Chapter 61 - The Manipulator IV

“Hmph...!”

Jeong Sang-guk’s eyes grew bloodshot. Puppet strings blocked even his mouth and tongue, leaving him unable to form words, but that hardly mattered.

Body language was a universal language, after all. He was broadcasting an SOS with every frantic wriggle of his body.

Sorry as I felt for him, my priority was the child, not the parent. His struggles only provoked Lee Hayul.

“...”

Without a word, Lee Hayul drove an awl beneath his fingernail.

RIP!

The nail split. Another establishment in the same line of business had abruptly been forced to celebrate its grand opening.

“Mmphhrrgh!”

The bleeding caused by this excess of competition drove Jeong Sang-guk into a faint.

I offered my condolences inwardly. It was all his fault for being born in the wrong era. Had he been born during the Japanese occupation, a traitor of his caliber would never have suffered fingernail torture.

I spread both hands.

“Lee Hayul. I have no intention of interfering in what’s between you and Jeong Sang-guk. As I said earlier, I’m only here to persuade you to come to the academy.”

“...”

“Let me introduce myself again. I’m Undertaker. I defeated Tenlegs on the Korean Peninsula. I’m currently the vice principal of Freiheit Academy.”

By now, it was time for an introduction from Lee Hayul’s own lips. But none came.

The housekeeper marionette who had opened the basement door for me stood behind Hayul’s wheelchair. Then she opened her mouth and spoke in a puppet’s voice.

“Lee Hayul. Puppeteer.”

“... Hmm. I understand you’re wary, but couldn’t you speak in your own voice?”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

Seated in her wheelchair, Hayul opened her mouth wide. Neat rows of teeth showed. Beyond them was darkness as pitch-black as the void.

I tilted my head.

What was this? Unless she had mistaken me for a dentist, the gesture made no sense.

Then the housekeeper spoke like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“Vocal cords. Impaired.”

That was beyond anything I had expected.

“I have no voice.”

“...”

“So I can’t talk.”

Only then did I realize that losing both legs was not the only disability this awakened, Lee Hayul, had been afflicted with.

A physical speech impairment.

... Then, before awakening her ability, the girl before me must have endured extreme difficulties. No freedom of movement. No freedom of communication.

And considering that she was the illegitimate child of a major politician, it would be fair to add a lack of freedom imposed by her status.

The ability [Puppeteer] truly was nothing short of a miracle for Lee Hayul.

“... I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s fine.”

Hayul closed her mouth. Not a trace of feeling could be gleaned from Puppeteer’s expressionless face.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Hmm.”

“How did you find this place?”

It was a strange sight.

The voice came entirely from the housekeeper, yet the person I was conversing with was Hayul. My gaze and the voice were directed toward different places.

Despite that unfamiliar sensation, I kept meeting Hayul’s eyes.

“I followed Jeong Sang-guk. His request that I wait at my lodgings for two whole days seemed suspicious. I saw him enter this place, the Dollhouse, and decided to eavesdrop for a bit.”

“...”

The girl’s eyes softened a little.

Apparently, she liked the name ‘Dollhouse.’

“That let me overhear your entire conversation with him. You’ll know if you saw me rampaging upstairs, but I’m quite skilled at using aura.”

Hayul tilted her head.

“Aura?”

“... Hmm.”

I kindled aura above my palm. An ink-dark flame. My aura was achromatic.

“This. You infused your puppet strings with golden aura earlier, didn’t you?”

“So that’s called aura.”

“Some people call it internal energy. It’s a matter of preference. Others call it demonic energy, or pronounce it ‘ow-ra.’ Did you learn to use it on your own?”

“Yes.”

“Impressive.”

“The magical girls said that too.”

For reference, ‘magical girls’ referred to awakened belonging to the Magical Girl Council, Japan’s most powerful group of awakened, which would later effectively inherit the Japanese government’s role.

As for how that whole batshit circus came about, uh...

For now, I’ll leave it at this: the crazier an awakened is, the stronger they are. I’ll have another chance to talk about them.

“The magical girls? Did they try to recruit you?”

“Yes. I refused.”

“May I ask why? I’d like to learn from their rejection and reduce my own chances of failure.”

“But those people are strange.”

“...”

“Dresses. Frills everywhere. Terrible fashion sense. End every sentence with ‘meow.’ Abnormal.”

“...”

That was a rather bold claim coming from a girl who was currently making her father’s fingernails debut in a bare-flesh strip show, one click at a time.

Still, that little bit of small talk did an excellent job of breaking the ice between us.

Hayul was easier to talk to than I had expected. Provided I ignored the unfamiliar puppet voice.

