Chapter 48

EP 9 - Jininsadaecheongmyeong (4)

When I woke up, the first thing I felt was the pressure of the bandage wrapped around my thigh. The second thing I felt was that it was night. The third thing I felt was that someone was holding my hand.

Someone was looking down at me. I could see eyes shining quietly in the dim world.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I called out to her with a hoarse voice.

"......Sister?"

In the dimly lit hospital room, I could see a pale face illuminated by the faint moonlight. She was sitting by the bed, staring at me blankly.

Looking into her cold, sunken eyes, I realized something.

How should I describe it? An instinct, a kind of instinct flashed through my mind. Perhaps this was a kind of superpower.

Seeing the moonlight reflected in her pitch-black eyes, I instinctively realized.

She knows.

* * *

It was a cold night. The sound of the boiler heater filled the hospital room. My arm, where the IV was inserted, felt a bit swollen and painful.

Yeo Doyeon asked hesitantly.

".....Terrorism, right?"

I closed my eyes without a word.

Silence was affirmation.

Yeo Doyeon's expression twisted nastily. She gripped my hand tightly.

"Why..., why did you do it?"

It took a very long time to answer.

Public welfare, morality, responsibility, justice, duty, righteous indignation, impulse.

These plausible words swirled in my head. Among them were several excuses that could deceive her.

However, I was not the kind of person who carried such grand beliefs in my head, nor was I strong enough to deceive her now, so I spoke with the purest intention.

"Because I had to."

Under the influence of painkillers and drugs, I answered her hesitantly.

"Someone... had to change this... shit."

I just didn't want to go crazy.

As my cursing excuse ended, Yeo Doyeon's expression twisted again, and she bowed her head.

She lay on my chest,

and I closed my eyes gently, recalling old memories. Why do people go crazy?

When you're fucked, you go crazy.

Unless you're a born psycho, a normal person goes crazy when they're fucked. That's how crazy people are born.

Suddenly, your family dies in a car accident, and everyone except you is dead.

Suddenly, a gate opens in the sky, and your beloved daughter and family are all dead.

Fucked people ultimately hate the world.

When you see a passerby, you want to swing a bottle at them, and when you see a functioning world, you want to run them over with a truck. That's how it is.

That's why I understood Cha Jaegeun.

He and I are fucked people.

And we struggle to avoid going crazy.

We focus our anger on the world. We set a clear target for revenge. We concentrate our resentment against the world into a single point.

In other words, we seek something to resent.

For Cha Jaegeun, it was the monsters.

He sought revenge on the monsters to avoid going crazy. He vented his inner frustration on the monsters.

He carried out mechanical revenge. He derived the optimal numbers, endured the minimum damage, and mechanically killed as many monsters as possible.

That was Cha Jaegeun's struggle.

He said that politics is a series of wars. I didn't seek power for its own sake but to achieve strategic goals.

He was right. Whether it's politics or war, it's all just a means. Biological experiments, strategy, politics, suicide—all these things fell under the category of revenge.

Ultimately, his life itself was an act of revenge.

He went crazy to avoid going crazy. And he gradually went crazy, committing crazy acts and eventually dying as a crazy person. When you seek revenge to avoid going crazy, you end up going crazy.

I was the same.

Alone in the world, sitting in a corner of the funeral parlor, trembling. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought of my parents' mangled flesh.

The 200,000 won disability allowance marked in my bank account. The red color. The uncomfortable wheelchair. The heavy crutches. The awkward prosthetic leg. The condescending looks from above. I just hated everything.

So, pretending to be normal, pretending not to have a mental illness, I was discharged neatly and prepared to go out with a kitchen knife in the early morning.

The target was the parents of the kid who ran out onto the road and was hit by a truck.

I felt like I would go crazy if I didn't vent this grudge, so I stepped out the front door.

And Yeo Doyeon caught me at the front door.

She had noticed that I was crazy and managed to stop me.

She kept me from going crazy. To avoid going crazy, you need to feel regret. Yeo Doyeon gave me that regret.

The more you have, the less you want to let go.

That's regret.

The attachment to what you still have.

We call those who lack this crazy.

At that moment,

Yeo Doyeon told me that I still had her.

At the same time, she put me in her hands.

At that moment, just like now,

she held my hand silently. She crouched down awkwardly.

And she cried endlessly.

"......"

5:00 AM. The dark hospital room.

She lay on me and cried.

I gently placed my hand on her back. Her slightly protruding shoulder blades were trembling. I gently stroked her hair.

It was a feeling that was hard to describe.

No words were exchanged, but many conversations took place. Perhaps this was a truly strange superpower.

I gently patted her back and listened to her persuasion for a long time.

Don't let go of what you have.

I don't want to let you go,

and you don't want to let me go, do you?

It would be a waste to end it like this.

She cried silently. The tears that slowly flowed down eventually soaked my chest.

In the small hospital room, where only the sound of the boiler could be heard, the occasional sound of Yeo Doyeon swallowing her sobs echoed.

"......"

When I held the kitchen knife, I dropped it and cried in her arms for a long time.

She gave me regret.

She made me think it would be a waste to end it like this.

The regret of having too much to lose.

People usually call this hope.

She said,

"......Don't go."

She gripped my hand tightly, so tightly that it turned white from lack of blood.

"......"

She still thinks I'm holding the kitchen knife.

She thinks I've gone crazy and am about to swing it.

