#075
Winter was deepening. The safe house had only one window due to security concerns, but it was enough to look outside.
There wasn’t much to see, just an empty lot with scattered abandoned factories, but whenever it snowed, Yoo Seong-woo would stand by the window and gaze outside endlessly. Seeing this, Yeon Tae-soo placed a chair and a blanket by the window.
That day too, he was looking outside as sleet fell.
“Why don’t you ask me anything?”
It was a somewhat impulsive question.
Yeon Tae-soo hadn’t asked him anything until now. At first, Yoo Seong-woo was grateful, but by this point, it was impossible not to feel suspicious.
“Secretary Kim Ji-heon must have told you everything. That my face is identical to Yoo-hyun’s. That as soon as I heard this, I attacked Secretary Kim Ji-heon and ran away.”
Yeon Tae-soo didn’t answer, but he was standing behind him. Since it was still daytime, Yeon Tae-soo’s face wasn’t reflected in the bright window.
“There must be countless strange things, so why don’t you ask anything?”
“…Because I think you’d prefer that I don’t ask.”
Yoo Seong-woo turned around. Was he really just carrying so many doubts for such a simple reason?
“Do you mean you’re not curious about who I am, what my identity is?”
“I’m curious. Of course I’m so curious I could go mad. I want to split your head open right now to find out. Not just who you are, but what you’re thinking, why you’re looking at me with those eyes.”
Judging by his expression, these absurd words were completely sincere. The back of Yoo Seong-woo’s neck bristled as if facing a natural predator. His whole body tensed as he half-turned, gripping the chair handle.
Yeon Tae-soo came closer and placed his hand on Yoo Seong-woo’s stiff shoulder. Though it was just a simple touch, he felt his body melt at Yeon Tae-soo’s contact.
“But I feel like whatever answer I hear won’t really matter.”
“…You expect that no matter what I answer, you’ll remain… favorable toward me?”
“Favorable?”
Yeon Tae-soo let out a brief laugh and nodded.
“Yes.”
Then, even if I were an android, would you still be favorable? Yoo Seong-woo swallowed the question that had risen to the tip of his tongue. That couldn’t be possible.
“I’ve killed many androids.”
He faltered at these words. His shoulders, which had relaxed under Yeon Tae-soo’s touch, stiffened again. Sensing Yoo Seong-woo’s anxiety, Yeon Tae-soo stroked his back with the same gentle gesture as before.
“I personally shot and killed those who were wailing and begging for their lives, all of them.”
Unaware that he was referring to the mass slaughter incident at Jirisan, Yoo Seong-woo was simply afraid. He couldn’t understand why Yeon Tae-soo was suddenly saying such things.
Has he found out? But since the eyes looking down at him were still sweet, Yoo Seong-woo tried hard to erase the fear from his expression. He only hoped that among his programmed functions, his acting ability would work on this man.
“…Why are you suddenly saying this?”
When he asked with feigned composure, a bitter smile appeared at the corner of Yeon Tae-soo’s mouth.
“I thought I should tell my story before hearing Mr. Yoo’s.”
And the story Yeon Tae-soo shared was a past that he had never revealed to anyone.
***
There were differing opinions on what to do with a soldier’s child.
The father had fled, and the mother had died. Long meetings were held to decide what to do with a child who had no relationships that could be called relatives.
And a conclusion was reached. A retired military android would take care of the child.
Sending a female android with childcare functions was the maximum support the military could provide.
This was a kind of experiment. Observing and recording the process of two android entities raising a human child would itself become valuable data.
Wasn’t it a blessing to ensure a child who would have been abandoned anyway could grow up safely? The administrators happily approved the project.
Yeon Tae-soo grew up well under the care of the two androids. There were no issues with his intelligence or personality tests. He even showed learning abilities superior to ordinary children.
The child called the retired male military android “father” and the female childcare android “mother.” Like any child, he became dejected when scolded and happy when praised. A typical attachment relationship seemed to be forming.
But there was one problem. Not only the retired soldier, but also the female android sent to assist with childcare was a half-malfunctioning unit. This was the result of trying to save costs.
The child who grew up calling an android “mother” appeared confused. He was terrified seeing it suddenly stop functioning and freeze up.
Nevertheless, the attachment already formed did not easily disappear.
‘Mother… is she in a lot of pain?’
The retired android looked down at young Yeon Tae-soo who was clutching his clothing with his small hand.
