HG | Chapter 18

“Haaa…”

Hakyung splashed cold water on his flushed face.

Again! He ended up doing something indecent with his father at the dining table again. How many days had it been since he vowed to only eat during meals? The only difference was whether it ended with light petting or went all the way to insertion, but not a single day had he kept his vow.

‘Today, he seemed especially excited…’

Thanks to that, Hakyung ended up getting swept away and shared his body for quite a while. It was a wonder the plates didn’t break.

‘If we guide every day, I might feel like helping?’

When he showed a rather cold reaction at the funeral, a part of his heart had sunk slightly. It was a suggestion that felt somewhat spiteful.

But today was the complete opposite. Hakyung remembered himself melting in his embrace, not knowing what to do. Today, it seemed he felt the same. It was a rare day when his father’s true feelings seemed within reach. It was so curious and bewildering that it was only natural he was momentarily dazed.

“By the way… does this mean, uh… that I’m, um, with Father… that?”

Lovers.

He repeated the word silently, finding it too embarrassing to say out loud. On the surface, it seemed like the difference between ‘Father’ and ‘Dad.’ It was a seemingly impulsive choice, but it turned out to be a lucky display of wit.

Hakyung covered his mouth and secretly giggled. Hehe, hehehe…. Maybe because a lifelong wish had come true, he couldn’t stop laughing foolishly.

He became his guide, and now his lover…. He only wished for two things, and both came true. Well done, Im Hakyung!

After practicing a composed expression several times in front of the bathroom mirror, Hakyung left the bathroom with a determined look. It was to act as if nothing had happened, in case he ran into any staff.

“Ow, my back.”

However, it was unavoidable that he dragged his feet a bit due to the overworked hole.

‘But I was the one who refused to be carried…’

To be precise, he refused to be carried to his room. He had a temperament that required him to finish things with his own hands, and washing Hakyung after sex was part of that ‘finishing.’ So he would remove the semen from his body, thoroughly wash the body covered in fluids, and only then leave Hakyung alone. Smiling as if looking at a house cat with blunt claws….

“Ugh… no, no.”

Control your expression!

Lately, his father had been smiling often, which made Hakyung happy yet troubled. The difficulty of managing his expression was increasing.

Ding.

Naturally thinking of his father, Hakyung descended to the third floor. As he stepped out of the elevator, he was greeted by a familiar scene from the past. It wasn’t something to be amazed by, as he visited once or twice a year, so the space itself was familiar.

The overall structure was similar to his father’s space. The bedroom was on the left, the living room in the middle, the study on the right, a library filled with books, a small room with children’s toys, and a pantry.

Hakyung was about to head to the study but impulsively leaned against the doorframe of the playroom. The room he used as a child suddenly caught his attention.

“Was I really this small…?”

The shelves, desk, chair, and toy box were all much lower, as if tailored to a child’s height. If his memory served him right, he used this room from when he was a baby, which he couldn’t remember, until around ten years old.

‘Look, Hakyung. Here’s the car.’

‘Shall we play with blocks with Dad?’

In his recollection, his young father tried to capture the child’s interest. Calling a toy car that didn’t even fit in his hand ‘car.’

Look. In Hakyung’s name, the ‘Ha’ is written like this, with a ‘Hieut’ and an ‘A’…

As he grew older, he overlapped his hand with the child’s and taught him how to write his name with colored pencils.

Dad…!

A small child ran out from beside the tilted Hakyung, almost tripping, and clung to the man’s neck.

My precious child.

The man embraced the child lovingly and kissed him.

Hakyung heard that he was slow in development as a child. From the time he started walking, speaking, reading, and writing, he was slower than his peers.

Whether it was due to slow cognitive development was unclear, but Hakyung had few memories from his early years. The ones he did remember were mostly of playing joyfully or being sternly scolded by his father, memories shared with Cheonghyeon.

Calculating it, Cheonghyeon was also a young father back then.

Cheonghyeon was thirty-eight this year. He became the guardian of a newborn at just eighteen. Frankly, it was two orphaned boys living as father and son, struggling to survive.

“Our father really lived diligently….”

Hakyung pressed his swelling eyes firmly. He thought he understood a bit why his father hadn’t removed the room he no longer used.

Feeling that if he stayed longer, he’d end up crying, he quickly turned away. Entering the study with the long desk, familiar items were neatly arranged on the desk.

Two boxes, a laptop, and a mobile phone.

Setting aside the boxes, Hakyung picked up the phone with a puzzled look.

“That’s strange…. Why is the phone new?”

The phone Hakyung originally used was an old model. It was rare to even have a physical phone.

In 2035, the ‘body chip’ became commercialized, marking the end of the physical device era. It was a time when chips were implanted under the skin, interacting through brainwaves. Now, it was fully established, and those using physical devices fell into three categories: extremely poor, very wealthy, or unable to adapt to body chips.

