Chapter 48

When I woke up, the first thing I felt was the pressure of the bandage wrapped around my thigh.

The second thing I noticed was that it was nighttime.

The third—

Someone was holding my hand.

Someone was looking down at me.

In the hazy darkness, I saw a pair of quietly shining eyes.

As my vision adjusted to the dim light, I croaked out a hoarse voice.

“…Noona?”

The dim hospital room.

In the faint moonlight, I saw her cold, expressionless face. She was sitting at my bedside, staring blankly at me.

Looking into those darkened eyes, I realized something.

Something primal. Something instinctive.

It wasn’t just a suspicion—it was a certainty that gripped me like a sixth sense.

She knew.

—

The night was cold.

The hum of the heater was the only sound filling the hospital room.

The IV needle in my arm throbbed slightly, the vein swollen.

Yeo Do-Yeon hesitated before asking,

“…That wasn’t terrorism, was it?”

I closed my eyes without responding.

Silence was my answer.

Her face twisted into something fierce. She gripped my hand tightly.

“Why… did you do it?”

It took me a long time to answer.

Public good. Morality. Responsibility. Justice. Duty. Righteous anger. Impulse.

Grand words circled in my mind.

Among them, there were a few convincing enough that I could use them to deceive her.

But I wasn’t the kind of person who lived by such noble ideals.

And I wasn’t strong enough to lie to her now.

So I gave her the purest, most honest truth.

“Because someone has to.”

Still groggy from painkillers and medication, I slowly, carefully explained.

“This… fucked-up world… Someone has to change it…”

I just didn’t want to lose my mind.

As my flimsy excuse, laced with a bitter curse, came to an end, Yeo Do-Yeon’s face contorted further.

She lowered her head.

Then, she collapsed onto my chest.

I slowly closed my eyes and let old memories surface.

Why do people go insane?

When everything falls apart, they break.

Unless you’re born a psychopath, a normal person will go mad when their world crumbles. That’s how madmen are made.

Like when a car accident suddenly wipes out your entire family, leaving only you behind.

Like when a Gate opens out of nowhere, and the daughter you cherished, your whole family, is slaughtered.

People who are ruined—they end up hating the world.

They see ordinary people walking by and want to smash a soju bottle over their heads.

They see life going on as if nothing happened, and they want to crash a truck into it.

That’s why I understood Cha Jae-Kyun.

He and I—

We were the ones who had been ruined.

And we fought desperately not to lose our minds.

We directed our rage at something tangible.

We found a clear enemy to blame.

We gathered all of our resentment and focused it into a single point.

We needed something—someone—to blame.

For Cha Jae-Kyun, that was the monsters.

To avoid losing his mind, he waged war against them.

He poured all his grief and rage into exterminating them.

He carried out systematic vengeance. He calculated the best numbers, accepted the least casualties, and killed the most monsters with cold, mechanical precision.

That was his struggle to stay sane.

He once told me—Politics is just an extension of war.

That he wasn’t after power, but that power was merely a means to achieve his strategic goals.

And he was right.

Politics, war—it’s all just a means to an end.

Human experimentation, strategies, political maneuvering, suicide—these were all just different weapons of revenge.

In the end, his entire life was consumed by revenge.

He fought because he didn’t want to go mad.

But slowly, he did go mad.

Until, in the end, he died as a lunatic.

That’s what happens when you wage war on the world to stay sane.

I knew it all too well.

After all, I had been there, too.

Alone in the world, sitting in the corner of a funeral home, trembling.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw my parents’ mangled bodies.

A disability allowance of 200,000 won.

A red ink stamp on the welfare documents.

An uncomfortable wheelchair.

Heavy crutches.

An awkward prosthetic.

The eyes looking down on me from above.

I hated it all.

So I pretended to be fine.

Pretended I hadn’t developed a mental illness.

Got discharged from the hospital looking perfectly normal—

And, in the dead of night, I took out a kitchen knife and prepared to go out.

My target:

The parents of the kid who had jaywalked into the road—

And gotten run over by a truck.

If I didn’t unleash my rage, I was going to go insane.

