Chapter 87
Chapter 87
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 87
Chapter Title: Frontline (5)
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“The chances of survival… are extremely slim.”
“How slim exactly?”
“To be honest, doctor, it's close to zero percent.”
Legend and Frontline's father, Tremor, nodded as he heard the doctor's despairing verdict.
A sickly sweet scent of grape wine wafted from his breath.
He and his wife had shared a drink beforehand, before their son and daughter arrived.
Somehow, a day meant for toasting their returning children and celebrating Christmas together as a family had turned into this.
Even as the alcohol clouded his mind and stirred his emotions, Tremor kept his face impassive.
He could remain so composed in a situation like this because he always had to occupy a position demanding cool rationality.
“Ah, allow me to guide you to the central operating room.”
“No need. I know the way.”
He wanted to be alone.
In front of others, he couldn't even control his own expressions.
No one in the world would demand rationality from a father whose child had suffered such a calamity, but he'd lived too long as both patriarch and CEO to give in now.
If the weight of duty and position made it impossible to collapse even when he felt like he might crumple at any moment—was that a blessing or a curse?
Shouldering the burdens of family head and company president, Tremor took heavy steps forward.
‘Extremely slim.’
It meant none.
A miracle aside, it meant he would never see his son again.
He walked toward the central operating room, silently studying the building map while trying to melt that agony inside him.
The sound of his shoes striking the floor echoed through the silent dawn hospital.
“...This won't be easy.”
Tremor was on the older side to be the father of a child who'd just graduated high school.
His twenties lost to work, he'd had kids in his mid-thirties.
Over fifty-plus years of life, he'd bid farewell to so many people.
His own parents included—acquaintances, friends who'd left too soon, company colleagues.
These days, funerals came around three times a month.
Partly because his position as CEO gave him wide connections, of course.
Now, when someone passed, he'd mutter they'd had their time and don the mourning clothes.
But the death of his own child was something he'd never imagined.
He'd never once considered his child going before him.
‘No. He's still alive.’
He knew he shouldn't abandon hope, yet the worst-case scenario crept in unbidden.
That was adulthood.
Having learned that clinging to hope brought torment, preparing for the worst made life easier.
Knowing the world wasn't all beauty, he refused to pin everything on hope.
‘It'll be okay.’
You know that's impossible.
Reason and emotion waged a fierce debate in his alcohol-fogged mind, feeling like it was splitting his skull open. Tremor grimaced.
A severe injury among severe injuries, with his right side nearly pulverized.
Even with scant medical knowledge, he understood cardiac arrest, crushed fractures, and unconsciousness spelled doom.
Even if he survived, could it really be called survival?
Each step grew unbearably heavier.
To Tremor, this moment felt like a dream.
A nightmare he desperately wished to wake from, but one that refused to end. A viciously unrelenting one.
“─────That's why! If it weren't for you─────!!”
A piercing scream cut through his hazy, drunken mind.
Someone's raw fury lashed his skin.
A familiar voice he hadn't heard in ages.
Masking his expression, Tremor headed toward the source.
“Why did you call him─────!!”
His daughter, yanking someone's hair while screaming.
“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”
A child simply enduring the violence, repeating apologies.
He recognized her at a glance.
She looked exactly like the original model his son had once shown him for one of his works.
“Oh, Seon─────!!”
And his wife, wedged in between, trying to stop their daughter's violence.
The other girl's parents hadn't arrived yet?
‘Hoo.’
His heart already in turmoil, and this was what he walked into at his son's operating room.
Even an iron-willed CEO, the unyielding pillar of a family—even he couldn't help but crack.
Suppressing his anger tightly, Tremor approached them.
“Frontline.”
“...Dad.”
Calling out to the daughter who'd suddenly packed a bag and fled to Europe because she couldn't contain her emotions.
She looked healthy enough—no visible problems.
“Stop it. It's not that child's fault.”
“...Not her fault?”
The flames roared higher.
Flames that had finally found fuel, now confused by the order not to burn.
“If it weren't for her, Seol wouldn't be like this!”
Flames licked her voice, her breath.
Screaming where to unleash this rage if not here.
If only it were familial love, but those eyes burned with something else entirely.
The trembling, nameless girl repeated apologies like a broken record player.
“I'm sor───── Ugh?!”
Despite the order to stop, she grabbed the hair again.
The violence escalated.
Tremor's sigh deepened.
A nightmare. A truly, viciously unrelenting nightmare.
He had to move. Had to intervene. But how? Pry them apart by force?
What would've taken seconds normally dragged on.
Even a father was human.
Having drunk too much in joy at his family reuniting after so long, pushing through the rising buzz, trembling at the fear of his son's impending death—making a swift, precise judgment then would make him a machine.
“Seon, enough now───── Kyaa?!”
