The Genius Decided To Live An Ordinary Life [EN]: Chapter 301

Hong Ki-joon’s eyes softened at Jinhyuk’s innocent, childlike reaction.

“That’s just the beginning. There are many things I saw with my own eyes that I still can’t believe.”

“Oh, uh, uhm… what, what else is there?”

“Hahahaha!”

Hong Ki-joon laughed so hard he fell backward.

What on earth was with that expression and tone?

Like a middle ground between Han Yu-young and Son Yu-jin, he showed both of their characteristics at once.

To ease Jinhyuk’s embarrassment, Hong Ki-joon quickly composed himself.

“Ahem! It’s hard for you to imagine things that have no comparison yet, so what would be good… A super high-performance laser? Ah, you already know about that since it’s been made public. It can be used as a weapon, but it’s also very useful in civil engineering.”

“It seems like that’s the technology you used when building the underwater research lab.”

“Right. The fact that we were able to dig through that hard bedrock in such a short time wasn’t just because we mobilized a lot of manpower. With that, you can dig under the sea and go to the North or South Pole. You can also make a tunnel to the other side of the Earth, and there’s no need to worry about earthquakes because there’s no vibration at all.”

“Wow, it would be amazing if you could make an underwater tunnel, but I didn’t think it could be used as a weapon.”

“It’s just a matter of securing the output. There’s no backblast or vibration, so it’s more stable than a large-caliber cannon or railgun. Above all, it’s not affected by gravity, wind, or relative speed, so the accuracy is much higher.”

“You haven’t weaponized it yet, have you?”

Hong Ki-joon didn’t answer.

‘Did I say something I shouldn’t have?’ he muttered, looking out at the silver sea in the distance.

“About the light-speed engine you mentioned earlier…”

It was time to change the subject.

“…There’s a problem.”

“I can’t even guess what the problem is. I can’t even believe that such technology exists…”

Jinhyuk scratched his neck like a general.

Oh, dear.

Hong Ki-joon sighed weakly.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to make it before I die. Maybe not even by the time you grow old and die.”

“Whyyy?”

Jinhyuk seemed destined to live with wide, rabbit eyes today.

There were so many surprising and bewildering things that it was hard to keep his usual half-closed eyes.

Ahem. Hong Ki-joon let out a hearty laugh before answering.

Now that he knew this guy was the former Son Jinhyuk, it was always amazing to see him act like a child.

“Speaking of the light-speed engine…”

Sigh.

Hong Ki-joon clicked his tongue.

“To make it to fit our circumstances, we’d have to make it in space. And the hull material is also a problem. No matter how much we dig on Earth, I can’t find the metal I’m looking for. Of course, it’s possible with materials from Earth, but what I want is a material that gives perfect performance. I did find a similar mineral. You must have seen the report that the metal first discovered in Chile is being tested at the Yeouido Research Center.”

“Ah, I remember.”

“On top of that, we need navigation and auxiliary devices.”

“Navigation…”

“Right. Navigation equipment. Since it’s a different space than Earth, the map has to be bigger, and the coordinates become immeasurably complex.”

Ten or twenty thousand times… Jinhyuk muttered like Yujin waking up from a nap.

“It’s more than that.”

Watching Jinhyuk’s hazy reaction, Hong Ki-joon kept shrugging his shoulders, his face genuinely joyful.

“We also need a highly developed AI and a supercomputer to run the AI. It’s close to impossible to cover everything with manpower.”

Wow…

Jinhyuk couldn’t close his mouth at the unexpected scale.

“The reason it takes so long isn’t just because it far exceeds the current production environment.”

Listening quietly, Jinhyuk pondered what to say next.

Hong Ki-joon was looking at him with sharp eyes, as if testing him.

“It seems like… even the eccentrics can’t understand it. It’s because a concept they couldn’t even imagine has appeared.”

Jinhyuk gave an expected answer, based on the shock he had felt.

Hong Ki-joon’s eyes softened.

He gripped Jinhyuk’s shoulder tightly and then let go, saying,

“Right. They can’t understand it. Even though I wrote the principles in our language, they can’t accept why it works that way. It’s like being trapped in the idea that a car wheel must be connected to the drive shaft. They can’t imagine putting the engine in the wheel. Magic and science are ultimately about persuasion, aren’t they? But I’ve only translated the technology into words, and I realized that I lack the foundational knowledge to persuade that field. Maybe there was a problem in the translation process.”

