Free Web NovelA message arrived on the long-idle SKELTON account.
He hoped it would be from Kang Han-min, but in some ways, he was prepared for this name.
Message from dongtanmom: So you're Park Gyu, huh? Let's grab a drink. There's a lot to talk about.
Dongtanmom. Baek Seung-hyun.
“......”
Tap tap tap
[ Would you like to block dongtanmom? ]
It was true—he was briefly tempted.
There was no denying that the relationship between the two of them online had never been what you’d call “good.”
Still, maybe it was better to meet.
Because Dongtanmom wasn’t just Dongtanmom. He was also Baek Seung-hyun.
Of course, he would never do anything that benefited that bastard.
With that firm resolve, he agreed to meet Dongtanmom.
But he had forgotten one crucial fact.
Baek Seung-hyun was a traveler.
He wandered the seas.
And those who sail the sea always carry more stories than those who don’t.
Whether those stories are truth or lies—that's for the listener to decide.
*
Incheon Port.
He met Baek Seung-hyun at the dock, where several ships were moored.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the legendary Hunter, SKELTON~?”
Baek Seung-hyun’s style hadn’t changed.
Close-cropped hair, leather jacket, well-fitted jeans.
The pistol holster on his chest was clearly on display—undoubtedly intentional.
“It’s been a while, Park Gyu.”
Next to him stood his wife, but his gaze drifted lower.
A child, already walking on two feet, stared silently up at him.
The kid looked more like the mother than the father.
Baek Seung-hyun prompted the child to greet him.
“Hyun-soo, say hello. This is Uncle Park Gyu.”
“......”
“What’s wrong? Park Gyu?”
“I don’t think I’m quite old enough to be called ‘uncle.’”
Baek Seung-hyun snorted.
“Don’t you always call Woo Min-hee ‘ajumma’?”
He didn’t finish the sentence, but his smug expression said enough.
He was mocking him—fine calling others old, but couldn’t stand being called old himself.
Baek Seung-hyun had invited him for drinks, but they agreed to just have some tea instead.
Too much bad blood, and they weren’t close.
They relocated to a different spot.
He led him to the second floor of a dockside building now being used as his campaign office.
Several desks were scattered about. It looked like people had been working here recently, but now it was just the two of them.
Baek Seung-hyun sat down first and spoke.
He wasn’t someone you could take lightly—on that point, there was no disagreement.
“Relax. I’m not here to ask for favors.”
He knew the source of the caution he'd been quietly projecting.
And that wasn’t all.
“Besides, we both know this election’s a joke.”
He also had a decent grasp of the farce behind the current election.
He lit a cigarette—indoors, not caring in the slightest.
He looked at the cigarette.
He assumed it was stockpiled government supply, but no—it was imported.
Not Chinese, but Indian.
“Oh, this?”
Baek Seung-hyun noticed his gaze and chuckled.
“Wanna try one?”
He shook his head.
Instead, he asked, “Where’d you get that?”
“Oh, this?” he said with a bitter smile, almost muttering.
“From the sea.”
“The sea.”
“Yeah. I posted updates about it now and then on the board.”
That was true.
He used to read them all.
At some point, he stopped.
Probably when curiosity was overtaken by disgust.
Anyway, from what he remembered, Baek Seung-hyun had been sailing aboard Hope.
East China Sea, off the coast of Japan, near Jeju—he’d sailed all over East Asia.
His wife brought out refreshments.
She kept glancing over, as if itching to say something. When Baek Seung-hyun gave her a signal, she blurted it out.
“Is it true? That Hunter Park Gyu is SKELTON?”
Her expression was subtly hostile.
“......”
Fair enough.
To be honest, he had cursed out Baek Seung-hyun—Dongtanmom—many times over.
But it wasn’t entirely his fault.
Baek Seung-hyun’s hideous online etiquette had pushed even a law-abiding man like him to spit venom.
Still, that was then. A question had been asked. It deserved an answer.
“Ah, yes. But I’m not the only one who uses it.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Sometimes the imaginary cat types in chat, too.
Baek Seung-hyun’s wife gave him a sideways glare and left the room.
“......”
An awkward silence fell.
“You remember I told you I was out of uniform, working in the private sector before the war?”
“Yes.”
If memory served, Baek Seung-hyun had quit the battlefield, started a business, went bankrupt, then bounced between companies. freёweɓnovel.com
The cynical, twisted mindset of his “Dongtanmom” persona probably solidified during that period.
With the Indian cigarette still in his mouth, Baek Seung-hyun reminisced.
“One of the CEOs I worked under back then was making insane amounts of [N O V E L I G H T] money. So much he didn’t even know how much he earned.”
“What was the business?”
“Screen golf.”
“Hm.”
“He went all-in, built this massive, fancy setup in the countryside. There were plenty of modest places already, but none on that scale. Most people thought it was dumb—why sink all that money into indoor golf sims when outdoor ranges were cheaper? But he was possessed. Went all-in. And it worked.”
Why bring this up now?
He knew Baek Seung-hyun wasn’t the kind to ramble unnecessarily. He was still a Hunter.
So this wasn’t just idle talk.
Soon enough, he brought the point around.
“But even that bigshot went under. About half a year before the war started, I heard he filed for bankruptcy.”
A rare, almost childlike smile crept onto Baek Seung-hyun’s face.
“Fucker. I was glad.”
There it was. Classic Baek Seung-hyun.
“Ah. Right.”
With a grin, he turned toward him.
“I brought that guy up because of my own future.”
A moment of tension.