I answered her with a hoarse voice.

"......Sister."

A thin voice escaped from my parched, twisted lips.

"......Do you remember when I first went to the martial law headquarters?"

My voice was so weak that I could only whisper to her.

"At that time, I told the vice minister, ...'pick an easy target.'"

Yeo Doyeon, who was trembling, stopped abruptly.

I continued to whisper with a distorted expression.

"......'Let's see what happens if we inject him with the stone.'"

I swallowed hard. My voice began to tremble slightly.

"Cha Jaegeun asked me if I wanted to conduct a biological experiment on me." Eventually.

"I told him I didn't want to do it."

A tear rolled down my cheek.

With each word, it felt like I was vomiting something deeply rooted inside.

"......But when I saw someone die, it didn't seem right. I was the one who told the vice minister about the superpowers and the one who suggested the biological experiments.

......I was scared of taking responsibility for the lives I took. I was scared, so I passed the blame. I pretended I didn't want to do it. I just... just...!

......I survived.

I was treated like a hero...

So, it didn't seem right."

I saw countless injustices over the past six months.

"......One in ten people died, and they didn't even build refugee camps because they didn't want to take in refugees. They were making entertainment shows with hunters to avoid being asked why the country was in such a mess. The media was censored."

They say that 1 million South Korean civilians died during the Korean War. I don't know the exact number, but it's clear that more people have died now than then.

"5 million, right? 5 million people died. We don't know how to close the gate. There are hundreds of thousands of civilians isolated in Seoul. And they're just playing with money in reconstruction projects."

"......"

"Is this a country?"

I laughed while stroking her back.

"But, I can't criticize those people."

"......"

"I'm the same."

Under the influence of the drugs, in a dazed state, I remember mumbling something.

"Trying to take a piece of the pie by controlling superhumans... siding with the winner between Cha Jaegeun and Yang Panseok... inciting and lying, f***ing..."

Yeo Doyeon thought I was crazy and held me.

But this time, I wasn't the one who was crazy.

"......The world is crazy."

The one who's crazy is the world.

"......Someone has to... do it."

Until dawn, we held each other and patted each other's backs.

*

"Representative Han Seungmoon is a symbol of the will with which we fought against the gate crisis."

"Thank you, but I feel really embarrassed."

The Jeju governor firmly shook my hand with a serious look.

The Seoul vice mayor, standing beside him, looked around the cameras filling the hospital room and said,

"Look, aren't these reporters representing the concerns of the people?"

"Please ignore the terrorists who talk about human evolution. We are not foolish enough to fall for such propaganda."

"I hope you recover soon."

As the reporters left, we were sitting in the hospital room. An awkward silence fell among the four politicians.

The news we had just filmed played on the TV.

[Representative Han Seungmoon regained consciousness at around 4:00 AM today. The next generation of senior members of the National Party visited Representative Han Seungmoon in a group. With the number of new party members joining the National Party surpassing 600,000 in just four days, the competition for the next party leadership is heating up—] "Are you feeling better, Representative Han?"

"Ah, yes......"

The Jeju governor, Seoul vice mayor, and political elder surrounded me with worried greetings.

It's understandable. The party leadership race is about to begin.

Of course, there's a struggle for power within the party.

1. The party leader, who represents the party.

2. The floor leader, who represents the party within the National Assembly.

3. The elected highest committee members chosen at the party convention.

4. The appointed highest committee members designated by the party leader.

5. The chair of the policy committee, who deliberates on policy directions.

6. The secretary-general, who manages the party's affairs.

7. The chief spokesperson, who represents the party.

These are just the main positions, and there are many other party positions (titles).

The chair of the National Convention, the chair of the Central Committee, the chief of staff to the party leader, the president of the central party support group, the director of the policy research institute, the chair of the advisory council, and the party affairs inspector. If you start listing them, there are countless.

The important thing is that the party leader will be elected by a vote at the party convention, but it's likely that the person I support will become the party leader.

That's why these elders are flattering me.

Of course, I could become the party leader, but then there would be no floor leader.

The floor leader is the party leader within the National Assembly.

And I am the only National Party member in the National Assembly.

So, I am the only one who can be the floor leader.

The floor leader is the second-in-command, and in terms of the importance of the job, it's no different from the party leader. Therefore, it's appropriate for me to be the floor leader.

Naturally, the party leader position will be vacant.

"......"

"......"

"......"

And these three would want to be the party leader.

It's not like I'm choosing a starting Pokémon; I'm not going to choose the party leader.

First, the Jeju governor. His constituency is a steel fortress, but he lacks national recognition. Recently, with all the conglomerates moving to Jeju, he has gained influence in the business world. And he's a water type.

Second, the Seoul vice mayor. He became a vice mayor after failing to be elected as a National Assembly member after serving as a district mayor three times. He doesn't have a constituency but has the support of the 10 million refugees in the capital region.

Third, the political elder. A walking modern history. He has a lot of recognition and a lot of enemies.

I spoke to them first.

"......Excuse me, but I don't think it's the right time to discuss party positions."

"......What do you mean by that?"

"I think I'm going to be arrested."

And six hours later.

[The prosecution has requested a search warrant for the Han Seungmoon Foundation, and the 'Han Seungmoon Special Investigation Law' has been passed in the National Assembly! Acting President Won Okbun claims that Representative Han Seungmoon is behind the recent terrorist attack—]

The dice have been thrown.