Hi,
The problem lies in these two sentences:
I do not understand how to register it with the lifecycle of the runtime environment.
Writing a system plugin makes the most sense, however I don't feel proficient enough at the moment.
To "register it with the lifecycle of the runtime environment", you need to write a system plugin. And that's why I recommended that.
Writing a plugin is not difficult if you know know a bit on programming. Just follow the Joomla documentation on how to write a plugin:
docs.joomla.org/Portal:Plugin_Development
And implement a trigger (like the "onAfterRoute" trigger) where you would put the code that you have in your get() function (and replace HIKASHOP_COMPONENT by "com_hikashop" ).