Passion: Diaphonic Symphonia Novel - Chapter 38

In other words, this place, which was outdoors with a breeze but not overly conspicuous to others, was perfect for smoking. Furthermore, it was ideal for someone like Jeong Taeui, who wanted to chain-smoke right now.

“There’s a problem…”

‘That guy, he’s definitely got some issues…’ Jeong Taeui mumbled as he puffed on his second cigarette.

Almost everyone feared Christoph. Even those who didn’t dislike him didn’t want to be close to him.

It was understandable.

When the servant, covered in blood, was sent to the hospital earlier, the people who contacted the hospital and arranged transportation were horrified and clicked their tongues, but they weren’t surprised that such an incident had occurred. That meant such things happened often.

“…Sigh…”

He tilted his head back and exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke towards the sky. In the process, his second cigarette was almost burnt out.

Jeong Taeui, without hesitation, pulled out another one and lit it. Perhaps because it had been a long time since he last smoked, his throat was already feeling scratchy.

It was then.

From below the simple tower, which was wide open except for its basic framework, he heard the sounds of a group of people ascending.

They were children’s voices.

He listened closely, wondering if they were crossing to another building via the tower, but the sounds were definitely coming up.

Maybe they’ll exit into a building on the floor directly below, he thought, but their footsteps passed that floor and continued to climb higher.

Jeong Taeui hastily put out his cigarette. Even if it were adults, he couldn’t keep a cigarette in his mouth when children were coming.

He quickly extinguished the cigarette, stuffed the long butt into the pack, and waved his hand through the air. The lingering cigarette smoke soon vanished. Simultaneously, he heard the tiny footsteps of someone bounding up the last step and onto the rooftop.

“Oh.”

“Oh….”

He had already heard them coming, but when the child stopped in surprise, uttering “Oh,” upon seeing him, he felt he ought to pretend to be surprised too.

Following the girl who came up first, four or five more children followed. They, too, exclaimed “Oh, oh,” upon seeing Jeong Taeui standing there.

“Did you all come to play together? You’re so friendly.”

Jeong Taeui said with a smile. They were all familiar children. They were the next generation of succession candidates, whom Christoph was said to be teaching.

Still around ten years old, these were children who had to compete fiercely from such a young age. It was also a reflection of Christoph and Richard in their past.

“Nah, I don’t play with her. She always just wants to read books.”

“That’s better than you, who always wants to play puzzle games!”

As soon as Jeong Taeui mentioned them being friendly, the children clamored, pointing at each other, saying, “I don’t play with him,” or “She’s boring.” Jeong Taeui watched them and smiled.

Richard and Christoph wouldn’t have been like this. Even at that age, their relationship probably wasn’t much different from now, he thought.

Jeong Taeui’s gaze drifted to Oliver, who, laughing among them, was saying, “The only reason you keep losing to Wolf is because you don’t know the trick. I’ll teach you later.” Oliver was now moving around as if nothing had happened, with only a large gauze pad on the back of his head.

“Oliver, are you okay where you got hurt?”

When Jeong Taeui asked, Oliver immediately nodded. His clear eyes looked up at Jeong Taeui.

“It only stings a bit when they put on new medicine, but otherwise, it doesn’t hurt at all.”

“I see. …You must have been very surprised.”

Oliver then wrinkled his nose. After hesitating, he shook his head with a wrinkled, smiling face. Jeong Taeui carefully stroked his head.

It was then.

Somewhat later than them, Richard appeared on the rooftop. And following Richard, who always moved around the mansion accompanied by Ilay, Ilay also appeared.

The moment Jeong Taeui saw Ilay, he inwardly groaned, “Ugh.” Ilay, on the other hand, widened his eyes slightly and gave a faint smile. It looked like a smile that said, I was bored, but I found you just in time, making Jeong Taeui inexplicably want to retreat.

“What brings you here?”

Richard called the children over with a gesture and greeted Jeong Taeui. Behind him, Ilay surveyed the surrounding landscape before fixing his gaze on Jeong Taeui. He subtly raised an eyebrow.

“You came to smoke.”

Even the children who had rushed up first hadn’t known, yet this man, who appeared last, had a nose like a dog’s.

But there was no reason to feel ashamed just for having smoked. “So what?” Jeong Taeui said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Alcohol and cigarettes too…”

Ilay clicked his tongue and turned his head. That was surely him scolding Jeong Taeui for liking beer—a bit too much.

But then. Ilay, turning his head, paused. And he stared down below.

“…?!”

In an instant, his gaze turned desolate. He paused, as if about to take a step towards Jeong Taeui. In that moment, his pitch-black eyes turned as cold as ice, making Jeong Taeui flinch.

However, the next moment, Ilay glared down for a moment longer, then clicked his tongue in displeasure, muttering, “Tsk.”

“Where did you get blood on your knee and come here…”

Muttering that, he swept his eyes over Jeong Taeui once more. He even spotted the tiny band-aid on his fingertip with uncanny precision, and his eyes grew desolate again.

