“Granny.”
“Yes.”
Li Hwa prepared a warm tea. It was a Taiwanese tea with a fragrant scent of flowers.
The old lady with a bent back had already lost most of her body’s physical abilities. She used telekinesis to make her heart beat and move her body. Despite that, she was always carrying a walking stick in her hand, even though she shouldn’t need it.
Bom had always been curious about that walking stick.
“Is it a special cane?”
“Nn? It was bought for five dollars at a market, so what could be so special about it.”
“Don’t you not need it?”
“No? Of course I do. Wouldn’t people give me more seats if I’m carrying this?”
It was a reason she had never expected so Bom giggled.
The two of them shared the tea together, sensing its gentle scent and enjoying the refreshing breeze of the forest. Soon, the old lady finished organising her thoughts about the troubles that the young girl had talked about.
“Girl.”
“Yes. Granny.”
“You said you were worried about it, didn’t you? How your emotions become extreme when you get jealous.”
“Yes… because Yeorum almost got hurt as well.”
“Let me tell you something.”
“Yes.”
“When your fists are about to go out in anger, attack with things that don’t hurt.”
“Okay…?”
“Dumping people with water actually soothes your anger quite a bit, you know that? And it often helps you avoid the worst case scenario.”
“Is that from your experience?”
“Definitely. My husband did get hit by pillows a lot.”
Hulhulhul… the old lady laughed followed by the child’s giggle. After wetting her lips with the tea, Li Hwa added.
“However… you also need to confront the more fundamental problem.”
“Yes.”
“You are very much like an adult than others your age. Perhaps it’s that part of you that is making you suffer even more.”
“Sorry?”
“I mean the problem is because you are not honest. You are hiding and suppressing your emotions, so the explosion it causes is even greater.”
“Mhmm…”
“To your precious people, it’s better to show more of what you are as is. If you like something or hate something, tell them straight. You need that for a more genuine relationship.”
“But, I’m not used to expressing my emotions honestly.”
“Why is that?”
“That’s what I learned from my mother when I was young.”
“Hmm.”
“Besides, if I’m too honest, wouldn’t that make me look like a child…?”
Li Hwa chuckled in response.
“Adults don’t worry about that.”
In response to her words, Bom once again realised how she was a young hatchling.
She was right. Acting like an adult thinking that she could control her emotions, Bom had been hiding her true emotions while the conflict was escalating even more.
Bom blankly etched her advice into her mind.
“Honest emotions…”
Even if that would make you appear like a child.
***
Five minutes passed by after hugging Bom. Her shoulders touching his arms were small.
Her loud heartbeats and her sniffles filled the waiting room.
He thought to himself that she was different from usual, but he had trouble defining what was actually different. Thus, he started going through the events from the start while consoling the child crying in his arms.
Her unusually happy self after receiving the invitation message.
The script of her awarding ceremony she had been preparing with the kids.
Her sudden anger at Carrot Girl; her facial expression that seemingly wanted him to move aside; her voice that complained like a child about the things that had made her upset and the words she used.
In all those situations, Bom had been subtly different from her usual self.
Her normal rhetoric packed with metaphors and analogies was no longer there.
‘That woman said she likes ahjussi. I hated that so much…’ Those were the words Bom said. Childish expressions and words had been used and her expression that tended to skilfully hide her emotions was clear.
Looking back he realised that Bom, who had usually been acting like a mature adult, was relatively childish these days.
Was this a part of her acting?
The reason he doubted it was because it had originally been extremely difficult to read her inner thoughts.
In any case, there were two problems.
Problem 1. The ‘Hatchling of the Green Dragon’ had never acted childish in any of the previous iterations. The green hatchling that had been maintaining composure no matter the situation changing like this was a matter that he could not deal with, due to a lack of data.
Problem 2. If possible, he would have loved to deny it but at this point he couldn’t even do so. It was such a clear thought that he even felt slightly repulsed by himself.
Even the crying child appeared pretty in his eyes.
*
It had been 30 minutes since he hugged Bom.
She was crying for a long time to an incomprehensible degree. Her polymorphed body resembling the physical body of a human could continue changing liquid into tears so long as the owner of the body wished to do so. Therefore, Bom continued shedding tears without taking a single minute of rest.
