“Mhmm~?”


  That day, for some reason, Bom wore makeup from noon. After applying eyeliner, she curled her eyelashes and touched them with a mascara. Then, she mixed some stuff here and there before adding colour around her eye.

  “How is it?”


  “You look beautiful. My lady,” replied the protector, while carrying a mirror.

  Yu Jitae reflected on how she looked before the makeup and compared with how she looked after the makeup.

  …


  It was so faint that he couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Uwah. Unni. You look super pretty today…!”


  “Really? Thanks.”


  “It’s seriously amazing! What’s that blusher?”


  “Ah, this is…”


  Kaeul, who recently became interested in makeup, watched Bom’s cosmetics from the side with sparkling eyes.

  He was curious about the reason Bom was wearing makeup. She was usually like air and was very consistent, but acted strange whenever something different was about to occur. There must be a reason why she was wearing makeup all of a sudden, despite them having no plans to go out.

  And as he had expected, his watch rang after some time.

  [MYH: Sir. Have you been well??? ^^,,,~~~ It’s me, Myung Yongha!!]

  It was from Myung Yongha. This was the first time he was having a private conversation with him ever since they shared their contact details.

  [MYH: What a bright and happy weekend morning! Have you had breakfast~~!!??]

  [MYH: Take a kimbab (similar to sushi roll) for yourself~!!]

  [MYH: @)))))))]

  [MYH: Hahaha~~~!!!!!!]

  Being in his forties, even his messages gave off a human feeling. Yu Jitae slowly carried his fingers across and typed the reply.

  [Me: Y es]

  [Me: What could be the matter]

  [MYH: You know~~ I finally received my vacation hahaha!! Let’s plan our trip!!]

  [Me: Ah]

  [MYH: Seriouslly~~ T.T These government bass-taards don’t give me any days off~~ It’s this late already!!]

  [MYH: (an emoticon of a dancing old lady)]

  [MYH: (an emoticon of a dancing elephant)]

  [Me: When’s the best for you]

  [MYH: Strike~~^^ while the iron is hot,,,,,, How~ about~ today,~~ right~~ now!?]

  So after thirty minutes, Yu Jitae met Myung Yongha, who was wearing a fake human-faced mask, at a cafe inside Haytling. He walked into the cafe with his wife and was surprised when he found Yu Jitae.

  To be exact, he was surprised by Bom who was sitting next to Yu Jitae.

  “Hello.”


  She was wearing an off shoulder blouse and a pair of jeans. Her white shoulders as well as her collarbones were in display.

  For some reason, she was also wearing earrings and those pink flower-shaped earrings flashing beneath her grass-coloured hair perfectly suited the meaning behind her name.

  “Iyaa~. She looks really pretty today, no? Hahaha!”


  He could now tell why she wore makeup in the morning.

  “Nice to see you again, Bom.”


  “Ah… hello, unni.”


  With a gentle smile, Bom greeted Myung Yongha’s wife, Jung Hawon.

  “Where’s Jun-il and Junhyuk?”


  “Our nanny is taking care of them. We want to have a day off a week just for us.”


  “Ahh, the baby should be bigger now, right.”


  “Of course. Would you like to have a look?”


  While Bom and Jung Hawon were sharing a conversation, Myung Yongha brought up the main topic to Yu Jitae.

  “There are two choices for the family trip.”


  “Two choices?”


  “The Association gave lodging tickets for a good vacation spot for VVIPs. The maximum number of people available is 20, so we can head there with others if you’re okay with that!”


  “And what’s the other choice.”


  “Yes, the other one! I’m not sure if you’ll like it sir, but apparently there’s this deserted island for vacation being built north of Las Vegas, which is a hot topic. I’ve made reservations for it for the time being.”


  “A deserted island?”


  Seeing that he was curious, Myung Yongha opened his mouth with a suggestive tone.

  “Uhuhu…! You see, it’s a pretty interesting place. Do you have field warfare experience by any chance, Mister Jitae?”


  He did.

  Around 90 years or so.

  “That’s great!”


  For a few minutes, Myung Yongha explained the vacation spot which was modeled with the concept of a deserted-island.

  “…That’s how it is. So although the kids would love it, we won’t even be allowed to take a good rest. Does that still sound good?”


  Yu Jitae imagined what it would look like.

  It wasn’t that difficult, and he simply placed Gyeoul inside the background described by Myung Yongha. Imagining how Gyeoul would look on a deserted island… It looked fairly promising overall.

