Chapter 62

39. Campaign (3)

Where should I start?

Explaining the situation to a mother who has lost her son.

In fact, I could just leave.

Ignoring it would be enough.

When will I see her again?

If there is an afterlife, we might meet, but the probability of that is slim.

The afterlife would be bustling with unprecedented guests.

But seeing the old woman left alone in the darkness, having to accept the fact that her only son is dead, and knowing that I, who witnessed his death up close, would not give her any explanation, weighed heavily on my heart.

There was still time before the armored vehicle arrived.

With a feeling of duty or something I couldn’t even name myself, I said to her,

"......The death of the congressman was heroic."

Park Sang-min’s mother looked like a strong-willed person.

Her clothes, though worn and faded, were still high-quality, and the jewelry she wore was not ordinary.

However, there was not a trace of dignity in her, which might be because her personality was too harsh to accept dignity.

"That fool couldn’t have died heroically."

The old woman glared at me with wide eyes.

"Did you kill him? Huh? Did you kill him, you bastard?"

She lunged to grab my collar.

I waved my hand to push her away.

"Watch your mouth."

"This is no place for backtalk! You lowborn scum! A bastard with no family name!"

"Your manners!"

Her attitude was so domineering that I couldn’t help but raise my voice.

"Before the war, you couldn’t even look me in the eye, you lowborn thing?!"

The old woman raised her hand to slap my face.

This was crossing the line.

There were other ways to subdue her, but to teach her a lesson, I pushed her back with my foot, making her roll on the ground.

"Aah!"

Some people need to feel pain to come to their senses.

This woman seemed to be one of them.

As she lay on the ground, her expensive clothes covered in dirt, and the pain spread through her body, she finally realized her situation and bowed her head.

"Why does everyone hate him? My son. Sang-min, our son Sang-min......"

For the first time, moisture appeared in the old woman’s eyes.

I hesitated for a moment.

Whether to tell the truth to this rude old woman or not.

"......"

The conclusion might have been decided from the beginning.

From the moment she told Park Sang-min to come back, and I heard it.

Perhaps it was a sense of duty.

Park Sang-min wouldn’t be able to come back, but I felt I should at least tell his mother what happened to him.

"......Let me explain in order. If you don’t believe me, you can go inside the parliament and see for yourself."

The story goes back to right after we left the old woman.

*“There was nothing we could do. Honestly, with the government fleeing and the country in chaos, what could the National Assembly do? Constitutionally, our role is to legislate and oversee the executive branch. But that oversight is only possible when the country is on a stable foundation. The president, the head of the executive branch, fled. All that was left were civil servants. With the heads of the executive branch gone, what could we do?”

I didn’t listen to Park Sang-min’s defense.

I understood that he had his reasons.

“Elections weren’t something we decided. I didn’t decide it. The higher-ups did.”

He asked me several questions, but I ignored them all because I didn’t want to engage in conversation.

The parliament was right in front of us.

Park Sang-min took out his phone and showed me a picture.

In the photo, several dirty and sad-looking children were lined up, and in the center, Park Sang-min was standing proudly, holding a boy’s shoulder and smiling.

Park Sang-min started talking while looking at the photo of himself.

“I know I’m not well-liked. It’s the fate of a politician. A job where you can’t help but be criticized. But I think it’s better than being a judge.”

“Born? You mean born?”

“No. What do you mean, born? Better. Not bus, but better!”

“Oh. I see.”

“This photo is of a private orphanage I sponsor.”

Park Sang-min looked at the photo with pride.

There were not only group photos but also scenes of the orphanage, which, though rundown, still had a sense of life, and photos of the children.

In each photo, Park Sang-min occupied the most important position, smiling politically, which was a point of interest in itself.

“I take pride in saving many children who lost their parents and were wandering. But if I’m not elected this time, I won’t have the means to take care of these children.”

Park Sang-min looked up at me with sad eyes.

“If I’m not elected, all these children will die.”

I said nothing.

I didn’t even give him a glance.

His intentions were so obvious that I had to manage my expression.

The parliament was now in sight.

The door, once the entrance for the most powerful and influential people in Korea, was wide open and decaying.

A few pigeons fluttered up, scattering feathers.

“......For the first time, I defied my mother.”

Park Sang-min said.

Unlike the previous conversation, I turned to look at him.

He smiled and looked at me.

“Can you believe it? A congressman, a man who has lived his whole life doing what his mother told him to do.”

He opened the door.

“I’m not going in.”

I said firmly.

“Can’t you at least pretend to go in? Your mother is watching.”

“......”

I entered the parliament.

It was my first time stepping into the National Assembly, but I felt no emotion or thought.

Only a common, smelly, dark, and chaotic ruin lay before me.

What caught my attention more was the marks on the floor.

“?”

I turned to look at Park Sang-min.

“Didn’t you say it was a capsule?”

“Yes, it’s a capsule. Whether by coincidence or malicious intent, it was right there in the center of the parliament.”

“Do you see these marks?”

He pointed to the floor.

On the corridor floor, there were marks, as if made by a sharp point, evenly spaced.

“What are these?”

Indeed, Park Sang-min had almost no experience.

I knew this.

He claimed to have won a proportional seat with his Hunter qualification, but in reality, he was a man with a questionable qualification, having never even been on a battlefield, let alone completed the training.

“There’s a type of small monster called a Spider. Similar to Earth’s spiders, but with only six legs.”

