## Chapter 292 – 29. Your Country, Your Homeland (6)
Ha Eun-young’s eyes widened.
It seemed she genuinely hadn’t expected those words.
“Wh…what did you say…?”
“I said I’ll become your country.”
“Wh-what nonsense…!”
“Why, do you think I’m not qualified enough? You’ve worked under me, so you know. You know what it means to be the eldest grandson of the Goryeo Group.”
The words “the eldest grandson of this country” that I’d carelessly blurted out at the Prosecutor’s Office were absurd and ridiculous, but when you thought about it, they weren’t exactly wrong.
Ha Eun-young, who had worked as my exclusive secretary for a while, would know that meaning well.
Maybe she’d realize it even more intensely than I did.
I didn’t have a good grasp of how much chaos I could cause, but the secretaries who were actually in charge of the practical work would feel the repercussions of my actions more directly, so they’d know much better.
“South Korea and the NIS abandoned you. No, they never even possessed you in the first place. They just used you as a tool. To possess someone means to take responsibility, but if they had, you wouldn’t be here.”
“….”
“Forget the fabricated life and follow the truth. Your real life started at Prestige, and it blossomed when you became my secretary. That’s your life. I am your country.”
“Don’t be ridiculous…. After doing…such terrible things…. Making me, making Yeon-ju Unni like this, and now you…!”
“That’s because your identity back then was Ha Eun-young. Ha Eun-young, the spy dispatched by the NIS. Ha Eun-young, born as a tool for experimentation and brainwashed as a spy agent. It’s pitiful, but she had to pay the price for opposing our group. But that should end with Ha Eun-young.”
I stood up again.
“If you’re Seo Eun-mi, there’s still a chance. Unlike others, I don’t experiment on or abandon my people.”
“Ah, ugh….”
Ha Eun-young gritted her teeth.
She didn’t seem to understand.
She’d been suffering terribly for months, so it was only natural.
She’d have a lot to think about.
But at least it was clear that she was wavering.
“Think about it. Who is the real enemy you should be harboring animosity towards? Is it me, who possesses you, or the NIS, who raised your parents as experimental livestock and then discarded them?”
“…!”
“Think about whether the anger you have towards our group is truly justified, or whether it’s the result of brainwashing.”
“….”
Ha Eun-young was silent.
She didn’t seem to have anything to say.
She was probably agonizing over it.
She’d have a lot to think about regarding her own identity, and feelings of betrayal towards the NIS and the country, as well as doubts and futility about her life, would be raging within her.
Trying to inject anything more at this point would be counterproductive. Sometimes you have to wait patiently and await the results.
“I think we’ve talked enough. I hope to see you as Seo Eun-mi next time.”
“Ah….”
The secretaries lifted Ha Eun-young up and dragged her to the corner of the prison.
Even as they did so, Ha Eun-young’s eyes were fixed on me.
+++
“Master, is it really necessary to go that far?”
Seo A-ram asked on the way out.
“What do you mean?”
“Regardless of the reason, she was a spy. I don’t know if giving her your trust again is really beneficial to you.”
She didn’t seem to trust Ha Eun-young.
‘Come to think of it, she didn’t like Yeon-ju either.’
I still remembered the scene of her kicking Ma Yeon-ju away when she was desperately calling out my name.
It seemed that as she became absolutely loyal to me, she also developed an infinite hatred for spies and traitors, which was why she almost antagonized Ha Eun-young, who had come in as a spy, and Ma Yeon-ju, who had been an NIS agent.
“A person who betrays once will betray twice. I…I can’t trust those women.”
“Judging by the way you say ‘those women,’ it seems you don’t trust Ma Yeon-ju either.”
“…Yes…honestly…I think you should just use her as a sex toy.”
“….”
…She’s become much more extreme. My A-ram.
“There are plenty of talented people who will be loyal to you, Master. I don’t know why you’re trying to bring in those kinds of people. I’m worried that someone disloyal in the secretary’s office might harbor bad intentions.”
“So, you’re saying that if I forgive a traitor, another traitor might believe that and act up, right?”
“…Yes.”
The side of the female lead that was called a ruthless iron lady in the story is slowly coming out.
“Your premise is wrong, A-ram.”
“…?”
“Ha Eun-young isn’t a traitor. She was just a spy. The same goes for Ma Yeon-ju.”
“…Yes?”
“Betrayal is when someone who was my person stabs me in the back, but they were never my people. They were spies brainwashed by the NIS. They never pledged allegiance in the first place, so how is that betrayal?”