So I stepped out the front door.

And Yeo Do-Yeon caught me at the entrance.

She had noticed. She had realized I was about to become a lunatic.

And she stopped me.

She made sure I didn’t go mad.

For a broken person to stay sane—

They need something they don’t want to lose.

Yeo Do-Yeon gave me that.

The more you have, the harder it is to let go.

That’s attachment.

People who have nothing—those are the ones we call crazy.

That night, Yeo Do-Yeon reminded me—

That I still had her.

And at the same time—

She made sure that I was in her hands, too.

Just like now.

Sitting there silently, holding my hand.

Crouched beside me, completely defenseless.

Crying.

“……”

5 AM.

A dark hospital room.

She sobbed into my chest.

I carefully placed my hand on her back.

Her sharp, protruding shoulder blades trembled slightly under my touch.

Her hair, tangled in my fingers, was gently stroked.

It was—

A feeling too complex to put into words.

No words were exchanged, yet a conversation was had.

Perhaps this too was some kind of superpower.

As I gently patted her back, I listened—

Listened to everything she was trying to say.

Don’t let go of what you’re holding on to.

I don’t want to lose you.

You don’t want to lose me either, right?

Ending things here would be too much of a waste.

She said nothing.

She just cried.

The tears slowly pooled on my hospital gown, eventually seeping into my chest.

In the small hospital room, with only the sound of the heater running, her muffled sobs echoed softly.

“……”

That night, long ago—

When I stood at the door holding that kitchen knife, she had caught me.

And instead of stabbing someone, I dropped the knife—

And collapsed into her arms, crying.

She had given me attachment.

She had made me believe—

That maybe, just maybe—

It would be too soon to end it all just yet.

Letting go now would be a waste.

Having something left to lose—

Most people call that hope.

She spoke.

“…Don’t go.”

She clutched my hand so tightly it turned white from the lack of circulation.

“……”

She still thought I was holding that kitchen knife.

That I was already insane. That I was about to walk out and start swinging.

I rasped out a response with my dry, cracked lips.

“…Noona.”

My voice barely made it out.

“You remember… back when I first went to the Martial Law Command?”

I had to whisper. My voice wasn’t strong enough.

“I told the Vice Minister… to pick an easy target.”

Yeo Do-Yeon froze, trembling.

I forced myself to continue, my voice strained and twisted.

“I said… Shove a mana stone into someone. Let’s see what happens.”

I swallowed dryly, my voice starting to shake.

“Cha Jae-Kyun asked me… Are you suggesting human experimentation?”

And in the end—

“I answered… Would you have refused if I was?”

A single tear slipped down the side of my face.

Each word felt like ripping out something deeply embedded inside me.

“But then… actually seeing people die… I realized this wasn’t right.”

I took a shaky breath.

“I was the one who told the Vice Minister about superpowers. I was the one who planted the idea of human experiments in his head.”

“But when people actually started dying—when I had to take responsibility for those dead bodies—I got scared.”

“I got so fucking scared that I shoved everything onto someone else. Acted like I was never involved. Just pretended—pretended—”

I sucked in a sharp breath.

“…And I survived.”

“And then they called me a hero.”

“So yeah… that didn’t sit right with me.”

—

For the past six months, I had seen so much corruption.

“…One in ten citizens died, but no one wanted refugees, so they didn’t even build proper shelters.”

“The government was afraid people would ask why the country was falling apart, so they threw Hunters on variety shows instead.”

“Censorship, media blackouts—”

I heard that a million South Korean civilians had died during the Korean War.

I didn’t know the exact number.

But I knew for sure—this was worse.

“Five million. Huh? Five million people are dead.”

“We still don’t know how to close a Gate.”

“Thousands of civilians are still stranded in Seoul.”

“And all the government cares about is siphoning money from reconstruction contracts.”

“……”

“This… is a country?”

I laughed as I stroked her back.

“But I’m in no position to judge them.”

“……”

“I’m just like them.”

Drugged up and dazed, I muttered to myself.