“Oh, I just pricked myself lightly on a piece of glass…”

Jeong Taeui quickly explained, casually rubbing over the band-aid.

Only then did the children notice the bloodstain on Jeong Taeui’s knee and start making a fuss.

“Where did you get hurt? How did you get hurt?”

“You need to go to the hospital. Can you walk?”

Amidst their lively fuss, which gave no one a chance to speak, it took Jeong Taeui some time to explain that the blood was not his own.

Richard, who had been silently watching him, quietly spoke.

“It was Christoph, wasn’t it?”

His voice was cold, devoid of any hint of a smile. Just like when he spoke about Christoph.

It seemed the news that Christoph had sent a servant to the hospital had already spread throughout the mansion. Both Richard and Ilay looked as if they understood.

Jeong Taeui gave a wry smile and shrugged.

Just cleaning up the bloody floor felt like it had drained all his energy for the day. He wanted to avoid any more conversation that would make him feel down.

“Ah—but what brings you here with the children?”

If Richard had appeared with just Oliver, Jeong Taeui would have thought it was just a father taking his son out for some fresh air, but with all these children trailing along, the only conclusion was that he was babysitting.

“Ah, I promised to teach the children how to handle simple weapons.”

Richard shook the hard case he was holding. Jeong Taeui looked at the hard case with a strange expression.

“A gun?!”

It was odd enough that he was teaching children to handle weapons, but the idea of giving them guns was completely unexpected.

“A gun… I mean, I suppose it’s better to know than not know, but there are so many other good things, why start with a gun of all things…”

Jeong Taeui scratched the back of his head and muttered. However, his voice, barely more than a whisper, seemed not to reach Richard, who was already surrounded by the children, unpacking the case.

Instead, the one who answered Jeong Taeui was Ilay, who had good ears as well as a good nose.

“These children are in a position where they need bodyguards and should be taught self-defense as much as possible.”

Jeong Taeui nodded, saying, “Ah, I see.”

Indeed, that was true. These children, among the many circulating in this house, were particularly chosen. They would, therefore, face far more dangerous situations than other children.

In fact, even if children knew self-defense, there was a fundamental difference in physical strength compared to adults, so it wouldn’t be very effective. However, in an emergency, knowing something was certainly better than knowing nothing.

“They’ll have to be careful when they go around.”

Jeong Taeui, who muttered this, had also almost been kidnapped several times in his youth, though he had never actually been harmed. This was because his older brother, who had actually been kidnapped multiple times, was an exceptionally talented individual.

Even Jeong Taeui, who had no outstanding qualities and possessed nothing, had faced the threat of kidnapping, so these children were certainly no exception.

“Hmm, I see,” Jeong Taeui nodded and looked at Richard and the children, then glanced at Ilay. Ilay met his gaze, arms crossed.

“Did you learn too, when you were young?”

Thinking about it, this man’s family was no less influential than this one. It made sense that he would have had bodyguards from a young age.

What must it feel like to always be protected—or rather, monitored—by others, and still have to learn self-defense or how to handle weapons just in case? Jeong Taeui couldn’t quite imagine it.

But Ilay’s answer was simple.

“No. They didn’t even ask if I wanted to learn.”

“Really? Compared to Tarten, Riegrow must have adopted a safer protection method, then.”

“No. My brother and sister learned. Father just never offered it to me.”

“…Ah.”

Jeong Taeui just nodded without saying more.

Come to think of it, these children were about ten years old. So, it was probably around the same age when that family tried to teach their children self-defense… and he’d mentioned that this guy was already swinging an axe back then.

That father, who must have judged it unwise to put various weapons in his son’s hands, seemed to have excellent foresight. Although it ended up being useless.

“Christoph is.”

Jeong Taeui inadvertently blurted out his name. Ilay’s gaze lowered.

“Did Christoph not need to learn either? Did he already know how to handle weapons?”

Ilay, with his arms crossed, slowly tapped his arm with his fingers. His gaze, directed at Jeong Taeui, was cold.

“If you’re asking when he learned how to handle weapons, I don’t know, but his personality and mental state have been like that since he was quite young.”

“I see…”

Jeong Taeui nodded.

Richard took the children to the round table in the center of the sky garden and was unpacking the contents of the case. Inside, there was one complete gun and pieces for another, disassembled into parts.

“Why. Are you shocked after witnessing him covered in the blood of the person he beat up?”

Jeong Taeui gave Ilay a cold stare. Anyone else but this man, this was definitely not something he should be saying.

“If I were to be shocked by being covered in someone’s blood, I would have been shocked hundreds of times over and suffered from neurosis already.”

There was even a time when one of his regular duties was to dispose of blood-soaked gloves.

Ilay, as if it were someone else’s business, as if a forgotten memory had just come to mind, said, “Ah,” and nodded. Seeing him muttering, “Come to think of it, that was true,” showed that this man had no conscience whatsoever.

As Jeong Taeui clicked his tongue and turned his head back towards the forest, Ilay suddenly let out a low snicker and spoke.

