Preparing for Delivery
Yoo Sena had been caught raising Bori, a cat she had secretly brought home behind Chairman Yoo Seung-chul's back. Even when ordered to send it away, she refused to give up on him.
It hadn't been long since the death of Choi Ha-neul—who was merely a concubine to Yoo Seung-chul, but Sena's biological mother—and the young girl desperately needed something to lean on.
And so, she kept Bori hidden, raising him in secret for two years.
One day, when Sena went to Bori's usual hiding spot, she found him foaming at the mouth, dying from poison fed to him by one of Chairman Yoo Seung-chul's servants.
Sena's explanation ended right there.
There was no long, drawn-out explanation.
It wasn't because she thought lightly of what happened back then. She was still genuinely sorrowful and angry.
That was precisely why she kept it brief.
Even now, more than ten years later, Sena did not want to recall those memories.
"So you were feeding him treats because he looked just like that Bori?"
"...Yeah."
Sena's trembling gaze drifted toward Bori.
"If it were really Bori, I would have recognized him. Bori had a little piece of his right ear missing... That's why I thought he was just a lookalike..."
Swoo also looked at Bori.
Bori's right ear was perfectly fine.
Its shape, angle, and even the fur growing on it were completely intact. If it had been injured once, there would have been some awkward scar or deformity, but compared to his left ear, there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.
"I see."
Bori still had his eyes squeezed shut, covering his ears with his fluffy paws.
Had he heard them, or had he not?
Judging by the atmosphere so far, Bori seemed to be doing a good job of keeping his ears covered, just as Sena had asked.
"So... whose commission did you two take to get here?"
"We got it from Neonic," Swoo replied. "A request to capture a cat that ate the wrong feed and learned human speech. We didn't meet the actual client; their chief of staff delivered the details instead."
"...So it's not just a simple request to catch a runaway cat. But at the same time, they aren't treating it as a matter of extreme gravity either."
Unlike her childhood self, the current Sena sought to grasp the situation first.
Though she was angry and resentful, she believed uncovering the truth of the matter took priority.
Swoo quite liked seeing this emotional human try to make a rational judgment.
After all, wasn't that composure the result of her worrying, agonizing, and suffering?
It was pleasant to watch, as if witnessing a glimpse of human potential.
However, that was Swoo's role as the contractor, not Sena's.
"They might actually be trying to make it look like a minor issue on purpose, just to show it's no big deal," Swoo pointed out.
"...Yeah, that's highly possible."
"So, what do you want to do, Sena?"
"What do you mean... what do I want to do?"
"Do you want to be with Bori?"
Sena blinked blankly.
Though she usually acted clumsy and foolish, Sena was still the head of an organization. She could easily grasp the underlying meaning behind Swoo's brief question.
If Sena said she wanted to be with him, Swoo intended to bring Bori to her.
"Why... why are you asking that? What are you going to do about the commission?"
"Wouldn't that depend on your answer?"
"That... you can't do that. It's too dangerous to just abandon it. You said it's a request from Neonic. Besides, an anomaly... an anomaly like this—"
"Not an anomaly. Bori. That's the name you gave him."
"...I'm the one who named him, so why are you the one—"
"Because you two were together, you shouldn't talk like that even more."
After a brief staring contest with Swoo, Sena let out a short sigh and nodded.
"...Sorry. I got a bit emotional."
"It's fine. I understand."
Normally, it would have sounded like a soulless, automatic response, but today, Swoo's words carried a deep sense of sincerity.
Does she really understand?
Has Swoo gone through something like this too?
Both Sena and Angela harbored the same question.
But they didn't ask. Swoo wasn't the type to give a straight answer anyway, and intuition told them that now was not the time to pry.
"Anyway, yes. If it's Bori... Neonic might have set up some kind of trap or tracking on him."
"There's no physical tailing or tracking in cyberspace," Swoo said. "There was one attempt, but Angela blocked it, so we're fine."
"Right, that's probably why you came here. Still, abandoning this commission is too risky."
"I never said I was going to abandon it."
"...What do you mean? When you asked what I wanted to do with Bori, didn't that imply you were willing to drop it? And you said it would depend on my answer."
"Completing the commission doesn't change. Only the direction we take does."
"...You mean you can complete the commission without handing Bori over?"
Swoo rolled her eyes slightly, calculating the odds, before nodding.
"Yep."
"How...?"
"Sena."
"...Yeah?"
"A commission, you see..."
Was she about to say something important?
Anyone else they might have ignored, but with Swoo opening her mouth with such a serious expression, they had no choice but to focus.