“Would you mind if I asked why you’re trying to kill Jeong Sang-guk?”

“Hmph...?”

He reacted to the word ‘kill.’ Apparently, even after being dragged into the basement and having his fingernails gouged out, he had not expected his daughter to kill him.

But in the original course of events, Jeong Sang-guk died.

In run eighteen, Hayul killed him, hanged the housekeeper, and then killed herself as well.

Everyone here except Jeong Sang-guk himself regarded his impending death as an ordinary item on the schedule. Hayul accepted my question just as naturally.

“This man betrayed Mom.”

Her mother? Did she mean her biological mother, Jeong Sang-guk’s second wife?

“He said he’d find a doctor. That there was medicine. That the treatment was progressing. But Mom died.”

“Mmph...!”

“Mom wanted to stay in Korea. This man forced her to come here. Then he neglected her.”

Hayul’s ‘voice’ did not change. It remained the same mechanical sound.

But her ‘eyes’ blazed as though burning gold down into molten metal. That was the heat she truly held inside.

“I remember. From when I was five, this man hardly ever visited our house. Mom was a nuisance to him. So was I. He was afraid of leaving us in Korea. Afraid people would find out about us.”

“Hrrmph!”

“The day Mom died, I awakened. This is revenge for Mom.”

Jeong Sang-guk thrashed as though insisting that none of it was true. The old wheelchair he had been seated in rocked and creaked.

... I could feel the sincerity in Hayul’s words.

But I also knew well that sincerity guaranteed neither the truth of the past nor the truth of the future. Wasn’t that the most agonizing sore spot of the beast called humanity?

“Could we hear Jeong Sang-guk’s side too?”

“...”

Hayul looked up at me at an angle. Her golden gaze picked over the skin of my face, searching for my true intentions.

She nodded.

“I don’t mind.”

“Phaaah!”

Jeong Sang-guk’s tongue finally regained its freedom. Webbing still tangled around his tongue and teeth, but it had slackened slightly.

“Th-that’s a lie! Mr. Undertaker! Please don’t believe a child’s words, much less those of a child who would so recklessly torture her own parent! I’m Jeong Sang-guk! Jeong Sang-guk! A man who devotes his very life to his country and people, sir!”

“Ah, I’m sorry. I pretended otherwise when we were drinking, but I actually consider the Second Provisional Government a sort of fucking sickness.”

Jeong Sang-guk looked blank.

“What?”

“I treated you people politely out of consideration for Fukuoka’s officials. I mean that I have no interest in you. Mr. Jeong Sang-guk, why would awakened who stayed on the Korean Peninsula and enjoyed Tenlegs’ company feel any affection for your lot?”

“...”

“Besides, I already told you. My aim is to bring Puppeteer to our academy. Right now, I simply want to verify whether Miss Lee Hayul’s claims are correct. As you know, a teacher needs some understanding of a student’s family circumstances.”

“I’m telling you, it’s a lie!”

Jeong Sang-guk shouted furiously.

“What did I neglect? Huh? What! Of course I had to bring my mistress over in secret! Was I supposed to announce it to the whole neighborhood? Think, damn it! Think! If I’d really intended to abandon them, I would’ve left them in Korea to fucking die!”

“...”

“Sure, life here is hard too, but Korea—huh? You know what it was like! Tenlegs! That fucking bastard! The Republic of Korea Armed Forces! Our armed forces were wiped out without even a chance to fight back! The North Korean army was obliterated too! With that thing roaming around unharmed, should I have run away and left Soyun and Hayul there, knowing they’d die? Huh? Would that have been right? Fine! I’m a traitor! I, Jeong Sang-guk, am a traitorous bastard! But I wanted to save my family. I wanted to save at least my family, so I groveled to Japan to keep us alive!”

I could feel sincerity in Jeong Sang-guk’s words too.

But I was not unaware that mimicking human pain was the instinct of the beast called a politician.

“If I were a man who cared only about his own life, I wouldn’t have looked after Hayul either! And yet my own daughter—huh? No matter how much you resent me, huh? How can you persecute your own parent like th—mmph!”

The webbing tightened around his tongue again.

At first, I thought Hayul had simply forced his mouth shut.

But that was not it.

“You brought us here, and neglected us.”

Jeong Sang-guk moved his mouth. The sound came from him, but the words were not his.

They were Hayul’s.

Whether deliberately or carried away by her emotions, Hayul was controlling his tongue, teeth, and throat to speak.

“This house, too, was shabby, originally. I used my ability to control people, and remodel it, like this.”

“Pff—even that! In times like these, even that was a blessing and a luxury! You’re old enough now. Why don’t you understand?”

“Liar. Your house was completely different.”

From that point on, something exceedingly strange unfolded.