His wife, trying to halt what was less a fight between girls than his daughter's one-sided assault, suddenly tumbled after catching an arm swung by his daughter.
It wasn't intentional.
A pure accident, born of coincidence.
Even Frontline, flailing punches in her heat-of-the-moment frenzy, froze at the suddenness.
“M-Mom. I didn't mean to─────.”
But that, in turn, became Tremor's trigger.
Ears ringing from the women's piercing shrieks, heart ready to burst.
The crisis, terror, dread that his son might die.
And more primally, rage boiling at the sight of his wife on the floor.
And ultimately, the alcohol numbing his reason, unable to contain all those emotions─────
“Kyaa?!”
“Honey!!”
─────Led to the worst possible conclusion.
If he could turn back time, the most hellish Christmas where he'd give anything to redo it.
It was a shocking story.
Even now, Father was crushing his left hand with his right as if it were his mortal enemy.
“What are you doing?”
I hurriedly grabbed and pulled his hands apart at the sight of his right nails digging into the back of his left hand.
Only then did I notice the scars covering the back of his left hand.
Scars shaped like nails, etched over years.
I gently stroked that hand.
“Enough.”
But Father immediately pulled his hand away.
As if he didn't deserve such comfort.
“That's the story of that day. Because of my foolish actions, Frontline shut me out, cut off all contact, and went to Europe.”
“...Didn't you try reaching out?”
“As if I didn't. I tried over and over. Went to her agency, the stadiums. Emails and calls beyond counting.”
But everything fell through.
The agency refused to even pass messages, no matter how much he insisted he was her parent or brought proof, because she didn't want contact.
Emails and calls got perfunctory acknowledgments at best—no way to know if they reached her.
He'd gone to matches, but Frontline focused on the game with terrifying intensity.
Headset on during play, earbuds in even entering and leaving to block out the world.
Even holding up signs to communicate—she never glanced at the crowd, and likely had words with organizers, as provocative signs never hit the jumbotron.
Instead, security chased him out for inexplicable reasons.
“What about through the news?”
“...I didn't want to disrupt Frontline's career or daily life just for my own satisfaction.”
The moment such a story hit the news, like it or not, Frontline would face scandals.
And making a fuss for a family apology? Dubious if media would even touch it.
Frontline was an adult then; who she met or spoke to was her right, her choice.
“So around her fourth year, I gave up. In a way, apologizing or reconciling might just be my self-indulgence.”
Did the pro gamer hailed as emperor, riding the peak career with world's top popularity, need a father she despised seeing?
Tremor's answer was no.
All he could do was watch over her life from afar, cheering silently.
Heartbreaking, but what choice did he have?
It was all karma from his worst actions, undone by mere drunkenness.
Father bowed his head.
“...Why keep it secret from me?”
“We're this far now—what's left to hide? I was ashamed. Ashamed to recount what I'd done.”
Had Father ever seemed this small?
Watching him hang his head, unable to meet my eyes, wasn't pleasant.
I glanced around the living room.
Mother listening quietly, Father with head down, and me.
One person missing.
“So you're just going to leave it like this? Now that I've woken up. Keep this relationship as is?”
“Of course not.”
The reply came astonishingly fast.
And with surprising force.
“The reason I hadn't tried contacting her since was I had nothing to say.”
Nothing to tell a daughter who didn't want apologies.
So he'd respected her, stepped back.
But now, he had news: me.
Had to tell his closed-hearted daughter I'd woken up.
He'd tried since I revived, but no luck.
Impossible to reach her in Europe.
Even detailed explanations with full proof—Landrox wouldn't budge.
“I told you all this today because I have to pass this on to you soon anyway.”
“Why?”
“Highwatch—the league Frontline plays in—its world tournament is coming up soon. In Korea.”
Landrox.
The team boasting world's highest viewership where Frontline plays—Europe's Highwatch scene had them in an iron grip.
Never caught on camera, security chases—because Landrox's influence in Europe was overwhelming.
Highwatch organizers wouldn't risk upsetting the top team, its star player, the sole female pro with stunning looks: Frontline.
“But Korea's different.”
A small country where three hours took you coast to coast.
Tiny landmass, especially its tight-knit game industry.
The company under Tremor had quietly sponsored Highwatch's Korean branch for seven years.
Here, beyond Landrox or HQ pressure, he could achieve his goal free of interference.
“Legend.”
Tremor's thick hand roughly ruffled Legend's hair.
“I need your help.”
Loving surprises was in the Jeon men's blood.
Like when Tremor once engraved a whole building with his wife's name for her.
Or Legend quietly crafting "Myth" over three years without a hint for her.
“Anything.”
Dad was still Dad.
This was a thousand—no, ten thousand times better than his downcast gloom.
And so, the operation to reclaim the lost family member began.