Chapter 689 (1/2)

Vivasvat.

Or Chan-hee: Brilliantly sparkling, beautifully happy.

It was the Buddhist nickname my maternal grandfather had given me.

***

‘Why are all the lights still off? Has Jae-won not arrived yet?’ Seo Eun-young opened the front door and entered the living room, but she soon tilted her head as she sensed that something was off. Originally, at this time of day, either her son or husband would have arrived home first and turned on all the lights. Moreover, she had a school reunion meeting today, so she had already told both of them that she would be arriving early in the morning.

While telling herself that she needed to call her husband and son later, Seo Eun-young crossed the living room and turned on the lights. “Goodness! Jae-won, have you been here all along?” She found her son seated with his face down on the dinner table. However, there was something unusual about her son’s mood.

“Is something wrong?” So, Seo Eun-young approached Jae-won cautiously and asked, but her son did not answer. “Did something happen at school?”

However, her son offered no response.

***

Son Jae-won did not attend school for three days after that day. He just locked himself up in his room. He pulled the curtains, turned off all the lights, and stayed in bed. Although his mother brought him meals and outwardly voiced her concerns about her son’s health, Son Jae-won just stated that he was ill and had no appetite.

Neither his father nor his mother could get Jae-won to do anything. All they could do was stand anxiously in front of their son’s door.

Son Jae-won's hands shook but not out of fear. ‘It was just for a moment, but I felt like I was truly…alive.’

Jae-won had acted impulsively because of Min Chae-young's unfortunate predicament. In the beginning, he was not that interested in other people. No, previously, it was more accurate to say that he was completely indifferent. Furthermore, he often applied that same cynical gaze upon himself. He was insensitive to living things. He was a being who lived only because his life started. Emotions, let alone empathy, was something he did not really possess…

However, Son Jae-won felt a different sensation last night. He did not feel any of the guilt that he thought he would feel, based on what he learned in school. After killing the ‘evil’ opponent, all he felt was pure pleasure, a feeling close to joy or a sense of accomplishment.

“…” Since childhood, Son Jae-won always viewed everything else in the world as things beneath him.

It was not that he could not comprehend others. Actually, he could often read people’s thoughts and feelings clearly. At first, he thought everyone in the world was like him, but he soon found out that this was not the case. In the end, he grew frustrated at being the only one who had this ‘sight’ ability. And from some point onward, that frustration turned into boredom, boredom and indifference towards everything.

Jae-won felt it was condescending to hear others call him a ‘genius’ or ‘gifted’ individual. At a certain point, everything was beneath him. There was a high chance for Jae-won to have become arrogant and self-righteous, but it was his family members who corrected his potentially misguided behavior. Thanks to a wise mother and brilliant father, he was able to maintain at least the basic qualities of a human being. Even so, his bored perspective on world affairs did not change.

Moreover, Jae-won possessed a sense of confidence that he would do well in whatever he decided to do. Thus, from the start, he did not put in any effort in any of his pursuits. This unmotivated perspective gave him no choice but to lose interest in all worldly things.

So, at some point, Jae-Won came up with the idea of always ‘being average’. He decided to always be in the middle of the pack in whatever he did because if anything he did seemed to be done too well he would garner too many people’s attention.

At first, if he did something well, he might feel a fleeting satisfaction, like showing off, but if that were to continue over and over, he would get tired of that sensation as well. It was annoying to receive the gazes of people who had high expectations of him, so he instinctively learned how to hide and escape from people’s gazes. This was also the reason why Jae-won consistently scored in the middle of his class academically.

Even if he had no friends, Jae-won could go to school without much fuss. Thus, his entire life was constructed in a way to avoid being noticed. He had put in a tremendous amount of effort to get to where he was.

However, at this moment, it was different. A sense of achievement, which he had forgotten for such a long time, tingled at the tips of his fingertips. He felt he could do something, anything. He felt like he was at a crossroads. He could leave a mark on humanity or be nothing at all. He felt this thought as if it constantly pulsated in his mind. On the other hand, he also felt a great internal conflict since his thoughts were at odds with the teachings he had learned from his parents.

Finally, once Jae-won got out of bed and turned on the lights, the intent in his eyes had changed.

***

<Another unidentified body found!>

<A question for the police. Is it fine for things to continue like this?>

<It turns out that the deceased had a prior conviction for murder.>

<Continued discoveries of dead bodies.>

<Are these the acts of a serial murderer or a hero in search of justice?>

***

[The Black King expresses great satisfaction with this ‘dream’.]

The Heavenly Demon slightly frowned when he saw the message pop up in his mind while he was scanning his son’s ‘biography’. “…this fucking bastard. He’s starting to act up again. His sleep talking is a bit longer ‘this time’, no?”

To the Black King, the entire universe was nothing more than just a ‘dream’. However, reversing this equation, it could also be said that all beings living in the universe were the ‘elements’ that made up the Black King’s dream. In other words, if the Black King wanted, he could enjoy the entire life story related to Vivasvat-Son Jae-won as if it were a passing dream. In this way, the Black King was making fun of the Heavenly Demon.

The Heavenly Demon, who was grieving over the death of his own son, was unable to impose any sanctions or retribution on the Black King. Thus, all the Heavenly Demon could do was feel his guilt burrow deeper into his chest.

The Heavenly Demon understood that the Black King was trying to agitate him and poke his sensitive spots, but he still found it too difficult to suppress the anger that was rising from his chest. Still, he forced himself to do so. If he did not, the entire chessboard that he had engineered up to now would be made useless.

[The Black King bursts into laughter, saying the Heavenly Demon is a heartless father who has abandoned his son to his enemies.]

Crack! The Heavenly Demon ground his teeth.