  “That would be good.”


  Their drinks were served during their conversation. Bom’s drink was a cherry ade, and she naturally lifted the cherry that was placed on top of the drink and carried it over to Yu Jitae’s mouth.

  “Here you go.”


  Due to the lack of experience with daily lives, the thought that it might look strange did not hit the Regressor instinctively, and he habitually received it with his mouth.

  Myung Yongha and his wife stared at the two of them with intrigue. “Oh my…” murmured Jung Hawon with a gentle smile which suggested that she was enjoying what she was seeing.

  “Then we’ll contact you again once we get the schedule. Hahat!”


  ***

  That evening, he received a call from BM.

  – It’s me. Do you have time by any chance?

  Judging from how BM also happened to have a day off on the day Myung Yongha was free, it seemed that one of the projects of Grand Natural Society had come to an end.

  Yu Jitae headed to the underground labyrinth.

  After passing through a deep valley of darkness, past the [Shallows of the Abyss (S)], he finally came across the underground labyrinth. Despite there being no light source, the floor and the walls were all bright, and despite being devoured by the darkness, the sky shone gently above.

  But today, the inner room was quiet for some reason.

  “…”


  The 30-man special force agents always ran in like a bunch of dogs while shouting out, “The doctor’s here!” but none of them were here today.

  In addition, the structure of the inner room had been changed. Before, they always laid down on the bare ground under the [Fragment of Paradise] whenever they weren’t working out, but now, there were dozens of container blocks inside the wide inner room.

  It seemed that they each prepared their own house.

  “Ah. You’re here already.”


  BM welcomed him inside the workshop. There were empty bottles of vodka on the floor and the person wearing sunglasses appeared very haggard.

  “Jung Bongman.”


  “Please. Like I said, I threw that name away.”


  “You don’t look too good.”


  “Yeah. I have been a bit busy these days. And things weren’t working out well either.”


  Standing up from his seat, he gave a stretch. Because of his long and thin body shape, he looked like chopsticks.

  Yu Jitae looked around and observed the workshop. Hundreds of containers had disappeared compared to before, only leaving around a dozen. It seemed that he only left the best of the best.

  “Do you like tea?”


  “No.”


  “Then, coffee? Or water?”


  “It’s fine. More than that, I want to see the chimera you made first.”


  BM scratched his unkempt hair.

  “Hmm… You mean right now?”


  “Why. I can’t?”


  “No. Of course you can. It’s just, embarrassing to show what I did. To think… I would feel like a child having his homework marked at this age…”


  While grumbling, BM wobbled across the room and Yu Jitae followed suit. On the back wall was a storage and when BM pulled the blinds that were blocking the way, a large hibernation capsule revealed its gentle blue lustre.

  Inside it was a young human figure whose gender was hard to tell.

  There was a hole around where the heart should be.

  “How does it look?”


  Yu Jitae stood in front of the hibernation capsule and stared at the child inside. Soon, the child slowly opened its eyes and looked back at Yu Jitae.

  When he lifted his hand and placed it next to the capsule, the child also carried its hand to the wall. With the thick glass in the middle, Yu Jitae and the child’s hands were overlapped.

  “Why did you do something unnecessary.”


  “What was that?”


  “Why did you put a light reflex on it.”


  “…Can you see that?”


  BM gave an empty laugh.

  “If you’re asking me why I put it on… Well, who knows, maybe it’s because I wanted to make it look more like a human…”


  Just like what Yu Jitae said, the child inside the capsule was not a living child. It was nothing but an awkward machine acting in reflex after sensing light.

  “…I don’t really know why.”


  In other words, it was more like a complex machine than an organism.

  “Pull all that stuff away. Don’t put something useless inside a human body.”


  “I shall.”


  Walking around the storage, Yu Jitae opened up various boxes in search of something.

  Seeing that, BM once again felt somewhat strange. For some unknown reason, Yu Jitae was only opening the boxes that had the key ingredients inside.

  “You don’t have any heart fragments?”


  “Yes. No matter how trash and garbage I am, I didn’t want to use a human heart.”


  “Why are you trying to save face.”


  “What?’


  “You’re not using it because you know it won’t work.”


  BM scoffed.

  …In fact, the man was right.

  It’s something he felt whenever he met him but the man was very difficult to deal with. Despite not having a single bit of respect for adults, he was more like an adult than himself. So BM, who was always treated like an adult wherever he went, felt like a child in front of this man.

