By Zephyria 
“Have you eaten?”
“Is that the first thing you say the moment you arrive? Anyone listening would think I live on a starvation diet.”
Despite the words, he looked like he had lost more weight. The bones in his wrists were more prominent than before.
He was a man who had the strength to hammer equipment and haul heavy objects even in poor environments, but seeing how his usual clothes hung loosely on him, it seemed that returning to work would be impossible for the time being.
“I didn’t know you two would deceive me with something like this.”
At the light reproach, Director Gil’s eyes twitched. Even as he picked up the tray with a composed face, he seemed to be inwardly calculating.
Just how many things had he lied about that he was already counting the number of offenses? If the one who had caught him were Joo-oh, he would have pressured him and scraped everything out of him, but unfortunately, the opponent was a well-mannered man of his father’s generation.
“Your health. I heard it wasn’t just a simple minor illness.”
At the gentle explanation, Director Gil’s stiff expression softened. He gestured for Mu-hae to sit on the sofa and opened the refrigerator.
For a split second, Mu-hae thought he saw several bottles of a very vivid green liquid. He felt that if he accidentally made eye contact, he would be forced to share health juices piled up as high as the homeowner’s karma, so he quickly shifted his gaze to the pie.
Tap. He didn’t forget to nudge Joo-oh to save him from the crisis. Joo-oh would probably mutter some insolent critique like ‘tastes bad’ or ‘deer feed’ while still drinking it all, but since he had a prior record, if Teacher Jung caught him, he wouldn’t hear anything nice either.
“What’s the point of telling you? It’s not a pleasant story.”
“That’s exactly why I should have known. Even if I couldn’t be of much help, I thought we were close enough to know that much about each other.”
A relationship where one knows when the other is about to drop dead. At the piercing answer, the grumbling voice stopped abruptly.
Director Gil’s movements became needlessly busy. By the time he returned with a green liquid that looked to be at least 800 milliliters and some normal fruit juice, the atmosphere in front of the tea table was in an ambiguous state—neither too heavy nor particularly bright.
Only Joo-oh was grinning foolishly, arranging the pie on the paper box as if it were a plate. It was clear he considered it both a get-well gift and his own snack.
“……How much did you hear?”
“It’s nothing much. Roughly that you’ve been dying in secret all this time?”
“…….”
“Fortunately, I heard the medicine has started to work, but since your complexion is still like this, I speculated that everything you eat, drink, and smoke would be under someone’s supervision.”
“Damn it. You heard everything.”
He set the drinks down with a clatter. As if that were a starting signal, Joo-oh hurriedly took a large bite of the pie topped with purple jam.
“I wasn’t always that frail. It’s not like I’ve lived like this for just a day or two.”
“You’re not exactly much better now, are you? I only heard a few days ago that there was progress, so I thought you’d be rolling around in bed when I got here.”
“That’s why I’m saying I’ve never been ‘rolling around’ like that. Do you really see me as a dying patient?”
“No, you weren’t. Director Gil was lying down.”
“What are you talking about now?”
Joo-oh, who had devoured a slice of pie in an instant, chimed in so as not to be left out of the conversation. Director Gil’s brow furrowed slightly at the sudden pincer attack.
Muttering something, he gulped down the green juice and stared at the empty wall for a long time.
“It’s not that I hid it because I didn’t trust you.”
At the explanation that was practically an apology, Mu-hae nodded silently. He knew what they must have been thinking to keep silent until this day.
Above all, Director Gil was still a patient. If he held onto the exhausted man and questioned him annoyingly, his doctor—whose presence was evident from the traces of a morning visit—would come back talking about violence.
The moment he thought of that, goosebumps ran down his spine. The fact that he hadn’t properly explained that day’s events to Teacher Jung made him want to bury his head in a piece of pie and faint.
Mu-hae sighed unconsciously and glanced at Joo-oh. This damn Hungry Ghost was already munching on his third slice of pie.
“And you, have you been doing well?”
“I’m always the same.”
“Your face doesn’t look the same.”
He was wearing an expression that suggested nothing was wrong, but it didn’t seem to work on someone who had known him for a long time.
Mu-hae pondered for a moment. Even if he pretended to be fine, Director Gil must have been bedridden until he arrived.
Was it okay to pour out everything he had experienced so far to a man whose physical condition was still precarious?
“I met West Wind.”
“Hey, you brat!”
Before Mu-hae could choose his words, Joo-oh blurted it out. Pfft, cough. With a short coughing sound, Director Gil sprayed green substance in all directions.
His red eyes glowed mysteriously, and the tea table became a flurry of activity. Before anyone knew it, the half-eaten pie had been safely evacuated into Joo-oh’s hands.
“Cough, hack, haa…… what?”
Only after roughly wiping his face and hands with a tissue did Director Gil ask with a lingering cough. There was no point in hiding it now. Glaring at the brat, Mu-hae briefly conveyed the events of the past few weeks.
“I’ve almost reached the destination, the final clue was in that person’s hands, and they came to meet me. That’s roughly it.”
