episode_0036

… … … … …

How many hours had passed? Finally, I had finished the long battle with numbers, graphs, and unfamiliar economic terms. That meant I had finished looking through and organizing all the data. My head was pounding, but I was still happy that I had accomplished something.

“Seo-ah, I’m done… … !”

His voice shook with a mixture of fatigue and excitement. He proudly held the fruits of his labor and approached her.

“Really? Where are you looking?”

Seo-ah accepted my report. The sound of her long fingers turning the paper echoed in the quiet study. Naturally, I held my breath and waited for her reaction.

Soon, Seo-ah’s expression began to change subtly. Her eyebrows twitched slightly, and her lips trembled slightly. Perhaps she was concentrating on the content?

“How is it? Did I do well?”

Seo-ah remained silent for a while. She must have been seriously reviewing my report.

“Autumn Army… … I know you worked hard.”

The voice of Ms. Seo-ah congratulating me sounded a little strange. It was as if she had mixed emotions. She might have been surprised by my report, or maybe she was just tired from the long paperwork.

“Yes! I really worked hard. Seo-ah said she would believe me, right?”

At that moment, Seo Ah’s hand slowly clenched into a fist. The veins on the back of her hand stood out and the joints turned white.

Seo-ah stood up from her seat. She slowly approached me and extended her fist. It may have been her mood, but her hand seemed to be shaking slightly.

“… … You worked really hard, Gaeul.”

Soon, Seo-ah’s fist came up to my head and slowly opened, and her hand gently stroked my head. Her touch was warm and affectionate.

“Please continue to do this in the future… …”

“Yes, Seo-ah! I will continue to help you while you stay here!”

I answered with a big smile. It was truly an incredibly rewarding experience to help her, my benefactor.

Seo-ah also nodded with a very faint smile.

“Okay. Now, take a rest. You worked hard.”

I got up from my seat with a glad heart at her words. My body was sore, perhaps because I had been sitting all day.

The moment I was about to leave Seo-ah’s study and close the door, I heard Seo-ah’s small muttering.

“… … I didn’t become like them. I… … won.”

… … … … …

As the door closed and the boy’s footsteps faded away, a strange smile spread across Park Seo-ah’s face. Her eyes were filled with triumph, and her heart was filled with joy.

Park Seo-ah slowly sat down on her chair. Looking at the report, which was a mess to the point of being useless, she thought about the changes that had occurred inside her.

“Now, I get it… … .”

Some might call her crazy, but to Park Seo-ah, the boy is a mirror reflecting her past.

She saw in him a helpless and innocent version of herself as an abused child, and so she hated him, and at the same time, she wanted to be violent towards him.

This is a fact that I have already come to feel to an unpleasant degree after all the interactions so far.

What she now realizes is why, despite all that hatred, she was unable to resort to violence.

“I’m not like those trash guys.”

Park Seo-ah hated the term “inheritance of violence,” because it was a word that pointed at her painfully.

But Park Seo-ah knew that, regardless of her feelings, she was partly carrying out the legacy of violence. Instead of taking out her non-existent children, she was taking out her violence on criminals.

But she did not pass on her violence to the innocent and helpless boy. That was an important clue that might break the chain of violence inherited from her parents.

Although it was a belated realization, Park Seo-ah noted that she could not wield violence ‘unconsciously’.

It’s not that she consciously endured violence, but rather that she unconsciously couldn’t wield violence. In other words, she is fundamentally different from her trash parents. She is a much better person.

Park Seo-ah’s hands clenched and unclenched into fists repeatedly. She recalled what had just happened.

Without realizing it, she was behaving just like her parents who had abused her in the past.

She was given ridiculously difficult tasks, watched as her efforts were futile, and received a shambles of results, and was consumed with a rage so intense that even she couldn’t believe it herself.

Yes. The report the boy made was really hard to read. It was exactly like the ridiculously difficult report that Park Seo-ah had been forced to make by her parents when she was young.

And the moment she saw the task, Park Seo Ah was overcome with an overwhelming urge to punch Ga Eul-gun in the head just like she had been hit when she was young.

The moment she raised her fist, memories of the past flashed through Park Seo-ah’s mind. The pain of being beaten by her family, that terrible feeling of despair.

But Park Seo-ah did not become a human like her parents. She did not beat her for criticizing the completeness of her reports, did not starve her, and did not lock her in a small box.

Instead, she stopped to gently stroke the boy’s head. The feel of his hair was warm and touching.

“Yeah… … I won. I didn’t do that.”

A smile spread across Park Seo Ah’s lips. It was one of the greatest victories, a turning point in her life. It gave her hope that she could overcome the crippling psychological trauma left behind by her trash parents, and her impulse toward violence.

Perhaps, this was a more exhilarating victory than snapping her parents’ necks with her own hands. No, it was. It felt much happier to be free of the mental influence they left behind than to simply remove the trash parents from this world physically.

At that moment, new thoughts began to arise in a chain reaction in Park Seo-ah’s head, as if dominoes were falling.

“Wait a minute… … .”

Suddenly, Park Seo-ah’s eyes opened wide. She slowly got up and walked across the study. Staring at the walls filled with countless books, she savored her new realization.

Park Seo Ah was projecting her past onto the boy, and her past parents onto herself. This was something she could not stop no matter how hard she tried to suppress it with reason.

“If so, then, then… … … !”

As Park Seo Ah has repeatedly proven today, if she gives her what she didn’t receive, she will be able to erase the shadow of her parents that has been hanging over her mind.

Of course, it won’t be easy. Since abnormal violence is deeply rooted in Park Seo-ah’s psyche, she will have to fight against her greatest desires every time she meets the boy.

But she was confident that she would win. She was essentially a different human being than her trash parents. In fact, she had already proven it several times and would continue to prove it in the future.

“Hoohoo… … Hoohoohoohoo.”

Park Seo-ah’s eyes grew more intense, her smile filled with joy spread, and she felt a sense of liberation throughout her body. The realization sent her into a state of ecstasy.

… … … … …

It was so difficult that it gave me a headache, but Seo-ah acknowledged my report. It was truly a heartwarming experience.

“Ehehehe… … .”

I lay in bed for a while with a pounding heart, but after a while my mind slowly began to calm down.

“Um, what do I do now… … ?”

Perhaps it was because of the room’s structure, which had white walls and no windows. The boredom came faster and stronger than I expected.

This is because I suddenly changed my residence and had nothing to do. I had no choice but to take out my cell phone again. If I didn’t have this, I would have been really miserable.

While absentmindedly browsing through various bulletin boards on my phone, I came across one bulletin board that caught my eye. It was a bulletin board that praised a certain game while insulting users of Restart World as ‘Lis Tribe’.

[After reading this article, I feel like I want a safe world… … .]

Among them, an article with a rather provocative title caught my attention.

[Restart Matchmaking Tribe: After reading this article, I want to go to Safe (short for Safe World).

I don’t do safes, but I heard that the price of items has dropped a lot recently due to various controversies.

If you spend just 3 million won to get the equipment, you can earn minimum wage while watching dramas and movies.

Isn’t this pretty good? If I sell the equipment later, I can get it all back…

First of all, I heard that the event will start soon and that equipment prices are at their lowest right now. It would be even stranger if they didn’t make such a good safe.]

“Heh… … ”

I’m not sure, but it seemed like a pretty convincing piece of writing. Is that what they called the rice feed I’ve only heard of?

“Safe World, right… … ? Will it be fun?”