Ch#63
The teacher asked back in a voice utterly devoid of surprise.
[Why do you think that?]
Dad, who had been looking down, raised his head. Then, staring straight into the camera, he said,
[Because I think I could have lived a bit more comfortably without just Tie.]
……A bit more comfortably?
Her body felt paralyzed, unable to move.
Tie couldn't tear her eyes from the screen.
Dad continued speaking.
[Money too. Honestly, if it weren't for Tie, I wonder if I really needed to work this hard.]
Tie took a short breath in, then hurriedly exhaled.
Her throat burned like she'd inhaled air from a bathroom oversprayed with disinfectant.
[That kid really made the bachelor from 106 suffer needlessly.]
At that moment, something clicked on with a pop from behind her.
Turning her head, another video was playing on the monitor atop the desk.
‘Grandma……?’
The person appearing in the second screen was the 107-room Grandma.
The one who had been like a mother to Tie.
[From the time she was little, she never listened to a word—such a sly little thing.]
[Tie?]
[Don't even get me started. Because of that kid, the bachelor from 106 never had a single day of peace. Raising her wore his body down to bits.]
“……Nonsense.”
Tie's lips quivered as she staggered away from the tablet and monitor.
Grandma and Dad would never say things like that.
But the videos kept playing relentlessly.
[Everything Tie asked me to buy always annoyed me. In our situation, how could toys or snacks be important right now?]
[Tie really lacks maturity.]
[Well, she's a child. Still, that's when I realized. That I could never fully love Tie.]
“It's fake!”
Tie shouted without realizing it.
She knew she had to hold her breath.
She knew all of this was fake inside the subspace.
But as Dad and Grandma's words continued, her breath rose to her throat, and her face burned hot.
“It's fake! My daddy would nevew say that! My daddy would nevew evew……!”
[Come to think of it, it's because of her that we're isolated here in the first place.]
But she had no choice but to shut her mouth at the next words.
[If Tie hadn't been there that day, things wouldn't have turned out this bad.]
Something flashed through her mind along with Dad's voice.
The dream from the day she lost Dad at Pearl City port.
The dream so vivid it still burned strongly in her memory.
‘You trying to get the young lady hurt?!’
‘Young lady, always stay healthy. Laugh a lot with the captain.’
People dying amid the endless waves of monsters.
Yet desperately trying to protect newborn Tie.
It was a dream, but too vivid to easily forget.
‘It's okay, Tie. It's okay.’
Recalling Dad in the dream's final moments, Tie pressed her lips tight.
She had even suspected that it might have been a real event from before coming to Korea with Dad.
[……That day, if only Tie hadn't been there.]
And now, in this moment.
Dad on the screen was confirming that her suspicion was true.
A chill crawled up her arm to her chest, throat, and face.
[If instead of ordering to ‘protect’ Tie, they'd ordered to ‘abandon’ her.]
Dad's gaze slanted sideways.
Toward where Tie stood.
[I wouldn't have fallen into a place like this, suffering alone without dumping it on someone else. I could've lived comfortably.]
Tie's frozen lips quivered.
A faint voice leaked from her throat.
“It's fake…… fake.”
She should have expected it.
From the moment the subspace took the form of Jongno-gu's scenery.
“All fake……”
She should have expected it from the moment Krazar showed her hometown and kindergarten.
Then she wouldn't have been shaken by this foolish fake video letter.
[Come to think of it, that's probably why.]
Listening to the continuing voice, Tie stepped back one step, then another.
Berugon had said it.
Krazar shows the target their deepest fear.
That overcoming it is so hard countless people lost their lives.
When she first heard that story, she was puzzled.
She got that Krazar was strong, but really only one person ever overcame it?
What on earth was the delirium Krazar showed?
But now she thought she knew the answer.
[The reason Tie's mom dumped her on me instead of raising her.]
Her legs gave out.
They were painful words.
Words that didn't just tear her heart to shreds but mangled it with scissors.
[She knew Astie would be a ball and chain. Knew she'd be nothing but baggage in everything. Knew she was a lump that ruins parents' lives.]
The moment Tie staggered and grabbed the wall.
The sound of the front door opening came from behind.
“Sovereign King……”
Berugon had entered the kindergarten after hearing Tie's voice.
Reason whispered in her mind.
‘Run.’
But her body was frozen solid, unable to move.
Was this what it meant to be swallowed by fear?
Then, something slithered in through the gap in the staff room door.
Red mist.
Behind it, Berugon shuffled in.
Like a rabbit before a beast, Tie stood rigid with wide eyes.
“Astie! What are you doing?!”
Astie snapped to her senses.
Turning her head, she saw Lucarion had emerged from her kindergarten bag.
Lucarion was flapping his wings in midair.
“Snap out of it!”
Lucarion knocked the monitor—where 107-room Grandma had appeared—off the desk.
Then he grabbed the tablet and hurled it toward the wall.
As the screen cracked and the video cut off, a sob burst from Tie's lips.
“B-Blackieeeee……”
Tears she'd been holding back fell in drops, but Lucarion was firm.
“Not now! Cry later! No time!”
Tie hurriedly shut her mouth.
And quickly wiped her eyes.
“I'll hold off the mist, so you steal the core from that guy! I can feel the condensed magic power from the core!”
Tie nodded and frantically turned toward Berugon.
Then her mouth fell open in surprise.
‘……A real zombie?’
He hadn't been like that when the chase started.
From wandering the streets searching for Tie, Berugon's ankles were wrapped in trash bags, discarded ropes, and a badminton net.
“Hurry! If you can't take the magic stone, just run!”
Lucarion shouted again.
He was now blasting white light wildly at the red mist.
“O-Okay……!”
Swallowing hard, Tie backed away first.
Then she knocked over the stool where the tablet had been, and shoved the stack of boxes by the wall to the floor with all her might.
Racing behind the large office desk after that, Berugon—seeing Tie distancing herself—grimaced.
“Sovereign King! Get over here right now!”
But Tie dragged everything she could grab and piled it next to the fallen boxes.
From the teacher's office chair to the mini bookshelf, vacuum cleaner, and drying rack beside it.
Once she'd gathered all sorts of items, a small barricade stood between Berugon and Tie.
‘What next?’
Her mind spun frantically to resolve the urgent situation.
Berugon seemed even less sane than before, staggering more and more.
‘But he's still an adult.’
Half-hearted methods wouldn't steal the core from Berugon.
Unless she tied him up tight somewhere.
‘Tie him up tight……?’
For a moment, Tie's gaze went to Berugon's ankles.
Precisely, to the trash bags, ropes, and badminton net wrapped around them.
The child's eyes sparkled.
‘That's it!’
Berugon's ankles weren't free.
So what if she completely restrained those feet?
Just then, the vacuum cleaner she'd knocked over earlier entered her view.
