Ch.189Epilogue. Meanwhile (2)

# Bang!

“Good shot.”

The sound of gunfire echoed continuously throughout the shooting range.

Bob patted his daughter’s shoulder and pressed the button firmly.

With a mechanical sound, the target sheet flew closer.

“Wow…”

Bella took off her goggles and exclaimed in amazement.

All the bullet holes were clustered just slightly off from dead center.

It was only slightly off due to sighting issues, but her aim itself hadn’t wavered at all.

“What do you think, Dad? Pretty good shooting, right?”

“Yeah… you’re quite good.”

What Bella was holding was a revolver that used .44 Magnum rounds.

Being double-action only, the trigger pressure would have been beyond imagination.

Yet Bella’s hand showed remarkable steadiness, not allowing even the slightest tremor while exerting twelve pounds of force with her index finger.

“You really take after your mother.”

“Really?”

To think she even inherited the hand strength of his wife, a former volleyball player.

When his wife’s back smash struck, he’d have to walk around with the scars of her divine palm on his back for at least a month.

Bob had already decided to pray for the poor soul when Bella eventually chose a husband.

“Have you ever brought Cuss here?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“That’s too bad. If Cuss came, I’d let her try shooting for free.”

“Come on, kid. Do you know how much bullets cost? I can’t let even a friend shoot for free.”

“Really? Then I could have paid for a few shots with my allowance…”

Bella rested her chin on her hand, looking disappointed.

Seeing her like that made him sigh involuntarily.

He wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t.

Some things had to be kept secret, even from family.

“Let’s go home.”

They got in the car, seeing off the staff.

Soon the quiet motor sound began as the car moved forward.

“Dad, are you not going to prison anymore?”

“No, the trial is over.”

“How did it turn out?”

“A fine.”

The price for hiding Jinsoo and Juliane had been quite severe.

About 20 businesses had been shut down by the LAPD who had been combing through the slums, and there were still 2 warehouses that had been seized and not yet returned.

It was essentially retaliation.

In the end, most of his operations couldn’t run smoothly and were halted midway.

But the mood in the organization wasn’t bad—in fact, it was more energetic than before.

Just reuniting Jinsoo with his daughter was worth paying that price, or so they said.

He wondered how all his subordinates could be so full of loyalty.

“But how did you really pull off that astronaut switch?”

“Well, you see, thanks to a certain collaborator, we already knew the entire internal structure. So we secretly cut through the fence, infiltrated through the CCTV blind spots…”

That was certainly the most difficult part of the operation.

Bob explained the process in detail, like recounting a heroic tale.

He almost got charged with kidnapping because of it, but since Jinsoo had done all the actual execution, he took all the blame.

Since he no longer existed in this world, it didn’t matter how many charges were added.

Even if murder charges were added, it wouldn’t matter, but Jinsoo had steadfastly refused to kill anyone.

After the brief gunfire inside the space shuttle, an examination of the bullet marks revealed that all bullets were found only inside the bulkhead where Jinsoo had been.

He had deliberately missed his targets and hadn’t shot at the door.

‘That foolish man…’

If it were me, I would have killed them all and thought about it later.

How could someone who was so violent in prison be so docile on his final journey…

Still, that certainly wasn’t the wrong choice.

“Oh, they’re still doing that.”

“Indeed.”

The news channel appeared on the screen.

The news was showing tens of thousands of people gathered at a regular rally that had been going on for months.

“Bring Cuss Back”

That was the rally’s only slogan.

Jinsoo’s choice to kill no one and travel far away with his daughter had created public sentiment, and that sentiment ensured he would be remembered forever.

And this memorial served as a powerful smoke screen, hiding the truth.

“Tsk. Taking a kid who hasn’t even finished her homework to a shooting range. Great parenting.”

“She said she had a headache, so I took her out to relax, haha.”

“Sniff sniff! What’s that smell?”

“I roasted turkey. Wash your hands and come eat.”

“Awesome!”

Upon entering the house, he exchanged a brief kiss with his perpetually stern-faced wife.

The television in the house was also showing the rally footage he had seen earlier.

Looking at it, Bob smiled and changed the channel.

Though he couldn’t openly go meet them, someday when the opportunity arose, he would be able to.

He decided to live quietly, looking forward to that day.

***

“Sigh… these guys are completely slacking off.”

At the Tactum maintenance facility.