  After checking the ingredients, Yu Jitae opened his mouth.

  “I’ve seen everything now.”


  “How does it look.”


  “What do you think. It’s a mess. So listen up. ATTN essence 425 mL, 45.3g of carbon extract from glycine, purple elixir 4.25 mL, glycoten reverse gravity fragment, 32.2 g of refined hydrogen, 11.5 g of nitrogen, and for calcium, 0.18 g from the beak of a Raptor, and 0.02 g from a human bone.”


  “Eh? Ah, yes yes.”


  “Those are the basic heart ingredients of an eight-year-old child. Make sure you don’t get a single decimal wrong.”


  “Ah…!”


  BM gasped.

  It was an astonishing compound equation that could never be bought with gold. He didn’t need to write it down, because his brain remembered it all.

  “Wait! Please wait. If those are the basic ingredients, does that mean you need more apart from those?”


  The Regressor nodded.

  “Yeah. And in order to obtain that, you need to go to a slightly dangerous place.”


  “What is that thing.”


  “At the very summit, there is a seed that allows the dead to breathe.”


  “A seed that allows the dead to breathe…”


  He had never heard of it before.

  “Wait, is it that dangerous? Even for you?”


  “No. Just for you.”


  “Damn it.”


  He grumbled.

  “I get it. I’ll prepare them right now.”


  “Yeah. It’ll take some time so don’t rush.”


  “You’re going already?”


  Yu Jitae nodded.

  In the previous iterations, he wasn’t interested in BM and had thus never looked into it, but he had a few questions, including the reason he was trying to make a human-type chimera as well as what he wanted from it. At the same time, BM probably had his share of questions.

  However, it was now time for the kids to have dinner.

  “Let me contact you once I prepare everything.”


  “Yeah.”


  *

  It was when he left the workshop and was about to return to the Shallows of the Abyss. Something strange entered the corner of his eye.

  “…”


  There was something resembling a portrait hanging around the middle of the [Fragment of Paradise], like a large placard. And what was hanging on that placard was Kaeul’s face.

  Why is that there?

  When Yu Jitae was feeling doubt from the unexpected situation, someone drenched in sweat left the container and found Yu Jitae.

  “Nn…?”


  She, who was wearing a sleeveless shirt revealing those tough arms and her broad shoulders, was surprisingly none other than Ha Saetbyul.

  “Ooohhh…! Doctor…?”


  Carrying a body that was even sturdier than the memory sent by the clone, Ha Saetbyul dashed towards him. Her blurry eyes flickered.

  “It’s been a while.”


  “You too, sir…! Uhihi…”


  As if she was half-intoxicated, Ha Saetbyul giggled and hugged Yu Jitae, before trying to lift him off the ground. Although she was still shorter than him, the arms surrounding his body felt rigid.

  “You came for a round… I wanted to see you…!”


  “No. I’m not here for a round. For starters, get off.”


  “Yes.”


  “Right. Have you been well these days?”


  “Of course?”


  With vacant eyes, she giggled and revealed her biceps.

  “I’m getting stronggerr.”


  “…I can see it. How is everything.”


  “It’s not bad… I’m getting harassed everyday because I’m bad at these exercises. But I’m trying harder because I’m annoyed…!”


  “You look like you have a goal now.”


  “Yess. I want these old ogres to not be able to look down on me anymore. In the distant future, I’ll be the boss of the 30-man special force…”


  He nodded.

  She looked a lot better than he thought. Despite receiving the Light of Paradise head-on, she had a firm determination and goal, which proved that she now had a strong desire to improve.

  Suddenly, Ha Saetbyul flinched with the same dull expression.

  “Oopsiess… You can’t tell anyone that… Boss Bell Baryon, that gorilla woman will be angry for sure.”


  “Got it.”


  “Scary scary… My waist will be folded in half easily…”


  Right. That’s that.

  More importantly, Yu Jitae decided to ask about that strange thing.

  “By the way, what’s that.”


  “Yes? Ahh… you can’t call her ‘that’. Sir… Even if it’s you, doctor, the patients will hate it.”


  “Huh?’


  “She is the idol of our mental hospital… Goddess Yu Kaeul…!”


  During her speech, Ha Saetbyul gave a full smile with her loose gaze.

  The Regressor doubted his ears.

  What?

  “Do you want to have a look togetherrr…?”


  …What?