But considering those were tears, it wouldn’t even amount to a handful even if he were to gather all of it.
When the green dragon cried, her body gave off the scent of a wet forest after a rainfall. It was a smell which he, who disliked the rain, did not like.
And because of that, his self-hatred continued to rise ever so slightly as time passed.
The scent he had been hating thus far, was slowly becoming likeable.
*
5 hours after he hugged Bom, she finally stopped shedding tears but her hiccups and gasps still remained.
Until now, Bom had been standing still and he loosened the arms that had been wrapped around her body.
She looked up into his eyes. Reddened eyes, flushed cheeks, eyes drenched in tears. After crying her heart out, she seemed slightly exhausted judging from her fatigued expression.
After calming herself down, Bom asked him the details of the incident and Yu Jitae straightened out the misunderstanding. It was a misunderstanding from the start till the end and the only problem was Carrot Girl having good feelings for Yu Jitae.
“…Since you understand everything now, I have my share of words to tell you. You need to get scolded a little.”
“Yes…”
“Do you know what you did wrong?”
“…”
With wet eyes, Bom gave a nod.
“You were selfish, Bom. Your emotions got the best of you.”
“…”
“To be honest, to me it doesn’t matter whether you’re selfish or not. If it was in the past, I probably would have cared even less. I don’t care if Carrot Girl and other people get disadvantaged by it as long as you feel better about it.”
“…”
“But one day, wherever it may be, when you are with people you sincerely consider important, the emotional bursts you have been showing so far will break a lot of things. I can tell you for sure, because it’s happened to me before.”
“…”
“And you can’t do that.”
Bom continued nodding her head, but had a somewhat dissatisfied look on her face.
“What is it. Do you have something to say?”
She shook her head saying nothing, but her expression remained in a pout as if there was something on her mind. When he repeated the question, Bom opened her mouth with a sigh.
“I wasn’t selfish before…”
“What kind of excuse is that. Are you telling me what you did just then wasn’t you acting selfish?”
“But that’s the truth. I really wasn’t selfish before…”
Hicc, she collected her breath after a hiccup.
“When I was young, I gave my younger sister all the toys whenever she wanted them. When I was on my Amusement, I didn’t feel bad even when my whole life was stolen by someone. So I rationally thought to myself that it would be better to help the kidnapper.”
He wondered if she was blaming it on him.
“That is weird. Why were you like that.”
“Because I’m not greedy. I’m not planning to live a long life and there’s nothing I want to do so why would I be selfish? Do you think precious relationships or whatever breaking apart matter to me?”
“…”
“And yet why am I like this now? Ahjussi, you…”
She hesitated as a melancholic light resurfaced on her face. Then, she buried her head into his chest and whispered.
“…You are making me selfish.”
Her words flew in like a harpoon. His mind turned dizzy.
She indeed was blaming it on him, but wasn’t bearing a grudge against him.
The child was confessing to him.
Perplexity surged forth. After finishing her words, Bom coughed out before gasping for breath again. Listening to those sounds, Yu Jitae had mixed feelings and at this point, he not only felt self-hatred and even felt disgusted by himself.
He must have truly gone crazy.
Now, even the resonance of her breath sounded pretty in his ears.
*
It was on the way back to Unit 301.
Crying herself to exhaustion, Bom used up all her energy and her hair had returned to grass-colour. She was tired and couldn’t even use teleportation since it was an S rank spell.
Early in the morning, Yu Jitae and Bom arrived at the warp station. It was closed but being a VIP, he was able to use it.
While the staff on duty turned on the artifact they had turned off in preparation for the long-distance warp, he sat Bom in the VIP lounge of the building after showing his Dungeon Free Pass.
All sorts of thoughts shook his head, and the emotions he had been denying started wreaking havoc in his mind. Half-lying down on the sofa, Bom used her pink flower-shaped hair band to tie her hair, revealing her white neckline.
It was the present he bought with Yeorum at Las Vegas. Looking at the child’s hand and her ponytail swinging left and right like the tail of an animal,
Yu Jitae realised that he couldn’t delay it any longer.
The Regressor thought to himself.
In order to not crumble the 7th iteration, he had to clearly discern what his emotions were and a judgement required clear logical evidence for this dialectic situation.
