WeTried Translations

Translator: ZEROSUGAR

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◈ The Royal Sentinel has a Strange Newspaper

Chapter 5

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The Kingdom Times (2)

"Dad! Don't drink too much! And be back before lights-out!"

Mun Geum did not react to his daughter's call at all.

He simply shuffled off somewhere with the heavy, dragging steps of a zombie.

Having lost his entire fortune overnight, it seemed his grip on his own sanity had decided to see it off as well. Money and the mind were old friends that way, the kind who tend to arrive together and leave together.

Si-ah heaved a deep sigh.

"Honestly, why does he have to be like this..."

"What's that, little sis? You're so worried about Father that your heart is just too unsettled to bear? Can't be helped, then. Right. This oppa will go after him and bring him back when the time feels right."

"..."

With a breezy indifference to the way Si-ah's mouth was opening and closing in disbelief, Su-ho went after his father.

Not that there was anything to hide. For exactly this kind of moment, when his father might disappear like this, the man Mun Su-ho had spent the entire day without straying a single step from the vicinity of the city gate.

He remembered the articles in the Prophecy Gazette, naturally.

『Mun Geum-ssi of the South Gate Sentinel Clan, Fall Accident in the Waterway! Suspected Suicide!』

『Father Mun Geum, reported missing and yet to be found. Upon receiving the news of his disappearance, the grandfather's condition is worsening.』

According to the Prophecy Gazette, Mun Geum-ssi was scheduled to depart this world today and remain undiscovered even by tomorrow.

And the method for farming Subscription Points by triggering a Correction and Retraction on this future article was simple. Su-ho just had to follow his father around like a shadow.

Sure enough, Mun Geum walked for a long while before he began to linger in a place where few people passed.

The capital of this uncivilized kingdom was a canal city that put even Venice to shame, with waterways of every size spreading throughout the entire city like veins. The place where Mun Geum had come to a stop was one such canal.

A faint flicker of awareness returned to Mun Geum's face. It was not a particularly good sort of awareness. Jump? Don't jump. Jump or not, jump, don't jump...

"Hey, ahjussi! Out of the way!"

"Ugh!"

At that moment, a large figure came flying out of an alleyway and crashed right into Mun Geum. Mun Geum, who had already been standing at the very edge of the canal staring down at the water, had no chance whatsoever of recovering his balance, and so, splash.

"Bluh! Bluh, spff, pfft, bluh!"

"Oh man. Sorry about that, ahjussi!"

And with that, the large figure was gone in an instant.

Mun Geum had not even taken off his armor when he clocked out. The gatekeeper's armor, which served as much as a display of authority as it did for practical protection, was heavier than it looked.

So he splashed and flailed. But Mun Geum's thrashing was purely instinctive and not particularly desperate. Come to think of it, he had been standing right there a moment ago debating whether to go in. Hadn't he?

If anything, it almost felt like a blessing.

For people who have made up their minds to end things, what is missing is not just someone to reach out and hold them back, but also the absence of someone to simply push them over. This had been a bit clumsy, sure, but being shoved like this, maybe it was a lucky break after all.

"It hurts..."

Mun Geum stopped kicking. Water had gotten into his eyes, and whether he wanted to open them or keep them shut, he could not tell himself.

Splash!

It was at that exact moment that the sound of another body hitting the water came.

A clean dive.

Su-ho swam over efficiently and pulled his father out. Had the kicking been more violent, the rescuer would have been in danger too, but Mun Geum happened to be in a state where all the strength had drained completely from his body. That, as it turned out, was the lucky break that made the difference.

"Father. That was dangerous."

"Ugh, bluh... Cough, cough!"

"Good grief. What would you have done if a dutiful son hadn't happened to be passing by? And if you were going to jump anyway, you should have taken the armor off first. That thing is worth a fortune."

"Cough... Su-Su-ho?"

"Yes, Father. It's Su-ho."

Faced with his youngest son's usual unbothered calm and general oddness, Mun Geum found tears pricking at his eyes for reasons he could not quite explain.

"How did you know to be here..."

"Well. A dutiful son like me comes with a built-in sense for detecting when a parent is in danger."

For reference, Su-ho had not once in his life remembered his father's birthday or any other anniversary. Blaming it on being bullied as an illegitimate child would have been a stretch when the calendar in his head was, frankly, more or less a blank page.

But Su-ho's expression right now was serious.

"That's precisely what sets me apart from a wild child like Si-ah."

"...You're actually a year younger than Si-ah, you know, youngest..."

"Oh."

Even Su-ho had forgotten about that one.

"Did you know that?"

"Your mother told me, right before she passed..."

"My, my. The mouth really does get the loosest just before the end, doesn't it. Father, you absolutely cannot go around revealing secrets, all right? If you do, I die, you die, and Si-ah dies too. Now come on, get up. Hold onto me."

Mun Geum accepted the support and staggered to his feet.

But his legs, good heavens. A newborn goat's legs would surely have trembled less than this. The tips of his fingers had gone stark white.

Mun Geum had been frightened. He had simply grown so exhausted that he was tired of even being frightened, that was all.

Su-ho sat with his father and talked him through it for several hours.

"His sons died. Of course it got to him like this."

