Where is this?

  I looked around. A common, tireless memorial car wandered along the road, and across the asphalt was the funeral hall of a university hospital.

  Why am I here?

  As if to answer my question, my body walked into the funeral hall, disregarding my will. Then, I realized when I saw the portrait hanging in the funeral hall……

  Oh, this is a dream.

  And it was also a dream I’d actually had in my past life. Suddenly, I was no longer Denburg Blade……

  My mother had passed away.

  The mortuary was filled with adults I didn’t know, and the chief mourner, that hateful human being, was busy greeting people here and there.

  "It’s okay……"

  I could hear people asking my father questions in the distance.

  "Ah, it’s all right……”


  His voice, emerging from a grief-stricken face as he smiled and answered questions, sounded cracked and stuffy. He appeared to not be okay, and yet still seemingly forcing a smile.

  It was despicable.

  Did those people know that trash hadn’t shed a single tear after my mother died? They probably didn’t know…… that that human being had never visited my mother when she was admitted to the hospital. There was no way for them to know how my mother and I had been treated at home. No, he wouldn’t let them know.

  It had already been a while since my mother’s mortuary had become their social center, and an unprecedented stage of ‘haha’s and ‘hoho’s. Just being there made me dizzy, and made me want to leave my seat to vomit right away.

  It was purely because of my mother that I was standing here looking at those masked monsters. If I weren’t here, this mortuary likely would have resembled a flamboyant masquerade for medieval nobles. It was at the point of being an insult to the deceased.

  Ah, poor mother, who lived her whole life essentially as a maid. This had been the result of enduring all kinds of insults from my father.

  Did you want to show this kind of scene to your son? If it was for your son, you shouldn’t have died in the first place. You should’ve lived longer than that trashy human being, and lived a long time with his inheritance…… You should have lived a really long, happy life.

  "Now, I’ll start the cremation along with the relics of the deceased,” the funeral director said.

  The chief mourner and the other people began to move. Soon, people picked up my mother’s coffin and headed to the crematorium.

  An expensive coffin entered a cramped space, a fire broke out for a moment, and then a voice said the cremation was finished.

  Saddened at the thought that it was already over, I looked at the clock and saw that considerable time had already passed.

  I felt empty.

  The expensive coffin and clothes were luxuries she had never enjoyed in her lifetime. The ancestral rite table was so extravagant that it bore no resemblance to her daily life of eating only one bowl of seaweed soup with a few vegetable side dishes and red pepper paste.

  It had all turned into a handful of ashes contained in a small urn. To think that urn was my mother…… It was so ridiculous, it made me laugh.

  "Thank you for coming."

  In the distance, my so-called father kept meeting and greeting people to the end, leaving my mother on the backburner…… No, the expression "backburner" was still too much. She was nonexistent to him. She was just being treated like air.

  I lightly touched the window of the compartment that contained my mother’s urn, resting on the shelf of the charnel house, and turned around.

  It wasn’t my mother that I had touched. It was my reflection in the window, with not a single tear on my face, just like my father. If I kept looking at my face any more, I felt I might punch the window out of anger.

  Turning around, I walked past the trash and left the charnel house. When I passed by, the guy called ‘Father’ glanced at me in passing, and didn’t even try to stop or talk to me.

  Sitting in the backyard in a black suit after escaping, I bit down on a cigarette and lit it. The smoke I exhaled scattered into the sky. I took out my mother’s cheap diary, which I had secretly taken, while biting the cigarette……

  xx Year xx Month xx Day is sunny.

  Today, I heard the news that ‘.……’ had a fight at school and rushed over.

  At school, I saw a child with black eyes; my son sitting on the sofa peacefully with a healthy face; a woman, the mother of the child who had been hit; and a teacher.

  As soon as the mother of the child who had been beaten by my son saw me, she screamed, and the teacher constantly tried to calm her down.

  I had to apologize. Anyone could see that my son was fine, and the other child had worsening bruises, so I had no choice but to apologize.

  The mother of the child had been shouting for a long time. She stopped because of the principal, who came over after receiving a phone call from my husband, and an unknown call she received.

  First, after taking my son home early, I asked him why he hit the other child. He said I should have asked as soon as I came, and asked bluntly, “What use is asking now?”


  When I heard those words, I realized my mistake, but it was too late. My son must have had his own reasons. But I scolded him regardless, saying that hitting the other child was wrong.

