The Chaebol Who Flies From Space - Chapter 3
Only Noblemtl
3. Funeral (2)
“Wouldn’t it be possible with an artificial organ transplant? You’re the richest man in the universe. And you’re not even a naturalist.”
“······. There are things that money can’t do. My new doctor says I’m a special case. What the hell, what good is having so much money for! I can’t even take care of myself. And on top of that, I don’t know when I’ll die. Does that make sense?”
“……”
The more I thought about it, the more angry and resentful I became. How could someone with the greatest wealth in the universe not be able to solve a problem with a limited lifespan?
Because it was such a rare case, there wasn’t enough time to do anything.
I sat down on the chair I was sitting in and looked out the window.
The pungent scent of the Mississippi River flowing gently behind the oak trees planted in the garden came into the house on the wind.
It was a natural feeling that could never be felt in the always flat and unchanging universe. It was a completely different feeling from the swirling scenery of the XF-124 seen through a hologram in the colony.
Of course, this one was much better for me.
“The moonlight is nice. I remember when I was little, you and I sneaked out at night to go fishing together, but we got caught and got in trouble.”
Georges forced a smile at my words.
“I don’t know what was so good about it back then. It was just good to be together.”
“You were young, my friend. Thank you for always being there for me.”
“What the hell! Don’t talk like you’ll never see me again.”
It was Georges with a voice full of moisture.
I sat with Georges all night long over a cup of coffee, reminiscing about my childhood. I had thought I had forgotten everything because so much time had passed, but as we talked, memories from back then began to come back to me little by little.
My mother passed away two days after I stayed at the Rose Garden. She was at peace at the end.
Over 400 farm family members gathered together to bid farewell to their mother.
As I watched my mother’s coffin being lowered into the ground, all the tears I had been holding back poured out at once.
Even though he was over 180 years old, he cried like a little child, rolling around on the floor.
Neither the fact that I was the richest man in the universe with a fortune of over 11.5 trillion dollars, nor the nickname of Kingmaker that I earned by creating five federal presidents, nor all the social honors surrounding me could stop me.
In that place, I was just a poor son who had lost his mother.
I must have lost consciousness because I cried so hard. When I came to on my bed, the morning sun was rising far away.
I lay on the bed and quietly recalled memories with my mother.
When the sun rises, the farm gets busy.
A mother ponders over the crops she planted with her workers.
The image of my mother sitting across from me and eating dinner together when the sun set early.
The more I thought about my mother, the more my body and mind seemed to sink together, so I shook my head.
As I forced myself to get up and go outside, the large house was quiet.
The fragrant scent of coffee clung to my nose.
As I walked along, following the scent, I saw father and son Michelle and Georges sitting side by side with coffee in front of them.
“This is the coffee my mother liked to drink. Can I have a cup too?”
My mother loved Ethiopian Yirgacheffe so much. As she grew older and had a poor heart, her doctor recommended that she not drink coffee often, and she was very disappointed.
“Are you awake? I will prepare tea.”
Michelle got up from her seat as usual and prepared some coffee.
“Are you here? I guess you’ve finished all the accounting.”
“I arrived late last night. The results were as expected, not bad. The meeting with the President was also nothing special. He said he would express his condolences to the Master.”
The financial results came out as expected. Sending pioneers to pioneer planets and mining resources is the company’s main business. Companies with numerous pioneers are busy settling their performance throughout the year, but they become even busier at this time of year.
Michelle’s presence here meant that a somewhat busy schedule was over.
“Why, Michelle, it’s your job to make the coffee.”
Georges’ face distorted at my casual remark.
“Should I move my old body while leaving my young son behind?”
“Then why did you run away? Thinking about how much I suffered because of you running away. Just…”
“It’s because you’re a bad employer. You’re crazy about women, and you leave the office, so I don’t think I have time to go home! I held out for so long that I finally hit you!”
I just sank under Georges’ counterattack.
Even thinking back now, I was really immature back then.
“sorry.”
“Do you know how satisfying it was when your wife slapped you when you told her you were getting a second divorce?”
“It really hurt back then!”
“You should have been hit more.”
I thought I was going to die from the pain. I still can’t forget the look on my mother’s face when I told her I was divorcing my second wife.
It was the first time I saw my mother, who had always understood me, so angry.
“Yeah, I did a lot of things that deserved to be correct.”
Georges looked dumbfounded at my straightforward admission.
When I was young, I was so stubborn that I would never admit my mistakes even if I died.
“I guess you’ve gotten older since you admit it.”
“It’s because it’s time to die.”
“Andre!”
Georges raised his voice at my words, but my gaze was directed to Michelle, who was bringing me coffee.
When the fragrant Yegacheffe was placed in front of me, I felt good. It was a scent I really missed.
“Michelle, I always thought of you as my child. Perhaps if your face had been just a little yellow, I would have considered you my own child.”
“My mother said the same thing. She said she didn’t know when I slept with André.”
Because I liked Michelle so much, strange rumors started going around.
Sometimes my mother would look at me with strange eyes.
“Huh, the genetic test results show that Michelle, you are 99.9% my son.”
“You little punk, when did you ever secretly do all those tests?”
“It’s my heart.”
“You two are always the same.”
At Michelle’s words, the two of us stopped fighting.
“……”
“……”
And then there was a long silence.
As the awkward atmosphere began to take hold, I picked up my holographic phone and called my lawyer.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“No, I’ve been preparing since yesterday.”
“Why are you here?”
