Fait Accompli
"Wow."
The exclamation slipped out of me before I could stop it. They had said the form simply changed from White to Black, but I hadn't expected the difference to be this dramatic.
'It did mention the forms were different, but... I never imagined it would be like this.'
The white coat had been dyed a deep black, with a black chest plate added beneath it. The jeans and white shoes had turned black as well, and the ring on my finger had become a crimson gauntlet. If the White form I had been wearing until a moment ago was built around everyday casual wear, then the Black form was, quite literally, made for battle.
"Oh. It suits you even better than I expected. I made the thing myself, but it's still impressive."
The old man was busy singing his own praises. The secretary beside him, meanwhile...
"..."
She had turned her head away and said nothing at all. The sight left me a little puzzled, but I didn't press her on it.
For now, I switched the form back to White.
"Thank you, Master. Honestly, I never even dreamed of getting an item like this..."
"What's that? Shall I take it back, then? I'll downgrade it for you."
"No, sir."
"Hmph. It was a pleasure for me too, getting to work with this old friend again after so long."
With that, the master gazed at Surtr's Heart, a wistful look on his face. As a craftsman, he was bound to covet an item like that. With it, he could forge equipment several times more powerful than anything he could make now.
'But that item belongs to Geumgang Guild.'
Unless he joined the guild, he could never use it. And the craftsman's pride of Seo Jincheol would never allow that.
Just then, the secretary, who had been standing quietly at his side, spoke up.
"Guildmaster Han Min-joon asked me to deliver a message. He says, 'Use it whenever you wish.'"
"Min-joon, that rascal?"
"Yes, sir."
At her words, something seemed to catch in the old man's throat, and the rims of his eyes went red.
"Tell him to come show his face sometime."
"I will."
With that brief reply, the master headed up ahead of us. I couldn't say exactly what he was feeling, but it was surely something complicated.
'It's only polite to wait down here while he collects himself...'
The problem was that it left the two of us alone together. And just as I had predicted, the moment the old man was gone, an awkward silence settled between us.
'This won't do.'
Thanks to Mom's order(?), I was going to be living side by side with this woman from now on. If things stayed this stifling, I would suffocate to death.
"Um... Miss Secretary?"
"..."
"Hello? Can you not hear me?"
"..."
No matter how many times I called, she didn't answer. So I gave up on conversation and turned Mom's words over in my head instead. She had said, quite clearly, 'Live together for a while, and those missing pieces of your memory should come back.'
'Is she saying there's something between the secretary and me?'
But no matter how I turned it over, nothing came. If it was something from childhood, I would never be able to recall it. By my reckoning, childhood was more than thirty years behind me.
'Ah... what do I do?'
My head was pounding. If I left things as they were, the awkward air would smother me, but every time I tried to think it through, the ache only got worse.
'Should I just ask her straight out?'
Of course, the odds were high that she wouldn't answer. The last time I had brought it up, she told me to figure it out on my own.
'Isn't there some other way?'
However long I racked my brain, no answer came. And when no answer would come, I quietly despaired.
'Why am I so weak when it comes to family...?'
I was strong, without question. But against family, I was endlessly soft. Something about that was deeply wrong, and knowing it changed nothing. If I had made the argument well, I could have refused Mom's unreasonable demand. But the moment I heard her voice, my brain simply gave up on thinking.
"Ha... Should I just pray to Mom...?"
"What was that you just said?"
Lost in thought, I had apparently let my muttering slip out loud. I shut my mouth at once. With no idea which part had escaped, opening it carelessly didn't seem wise.
"Didn't you just say something about praying to your mother?"
"Ah..."
Of all the things that could have slipped out, it had to be that. 'Fine. Maybe I should just be honest.' We were about to live under the same roof, and hiding it would have been stranger than saying it. So I asked her plainly.
"I was trying to ask whether something happened between you and me."
"What?"
Whether from shock at my words or something else, the secretary's face crumpled, and in the same breath, tears began to fall.
"Huh? Huh?"
Flustered, I just stood there, frozen and useless. I hadn't known a woman would cry over something I said. I might have been single my entire life, but even I knew that leaving her like this was not an option.
"W-wait, stop crying first!"
"Calm down. Calm down."
"I'm sorry, all right? It was my fault, so could you please stop crying?"
I threw every means at my disposal at the problem, and in the end, I managed to calm her tears.
"Hic... hic..."
"Haa..."
Watching her sniffle, I wiped the sweat from my brow. I had no idea what was going on, but that was something I could hear about starting now.
"Um... Miss Secretary?"
"..."
When I opened my mouth, she glared at me through her sniffles. Under that look, I corrected myself at once.