  Then my son smiled cynically, locked himself in his room, and didn’t come out.

  My husband, after arriving home late at night, knocked hard on our son’s room angrily. My husband cursed and shouted for him to come out, but our son didn’t answer.

  Then, my angry husband picked up a golf club and began to hit the doorknob. I was surprised and tried to stop him, but he pushed me, finally broke opened the door, and began to hit our son with the golf club.

  Feeling cold, I thought I needed to stop him. I grabbed my husband, but he pushed me while cursing, and after receiving a shock to my head, I fainted.

  By the time I woke up, I was in my room. As I left the room, I could see my son’s broken door, and my son making coffee with a bruised face.

  I asked my son if he was okay, and he gave me coffee with a bitter smile that resembled my husband, asking, "Why did you step in and get hurt like a fool?".

  Below that, due to an old tear mark, the ink was smudged and couldn’t be read.

  It was really foolish. Really……

  Cigarette smoke entered my eyes and blurred my vision, but no tears flowed.

  It was really foolish.

  I chewed on the cigarette filter. Emotional things weren’t my cup of tea.

  * * *

  After my mother’s funeral, I went back to my own rented room near my high school and turned on the computer. The room was a place where my mother had begun to live independently after being hospitalized.

  When I turned on the computer, my message box was full. Ever since my mother was hospitalized, I had never turned on the computer properly, so it was natural that things had piled up.

  One of the reasons was that there had been no way to check the messenger I used because it was made with a self-made tool, so it couldn’t be linked to a mobile phone or another computer-

  Lactose Intolerance: Huh, younger brother?!

  As soon as I logged into the messenger, ‘Lactose Intolerance’ responded-

  Crow: Who’s younger than you? We don’t even know each other’s faces.

  When I sent a message saying ‘don’t make me laugh’, ‘Lactose Intolerance’ replied, bold-faced-

  Lactose Intolerance: Since I joined the messenger first-

  Lactose Intolerance: I’m older than you-

  Lactose Intolerance: You joined later, so you’re younger than me. What’s the problem?

  I snorted and sent a message-

  Crow: Show your ID-

  Lactose Intolerance: Ayy, what ID. Aren’t we both Korean?-

  Crow: Who says I’m Korean?-

  Lactose Intolerance: Isn’t your ID card Korean?

  I wrote ‘Don’t make me laugh’ in Filipino, and ‘Lactose Intolerance’ said he was actually Brazilian in Cantonese. In response, I asked why a Brazilian was speaking Cantonese in Portuguese.

  In fact, these were all meaningless conversations. It was clear that dozens of proxies were used to log into the messenger. Even if he spoke fluent Korean, there was no guarantee that he was Korean-

  Carbonara: Oh, what’s going on? Crow is here?-

  Carbonara: Didn’t you quit being a hacker?

  Suddenly, ‘Carbonara’ greeted me happily using my nickname ‘Crow’.-

  Crow: Ahh, it’s been a while since I last had someone I wanted to kill-

  Crow: I’m going to become active again.

  My messenger was full of smiling onomatopoeia-

  Lactose Intolerance: 可 可 可 可 可 可 可 可 可 可 可 可
-

  Carbonara: lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol-

  Carbonara: ‘Lactose Intolerance’, why don’t you laugh the usual way using ㅋㅋㅋㅋ? It doesn’t look normal-

  Lactose Intolerance: I accidentally pressed the Korean/English switch in the past, and now he’s asking where I’m from :D-

  Carbonara: Anyway, who else are you going to bury?

  ‘Carbonara’ asked me a question.

  So far, I’d never really tried to bury anyone. It had just been practice to bury my damn father.

  For practice, I had just caused a mafia uprising in Italy. I had tried to drive a wedge between the Yakuza and the Triads, and had also broken into the CIA’s servers and sold information to an anonymous person at a high price.

  For reference, the mafias still hadn’t noticed that someone had intentionally triggered the uprising. On the side of the Triads, they thought it was American gangs who had done it, and the CIA suspected an internal spy.

  The fact that I had done such things was also something that even among these messenger groups, ‘Lactose Intolerance’, ‘Carbonara’, and ‘I’m My TOP’ didn’t know.

  What was funny was that ‘Carbonara’ thought I was Indian, ‘I’m My TOP’ thought I was CIA, and I didn’t know what ‘Lactose Intolerance’ thought-

  Crow: Does anyone have a zombie computer at Moronz headquarters?

