EP 35- International Society (3)
Until a few years ago, Gimhae International Airport was filled with only fighters, combat helicopters, and combat food. So the atmosphere was a bit combative.
But now I can see some civilians, taxis, and restaurants, so it feels like an airport. Even the familiar back of the head was visible.
It was Yeo Do-yeon.
“hey!”
“Were you there?”
I’m no longer a politician, but I can’t get my hands on the bodyguard, so I decided to take Yeo Do-yeon, who was on vacation, to Europe.
Actually, Yeo Do-yeon is better than any bodyguard. When a grenade flies, me and my sister join hands to surround Pichaewon and combine it in three stages to be invincible in theory.
Theoretically.
“Why is it so hard to find? Are you children of darkness?”
“Eat fish cakes.”
“Hey, I had to put oden in the gorge… … .”
“Let’s eat delicious food in Europe.”
She was wearing a shirt and trousers. He had only taken off his dark blue coat from the magistrate’s attire.
As if excited about the long-awaited trip to Europe, I came with a suitcase with a floral sticker attached to it. It probably contained some kind of sweets.
“I see you after a while, Chaewon. how have you been doing?”
“It’s been a while, sister.”
“It’s a lot of trouble to keep the gates up and running.”
“no.”
No, look at these people.
“Who is the one who lifts the spit?!”
* * *
“Sir, get up.”
“uh… … uh?”
“It’s morning. You should get off soon.”
“uh… … .”
“Breakfast is not served, so please eat tangerines here. There are reporters at the airport, so they comb them and put on their prosthetic legs.”
After eating Ottogi Curry Rice for in-flight meal, I fell asleep for a while, but 8 hours had passed.
The plane was still dark, and the air was damp. Maybe it was because I was tired, or maybe it was because I was old, so my body couldn’t move well.
As I stretched on the blanket, creaking in the blanket, I saw Yeo Do-yeon clinging to the window.
“what are you doing. What’s out there?”
“uh… … What is there?”
Did a monster come out? There are times when troubles gradually arise in the pattern of life.
Curious what the hell was there, I shoved my face into the small airplane window.
There was the Eiffel Tower rising with the morning sun.
“Hey… … .”
As the dawn slowly rises, the puffy clouds disperse. Below that, Paris, the heart of France, appeared.
“A lot has changed here too.”
“Isn’t there a battlefield in the old days? Have you erected all the buildings?”
Paris had washed away the scars of the past catastrophe. Thousands of vehicles flowed like the blood vessels of the city between the low and rigid towering buildings.
The size of the city also seemed to have almost doubled. It was still the heart of France, but it is no exaggeration to say that it is now the center of the European continent.
As all the goods the United States supplies to Europe pass through Paris, the transport planes are also crowded. The airport was blown up, and our plane could only land after a few laps around the area.
Charles de Gaulle International Airport upon arrival was crowded with people. Compared to this, Gimhae Airport was a highway rest area.
Suddenly, I missed Incheon International Airport, which is no longer there. I left the airport with a slight nostalgia.
“Minister!”
“Five.”
Noah Lumière was waiting at the airport entrance.
* * *
“… … The situation is more serious than I thought.”
Lumiere clicked his tongue. Looking back, it seemed that he didn’t know anything.
“Didn’t the American side say anything?”
“The US ambassador asked me to meet him urgently this evening.”
“Originally, we didn’t want to talk, but since we met, it seems like we made an appointment in a hurry.”
“The teeth are consistent, which is nice. But what does hasty mean?”
Knights Without Borders headquarters. In Lumiere’s office, it was only me and her.
I delivered to Lumière all the stories of the emergency that occurred in Korea and the ‘foreign phenomenon’ warned by the United States.
And she quickly realized the seriousness of the situation.
“So, isn’t it that a second catastrophe is going to happen in Korea?”
“I also have in mind the possibility of a second catastrophe. However, it is only a one-sided claim by the United States, and no evidence is presented… … .”
“Don’t take it so carefully. If the situation breaks out, the Korean government can somehow survive. There are many Hunters and they have abilities. But the Korean Peninsula will not survive.”
Lumiere prophesied. It was a tone full of confidence.
