Chapter 131

Chapter 131. The Hometown Where I Once Lived (1)

“Scrap metal! The food’s ready, so hurry up and serve it.”

It was an ordinary day, no different from any other.

As usual, Yukgap held out the finished dish, and Robert took it while grumbling.

[It is truly miserable that I must labor for fleshbags who cannot survive without continuously consuming organic matter.]

“Quit complaining and move! The customer’s waiting!”

While they were busy working, an unfamiliar voice suddenly echoed through the restaurant.

“Is anyone here?”

A broad-built man with short-cropped hair stood near the entrance.

He anxiously looked around as though searching for someone.

Robert addressed him as usual.

[Welcome, fleshbag. What will you order?]

“I’m not here to order food.”

“I’m looking for someone.”

The moment Robert heard that, a gun barrel emerged from his chest.

A warning beep sounded.

[This is a restaurant, not a private investigation agency.]

[Leave within thirty seconds or I will open fire.]

“W-Wait! Please!”

The man screamed but refused to retreat.

“This person is really important to me!”

Hearing the commotion, Yukgap poked his head out to see what was going on.

“What’s happening?”

The instant the man saw him, his eyes filled with tears.

He rushed over.

“Captain Kim Changi!”

“Huh?”

Yukgap blinked.

“What did you call me?”

The man ignored his confusion and grabbed Yukgap’s hands with overwhelming emotion.

“You’re alive!”

“I knew you had to be alive, Captain!”

He acted as though he and Yukgap had known each other for years.

Robert glanced toward Yukgap.

[Do you know this fleshbag?]

“No.”

Yukgap looked just as baffled.

“I’ve never seen him before.”

The man seemed frustrated.

“It’s me!”

“Me!”

“Jung Jinyoung, the combat cameraman!”

“You saved my life, Captain!”

At those words, a possibility suddenly flashed through Yukgap’s mind.

He asked in a stunned voice,

“Do you... know about me?”

“Someone who knows Yukgap showed up?”

Victoria rushed over the moment she heard the news.

Yukgap nodded, his expression deeply complicated.

“Yeah.”

The man who introduced himself as Jinyoung looked Victoria up and down.

“And who is this?”

“Victoria Frankenstein.”

“My employer.”

Yukgap explained casually.

Victoria’s foreign appearance seemed to make Jinyoung curious.

At the same time, Victoria stared suspiciously back at him.

“Hmm. You don’t look connected to Abraxas.”

“Abraxas?”

Jinyoung looked confused.

“What’s that?”

He seemed to know nothing about Abraxas.

At least, Yukgap did not think he was lying.

He quickly summarized what Jinyoung had told him earlier.

“He doesn’t seem connected to Abraxas at all.”

“He found me after seeing footage from that TV shoot we did.”

More precisely, Jinyoung had been ordered to destroy the footage from A Restaurant Like This Exists?!

Then he happened to spot Yukgap in the recording and came all the way here.

Apparently, Yukgap had saved his life, so there was no way he could have mistaken him.

“To explain again, I was short on tuition money, so I served for a while in the French Foreign Legion as a combat photo and video specialist.”

Jinyoung’s eyes grew wet as he recalled the past.

“That’s where I met Captain Kim Changi.”

“Captain, you always looked after me because there weren’t many Koreans there.”

“You saved my life several times too.”

“So I always wanted to repay you someday if I ever got the chance!”

The words were deeply emotional for Jinyoung.

But to Yukgap, they were completely unfamiliar.

He had no idea how to respond.

“Uh...”

“After I returned to Korea, I always wanted to see you again if I got the chance.”

“But no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find you.”

“Then I saw that footage.”

“It felt like fate had led me here.”

Victoria frowned as she noticed something strange.

“Wait.”

“There’s something I don’t understand.”

“Wasn’t Yukgap’s real name supposed to be Kim Jeongseon?”

Jinyoung immediately recognized the name.

“That?”

“That was just a nickname because Captain Kim’s hometown is Jeongseon in Gangwon Province.”

“He said he never wanted to forget his hometown no matter where he went, so he asked everyone to call him ‘Jeongseon Kim.’”

Yukgap’s eyes widened.

“Jeongseon in Gangwon Province?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why all the foreigners called you ‘Jeongseon Kim.’”

“It was easier for them to pronounce too.”

So Jeongseon had not been his name.

It had been his hometown.

No wonder they had found nothing after endlessly searching for someone named Kim Jeongseon.

“I... I...”

