Retire 239
by Cristae239 Father and Daughter (1)
I struggled, desperately, to keep my composure. Fortunately, my sanity held out until I managed to pull the car over to the shoulder.
“Give it to me.”
Hong Seok-young silently extended his arm. The phrase he had just read flickered before my eyes.
I stared at that absurd sentence in silence.
“…Is this even possible?”
“Please, just be quiet for a moment.”
“……”
If you simply asked whether it was possible or not… it was possible.
The mana watch had been created to enable real-time communication with the outside world from within a dungeon. Receiving dungeon information or searching for runes was only a secondary function.
Once the mana watches were fully distributed, we were preparing to set up an emergency operations center. Like 911 or 112, the idea was to receive distress calls from within dungeons and dispatch rescue teams or direct them remotely. It would require a lot of manpower, but if successful, it could drastically improve hunters’ survival rates.
Depending on the dungeon entered, the functions of the mana watch and the information permitted would differ, but we hadn’t established those criteria yet. The only reason we’d been able to transfer the entire management agency’s database was because it was just my father and me. Connecting to the agency’s server and accessing the cloud-stored data in real time was also only possible for us. That, too, was a feature left on for performance testing; once the tests were complete, it was to be adjusted.
Of course, along with the biometric signals, all those functions vanished when I returned to the past.
Now, unless I personally created a new document, the mana watch would no longer generate any new files.
But just before I returned to the past… more precisely, just before South Korea fell into paralysis, while the management agency was still intact, any documents my father had written would have been uploaded to the server. This clever yet foolish machine had temporarily saved them, and only after recognizing my father—Hong Seok-young’s mana pattern—did it retrieve them.
Damn it.
What the hell is this?
With my forehead pressed against the steering wheel, I let out a hollow laugh. Hong Seok-young flinched and raised his hand. His tentative, hesitant hand cautiously patted my shoulder, then gently stroked my head.
“…I’m thirty-one now.”
“And?”
“Stop treating me like a child.”
“What are you talking about?”
Hong Seok-young feigned surprise in an exaggerated voice.
“To a father, his son is always a child.”
“…Enough already.”
I let out a short laugh and straightened up. Hong Seok-young started teasing me from the side.
“You didn’t cry, did you?”
“I did not.”
“Now would be the perfect time to cry. In your father’s arms?”
“That’s never going to happen, so wake up from your dream.”
If I were going to cry, I’d have broken down long ago.
It would be a lie to say I wasn’t shaken, and it was true that I was rattled enough for Hong Seok-young to try to comfort me with his clumsy jokes.
But what good would it do to stay like this? Would Noah Michel be rehabilitated and start volunteering if I just sat here? Would the dungeons vanish and the world be spared from destruction?
It was better to do something productive with my time.
“Open it.”
“…This?”
“I need to see what he was doing at the end.”
Hong Seok-young hesitated for a moment, then pressed the button.
[Would you like to load?]
[Yes]
The window flickered and began to load. Just how large was this file?
“The creation date should appear at the top.”
“Hm…”
Hong Seok-young expanded the window. Perhaps because he’d watched me do it earlier, he handled it deftly this time.
“August 1, 2030.”
“…That’s so long ago.”
“Last modified: June 2, 2041.”
Hong Seok-young looked at my face.
“This date… I don’t need you to tell me. It’s the day you crossed over to the past, isn’t it?”
“……”
Hong Seok-young checked the document my father had edited.
“Well, well. I really am myself.”
“…Excuse me?”
“To think these were my last words.”
At the top of the revised document. Hong Seok-young turned the screen toward me with a smile.
“Take good care of my kids, Hong Seok-young.”
“Teacher!!!”
“Damn it, Jieun. What’s the situation?!”
“It’s bad!!”
“I know that already!! How much time do we have left?!”
“Team One is wiped out!!”
“Han Taekyung too?”
“From the flashes in the distance, it looks like he’s the only one still alive.”
“Then it’s not a total wipeout.”
“He won’t last long. Whether he dies now or in five minutes, it’s still a wipeout.”
Under normal circumstances, he would have scolded her for her cynical words, but the man said nothing. That was how hopeless the situation was.
He frowned as he watched a group of hunters tumble through the front gate.
“Damn. If those bastards are here, it means Yongsan has fallen too.”
“Seoul is already beyond recovery.”
“It’s not just Seoul, is it? This country is finished.”
“Is it just this country, teacher?”
The man looked at the woman and let out a fierce laugh, but soon his shoulders slumped in resignation.
“So this is how it ends.”
“We prepared ourselves for this when Alex died. We lasted longer than expected.”
“That’s true.”
The man gave a small smile as he looked at the woman.
“You’ve been through a lot, Jieun.”
“…You too, teacher.”
“If I’d known things would turn out like this, I wouldn’t have sent him away.”
“What could he have done in Seoul anyway?”
“At least he could have explained the situation. I feel bad leaving it all to you.”
The woman burst out laughing, her voice ringing incongruously in the grim atmosphere.
“When he said he wouldn’t be a hunter, you and I talked about it. We agreed not to involve him. That was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“If I’d known it would come to this, I would’ve forced him to stay and told him everything!”
“You’re the one who indulged all his whims, teacher.”
“…That’s true.”
“You always gave in to his stubbornness. Even let him take this vacation.”
“I sent him off to rest, but if I’d known trouble would break out, I never would’ve let him go….”
The man grumbled, lips jutting out. The woman ignored him and said whatever came to mind.
“Does he know? That because of him, the management agency started giving bonus points for hunter licenses in their hiring process?”