“You must have taken it too lightly. It’s not like you couldn’t have noticed his true nature, did you get fooled by his appearance without realizing it?”

Jeong Taeui frowned slightly and looked at Ilay. But Ilay, undeterred by his gaze, continued.

“Sometimes there are people like that. They know everything in their heads, but they get deceived by what their eyes show them. —So, think about it. Christoph Tarten was one of the top-ranking members of T&R’s mobile unit. That means he received and completed that many dangerous assignments. Don’t you understand what that means?”

He knew.

Killing people was no big deal to him.

“Shall I put it more simply for you? When the Kosovo War broke out, he was just over twenty, a young age. And at that age, he was deployed there, and he’s still talked about as the one who brought about a European Killing Fields.”

He had heard that too. The story of him standing alone amidst mountains of corpses was a regular topic among those who talked about Christoph over drinks.

“Rick. No.”

Jeong Taeui opened his mouth.

What Ilay was saying was subtly different from what Jeong Taeui wanted to say.

“There are certainly spaces where killing is permitted. Killing people in a special environment where murder is not defined as illegal, where you are not held accountable no matter how many people you kill, is not something others can comment on, unless it’s a crime against humanity. Whether he considers himself a murderer because of it or not, others cannot say such things to him. Whether it was the Kosovo War or other battlefields where he was called as a mercenary, I cannot bring up those matters now, nor do I intend to.”

“That also means that one can be held accountable for the killings that happen here.”

Jeong Taeui fell silent. Ilay had a chilling smile around his eyes.

“You don’t want to hold him accountable, but your mind tells you otherwise, so it’s a headache, isn’t it? You want to accept everything positively, but reality and your values don’t align, do they? —Just like when your brother got involved with weapons.”

Ilay’s voice dropped low on the last words. He bent down, bringing his mouth close to Jeong Taeui’s ear, whispering in a low tone meant only for him. The moment he heard those words, Jeong Taeui subtly flinched.

Ilay laughed. He straightened up again, putting his hands in his pockets. With a crooked smile, he continued.

“There’s only one problem with this situation. It’s not complicated. His everyday life and other people’s everyday lives are clearly different. If this situation is a problem, it means he’s not where he should be, and he’s in a place he shouldn’t be. Don’t you think so?”

“…—”

“I—and I probably know more about him than you do—can say it clearly. Christoph cannot be here.”

Jeong Taeui looked at Ilay. No words came out of his mouth. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to say. He just listened to the undeniable words.

Ilay moved. He walked to where Richard was sitting with the children, demonstrating how to assemble the disassembled gun. Jeong Taeui stood there for a moment, rooted, then followed him.

The children meticulously watched Richard’s fingertips. When his hand set the spring into the hammer, when he aligned the sights with the barrel, they watched without hardly blinking, as if not wanting to miss a single detail.

He slowly assembled the disassembled gun, then took it apart again. Then he asked the children, “Can you do it?” The children nodded. However, seeing one child who ambiguously nodded, saying, “I think I can, maybe,” Richard disassembled and reassembled the gun once more, this time a little faster. This time, every child nodded, saying they could do it.

They were smart children.

They understood where and in what structure those numerous parts, which must have been unfamiliar to them, were used.

Among these smart children, only one would be chosen. Twenty years from now.

“Hmm… what, are they practicing with toys?”

Ilay, looking at the parts from behind the children who were fiddling with their assigned pieces, muttered. Richard, who had been watching the children’s fumbling hands, turned his gaze.

“Toys? They’re made exactly like real ones. Only the power has been greatly reduced, but the structure and size are identical to the real thing without an inch of error.”

“What does it matter if it’s real when there are no bullets anyway?”

Ilay chuckled, scanning the children with his eyes.

“Five, huh… Looks like no one gave up on the succession from the start this time.”

Ilay seemed to be gauging the number for a moment before abruptly asking. Richard, who had turned his head back to watch the children, looked at Ilay curiously, then seemed to understand what he was saying and replied, “Ah, yes.”

“No, there weren’t any. All five of these children accepted.”

“When you were their age, one person gave up from the start.”

“Hmm. That was Johann. He was very clever, but I don’t know why he gave up.”

“He gave up from the start because he was clever.”

Richard laughed out loud. Perhaps so, he nodded, glancing at Ilay with a smile still lingering on his face.

“Why bring that up suddenly?”

“We were just discussing the importance of being able to properly distinguish between where one should be and where one should not be.”

“Hmm…?”

This time, Richard tilted his head slightly, as if finding it hard to understand what Ilay was saying. He then looked at Jeong Taeui, as if seeking an explanation.

However, Jeong Taeui couldn’t answer either. He couldn’t answer something he didn’t know.

“Does giving up on succession… have a different meaning depending on the timing?”

Jeong Taeui sought an answer from Ilay. Ilay smiled. Richard seemed curious about what conversation had transpired between them, but soon answered on Ilay’s behalf.