novelraw Chapter 226 : Chapter 226
Chapter 226 : Chapter 226
Chapter 226: The Past (2)
Smiley wrapped her arms around her body.
“I finally found you.”
Her voice, trembling slightly, was filled with deep emotion.
Just as Ho-cheol was about to ask what she meant.
Waaah―!
Ho-cheol and Smiley’s heads turned at the same time.
The two checked the inside of the car.
A newborn baby crying in a child seat in the back, and a woman slumped over the driver's seat, unconscious.
Blood was flowing from her forehead, but the bleeding wasn’t at a serious level.
Seeing this, Smiley spoke.
“First, let’s pull the car back to a safer place.”
They didn't know when the bridge’s collapse would affect this spot.
At Smiley’s command, Ho-cheol narrowed his eyes.
Himself, critically injured and covered in blood from being cut and stabbed all over while fighting the villain, and Smiley, who had only been watching until now.
Which of them should be doing this menial task.
The answer was, of course…….
“Damn it.”
His weaker self.
Ho-cheol clutched the penetrating wound in his side, dragging the car to a safe place with his remaining hand.
Seeing this, Smiley smiled slightly and apologized.
“Sorry. My condition is just really bad today.”
“You call that an apology.”
Of course, even to Ho-cheol’s eyes, Smiley’s condition was much worse than usual.
He could feel it from their brief exchange just now.
A noticeably weakened state.
After all, if she were in top condition, she would have easily subdued him before showing him her back so defenselessly.
After that, Smiley thoroughly scanned the surroundings and checked the car's interior, just in case there were other citizens in a similar situation.
Meanwhile, Ho-cheol pulled out the sword he had embedded in the car’s trunk and aimed it at the villain again.
He couldn't finish the job earlier because of Smiley’s interference, but now, while moving between the cars, he thought he could handle it before she could interfere.
Smiley also belatedly noticed Ho-cheol holding the sword and let out a regretful sigh, Ah―.
But unlike before, this time she didn’t try to stop him, merely watching him with pitiful eyes.
His face stung from her intense gaze.
In the end, Ho-cheol sighed and threw the sword aside.
Smiley clasped her hands together and smiled brightly.
Then she stuck close to Ho-cheol and grabbed his arm.
“Heroes will swarm here if we stay any longer, right? Let’s run.”
Even though her condition was bad, she was still stronger than Ho-cheol.
She forcibly led his body and leaped lightly.
On the rooftop of a building far away, heroes could be seen moving busily in the distance, handling the rescue work and cleanup on the bridge.
In the far distance, the villains Ho-cheol had defeated were being captured and put into villain transport vehicles.
Seeing this, Ho-cheol turned his head to the side.
If the Association or the courts were sane, he wouldn't be seeing their faces for at least the next few years.
Meanwhile, Smiley spotted a few familiar heroes and giggled, Kyarara―.
“They’re working hard.”
A puzzled Ho-cheol asked Smiley, who was swinging her feet back and forth.
“Aren’t you going to help the other heroes?”
“Me? That? Why?”
It was the moment Smiley’s public image as the perfect hero completely shattered.
“I’m a hero who saves people, not a hero who fixes bridges or saves cars. More than that…….”
She raised her hand and pointed to the horizon.
She marveled quietly, watching the sun hide behind the clouds, the sunset burning red.
“Pretty. What do you think of when you see that sunset?”
“……It looks like the sky is vomiting blood.”
“Wow, poetic. Though the expression is a bit extreme.”
Actually, even that was the most refined expression Ho-cheol could manage.
“I hate sunsets.”
He confessed his true feelings curtly.
That memory was still vivid.
When he was young, the tunnel collapse accident that killed both his parents, the tunnel he barely escaped from.
The moment he emerged from that dark tunnel, a sunset just like that had greeted him.
The sky he saw after losing everything was so horrific and ominous.
As if it were an omen that his future would turn out just like it.
And just as predicted, his life now was horrific.
“Really?”
At his words, Smiley’s voice sank, becoming melancholic.
“That’s sad. Actually, something sad happened to me too. Everything felt bleak and uncertain. But the sky I looked up at then, that sunset, was so beautiful. No, maybe the person I watched the sunset with at that time was so beautiful. I really wanted to become like that.”
She raised one leg, hugging her knee.
She rested her cheek on it and muttered softly.
“It would have been nice if you had that kind of hope, too.”
Smiley’s voice as she said that was so lonely.
“But it’s okay!”
Suddenly changing the mood, Smiley got down from the railing again and patted Ho-cheol’s shoulder.
“Because I’ll share my hope with you, starting now!”
Ho-cheol couldn’t even think to brush off the hand patting his shoulder.
Her words were that bizarre.
He stared at Smiley as if he couldn't understand at all, before finally being unable to hold back and asking.