"...is considered complete as long as the client is satisfied and hands over the reward."
They had expected some profound revelation, but she had merely stated the obvious.
Sena glared at Swoo with a dumbfounded look, but Swoo continued, completely unfazed.
"This commission is no different. If we satisfy the client, we can keep Bori."
"But how on earth are you going to—"
"The information that Hugo Arcardo is preparing a rebellion, and that even though Zyrec knows about it, they can't easily deal with him because his faction holds a significant share of power within the company."
Sena's eyes widened to their limits.
She quickly scanned her surroundings, suddenly on guard in case anyone was listening.
"And the speculation that while Zyrec is thrown into chaos by a civil war, Lui Chen will seize the opportunity to expand its influence and shake Zyrec to its core."
The former was a certainty; the latter, a speculation.
However, now that Swoo had passed the information to Serena, Serena would undoubtedly relay it to headquarters exactly as Swoo intended.
Thus, the outcome Swoo described was practically set in stone.
"And the plan for Hugo's faction and Neonic to join hands and bring down Lui Chen once all of Lui Chen's attention and military forces are focused on Zyrec."
Information, speculation, and a plan.
Sena could no longer think straight. Even Angela, who had spent a relatively long time by Swoo's side, widened her eyes and carefully processed Swoo's words.
Swoo had declared she would destroy Lui Chen, but until now, her target had seemed to be Zyrec.
Yet, Swoo was still aiming for the downfall of Lui Chen.
The current state of Eden could be considered the most chaotic since the Abyss War. In an Eden where incidents and accidents erupted constantly, Swoo was actively exploiting the city's unpredictable, volatile situation.
Angela's trembling gaze turned toward Swoo.
Is that why she never fully explained her plans until now?
Since the tides of the era could shift at any moment, she might have refrained from speaking until the plan was absolutely certain.
If so, did this mean what Swoo just laid out was now a certainty?
Even the prediction that Neonic would join hands with Hugo to bring down Lui Chen...?
"The third part is a decision for Neonic to make. But if we just give them the information and speculation I mentioned, it'll be more than enough to let us keep Bori."
"...Are you, are you really trying to destroy Lui Chen?"
"I don't lie."
"...Then will Hugo Arcardo become the head of Lui Chen?"
"I told you before. The new owner of Lui Chen will be you, Sena."
With a figure like Hugo looming, and Zyrec and Neonic standing strong, could a nobody like her really sit at the pinnacle of Lui Chen?
Just thinking about it gave her a phantom stomach ulcer.
And yet, she couldn't bring herself to say she didn't want to do it.
She had felt and learned too much since Wolha became a subsidiary of Lui Chen. It was enough to rekindle the flames of ambition she thought had died out long ago.
That was why Sena did not dare utter a refusal.
Even if it was a hollow hope, she simply wanted to believe.
"...What do I need to do?"
"There's nothing for you to do. Just tell me what you want to do with Bori."
"But..." Swoo trailed off, her eyes blinking slowly.
She had felt a strange sense of dissonance in the current situation, and only now did she realize its source.
"Bori doesn't know he died. Even though he died foaming at the mouth right in front of you, he doesn't know."
"...Could it be that the memory of dying was so shocking and painful that he forgot it?"
"Was Bori a kitten when you first brought him home?"
"No. He was a bit smaller than he is now, but pretty similar."
"And his ear was already cut?"
"To be precise, it looked like it had been gouged out, as if gnawed on by a rat."
Swoo nodded.
Now she was certain.
Bori was no ordinary cat.
He had strayed far from ordinary the moment he learned human speech, but Bori had never been normal to begin with.
No, he was never allowed to be normal.
"That's where the identification tag was."
Angela gasped.
Sena, slow to catch on, tilted her head in confusion before suddenly covering her mouth as she recalled the rumors circulating within Lui Chen recently.
"...Ah."
An identification tag.
There was no need for further explanation. It meant exactly what it sounded like.
A marker used to identify and track something.
Normally, one would implant a nanochip for tracking, but for things that needed to be kept safe from hacking or hidden from sight, physical tags were attached by hand.
Then why did Bori have an identification tag?
There was no need to think deeply.
"Bori was a Kimera from the very beginning," Swoo murmured nonchalantly.
"I guess Lui Chen wasn't the only one researching Kimeras."
The biological brain remained an untouchable domain.
But if it were a brain constructed entirely by human hands from start to finish, how far could it go?
It seemed they had, at the very least, reached the stage of memory inheritance.