Chapter 192
Chapter 192
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 192
Chapter Title: Episode 63. Happy Happy Funeral
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"I'm going to hole up in my workshop for a while."
BM said.
Ha Saet-byeol gazed at him with unfocused eyes and giggled.
"Hee hee, why...?"
"Tae-baek died."
"Eh...?"
Ha Saet-byeol blinked in confusion, as if asking what he meant.
"Just keep that in mind. Don't come looking for me for a while. Tell Bell, too."
"Uh... um..."
Before Ha Saet-byeol could respond, the workshop door slammed shut.
The dazed woman peeked out the window, only for BM to draw the blinds.
"Huuuh..."
Left alone, Ha Saet-byeol scratched her head.
The underground labyrinth plunged into perfect darkness when the lights went out.
It hadn't been like that when the incubators and creation devices were scattered around. Even with the lights off, the glow from the solutions lit the place, so BM could sleep without it feeling too dark.
After creating Jeong Tae-baek, he'd cleared out the now-useless devices and incubators.
Even then, it was fine. Tae-baek himself was a source of light, so the workshop never felt dark.
But now that Jeong Tae-baek was gone,
the unlit workshop was overwhelmingly dark.
"......"
He couldn't see it, but he knew it was there. In the distant darkness. The playroom-like workshop still held the child's belongings, untouched despite his absence.
It wasn't my child anyway. It wasn't those two friends' child. So when I pulled myself together emotionally, I should have thrown out the books and toy blocks the kid played with.
But why couldn't I?
BM reached out and picked up the alphabet book Jeong Tae-baek had played with most.
Flipping to the first page, three crooked letters were scrawled there.
'Jeong Bong-man'
It was the first word Tae-baek had learned to write with Yoo Yeoreum.
'I'm your dad.'
'My name is Jeong Bong-man.'
BM had said that to the child emerging from the culture fluid in an S-rank dungeon's boss room. The puffy-eyed infant had squinted up at him and mimicked his words.
'Jeong Bong-man?'
It was a chimera.
And now the chimera was dead and gone.
But the child who had once been Jeong Tae-baek to him
had written down his "dad's" name.
Even though the child was dead, "those moments" when the child thought of him lingered there. That's why BM couldn't discard these things. He knew he had to get rid of them if he ever wanted to meet the real Tae-baek again. The fact that he couldn't meant these remnants were the lingering attachments in his heart.
Suddenly, his eyes fell on the wooden blocks the child hugged every night to sleep.
He reached out and grasped them.
Sharp teeth marks snagged his fingertips.
— You lunatic.
It was then. A voice spoke in his mind.
It was Kalravan, the great monster from the Otherworld Arandot, one of the chimera heads forming his body.
— If you're gonna mope like that, why'd you kill it?
— Human, why can't you think straight?
— You almost fucked up big time.
— That thing was just playing baby now, begging for milk and acting cute. But give it a little power, and it'd try to escape.
— And if it escaped? It'd blend into society and do whatever it wanted.
— Stuff its belly with theft. Butcher people to absorb their power.
— Who'd catch it? It could mimic the humans it ate. Change appearance and gender, make like 200 fake identities. How the hell do you track that?
— Then it'd use the essence of chimera engineering etched into its body to make new chimeras. Build an army and strut around like, ahem ahem~ Worship me~ that bullshit lol.
— So what would that make in the end? Huh?
......
— Look at this bastard dragging his feet...
— A second Gnosis!!
Gnosis.
The mad human-like chimera that had pushed the Otherworld Arandot to ruin.
At the same time, the previous owner of BM's 「Eye of Abracadabra (S-)」.
— Hey, eyeball.
— Speak up, you psycho bastard.
— ...Hm.
— What's with the hm? Just say it. Your old master did that shit, right?
— Yeah...
— Dangerous or not?
— Dangerous...
— Exactly. So good riddance. Jeong Bong-man! You did well!
— Lol yeah, you did good.
— Lmao ㅇㅈ.
The heads in his mind chattered on.
BM didn't respond.
He knew it, too.
All the reasons the child had to die were right there.
He knew it in his head.
In his head...
— Hey, heart!
— Yeah?
— You're such a pushover. No complaints? You almost got eaten by that little shit.
— Yeah...
— Complain to the bastard a little, you sap.
— Hey, why pick on the pained guy.
— Yeah...
Soon it grew even noisier than usual. So BM shut out the chimera voices.
He wanted to be alone in silence.
But staying quiet in the darkness made emptiness surge up. He'd told Yoo Ji-tae he had no intention of extreme measures, and that was sincere. Yet in this moment, BM found his living, breathing self so agonizing that he wanted to die.
Just for today.
BM thought that.
When the heart is wounded, the injury isn't visible. The pain lacks a visible wound, breeding anxiety. Why does it hurt when there's no reason it should?
So they inflict wounds on their own bodies, staring at them for peace of mind. Convincing themselves it's okay to hurt because they deserve it.
That was the psychology of self-harmers. And that's how BM felt now.