At this point, Baek Seung-hyun might ask for election support.
He’d made it clear many times—he had zero intention of helping with that.
Seniority be damned, someone like Baek Seung-hyun—a lunatic known for spewing garbage on the internet—shouldn’t end up as an elected official.
Whether he understood that sentiment or not, Baek Seung-hyun flicked his cigarette, scattering ash on the floor.
He spoke in a low voice.
“......Looks like I’ll be heading back to sea.”
“?”
Momentary confusion.
He had run every possible scenario in his head before this meeting—but this?
This wasn’t even in the realm of consideration.
“You’re going back to sea?”
Luckily, his well-trained—or perhaps just naturally stoic—expression held. He asked in a calm, normal tone.
Baek Seung-hyun gave a shallow sigh and nodded.
“Yeah. It’s already decided. Most of the crew’s coming with me. Plus...”
He pulled out his phone.
On the screen was a voice recorder app.
Multiple audio files, sorted by date, ready to be played.
“......The Jeju guys seem to like the idea. When we said we’d leave again, they offered fuel and supplies.”
He didn’t play the recordings.
Probably insurance. Something to leak in case the deal fell through.
“That’s why I brought up that CEO.”
When he first came here, he’d intended to just check in briefly and leave.
That made sense, given the nature of their relationship.
But Baek Seung-hyun, like his wife’s face—grown more mature—and like his toddler, now walking upright, had changed in subtle but clear ways.
“Most of the ones who crash and burn are the ones who give up what they’re good at to chase something else. That CEO was the same. Got greedy about financial freedom, bought a giant commercial building. Wanted to live off rent forever. Problem was—ownership of that building was split across hundreds of shares.”
He asked,
“Did you see something similar in this election?”
He wasn’t interested in the election.
No plans to run. Tired of being hounded to help campaigns.
But he knew it was rigged.
Just another deception by the Jeju government.
Baek Seung-hyun had seen something even dirtier.
“......They’re stacking the deck. Only letting through the ones who’ll play nice. The rest? Wiped out. Elections are supposed to be about choice, but if all the candidates are bastards, what choice is there? The act of voting becomes meaningless.”
“Is that so.”
Baek Seung-hyun sighed and nodded, shoulders sagging.
“......”
Of course.
The filth ran deeper than expected—again.
That same crowd. The ones who slowly, deliberately brought down Seoul and its great people.
“Well, I’ve got a crew. They can’t ignore me.”
Baek Seung-hyun had returned to Seoul with 868 crew members.
Over 200 of them weren’t even Korean—Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Japanese, even Chinese.
People he’d rescued at sea or picked up from deserted islands.
That’s why he jumped into the election—to protect them.
Jeju probably couldn’t dismiss him precisely because of that manpower.
He didn’t know the details, but their combat power wasn’t insignificant.
These people had survived nearly a year in erosion zones by the sea.
And the sea was no safe haven—less erosion, sure, but that meant more pirates.
Japan was crumbling in real time.
Just like old Joseon, they were abandoning the islands and retreating to the mainland.
Tsushima had already been overrun—now uninhabitable.
And those pirates? They were Korean. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
History repeats itself.
To survive at sea means you’ve survived pirates.
According to Woo Min-hee’s informants, several regular Awakened were part of Baek Seung-hyun’s crew.
So Dongtanmom had, somewhere along the way, become a leader.
“When I came back to Seoul, I was hopeful. My hometown, a fresh start. But the reality? Still fucking garbage. Couldn’t stop thinking of that CEO. And my thoughts started to shift. Politics? Who am I kidding? Back to sea. Maybe I’ll find new hope there.”
Baek Seung-hyun had decided to do what he did best.
He had become a man of the sea.
“......”
There were many things he resented about him.
Even before Dongtanmom, Baek Seung-hyun had never been a good person.
He could be monstrously cruel to others for his own sake.
He still remembered—vividly—the cat mom whose death he had forced.
Not her face, but the moment.
But like Baek Seung-hyun said—“this fucked-up world.”
He’d said it with a kind of bitter poetry, and that phrasing remained etched in memory.
Still, they had both seen and endured much since the war.
He may have reached higher peaks, but in terms of consistency, Baek Seung-hyun probably scored higher overall.
Since being abandoned in China—since being left to raise an immature wife and infant alone.
Maybe that was why—
He did something unexpected.
Something completely unplanned, unimaginable even.
“Senior... We’ve been through a lot, you and I. But as your junior, Park Gyu, I want to say something.”
He looked him in the eye.
And said,
“I hope wherever you go, you do well.”
His honest truth.
“But... please try not to nyam-nyam so much, wherever you end up.”
That part was 120% sincere.
“!”
Something changed in Baek Seung-hyun’s face.
A flicker of unmistakable surprise crossed his usual sneer.
He didn’t say anything—but he was clearly rattled.
Then came a shift in his expression.
A smile.
Closer to a smirk, but he chose to believe it was genuine.
“......Nyam-nyam.”
“?”
“My mom used to use that. She was on those real estate forums. Harmless phrase, but people hated it. So many would freak out. Curse at her. And for some reason, that was hilarious to me. Funny, y’know? Like a reverse psychology reflex.”
“Ah. I see.”
Baek Seung-hyun fell quiet, staring at the sea outside.
Then he spoke again.
“Do you know Yuldoguk?”
He didn’t consider himself that old.
So calling it “insight” might sound pretentious.
But just for a moment—he felt a flash of insight light up within.
“......The legendary island.”
An unexpected turn in the conversation.
