WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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Chapter 467: Final Chapter - Childhood's Beginning (5)

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After finishing his routine as Colonel Han Gyeoul in the more familiar world, Gyeoul woke from sleep in the outside world and prepared for an outing that would require resolve.

Anne suggested he go out in a suit.

"A comfortable look isn't bad, but a suit is social combat gear."

She helped Gyeoul get dressed. Not because he needed help, but because she wanted to. Gyeoul liked the feeling of leaving himself in her hands. Ahead of his reunion with the tyrant, his body had been stiffening around the knot in his chest, and now it felt as if warmth was loosening it.

Looking into Gyeoul's eyes, she tied his necktie in a neat knot. Then a sly playfulness touched her mouth, and she wrapped both hands around the tie like a leash and pulled him closer. Slowly, but provocatively. Gyeoul smiled awkwardly.

"Actually, this is what you wanted to try, wasn't it?"

"That's unfair. I only wanted to help you relax."

"Oh no... Then I suppose I should thank you."

"Only with words?"

Gyeoul kissed Anne. It was a light kiss, one that ended with only their lips touching. It really was good to have someone who could put his heart at ease in any situation.

When the lingering warmth faded, Anne stepped back, patted the tie she had been holding back into place, and looked Gyeoul up and down with satisfaction.

"Fantastic. It really suits you."

"Of course it does. The tailor was Bom."

In the literal sense, it could be called a work of God.

Anne spread her arms toward Gyeoul and demanded, "Help me too?"

She chose the kind of suit she had always worn as an investigator. A white shirt with a pitch-black blazer. She even wore pistol holsters under both arms. There would be no occasion to use them, but leaving them out felt strangely empty. Her belted coat was an ivory color with a striking contrast.

Wearing leather gloves and sunglasses, she jerked her chin toward the outside.

"Let's get going."

Hoo. Gyeoul let out a short breath and nodded.

Gaeul came out to see the two of them off. Gaeul wore an extremely complicated, troubled expression, but she did not change her decision not to meet Go Geon-cheol.

"Is there anything you want me to tell him, just in case?"

Even at Gyeoul's final question, Gaeul only shook her head.

"Come back safely."

Then she quietly bowed her head to Anne.

"Gibson. Please take good care of Gyeoul."

On the surface, it was gratitude toward someone accompanying him to a place where Gaeul could not. In truth, it held a deeper meaning. Sensing it, Anne bowed her head in return.

"When we come back, I hope Gaeul will call me Anne too."

"...I will."

For a brief moment, Gaeul showed a faint smile.

The helicopter they would ride was parked ten minutes from the safehouse. Even though Bom could handle the piloting, Anne insisted on taking the controls herself. Adapting to an unfamiliar model took her only a few seconds. Even the fear of flying she had suffered from for years was no longer much of a problem.

"I knew, of course, but actually doing it feels different."

That was her impression.

The aircraft took off and crossed the city, which remained gray even beneath the falling snow, heading for Hyeseong Group's headquarters. From the sky, the headquarters looked like a fortress whose weight pressed down on everything around it. It must have been the result of its owner's personality and taste reflected in full.

The helicopter Anne handled settled onto the rooftop landing pad in a clean, efficient descent. At the edge of the pad, a familiar person was waiting for Gyeoul's arrival.

Go Ah-young, who had been holding her clothes shut against the wind kicked up by the rotor, saw Gyeoul get out with Anne. She approached in slow, hesitant steps and offered an awkward greeting.

"It's been... a while."

She seemed glad to see him, but uncertain how to treat him. There was a little tension in her too. As one of the first collaborators Bom had brought in, she had already been told about the relationship between Gyeoul and Bom that had finally become clear.

Their last meeting had also been that awkward. Knowing how he had been doing did not lessen it. Nor did the treatment Bom had guaranteed her.

Gyeoul looked at her quietly, then nodded gently.

"Yes, it has been a while. Doctor Song Su-a... I don't need to call you that, do I?"

At his teasing words, Ayoung gave a bitter smile.

"...I wish you would forget that name. I had circumstances Father couldn't be allowed to find out about, and even without them, I didn't have the courage to face you with my real face at first."

The light joke eased the mood. It felt like meeting an old friend again.

"Then I'll call you Teacher, like before. President Go Ah-young feels too stiff."

Ayoung agreed.

"Yes. For now, that would be better."

Relieved that they had settled their relationship more easily than expected, she studied Gyeoul closely.

"Should I call this fortunate...? A lot of the shadow has left you. It's like you've become a different person."

"Personally, I think I became an adult."

"Became an adult, hm. That should be something to celebrate."

Ayoung looked at Gyeoul with fresh eyes. She had long felt that there was something special about him, but she had never imagined that special quality would become the trigger that made Bom bloom.

