The Hunting Dog of the Prestigious Family Has Returned Chapter 82

“Everyone! Can you see him?! The founder of our foundation! The establisher of our school! Young Master Kim Changwoon, who blessed you all with the grace of ‘Pyeongwoon Academy’! He has finally graced our school with a personal visit—!”

“Waaaah—!”

Terror.

There were no other words for it.

The graduation ceremony I had dreaded even in imagination was, exactly as I had imagined, or perhaps beyond that, pure hell.

“W, wow…”

Thunderous applause threatening to burst eardrums.

Faculty and students weeping and screaming incomprehensible sounds.

Each one with a patch sewn onto their chest that read ‘Glory to Young Master Changwoon,’ offering me their most heartfelt devotion.

And behind them, parents dabbing handkerchiefs at their eyes, overcome with emotion.

As if that weren’t enough, some among them were kneeling on the floor and giving thanks, saying ‘the fact that my child could attend this school is entirely thanks to Young Master Changwoon.’

Well. Fine. Granting a hundred concessions, I could barely tolerate even that.

I was the one covering tuition up to university, so I could understand being that grateful.

But that, over there, wasn’t that going a bit too far?

Fainting at the mere sight of a wretch like me and getting carried out in an ambulance…. no matter how I thought about it, wasn’t that going a bit too far?

“That over there, it’s staged for the cameras, right? They’re not actually being taken away, right?”

I muttered to myself without thinking as I watched a student receive emergency treatment, but the proprietress slowly shook her head.

Right, I knew.

Watching one of the medical staff hurriedly radio in while fitting an oxygen mask onto someone, that was a genuine faint.

Which is exactly why this was driving me mad.

“What are you doing, Young Master? You should be smiling.”

The proprietress’s whisper from behind sent a chill down my spine.

I glanced back to find her smiling more brightly than usual, using her hands to mime lifting the corners of my mouth.

‘Should I run?’

I genuinely considered it for a moment.

But the spotlight had already fixed itself above my head and would not leave, and the students were screaming my name like mad.

I couldn’t.

How would I escape from the middle of this crowd of raving fanatics?

In the end, with a stiff face and a forced smile, I slowly waved at the crowd below the stage, and.

“Waaaaaah—!!”

From that point on it was, in the truest sense of the word, total pandemonium.

“The young master looked at me! The young master saw my child’s face and smiled at them!”

“Aaaak?! Aaaak—!”

Right.

Granting a hundred concessions on top of everything I’d already conceded, let’s say even this was acceptable.

Besides, once this current speech was done, the next item on the schedule was individual student meetings and a facility tour.

The atmosphere would settle down a bit then.

No matter how extreme the reaction, it would still be better than this current cauldron of madness.

Thinking that, I forcibly composed my burning face and hurried inside the school, and.

The moment I stepped into the classroom, I had no choice but to sincerely regret not having run when I had the chance.

“Wh, what on earth is this…?”

Portraits of me hung everywhere throughout the hall.

And below each one, the phrase ‘Our Young Master, Our Savior’ gleamed and glittered.

After barely pulling myself together to ask, a man who introduced himself as a professor from the fine arts department answered with a look of profound emotion.

“In order to commemorate Young Master’s grace and achievements, we have installed portraits of the young master in every classroom, dormitory, dining hall, and even the restrooms!”

“The rest… rooms?”

“Yes, that’s right!”

What was there to be proud of in that answer.

Had I heard wrong just now?

They say everyone in the arts and physical education departments has a screw loose, was this man one of those?

“I’ll ask, just in case, but the reason that painting is tilted slightly downward is…?”

“Each one was placed with deliberate care and intention! That particular angle in particular is meant as a symbol that the young master is always looking down upon us…!”

In that moment, along with a throbbing in my head, another image flashed through my mind.

Somewhere up north, gathering the comrades together with a bright smile: “Now, today let us recite the blessed words of General Changwoon.” The face of that art teacher.

And the glorious portrait of ‘Great Leader Comrade Kim Changwoon,’ gazing down upon that art teacher and tens of millions of comrades….

“Take every painting down. Right now.”

I raised my hand quietly and spoke with finality.

No matter that this school was a training ground forging revolutionary soldiers, this had crossed the line.

I had told them to build a school. I hadn’t told them to build a puppet organization under one-party dictatorship.

The mental shock must have been severe indeed, for memories of a timeline that could not exist, one where the northern territories were being played by some pig, were seeping into my mind.

