Chapter 62

“……”

I stood somberly, looking down at the two of them. My second set of parents lay inside the transparent pods. The black veins spread throughout their bodies hadn’t faded yet.

I let out a small sigh and shut my eyes for a moment. It felt like I’d fall asleep right away, but the unease kept me awake.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the funeral home. Maybe because it was the most vivid memory of my life.

My father, who had run a business, passed away leaving debts scattered all over. My mother, who didn’t die instantly, underwent surgery four times before falling into a coma and eventually dying—burning through what little we had left.

They said I’d been impaled in the stomach by a metal shard, and my intestines burst, poisoning my body. I heard the doctors went through hell to save me. I even spent two months in a coma.

Thanks to that, I held the funeral not with condolence staff, but with debt collectors.

The people we had lent money to never showed. Only the ones we owed came by, and some even pretended they’d lent us money to get in on it.

Tap. I placed my hand on the transparent pod.

My family was in there.

My uncle, who once chased debt collectors out of the house swinging a dinner table with one arm. My aunt, who sold her home to pay off the debts. My sister, who held me tight and cried her eyes out.

“……”

None of them were by my side anymore.

* * *

Nodding off in the car, I noticed Yang Il-ho glancing at me through the rearview mirror with a puzzled look.

“Hyung, something wrong today?”

“Huh? Why?”

“Uuuhm… nevermind.”

“Every time you end a sentence with a nasal whine, you get a smack. Hands on the wheel, straight.”

Yang Il-ho whimpered and focused on driving.

“……”

There were a few things that had changed since I became a politician.

First, I’d gotten better at hiding how I felt. Not that I wasn’t good at that before.

“Ahhh, a-i-u-e-o. Ganjyanggonjanggong-dyangdyang… ahem…!”

Even my voice had changed a little. It sounded a bit strained now.

Slumped in the backseat, I stared at my reflection in the car window. I pulled down the skin under my eye with my finger.

“Damn dark circles are no joke…”

My cheeks were hollow, my face sharp, irritable, and sensitive. Not that I was sharp, irritable, or sensitive, of course.

“Hey, turn off the heater.”

“It’s not on.” “Shut it.”

I turned to Lee Ho-jung in the passenger seat, who was flipping through my schedule.

“Hey, I checked my weight this morning. I think I’m lighter than you.”

“How much did you weigh?”

“Sixty.”

“Are you crazy!?”

Lee Ho-jung squawked in outrage.

“I’ve eaten nothing but chicken breast to maintain this figure! Sixty!? Sixty!?”

“Hit a nerve?”

“I’m fifty-two, thank you very much!”

Yang Il-ho cheerfully mumbled,

“Fifty-four, actually.”

“Zip it.”

“……”

I chuckled and said to them,

“Hey, since I started politics, I feel like I’ve changed a lot—like… you know.”

“Got haggard?”

“Bit blunt, but yeah. Haven’t I changed? I got dark circles, white hair’s coming in, my voice cracked, lost weight, I look all edgy and irritable. Haven’t I?”

I muttered while absentmindedly rubbing my chin, and Lee Ho-jung—always one for brutal honesty—stabbed me in the chest with her words, slightly sulking.

“That’s from getting jabbed with syringes 200 times in the arm. It’s not politics’ fault.”

* * *

“Politics ruined you?”

“Not that far.”

“You don’t feel the drive anymore?”

“If I had to put it… yeah.”

Lee Ho-jung, sitting in the front seat, smiled faintly and held out some chocolate she swiped from a collapsed convenience store.

“Your blood sugar’s low, huh?”

“A little.”

Munch. It was cheap chocolate, but I hadn’t had sweets in a while—it tasted amazing. Maybe it was the constant diet of spam and microwaved rice.

“To be honest, watching you do this job from the side, it makes sense. You’ve never really gotten to enjoy any of it.”

“Hey, who goes into politics to enjoy th—”

Lee Ho-jung grinned, cutting me off mid-sentence.

“Seriously?”

“……”

“Don’t tell me you became a lawmaker out of patriotism?”

She was right.

Who the hell becomes a public servant for patriotism these days? I just wanted a taste of power.

“No one goes through all that to spend twenty years being some Assemblyman’s lackey. Not even us. I mean, sure—I went to Sky University. Anyway.”