The section chief came to inspect the engine maintenance site and shook his head.

There were as many as 20 people, but it seemed like at least 10 of them were just loafing around.

“This never happened when Jinsoo was here.”

“Every day it’s Jinsoo this, Jinsoo that! Who the hell was this guy that you keep going on about him?”

“Listen up, you fools! He was a genius of maintenance!”

Looking at how they worked was truly frustrating.

Just to loosen a single bolt, they brought all sorts of strange equipment to inspect the inside before loosening it.

If it were Jinsoo, he would have gone with just a pair of pliers, tapped it a few times, and immediately determined, “Yeah, it’s okay to loosen this.”

It was hard to believe that efficiency could drop so much just because one person was missing.

No matter how he thought about it, he could only sigh.

“Hey, where was this engine made anyway?”

“I think it was a collaboration between Northrop and Boeing or something.”

“Those guys are complete geniuses, aren’t they? How did they create such a structure…”

Nevertheless, the Ares engine maintenance work was progressing smoothly.

The fact that the aerospace agency was freely sharing data like this meant they likely intended to choose Tactum as a partner for future projects.

It meant Tactum had a bright future ahead.

“Section chief! Please look at this!”

“What is it?”

“It’s a safe found in Jinsoo Kim’s cabinet.”

“What?”

Just then, an employee handed over a small piece of metal.

Though small in size, it was quite heavy.

“That’s strange. Didn’t we thoroughly search the cabinet back then?”

“That’s what I thought too. Maybe it was camouflaged.”

There’s no way a safe that wasn’t there before suddenly appeared.

They must have missed it during previous cleaning.

But what could be inside Jinsoo’s safe?

Whatever was inside should be given to his wife.

“Good work then. When you finish maintenance today, write up a report and submit it!”

“Yes sir! Have a good day, section chief!”

After casually waving to the maintenance workers, the section chief left the facility with the safe.

It would be difficult to bring the entire safe.

If he couldn’t open it, it wouldn’t pass the security check at the Hyper Bullet terminal.

He needed to somehow extract the contents.

“Jinsoo’s birthday… no. His Tactum hiring date… no. Hmm.”

He tried several numbers, but the safe door wouldn’t budge.

Perhaps he should ask his wife if she had any idea what the password might be.

As he was scratching his head thinking about this, a number flashed through the section chief’s mind.

“Ah. His daughter’s birthday…”

Jinsoo had once proudly mentioned it.

He had set his daughter’s birthday as July 7th.

As if entranced, the section chief pressed 0707 in sequence.

Beep…!

With a click, the lock was released.

The section chief swallowed hard and opened the door to look inside.

“What’s this?”

But the inside was empty.

After turning it over and examining it thoroughly, he finally discovered something taped to the ceiling.

Carefully peeling off the tape, he found it was a Polaroid photograph.

Looking at it, the section chief couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

“A happy family.”

It was a family photo.

A family photo of three people taken on a beach at sunset.

Flipping the photo over, there was a note saying it was taken at Waikiki Beach, Hawaii.

He should definitely give this to Jinsoo’s wife.

The section chief carefully placed the photo in his inside pocket to prevent it from getting wrinkled.

“Huh?”

The section chief’s eyes suddenly widened.

He hurriedly took out the photo again and examined the note.

Waikiki Beach, Hawaii.

If his memory served him correctly, since meeting his current wife, Jinsoo had never once left North America.

Even when he went to El Paso, he reported to me, his direct supervisor—so he went to Hawaii without saying anything?

That couldn’t be right.

Then when was this photo taken?

“Ha… this guy…”

The section chief burst into laughter out of sheer disbelief.

To pull the wool over his eyes like this.

What a crazy bastard.

The section chief held his tingling head and kept laughing.

Though it tingled, he didn’t feel particularly bad about it.

If this was how it was, he could be fooled again and again.

He was confident he could happily be deceived multiple times.

“You crazy bastard. Why not just say your dead daughter came back to life too?”

The section chief chuckled as he tore the photo into pieces.

Then he lit it with a lighter, and the Polaroid fragments shriveled up black, soon becoming unrecognizable.

It was enough just to know they were alive and well somewhere on Earth.

They would probably never meet again.

He decided to erase the photo he had just seen from his mind.

“I’m hungry. Time to head home.”

The section chief yawned widely as he walked away.

The Polaroid fragments left behind him were soon blown away by the wind and disappeared.