“You just have to catch and kill the monsters. Destroyed buildings can be rebuilt. But the dead cannot be brought back to life. If a large-scale gate incident occurs in a narrow land like the Korean Peninsula, temporary loss of all land is unavoidable. Of course, we can get it back, but in the meantime, the population will be reduced to less than half. Then the country will collapse. And if that happens, there will be no way for other countries to intervene in Korea. By then, the country will be divided in a civil war or a coup.”
The explanation was strangely specific. It seems like I’ve been through something similar before.
I nodded my head subtly.
“I know what you mean, but the situation in the country is too complicated to strike martial law and prepare for all-out war with the advice of a USFK commander. Above all, I don’t have the power to do that.”
“ah… … . Now you have come out of the cabinet. Have you really let go of all power?”
“I don’t know who has the power to put anything down, but I’ve given up all public offices. So, I can’t even bring up the words of the knights’ society and ask me to help Korea.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I’m trying to bring people together.”
“… … .”
Politics is the second most harmful thing to the body after drinking and smoking, and it doesn’t do much for character development.
So, I tried to create an organization. Because that was the best I could do as a civilian.
But Lumiere looked at me with a slightly puzzled look.
“What kind of organization are you trying to create?”
What kind of organization is what?
First of all, you have to be independent of the national interest, you have to be just, you need to save people first, you have to have your own abilities, you have to have a political position, and if Korea is in a crisis, you have to run to help, and above all, even if your life is in danger, you have to put your head first. They should be real (crazy) hunters.
Where in the world do such people gather? It must be very difficult to create such an organization.
So, I decided to go to my contacts and ask for help in order to build a foundation, and Lumière was the first among them that I thought would be convincing.
In fact, Lumière was the most accommodating.
“I don’t like it.”
But she bluntly rejected my offer.
I was stunned for a moment, and while I was wandering around, Lumiere frowned and came in like a lightning bolt.
“Can’t we just come to the Knights Association?”
“Yes?”
“When it comes to multinational lifesaving hunters, isn’t it our Knights Without Borders? Although we mainly work in Europe, we already have a Korean branch. Or is there any reason not to join the Knights Society?”
“Oh, no, it’s not.”
“No, come to think of it, you also created the Knights Association. In the first place, Minister, aren’t you already an honorary advisor to the Knights Association? By the way, what kind of organization are you creating? I think this is unreasonable treatment… … .”
“When did I say I was going somewhere else! Of course, I have nothing but the Knights Association. But since I’m in politics, I’m careful about my affiliation-“
“her. You don’t even know that you’re already a member of the Knights Society. I understand how much the Minister has always thought of us as others. Every election season, he put the name of the knights’ association on his business card and rotated it, and now it’s a stranger… … .”
“ah! Let’s go to the knighthood! Isn’t it okay to go in!”
“It’s not coming in, it’s going to come back. I will take special consideration for the Minister.”
* * *
“It happened.”
Pi Chae-won looked at me with pathetic eyes after a long time. I tried to avoid that gaze.
Lumiere, who followed me to the hotel, smiled softly and patted my shoulder.
“Minister, I don’t think you are the one who waits for the red roses to fall under the persimmon tree.”
“you are good at Korean.”
“thank you. Do you have any next plans? I don’t think it’s going to be the minister’s personality.”
“Ah, yes… … .”
I laid a world map on the table and started explaining. There were crumbs all over as if Yeo Do-yeon had just picked up a cookie and ate it.
I pointed my fingers towards the wide midfield.
“For now, I’m going to rant about China a little bit.”
“President Lee Chung-bin had a taste for isolationism. It seems that he is not communicating with the Eastern Warlords of Vladivostok who have been so attached. So the people of Moscow liked it.”
“It would be more accurate to say that China is not following the isolationist route, it is just an old man living there. The domestic situation is so unsettling that he doesn’t come out of the bunker.”
“But how are you going to attract China? No, what are you trying to do in the first place?”
“If I ask you to rob the Horus system together, I won’t die.”
I was going to rob the Horus system.
At least it seemed to give you a sense of how things are going now, and above all, if the Americans had managed it well, would the Jecheon Incident be prevented?