"By the way, who is this?"

Ayoung turned to Anne and tilted her head.

"She looks familiar somehow... Have we met somewhere?"

Her expression said she found it unexpected that someone of unclear identity would accompany them when they were about to meet her father. She must have thought Gyeoul would come alone. After all, even alone, he would have no trouble. It seemed Bom had not told her that much.

Thinking it over, having someone interfere in every small detail of how people formed relationships could create even greater awkwardness instead.

'The process of forming relationships must have value in itself too... Anyway, if she thinks Anne looks familiar, she must have stopped watching before Bom's modulation began.'

Otherwise, she would not have recognized Gyeoul, let alone Anne.

Even after the meetings disguised as psychological therapy had been suspended, Gyeoul believed she had watched him for some time. Pity was not an emotion that could be cut off in an instant. At the same time, Ayoung must have worried that her lie might have had some harmful effect on Gyeoul. Gyeoul understood Go Ah-young as a friend that way.

「Correct.」

Bom affirmed every guess flowing through Gyeoul's mind in a single word.

Looking back, there was no reason to hide Anne's identity from Ayoung. She shared the most important secret of all, the truth of Bom. Gyeoul introduced his lover to her.

"This is Joanna Gibson. The person who will become my wife."

"W-wife?"

Quite flustered, Ayoung rolled Anne's name around in her mouth a few times, then soon remembered who she was.

"If you're Joanna Gibson, then you're the FBI supervisor who was in your afterlife...?"

"So you do know."

"My goodness."

To Ayoung, who could not hide her surprise, Anne took off her sunglasses for a moment and held out her hand.

"I look forward to working with you. From now on, we'll have many occasions to help each other."

"..."

After a moment of silence, Ayoung accepted Anne's handshake along with the meaningful words.

"So this is the future I decided to accept. I look forward to working with you as well. As one person to another."

Since she already knew of Bom's existence and had been persuaded by Bom, she must have expected the appearance of virtual personalities who had gained minds and physical bodies. Anne was therefore a symbol, and the future Ayoung mentioned should be understood not as her own future, but as the future of this world. A new age she had to accept as one member of humanity.

To Gyeoul, Ayoung exchanging a handshake looked like an entrepreneur closing a contract. It was an unfamiliar side of her that she had never shown as a friend. Though she had grown up in misery, she was still the tyrant's daughter.

Ayoung's gaze returned to Gyeoul.

"We can put off any further conversation until later, right? There will be plenty of chances."

She took a deep breath.

"If you're ready, I'll guide you to where Father is."

For Gyeoul to take control of the two major groups, Hyeseong and Paradise, with Ayoung's cooperation was a means of minimizing intervention in humanity's free will.

'The identity verification procedure is practically part of the system that makes up Bom...'

Ayoung was Go Geon-cheol's only family. If she stayed silent, there would be no obstacle to Gyeoul replacing Go Geon-cheol. As for the close aides who knew the tyrant's madness, they could simply have Ayoung deal with them as the public successor. Or Gyeoul could play the tyrant, seething with pent-up rage.

In that situation, who else would raise an objection? The tyrant was lodged in Gyeoul's old body. The weakness that had vanished in an instant could be explained away by saying a new body had been cultured.

What Ayoung gained in return was the truth, and the right to raise her child as a mother.

But there was something he needed to confirm.

Gyeoul asked, "Teacher, do you have no desire at all to save your father?"

Ayoung paused, then asked back, "Other than winning Gaeul over... I heard there was no other way to save him. Did I understand that wrong?"

Gyeoul shook his head. Since Go Geon-cheol's desire to kill himself came from disappointment and anger toward himself, there was no other way to save him. With Bom's ability, his physical death could be delayed endlessly, but that would only drive him into a deeper pit of despair than the one he was in now.

But the core of Gyeoul's question was not whether a method existed.

"Regardless of whether there's a way, I'm asking because I wonder if this moment might become a regret for you. Love and hate sprout from affection. It must be rare for feelings between family to be pure hatred."

"..."

Ayoung's face colored with bitterness.

"I don't know... Thank you for the consideration. But even love and hate disappeared between Father and me a long time ago."

As she said this, she seemed dried out, like an old tree in a cold season.

"The father I knew, the father who loved me, might as well have died the day Mother's unfaithfulness was revealed. What remains now is something like the surplus left behind by the person who used to be my father. All the other parts died, and only the wound carved into him that night remained, breathing in the shape of a person."

She let out a white breath and briefly closed her eyes.

"For a very long time now, a life worse than death has been forcibly, forcibly prolonged. Because even letting him die was something that made me angry..."

Footnotes:

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