The Tough Guy Hides the Villainess - Chapter 148



148 – There’s a Secret Base on the Dark Side of the Moon! # 2

148 – There’s a Secret Base on the Dark Side of the Moon! # 2

President Adams of the United States is forty years old this year.

But the emotions that could be felt in his deep eyes made him seem like a very old giant tree, a rock, or a mountain range.

“I’ve even forgotten who I am. Pharaoh, Kaiser, Khan…. I had many names and many faces, so I can’t remember them all. My oldest title was ‘Sage’.”

So, the Sage Council after all.

“Are the rest of the members of the ‘Sage Council’ also beings who have lived as long as you?”

“Not quite. They wished to become like me, but they couldn’t. They are just those who have helped me generation after generation, family to family. They aid in what I must do, in my goal.”

This old man was a monster who had been secretly manipulating history from behind the scenes for a very long time.

What was the thing he had to do, his goal?

“Tomorrow, something that will shock the entire world will happen. I plan to reveal what’s on the dark side of the moon, literally. Mr. Han Nam-jin, and Ms. Baek Yeo-ul, you should be excited.”

“The dark side of the moon, is it like the rumors say, with an American military space base or something?”

“Similar. You’ll find out more tomorrow. Is there anything else you want to ask? What about Core? There must be a lot you want to ask about that.”

At the mention of Core, I took a photo out of my pocket and showed it to him.

It was a picture of my mom with what appeared to be members of the Sage Council.

“My mother used to work with you, right?”

“Yes. She agreed to work with us until her son turned ten. It was an old rule of the Fairy Royalty that the successor to the Red King took the throne when their child turned ten.”

Tenth birthday.

Suddenly, the documents I’d seen in the Great Labyrinth flashed in my mind.

【To commemorate the Princess’s tenth birthday, we shall brew “Nectar”…!】

【“Nectar” is a very sweet and delicious drink…! It’s the favorite beverage of us fairies, including the Princess…! The kitchen fairies must follow the recipe below carefully…!

Ingredients: Sugar, lime, fairy ditch water (can be replaced with sparkling water), honey….】

【Happy tenth birthday to you.】

【Once it flies away, you’ll never find it again, so don’t take it out.】

【To my beloved Spring, Father Balla─】

These were documents celebrating my mother’s tenth birthday.

The current Red King had ascended the throne when our mother turned ten, separating him from his daughter.

Originally, it meant that when I turned ten, my mother should have left me too.

“But Kore didn’t do that. Perhaps her desire to stay by her growing son’s side was too strong. Then problems arose. Kore died and the ‘Red King’ reached its limit.”

If my mother had left me when she was ten, would many things have gone back to normal?

No one knew the answer to that.

It was like the dark side of the moon.

# # #

“He was a weird person.”

Once the Sage left, Bbangdaeng summed up the meeting with him simply, in retrospect.

A weird person.

I agreed with that assessment.

It was too strange in many ways to definitively call him a good or bad person.

Anyway, the Sage said that many things in the world would change tomorrow. So, after a long time, I was looking forward to tomorrow and was about to fall asleep when Bbangdaeng woke me in the middle of the night.

“Why?”

“HanamjJin! Look at this! It’s a glow-in-the-dark palm!”

Bbangdaeng showed me her palm from under the blanket.

If her palm had really become glow-in-the-dark, it would have been enough to wake me up.

The problem was that Bbangdaeng’s palm was not at all glow-in-the-dark.

“It’s not glow-in-the-dark?”

“I lied!”

What a straight-up liar.

So, I’m trying to fall back asleep, but this Bbangdengi keeps jabbing me in the side.

“Hanamjjin! I’m bored! Can’t fall asleep! Is it because I’m becoming a Maine, I can’t sleep at night! The Maine of Death is definitely nocturnal!”

“I’m sleepy.”

“That’s so unfair! So unfair! I even got shot to save you, Hanamjjin! And because of that, I became a Maine, and all that! I did everything!”

“Okay, okay. What do you want to do for fun?”

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“I don’t know!”

She doesn’t even know what she wants to do, just wants to play.

There’s only one way.

“Okay, let’s play dead. Whoever lies still wins. Starting now.”

*Thud-*

I quickly lay down and closed my eyes.

Then, Bbangdengi lay down next to me, too, but the light in her eyes vanished, her breathing stopped, and her heart seemed to stop, becoming like a real dead body.

“Hey!”

I was startled and shook Bbangdengi like crazy, and the kid just goes, *hehehe-* laughing.

“I won!”

Indeed, maybe it’s because she possesses the concept of 「Death」, but she’s eerily good at playing dead.

“Well then, Hanamjjin, sleep well!”

“Okay.”

I laid back down again.

But I soon opened my eyes again because Bbangdengi was sitting beside me, staring intently at my sleeping face.

Not even blinking.

“Why.”

“Hanamjjin, you make that kind of face when you sleep!”

“What kind of face?”

“Hehehe, a weird face! It’s fun just watching. So I’m going to watch you sleep all night tonight.”

Better than being pestered like a child to play, but having someone watch me sleep all night is a bizarre thing in itself.

「The Maine of Death is gazing upon you.」

「You are falling into a nightmare from which you cannot awaken.」— feels like a status message like that might appear.