“Oh! It’s Brother Changwoon!”

Just then, a familiar voice reached me.

I turned my head to find the children from Father Jeong Suhan’s church waving at me.

They looked healthier than the last time I’d seen them, with more flesh on their bones and much livelier faces.

Seeing them like that, my nose tingled for no particular reason.

“It’s been so long! I heard you joined the Administration, brother? How is it?”

“Hey, idiot! Father said not to act close outside the church!”

“What do you know! Brother Changwoon is the supreme authority at this school! Showing everyone how close we are, as the next student council president, my approval rating would… urk?!”

Give me back that moment of emotion, you rotten little brats.

I smacked the head that was muttering deviously full of ambition without a second thought.

“I could already tell when you were stealing name tags, but you haven’t even dried the blood behind your ears and you’re already playing politics?”

“You don’t know anything! In times like these when the upper tiers are in chaos, you have to build your strength fast and push your way up! Which means I need to start building my people now…! Ow?! Why are you hitting me again!”

Why else.

Because brats who should be busy studying and playing are wasting their energy on nonsense.

But even while rubbing their throbbing heads, the children maintained their bright smiles and said to me.

“Brothers who graduated today said the same thing! That they’d succeed and make something of themselves quickly, and become people like Brother Changwoon! We’re not saying this as a joke!”

“Even as a joke, don’t say things like that. What would you gain from becoming someone like me?”

The moment I said that with a chuckle.

“……Huh?”

The children blinked in surprise and tilted their heads.

A slightly bewildered, innocent expression.

“Why can’t we say things like that? What’s wrong with being like you, brother?”

“What’s wrong with it. Well, that’s…”

In that instant, the end of my sentence trailed off.

I slowly looked around.

The children approaching my side with care, smiling at me.

The students who had greeted me with applause that was clumsy but full of passion.

Their expressions, showing no shame even before those absurdly idealized portraits.

In all of it there was no fear, no wariness.

As though it were natural from the very beginning.

As though they already knew I was that kind of person.

Gazes filled with pure trust and respect were turned toward me.

“…….”

Only then did I understand.

The ‘Kim Changwoon’ they knew was a different person from the ‘Kim Changwoon’ I knew.

Not the Kim Changwoon who sold people for the sake of his clan, who demanded sacrifice for the sake of justification, who lived with hypocrisy and schemes always on his tongue.

A revolutionary throwing himself entirely into creating a new order. A good aristocrat. A good man. A great man. Roughly a collection of things called by names like those.

As though a true essence planted inside a hollow had genuinely taken root and grown, in their eyes, my existence was becoming something noble like that.

Yet I could not bring myself to meet those gazes properly.

Why?

‘Because it’s all just surface.’

A mask put on to achieve a purpose.

A product of performance dressed up in pretense and deception.

A flimsy ghost cobbled together atop crumbled guilt.

The ‘Kim Changwoon’ they believe in and follow, at best, is nothing more than that.

Of course it is.

The ‘true hero’ who will save these people is the golden radiance arriving from the north.

A superhuman on a white horse who cuts down the evil before her eyes without a moment’s hesitation.

There is no way a half-finished wretch like me could take the place of that radiance.

“Brother Changwoon?”

“Why else.”

And so I had no choice but to shake my head with an awkward smile.

“I’m not as good a person as you all think I am.”

And those words were spoken to no one more than to myself.

---

“Quickly, quickly! There’s no time!”

“I know! Good grief… even so, an aristocrat has dignity to uphold, dignity…!”

A dark night. The hems of clothes fluttered in the sea breeze, and a cold mist spread across the pier.

Even with cold sweat running down the bridges of their noses, the last survivors of the Pungyang Jo made haste to board a luxury yacht.

They had been born carrying the name of aristocrats, but in this moment alone, they had thrown away all face and pride, and were nothing more than ‘refugees trying to survive.’

They had known.

Collateral lines too thin in blood to truly be called heirs of the main family.

Because of that, they had not thought the blade of the purge would reach even them.

But now, even that thin blood had become a crime, and flight was the only answer.

As the yacht that had thus departed gunned its engine to break away from the coastline.

Paaat—!

Dozens of searchlights tore through the thick darkness and locked onto them.

“Th, that is…?”

“Aquatic drones!”

They stared wide-eyed at those strangely modified aquatic drones.

