WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

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◈ The Little Prince in the Ossuary

Chapter 51

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#Past (4), After the Deal

Ah-young couldn't bring herself to open the door. Through it came the sounds of violence. Her father, Chairman Go Geon-cheol, was in a rage, tearing the place apart like he meant to kill someone.

She had to go in anyway. Even if she despised him -- even if he despised her -- she was the only one who could stop him. A deep breath. She pushed the door open with her whole body.

Chaos met her.

"You quack bastard! You dare deceive me?!"

The chairman swung a nameplate at his personal physician. Thwack, crack! Vicious sounds. The doctor, bent over and taking the blows across his back, scrambled wailing into a corner. One shoe had come off. Every step he took left a smear of blood, the floor being covered in broken glass.

But there was nowhere to run. The chairman's secretaries and bodyguards seized him and flung him back into the middle of it. It wasn't as if they enjoyed the work. Under a chairman whose distrust of people ran bone-deep, they were simply crushed under the weight of his power. Their eyes found Ah-young. Hoping she'd do something.

Few familiar faces. Another purge, by the look of it. She thought about her father's distrust, and the woman who had made him that way.

"You've arrived, President-nim."

As she drew closer, the chief secretary bowed.

"How long has this been going on?"

"About thirty minutes."

He was trembling. On the days the chairman flew into a rage, several people were invariably let go. It wasn't just a job they'd lose. Once branded by the chairman, a career was finished.

That was why the people around him came to Ah-young whenever something happened. She was the only one who could absorb the chairman's fury and come out the other side.

Crash! A vase shattered, and her fists clenched. Her whole body shrank.

I'm scared too.

The memories of violence she had watched growing up ran deep. She herself had almost never been the target. But those had been years no child's sensitivity could easily bear.

Fear -- the kind her reason couldn't touch -- burned through her nerves all the way to the core.

The doctor wailed, his words coming out garbled.

"I told you! The chairman's sexual dysfunction is a psychological problem! There is nothing physically wrong with you!"

The mother-of-pearl nameplate rose high. Rising anger given shape.

"Then why are you only telling me this now!"

Thwack!

"Information relevant to the deal!"

Thwack!

"Should be disclosed in advance! That is the principle!"

Thwack! Blood flew. The doctor, forehead split open, rolled backward, and only then noticed Ah-young. With the look of a man who'd found a lifeline, he crawled across the floor and grabbed hold of her legs.

"Please save me! Please save me! President-nim! President-nim!"

The chairman bore down on them, snorting. He looked different from before. An old rage housed in a new body, and it was changing him further with every passing day. Go Geon-cheol had grown so distorted that no trace remained of the boy he'd been before the deal. Could what lived inside a person really do that much to the outside? He was a completely different person now.

Ah-young finally forced herself to move. She stepped between the chairman and the doctor, bowed her head, and let her hair fall forward to cover her face as much as it could.

"Stop."

"Get out of the way! Move it!"

He lurched left, then right, then tried to shove her aside by force. She barely held on. You little bitch! A sharp blow knocked her aside.

Sudden silence.

With burning eyes, the chairman stared at his own hand. The hand that had struck his daughter.

"This isn't right."

Almost to himself. Then a long silence. He didn't move, like he'd turned to stone. Even his ragged breathing quickly stilled.

Finally, his gaze settled on Ah-young. She didn't meet it. Her face, which looked like her mother's, was her original sin. Even without looking, she could feel the torrent of love and hate pouring toward her. A contradiction that could neither hate all the way nor love all the way.

"That's not why I started over."

Who was he saying that to? After another long silence, he spoke directly to her.

"Step aside."

This time she did. The doctor scrambled desperately. But before he could grab hold of Ah-young, the chairman reached him first. He seized him by the collar and hauled him up. The personal physician couldn't even manage a proper struggle.

"Don't think you can make a fool of me and walk away clean. I give what I get and get what I give. Find a solution. Come back with a way to fix this."

Not an idle threat, not by a long shot. The connections he had spread across business and politics -- what he called his 'means of harmonious business cooperation' -- were capable of burying a person alive. Socially. Entirely.

Knowing this, the personal physician nodded frantically.

"I understand! I will do my very best! Please trust me!"

"Good."

The chairman released him.

"Everyone out. Go Ah-young stays."

Why? She'd allowed herself a moment of relief that it was over.

The attendants filed out in perfect unison. Not a second's hesitation in carrying out the chairman's orders.

Alone now, the chairman spoke with a quietness unlike anything before.

"I was going to call for you anyway. You've saved me the trouble."

"...What is it?"

When she asked, the chairman bared his teeth. A boy's smile on that changed face.

"Prepare for a divorce."

The words hit like a wall. Go Geon-cheol's bluntness caught even the daughter who knew him best off guard. After a moment, she managed to speak.

