

What is he even saying.

Not even sparing Yeonwoo a glance, Roy grabbed Taeon’s wrist—Taeon had been trying to sneak his carry-on behind him like this was the moment—and stood up.

"Official duty starts tomorrow, so come ready. Dismissed!"

And just like that, Shooting Star officially launched.