“I know that much. Isn’t it a typical type of stationary monster? Once it establishes a base, it’s harder to eliminate than any other stationary monster.”

“Why is it harder?”

“Well, that’s...”

“Because it creates a maze and lays eggs. More accurately, it creates minions.”

What Park Sang-min said was true.

The Spider type is one of the most difficult small monsters to deal with once it establishes a base.

It changes the terrain itself, like a spider web, and creates hundreds of minions—Spiderlings—that eliminate anyone who enters the maze.

“There are traces of these minions everywhere. It seems a monster appeared here besides the capsule.”

“But there’s no sign of terrain alteration?”

Park Sang-min looked around.

“Spider types turn the area around their base into a corrosive zone, making it their fortress, don’t they?”

“It must have appeared recently, mixed with the giant monsters.”

“......”

But Spider types only start producing minions after they establish a base.”

“......”

He seems to have studied hard.

This time, he was right.

Spider types, like queen ants, only start producing Spiderlings after they have perfectly established their territory.

The order of events has never been reversed, at least not in my experience on the battlefield.

Come to think of it, this Park Sang-min.

He’s smarter than I am.

He graduated from one of the top universities in Korea and completed his master’s degree in the United States.

I almost dismissed everything about him because of his ridiculous Hunter career.

“......Ha.”

Park Sang-min sat down on the floor.

The fear of being in a monster’s territory was one thing, but a more intense fatigue covered his face.

“Aren’t you going any further?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s stay for 10 minutes. That way, your mother will understand.”

A heavy silence enveloped us.

There was nothing to talk about.

We didn’t particularly like each other.

If we were teenagers, we might have had a spat and made up, but we were already old adults.

In the world of adults, there is no such thing as reconciliation.

Because we know the positions of the lands they have settled on are too different.

“Weren’t you a senior to Kim Dalram?”

Park Sang-min broke the long silence.

I nodded quietly.

“Kim Dalram was at least someone I could talk to.”

I looked at my watch.

Only 2 minutes had passed.

It felt like 10 minutes.

“U Min-hee was a bit strange. She talks in a way that makes you uncomfortable. I don’t know, it’s like... she’s not malicious, but her tone is just... it makes people uncomfortable.”

U Min-hee is like that.

Park Sang-min sighed deeply.

“......Like my mother.”

I looked at him.

This was the second time.

Coincidentally, both times I showed interest in him were when he mentioned his mother.

His mother didn’t seem to have a good personality.

She was the typical domineering and fussy lady.

I immediately thought of the image of a young female employee being made to kneel and being humiliated in various ways in a luxury store.

Park Sang-min laughed bitterly, looking into the distance.

“Well, if you think about it, we might be here because of my mother.”

“Didn’t your mother tell you not to come?”

“No. I mean, in the broader sense of life. It’s like inertia. I was pushed by the inertia created by my mother.”

“Inertia...”

“From the moment I came out of my mother’s womb, my life was set.”

Park Sang-min spread his hands and looked at his palms.

He looked at his palms carefully and then turned to me.

“Like palm lines.”

“......”

“Snacks, play, clothes, school, hobbies, friends, wife. Everything was decided by my mother. Even my job as a congressman was thanks to her.”

“You come from a good family, it seems.”

“Yes, that’s true. I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient for you.”

Suddenly, I became curious.

“What about your father?”

What kind of life did the husband of such a strong woman lead?

“He left to start a new life.”

Indeed.

“Who could put up with that personality? My wife couldn’t either and left. My younger brother also has a condition similar to autism. You’d be surprised. Under the brash Park Sang-min, there’s a shy and awkward brother.”

This man certainly has a good self-awareness.

He knows how others see and think of him.

But to have lived a life that hurts and uses people is, in a way, impressive.

Most incompetent people don’t even realize they are incompetent.

Anyway.

“10 minutes are up.”

Park Sang-min got up.

Strangely, I felt a sense of regret.

I found myself interested in the story of this man, who was only about five years older than me and had a completely different life journey.

Perhaps it was a fate-driven interest.

The story of his oppressive parents was a fantasy to someone like me, who had no parents.

“Do you want to go further inside?”

I also realized that this Park Sang-min was not a trivial congressman.

This man reads the flow well.

Beneath his arrogant, conceited, and selfish personality, he had sharp insight.

He quickly realized that I was not swayed by him as a congressman and approached me as a person, which was a quick and clever response.

As a result, I found myself stepping into the center of the political history, which was not part of my plan.

Several frames hung in the corridor leading to the parliament.

Constitutional amendments, gerrymandering, gymnasium elections.

The stains of political impotence, symbolized in modern art style, were worn out under the ruins without a roof.

“I still vividly remember the day I first entered the parliament.”

Park Sang-min said as we walked toward the parliament with a comfortable pace.

“Everything was amazing and new. I felt alive for the first time.”

His steps stopped.

His eyes were fixed on a round, grayish object standing boldly in the center of the podium.

“......Even if it’s on the track my mother laid out for me.”

In the center of the destroyed capital, a monster’s egg was laid.

“I like it here.”

Park Sang-min put his hand in his pocket.

Before he pulled his hand out, the familiar handle of metal and plastic in his hand was revealed.

A gun.

“......”

It was expected.

Click.

“Drop the gun on the ground.”

I was the first to aim my gun.

“I’ll give you 3 seconds.”