Even Yang Il-ho was a guy with a trail of youngest-this, youngest-that titles, passed the last bar exam, went through law school and everything.

Why would someone with a law license fetch coffee and take mood swings from a lawmaker? Because he wanted to get into politics. Just like me, catching scraps from an Assemblyman hoping to someday wear the badge.

In a way, you could say most aides in the National Assembly are basically aspiring politicians.

“But the reality of being a lawmaker… it’s not what you imagined, right?”

“Right.”

Since the sky cracked open, there hadn’t been a job as extreme as this.

Barely six hours of sleep, no pay when the government collapsed, aging like crazy, can’t go anywhere because of the press, someone always pointing a gun at your face.

“Honestly, it feels natural to me. Anyone living like this would hate it. No one holds on to that initial spark forever.”

“I mean, it’s not that I hate being a lawmaker…”

Tsk.

“……What’s for dinner tonight?”

Yeah, I’m sick of politics. Sick of it.

 

Truthfully, I’ve been feeling deeply disillusioned lately.

After all the crap I went through, what did I gain?

Sure, I got fame, power, this and that—but I lost my family and my health, and now everything feels hollow.

Call it political burnout. Or maybe just a slump.

I worked my ass off to patch society back together—and the Black Mountain Goat popped out and went ‘mehh’ and made it all worthless. Okay, maybe not completely worthless, but still.

Anyway.

Getting constantly tangled in people drama is exhausting. And it weighs on me—knowing one political decision could mean life or death for so many.

Simply put, the burden was a bit heavy.

And I was starting to feel tired.

So, it was hard.

To make matters worse, my family was sick, and my sister was out there, wandering the most dangerous place in Korea just to find a cure that already exists. She could come back as a corpse at any time.

“Huu…”

I let out a quiet sigh at the door, bracing myself.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Then I slowly knocked, doing my best to keep neat and composed.

“Come in…”

“It’s been a while, Director Cheon—”

The moment I opened the door and stepped in, I froze for a second. Or more accurately, I stood there awkwardly stiffened.

“Welcome…”

“Rep. Han! Long time no see!”

In front of Director Cheon Geum-soon, who greeted me with a slight bow and her usual hunched posture, Hong Seon-ah sat leisurely, crossing her long legs and waving brightly.

Their auras were completely different, and the difference in their builds was so stark it was almost comedic—but to me, they both looked like the same kind of beast.

What is this? A snake pit?

Hong Seon-ah smiled sweetly.

“I heard you were coming, so I dropped by!”

“…Ah, yeah.”

Back then, only the tips of her hair were red. Now, about half of it shimmered with a faint reddish hue.

“……Is neon dye a thing now?”

Hong Seon-ah’s hair literally glowed. Softly.

She smiled with ease and flipped her shoulder-length bob back. Wait—she’d grown it into long hair since I last saw her.

“What can I say? I’ve become too powerful! The Flame Girl Hong Seon-ah is, as always—”

“Please stop talking crap.”

“Boohoo…”

Even as she whimpered, her expression remained lively. Cheon Geum-soon, seated across from her, weakly fiddled with the hem of my sleeve.

“It’s been a while, sweetheart…”

“Ah, yes. I heard you’ve been doing well with the mana stone business lately.”

“All thanks to you, really…”

Right before the prosecution and the special investigation unit forcibly dissolved the Han Seung-Moon Foundation, I had transferred every mana stone I’d hoarded to GS Group.

And just as I instructed, she was now shaping the market at a perfectly balanced price point—while also securing market leadership.

I took a seat and asked how she’d been.

“I heard you even started a PMC. Aegis, right? I remember the logo—it had a gold shield with the GS emblem on it. Pretty tacky, honestly.”

“You throw rocks the moment we meet…?”

I glanced at Hong Seon-ah, sitting across from her. Her skin looked flawless, and her makeup suggested she’d just finished filming something.

“Maybe it’s because Ms. Hong is the guild leader. You two seem to get along well.”

I was the one who tied them together—to break state control over hunters and promote a market-based hunting economy.

Cheon Geum-soon gave a weary smile.

“Please take her back. She’s draining me…”

“Aww, unni~ don’t be like that!”

