Chapter 79. The Bird Trapped in the Egg (2)
“Thank you for agreeing to our request.”
Seo Jeongheon politely bowed to Victoria after hearing the news.
Victoria simply smiled brightly.
“It’s nothing. If I can help, then I should. My mother always said alchemy exists to make people happy.”
“Is the gentleman beside you here for the same reason?”
Jeongheon glanced at Yukgap standing next to Victoria.
He seemed unable to understand why someone unrelated to the matter had accompanied her.
Yukgap answered casually,
“I’m her bodyguard.”
Victoria awkwardly laughed and hurriedly covered for him.
“Hahaha. I’m more timid than I look, you see. So I asked our chef to come with me.”
“Ah, I see.”
Fortunately, Jeongheon did not question it any further.
He led the way and asked,
“But why did you want to see my son’s room?”
“Uh... it’s a kind of preliminary inspection before we proceed with anything serious.”
They were currently standing in front of the room that had belonged to the deceased boy, Eunho.
Unable to shake their unease, Victoria and Yukgap had decided to come here before attempting the cloning.
At the very least, they felt they needed to understand something about Eunho’s death before they could proceed.
“Is this your son’s room?”
Victoria asked while looking toward a room that received plenty of sunlight.
Jeongheon nodded with a sad expression.
“Yes. We couldn’t bring ourselves to touch anything after he died. It always felt like if we opened the door, he might still be inside.”
“That must have been very difficult.”
“It was especially hard on my wife.”
Jeongheon smiled with expectation.
“But it’s all right now. Thanks to you, Doctor Frankenstein, we’ll be able to see Eunho again.”
He opened the door.
Inside were a bed and desk that had clearly belonged to the deceased boy.
The shelves beside the desk were packed with thick books.
Above them were countless certificates and awards.
There were enough to cover almost an entire wall.
“That’s a lot of awards.”
“I know I’m his father, so I may sound biased, but Eunho really was an intelligent and admirable child.”
Jeongheon smiled bitterly.
“Ever since elementary school, he entered all kinds of competitions and won prizes. My wife and I had very high hopes for him.”
Even though his son was already gone, he still seemed pleased to hear someone praise him.
“Is this a schedule?”
Victoria noticed a daily timetable posted beside the desk.
Jeongheon explained proudly,
“My wife and I made it for him. We thought it would be better for him to develop a regular routine from an early age.”
His expression darkened.
“Of course, it doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
Victoria carefully studied the schedule.
Then surprise spread across her face.
“Huh?”
“What is it?”
“N-Nothing.”
Victoria quickly answered.
Then she suddenly asked,
“By the way, may I ask how your son passed away?”
Jeongheon flinched.
It looked as though he was hiding something.
After a moment, he carefully explained his son’s death.
“It was an accident.”
“He was sitting on the windowsill and fell.”
“As you can see, this is a high-rise apartment. There was nothing anyone could do.”
“I see.”
Victoria slowly nodded.
They were on the fifteenth floor.
A fall from this height would easily have killed someone instantly.
“Please take your time looking around.”
With that, Jeongheon left his son’s room.
Once they were alone, Yukgap looked around and spoke casually.
“Hmm. I don’t see anything particularly unusual.”
Even with his sharpened senses, nothing stood out.
It was simply the ordinary room of an adolescent boy who had once lived there and was now gone.
But Victoria seemed to have noticed something.
“Yukgap, there’s something strange about this room.”
“What?”
Victoria immediately pointed at the bookshelf.
“These books aren’t at a middle-school level.”
“They’re advanced academic texts that even university students would struggle with.”
“And these awards are all from academic competitions for adults.”
“These aren’t events a child should even be entering.”
“Didn’t they say their son was only fifteen?”
“And this schedule is strange too. Look closely.”
Victoria glanced toward the timetable beside the desk.
Yukgap examined it carefully.
After staring for a while, he finally realized what she meant.
“He only slept four hours?”
The schedule was divided down to the minute.
And sleep was limited to only four hours, from midnight until four in the morning.
Victoria pointed out the same thing.
“Other than sleep, every single hour is filled with academies and lectures.”
“Even an adult couldn’t survive this.”
“And his father showed this to us like he was proud of it.”
She pointed toward a phrase written on the schedule.
“Look at this too.”
Yukgap frowned.
“What is that? Chinese characters?”
“Sadangorak.”
Victoria explained,
“It means, ‘Sleep four hours and you pass. Sleep five hours and you fail.’”
Yukgap clicked his tongue.
