170. Contract Termination 4

There was no one around. Only the sound of the shallow stream flowed, and not a single insect, let alone an animal, was visible. It was the perfect condition for suppressed desires to erupt. Just as she thought she needed to distract herself, Yoon Tae-ha asked him,

“Aren’t you angry? I lied to you.”

Her eyes trembled slightly.

“I made a mistake from the start. This wasn’t a topic you could bring up first. I should have known when I suddenly asked if you were a police officer, shouldn’t I have?”

She didn’t answer. Cheon Geon-young wasn’t expecting an answer either. He touched her neck and cheek with his cold hands, as if wanting to share some of her warmth.

The handkerchief quickly became lukewarm. Cheon Geon-young cooled the handkerchief again. Squeezed dry, it was folded lengthwise and placed on her forehead. Yoon Tae-ha leaned her head back, feeling the coolness.

Small, white stars, initially unnoticeable, dotted the night sky. She felt Cheon Geon-young sit down beside her. His fingers, chilled from rinsing the handkerchief, brushed her pinky finger.

Cheon Geon-young felt it too. A contact almost too insignificant to be called contact. He looked at their touching fingertips, then shifted his gaze forward. They were awkward, like strangers who had never even held hands.

“Tell me about the project. Or what you found at Small Hive.”

“We rescued one researcher. A man named Choi Jae-seong. Have you heard that name before?”

“First time.”

“How about the word Galatea?”

She, who had been gazing at the sky, straightened her posture. The handkerchief fell with a thud to her thigh.

“Professor Yoon Jeong-hoon only told me what kind of story it was. She’s a woman from a myth, isn’t she?”

“They call the espers they dream of that. Espers who don’t need a guide, they call them Galatea. The project was also named after her.”

Yoon Tae-ha slowly turned her head and looked at Cheon Geon-young.

“So that’s what they called beings like you.”

The perfect and beautiful Galatea, blooming like a flower with the breath of a god, eventually becoming the sun her master worshipped.

Cheon Geon-young spoke softly.

“Your name and mine were on the list of test subjects for that project. Choi Jae-seong testified everything he knew about the Galatea Project.”

He then relayed a story unfamiliar to Yoon Tae-ha. A project that began by gathering the children of dimension travelers. How, if they didn’t manifest the desired abilities around the age of ten, they were branded as failures. Yoon Tae-ha listened intently, never interrupting his words.

Cheon Geon-young, who had been calmly explaining, paused just before revealing the most important part. His family and her family. Only difficult obstacles remained.

“Yoon Jeong-hoon was the project leader. He...”

“He’s my grandfather.”

He hadn’t expected her to cut him off.

“He’s my grandfather. Yoon Jeong-hoon. When I was young, that man came to me and told me to become his granddaughter. Back then, I thought he adopted me to use me. But seeing your reaction now...”

She let out a bitter laugh, spitting out the words.

“He’s really my family, isn’t he?”

Cheon Geon-young, reading the deep despair on Yoon Tae-ha’s face, gripped her trembling hand.

“He’s also the one who chose you as a test subject for the project. You don’t need to feel guilty for what he did.”

Her gaze dropped. Cheon Geon-young was sure that if Yoon Tae-ha disappeared like this, he too would go mad. An unbearable silence tightened around their throats. Soon, Yoon Tae-ha slowly clasped his hand.

“When you first proposed the contract to me. I thought Orca had approached me, hiding its identity. I instinctively knew it wasn’t them soon after. But anyway, I was wary of you. So I collected all the information I could.”

“It’s the same for me.”

“According to my memory, your parents died in an accident. But actually...”

Yoon Tae-ha, looking down at their clasped hands, had a vacant expression, as if her soul had left her body. Her mind was gradually clouding, but the cruel conclusion, conversely, became clearer within her.

“Your parents’ death wasn’t an accident. It was a cover-up. That’s why you joined Arc, and you asked me to attack Orca with you. Since they’re essentially one entity. In the end, this was revenge, wasn’t it?”

The woman, having reached her conclusion, met the man’s gaze.

“Should I take it out on me?”

Cheon Geon-young couldn’t believe his ears. Revenge. Was this woman telling him to take revenge on her? His eyes burned with a fierce blue, as if he had suffered a fatal betrayal.

“The one who decided to put you into the project was Cheon Seong-beom. Surely, you don’t believe that Yoon Jeong-hoon forcibly took the Chairman’s grandson, do you? I never imagined you’d blame this on yourself.”

“...”

“I’m telling you this because I know how addictive it is to blame everything on yourself, but you’re being excessive right now.”

Excessive? She released Cheon Geon-young’s hand and rose from the rock. The stream’s flow was rougher than when they first arrived. Even the calm trees swayed back and forth from a sudden gust of wind. Yoon Tae-ha, utterly pale, had a pained expression, as if she had swallowed a blade.

“The fact that the person who gave the order hasn’t been revealed means it could have been anyone. I know Yoon Jeong-hoon. He’s the kind of person who would do that and worse.”

She clutched her forehead, her chest heaving.