“Stop calling me unni…”

“Unni~yaaa~”

Cheon Geum-soon obediently let Hong Seon-ah feed her a macaron. Looked like she’d met her natural predator.

“I heard from Minister Yoo Jae-kyung that business is booming these days.”

“That bastard.”

“Sorry?”

“Ah, no, nothing…”

Oh, right. Yoo Jae-kyung apparently tore apart one of Cheon Geum-soon’s subsidiaries through the Financial Services Commission.

Even though the commission was under the Prime Minister’s Office, all the members were high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance—so the finance minister was effectively the boss.

No wonder she saw Yoo Jae-kyung as someone to kill. GS Group had rapidly climbed to 5th in the corporate rankings, and the commission had been itching to clamp down. Judging by her dark circles, she was likely fighting a shadow war against the strongest minister in the country—without asking me for a single favor, knowing it wouldn’t help.

“But Aegis is top of the industry now, isn’t it?”

“There’s no ‘top’ in startups… You have to sit on it and go big later.”

Maybe because I was buttering her up, Cheon Geum-soon awkwardly played it humble.

Sharp as ever.

Still, she’s not as slimy as politicians.

“Isn’t it a golden age for PMCs nowadays?”

With awakeners increasing thanks to the stimulant leak and the Uijeongbu Gate, PMCs were popping up everywhere.

They were still a minority, but the money swirling in that sector was massive. The mana stone business had boundless potential.

“Make potions with mana stones, generate electricity… R&D is booming too, right?”

Translation: You made bank thanks to me, huh?

“True… the incoming mana stones have exceeded expectations. Hunter Hong here is especially capable…”

Translation: This isn’t all because of you.

Hong Seon-ah beamed with pride.

“I scorched the entire Taebaek mountain range!”

“Got blasted by Greenpeace for that. Anyway, is the work manageable?”

“Once everything’s torched, all that’s left is clearing half-dead monsters! Some are fire-resistant, but my team’s really good!”

The members of Aegis were former underlings of Kim Chun-sik—so they were guaranteed pros. Aegis was basically a gathering of ex-guild renegades.

“……”

David Kim had been drinking alone, sulking ever since Hong Seon-ah left with the others—but I wasn’t about to mention that.

Who should die for whom, or whether a few should be sacrificed to save the many—there’s no right answer to those questions.

As I sat in silence, eyes on the floor, Cheon Geum-soon yawned and asked,

“So, what brings you here today…?”

“Ah, uh, well…”

I laughed awkwardly.

“I’m hosting a small get-together with some people I know.”

“Excuse me?”

For once, Cheon Geum-soon looked genuinely flustered. Hong Seon-ah still wore that unreadable smile of hers.

“No, I mean. We’ve had a lot of people help us, right? I thought it’d be nice to invite them all, treat them to a little food, and spend some time together. A casual gathering, just to show appreciation and build some camaraderie.”

I invited them to the party.

“It’s a tough time for everyone, so it won’t be anything big… but I’d be grateful if you could come and brighten up the event…”

“I’m in!”

Hong Seon-ah raised her hand with a cheerful smile, but Cheon Geum-soon muttered with an uneasy expression.

“……What kind of party?”

* * *

“We now begin the 1st National Party Convention!”

— WAAAAAAAH!

Thunderous cheers erupted through a massive baseball stadium. Outwardly, I clapped with emotion; inwardly, I was bored stiff.

“Floor Leader Han Seung-Moon is here with us! Let’s give him a round of applause!”

— WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!

— KYAAAAAH!!

— UWAAAAAHHH!!

An even louder roar followed. My face appeared on the giant jumbotron. This was being broadcast live on every major network.

Cheon Geum-soon and David Kim sat on either side of me. Both were highly popular public figures—top-tier visual props for the event.

As I stood and waved brightly, I noticed Cheon Geum-soon clapping stiffly, her expression frozen. She was definitely grinding her teeth in discomfort.

What would happen to her if the National Defense Party won the election and found out she’d attended the National Party Convention?

That’s why tycoons always kept a vague distance from politics—but now she was sitting in what was considered the pinnacle of politics.

……Yes, the pinnacle of politics.

The spring blossoms had bloomed.

The presidential and general elections were coming.