“Ahem.”
“Really? He still doesn’t know?”
“……”
“He can’t get mad if I call him a parachute hire. It’s the truth.”
“Hey. Our Heejae really is smart, you know?”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not a parachute.”
The woman snorted and checked outside.
Flames, origin unknown, were creeping closer from afar. The speed at which they spread was far too fast to be ordinary fire.
She narrowed her eyes.
“…At most, we have thirty minutes.”
“The centipedes?”
“Crawling here from Yongsan.”
“It’s a mess.”
The man took a small, powerless table clock from inside his jacket.
“Did Heejae say he was on his way?”
“I heard someone from the secretariat called. Knowing his personality, he probably rented a police helicopter the moment he heard the dungeon had blown.”
“…If he arrives, give him my tag.”
“Yes.”
“Take care of him, Jieun.”
The man handed the clock to the woman. She hesitated, then accepted it.
“Wouldn’t it be better if you did it, teacher?”
“Me? No. I told you last time.”
“But still…”
“I know myself best. Even now, if someone from the future appeared, I’d kill him on the spot.”
“……”
“The me of the past would be the same.”
The man pulled the woman, who was standing awkwardly with the clock, into a tight embrace.
“I’m sorry for putting such a heavy burden on you, Jieun.”
“At this point, what does it matter.”
“Hey. Do you think I want to do this to you? No father wants to make his daughter do something like this.”
“…Daughter.”
“That’s right, you’re my daughter. Hong Jieun. What a beautiful name.”
“……”
Yoo Jieun.
Or perhaps Hong Jieun, gazed quietly at the man’s face. When she was too young to understand anything, lured by the promise that she’d never have to see her violent father again, she and her sister had eagerly followed this man.
So much had happened since then. There had been things so terrible she never wanted to remember them, and moments so unexpectedly joyful that laughter slipped out unbidden.
In place of her dead sister, she’d gained a cute but insufferable younger brother, and, though he sometimes exasperated her, a teacher she could mostly respect. Teacher. Mentor. Father.
Hong Jieun slowly raised her arms and hugged her father tightly.
“Thank you for everything, Father.”
The embrace, which had seemed as though it would last forever, was broken by screams from outside.
The man unfastened the sturdy watch from his wrist.
“Take this with you, too.”
“…Yes.”
“There’s one for Heejae, but… it’ll be more convenient for you to have one as well.”
“Yes.”
The man fastened the watch onto Hong Jieun’s wrist himself.
[User recognition in progress]
[Recognition complete]
[Hong Jieun]
“…When did you change the name again?”
“Director’s privilege.”
The man laughed heartily and picked up the spear he’d left leaning against the wall. For someone who had long reigned as one of Korea’s foremost hunters, his final stand was all too humble.
But what awaited him was a path stained with fire and blood, a path where more had died than he could ever have imagined.
There was nothing the man hadn’t foreseen.
He had expected to die here, and so it came to pass. He had expected none of the hunters who followed him to survive, and that, too, came true. He had prepared himself for all of it.
But there was one thing he had not foreseen.
“Kh…!”
Hong Jieun clutched her abdomen, now blackened with poison. Not keeping the watch in subspace during the battle had been a fatal mistake. She should have put it away during the fight.
But then again, she couldn’t have, not knowing when the conditions for activation might be met.
Still, dropping the watch in the middle of the fierce battle was a grave error. She remembered exactly where she’d dropped it. But…
“…Damn it.”
She’d been poisoned. In this state, going back would be pointless. She’d only die somewhere else. Besides, she had no idea where her brother, who was supposedly heading up to Seoul, was now.
Still.
[Hong Heejae]
Seeing that the biometric signal was connected, he was still alive.
As long as he was alive, that was enough. As long as he was alive.
“…Really. He’d never change his surname, though.”
Hong Jieun’s body trembled. She couldn’t go to the past like this, but the thought of the watch falling into the wrong hands was unbearable. If she couldn’t use it, she had to destroy it.
“Kh, khhh…”
But her body wouldn’t obey.
Hong Jieun gripped her father’s tag tightly in her hand.
I’m sorry, teacher. Father. It seems I can’t do it after all….
“…Ma’am!”
But when a familiar voice rang out through the acrid smoke, Hong Jieun nearly burst into tears. Even that annoying form of address was welcome now.
“Hey. Woo Heejae. Heejae.”
They were supposed to go together.
If she made it back safely, she’d planned to explain everything. She didn’t know much herself, but at least he’d have a chance to find out. That would be enough, she’d said to her father.
She tried to open her mouth to explain, but all that came out was bright red blood.
“If you’ll call me ‘noona’ again, just shut up….”
She’d given her brother their father’s tag. But she hadn’t given him the mana watch.
Hong Jieun died with her father’s watch on her wrist.
She figured she could be selfish enough to keep at least one memento of her father.
Whether her brother would find the watch or not, even Hong Jieun couldn’t know. It was a matter of luck.
Would he find it if he was lucky? Or would he find it if he was unlucky? Maybe someone else would get to it first and use it before her brother ever found it. If that happened, she’d feel sorry for her father, but…
Even though she knew it would be a struggle for him alone, Hong Jieun still hoped her brother would find the watch.
He was her brother, after all. If at least he could survive, that would be enough.
“Heejae.”
She knew her words would become a shackle, but Hong Jieun left her final message anyway.
“Live.”
Someday, there would be a day when they could meet again. By then, she would no longer be Hong Jieun.
But if that kid was still alive, she could die believing she’d won.