“Th…that’s….”
Was she flustered because it was too literal?
Seo A-ram’s face, as if she wanted to say something but couldn’t, was a little funny.
“And for betrayal to occur, it means that there’s someone who can offer more benefits than me, or someone who is more aligned with justice. What I can’t tolerate is that fact itself. Compared to that, a traitor is cute.”
“…I don’t understand what you mean.”
“As the eldest grandson of the Goryeo Group, I can’t tolerate the concept of betrayal itself.”
“….”
“Me and the Goryeo Group are this country, justice itself, and there’s no place better than by my side. There’s no reason for betrayal, and there shouldn’t be.”
“….”
Seo A-ram was speechless at the enormity of those words.
Her eyes were wide and her mouth was agape, and I almost laughed.
But I had to show my dignity as a master.
“That’s the reason for my forgiveness.”
“….”
Of course, there was a condition that it was limited to pretty women and that they had to pay the price for their sins.
But anyway, forgiveness is forgiveness, right?
Seo A-ram, who had been looking dazed, soon changed her expression.
“If…if you say so….”
“When you think about it, they’re pitiful. They never had the freedom to make proper judgments in the first place. By possessing them, I can save them. Everyone should have a chance to be saved at least once, don’t you think?”
“Salvation…!”
Seo A-ram, who thought she was saved through me, reacted to that word.
“…I understand. I won’t disagree with your judgment anymore.”
“No, you should disagree…. That’s how you get proper advice.”
“Yes.”
+++
Ha Eun-young’s mind, stuck in the corner, was complicated.
It was as if all the lives she had lived so far were뭉쳐져 into one and creating a whirlpool in her head.
Muddled.
What was true, and what was false,
Where did the brainwashing end, and where did her own self begin?
There was no way to know.
In the midst of all this, that bastard Go Mu-yeol had stirred things up with all sorts of words, so she couldn’t help but be even more confused.
“….”
Her worries must have been so deep that she didn’t even have a seizure.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she was even suppressing the strong withdrawal symptoms of the drugs.
‘I am…. What am I….’
The NIS internal data that Go Mu-yeol had dropped off last week.
She knew it at a glance as soon as she saw it.
The writing style, the encryption method, and even the algorithm for interpreting it were all from the methods of the organization she had been a part of.
It would take a lot of effort to fabricate this.
But even so, she denied it at the time.
It was too enormous a fact to simply accept.
To think that she, who thought she was just one of the many orphans scattered throughout South Korea, was actually the result of a victim of bio-experiments being forcibly impregnated and giving birth…. And that the reason she was still alive was because she had been deemed unsuitable as a candidate…!
Her life after that was also a mess.
From the orphanage where her memories began to the short relationships she had occasionally had, everything was a fabricated environment by the NIS ‘to train agents.’
Everyone she remembered probably wore false expressions and spoke false words.
For the sake of the organization’s goals, to make her a human being suitable for an agent, they would have acted and behaved according to a script that was meticulously planned from start to finish.
The person who treated her with genuine sincerity was probably…nonexistent or extremely rare.
So she denied it.
She had no choice but to deny it.
But….
Go Mu-yeol didn’t let her deny reality.
He came back a week later, and this time he prepared a massive invasion of the NIS to allow Ha Eun-young herself to access the relevant data.
And she…could see it.
She could see all the data she had read sitting right there on the server.
As a last resort, she said, “Didn’t you guys upload this in advance?” but even as she said those words, she was in despair.
Because she knew.
She knew that there was no reason for Go Mu-yeol to go that far.
And the words that came back were the same.
Despair engulfed her whole body.
Her heart, which had only been filled with a sense of duty and patriotism, was now empty.
If the only two things that remained were lies, then what was left for her?
‘I will become your country. Seo Eun-mi.’
“Ah….”
Go Mu-yeol said he would become her country for her, who was in despair.
Even though she was caught spying, he said that if she was ‘Seo Eun-mi,’ it would be okay.
When she thought about it, her life as ‘Seo Eun-mi’ was all genuine feedback.
The words and actions that people took towards her, and the relationships she had formed in the process of receiving education and carrying out various missions at Prestige, had at least a normal level of pretense.
Not like some huge organization preparing scripts and acting styles for all the people’s actions for a special purpose, but real interactions with real people.
A real life.
If there were any lies in the midst of all this, it was only Seo Eun-mi’s own heart.
Because it was the only environment that the NIS couldn’t reach or manipulate,
Paradoxically, she was able to live a true life.
“…Prestige…. Goryeo…Group….”
