Urban Vagabond: Reload

After Kim Chanho and Park Jiyeon finished giving their son—who’d recently started running around on equal footing with “big brothers”—a full-blown lesson in basic manners and respect for elders—

“What the hell did you do that my parents are clinging to Han like that?”

Kim Muhyuk grumbled at Han Jaechun, his ears still ringing from the storm of nagging. The two of them stepped outside for a moment to talk.

“I just helped out with the work, that’s all......”

Han Jaechun said it while barely holding back laughter, having witnessed the rare spectacle of a pinnacle expert getting scolded by his parents in real time.

“You guys look close. I’m jealous.”

“You said your mom passed away, and you don’t have siblings, right? What about marriage?”

“Why are you suddenly doing a background check? And what kind of woman would be blind enough to live with a guy like me?”

Han Jaechun answered with self-mockery, but Kim Muhyuk had almost not recognized him at first—his beard trimmed, his hair tied neatly.

If he walked around like this, there’d be plenty of women ‘blind’ enough.

Every time that long-haired handsome guy with the rough vibe moved around inside the café, the customers who came for coffee during the soft opening whispered among themselves.

But he had no idea how much he’d changed.

“So you grew the beard to look tough among drifters?”

“......That was the plan at first. Later it just got annoying to manage.”

At Han Jaechun’s sheepish answer—scratching at his newly cleaned jaw—Kim Muhyuk clicked his tongue.

“From now on, keep it like this. Dress as clean as you can, too. You’re going to be here a lot, and if you look filthy, you’re just causing trouble for my parents’ café.”

“Th-that means.......”

Han Jaechun’s eyes widened at Kim Muhyuk’s words.

The reason he’d come here with his heart in his throat, and waited for hours—

Kim Muhyuk remembered last night’s promise. He grinned and nodded.

“I said I’d teach you martial arts. You think you can get anywhere coming once or twice? You’ve got to come whenever you have time if you want to improve.”

Han Jaechun’s face lit up. He grabbed Kim Muhyuk’s hand.

“Thank you. Seriously. I’ll never forget this. If you need anything, make me do it. No—I’ll come every day and help your parents at the café!”

“That’s enough. You don’t have to go that far—”

Kim Muhyuk tried to refuse, but then he flinched at a familiar, prickling stare from far away.

He shifted only his eyes and glanced sideways.

Kim Chanho and Park Jiyeon had both hands cupped over their mouths, silently shouting with exaggerated lip movements.

Don’t reject someone’s kindness, you little punk!

Just say okay! Say thank you!

Whatever Han Jaechun had done, the two of them looked downright desperate.

So Kim Muhyuk had to whip his head from side-to-side denial into a fast up-and-down nod.

“......I mean, I’d be grateful if you help. Then can I ask you a favor?”

“Of course! I felt bad just taking from you, so don’t worry about the café work from now on.”

Just like that, Han Jaechun naturally became an employee of .

They tussled briefly over pay—the owner couple tried to give him more no matter what, and the employee tried to refuse no matter what—but after a reasonable compromise, everyone ended up satisfied.

“Now, should we go to the training hall?”

“Finally......!”

Kim Muhyuk headed with Han Jaechun to his training hall in the building basement.

“Here. This is my private training hall.”

“Wow.......”

After looking around the facility, Han Jaechun couldn’t close his mouth.

Traditional training implements, sandbags, wooden dummies—and even modern training machines that looked expensive at a glance.

The walls and ceiling were perfectly soundproofed and designed to withstand blades, and off to one side were dedicated recovery facilities, filming equipment to measure all kinds of physical metrics, and monitoring gear.

It was a comprehensive training facility you’d only expect to see in a major sect.

Han Jaechun’s eyes went wide.

“How much money did you even spend on this place?”

“Even if I make money, I don’t really have anywhere to spend it. This is where I invest the most.”

Kim Muhyuk looked around with a satisfied expression.

In his previous life, he’d lived as a drifter in conditions worse than Han Jaechun’s—more dangerous, more brutal.

His talent, effort, and luck had kept him alive long enough to grow strong, but he’d paid for it harshly—throwing himself around without proper treatment or recovery.

Once I passed forty, the body that was already wrecked just... stopped recovering.

So he’d vowed not to repeat the same mistake.

The moment Kim Muhyuk started making money, he built his training hall into the best facility possible.