"Why... why? Why so suddenly..."

"Do you have to ask?"

Her young father curled his lip.

"That man did not uphold the principle of good faith and sincerity. A married man, daring to play around with another woman? He has to be punished."

The principle of good faith and sincerity. Ah-young shivered. That phrase had once been a kind of incantation her father hurled at her mother like a curse.

"Why now?"

She swallowed the words, then let them come out again like a moan.

"Why are you doing this now. You knew from early on that he had another woman, didn't you? You were deliberately looking the other way."

"That's right. I was pretending not to know."

The chairman bared his savage fury again.

"Because to grind that bastard completely into the ground, I needed time to prepare."

Prepare? She grasped it immediately.

"The management rights of Paradise Group..."

Her husband was the heir to Paradise Group. He held a significant stake. A divorce suit with grounds on his side, and the asset division that would follow. Ah-young shook her head.

"That couldn't possibly be feasible."

"I made it feasible. You think the time was needed for nothing?"

Go Geon-cheol's sardonic reply. The room tilted slightly. Without thinking, she said something she shouldn't have.

"Don't take a father away from my daughter. I've been enduring it too. At the very least, my child should get to be happy... she has to. How lonely I have been..."

"What?"

He cut her off. She realized her mistake and squeezed her eyes shut.

"You... don't tell me... you've been missing that woman?"

Nothing like the blazing fury from before. Terrifyingly cold. His hand shot out like a reflex -- reaching, but not quite touching her, giving one thin, trembling spasm instead.

"That was a fair contract."

The words came out saturated with something deep and long-held. The chairman roared.

"I paid with my life! I was going to buy that woman's life! It was a fair contract for both of us! No one can blame me! No one should take her side! You mustn't miss her! Especially you -- you of all people! If you are truly the child of me, Go Geon-cheol, then you must not!"

"I wasn't missing her. I was just lonely."

"Don't try to deceive me!"

Ah-young opened her eyes. As expected. Always the same. Distrust in the shape of a human being, staring her down. On this matter, her father had never once believed her. Not once. He muttered in a voice thick with contempt.

"Getting fooled once is enough. Honestly, with half that blood mixed in..."

"..."

The chairman turned away.

"At least for today, don't appear before me again."

Ah-young bowed her head. Hitting this wall, every time. It hurt. She'd hit it so many times, she'd thought there was nothing left in her to break.

She let out a sigh she'd long since learned by heart.

#Journal, Page 82, Camp Roberts

An operation ends. An officer's duties don't.

After returning from Atascadero, I was asked to submit a combat report.

"They're using our report to write the Trickster combat manual. Write it in as much detail as possible. Why you moved the way you did at each phase, what your reasoning was at each call, what the Trickster's characteristics were... don't leave out anything, no matter how minor."

Jeffrey's explanation. The operation had been evaluated well on multiple fronts, apparently -- thanks to neutralizing a special mutant with no prior intelligence and zero casualties. Other units, he said, had suffered considerable chaos and losses.

During this operation, every member of the platoon had worn a combat camera. Mounted to the helmet, it recorded or transmitted exactly what the soldier saw. As gathering intelligence on mutants grew more pressing, the United States had been expanding combat camera distribution across its units.

Jeffrey and I went over the recorded footage again and again. A full platoon's worth of material. Reviewing it carefully took no small amount of time.

Writing the report was originally Jeffrey's role -- he had been the commanding officer, after all. But headquarters seemed to have decided my perspective was the more valuable one. It was the kind of thing that could easily sting, but Jeffrey just nodded and said it made sense. Then he added:

"If things go well, you might get another medal."

I asked if that was really likely, and he laughed.

"With evidence this clear?"

He pointed to the screen still playing behind him.

"Don't be modest. Set your sights on Audie Murphy. You could pull it off."

The name Audie Murphy had come up before. After the Silver Star ceremony, if I remembered right. When I said I didn't know who that was, Jeffrey seemed mildly surprised -- as if it were strange that I didn't -- then worked it out on his own. He must have only just remembered my background.

My expression must have shifted, because he rushed to explain himself.

"Who would look at you these days and think you came from a refugee camp? Forgetting something like that is perfectly normal. For someone like me, anyway."

I wasn't so sure about that.

Anyway, I got the explanation. Audie Murphy was America's most legendary war hero. He'd served in the Second World War and in just two years received twenty-seven medals from three different countries.

Being compared to someone like that was its own kind of pressure.

Still, it was good to be appreciated. Right now, I had people I needed to protect.

The report took considerable time to write.

What I'd noticed during the second day of the search went into the closing section as well. Hypotheses about the mutants reproducing and the new abilities they might be passing on. Nothing more than my own speculation, but I thought the likelihood was high.

I could only hope this wasn't a sign of something worse to come.

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