“Why?”
Why on earth?
Her favorable attitude so far, yet her just watching until he was on the verge of death and then stopping him from killing someone—everything about her was bizarre.
But nothing was as bizarre as her current statement.
At his question, Smiley squeezed the hand on his shoulder.
“Because you are, without a doubt, a good person.”
Not a hint of doubt could be felt in her expression or tone.
She was that firm and full of conviction.
Unknowingly, or by the time one comes to their senses― when a person acts in that kind of situation, is the foundation moving that person good or evil.
And Smiley had clearly seen it in Ho-cheol just now.
He was a person who moved with good intentions in an extreme situation.
Just as she expected.
“A person who can place good intentions before all other emotions. Your evil deeds so far are just because the situation overwhelmed and hid your true heart.”
She tilted her head and poked Ho-cheol’s shoulder with the tip of her nose.
“I believed. And you proved it. No matter how harsh reality is, a person’s true heart doesn’t change. The one value that never, ever changes.”
“Since you proved it. Now it’s my turn to prove it.”
“What.”
“My true heart.”
Of course, she couldn't say what that was.
Because she had received.
She received a life, received hope, received a future.
Although there wasn't much time left, even if she couldn’t return double what she received.
To repay even half of it.
She dropped her head from Ho-cheol’s shoulder again.
“So, first, shall we go get something to eat?”
Smiley smiled brightly, just like her name.
***
“W-wait a minute!”
So-hee hurriedly raised her hand, stopping Smiley’s recollection.
She touched her lips with one hand, her eyes darting left and right.
“……Something, something is strange.”
Smiley’s expression as she spoke, ruminating on the past, looked so happy and joyful that she couldn't cut her off, but this question had to be resolved to understand.
“You said you’d tell me from your first meeting, but…….”
In her story, Ho-cheol clearly reacted as if he was seeing Smiley for the first time.
But looking at Smiley’s behavior, wasn’t her mood and speech too soft for someone just dealing with a villain she’d met for the first time?
Unable to understand, So-hee asked.
“Was that situation really the first meeting for both of you?”
Smiley, however, just shrugged nonchalantly.
“That’s right. The memory we share, our first meeting.”
Smiley, who particularly emphasized the expression ‘our first meeting’.
So-hee also felt a sense of wrongness from that phrase.
There was no need to even use her Trait.
That statement clearly had a small lie mixed in.
Above all, the conversation about the sunset at the end.
In that expression, which included Smiley’s personal feelings, something clearly different was felt.
“If it wasn't the first meeting for both of you, was there a one-sided meeting by just one person?”
At the question that hit the nail on the head, Smiley smiled with her eyes.
She wasn't as clueless as she seemed.
Well, having given such obvious hints, it was only natural that she’d notice.
“That’s right. Hocheol doesn’t remember it at all, but. Ho-cheol the villain and me the hero. That wasn’t our first meeting.”
She cupped her chin with one hand and recalled that time.
“I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in connection.”
That day, when she lost everything, but also gained everything.
“The tunnel accident where Ho-cheol lost everything. The person Ho-cheol saved back then was me.”
So-hee sucked in a breath.
“That’s…….”
Once, Ho-cheol had come back from an outing covered in blood, yet excited.
When she asked why, he said he wasn't as bad a guy as he thought, and told her the story about that tunnel accident.
He said he was also a person who helps others in extreme situations, a person who puts good intentions before anyone else.
He had said it so proudly.
So-hee couldn't even continue her thought.
The emotion she was feeling now was not the kind that could be expressed in just a few words.
“I’m called everyone's hero, but really, the hero to me was Ho-cheol.”
Smiley lifted her coffee cup and gave a bitter smile.
Saved by him, she believed in human goodness more than anyone.
That's why she became a hero.
But the real hero who saved her was overwhelmed by his situation and couldn't believe in human goodness.
Forgetting that if he had it, others must too, he was crushed by his circumstances.
And in the end, he fell.
Even after becoming a hero, Smiley spent her whole life searching for Ho-cheol.
And when she first found him and learned of his situation, the emotion she felt was a deep sense of guilt.
And next, she resolved.
“So, saving Ho-cheol was something only I could do, and something I had to do.”
“Then. The reason you became a hero was…….”
“Just a simple repaying of a debt. Ho-cheol misunderstands me a little, but really, I’m just a little bit nicer than the average person.”
She pressed her thumb and index finger together and stuck out her index finger slightly.
Honestly.
The safety of the citizens, the peace of the nation, a beautiful world.
Things like that didn't matter.
She only became a hero because she survived thanks to Ho-cheol’s goodness, and she didn't want to waste the life she gained from that goodness.
The hero who always smiles?
That's because it was a life gained so preciously, she didn't want to wear a sad expression even for a moment.