“So that’s why you’re releasing it step by step…”

Jinhyuk nodded, recalling the reports Hong Ki-joon had uploaded to the SAKDO database [South Korean Advanced Development Organization].

“Right, at first, I put steps in the technology release to reduce the shock to the researchers…”

It seems like it’s still fast. Hong Ki-joon let out a puff of air like a deflating balloon.

The SAKDO researchers discuss and debate the reports like archaeologists restoring ancient artifacts. They build hypothesis upon hypothesis to prove a single principle and then experiment. Like esoteric Buddhist monks praying and training to reveal the essence of mantras.

Once they prove and implement one thing, another report is uploaded.

Then the researchers repeat the process.

They were addicted to research more than any drug and cheered.

And the light-speed engine, which hasn’t even been made public yet, is just the beginning.

Just how much technology did you steal—ah, bring back from that other world?

“They’ll need time to understand and accept it.”

“That’s right. It’s something that takes a lot of time. The geniuses I’ve found have reached their limit at the current speed.”

“It would be nice if there were a few more people like Einstein…”

Jinhyuk murmured wistfully, watching a kite circling high in the sky.

‘I need to close the chicken coop door. I wonder if Mom closed it…’

“Einstein? I can’t say my researchers are better than him, but they’re not inferior either. In a different history, they would have been quietly disappeared, called weirdos, and not given a chance because they didn’t have enough education.”

“Ah, I didn’t mean to disregard the researchers.”

“Hehehe, it’s okay. I know.”

Hong Ki-joon quietly reached out and took Jinhyuk’s hand.

“I didn’t come here just to have this kind of conversation… but it’s nice to be here…”

Hong Ki-joon’s muttering didn’t reach Jinhyuk’s ears.

It was because of the troublemakers who appeared just then.

“Waaah! Tu-hyuk, Jung-won is catching meee!”

“Caw! Run awayyy!”

Jung-won and Hong Su-hyuk circled around the two men.

Five dogs also appeared and started licking the two men.

“Hey! You guys! General! Go away!”

“Hehehehehe.”

Looking at the retriever with a pink ribbon like Bomi, Hong Ki-joon thought,

‘I should have brought Su-jeong…’

Then Su-hyuk would have been quietly next to his sister.

And the dogs wouldn’t have interrupted the conversation.

Still, he couldn’t help but laugh.

How could he not be happy when the children were running around and the dogs were wagging their tails?

When he laughed, the nightmares and worries seemed to disappear.

Hehehe.

Lick, lick, lick.

“Hehehehehe.”

“Hey, Hongsi! Stop getting your slobber on me!”

Hehehe.

Hongsi seemed to find Hong Ki-joon delicious.

She must be like her mother. She’s trying to eat a person.

Or maybe it’s because of her father Bomi’s genes that she’s so attached to Hong Ki-joon.

In this case, the only person who can control them has to step up.

Jinhyuk gently snatched his youngest sibling, who was waddling around.

“Jung-won-ah.”

“Yes? Eheh.”

“Can our Jung-won get General a dog treat from the storage? General will like it.”

“Yesss! Owaaa! Let’s gooo!”

Son Jung-won immediately changed direction.

“Generallll! Treat! Treat! Treat!”

“Run awayyy! Treat! Treat! Treat!”

Jung-won and Hong Su-hyuk immediately ran towards the storage.

General and the dogs, who understood the word ‘treat,’ followed them with fierce momentum.

It was better to have them do something they enjoyed than to push them away to play somewhere else.

It was a small know-how he had learned while taking care of his younger siblings.

“Hehehe, I should bring Su-hyuk more often. It’s the first time I’ve seen him play so excitedly. It must be because he has a friend his age.”

Watching the children move away, Hong Ki-joon was excited at the thought that he could finally have a different conversation.

However.

“If you make a space station and a spaceship, will you travel to other galaxies? Can we go on family trips?”

Jinhyuk had good concentration.

‘Is a workaholic still a workaholic even after being reborn? Or is it just curiosity?’

Hong Ki-joon analyzed Jinhyuk’s interest in his own way.

And he added a note to his mental notebook.

[Laughter, thought, desire + curiosity.]

Jinhyuk, who had no idea of his inner thoughts, clung to him like a child.

“Huh? Will you need to recruit a lot of astronauts? Can I do it too?”

Hong Ki-joon raised both hands as if admitting defeat.

Whoa, whoa, relax.

