Retire 240
by Cristae240 Father and Daughter (2)
[Please take good care of my kids, Hong Seok-young.]
[The girl’s name is Hong Jieun. She might have introduced herself as Yoo Jieun, but you can ignore that. Even if she doesn’t seem that way, Jieun is actually quite shy.]
[The boy is Woo Heejae. He’ll probably insist on it, but if you casually call him Hong Heejae later, he’ll just let it slide. He can be a bit sly at times, but he’s a sensitive kid at heart.]
[By the time you read this, you probably already know what kind of children they are. And why they’re there.]
[What I—no, what you tried to do originally has failed. There were some successes, but the very first step was wrong.]
[I hope Jieun managed to handle what happened in Myeongdong safely. If not for that, I wouldn’t have wasted so much time with the Agency, and I wouldn’t have given them time to regroup.]
[For security reasons, I can’t write the details here. Jieun will explain everything you need to know. I’ve told her everything.]
[Heejae… By now, he’s probably extremely annoyed. That’s my fault for not explaining anything to him.]
[He doesn’t really like fighting. It’s not that he can’t do it—I made sure he could hold his own. Even if he says he hates it, he’s good at it when it comes down to it, so don’t go too easy on him. Jieun will probably get mad, saying she’s never gone easy on him.]
[But I couldn’t show a kid who’s already had a hard life the dissection of his own childhood. That’s why I deliberately kept him at a distance, but now that things have turned out this way, I regret not at least giving him a hint.]
[He gets irritable when there’s something he doesn’t know. Even if he acts prickly at first, cut him some slack. Imagine how bewildering it must be to suddenly be dragged to the past by his sister. Still, he’s a good kid.]
[Heejae. Don’t be too angry that Dad didn’t say anything. I did it all for you. I thought I’d have more time.]
[You finally went on vacation, but it’s a shame you couldn’t really enjoy it. Did you meet up with Jieun? Listen to your sister. Don’t be too hard on her—she was just following my instructions.]
[Still, I’m really sorry I didn’t get to see your face at the end.]
[Jieun. All I’ve ever done is make things hard for you. If I’d known not stopping you back then would lead you down such a rough path, I would have stopped you no matter what.]
[Of course, you’d probably tell me not to say things like that. That if it weren’t for your teacher, you’d have run off and died somewhere.]
[But as your guardian, I should have protected you. Not pushed you into danger.]
[Jieun. My good Jieun. I can’t give your sister back to you, but if you can forgive this teacher, could you look after those children… those poor kids?]
[Even to the end, I’m only leaving you with burdens.]
[But Jieun, you are always my proud daughter. Please forgive this foolish father.]
[Jieun, Heejae.]
[Dad has always loved you both.]
[And Hong Seok-young. I failed, but this was a chance I managed to create with great difficulty. A chance bought at the price of the world’s destruction. Don’t waste it.]
[Don’t be arrogant.]
[Give up the idea that you can save everyone.]
[You’re not such a great person.]
“Dad has always loved you both….”
Hong Seok-young read the letter in a low voice.
A letter? Could this really be called a letter? Isn’t it more like a will?
“After this, there’s a bit where he curses me… The rest, well.”
“……”
“……”
Hong Seok-young fell silent.
It was quiet. The faint sounds from outside barely kept the car from being submerged in complete silence.
But it was just as suffocating.
Unable to endure the silence, I finally spoke.
“…Hunter Yoo Jieun.”
I stopped, then corrected myself. There was no point in hiding it now. Not that I’d been consciously hiding it all this time, but…
“My sister.”
Maybe I just wanted to avoid facing it.
“…Do you think she knew everything?”
“That depends on what you mean by ‘everything.’”
“……”
Hong Seok-young, annoyingly, gave the textbook answer.
“Think about it however makes you comfortable.”
“However makes me comfortable?”
“Trying to guess the intentions of someone who’s gone only tires us out. In that case, it’s better to imagine whatever we want.”
“……”
“If you have complaints, tell her to come and argue with you.”
His words, which could have sounded brusque, instead brought me a strange sense of relief.
If it were the two people I knew, the moment I brought this up, they’d both burst into laughter with the same expression.
I could see it so clearly in my mind.
“So, my father was planning to send my sister and me to the past.”
“That’s how it looks to me.”
“But…”
My sister, telling me to take the sword.
My sister, telling me I must survive.
My sister, smiling at me even as she coughed up blood.
Sister.
Sister.
Sister.
“My sister is dead.”
“…I know.”
“I was the only survivor I found in Seoul.”
If I’d searched Seoul more thoroughly, maybe there would have been other survivors. But the situation didn’t allow for it, and even if I had found someone, there was nothing I could have done. They would have just sat and waited for death.
Thinking about it, I’m grateful I got to see my sister’s face at the end. Father never even got that.
My sister, staring at me with her eyes wide open until the very last moment.
