By Zephyria 
I should give back exactly what I received. I wanted you to suffer as much as I suffered, and I wanted your family to grieve your death as much as I grieved my parents’ death.
I thought that was only natural.
Then, a thought suddenly occurred to me. Could it be considered a clean end just because Cha Baek-joo killed my parents and I killed Cha Baek-joo?
Rather than exchanging death for death, perhaps I had simply created another sin. If I took revenge for my parents’ deaths, wouldn’t someone else take revenge for Cha Baek-joo’s death?
If so, how long would this endless cycle of sin and retribution continue? Would it be when there is no one left to demand payment for the sin? Or the moment some pushover decides to give up on revenge?
In any case, it doesn’t matter now. Whether this is the end or the beginning of an endless cycle of revenge, it’s fine.
Even if someone asks me to pay for my sins, I will proudly say it was a choice I have no regrets about. Because everything started with Cha Baek-joo. I could stand proud and without regret even in the face of my own sin.
“You didn’t come in.”
“I was getting restless from sitting or lying down all day.”
One good thing about Father being the museum director is that I can enter and look around for free without an admission fee. As I strolled through the exhibited works, my Omega father approached me.
“I see you made your decision faster than I expected. Your execution was even faster.”
“I endured it for twenty years, but once I realized this wasn’t right, I couldn’t bear it for another moment. Just looking at that face is horrific and nauseating. How could I have endured it?”
“You did the right thing.”
I said that, but my heart felt heavy. He looked calm and composed as usual, but his voice was fragile and thin, as if it might break at any moment.
I wondered belatedly if I had stripped away this man’s will to live. There are many ways to seek revenge, and there is no single right answer; one must seek revenge in the direction they desire to leave no regrets. I wondered if I had shattered Father’s goal too completely.
But I have my own points to make; the direction Father envisioned involved me being used as a tool. Without asking my opinion, he just thought it was enough for me to possess it. While getting a bonus is always nice, there’s no need to receive a bonus at the cost of giving up everything I have.
“I guess you didn’t have the courage to kill him, though.”
“I want to tear down hosan first. I was curious to see what faces the two remaining Chas would make when the ‘great’ hosan, which they consider their very foundation, begins to falter.”
To be precise, there are three including Cha Soo-kyung. But since Soo-kyung washed his hands of hosan, ran away from home to marry the child of an enemy family, and is acting as if he’ll be removed from the family register—or remove himself—he has naturally been excluded from the ‘Cha family’ category.
“In that regard, you’re quite similar to me.”
I had the same thought when I visited Grandfather. I wondered what expressions Grandfather and Father would make while clinging to the name of a hollowed-out hosan. I had been sad about my poor imagination.
“Killing him can wait until after I’ve had my fill of watching that vacant expression.”
“I’m going to start prenatal education now. I heard so much bullshit from Grandfather that I think it’ll be bad for the baby’s mental health. So, please keep your murder plans to yourself.”
Meeting that old man feels like hearing a whole year’s worth of insults all at once. He is definitely a harmful human being for a child. To raise the prenatal education score that has dropped into the negatives, I should only say kind words and see good things for a while.
“I heard you visited the hospital.”
“I heard you sent the divorce papers; I guess you two are sharing that kind of news?”
“Do you think we shared it affectionately? He was just trying to raise his voice for once.”
“I heard it was incredibly loud. I heard a man who didn’t even cry when his child died was clinging to legs and sobbing; is that true?”
What’s the point of clinging to pant legs and crying now? He should have been better to them when they were around. No, even if he had been, the first button was fastened wrong, so it was doomed from the start.
When I was being mistreated by Grandfather, he acted blind, but then he’d cling to me at home wanting to have sex—I wondered what the hell was going through that man’s head. I guess his head was just filled with nothing but sex. That’s probably why he couldn’t control his lower half and committed a crime.
Anyway, they are men with not a single redeeming quality. Both the Alpha father and the grandfather.
“It seems you hear a lot of news despite living away from home.”
“Not the trivial details. The driver was surprised and called me. He said the atmosphere is bad, so I shouldn’t come home or contact them for now. It’s funny how the people around me worry more about my baby than I do.”
I couldn’t tell if the clicking of his tongue was because of my habit of mingling closely with the employees or because of the casual way family news was being relayed. I didn’t particularly care to know, so I pretended not to notice and changed the subject.