The android who had worked as a soldier for a long time could read the emotional expressions of the young human. Fear and sadness, and… affection.
His adoptive son, who showed affection to a being that was neither human nor bound by blood, was a strange existence.
But there was no way to revive a consumable item. The female android was already scheduled for disposal.
‘Is Mother going to die?’
The retired soldier, who was about to say disposal rather than death, closed his mouth. Some inexplicable error prevented him from speaking.
‘I wish she wouldn’t die. But she’s going to anyway.’
As disposal drew near, the female android had more and more days when she stopped functioning. When she briefly awoke, she spent time with her adoptive son.
The adoptive son never said things like “don’t be sick” or “don’t die” to his adoptive mother. He just spent time with her, smiling. Even when she presented math problems he had learned long ago, he solved them as if for the first time, and played games more suited to younger children.
One day, Yeon Tae-soo came home from school severely injured. This had never happened before. As an experimental subject of the military, he always had security escorts.
The cunning classmates waited in the bathroom where the security couldn’t enter, and then lynched Yeon Tae-soo.
Despite clear circumstances and multiple witnesses, Yeon Tae-soo claimed he was injured by his own mistake.
‘I just fell, that’s all. I know the military has been cutting our living expenses lately… no need to create problems unnecessarily.’
The child knew he was an experimental subject.
As soon as the android saw the adoptive son’s downcast eyes, he understood why Yeon Tae-soo always smiled in front of his adoptive mother. He could also understand the sentiment behind wishing she wouldn’t die.
Paternal love was an emotion he had never learned. Without realizing it, he touched his chest and made a decision.
To protect this life form. To “make” this weak human live a little longer.
He was a hacking specialist android. Handling information was easy for him. Even if that information concerned human surgical procedures, it made no difference.
After weeks of searching for and inputting information, he shared his findings with his partner and colleague, the female android.
‘Don’t you want to complete your mission? As an android.’
Her mission was childcare. For Yeon Tae-soo to grow up healthy.
The female android looked at him and smiled. With a smile similar to a human’s.
‘Please take care of our son.’
The former soldier and hacker android disobeyed military orders for the first time. He escaped to a place beyond their surveillance.
He couldn’t hide forever, but that didn’t matter. He only needed to hold out until Yeon Tae-soo recovered from the surgery.
‘Father… where is this…?’
White walls everywhere, a sterilized surgical bed, and tools for surgical operations. As he entered the room with bright lights, young Yeon Tae-soo became frightened.
‘I’m not sick. Father, why are we here… and you’re not even a doctor…’
Instead of answering, his adoptive father covered his adoptive son’s nose with a cloth soaked in anesthetic.
Immediately after the surgery, Yeon Tae-soo suffered tremendous pain. A terrible pain shot up from his chest, too severe for painkillers to help. It felt like some plant was growing through his heart.
It hurts, Father, it hurts. It hurts so much. Looking down at Yeon Tae-soo crying out like this, the android clenched his fist. He couldn’t say anything. He wasn’t an android with free emotional expression.
It took several weeks for Yeon Tae-soo to fully recover. During that time, the child screamed every day until his vocal cords were damaged. And remarkably, as soon as he recovered, the pain vanished completely.
Young Yeon Tae-soo realized that pain wasn’t the only thing that had disappeared from him.
The wind touching his body, the sound of falling rain, the way his senses received these things. And the hope that his mother would get better. All of these were different from before.
He was told that his mother had been disposed of while he was writhing in pain. Even hearing this news didn’t cause his heart to ache much.
Something had changed. It was as if the color had drained from his body. The world remained the same, but he felt one step removed from it.
‘What did you do to me?’
‘It was for your own good.’
Strangely, he didn’t feel like getting angry. Only a coldly settled rage froze his heart from within.
Yeon Tae-soo checked his adoptive father’s computer when he was away. He could see X-rays and super-MRI images of his chest. When he opened the file in 3D, a hologram of his heart appeared.
His heart looked different from the “human” heart he had learned about in school.
A black mark attached to one side of the heart. This stone, so black that at first glance one might think the photo was taken incorrectly, was something Yeon Tae-soo had learned about.
His adoptive father had forcibly implanted a black moonstone in his heart.
There was no shock. He just realized that this was the cause of the terrible pain. And one question: where did this black moonstone come from?
From other materials, Yeon Tae-soo discovered that his adoptive mother’s expected lifespan had several more years remaining.
Where the black moonstone in his chest came from was clear.