If I'm this tormented, he wanted confirmation of whatever tormented him right before his eyes.
What if that was his own dead corpse?
As those extreme thoughts brewed,
hours or days later,
noisy sounds started filtering in from outside.
Thud thud thud.
Rhythmic pounding, like smashing something.
He tried ignoring it by blocking his ears, but vibrations traveled through the floor, shaking his body.
That alien sensation disrupted his miserable time.
Endure it.
Hold on.
When irritation finally boiled over, BM flung open the workshop door and checked the underground labyrinth's "inner chamber."
There hung a massive photo of Tae-baek's face.
Black tape framed the corner like a funeral portrait. The weird part? Airborne special forces members were dancing in front of it.
Were they pranking?
Emotion surged.
"Hey, you—"
BM bellowed.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
It was the roar of the world's second-strongest recognized being.
The yell echoed through the chamber, scattering dust from the paradise fragments.
"Oh...? Nurse...?"
"Haha..."
He saw their startled, pale grins. Faces usually bright and cheerful now seemed to kick out his mental safeties.
BM charged over, snatched the portrait, and smashed it on the floor. The makeshift wooden frame splintered, shattering the labyrinth's decorative glass.
Crash!
The dancers froze awkwardly.
Their festive mood, drumming percussion with song and dance, sank.
BM's aura was that ferocious, shattering the pervasive joy from paradise's light.
"Bell Varian!"
BM shouted. The burly woman, captain of the airborne special forces, approached cautiously.
"What is this? Bell."
"Nurse... why are you so angry..."
"My child died, and you're dancing and frolicking in front of me?"
"......"
"Explain this! Make it make sense!"
BM's hands trembled with uncontained rage.
The calm nurse is furious...!
If it doesn't make sense, someone might die...!
As the forces tensed amid hazy thoughts,
"We were honoring the dead child..."
"You call dancing and playing honoring? You've all lost it. If I kill you all and dance on your corpses, is that honoring you? Huh?!"
Tense, Bell averted her eyes.
"Stop this now. Hurry!"
But no one moved.
As BM geared up to yell again, Bell Varian spoke in a mouse-like voice.
"Nurse, you're saying something strange..."
"What?"
"Is holing up in the dark crying the only way to honor?"
Behind sunglasses, the gaunt man's sharp gaze honed thin.
"So you're saying playing around is honoring? That's what you're telling me now?"
"Yes. The doctor told me..."
"What?"
"A good funeral... The kid was fake and had to die... It was inevitable..."
"And?"
"The coming and going of a life is natural order... So the child that had to die passing is right, even if sad, isn't it...?"
BM's mind grew complicated.
"The child left us... but we were together once... Like my own son... Not just me. Everyone thought of it as their child... The red-haired boy, different in looks but like our kids back home far away... We could smile... Even if just for three weeks..."
BM bit his lip.
"Look, Nurse. That's the child's face..."
At Bell Varian's gesture, BM glanced at the fallen portrait. A photo taken with the camera he'd handed to Gaeul for pictures.
"And this is the drum we made with the child..."
BM eyed the crude leather drum.
Right. As anger cleared, he recalled the African operatives spending those three weeks making folk drums with the kid and playing.
"And the dance we did was one the child learned from Saet-byeol..."
Bell Varian chuckled, flexed her muscles, and did a weird dance.
"We met briefly..., it's gone now... But to honor the child remembered until death, its final moments, that's what we're doing..."
"What kind of baseless nonsense is this?"
"Is the method the problem...? It's our way, from time with the child..."
The boiling anger ebbed.
Emotions sinking deep, endlessly.
Calming bit by bit.
"......Got it."
BM staggered to a corner of the chamber, leaned against the wall, and slumped.
Taking it as permission, the muscleheads resumed their weird dances, flexing.
Thud-dak-dak! Thud-dak-dak! The simple drum beats they couldn't handle complex rhythms for yet, from time with Tae-baek. Even the dance and drums were off-beat.
A total mess.
Watching, it was so absurd he chuckled.
They're lunatics.
Why'd I take these crazies seriously...
But as the mad dance continued,
amid the clumsy drums,
when the broken portrait was clumsily propped up,
BM couldn't hold back tears.
"Hee hee... Nurse is crying..."
"Are you...? Haha..."
Forgetting their fear, the operatives teased him as they approached. No strength to tell them off. Ha Saet-byeol approached with a grin.
"Hee hee... If you wanna die, just die..."
"What? Telling me to die?"
"Yeah... Die then..."
"Get lost, missy."
"But... if you don't wanna die, think of something to look forward to..."
"......"
"Expectations keep people alive..."
Who she'd heard it from, Ha Saet-byeol said that, then wiggled her hips into a dance.
Mulling it over, it strangely comforted.
Alone in the corner, BM thought and thought.
More than the child he'd briefly grown attached to and lost. The child who was the purpose of his survival. The two friends' child he couldn't trade for the world.
If he anticipated reuniting with that child...
Maybe he could live through today.
The next day.
BM cleared out all the child's belongings filling the workshop.