  Moronz was a famous office program company, and zombie computers were computers that had fallen under hacker control-

  Carbonara: Wait, Moronz headquarters? Who would have such a dangerous thing in a place full of monster hackers?

  ‘Lactose Intolerance’ responded to ‘Carbonara’.-

  Lactose Intolerance: Me! Me! I have one! I have one!-

  Carbonara: Are you crazy?!

  He was seriously crazy. To think he had planted a virus at Moronz headquarters, which was impossible for most hackers due to their impenetrable firewall. If you were tracked back and caught, you would get a sentence of a few hundred years.

  I told ’Lactose Intolerance’.-

  Crow: All right, that’s good. Keep it well and pass it on to your descendants as an heirloom-

  Carbonara : lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol-

  Lactose Intolerance: 可 可 可 可 可 可 可 So mean ㅠㅠ

  I looked in the mirror and distorted my lips to try to laugh at the boring joke. But in the mirror, I had an expression of disgust.

  I managed to endure my desire to throw the mirror away, and covered it so it couldn’t be seen. In the future, there wouldn’t be any reason for me to look in the mirror except for shaving-

  Carbonara: So what do you need? I’ll give it to you cheap.

  I told ‘Carbonara’ that it was fine and sent a smiling emoticon.

  Would I be able to laugh when I destroyed him?

  * * *

  Reporter Lee sighed as he chewed on some eundan, looking at the reflection of his face in the LCD computer screen after not having been able to go home for three days.[1]

  It was good that he had gotten to be a reporter for the city division the way he wanted, but the articles he wrote kept having to be made according to his superior’s taste, so he didn’t feel like living these days.

  It would have been nice if a scoop had dropped out of nowhere, but there couldn’t be such a convenient thing in the world.

  Thinking that way, he spit out the eundan he had been chewing, gargled lukewarm water from a plastic bottle, and swallowed it. He was a crazy guy who couldn’t even brush his teeth, because he cleaned his shoes with his own toothbrush that lay on his desk.

  Thinking he should start working again, he woke his computer from sleep and opened his email first. If his boss sent him an email but he missed it, he would receive some discipline.

  As soon as the reporter opened his email program, he received a message-

  A tip-off

  A tip-off? Reporter Lee clicked the email, thinking it was a trivial thing with someone sending some nonsense as a tip-off. He checked the photo attached to the email while drinking his lukewarm water.

  "Pppfff-!" At that moment, he was so surprised that all the water he had been drinking sprayed from his nose and mouth.

  "Ah, senior, that’s gross!" Reporter Lee’s junior reproached him with a frown.

  But Reporter Lee was too focused on the picture. Suddenly, he shouted, "I-it’s a scoop!"

  He quickly printed the photos that had been attached to the email and ran to the office of the city division’s deputy head. But even in his hurry, he didn’t forget to close the email.

  * * *

  I stopped fiddling with the computer and turned on the TV because the news was about to start. The black screen lit up, showing the familiar announcer’s face reflected on the screen-

  Today, the chairman of the international organization of superpowered people, the World Hero Union (WHU)—also known as the strongest hero, Sir Blip de Menter—announced his retirement and selected Na Yerin, known as the Hero of Light, as his successor. Before she gave up all her nationalities as a hero, she was Korean-British when she was young……

  After some irrelevant and unimportant stories passed by, the announcer continued the report, looking serious around the time when a scoop would usually be announced-

  Our news team received a tip-off. Let’s take a look at the picture.

  The picture on the screen depicted an upper executive police officer and the mayor of the city having a drink.

  If it had been them simply having a drink, it wouldn’t have been on the news like this. However, if it were a drinking party surrounded by naked women, such that half the picture had to be censored, it would be a hot topic.

  Honestly, although I had reported it, I hadn’t been sure whether it would get on the news. It wasn’t because of the information itself, but I had thought it might get blocked because the editors-in-chief of the news outlets, including the one I had reported it to, were friendly with those people.

  Of course, if it hadn’t been reported, I would have hacked into the news outlet I had reported it to and made it seem as if it had been discovered by accident. If that had happened, the press wouldn’t have been able to avoid accusations of covering up the facts on purpose, but fortunately, they had reported it.

  Now it was time to add more firewood to the scandal and move onto the second step.

  1. Eundan is a candy that looks like silver balls and carries a refreshing sensation, similar to Tic Tacs.