Yukgap could only stammer.

His head was spinning.

The information he had desperately searched for was suddenly flooding in all at once.

Instead of joy, the first thing he felt was confusion.

“You really don’t remember any of it?”

Jinyoung asked with concern.

Victoria quickly stepped in for Yukgap.

“Unfortunately, Yukgap doesn’t remember his past.”

“What?”

Jinyoung stared at her.

“Why not?”

Victoria immediately fabricated an explanation.

“He was in an accident.”

“He developed amnesia and forgot his name and his past.”

“Then he happened to meet me overseas and eventually came here.”

“Yukgap is just an alias.”

Jinyoung looked like he might cry.

“To be honest, part of me wondered if you might not even be alive anymore.”

“I heard there were heavy casualties during the last operation you participated in.”

Yukgap cautiously guessed,

“Then maybe that was when I...”

“You probably lost your memories around then.”

If he had been abducted by Abraxas and modified during that final operation, the story roughly fit.

And because the operation had suffered so many casualties, everyone might simply have assumed he was dead and never searched very hard for him.

Robert’s eyes glowed.

[Fleshbag, tell us everything you know about Yukgap.]

[We have been searching for his family.]

Jinyoung answered with a serious expression.

“He saved my life.”

“I’ll do anything I can.”

“I’ll tell you everything I know about Captain Kim.”

The kitchen was silent after closing.

Yukgap quietly prepared ingredients with the dagger he always carried.

His movements were almost obsessive, as though he were trying to forget something.

“What are you doing?”

Victoria called softly from behind him.

Without turning around, Yukgap answered indifferently.

“Preparing ingredients.”

“I need to get ready for tomorrow.”

“You can do that tomorrow.”

“Doesn’t hurt to do it early.”

“Why not do it later?”

“No.”

“I want to do it now.”

That was the end of the conversation.

An awkward silence, difficult to describe, settled between them.

After some time, Victoria called quietly,

“Yukgap.”

“What?”

Victoria sighed softly and held out a piece of paper.

“I wrote down everything Jung Jinyoung told us earlier.”

“With this, finding your family shouldn’t be difficult.”

Jinyoung had known far more about Yukgap than they expected.

He had spent almost a year alongside him and had heard plenty about Yukgap’s family.

More specifically, he knew what Yukgap’s parents did, approximately where his house was, and even which school he had graduated from.

One man had simply handed them nearly all the information they had been searching for.

It almost felt anticlimactic.

“No.”

Yukgap answered bitterly.

Victoria looked startled.

“What’s wrong?”

“...”

He said nothing.

But his shoulders were trembling slightly.

Victoria immediately understood.

“You’re scared.”

“Yeah.”

Yukgap did not make excuses or deny it.

He simply admitted what he felt.

“I always thought of it as something vague and far away.”

“That someday I’d find my family and learn about my past.”

“But I thought that would happen after a long, long time.”

Honestly, he had never believed finding them would be easy.

Hadn’t he gone through hell just to discover one possible name?

Even when Seryun said he could not find anything about Yukgap’s past, Yukgap had accepted that as unavoidable.

“But now it suddenly dropped right into my lap.”

“I don’t know what to do with it.”

“It doesn’t feel real.”

“And what scares me most is...”

Yukgap’s grip tightened around the knife.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say if I meet my family.”

Victoria looked at him as though she could not understand.

“What do you mean you don’t know what to say?”

“They’ll be happy just to see you!”

“Victoria.”

Yukgap quietly interrupted her.

“I was an Archon of Abraxas.”

He was neither fully human nor beast.

Something awkwardly mixed between the two.

No one could be blamed for calling him a monster.

“I’ve killed countless people.”

“If a son who disappeared suddenly came back as a chimera weapon, what do you think his family would feel?”

From the moment he regained awareness, he had learned to track people down and kill them.

He had been excellent at it.

Better than almost anyone.

He had never hesitated.

He had killed.

And killed.

And killed again.

The weight of those deaths had become an unerasable chain around his neck.

“Maybe they’ll despise me.”

“In the worst case, maybe they’ll ask why I came back at all.”

Yukgap’s voice trembled.

Victoria immediately objected.

“That wasn’t your fault!”

“Abraxas kidnapped you and brainwashed you!”

“But that doesn’t wash the blood off my hands.”

Yukgap looked down at them.

His hands were trembling.

He hated them.

More than anyone else, he hated himself.

“Would a family really be happy to see a murderer like me come home?”

“I don’t know.”