“Do you think he’ll sign the divorce papers?”
“Do you think he’ll do it willingly? As you said, he’ll have to see everything turn filthy before it ends.”
“It’s going to be a long process.”
“I am fine with that. As long as that man is miserable and suffering, it doesn’t matter how long it takes. In fact, I hope it takes longer. So that everyone can know what happens in this household.”
That’s a good attitude. If you keep shushing, enduring, and hiding things because you’re afraid of others’ eyes, you get sick. You move passively because you’re conscious of others, and eventually, you give up on what you want. To get what I want, I had to ignore the gaze of others.
“Will there be a trial? Let me know if you need a witness.”
“How can you be a witness when you have no memories?”
“Still, for Father, a son with only a few months of memories will be much more helpful than a son of the last nineteen years.”
As for me, I’m a guy who’s told he acts like a mudskipper, not knowing where he is. But I’m confident I can talk a much better game than Cha Soo-kyung, who can’t say a word while walking on eggshells.
Even based solely on the fact that we ate simmered soy beans as a side dish, I was confident I could make the Alpha father look like a total scoundrel.
“Yes, that is reassuring.”
A faint laugh escaped him. Since he was a man I’d never seen laugh loudly, I felt it was a relief that he could at least laugh like this. If he keeps laughing like this, a day will come when he laughs loudly.
“You should have hired more lawyers. They’re supposed to be smart people; ten heads working together should be better than one.”
“I’ve gathered enough so that we aren’t outmatched by the hosan legal team.”
“Good. Tell them to harass them until their hair falls out.”
“I shall.”
Since there was nothing more to discuss, silence followed for a while. I looked indifferently at an artwork that didn’t even catch my eye and spoke.
“Is this even a piece of art?”
It was nothing more than a square piece of plaster with finger marks pressed into it, standing on its edge. Was there any reason to exhibit this in a museum? I found it utterly difficult to understand where the art was or from what perspective this should be called a work.
I guess I really am a person far removed from art. Either my sensibility is dried up, my artistic sense is lacking, or my eye for it is poor—or perhaps it’s all three.
“What is art, anyway? Anything that passes through human hands is a work.”
“Then a used tissue would be a work of art.”
“If emotion is contained within it, it could be a work. If you give it a plausible title and meaning, it becomes a meaningful work. And if the artist’s name is famous, it becomes an even greater work.”
“What on earth is that?”
That’s not art; that’s a scam. It was absurd to hear such things from a museum director.
“I produced some artworks a few days ago; do you want to see? Kwon Yi-kang praised them so much.”
I found the photo I took on my phone and showed it to Father. It was a clay animal I had joined in making after seeing Kwon Yi-kang take photos and getting swept up in the mood. It wasn’t a joke; Kwon Yi-kang even brought a transparent case the next day to put it in.
“You made it well. Did you make this?”
“Kwon Yi-kang has recently awakened to shopping for baby toys. The baby isn’t even out yet, but he buys all sorts of things. I’m the one dealing with them instead of the baby.”
Yesterday, we put together a thousand-piece puzzle. I must not have a talent for puzzles, because I felt like my eyes were going to pop out while doing it. I spent all day on it and couldn’t even finish half, and eventually, Kwon Yi-kang joined in after work to barely complete the puzzle.
I wondered what was going on in the head of Kwon Yi-kang, who bought a thousand-piece puzzle as a ‘baby toy’ that required two adults to finish.
“You seem to have a talent for crafts.”
“Kwon Yi-kang said that, and I told him to stop talking nonsense. But looking at this, it does seem like the one I made is better.”
It’s a work that instills confidence in people. In that sense, it’s a wonderful piece. The confidence that even if I made it with my feet, it would be better than this.
“Your fingertips are nimble. You captured the characteristics well.”
“Heh, I’m actually quite good at things involving my hands.”
I managed to make a living using those hand skills. If I didn’t have that skill, it would have been hard to survive in the back alleys. I probably would have been sold off to somewhere even worse.
“Your painting hasn’t progressed at all. It wouldn’t be bad to try learning crafts.”
“I was just joking, but you’re praising me again. I’m not at a level where I need to formally learn to make things.”
“I’m saying this because you did well even with baby toys. When you have some free time, let’s find a way for you to learn.”
There was no longer any reason for him to care for me, yet I looked at Father quietly as he spoke those words as if they were nothing special.