Even Shin Kangheon had come once, seen it, and clicked his tongue in disbelief.

Seeing a place like this for the first time, Han Jaechun couldn’t help but swell with anticipation.

“If I train somewhere like this, even I—”

“Feels like you’ll become a master overnight, right? Wake up. If you’re a low-level nobody, you start by swinging a sword until you’re dying.”

Kim Muhyuk strode to the center of the hall.

He pulled out a wooden practice sword and tossed it to Han Jaechun.

“Come at me. I’ll check your level first.”

“Hoo.......”

Sword in hand, Han Jaechun took a deep breath, then rushed Kim Muhyuk immediately. He forced power into his limping left leg and kicked off the floor.

“Hyah!”

He didn’t bother with warnings that were above his station.

His opponent was a master at a realm far beyond him. He calculated the shortest distance and aimed for the heart as fast as he could.

“Good. Going all-out from the start.”

Kim Muhyuk twisted his body slightly and avoided the first strike, his eyes sharpening as he observed the other man’s movement.

SWISH! WHOOM—! SHHK!

Thinking this might be his last chance, Han Jaechun swung, stabbed, and slashed with everything he had.

He poured out every attack he could perform—techniques he’d learned after paying millions to an instructor who’d turned out to be a fraud, attack methods he’d figured out on his own, and even feints he’d practiced alone after watching YouTube.

Do it with everything you’ve got—no regrets!

Han Jaechun knew this was the kind of opportunity that might never come again in his life.

So he bared his teeth and tried to show everything he was.

When he was swinging like a madman, so hard it felt like his heart might burst—

“That’s enough.”

Kim Muhyuk, who had avoided every strike by twisting only his upper body in place, nodded.

“Hoo... hoo.......”

Han Jaechun panted, waiting for Kim Muhyuk’s evaluation, his face tense.

Was that okay? Maybe to Kim Muhyuk it was beyond hopeless. If only my leg didn’t limp, I could’ve done better—

“Not bad.”

The verdict wasn’t as awful as he’d feared.

“You’re a little better than I expected. Feels like you’ve trained the sword consistently, and you’ve kept your body in decent shape.”

“......So I pass?”

“Pass what? You thought there was a chance you’d fail?”

Only then did Han Jaechun finally exhale in relief.

But Kim Muhyuk wasn’t finished.

“Right at the average for bottom-tier drifters. It’s vague to call you a martial artist, but you’re stronger than a normal person. By license standards, third-rate or lower.”

“.......”

Han Jaechun’s expression, just about to brighten, hardened again.

Kim Muhyuk told him reality, neither adding nor subtracting.

“And your left leg. If you keep swinging like that in real fights, you won’t last more than a few years before you can’t use it at all. You might end up not as a limper— but unable to walk.”

Kim Muhyuk had done missions with him a few times in his previous life. He knew roughly how good Han Jaechun was.

And he also knew that about a year from now, Han Jaechun’s limp would get worse.

“......That’s not something I can fix.”

The leg was a side effect of the artificial lower abdomen procedure. He’d gone to multiple hospitals—there was no method to fix it.

Of course, Kim Muhyuk knew that better than anyone.

“Don’t try to force your balance. Every human has imbalance. For you, it’s just much worse. So you need to learn how to move around that.”

“That’s easy to say, but......”

“I’ll show you. Watch.”

Kim Muhyuk didn’t stop at explanations.

He pressed pressure points on his own left leg.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

By suppressing pressure points and making the leg uncomfortable, he forced himself into a state similar to Han Jaechun’s.

Among drifters, having one eye, a limp, or one arm was common.

Kim Muhyuk remembered the way the ones who survived for a long time fought.

It was precious know-how you couldn’t learn anywhere else.

Now limping, Kim Muhyuk crooked his fingers at Han Jaechun.

“Attack. And watch carefully how I move.”

Han Jaechun looked flustered for a moment, then nodded and charged.

“Hyaaah—!”

About an hour later, after sweating through everything—

Han Jaechun collapsed flat on the floor, totally drained.

“Haa, haa... I can’t even move.......”

He was so exhausted he couldn’t twitch a finger, yet he kept smiling like an idiot.

In his head, the way Kim Muhyuk had moved like him—how, when he copied it, everything felt so much easier—was vivid.

“Is this how a blind man feels when he suddenly opens his eyes......?”

Muttering to himself, Han Jaechun lifted only his head and looked at Kim Muhyuk.

