“Ahjussi, do you remember what you said to me before?”
“Un un. You know, I asked what it would be like if there was a world without farewells…”
“And you said the time spent together won’t feel special anymore.”
“It’s because there are farewells, that we must do our best for each other in the time leading up to the farewell, was what you told me. As well as how we had to create a good farewell…”
“Uum… in that sense, I thought I was trying quite hard. Making good memories with ahjussi, and eating a lot of delicious food together.”
“But, uum… When I look back at it now.”
“It feels like,”
“It feels like ahjussi…”
“Ahjussi was the only one, that was trying hard…”
“There are way more things I got from ahjussi than what I did. And that, like, makes me sad and stuff.”
“I feel like I actually didn’t do anything.”
“Like, right? When you are in trouble, I don’t even know why, and I can’t help because I don’t know why, and all I can do is worry because I can’t help with anything…”
“But then again, it feels like Bom-unni knows about all your worries. But it’s not like because you are dating? Or anything like that…”
“So, that means Bom-unni, was trying harder than me… Uun. She was more interested in ahjussi, and wanted to chat more with ahjussi. That must be why ahjussi could trust Bom-unni and tell her everything.”
“If you think about it like that, then it would mean I was unable to try my best in the time leading up to the farewell.”
“…”
“…”
“I should have…”
“I should have talked to you more…”
“I should have done more…”
“Why am I only thinking of this now when we are so close to the farewell…”
“It, kind of makes me… regret it… a bit…”
“…”
“I was too immature right…?”
“Uum, but still. Now, I understood that we have to separate, and accepted it, quite a bit. If I regret it here, I think all the good memories will be remembered as bad memories so I will stop regretting it now.”
“Ah…! Actually, when it was just me and Bom-unni yesterday, I asked her if it would be possible for us to come back here later.”
“Bom-unni said it would be difficult. And I actually think the same because the dimensions are just too far apart. Uum, what did she exactly say again? It’s too far, and the coordinates change when they intersect or something? Anyway, it’s impossible to find them as a normal dragon.”
“That was a bit of a shame.”
“It would be great if we could meet again…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…What should I do, if I want to come back?”
“…I think, I will miss everything.”
“I will miss all the friends I made here.”
“I will miss our Unit 301.”
“The world with Chirpy… Ah, I actually went there a few days ago because of that.”
“And I will miss Cleaner ahjussi doing some strange yoga every morning. Because a gold dragon can’t go to a green dragon’s lair…”
“And? I will also miss all the plushies I have in my room.”
“And, I will miss Lair.”
“And chicken, pizza, burgers.”
“Macarons, the red velvet cake, egg tart, chocolate muffins, ice cream cakes. I will miss all of them. Even if I copy it at home, they won’t taste like the ones here.”
“Uum… And…”
“…”
“And…”
“…”
“Ah, there must be something wrong with me. It’s time to go and yet here, I’m being miserable by myself.”
“It’s okay. I’m not like really sad or anything. We are dragons you know. We just have to reminisce on all the good memories we made together!”
“Ahjussi might not know how it works, but that thing is very vivid. It’s a lot more realistic than playing a video and like, we can also feel how it felt back then.”
“I still do that sometimes. Remember how I cried when I first ate chicken? Hehe. Back then, it was like, how should I say this, shocking? Like, shaking all my ideologies and stuff?! That was how it tasted… same for the macaron.”
“Anyway, what I want to say,”
“Is that I’m not regretting anything.”
“Then, that should be a good farewell right?”
“…”
“By the way, ahjussi, did you know?”
“Back when I like saved Chirpy – it was meant to be a very happy thing right? But I suddenly couldn’t stop my tears.”
“So I asked Bom-unni. Why do we cry when we are feeling happy? And Bom-unni said it’s because we remember the [Hard times that went by].”
“Interesting right? But there’s one more.”
“Apparently, people can also smile when they’re sad.”
“You see, that’s because…”
It was then.
Knock knock!
Someone knocked on the door.
“Mommy…!” Kaeul, who had been sitting alone at the corner of the camp grumbling to herself, flinched after sensing Yu Jitae’s presence.
Did he hear everything? That shouldn’t be the case because she had blocked the sound from going outside.
How is my face and my voice? Thinking that, she coughed, ‘Kuhum…!’ to relax her throat and checked her expression through the mirror and organised herself before opening the door.
“Yess.”
“Shall we talk for a bit?”
“Right now? Okay…!”
She carried her feet after him. He said there was a beautiful garden of flowers at the peak of the mountain.
On the way there, Yu Jitae glanced at her face before asking her a question.
“What is it.”
“Sorry?”
“Did something nice happen?”
“Why?”
“You’ve been smiling the whole time.”
Kaeul widened her eyes.
She didn’t even realise she was smiling. Soon, she lowered her gaze and slowly shook her head.
“Then why are you smiling by yourself.”
Why do people cry when they’re happy?
It’s because they remember the hard times that went by.