Since his father had given him devices from a young age, Hakyung found chips awkward. They felt unsettling. Cha Hyunseo had teased him, saying, ‘Wow! A rare analog enthusiast right next to me. Are you in your 70s?’ but Hakyung didn’t budge from his preference.

He didn’t dislike the new phone. It was just a bit disappointing.

‘That was a gift from Father.’

It was a birthday present he received at fourteen.

With the emergence of awakeners and a drastic decrease in the global population, every field underwent upheaval. Manufacturing was particularly hit hard.

With factories unable to operate as before, device production naturally decreased. The rise of brainwave research led to a decline in the population using physical devices, a decisive factor. Major companies suffered massive losses and quickly shut down in succession. All these phenomena were changes brought by the awakeners.

However, the fact that the first awakener insisted on ‘analog’ devices was ironic, even to Hakyung.

‘I should ask Father about the phone later.’

He kept it for sentimental reasons, but he didn’t use devices often anyway. Losing the contents wasn’t a big concern. Photos were automatically backed up to the cloud.

“What is this?”

The laptop was the truly important item.

On top of the laptop was a stiff document envelope. A sky-blue sticky note attached to the envelope caught his eye.

It was his father’s handwriting. Instinctively, Hakyung realized this was the ‘price of the deal.’

“He left it here in advance….”

Since there was no mention of it, he thought he might tell him separately later. It was a pleasantly mistaken assumption.

With a mix of tension and excitement, he opened the envelope. The contents were just a single sheet of paper.

‘Did I expect too much?’

Scratching his forehead, he flipped the paper meaninglessly. Honestly, it would be a lie to say he wasn’t disappointed. Still, he accepted it, thinking there must be a reason his father only gave him this.

After checking the content, Hakyung tilted his head.

“…An official document?”

And in a format quite different from the current ones. Moreover, it wasn’t stamped by the Association but by an unfamiliar organization called the ‘Korean Awakeners Special Forces.’

<Korean Awakeners Special Forces Summoning Directive>

With the confirmation of the emergence of an S-class gate, 16 special mission units are to be organized, and the following awakeners are appointed as leaders of each special mission unit.

Team 1 Leader: Im Cheonghyeon (S-class) – East Gate 1

Team 2 Leader: Im Juhyeong (S-class) – West Gate 1

……

Team 16 Leader: Kwon Hojin (A-class) – North Gate 4

It was easy to deduce that this document was related to the preparation for the ‘Haegakryeong’ subjugation. The summoning date was clearly long before the outbreak.

“What am I supposed to focus on here?”

Hakyung unconsciously muttered aloud. This was like a quiz his father had given him. It seemed to say that if he couldn’t figure out even the basics, he wasn’t qualified to know the truth.

“An official document…. Why an official document?”

Constantly thinking, he sat down and booted up the laptop. Though it was an old model, it ran smoothly, except for the slightly long boot time.

“Let’s see…. Hologram check. Hmm hmm… ‘Hello, Blue.’”

-It’s been a while. Is there something you want to know?

Calling upon artificial intelligence always made him feel awkward for some reason.

Hakyung stared at the hologram of the artificial intelligence embedded in the laptop’s basic system.

A robust man in his late 30s. A handsome AI reminiscent of ‘Im Cheonghyeon’ smiled, waiting for Hakyung’s response.

‘How did I survive without being caught?’

Hakyung bought the new laptop in his first year of high school. He remembered crying alone in the corner of his dorm, missing his father, but he had surrounded himself with more of his father than he realized. The longing was so great that he didn’t notice his surroundings.

‘Even the AI’s name….’

At the time, he vaguely assumed ‘Cheong’ in ‘Cheonghyeon’ meant blue, hence naming it ‘Blue.’

Embarrassingly, Hakyung didn’t know how to write his father’s name in Chinese characters for quite a while. It was understandable since Cheonghyeon seemed to have every move spread on the internet, but in reality, even his Chinese name wasn’t properly known.

Searching for him only yielded photos, live videos, or dungeon suppression videos, but delving deeper gave the impression that all data was blocked.

‘Searching for Father won’t help.’

Glancing at the official document, Hakyung shifted his question.

“What major events were prominently reported in the newspapers between January 21st and a month later in 20XX?”

-Hmm… The most famous ones are the assassination of the president and the assassination of the first president of the Awakeners Management Association.

“Oh, right.”

Hakyung had learned about those events in history class. His father was the one who blatantly killed them, so the scrutiny was immense.

“Why did Father end up killing that person? They were civilians, right? He wouldn’t have touched civilians lightly.”

