Chapter 212

The flight path from Washington Dulles to Incheon International Airport.

The two passengers who were able to board the plane first in Delta One class chose a beef tenderloin steak accompanied by a red wine sauce for dinner.

The man speared the last remaining piece of meat with his fork and wiped it in the leftover sauce on his plate before bringing it to his mouth.

“Did you really finish that already?”

“The hanwoo is delicious. Wasn’t it said to be from Jeju Island? I’m really looking forward to the trip to Korea.”

“Dr. Fuller, we are not here for a vacation.”

The beautiful platinum-haired woman wiped her mouth with a napkin and looked disapprovingly at the bald man accompanying her.

“I know, I know. But since we are representing the Seviron Foundation, we need to be well-versed in Korean culture.”

Dr. Fuller fiddled with a gold-plated badge on his suit jacket.

The logo, shaped like an hourglass, had thick lines that made it look somewhat like the letter ‘S.’

Robert Fuller and Emilie Mayakovsky.

They were representatives dispatched from the Seviron Foundation.

“Anyway, I hope you remember that our purpose is ultimately verification.”

The proofs of the seven mathematical problems presented by Name were all concluded to be ‘not verifiable.’

Quoting the mathematicians, it could be aptly described as suddenly hitting a massive boulder while driving on a well-paved road.

Before knowing if this direction was correct or incorrect, the road had blocked the path.

Ultimately, the only solution was to confront the road’s designer directly, and Dr. Fuller and Emilie headed to Seoul where Name was located.

Dr. Fuller, who was generally interested in Korean culture, including K-Pop.

Currently, they were at an altitude of 10 kilometers, higher than the clouds.

“Isn’t this child noname?”

It was no mere coincidence that he began looking for Name on the internet after finishing dinner.

This was because it was a trending video that ranked in the top 10 of the VTube real-time rankings.

[Island Gayageum Rock Paganini (Durido Gayageum Rock Paganini)]

“What? Gayageum…?”

From just the title alone, it was impossible to guess the video’s content.

He was bewitched, like a gumiho, and pressed play on the video, which showed Name playing the gayageum at a crazy speed for five continuous minutes.

“What on earth did I just watch?”

His impression was brief.

Even after watching the entire video, his brain stubbornly refused to comprehend it.

“Oh my god… But do Koreans keep pet snakes too?”

“What did you say?”

“Emily, look at this. There’s a snake squirming beside them.”

“…!”

Just as Dr. Fuller said, a massive python, about the size of Name, was slithering up the pole to the gazebo and suddenly began to dance by shaking its body.

Emilie Mayakovsky seriously considered giving up on the business trip to Korea.

* * *

“There might be someone who sees the video and comes all the way to this island.”

“Is that so?”

“If you happen to meet them, please don’t be too harsh and welcome them. They must all be people who came because they like the General.”

Leaving everyone else at home, I climbed the hill with the General.

I received a message from Semaaru that he had just uploaded a VTube video.

General Baek Bong Gon leaned on his seaweed tree cane and sat on a stump.

He let out a deep sigh as he gazed over the ocean spread out in all directions.

“The world has changed way too fast. Don’t you think, Name?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it make me sound so old-fashioned saying that?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, you’re so honest.”

There is a theory called the Red Queen hypothesis.

In the place where the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland lives, there’s a bizarre rule that she must keep running forward just to stay in the same place.

This was a biological theory suggesting that one must continuously struggle in an infinite competition just to avoid being left behind.

If following this hypothesis, General Baek Bong Gon could indeed be considered a person left behind by the times.

“But the world is not a 100-meter dash. I thought I was falling behind like on a circular track, but before I knew it, I was ahead. And there’s the saying that fashion goes in cycles.”

One can easily tell this just by observing the periodically returning retro trend.

While one might think denim on denim is a fashion disaster, it can suddenly regain the lead in fashion.

“I believe dividing the old and the new no longer has any meaning. If you truly want to promote magical items, General, you should have actively advertised them rather than hiding on an island.”

But he couldn’t possibly be unaware of that.

Although he bought Bitcoin due to ransomware, he was well-versed in digital culture, had a door lock installed at home, and expertly used a medical capsule.

“I heard you used to be quite a well-known craftsman. Is there a reason you ended up living in seclusion like this?”

“Hiding, huh. This is my hometown.”

“Until I entered the magic power plant, this was a region where I couldn’t even get a signal, which is basically hiding.”

Professor Cheon told me.

General Baek Bong Gon had established a workshop in Seoul that was fairly well-known, with quite a number of regular customers.

“Here you go.”

“?”.

General Baek suddenly handed me his phone.

“Weren’t you wanting to take this bitcoin or dead coin? Check out that virtual currency exchange app.”

“Yes…? Right now?”