“Ah, then the newborn baby from that time was…….”
“That’s right. My little sister, Ye-jin. Connection really is a mysterious thing. To think they would meet again like that.”
So-hee covered her face with both hands.
Ho-cheol probably still didn't know that the child he saved from the tunnel back then was Smiley.
No, he definitely didn’t know.
If he had known, he would have mentioned it at least once.
“A truth he doesn't need to know…….”
“It’s heavy, right? There are so many things in the world that are overwhelming just to know.”
Smiley reached out and grabbed So-hee’s wrist.
Then she forcibly pulled down the hands covering her face.
And she made eye contact and said.
“But we’re not even halfway there yet. So concentrate and listen.”
Having started, she had to see it through to the end.
Smiley continued her recollection.
***
After that, Smiley continued to visit Ho-cheol.
However, it wasn't that she was showing a determination to rehabilitate him.
But, her attitude toward him definitely changed after the incident on the bridge.
The change in her attitude began with her hands when she visited.
While maintaining her lighthearted attitude, she had always brought her weapon―Peacemaker―in one hand, but after that day, she no longer carried her weapon.
Instead, the hand that used to hold the weapon now held gifts.
Whether they were trivial or not.
They were all things for Ho-cheol.
Ho-cheol himself treated them as trash, finding them annoying.
But when she visited next, they were piled up in a corner, under the excuse that it was too annoying to throw them away.
Even after that, there wasn’t much Smiley did when she came over.
She chattered about her own stories.
But the emotions felt in those stories were trust, faith, affection, goodwill.
Those positive emotions, no matter how cold an attitude Ho-cheol maintained, were slowly and surely melting him.
Before he knew it, Ho-cheol wasn't just listening anymore.
“I…….”
Suddenly, perhaps feeling some emotion, he began to confess his past story.
Human malice had killed his family, and society's indifference had forced his silence.
At that, Smiley couldn't smile for the first time.
A horrific memory that didn't even allow a fake smile; watching Ho-cheol calmly confess it, the most she could do was not break down in tears.
Why did her hero have to suffer so much?
Ho-cheol and Smiley had both lost everything in the tunnel.
But after that, Smiley was able to get back up, meeting only good people, starting with Ho-cheol.
But he only fell into a deeper abyss.
At some point, his story ended.
Ho-cheol leaned his body against the back of the chair.
“That was the first time. Someone truly listened to my story.”
“Sorry. Sniffle― I, I. Something suddenly came up, so I think I have to go.”
In the end, thinking she wouldn't be able to hold back her tears, she shot up from her seat.
“……Hey.”
Towards that Smiley, Ho-cheol held out a handkerchief.
“Thanks.”
Smiley looked surprised, but then smiled brightly again.
How much more time had passed?
Ho-cheol stared blankly at Smiley.
She was talking about things like how a new hero had recently risen to A-rank, that their skills were amazing.
That they would probably reach S-rank soon.
Several months had already passed since she started barging in like this.
Someone's few months can be more valuable than someone's few years, and it was enough time to move a person’s heart.
She didn't tell Ho-cheol to change.
She said he could change.
Potential.
She just believed only in the potential Ho-cheol possessed.
Truthfully, Ho-cheol had found it unpleasant at first.
Because it felt like she was judging him however she wanted, and he suspected her true intentions.
He thought she was after something.
And he denied the affection.
To him, others were relationships just meant to be used, manipulated, and tormented.
But no matter how many times Ho-cheol pushed her away, Smiley always gently affirmed even his rejection.
At some point, Ho-cheol thought.
Maybe it was possible for me to change too.
Another’s belief makes me affirm myself.
Unconditional faith.
This was the first time in Ho-cheol’s life he had experienced such an emotion from a non-family member, from another person.
Ho-cheol slowly opened his mouth.
“……Really.”
For the first time, Ho-cheol initiated the conversation.
Smiley’s head whipped― to the side.
Her eyes shined with anticipation.
As if she was waiting for something, and Ho-cheol responded to her expectation.
“Do you think I can change?”
“Of course!”
“……Even after I’ve sinned this much?”
He lowered his head and looked at his hands.
On his two hands, which at first were just stained red, bright red blood from who-knows-who was now flowing endlessly.
Smiley approached and cupped Ho-cheol’s hands with both of hers.
Ho-cheol was momentarily startled and snapped― his head up.
But he didn't pull his hands back.
“It’s okay.”
A warm and soft palm touching his rough and cool hands.
She gently squeezed Ho-cheol’s hands.
“I won't say you're sinless. And I won't say the empty words that you can repay everything. It will probably be painful. But, if you truly change your heart. I will definitely… be by your side.”
Ho-cheol stared blankly down at his hands again.
The hands that had been so stained with blood just moments before, now looked a little cleaner.