Chapter 129. Victoria’s Heart-Pounding Date (1)
“Ughhh... I’m exhausted.”
Nova leaned back against the rear seat and muttered.
With her silver hair and exotic appearance, she had been extremely popular with the children.
They had called her the “pretty elf big sister helping Santa” and dragged her all over the place.
She had played with dolls, read picture books, and handed out presents.
And on top of all that, she had needed to keep an eye on Victoria in case she caused another disaster.
Even ten bodies would not have been enough.
“Nova, you worked hard.”
Victoria comforted her.
Nova answered as though it were nothing.
“We all worked hard.”
“But I had fun.”
“I’ve never had such an enjoyable Christmas before.”
“Really?”
Victoria looked surprised.
Nova replied flatly,
“As you can see, I was never really able to play with kids my age.”
“And it’s not like I could join the adults’ parties either.”
“More importantly, the people who called themselves my parents never gave me a Christmas present even once.”
She had been born as an experimental subject for money in the first place.
There was no way parents like that would have possessed enough affection to celebrate Christmas with her.
Even if she had wanted to spend time with children her age, her intelligence made their childish Christmas games impossible to enjoy.
She could at least hold conversations with adults.
But in their eyes, she was still only a child.
A day where she belonged nowhere.
That was what Christmas had always been to Nova.
“Ta-da!”
Victoria suddenly held out a wrapped present.
Nova accepted it without thinking.
“What’s this?”
“A Christmas present for a good girl.”
“Go on, open it!”
Apparently, Victoria had prepared it specifically for her.
Nova unwrapped the package.
Inside was a round snow globe.
A tiny silver-haired elf girl danced inside it.
It was obviously modeled after Nova.
“It’s pretty.”
“Right?”
Victoria looked delighted.
“I worked really hard on it while thinking about you.”
Nova had never expected to receive a present.
She smiled awkwardly.
“Thanks.”
Yukgap, who had heard that, quietly spoke up.
“Don’t thank us yet.”
Before long, they arrived in front of Restaurant Shelley.
But the lights inside the restaurant were on.
Through the windows, they could see a Christmas tree, decorations, cake, and all kinds of food.
Hadn’t they said they were closing the restaurant today?
Then what was all this?
Nova stared in confusion.
“W-What is this?”
“Wasn’t the Christmas volunteer work already over?”
Robert answered with a series of mechanical beeps.
[The Doctor prepared this while making the children’s presents.]
“I made the food.”
Yukgap snorted.
“Don’t take all the credit.”
Victoria ignored him and raised her voice excitedly.
“Nova!”
“We should have our own Christmas party too, shouldn’t we?”
Apparently, they had prepared all of this separately for her.
Nova laughed softly, almost in disbelief.
“A present and a party.”
“Who knew I’d ever spend Christmas like this?”
Snow continued to fall without pause.
The temperature had dropped below freezing.
The weather was terrible.
And all around them lay only stillness and silence.
But even so.
Somehow, when she was with these people, none of it seemed to matter.
Nova looked at the warm glow of the decorations spilling through Restaurant Shelley’s windows.
“This really is a warm winter.”
“Producer Jung! Producer Jung!”
Jinyoung, who had been busy working on video recordings, looked up at his senior’s voice.
“What is it?”
“This is the footage from the latest shoot of A Restaurant Like This Exists?!”
His senior handed him a USB drive.
“Check it, then destroy it.”
“Destroy it?”
Jinyoung tilted his head.
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t know the details either.”
“But judging by the fact that the chief director had to write a formal incident report, something pretty serious must have happened.”
“All right.”
Still puzzled, Jinyoung accepted the USB.
A Restaurant Like This Exists?! was a fairly popular program.
Its content was also usually calm and harmless.
It was difficult to imagine anything happening during filming that could require a formal incident report.
“What the hell did they record?”
Driven by curiosity, Jinyoung plugged the USB into his computer.
The drive was packed with footage from the shoot.
Without thinking much about it, he opened the first video.
“This doesn’t look like anything special.”
As he watched, Jinyoung muttered casually.
It was just an ordinary restaurant that could have existed anywhere.
Other than the owner being a blonde foreign woman, nothing seemed particularly strange.
No matter how he looked at it, there was nothing here worth writing an incident report over.
“Huh?”
Then Jinyoung’s eyes suddenly froze on one scene.
A shocked groan escaped his lips.
“N-No way...”
With trembling hands, he replayed the footage.
There was no mistake.
He was certain.
The man had only appeared for a few seconds in passing.
But there was no way Jinyoung could fail to recognize him.
“Captain Kim?”
A man in a restaurant chef’s uniform was leaning his head into the frame.
His face matched someone from Jinyoung’s memories exactly.