So, unable to fall asleep comfortably, tossing and turning like pork belly sizzling on a pan, Bbangdengi giggled, *hehehe-*.

“But it’s okay. Hanamjjin, you’re getting so popular it was making me a little bitter. Now that you’re a criminal you won’t be popular anymore, right!”

That’s right.

They called the girls who liked me, Ha Nam-jin, “Namsun,” huh.

I’d never actually seen them, but they were all over the internet.

But now I’m on the run, so my popularity’s gone down the drain.

“Krak! My horde of little girls!”

I didn’t even get to enjoy my popularity properly!

I cried tears of injustice, and then Bbangdaengi comforted me.

“Even if you become the poorest and ugliest person in the world, Ha Nam-jjin, I won’t hate you! So don’t worry. I’ll always be by your side, Ha Nam-jjin! Forever! Forever!”

“Bbangdaengi, that’s actually kind of touching.”

“Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever!”

“Hey, what’s wrong with you! Stop it!”

“Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever! Forever!”

Bbangdaengi repeated “forever” forever.

Her face had no life in it, and she just moved her mouth like a broken record player. It gave me the shivers, but when I came to, the morning sun was already rising.

“Ha Nam-jjin! You’re awake! I made you fried eggs! Eat up!”

Was it a dream?

Where did the dream begin and end?

Bbangdaengi must’ve been staring at me while I was sleeping and given me a creepy dream.

“Why do you look like that? You don’t like fried eggs? I have sausages too, should I fry them up?”

“No, it’s not about the menu, I had a weird dream. It was a dream where you, Bbangdaengi, kept repeating the word forever, forever.”

“Puhuhu, that’s a weird dream! But it might not be a dream! Ha Nam-jjin, I’ll be by your side forever! Forever! Forever!”

“Gyaaak!”

I was utterly horrified.

Last night wasn’t a nightmare, it was reality.

But then Bbangdaengi added, like she had more to say.

“It’s because you’re so lonely, Ha Nam-jjin! I have to be by your side. Last night, you were crying in your sleep, saying you missed your mom, it made me so sad and pitiful!”

“You little brat, Bbangdaengi! Why do you lie like that! Me, a man, crying! That would never happen!”

“It’s not a lie! Now eat your breakfast!”

The breakfast Bbangdaengi made was pretty good.

Her cooking skills are still great.

But Bbangdaengi smacked my back with her palm—*thwack*.

“Now that I think about it, you gave the lunch I made back then to Seo Gaeul, didn’t you! That was so mean!”

“I’m sorry about that. Seo Gaeul was so picky she wouldn’t eat anything I gave her for lunch. But she ate the lunch you made really well.”

I’d relied a lot on Bbangdaengi’s help to tame the kidnapped Seo Gaeul.

Anyway, with that feeling, time passed, and all the broadcasting stations started airing programs celebrating and spotlighting the US President’s visit to Korea.

It felt so strange seeing the person I met yesterday on TV, and I couldn’t help but wonder what this great secret he would reveal today was.

The US President, “The Sage,” stood before the crowd at the podium and said,

“To the citizens of Korea, hello. I am the 50th President of the United States, Adams.”

He started with a conventional sentence, and everyone was amazed, like, totally blown away, that an American was speaking fluent Korean.

Maybe five minutes passed like that.

“The Sage” got to the point.

“Today, I would like to share an incredible fact with you all. It’s the lunar base project, developed through a collaboration between the United States, China, Japan, the UK, and Russia.”

The screen behind the President showed a moon full of craters, and on it, a high-tech base.

“That’s right. This is a structure built on the far side of the moon, which you don’t normally see. Its size is roughly comparable to the entire Korean peninsula. So, what was the reason for building it!”

“The Sage” pointed his hand to the sky.

“It’s because the black clouds are enveloping the world, the soil is being contaminated, and this land is increasingly becoming a difficult place for living things to inhabit. The lunar base is a haven built to accommodate people from all over the world. It can hold approximately 8 billion people. I’d like to start by moving the citizens of Korea, who will be directly hit by the ‘Black Rain,’ to the lunar base.”

They were going to send all Koreans to the moon?

That would be an unprecedented mass migration.

‘This didn’t happen in the last world.’

Rumors had it that some of the rich had escaped into space to avoid the apocalypse—that was just a kind of urban legend though.

But to think that the story was real.

*Koo-oong!*

Then a tremendous roar echoed and the ground shook.

It was the kind of feeling you’d get if a huge bomb went off or a gigantic volcano erupted.

“What’s going on! What is it!”

Bbangdaengi looked panicked.

Unlike the surprised Bbangdaengi, I felt a familiar sensation from this shaking.

On the day of destruction, when giant monsters appeared and swept over the ground, and ferocious demons rose from the earth and started eating people, there was this exact type of earthquake.

So, what we just heard was probably the sound of the “Great Labyrinth” twisting underground in Korea.

A dungeon break was about to happen, and monsters were going to flood to the surface.

The US President spoke on television.

“It seems the subjugation force that departed this morning has failed to eliminate the ‘Red King’. If the rampaging ‘Red King’ surfaces, Korea will become uninhabitable within a month. We must go to the lunar base!”