"Yu-jin?"
"...What."
When I called her by name, she answered curtly, no longer glaring. The fact that she answered at all meant step one was a success.
"Can you tell me why you were crying?"
"...Idiot."
"Huh?"
"Jin, you're an idiot."
Her words landed like a blow to the head. Seeing me still reeling, she spoke again.
"I even told you my name... Isn't it a bit much that you don't remember?"
At that, I threw every corner of my resting brain into the search, digging through my memory for the words An Yu-jin.
'It was thirty years ago. Come on, remember. Remember!'
I hypnotized myself, straining however I could to summon that name. Then, after about ten minutes, a figure finally crossed my mind.
"An Yu-jin of Yuseong Group?"
At my words, she gave a small nod. Yuseong Group was a world-class conglomerate, and at the same time a sponsor of Geumgang Guild.
"It's really you?"
"It's me..."
An Yu-jin and I had played together constantly as children, though that, too, was before she left for America.
'Now that I think about it, she does look similar.'
Back then she had worn glasses, and her hair hadn't been the blue it was now but a pure, deep black. Inside and out, the woman before me bore no resemblance to the girl she had been.
'I have lived more than thirty years. It isn't as if I remember everything.'
Perhaps because I had lived such a brutal life, my childhood memories had gone hazy. Even so, my memories of her had been kept safe in some quiet corner of my mind.
"You came back?"
"Yeah."
"You could have at least told me."
"I thought you'd remember the moment you heard my name."
Even if I had never regressed and had lived an ordinary life, it had already been more than ten years. Remembering at all would have been the real miracle.
"I'd rather decline a request that unreasonable."
"Still... I'm glad you remember me now, at least."
With those words, she gave a shy smile. For some reason, I turned my head away. This wasn't some Japanese shoujo manga, and yet the moment was unfolding far too picturesquely.
"So how did this cohabitation thing even come up?"
She was the youngest daughter of Yuseong Group. I couldn't imagine that stubborn old man ever approving of her living with someone. Which meant she had wanted this herself.
'What could she possibly be lacking, that she'd want to live with me...?'
While I was still wondering, she spoke softly.
"To make you remember me..."
"And?"
"I figured if I stayed by your side, I could make it a fait accompli..."
"Huh?"
My brain couldn't keep up. A fait accompli? I became intensely curious whether the woman standing in front of me understood what she had just said.
"Excuse me? Weren't you a chaebol heiress?"
"D-don't call me that!"
Whether or not she realized she had said something embarrassing, her face had flared scarlet.
"Don't say things like that again, even as a joke."
"It's not a joke..."
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
She had definitely muttered something at the end, but since I couldn't make it out, I decided not to dwell on it.
"Now that I've remembered you, there's no need for us to live together, right?"
"That's not happening."
The woman who had been sobbing moments ago answered with sudden gravity.
"You were literally just crying."
"We are living together. That part isn't changing."
She ignored my question and answered with her expression set firm. I asked a few more times, but she wouldn't budge, so I raised the white flag.
'Well, if Yu-jin is offering, it's not like I'd complain...'
Not that there were no complications. She was... my first love.
It was the kind of development you would find in a cheap drama, but I simply accepted it. Once our conversation had revealed who she really was, I went along with her and let her stay at my side.
And in trailing around after her, I learned one thing.
"Unbelievable."
She was a genius of absurd proportions. She was proving it at this very moment.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
"Like this?"
Murmuring to herself, she kept swinging her sword, while Poong-rim scrambled to work his spear, barely turning aside Yu-jin's attacks.
"This is going too far..."
Her genius had gone beyond the pale. If an ordinary talent learns one thing and understands a hundred, and a genius learns one and understands a thousand, then she learns one and understands a thousand and one. And that single extra move was the line between a genius and a monster.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
And she was, without exaggeration, a monster. I was neither a genius nor an ordinary talent. If anything, I was closer to a dull one, or perhaps a late bloomer.
Just then, the duel was decided.
"Victory is mine."
Yu-jin had held the advantage from start to finish, but level and experience could not be ignored, and in the end she lost.
"Ah..."
Flustered, Yu-jin stood frozen with her mouth hanging open. I walked over and clapped her on the shoulder.
"Good work."
"Haha. I got beaten."
Whether she was disappointed by the loss or not, Yu-jin smiled a bitter smile. I patted her shoulder again, telling her it was all right.
'It's about time I started moving.'
A month had passed since we returned to North Korea. Yu-jin seemed to have settled in by now, and other parts of the kingdom were beginning to stabilize as well.
'Maybe it's time to go claim that Hidden Piece.'
I set out to obtain the Hidden Piece Baek Hyuk had told me about.