What Happens When The Second Male Lead Powers Up [EN]: Chapter 818

Gemini (1)

That night, Gain dreamed.

-······Drip!

The sound of a water droplet falling echoed from somewhere.

The clear resonance momentarily jolted her awake.

Her delicate eyelids furrowed slightly.

“Umm······.”

However, she was exhausted, her vision blurring, and mentally drained by her teacher’s disappearance and other problems.

Frankly, the events after the war felt overwhelming.

In short, she didn’t want to wake up at all.

She had barely fallen asleep after battling insomnia.

She dismissed the sound as mere background noise and turned to her side.

-Drip······!

“······.”

She drifted back to sleep. Beyond her fading consciousness, she sensed someone smiling at her.

Gain felt a pleasant warmth spreading through her heart.

Brown hair fluttering in the early spring breeze, a hand waving towards her like azure waves…

Fluttering purple petals.

-······Drip!

Startled, Gain shuddered and woke up again.

Though her eyes remained closed, she felt the cool air of reality on her cheek.

How long had she slept—five minutes? An hour? Annoyance began to creep in.

Was there a well near the campsite? Where was this dripping sound coming from?

-Drip!

There it was again. At this rate, even Mom would wake up…

-Sleeping so soundly, you foolish puppy.

“Enemy!”

At the unfamiliar voice, her eyes snapped open instinctively, and a cry burst from her mouth like an alarm.

A middle-aged woman she had never seen before was looking down at her, clicking her tongue.

‘Huh!’ Startled, Gain abruptly sat up.

“······What? Cough, who are you?”

-Who am I?

“Huh?”

The instant she frowned and questioned the woman, the fantastical scenery around her came into view.

Her mouth involuntarily gaped open.

“Huh······.”

The young Cardinal was sitting in a space entirely deep blue, like the sea.

Gain was momentarily speechless, looking around in all directions.

The wave patterns, moving like living things, danced gently, casting a faint light on her body.

It was as if sunlight was seeping in from a distant place.

No matter how she looked at it, Gain was definitely underwater.

“No… What is this?”

As evidence, her pink hair floated as if submerged, and her clothes and sleeves fluttered like jellyfish or sea anemones.

The buttons on her jacket sparkled like fish scales.

Gain groped her body for a long time before slowly raising her head.

“Teacher, excuse me, but who are you? Do you know me?”

-You have a habit of repeating the same question.

“I repeat it because you don’t answer.”

-Hahaha.

Perhaps amused by the cheeky reply, the woman laughed heartily, placing one hand on her hip as she stood.

In her other hand, she held a long oar. Gain tilted her head, thinking: *Is she an oarswoman? Judging by her attire, she looks like a simple Venetian noble.*

-You probably already know who I am, so there’s no need to answer.

The stranger said, her voice laced with laughter.

She had haphazardly pinned up her crookedly twisted hair with something like a twig.

The young holy knight stopped observing the middle-aged woman and frowned.

“Yes? No, I really don’t know you.”

-Oh, my. You don’t know because you believe you don’t know.

She said exaggeratedly, as if scolding her.

Gain felt strangely intimidated and muttered to herself.

*No, I really don’t know, why do you keep…*

-What you are forgetting now is also the same.

“······Yes?”

-You don’t remember because you believe you have completely forgotten, that you don’t remember.

“······.”

-Bring it to mind. Pull it out of the water.

“What······.”

As she mulled over her words with a dazed face, a voice brushed past her ear.

‘Don’t lose it, take good care of it.’

There was no mistaking it. It was Ham Gain’s own voice.

Resonating like the whisper of a conch shell…

‘…Take good care of it too. Never forget.’

*What? When did I say something like this?*

“······No, did I say this to myself?”

How did it happen?

-If you were a novice priest, I wouldn’t say anything, but how can a Cardinal lose their partner?

“Lose what?”

Confused, Gain looked up at the middle-aged woman with a blank face.

Then, the woman, who had been clicking her tongue, smiled and began to row in the air.

-Heave-ho, let’s go!

“Uh······.”

There was no need to even guess what that meant.

-Swish······!

“Uh oh oh, shit?!”

Suddenly, a huge wave arose!

Gain naturally tried to resist, but her strength was not enough.

The ether [a hypothetical medium formerly believed to fill the universe] did not explode, and her weakened body was swept away haphazardly like a buoy on the sea.

The water, slightly cooler than her body temperature, bubbled and turned her vision white.

To make matters worse, she couldn’t remember how to swim at all. The water-attribute Cardinal who fell into the water frantically flailed her limbs.

-Splash! Splash splash!

“Cough! Ugh! What is this―!”

-See you again, you silly puppy.

The middle-aged woman’s voice became clear and muffled as it echoed between the surface of the water.

Gain tightly closed her eyelids as her eyes stung.

At the same time, she heard the sound of her body sinking ‘glug’.

-Swish······!

“Aaaagh!”

-Rustle!

When she opened her eyes, she was back in the middle of the campsite.

“Huh, what, what is it······. Cough, crazy······.”

*Was it a dream?* Gain looked around at the surrounding bushes, which were crushed and bent, and caught her breath.

It was too realistic for a dream—she could even taste salt on her tongue—but it seemed like she had a nightmare because she was tired.