Georges couldn’t hide his displeasure at the sight of the lawyer who had appeared. Georges’ youngest son, Vincent, worked as a partner at a famous law firm in Boston.
“You came because I called you.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“My will.”
“……”
“Andre this is···.”
He raised his hand to stop the two people who were about to object.
“I don’t have much time these days.”
The heads of Michelle and Georges, who were sitting across from me, tilted.
Now both of them seemed to feel that what I said wasn’t a bad joke.
“I’ll announce the simple things when all the family members are gathered together, but I think the two of you should know the details.”
Bang Sang handed the paper documents to the two silent people.
Georges, who had grown old and had become presbyopic, had difficulty reading the documents after finding his glasses. Even in this space age, important documents such as wills must be made on paper to be effective.
“Ugh, you son of a bitch.”
The contents of the will, filled with complicated legal terms, can be simply summarized as follows: 90% of my entire estate will be used to create a foundation for Michelle, and the remaining 10% will be used for the Rose Garden, which is my mother’s legacy and is mostly made up of the profits from farming.
Farm work was an unstable source of income.
It would take a lot of money to maintain the farm later on. If the farm contained 10% of my wealth, it would probably be able to survive even if the Space Federation collapsed.
To me, this farm represents my mother.
The money that goes back to the guys known as my children is 100 million JER each in cash.
“Andre, have you given up on Raymond?”
Michelle took out the name of my neglected youngest son from the will. He was the child I never gave up on until the very end.
“Yeah. I bet there’s another accident somewhere right now.”
“But aren’t they your biological children?”
Raymond’s two older brothers were obviously not my children. They looked completely different from me. But Raymond had a typical Asian face to anyone who saw him.
“Him? He’s not my child. I can’t have children. They said it’s the aftereffects of an accident I had a while ago.”
I lived by the belief that I would not stop a woman who came to me and would not catch a woman who left me.
I had slept with so many women and was surprised that I only had three children, so I got tested. The first test came back normal, but when I secretly got tested again, I found out that I couldn’t have children.
The doctor was surprised and said that it was a rare constitution that was rarely seen. He immediately fired his attending physician and hired a new one.
Naturally, the youngest child’s genetic test results showed that he was the biological child, so we tested his genes. The results were as expected.
I was shocked for just one day. Even in this space age, there were dead ends.
The third mother bribed my doctor to falsify the results of my genetic test.
I’m a cripple because I didn’t get my genes tested right after I was born.
“……”
“……”
Everyone kept their mouths shut, perhaps because a secret that had been kept hidden for so long had been revealed.
After burying my mother and taking care of her will, I set off for my own colony. I boarded my own spaceship and the sun began to gradually move away. It took a day to reach the Kuiper Belt. As soon as I got into orbit, I stood up as if I had been waiting and took out the alcohol I had hidden deep inside.
It was my secretary Thomas who persistently tried to dissuade me from opening a bottle of alcohol.
“Sir, you are not in good health, so drinking alcohol is too much for you.”
“Oh! Thomas, when were you here? I haven’t seen you in a while. Did you attend the funeral?”
Maybe it’s because I’m specialized in secretarial work, but sometimes I forget where Thomas is.
“I attended too. With my family.”
“How is your mother? Come to think of it, I haven’t really talked to her.”
“You were out of your mind. After Madam passed away, Mom also wasn’t in her right mind at all.”
“okay.”
It was her mother who took Eva Miller, who had lost her husband at a young age and was at a loss as to how she would live with her children, into the farm.
My mother was a very generous and warm-hearted person.
Eva never left the farm, even though her son Thomas had settled down.
There were more than one or two of these people on the farm. The space age had begun and numerous colonies had been created, but most of those who remained on Earth were poor people with nothing. To them, who were embraced by their mothers, the farm was their home and their hometown.
“The farm people loved it because the owner kept the farm going and even provided financial support.”
“We have to keep it, it’s our hometown, you and me.”
“Yes, that’s right. But no alcohol. Dr. Joseph strongly advised me not to. The CEO is too self-willed.”
“That damn guy, he won’t even let me drink anymore.”
I grumbled lightly, but I know that drinking is bad for your heart. But isn’t it too harsh to not let me have a drink on a day like today?
“Don’t even think about just letting this pass. Absolutely not.”
“No way. You shouldn’t drink this.”
It was a shame to leave the wine with the cork open, but I had to force myself to endure it.
I pushed back my seat and lay down, but I couldn’t fall asleep.
After tossing and turning for a while, I got up from my seat and headed to the bedroom on one side of the spaceship.
Thomas, who had been keeping a close eye on me in case I was drinking, opened his eyes wide and watched my actions.
“I’m not drinking, you punk!”
Thomas chuckled and closed his eyes again.
The sleeping compartment of my solar system spaceship is a space that my mother used to visit me when she was alive. When I thought of her, the tears that I thought had dried up with the funeral ran down my cheeks once again.
I took a deep breath for a moment because I felt like I might suffocate.
I lay in bed and felt around. If it was my mother······
There was a clicking part next to the bed.
As expected, she was thoroughly prepared, thinking that it might be her mother. When my doctor told me to abstain from drinking, she created a secret space in the private compartment of my private spaceship and had a light drink every time she got on board.
All that was in the room was a half-drinkable bottle of Calvados and a glass.
I felt like I could feel my mother’s warmth in the glass, so I stroked the empty glass for a moment.
I poured myself a glass of Calvados and drank it slowly. As the drink went down my throat, my body felt warm. My heart also seemed to beat a little faster.