As a true (ex-) politician, he couldn’t stand still after being beaten up. If we were to see blood, we had to make it accountable in some way.
Of course, there were voices of concern.
“The Chinese have even hacked and failed to get their hands on it. But how can you steal the Horus system?”
“I don’t steal. You have to make them vomit.”
“Even so, touching America… … .”
“Don’t worry. If anything, I think it will be a win-win.”
The Chinese government, who was still longing for the Horus system by hacking it, was willing to participate in our plan, and I went through the process little by little.
Establishing a cause to intervene in American politics. sneak attack on the federal government. Destroy what is to be broken, and fix what is to be fixed. He hides his identity… … .
“It was the work of the previous administration that burned Europe with the Horus system in the first place. It’s such a fatal weakness for the United States, so the president is keeping his mouth shut right now. If you have a chance to do laundry, wouldn’t you want to clean it up?”
“After the Australian crisis, all of the big supporters of the World Superhuman Organization were gone. I wasn’t really sure how to get things done. Of course, all the plans to advance in Southeast Asia fell through, so who would ate the money for the yangbans?”
“It’s a good headline. Let’s explode in the UK and France at the same time. If you blow off a few ministers, you’ll be poisoned. Then the Chinese government will return some aircraft carriers to Southeast Asia. Then public opinion will not subside easily.”
* * *
The inauguration of the Won Ok-bun government was not smooth from the start. It was because of the great bad news of the Jecheon Incident. The president started his first business by kneeling at the memorial.
And the knee that I knelt at that time has not yet been straightened. The temporary economic downturn caused by the Jecheon incident was compared to the economic boom of Yang Pan-seok’s era, and thanks to this, the presidential approval ratings continued to slump.
But most of all, it was the United States that bothered President Won Ok-bun. It was an American warning.
Something. that something might happen.
“Let’s say we have a defense line in Gwangju instead of Busan this time. Then the food self-sufficiency rate would be a defense… … .”
Thanks to this, President Won Ok-bun spent most of his day at the emergency meeting. I didn’t know when and where the gate would open, so I tried to count the number of all cases.
President Won Ok-bun was writing an emergency manual with his unique tenacity and the blood and sweat of civil servants. However, unless the fundamental problem is solved, there is a limit to such a fist-fighting method.
And the limitation was the stress-induced gastritis of President Won Ok-bun. In the end, the president was lying down amidst the anxiety of not knowing when the gate would open and repeated overwork.
As an elderly nobleman lay down in the hospital, rumors of the death of the president circulated among the people like rumors. As the approval ratings were shattered, ministers and seniors alike shredded at the Cabinet meeting.
“How long are you going to be like this? I’m holding on to the map all day long, even if I focus on economic issues, I won’t!”
“But you can’t just let go of it, can you? We don’t know when or where the second Jecheon incident will happen. Maybe even worse-”
“haha. Don’t make a fussing noise. Besides, isn’t this the realm of the military? I am worried that excessive concerns are driving the government to ruin.”
“Is this an evacuation plan or an operational plan then? Refugees can all die, right?”
“Oh, why even you! Why are you so excited when you don’t even have a camera!”
The Jecheon incident was a natural disaster, but people had to deal with it. However, it is not possible to rectify the situation, and it is a situation that is no different than holding a rite or holding a ceremony to prevent the next natural disaster.
If it had been a domestic problem, I would have tried to control it somehow, but outside of this country, Won Ok-bun’s hand was out of reach. In the end, unless there was a Horus system, he had to head to the bare ground and count the number of cases.
It was such a rush.
“dismissal!”
“Please speak.”
Good news flew to Won-ok-bun, who was working with a ringer in his sickbed.
On the television in the hospital room, a White House spokesperson made a blunt announcement.
[…] … The Republican government has divided America with hatred, hatred, and discrimination. What is it that made America great? What is the great America they are talking about?]
[…] … The catastrophe in Europe is the ugliest aspect of the ugliest regime. America does not consider this a virtue. At least now, our America is.]
[…] … In response, the federal government has pledged to maintain strong solidarity with the world by unveiling the Horus system. Respected American citizens, please… … .]
Wonok-min closed his eyes tightly.
Heaven was helping.
The gate opened on the first day of my tenure episode 232