“I poured so many potions into her, but I couldn’t save her. That woman, Lee Miseon, was so confident that as long as someone was still breathing, she could save them. She should be jailed for false advertising.”
Hong Seok-young nodded silently in agreement.
“I see.”
Truthfully, my sister’s wounds were deep, but not so bad that potions couldn’t heal them. The problem was something else.
“If it hadn’t been for the poison… If not for that, I could have saved her. Then she could have come here too, right?”
“……”
I let out a hollow laugh.
“But how could she not say a single word to me in that situation? What if I hadn’t found it? Just handing me a sword isn’t enough!!!”
I shouted in frustration, but the more I spoke, the more irritated I became.
What? I get irritable when I don’t know something?
Of course I do!
It’s annoying enough when it’s work-related, but when it’s about me and you don’t even tell me, just decide everything, how could I not be annoyed?
The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.
At the time, all I could think about was escaping from the monsters burning Seoul to the ground. I only started wondering how I’d managed to come to the past once things had settled down a bit. Even then, before talking to Hong Seok-young, I had no clues, and even after learning that some monsters had crossed over to the past…
You can only pretend to worry about something if you actually know anything about it. If you know nothing, what’s there to think about?
But it turns out my sister and father had been plotting to go to the past since long ago. How could I not be annoyed? They didn’t even ask what I wanted!
“…Heejae? Are you all right?”
I took a deep breath. Trying to guess the intentions of someone who’s gone only tires us out, huh?
Yeah. That’s true. Getting angry at the dead only leaves me frustrated.
But!
Still.
If they were planning to include me, they should have told me from the start! Don’t just go ahead and do it like it’s some surprise party for my birthday!!
No, I don’t even like surprise parties. The thought of people scheming about me behind my back—are they out of their minds?
Even though I hated those surprise parties so much, my father tried every year. I can still remember the look on gloomy high schooler Yoo Jieun’s pale face as she blew up balloons… It’s burned into my memory.
They did those surprise parties so often, they stopped being surprises. But since they kept trying, I just let it go.
Father and my sister were always like that. Nothing ever changed, not since I was a kid. They always said, “Do whatever you want, Heejae, we’ll let you do anything you like,” but what did it matter? In the end, they always did whatever they wanted! They had no idea how much trouble I went through cleaning up after them!!
Turning that mess of an Agency into a halfway decent government office was so much work. I should count myself lucky we never got audited.
…Wait. Now that I think about it, maybe the country looked the other way because they couldn’t touch Hong Seok-young? They could have made an issue of it anytime, but even after several hearings and press conferences, it never came up…
“……”
“What? What is it?”
I couldn’t grab the dead by the collar, so I glared at the living Hong Seok-young sitting next to me.
“I’m just suddenly annoyed.”
Hong Seok-young stared at my face, then glanced at the still-open window.
“Well, no one can know everything…”
“That’s not it.”
Damn it.
“In a way, that’s true, but this isn’t something you can just brush off. Something as impossible as going to the past actually happened, and you kept it a secret?!”
“…Hmm.”
“You don’t have anything to say for yourself!”
“Well… I’m the older one, so I must have had my reasons.”
“What reasons? To screw over your son?”
“Hey now. You shouldn’t talk to your father like that…”
“Father, my ass!”
I ground my teeth and shouted. Hong Seok-young gave an awkward laugh.
“Yes… I understand how you feel.”
“Are you hiding something from me?”
“Hm?”
“Is there anything you haven’t told me?”
“Uh…”
“If there is, say it now.”
“……”
Hong Seok-young’s eyes rolled around.
“Well, nothing comes to mind right now… but if I remember anything, I’ll tell you.”
“……”
“Hmm. Let’s see, this part looks like it was revised too?”
I glared at Hong Seok-young.
He finally raised the white flag.
“I said I’ll tell you if I remember, all right?”
“…Fine. Let’s say that’s true. What else was revised?”
When I looked at the mana watch’s window, I saw the lines Hong Seok-young hadn’t been able to read aloud.
[Don’t be arrogant.]
[Give up the idea that you can save everyone.]
[You’re not such a great person.]
I looked down, pretending not to notice.
He’d said it was a revised document. But for something supposedly edited later, it felt… as if it had been written at the very, very end.
As I scrolled through the document window, I found something unexpected.
[The Library of Mont-Saint-Michel]
It was something I never expected to find here.
And right below that, there was a name that definitely shouldn’t have appeared.
[Edited by Yoo Jieun]
“Jieun went in here too?”
“No… No, she didn’t. My sister mostly stuck to domestic dungeons rather than overseas ones. It’s not like she never went abroad, but if she’d gone into the Library, there’s no way I wouldn’t know.”
“What if she went secretly?”
“An overseas dungeon? Even you only went in at the request of the French government.”
I decided to check the contents first before making any judgments and scrolled down.
[■■■ ■■ ■■■■ ■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■■■]
[■■■■■■ ■ ■■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■]
[■■ ■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■]
“……”
There was nothing I could read.