If so, then why do people smile when they’re sad?
Bom’s answer regarding that question was this:
[Because they remember the happy times that went by.]
***
His conversation with Kaeul was very short.
With a smile, she gave him a hug and then simply told him about a few of the good things that happened while expressing her discontentment with the farewell. She said she will miss him a lot.
He returned the hug and caressed her hair. After watching the flowers for a bit, they came down.
She was a child that would be adored and loved anywhere and because she also belonged to a happy family, the child would live nicely after returning to her world.
On the other hand, there was one person that worried him the most.
It was Yeorum.
During the past two weeks of the trip, the kids had each accepted the farewell. It was fortunate that they did so. Parting ways without any heart-ache was a really difficult thing and that was something he slowly started to realise by seeing them.
Yeorum must have accepted the farewell a lot earlier than the other kids. That should be why she suddenly joked about having a relationship with him.
But after that, Yeorum started to avoid him during their next several encounters. He didn’t care too much about it but the face he saw under the falling rain of stars was still very vivid.
That was clearly an expression of displeasure.
– How can you be so fucking selfish from the start to the end?
Her last words echoed around his mind.
There was nothing wrong with what Yeorum said, and there was more than enough reason for her to get angry.
Looking at it from the perspective of the baby dragons, the start of their relationship was when Yu Jitae abruptly visited them, and the end of the relationship was with his one-sided announcement. After suddenly entering their lives and shaking it from the core, he was now ending it on his own accord.
A piece was added to the mountainous stack of guilt.
But since he thought it was best to make the farewell as clean as possible, he looked for Yeorum who was smoking by herself under a tree.
“What.”
“Shall we have a little chat.”
“No.”
And as expected,
Yeorum faced him with discontentment so he tried to persuade her.
“You said you will send us back at the end of the trip right? Yeah. I’m sure that’s what you’ll do, since you do everything the way you want to.
“At least in the past, it was for us but now that’s not even the case.
“So what is there for us to talk about?”
She vented her anger with a powerless voice.
“I whole-heartedly trusted you and was betrayed. Right now, I feel like a girlfriend who suddenly received a message about breaking up. I was dumped.
“No. Maybe it’s more like a sex partner than a girlfriend. Because if you did have feelings for us, then you wouldn’t have just dropped it on us like that. You only did that because you were playing with us.
“‘I’m done playing so get lost.’ Am I wrong?”
There was undisguised displeasure filling her eyes as she criticised him for hiding the reason behind the farewell.
“So it has to be this. You found a new sex partner; someone that’s more important than us. And you don’t even reply when we ask who that is. Or what, did you find yourself an actual girlfriend this time?”
After saying that, she got up and dusted her bum before walking away from him with rushed steps. She halted and muttered to herself with a sigh.
“And here I was thinking we were quite close…”
A powerless and lethargic voice left her mouth.
“I thought we trusted each other more than a normal pair of lovers.
“But I guess that was wrong. Judging from how easy it was for you to dump us, it must have been my delusion.
“You know.”
Yeorum turned towards him. Her ruby-coloured eyes were dripping with sorrow at being betrayed.
“I don’t like you anymore either…”
He tried to grab her a few more times for a chat but was rejected every time. Yeorum started avoiding him a lot.
“What. What about it.
“I had no idea you were this disgusting. Sending us back on your own accord and still pretending to be nice until the very end. Do you know how disgusting that is?
“Send me off first when I’m done fighting Javier. I don’t care about others but I don’t even want to spend one more second with you.”
Yeorum endlessly condemned him. She cursed and loathed him.
However, he was instead puzzled by her words because she neither ‘liked’ nor ‘disliked’ him according to the Eyes of Equilibrium. Even though it was an ambiguous emotion, it was still not that negative so he couldn’t understand that extremely negative attitude of hers.
“You know what? The other kids are just so nice they do everything you say. They’re retards that still trust you after getting dumped like this.
“And you are the one dumping them. Just because that’s what you want to do. Don’t you think that’s really shameless and trash?
“If you were going to dump us like this from the start, then why were you so nice to us in the first place? You shouldn’t have done that. You shouldn’t have given us a hug for comfort and you shouldn’t have given us nice food every time. You shouldn’t have consoled us when we were crying, nor smiled together when we were happy. But you did that. You made us trust you.
“And yet now you shattered all that trust.
“I know this is the last but I still have nothing to say. All I want to do is hurry up and separate myself from a traitor like you.
“So don’t talk to me now. Please…”
.
.
.
But even on the way back home after the trip,
Her favourability towards him was still sitting at neutral.
.
.
.
After returning to Unit 301, he left the house to check the ‘ship’. It was D-2; there were two days left until their departure and it was time to activate the device.
Today he would check the ship, and tomorrow would be Yeorum’s fight against Javier and the day after that he would send the kids off.
As the very last moment was nearing them,
“Let’s go.”
“Yes.”
Bom followed him from behind.