“Can I come again tomorrow?”

Kim Muhyuk nodded, as if it was obvious.

“I’ll tell you the passcode. If I’m not here, come train alone. Take the recorded videos and watch them. And don’t forget to clean up properly before you go.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m insanely good at cleaning!”

The smile never left Han Jaechun’s face.

*****

For a while, Han Jaechun didn’t even look for other work.

Instead, he rented a place close to Kim Muhyuk’s training hall and moved.

The money from the last smuggling incident was enough that he could go without working for months, and now he had a new job anyway.

More than anything, learning martial arts from Kim Muhyuk was just too fun.

“Boss! Good morning!”

“Jaechun. I told you not to come so early......”

“My body feels itchy if I don’t.”

Han Jaechun came in before the owner couple, unlocked the café, and opened up.

He did a quick cleaning, organized the ingredients, then found whatever needed doing before anyone even asked.

Maybe it was his effort, the cleaned-up look, and the brighter expression—but even during the soft-opening period, the number of people coming and going noticeably increased.

“Did you see? That long-haired part-timer.......”

“I’m losing it. You saw him smile awkwardly just now, right?”

“I liked him better when he looked rough.”

When the café work was slow, he went down to the basement and swung the sword.

I want to get stronger.

Just from Kim Muhyuk correcting his posture and fixing a few pointed-out issues, his skill improved so quickly he could feel it himself.

One day, he was so amazed he told Kim Muhyuk,

“Muhyuk, you should open a cram school later. You teach better than those guys they call star instructors.”

“Me? I have way more fun learning than teaching.”

He said that, but Kim Muhyuk also found a quiet enjoyment in teaching Han Jaechun.

His talent is better than I expected.

Aside from being physically unfit to be a proper martial-world practitioner, he hadn’t learned correctly—yet his physical base and instincts were good.

And Kim Muhyuk—who had once been in a similar position—was confident he could make Han Jaechun overcome even that.

“Han. Are you going to keep doing drifter work?”

Han Jaechun hesitated, then nodded.

“Yeah. I want to live as a martial artist. I don’t really have anything else I can do......”

The mistake he’d made as a high schooler, and a handful of minor criminal records from drifter work, held him back.

So Han Jaechun had given up on his childhood dream of becoming a lawyer.

And because he’d undergone an illegal artificial lower abdomen procedure, he couldn’t obtain an official martial-artist license, either.

But he’d gained a new dream.

To become strong as a martial artist.

And then......

I want to become like you.

He only stared at Kim Muhyuk, keeping the rest of his thoughts to himself.

That was when Kim Muhyuk made an unexpected suggestion.

“If you’re going to be a drifter anyway, how about aiming for the top of the industry?”

“......The top?”

“I mean drifter hero.”

Drifter hero.

A title only a microscopic handful among freelance drifters could ever receive. It wasn’t a seat you could claim just by being strong.

When Kim Muhyuk—as The Lone Ghost—had solved dozens of missions that seemed impossible and returned alive, the underworld drifters acknowledged him as a drifter hero.

For the past few decades, and for at least the next twenty years, there won’t be a drifter king—so being a drifter hero is more than enough.

Drifter king.

The one and only existence with enough influence and power to bind even drifter heroes—and the entire underworld drifter world—into one.

In his previous life, some comrades had tried to make Kim Muhyuk the drifter king at one point, but he himself had never cared much for titles like that.

But now, his thinking had changed a little.

Even becoming a drifter hero would give me real influence in the industry.

If he used the know-how he possessed, and the future knowledge—

It wasn’t impossible to make Han Jaechun into a drifter hero.

And Han Jaechun’s influence would surely help later, too—when it came time to check and stop the Heavenly Demon Cult.

Though then we’d have to find another part-timer.

He felt sorry for his parents, but having an industry-top drifter as a café employee was ridiculous.

It made no sense for Han Jaechun to keep working here forever.

Kim Muhyuk naturally thought so—because he didn’t know Han Jaechun’s hidden resolve.

“Drifter hero... That sounds cool. Fine. I’ll make that one of my goals.”

“‘One of’?”

“Yeah. There’s another one.”

Instead of explaining, Han Jaechun grinned as if to say he’d prove it with results.

Whether it was becoming a drifter hero or anything else—

He’d already decided to spend his life beside Kim Muhyuk, repaying that debt.