Recycled electronic parts forcibly mounted with outdated turbines, crude but sturdy hulls.

At that familiar sensation, one elderly man muttered weakly.

“…How did the wako get all the way here?”

Wako.

As if to prove those words, a tearing gunshot rang out from the stern of the yacht.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!

“Kyaaaak?!”

“Get inside! Hurry!”

As dozens of rounds embedded themselves in the yacht’s outer hull, the members of the Pungyang Jo screamed and dove into the cabin to hide.

Joining up at the center of the drones were five jet skis.

In the middle of them was a man with his visual sensors narrowed to slits, red optical light flashing.

Mizutani Ryuu.

A wako notorious for his activities in and around Busan.

“Special armor plating. Even a field generator…. with this, rifles won’t make a dent.”

Rising from his crouch, he moved with cold, mechanical metallic sounds, his entire body composed of artificial components.

“And judging by how things are going…. this job is going to run at a loss.”

With those words, a subordinate on the adjacent ski carefully handed over a rocket launcher.

“The auto-targeting system is shot! Looks like it got damaged on the way here!”

“Doesn’t matter. Just watch the wind direction. The calculations are already done.”

Action came faster than words.

Mizutani stood straight up on the jet ski and raised the launcher to his shoulder in an unbroken posture.

Like a circus acrobat.

Even on the violently rocking water’s surface, the launcher’s sighting line moved as though precisely calibrated, without wavering.

The moment he pulled the trigger, a short, heavy detonation rang out, and.

Boom—!

A tandem warhead tore through the pitch-black night sky and pierced straight through the center of the yacht.

The yacht with a devastating hole blown through it amid the thunderous blast.

Having done this much, the rest was for his subordinates to handle.

“Board her!”

“We’re going in—!”

With a battle cry the wako leaped into the yacht.

Brief screams rang out as personal-defense artificial bodies seemed to activate, but only for a moment.

When gunshots rang out several times, what blanketed the yacht was a deathly silence.

“Mission done. Another fulfilling day.”

“Anything to do after? Want to catch a movie?”

“Pass. Oh, but boss.”

In the middle of confirming each body with a finishing shot, one of the wako turned to look at Mizutani, who had climbed leisurely onto the yacht.

“Earlier when you fired the missile you said it was a loss. What did you mean? The advance payment for this job alone was something else.”

“Right. One rocket launcher round barely makes a dent in that kind of money. What loss?”

“Boss, don’t tell me you’re planning to pocket it yourself.”

The wako sorting their weapons with practiced motions asked as much, but Mizutani’s gaze would not leave the pulverized corpse of the target.

“……Then take the whole job payment yourselves.”

“What?”

A corpse reduced to a lump of meat.

Mizutani, who had been sifting through the remains, pulled out a jade name tag from within.

The moment they saw it, the faces of the subordinate wako went pale.

“What! Hey, an aristocrat?! We just shot a Joseon aristocrat?!”

“Damn it…! Nobody said anything about this, boss?! Killing one Administration official means two months in hiding, and now we’ve killed an aristocrat! This is—!”

“What else would it be.”

Mizutani’s voice sensor twisted grotesquely.

“We walked right into a trap.”

The moment Mizutani said those words and leaned his body over the yacht’s railing.

Rmmmmm—!

Tearing through the night sky, dozens of searchlights came on once more.

[System activated. Modules De-1 through Ra-3 deployment complete]

[Target identified. Switching to combat mode]

The observation drones they had deployed in the air had all been shot down long ago.

Around the yacht in the sky, five massive tactical modules were positioned, and atop them, aligned without a single deviation, stood the escort warriors of Andong Kim.

They drew their hwando simultaneously and stared down with expressionless faces.

“Ha….”

Mizutani let out a short breath.

What a tiresome script this was.

Frame us as aristocrat killers, then dispose of us by pinning all the crimes of aristocrat murder on us…. that was roughly what it amounted to, he supposed.

The opponent had five tactical modules with five phase-ability users.

No chance of winning in a straight fight.

Then what remained was only one thing.

To run for his life.

“……This is why you don’t do jobs with aristocrats.”

Before the words were even finished.

An explosive sound burst from his body.

Fwat—!

The boosters of his fully artificial body ignited simultaneously, and his body shot upward, cleaving through the air.

A silhouette breathing fire.

It hurtled toward the tactical module like a single grenade.

His last desperate gambit.