Mun Geum had originally had two more sons. The eldest, who used to give a bitter smile every time the illegitimate Su-ho addressed him blithely as "hyung-nim." The second son, who would scowl coldly and mutter something like "this idiot."

But both sons had died in the last war.

It was that loss that had laid Grandfather Mun Cheol flat on his sickbed, where he still had not risen. The relatives had been thrown into a quiet panic. And deep inside Si-ah's heart, a rhythm of grief had left a mark that would never fully fade.

For Mun Geum, as the head of the household, it was not simply a matter of his own grief crashing down on him. The pillars that were meant to hold up the family's future had collapsed overnight.

His last hope had been the Ursalite investment. If he could pull off a big windfall there, it would have bought them just enough time for Si-ah, who had been rushed into the role of heir, to grow a little more. And so...

『Ursalite Value Plummets by 90%!』

That, too, had fallen apart.

His wife had been lost long ago. His eldest and second son had died sudden, violent deaths. In the midst of all that, his own father, Su-ho's grandfather, had collapsed with illness. More than half the family's assets had evaporated.

It was a run of misfortune so relentless it had almost become an art form.

That was why Su-ho could find it in himself to understand, generously, why his father had lost his grip on sanity.

"Still, you should have thought of Si-ah."

When Mun Geum seemed to have more or less come back to himself, Su-ho quietly patted his father on the shoulder and said:

"From your perspective you've lost your sons, but from Si-ah's perspective she's losing her brothers and her father one after another. Is that fair to her?"

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry for everything..."

"What happened today will stay between us men."

"My son..."

Mun Geum was mortified to the point of feeling like he could die right then and there.

This boy had always seemed to just read his newspapers and pay no attention to the family at all, and yet the moment a genuine threat to someone's life had arrived, he had been the first one there to pull his father to safety.

Come to think of it, was this not clear and undeniable proof that his son had in fact been watching everyone around him with genuine affection all along?

However, Mun Geum-ssi's surge of emotion was rather premature in certain respects. Truthfully, on that particular point, the evidence was not quite conclusive.

"How's it going?"

Glance, glance.

Su-ho was patting his father on the shoulder with one hand while his two eyes were entirely occupied with scanning the newspaper spread out beneath him.

‘Has Father been moved enough to give up on jumping, do you think?’

Sure enough.

The Prophecy Gazette had begun making its corrections.

【Correction and Retraction!】

『Prophecy Gazette, October 16th, Front Page.』

『Regarding the report titled 'Father Mun Geum-ssi Found Missing, Location Unknown,' we offer our sincerest apologies to our subscribers.』

『Following further investigation, it has been confirmed that Father Mun Geum-ssi was safely rescued and returned home. We hereby issue the following correction to the erroneous report.』

The text on the broadsheet began to wriggle and shift.

【Your contribution aided in the issuance of a correction.】

【As a token of our gratitude, a complimentary gift will be delivered to you!】

【You saved the life of Mun Geum, a key source for the 'Family Edition': Subscription Points +80】

【You neutralised a threat that was about to befall all related blood relatives covered as sources: Subscription Points +30】

【Current Subscription Points: 170】

Su-ho gave a satisfied nod.

‘Glad I saved Father after all.’

‘Sincerity moves heaven. My filial devotion touched the skies, and that is precisely why fortune smiles upon me like this.’

More than anything, he had today a personal and rather pressing reason to earn Subscription Points by any means necessary, even if it meant moving quickly. An entirely personal reason.

His eyes moved to the advertisements column.

[Consumable] Exclusive Scoop, Ten Years Ahead, Preview Ticket, Single Use

(100 Points) (Limited sale) (No restock)

*Unbeatable deal! A product ordinarily priced at 1,000,000 Points, now available at this price?!

*This publication normally provides only daily articles. Today, and today only, you have a special opportunity to experience an "extra edition from ten years in the future."

*A one-time taste of the "Kingdom Edition," a tier far beyond even the Family Edition, will be granted to you. Sample the Prophecy Gazette's exceptional coverage for yourself!

*Limited-time product. Available for one day only. Enjoy this exclusive new-subscriber benefit that will never come around again!

A limited sale item. Priced at 100 points.

Explicitly noted as available for one day only!

"Now I can finally buy it."

Just imagining it made his chest swell.

A chance to peek at an exclusive scoop from ten years into the future? And a first-print limited edition, no less? Good heavens. Could anyone who held back on this still call themselves a newspaper devotee? The answer was no.

The look in Su-ho's eyes as he gazed at his father softened all on its own.

If his father had not attempted to jump today, what on earth would he have done to earn 100 points? He would have helplessly missed the limited first-print item, lost the chance for all eternity, and gone to his grave with a lifelong regret.

It was precisely because his father had gotten himself swept up in an accident, half-willingly, that Su-ho had been able to make up the Subscription Points in a hurry. If it were possible, Su-ho sincerely hoped that Mun Geum would go on being a generator of incidents and accidents for the foreseeable future.

And why stop at just his father? He earnestly wished for his sister, his aunt, his uncle, every single member of the household to get tangled up in as many incidents as possible. The more the better, because that was how Subscription Points multiplied.

"I've never said this before. I love you, Father. I'll be saying it more often from now on."

"My sooon..."

Mun Geum wept the tears of a middle-aged man.

There was truly no more devoted son in the world.

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