Both of them were conversing with the same tongue and mouth. No, they were fighting.

Hayul’s words came out in choking bursts, broken up like mechanical speech. Probably because Jeong Sang-guk himself was resisting.

But his resistance failed. So the two ended up appearing to take turns speaking.

As if they had forgotten my existence, father and daughter poured out their emotions violently through a single channel, yet in two diverging directions.

“Of course! I’m the head of the provisional government! If I lived in some shabby place, it would disgrace every Korean who sought asylum here! Do you even know how much the Japanese care about saving face?”

“Why, when Mom was sick, in bed, did you stop sending food? Why didn’t you visit?”

“I told you! I was overwhelmed then! Busy! And do you think food grows on trees? Everyone was hungry and struggling!”

“What about Mom’s funeral?”

“I couldn’t go! Of course I couldn’t! I keep telling you the same thing! My life isn’t mine alone. South Korea’s future, its spark of hope, rests on me!”

“You said you wanted to save, at least your family. Just now. So why are you suddenly talking about the country?”

“That was at first! Only at first! Once I came here and started looking after the Koreans, I developed a sense of duty! What, do you think your father will stay the same person forever? Is a traitor always a traitor? Must someone who deserves death die? You cruel thing. How can you be so harsh? Even if everyone in the world tries to kill me, family should protect one another!”

“Liar.”

“I’m not!”

“You didn’t protect us.”

“I couldn’t protect you! Fine! I’m sorry, Hayul. All right? Dad was wrong!”

“That’s a lie too. You never apologized. Only after you learned I’d awakened my ability did you apologize. Why won’t you admit you’re lying? Do you want to live that badly? Why?”

“Why can’t you understand your father’s true feelings?”

... It was a grotesque one-man play.

I could only stand speechless at a sight I had never witnessed before.

On one side, a child who had never been able to say anything until she awakened her ability. On the other, a man who had spent his entire life saying anything at all.

Normally, we think of a doll as ‘a being that cannot say anything.’

But wasn’t ‘a being that will say anything’ equally a doll? The two were alike in that words could never convey their true feelings anyway.

“You—you’re no daughter of mine! You crazy bitch who does nothing but torture people!”

“You’re not my father, either.”

Their anger reached its peak.

But I thought their words were wrong.

Jeong Sang-guk was a puppet too.

As mayor of Busan, he had been a puppet who would say anything to win the citizens’ favor. As representative of Busan (‘Blessed Mountain’), he had likewise been a puppet who would say anything to win Japanese support.

Words did not matter to him at all. He could name a group of exiles the Second Provisional Government. He could rename Fukuoka Busan (‘Blessed Mountain’).

The only difference was whether the country was his own or someone else’s. In the end, Jeong Sang-guk had spent his entire life as a slave to state power—a slave of the state.

If language defined the essence of humanity, then Jeong Sang-guk had imitated that essence.

Something that vaguely imitates a human. Isn’t that what we call a doll?

Strangely, the genes of a doll had been passed down to another doll.

For Lee Hayul, a child who had grown up watching her mother and father all her life, the original image of a human had been imprinted as a doll—a human shape.

Because parents, whether they wish to or not, inevitably leave their children some inheritance.

Even what they themselves had turned away from, their children did not. Could not.

That alone was humanity’s fate.

“Liar.”

“It’s not a lie...!”

And a being who had devoted his entire life to power must also accept an ending like this.

The truth that, in a spiraling struggle whose paths would never intersect, victory belonged to whoever wielded greater power.

Before they crossed to Japan, and immediately afterward, the one with power in this family had indisputably been Jeong Sang-guk. He had possessed the strength to control the other puppets.

“It’s a lie. Everything. All of it.”

Not anymore.

Now the master of the Dollhouse was not him, but Lee Hayul.

“Hah—mmph?”

Jeong Sang-guk’s throat was constricted.

Hayul said nothing. Just as she had since birth. As she had at birth, she looked at her own flesh and blood.

The puppet strings dug into his skin.

A convulsive gag escaped him.

“...! ...!”

A struggle.

A slight one.

And then.

“...”

The puppet went limp.

The basement fell quiet.

In the end, these were the last words of a certain politician who had stirred up trouble at the end of the world.

It’s a lie.

Everything.

All of it.

Last words severed into three phrases. A neck in three segments.

Of all the words Jeong Sang-guk had uttered throughout his life as a politician, were these last words closer to truth, or to falsehood?

“...”

Looking at Hayul, drenched in blood as his neck burst, I lingered on that thought for a moment.

Some might say those could not count as his last words, since he had not spoken them of his own will.

Perhaps they were right.

But they were certainly his legacy.