“If you don’t like me acting this way, say it’s not true. Say it’s a lie. Tell me it’s because of paranoia, and I’ll forget it.”

“I don’t want to create any more secrets. We’ll be moving together from now on.”

In front of his rock-solid answer, Yoon Tae-ha could say nothing.

“I don’t have many memories from my childhood.”

“...”

“Memories before my parents died are strangely blurry, and it feels like there are gaps. It’s as if someone tampered with my memories. Just looking at the fact that I have no memory of visiting the research facility before the age of ten confirms it.”

Yoon Tae-ha, covering her mouth with her injured hand, froze.

“My parents died on a ship. An esper I’d never seen before attacked my parents, and then pushed me from the ship into the river. That’s why I’m afraid of water. My grandfather made it look like an accident.”

The incident that occurred on the river, rippling like a swamp, was also a past Cheon Geon-young rarely revisited.

He then spoke of what the unidentified esper had said, the fire incident where he discovered his flame immunity, and then about Cheon Seong-beom, who subsequently took him to Yoon Jeong-hoon. He even mentioned that Yoon Jeong-hoon acted as if he had never seen him before.

As she listened to the story, transparent liquid gradually welled up in Yoon Tae-ha’s large eyes.

Cheon Geon-young, who had even revealed how he came to join Arc, belatedly noticed her on the verge of tears and approached. Yoon Tae-ha gasped roughly, trying to hold back her sobs, but failed. Cold liquid eventually streamed down her cheeks.

But before the tears reached her chin, Cheon Geon-young abruptly embraced her. He wrapped his thick arms like a shield around her dangerously trembling back.

“Get away. Let go...”

Yoon Tae-ha tried to put strength into her legs to support herself, but her feet slipped like a newborn animal. Cheon Geon-young held her tightly, as if binding her to his body, making her able to stand upright.

Tae-ha. Cheon Geon-young called her name softly.

The woman began to cry silently. Her tears fell like rain into his chest. Cheon Geon-young stood steadfast, surrendering himself to it. As if he was confident he wouldn’t resent her even if he drowned.

He intended to let her cry her heart out, but contrary to his wish, Yoon Tae-ha slowly pushed against his chest. Seeing her roughly rub her delicate eyes with a bandage, Cheon Geon-young’s face immediately hardened.

“Why did you come back?”

She spat out in a voice filled with resentment and injustice.

“Knowing everything, why did you come in yourself? The person who made your family that way might be here. They’d still be after you!”

Yoon Tae-ha blinked, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

“At least you shouldn’t have come in after manifesting as a guide. Why did you return to where the person who tried to kill you is? You’re not that foolish. You could have stayed safe outside.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason you went to find your friends.”

“I had no choice!”

She twisted her expression, as if unable to bear any of this conversation.

“My life outside would have been treated as nothing but a potential criminal. You were different from me. What on earth were you thinking coming back here? You shouldn’t have come to me!”

“Say that again.”

Among all the frantic words she poured out, only one bothered Cheon Geon-young. Brushing back the hair that had fallen over his neat forehead, he revealed his simmering rage.

“Finding me was a mistake. Those people must have recognized you. They would have been interested in the fact that a child classified as a failure later manifested as a guide.”

His mind reeled at her dismissive words. A mistake. What was a stroke of luck for me, she calls a mistake. His insides shattered into disarray.

“If it wasn’t a mistake, how far down do you think you would have gone?”

Cheon Geon-young, engulfed in emotions he couldn’t even define himself, was losing his composure.

“Every day, you’d be forced to swallow medicine that’s hard to take, get injections if you can’t control yourself, and if that doesn’t work, they’d put a bomb around your neck. Do you think that’s better?”

“It’s better for me to go through that than for you to get hurt.”

Yoon Tae-ha finally touched upon words he couldn’t tolerate. They were swept away by a tidal wave of despair, unable to escape for a while.

The lamp’s light, leaning against the rock, was too weak and faint to fill the deeply etched sadness. Yoon Tae-ha, finally wiping her face, opened her pale lips.

“I’m scared of you being in danger because of me. Just the possibility of that happening makes me feel like I’m going to die right now. What do you want me to do about being born like this? It’s not entirely my fault that I came to like you.”

Unfiltered sobs seeped into her sorrowful confession. Yoon Tae-ha cried silently, pouring out her resentment to another person for the first time. Cheon Geon-young looked at her, seemingly in shock.

“If I could only calculate with my head, I wouldn’t have done anything with you. I should have. I keep forgetting that wanting to lean on someone else is a luxury. When I’m with you, I feel weak. That’s terrifying.”

I want to disappear.

Clutching the handkerchief, she turned her back to Cheon Geon-young and tried to leave the stream. But before she could step into the dense forest, a rough force turned her around.

“Let go!”

Cheon Geon-young looked down at her with eyes pulled taut, like he was on the verge of exploding. At that moment, the branches looming above their heads swayed grotesquely like spider legs. Even the gravel path along the stream rattled.

The surrounding objects had begun to be affected by the esper’s emotions. Yoon Tae-ha realized her body had reached a dangerous stage.