“Then, as for who West Wind is…….”
“Yes, well. That’s how it turned out.”
He had found more of his lost memories. He vaguely understood for what purpose West Wind had lurked behind Gu-reum and led him.
There were plenty of more important stories, but he didn’t tell them. He considered it a small revenge for the hidden illness.
Just as Director Gil had worried about Mu-hae’s shock, Mu-hae also couldn’t help but worry about him. He didn’t particularly want to see him fluttering in outdated guilt.
“The Return flight…… I thought you had finally let go of it.”
“That’s how it turned out too.”
That was true. And that was the plan. Until he met West Wind, he had intended to stay away from all sorts of dark secrets and illusion-like opportunities.
He thought the Aberrant humming and crunching on pie beside him would be safe. But in the place he visited out of lingering attachment, he realized that such pathetic struggling was useless.
“Did you know? West Wind still wants to get rid of Crystal Blue.”
Director Gil flinched slightly at the title used for her. Perhaps he thought Mu-hae would call her something different now that he knew her identity.
However, calling West Wind ‘mother’ felt as unrealistic and awkward as imagining a friendly chat with his father, who had left more than a decade ago.
They were not part of Jin Mu-hae’s life. Regardless of the past, in every moment of the present, unlike some others…….
“……I thought as much. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have left such loose ends.”
“I received a proposal. She told me to join her plan.”
“Cough!”
Once again, Director Gil had a violent reaction. Fortunately, since he wasn’t drinking the green juice this time, there was no risk of another pattern blooming next to the cushion that already had green stains.
“It seems she possesses everything, from the existing information of the Starpath to the research results that have steadily continued. However, I don’t know yet if the ‘defect’ of the past has been resolved.”
“……Do you happen to have the data?”
“If it’s about the defect, no. But I did obtain some additional things.”
When he projected the documents taken from the Tamjeunggwan before his eyes, Director Gil examined the contents with surprising seriousness.
For a while, a silence so profound that even breathing felt intrusive settled in, broken only by the sound of someone crunching on pie.
“Anything else?”
“I mentioned that to you before.”
“Let me see it.”
Director Gil, who had been reading the documents via the low-readability hologram like a possessed man, finally leaned back against the sofa, covering his tired eyes after several dozen minutes.
Though his face was mostly covered, Mu-hae could tell that color was beginning to return to his pale complexion.
“The defect…… I don’t know what happened to it. But it seems the final trigger has been resolved.”
“Pardon?”
He had already learned through Gu-reum that a decisive trigger had been missing from the research of the Return flight twenty years ago.
So he had vaguely thought that this was the defect of the Starpath. But Director Gil’s nuance was entirely different from his expectation.
“If West Wind sought you out, the Starpath is likely now in a state where it can be used at any time. I’m not certain, but I can guess.”
“For someone who says that, she seemed sensitive about the defect……. She intended not to tell me until the end unless I joined her.”
She was the one who had collapsed the Return flight because of the Starpath’s defect. A person who acted that way twenty-some years ago wouldn’t suddenly ignore the defect and force a change now.
As he tightened his jaw thinking this, he felt Director Gil’s gaze. Mu-hae slowly turned his eyes toward him and met a face that seemed to know something.
‘That probably isn’t the “problem.”‘
‘The defect…… I don’t know what happened to it. But it seems the final trigger has been resolved.’
The words of Teacher Jung and Director Gil echoed in his head, bringing a fresh realization.
Come to think of it, naturally, the two of them would know. What the defect of the Starpath was. And why that had led to the conflict with West Wind.
It seemed Director Gil noticed Mu-hae’s intention. His gaze changed as well.
“Mu-hae. Do you want to keep doing this work?”
“…….”
“If not, I have no intention of telling you. It’s not some grand secret, anyway.”
“Since when did you care about West Wind’s side?”
“I have to. Especially if that woman said such a thing.”
If he didn’t join, he couldn’t hear the secret of the defect. Put another way, that warning was a sentence stating that the moment he crossed the line, she would pull the new head of the Return flight into the grand plan she had been postponing.
Jin Mu-hae calmly drank the rest of his juice. The sour taste stung the root of his tongue, but he didn’t even blink.
“Then that’s fine. I’ll find out on my own.”
“Mu-hae.”
“You never know. I might change my mind while digging into it. So just throw me some simple clues like usual.”
Well. He said that, but seeing Joo-oh watching him while leaving two whole fruit pies out of conscience, he had no intention of letting anything related to him disappear from the world.
The guilt of deceiving even Director Gil, who worried for him, was nothing compared to the anxiety lurking in his heart.
“Jin Mu-hae. You don’t like pie?”
“Why.”
“Then let’s go home and eat cookies.”
Had his patience finally run out? Joo-oh, who had been watching quietly, leaned in close and whispered in his ear as if exchanging a great secret.
The expression on Director Gil’s face at that moment was quite strange. Only after raising his hand to brush his mouth did Mu-hae realize that he had laughed quite loudly without even noticing.
253 – I Became an Aberration in a Dead Game