“Then what, were you planning to take it away after I die? Ho-chan was whining about it going down.”

Hearing the General mention cryptocurrency felt exceedingly unnatural.

As the password window opened to access the digital wallet, he started to grumble.

“Name, you’re right. Leaving the world behind was all my choice. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t heal without the beauty of nature.”

“Were you very unwell?”

“It’s not just the body; it’s the heart. This heart hurts too much.”

He patted his chest mournfully, looking as though he was about to break into sobs.

The depth of sorrow in his eyes deepened.

“A husband who loses a wife is a widower, a wife who loses a husband is a widow, and children who lose their parents are orphans, but do you know what you call parents who lose a child?”

“No…”

“There is no term for it. It can’t even be expressed in words. Instead, there’s a term ‘chamcheok,’ using the character for tragic (참) and the character for worry (척).”

“Ah…”

It’s the term that describes the tragedy of a child leaving this world before their parents.

Though he was sobbing, he did not shed a tear.

The eyes of General Baek had long since dried up.

“The password you say? It’s ‘baek221214lee221210.'”

A password featuring a surname followed by years.

When I typed it in as he told me, the insides of the electronic wallet that Baek Ho-chan had long desired opened.

December 2022. What does that mean?

Baek Ho-chan said that at first, he tried entering his birthday and the birthdays of his parents to figure this out.

The year he mentioned did not include 2022.

“Our precious only son’s name is Baek Ho-jun. And our daughter-in-law’s name is Lee Na-yoon.”

“Are you referring to Uncle Ho-chan’s parents?”

“Right. And December 22nd is the date of the kids’ passing. Ha…”

I turned off the phone and sat next to him, staring at the waves crashing along the shore for quite a while.

This is definitively a scene that will remain unchanged, 365 days a year, and will continue to remain so in the future.

General Baek Bong Gon’s time was frozen in 2022.

“Ho-chan probably doesn’t even know what his parents look like. Right after he was born, they left him with me and went off to the Middle East to kill people.”

In 2022, Baek Ho-chan was only three years old.

Losing parents is a sorrow that feels like the sky is falling, but what feelings arise when a child leaves this world before their parents?

The profound grief that General Baek Bong Gon was holding within was something I could never fully comprehend.

“Having closed up shop and cast aside all my friends who came to visit, I came here to my hometown, almost pushed away. But still, I have to raise Ho-chan well, don’t I? What does Ho-chan say to me? He doesn’t really like me, does he?”

“Yes, Uncle Ho-chan said he didn’t like his grandfather.”

“That would make sense. Would a kid want to be teased for not having parents? So I raised him even stricter. I couldn’t bend his will to go to the Academy, though.”

“Did both of your parents come from the Academy?”

“Beyond the ten levels of arts, we’re at the white level now, Name.”

With a still melancholy expression, the General patted my head.

The reason he hated the Academy.

“America is individualistic and Korea is communal? That’s completely wrong. The Academy and Foundation people are only superficially liberal and individualistic. However, in practice, they are no different from communists!”

General Baek’s teeth ground together.

“Dressed up in money and fame, luring innocent young kids and sending them off to the harsh battlefield without knowing a thing—what could those bastards be if not demons? Commanding the boiling blood of youth to kill each other—what could those guys be if not demons… What on earth are they…?!”

General Baek hated the Foundation that took the lives of his children.

This was a value that would never change until the day he died.

When parents die, they are buried in the mountains, but when a child dies, they are buried in the heart.

The holy sacrifice of the combat mages was recorded in history, but for someone’s child, sibling, or parent, they were buried in the hearts of grieving families.

“So Name, don’t get involved in anything dangerous and don’t even think about it. Byun Ho is also a truly pitiful kid. Perhaps even more than me.”

As I blinked in silence, General Baek grabbed my shoulder and asked.

“Did your father not tell you anything?”

I nodded—

“Dang it… That numbness of the heart is bullshit! You haven’t forgotten at all. Fine. If you’re too curious, go ask Byun Ho, or was it Kyu-jin? Yeah, go ask Kyu-jin. Now let’s go down and have dinner with those troublemakers.”

The red sunset hid below the island of Bian, right next to us.

Blue and orange paints were mingled together, and dragonflies flew freely across the vast, clear summer sky.

“Hurry up and come!”

The seaweed tree cane shook side to side, urging me on.

After shedding long-held sorrow, General Baek looked somehow relieved.

As the brilliant sun disappeared entirely, a thick shadow cloaked the small forest.

Suddenly recalling Professor Cheon, I inexplicably felt uneasy in the corner of my heart and clutched my chest.

“I’m going.”

* * *

[My Assets]

[10,825 BTG (Bitcoin Gold): ₩193,767,500]

I called out to Sebastian (the half-buried snake) following closely behind me.

“General, could you come here for a moment?”