-If you look at the public opinion at the time… there was a view that corruption had reached its peak when awakeners appeared, and the government tried to use awakeners to seize control of the country. However, no one knows why Esper Im Cheonghyeon killed those two. There’s no concrete evidence.

‘Blue’s’ answer was similar to what he learned in class. Since it was based on actual published articles and verified data, he hoped for a different perspective, but it was a disappointing result.

-Here’s an interesting column. Want to see it?

“What is it?”

Blue displayed a separate screen next to its main body. Hakyung checked the column title and was startled, looking around. He was afraid someone might see.

-Did the Orphaned Esper Betray His Parents?

“Summ… summarize the content.”

Though the names ‘Im Cheonghyeon’ and ‘Im Juhyeong, Choi Seonyeon’ weren’t mentioned, it was clearly targeting them.

His heart pounded anxiously. No way… there’s no way.

His biological parents’ limbs were clearly torn by someone else.

-It’s a speculative column where the title says it all. The event of an orphaned boy awakening as Korea’s first S-class esper was hugely famous, but after being adopted as a son by an esper of the same rank, only twelve years apart, the boy experienced a ‘status upgrade’ level of change. Moreover, after the outbreak incident, he inherited all the wealth and rights of his adoptive parents.

“Wealth?”

-Im Juhyeong was the heir to the SL Group, and Choi Seonyeon, as his spouse, held some shares of the group and shares of her family, the DH Group. While they were alive, there were eyewitness accounts that Esper Im Cheonghyeon killed Im Juhyeong’s older brother and youngest brother, who were candidates for the group’s succession, and Choi Seonyeon’s two brothers.

As a result, Im Juhyeong and Choi Seonyeon became the owners of the group….

-In other words, the person who benefited the most from the deaths of Esper Im Juhyeong and Guide Choi Seonyeon was Esper Im Cheonghyeon. The column raises suspicions about that….

Nothing could be heard.

Hakyung let the explanation flow by blankly. His father killed his biological parents?

No. There’s absolutely no way.

The father Hakyung had seen all this time never laid hands on people recklessly. Knowing his power well, he had a habit of avoiding touching others. If what he confessed at the columbarium was true, his biological parents were people with proper standards, and Cheonghyeon would have consistently developed that habit under them.

In short, he wasn’t someone who left things ambiguous if he liked or disliked something. There was no way he would have raised the bloodline of his enemies.

It was a fact he could confidently assert because he was raised by him.

‘Let’s trace it backward.’

“Father… killed my biological parents’ family….”

Assuming the reason was something worth dying for, even if the exact cause was unclear.

“Was it revenge…?”

Isn’t the only conclusion that he retaliated?

The next search term was naturally determined.

“Tell me about Esper Im Juhyeong and Guide Choi Seonyeon’s family relationships. Also, show me articles mentioning the people on that list.”

The results came quickly. Hakyung looked at the countless windows popping up and eventually hung his head.

-Third-generation chaebol ‘drug use’ investigation… The downfall of SL Group’s crown prince

-‘Returning in glory’ Esper Im Juhyeong, will he seize the throne of SL Group

-[Exclusive] “DH heir manipulated sister’s accident”… DH Group ‘internal whistleblower’ scandal

“…….”

The windows filling his retina were hard to find anything clean. Drugs, violence, fraud, harassment, drunk driving, political fights… all the dirty aspects of the world were gathered there.

Objectively, his biological parents’ siblings weren’t ‘good’ people. His biological parents must have been fighting a tough battle with them. Cheonghyeon merely avenged his parents as a filial duty.

That revenge might still be ongoing….

Hakyung pressed his cold eyeballs with his palm.

‘If Father is still in the middle of revenge… what should I do?’

Shouldn’t I join my parents’ revenge drama too?

As his thoughts reached that point, his chest felt incredibly heavy. He grabbed the new phone and called Cheonghyeon. The call connected before the second ring.

-Child, how’s the phone?

“Father… if my biological parents’ revenge is still ongoing… please include me.”

It was a statement that cut off all context. But Hakyung was confident he understood. The silence was proof. If he had prepared for the question, he would have immediately answered no, like a ping-pong ball bouncing back.

It’s true….

The revenge isn’t over yet.

-…Hmm. I don’t know what you’re suddenly talking about.

“Ugh….”

Hakyung forcibly suppressed the nausea rising in his throat. His father’s silence and answer, the two contradictory things, paradoxically kept pointing to one spot.

He genuinely cherished me as a son.

Because he cherished me, he didn’t want to include me. His determination not to drag him into the mire was firm, so it might not have mattered whether Hakyung knew this fact or not.

“…But, Father.”

It’s the same for me.

The person who first comes to mind when thinking of ‘parents.’ The person who first comes to mind when thinking of ‘love.’

-Enough of this talk….

“You love me.”