“I wanted to take a cut of the pie, take control of the Awakeners—”

“Cha Jae-Kyun and Yang Pan-Seok were fighting, and I planned to side with whoever won—”

“I lied. I manipulated. I—fuck—”

Yeo Do-Yeon thought I had lost my mind.

That I was the one going crazy this time.

But no.

I wasn’t the one who had lost it.

“…The world is insane.”

The world was the crazy one.

“…And someone has to do something about it.”

—

Until the sun rose, we held each other and patted each other’s backs.

—

“Assemblyman Han Seung-Moon symbolizes everything we’ve fought for since the Gate Incident.”

“Hearing that from you, Governor, makes me feel unworthy.”

The Governor of Jeju Island shook my hand firmly, his expression solemn.

Beside him, the Deputy Mayor of Seoul glanced around the hospital room, packed with reporters.

“Look at this. All these journalists represent the concerns of the people.”

“Don’t give those terrorists another thought. We are not foolish enough to fall for such propaganda.”

“We all wish you a swift recovery.”

After the press left, the politicians and I sat in silence.

The TV played the news segment they had just filmed.

>[Assemblyman Han Seung-Moon regained consciousness at approximately 4 AM today. In response, senior members of the National Party visited him in solidarity. Meanwhile, party membership has surged past 600,000 in just three days, leading to speculation over upcoming leadership shifts—]

“How’s your health, Assemblyman Han?”

“A-ah… well…”

The Governor of Jeju, the Deputy Mayor of Seoul, and a veteran politician surrounded me with concern.

Of course, they were worried.

Leadership battles were about to start.

Naturally, there were power struggles within the party.

—

The Key Positions in the National Party:

1. Party Leader – The public face and supreme representative.
2. Floor Leader – The de facto leader within the National Assembly.
3. Elected Supreme Council Members – Chosen at the party convention.
4. Appointed Supreme Council Members – Selected by the Party Leader.
5. Policy Committee Chairperson – Sets the party’s policy direction.
6. Secretary-General – Manages the party’s finances and administration.
7. Chief Spokesperson – Handles the party’s public relations.

And that’s just the major roles.

There were dozens of other positions—

Chair of the Delegates’ Assembly, Chair of the Central Committee, Chief of Staff to the Party Leader, President of the National Party Fundraising Committee, Director of the Policy Research Institute, Chair of the Advisory Committee, Director of Party Audits—

It never ended.

The Party Leader would be elected at the convention.

But everyone knew whoever I backed would win.

That’s why these three were here, flattering me.

I could take the position myself.

But that would mean there’d be no Floor Leader.

And the Floor Leader was the National Party’s representative within the National Assembly.

I was the only National Assembly member from the party.

Which meant—

I was the only one who could be Floor Leader.

It was only right.

Which left the Party Leader seat…

Empty.

—

“……”

“……”

“……”

These three men—

They wanted to be Party Leader.

It was as if I had to pick my starter Pokémon.

—

Candidate #1: The Governor of Jeju.
– Stronghold: His region is a fortress of support.
– Weakness: No national recognition.
– Advantage: After the major conglomerates relocated to Jeju, he gained influence in the business world.
– Type: Water.

Candidate #2: The Deputy Mayor of Seoul.
– Stronghold: No official electoral district.
– Weakness: Lost his parliamentary bid, hence the Deputy Mayor role.
– Advantage: Supported by millions of metropolitan refugees.
– Type: Grass.

Candidate #3: The Political Veteran.
– Stronghold: Walks history itself.
– Advantage: Recognized nationwide.
– Weakness: Just as many enemies as he has supporters.
– Type: Fire.

—

I spoke first.

“…Pardon my rudeness, but I don’t think now is the time to discuss party positions.”

“…What do you mean?”

“I think I’m about to be arrested.”

—

Six hours later.

>[The prosecution has requested a search and seizure warrant for the Han Seung-Moon Foundation. The National Assembly has passed the ‘Han Seung-Moon Special Investigation Act.’ Acting President Won Ok-Bun has stated that Assemblyman Han is suspected to be behind the recent terrorist attack—]

The die had been cast.