Isabelle in the next seat seemed to be fast asleep, oblivious to everything. Lynn was nestled in her arms, the baby’s hand clutching a familiar rag doll.

Gain watched them for a while, trying to calm her startled heart.

Two marines heard the loud noise and approached, but she settled the situation with a few hand signals.

“Hoo······.”

The east was faintly brightening, signaling the approaching dawn.

Gain regretted the sleep that had completely fled and reflexively looked for the moon in the dawn sky.

However, instead of the celestial body, a small ornament caught her eye.

*Ah, damn it.*

“This is······.”

*That’s right, I had this.* The pendant of the necklace emitted a subtle glow against her collarbone.

Gain looked at it under the dim starlight. *What’s the name of this…*

‘It’s called the ‘Bas’s Mirror of Desire and Hope’.’

‘It shows what you want right now, what you need most. Or some result you are desperately hoping for unconsciously….’

“······.”

*Who is it?*

“······Whose voice did I just hear?”

*Wait a minute, someone gave this to me as a gift. It seems like they put it around my neck themselves.*

*It definitely wasn’t Mom, Grandma, or Grandpa. Gain is…*

“Huh?”

In an instant, all the distracting thoughts in her head disappeared.

She staggered like a crazy person and jumped up from her seat.

One of the surprised marines ran over again, but she quickly raised her hand to stop him.

“This, why is this······.”

-Ripple······

The surface of the mother-of-pearl-like water mirror reflected the back of someone.

He had brown hair.

“······Why can I see this person?”

And Gain could see that color accurately.

Only the color that made him up was vividly alive in the black and white world.

A shiver ran down her spine.

*

The weekend arrived. Eunseo went on her first MT [Membership Training, a common overnight trip for university students in Korea].

The rest of us were heading to the Geumgyeong Nursing Hospital to see Mom.

“…Don’t drink too much alcohol, and if you feel like you’re getting too excited, just stick to drinks and snacks from then on. Especially, refuse everything those male bastards give you.”

“Hyung [older brother or male friend],…”

“Ah, and if they’re returning students, don’t even talk to them. They’re untouchables.”

*Goodness.* I smiled wryly as I looked at Jung Hyunseo’s profile while he was driving.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t worried about Eunseo, but my brother was especially invested in the college life of his twelve-year-old youngest sibling.

I roughly softened his words and conveyed them to my sister.

Soon, Jung Eunseo’s cold reply echoed in the group chat. KakaoTalk!

‘I heard from a third-year senior earlier that there aren’t any handsome guys in our department’

‘As expected’

‘I politely asked for some pictures of the art department cats because they’re the most handsome ㅅㄱ [Korean slang for “subjectively”]’

‘(Emoticon)’

“Hehehe.”

It was a reaction that made me laugh.

I sat in the back seat and briefly explained the Korean university MT culture to Cardinal John, who was wearing Jung Hyunseo’s baseball cap and a hoodie today.

He had hardly any clothes that fit him at home, so my brother bought him a few things during the Musinsa sale [a popular online fashion retailer in Korea] the other day, and he looked like a model no matter what he wore because he was so handsome.

*You look like you’re in your twenties today.*

“…I don’t know if it’s okay to send young Eunseo alone in such an environment.”

“Hahaha.”

The Cardinal, after listening to my explanation, said with a serious expression.

I laughed out loud for the first time in a while. Then the man returned a wonderful smile.

“We’re here.”

-Squeak squeak…

Before I knew it, Morning was groaning laboriously as it circled the underground parking lot.

I felt a sense of crisis that we really should scrap it, but I believed that the owner would make his own decision since it was my brother’s precious first car, and I just held onto the handle on the ceiling.

Fortunately, we arrived at the nursing hospital lobby without any problems.

If it were me, I would have looked around in all directions, been horrified, and made a fuss, but Cardinal John didn’t show any signs of being a stranger even when looking at the kiosk, the automatic door, or the air conditioner embedded in the ceiling (rather, he seemed to dislike the last one a bit).

We told the receptionist Mom’s name in the lobby, confirmed the reservation time and number of people, received visitor badges, and then took the elevator.

-Going up. The door is closing.

“······.”

At the following announcement, Cardinal John’s neck became subtly stiff.

I chuckled quietly and tried not to become stiff as well.

Meeting Mom was literally meeting Mom, so normally there wouldn’t be anything to worry about or think about.

The visiting time was limited to 30 minutes once a week, and Mom on days when she was healthy enough to visit was the ‘Choi Seonah’ we knew.

“…Hyung, Mom said she knows everything, right? That…. Our story.”

‘Our story’. I realized that the word was ambiguous only after I said it.

Then Jung Hyunseo glanced at his wristwatch and looked at me.

“I guess so. I explained most of it, and Mom saw quite a few scenes in her dreams too. Unlike Jung Eunseo, she seems to remember a lot of the details.”

“······.”

“Why are you making such a nervous face?”

“I don’t know. I’m just nervous today. She’s our Mom.”

I whispered almost inaudibly.

My brother, who chuckled, was holding a fruit basket for Mom and the caregiver in both hands.

When I think about it, it was the first time I was meeting her since I found out that Mom was the original author of .