“It’s not like I have a specific place in mind to go. I don’t even know where we can go. I’m just preparing for the future. 2030, 2040. It won’t be until then that the preparations will be complete, not for sailing, but for production. To do that, we need to explore. We need to know what problems there are in advance. That’s why we launched so many exploration satellites, and we’re collecting data bit by bit. At SAKDO.”

It was an exciting thing to think about.

However, both Hong Ki-joon and Jinhyuk were quite disappointed at the thought that they wouldn’t be able to go on such an adventure.

“Maybe… no, never mind.”

‘Rather than expanding the work for you, it seems like I’m clinging to you because you’re the only one I can entrust the work I’ve built up so far.’ Hong Ki-joon flicked a black ant that had crawled up to his knee with his index finger and moved his lips.

Since it was something that started from a sincere heart, what use was the contract with Dugu Elil now? That contract fetishist Dugu Elil would have known that it was a futile restriction. It had been broken so easily.

“You’re still young and healthy, so you should keep leading. I still don’t understand what you mean by handing it over to me. When did you say to live happily…”

Jinhyuk scratched the brown soil with a twig.

The smell of soil mixed with the scent of grass roots rose up and teased his sense of smell.

Then, Jinhyuk glanced at Hong Ki-joon’s profile and smiled.

“Do you know what?”

“What is it?”

“You looked very tired, but your eyes light up when you talk about work.”

“Hehehe, is that so?”

Hong Ki-joon nodded, laughing happily.

What if it’s a fantasy, what if it’s a delusion?

If it can give you the strength to live, and if it doesn’t harm others, isn’t that a good thing, whatever it is?

“I just answered you diligently because you asked so many questions.”

Ah.

Hong Ki-joon let out a small exclamation.

‘I didn’t have anyone to talk to.’

When he was in the office, he was always alone.

Even if someone else was there, it wouldn’t be any different. Would there be anyone brave enough to have a private conversation with the chairman, who was no different from an emperor?

Outside, he didn’t open his mouth except for work-related conversations, and when he returned home late at night, he only exchanged a few words with his daughter.

He could guess why the darkness was slowly creeping into his head.

[Laughter, thought, desire, curiosity + conversation.]

It was something simple and easy, but he had forgotten it because he was living blindly.

“Don’t get tired. You still have to leave a bigger mark. You said that at the training institute when you gave a lecture a long time ago. ‘Cling to whatever you do desperately, and don’t get tired.’ That one sentence made the company employee Son Jinhyuk.”

“Really?”

Hong Ki-joon’s eyes widened as if surprised.

“It was a beacon for me, who didn’t have an adult to take care of me or nag me. That’s why I worked so hard. If I hadn’t, wouldn’t I have just lived carelessly, only caring about payday? Drinking, being depressed, and smelling like a bachelor…”

Hong Ki-joon smiled silently and nodded.

Jinhyuk had used him as a beacon. There seemed to be nothing more meaningful to the current Hong Ki-joon than that one sentence.

“You’re the one who left a big mark. Without using shortcuts or dishonest methods like me.”

“I don’t think you committed any dishonesty. Everyone has different ideas. And you didn’t abuse it. You didn’t just make money with small pieces of information to accumulate wealth, you opened up a new world.”

“Hehehe, that’s comforting.”

Jinhyuk chuckled.

Hong Ki-joon was only in his early 40s, but he was starting to sound like an old man.

“You haven’t changed.”

“You haven’t changed, but you’ve changed a lot. Jinhyuk was more like an old man when he was a child.”

“I’m the same, but my surroundings have changed. When the surroundings change, it’s right to adapt and change to them. To some extent.”

That’s what humans are, right?

Um… humans.

Hong Ki-joon nodded.

He then changed his expression to a serious one and looked at Jinhyuk. He sensed that it was time to finally bring up the words he had been saving.

*

“You’ve recovered a lot of your memories?”

“To some extent.”

Jinhyuk fidgeted with his fingers like a shy country boy.

“Actually, I think I’ve recovered almost all of them. Except for the most important one.”

Hong Ki-joon, who had turned his face to the clear sky, only rolled his eyes to look at Jinhyuk.

What could the most important thing mean?

“Well… I guess it’ll come to me someday. That bastard Dugu told me everything else, but he didn’t tell me that. It feels like he’s going around in circles.”

According to the memories he had recovered, Jinhyuk had not traveled through other worlds.

To be precise, Jinhyuk’s body was not in any of those worlds.

Nevertheless, he could conclude from the vivid scenes, the sounds that seemed to be heard directly, and the sensations he felt.

Son Jinhyuk was a transmigrator.