The Regressor pondered on.
Human greed could be presented in two different forms.
One was the mind and the other the body.
‘Bom is pretty’ – if his thoughts weren’t romantic feelings and was just his aesthetic preference aligning itself to Bom’s appearance, he had to stop there.
However, if he couldn’t help but crave for Bom’s body as well, he would no longer be able to deny that it was a romantic feeling.
Therefore, he walked up and sat next to Bom who was powerlessly lying down on the sofa. Then, he shoved his head in to smell the scent of the child.
And that,
Was how it happened…
*
Whether this was the VIP warp lounge, or not.
Whether the people on duty were here or not,
None of that mattered at this point.
“Ahjussi, wait.”
“…”
“What if someone comes in…”
“No-one will.”
No-one was nearby nor were there any eyes on them. He immediately started the test.
How about putting lips together.
No.
This was not enough to be used as a logical proof. He had to crave her body.
But he could not damage daily lives in the process so he gave her the keyword, ‘hate’. If Bom ever showed her hatred of the situation, he would immediately end the test without any questions asked.
“You can’t…”
However, she did not say it. With his body on top of hers, he brought his face closer towards the child’s face. As the tension was rapidly reaching its explosion point, Bom started tearing up again.
Her powerless arms tried to stop his shoulders but she couldn’t.
“You can’t…”
As their lips drew closer, tears started forming under her eyes. She couldn’t refuse him but was trying to refuse him.
It was a situation he couldn’t understand. Unlike himself who still wasn’t sure yet, Bom should have genuine romantic feelings toward himself, so why was she refusing it?
Yu Jitae did not know what physical relationship meant to Bom.
Her hair had returned to grass-colour. If Bom was to be embraced by him now, the thought of the black-haired girl who would later come up and be embraced by Yu Jitae would haunt her from hell as she trembled in fear – there was no way for the Regressor to know that.
Besides, Bom did not want to tell him that. She thought he would probably never shower her with love if she told him, and thus could not tell him.
She was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Stay still.”
Twisting her head and her body, Bom twitched so he pinned the child down by her neck. His hand was large in comparison to the small Bom, so once his hand took a hold of both her neck and her collarbones, Bom could not avoid him at all.
Was he craving her body?
He still wasn’t sure yet.
He brought his hand to the back of the red dress, and lowered the zipper. Her clothes slid down from her shoulderlines, as her white skin that had never entered his sight before slowly revealed itself. Her collarbones – beneath them were curves imitating human breasts being displayed over the underwear.
Did he want to delve even deeper?
Even now… he couldn’t be certain.
A little bit more – he had to go a little more.
Lowering his hand, he laid it on her stomach. Going even lower, his hand touched her thigh beneath the hems of her dress. ‘Ah…’ Bom faintly moaned.
That was when the situation turned.
“Ahjussi.”
Her grass coloured eyes closed as a drop of tear travelled down her cheek.
Soon, she faintly opened her eyes, and whispered with a very soft voice.
“I’m, scared…”
Hearing her words, he stopped his body.
As a myriad of thoughts flashed past his head,
Bom’s lips suddenly closed in and touched his.
A soft and foreign texture and warmth spread across his lips – Bom had kissed him on his lips.
In that instant, he felt the world coming to a stop.
A sense of perplexity exceeding its limits shook his head. His composure was torn apart and shaken to its core, as his mind turned dizzy.
“…Only this for now.”
Bringing her lips back, Bom tightly closed her eyes. As another drop of tear travelled down her cheeks, she buried her head into his chest.
From around his chest, he heard her whispering, ‘Can’t we…?’ for permission. Bom had given up now and it was completely up to him whether they would continue or not.
Despite crying and being scared, Bom did not say she hated it but at this point, even he realised that there was something with Bom and that he should not continue hereon. But right when he decided to stop his body, an undeniable evidence finally revealed itself.
Now that he was trying to stop,
There was a part of him that found it a shame.
It felt as if his head had been driven into a bucket of water. Absent-mindedly, he laid his hand on her back and slowly raised the zipper he had lowered.
The Regressor realised that something had gone terribly wrong.
He couldn’t deny it any longer.
The feelings he had for Bom.
…Those were clear romantic feelings.