# Chapter 33
My biggest lingering regret was not being able to convey my feelings to him. The stained emotions had gradually faded, leaving only dry sentences behind.
Words that didn’t feel like a confession—parched and lifeless. But that wasn’t because the feeling of love had been erased. It was because I could now control this emotion.
The mass of feelings that had been creeping up began to retreat slowly each time I confessed to him. The emotions that once surged as if they would swallow me whole had become gentle waves under my will.
The silence that once made breathing difficult now felt familiar. The confession had become routine. Today too, there was no answer from the Boss.
I could feel both sadness and relief in this silence. As long as he didn’t answer, opportunity remained.
Knowing that the Boss’s answer couldn’t possibly be positive, I had come to think of this silence as fortunate.
His silence, which hurt so much at first. It’s truly amazing how a person’s heart can change like this.
Perhaps it was because my own thoughts had changed.
Rather than hearing an answer to my confession, my true desire now was to leave no regrets in my life.
I placed more value on the act of conveying my feelings than on his reaction. That’s why even the slight resentment I had felt toward him had disappeared.
“…”
I turned my gaze away, seeing his eyes not directed at me. It was time to prepare for tomorrow. I moved my steps to leave.
“Why do you confess right before the mission?”
At that moment, I heard a voice so foreign that I thought it was an auditory hallucination. My body turned reflexively. The Boss’s soft yet serious voice made my fingertips tremble.
I had thought he would never open his mouth. That’s why I could get used to these confessions. Because I knew the Boss would remain silent no matter what I said.
But today, for the first time, the Boss opened his mouth in response to my confession. I raised my wandering gaze to look into his eyes. His troubled, sunken red pupils were staring at me with suspicion.
Beyond that, there was pure curiosity, unadorned with other emotions. After blankly staring at the Boss, who had spoken as if he genuinely couldn’t understand, I finally came to my senses. I quickly redirected the sluggish flow of my thoughts.
The reason for confessing… It wasn’t such a grand reason. I just wanted to convey my feelings of love to the Boss at least once.
The reason I confessed multiple times was because I hoped to be engraved in the Boss’s memory.
But if asked why I confess right before a mission—
After completing my thought, I opened my hesitating lips.
“Because it’s my last will.”
My voice, falling low like the somber atmosphere, felt very out of place. Yes, this was my last will.
It was a conclusion I had reached after much thought. Why did I confess each time? Why specifically at those moments among countless others?
All the conclusions I reached led to one point. If I were to die sooner than my remaining time, I wanted to say these words before I died.
It was something I shouldn’t have said to him, but I had no intention of taking it back. My remaining lifespan was just two weeks.
In that short time, he wouldn’t be able to grasp the meaning of my words.
Of course, there was also some selfishness mixed in. If my confession couldn’t have any impact on the Boss, I at least wanted these words to be remembered.
I hoped that what I said in this moment would return to him someday and be remembered.
Such an ugly selfishness. A choice made solely for myself, without considering the one I love.
But he was also part of the reason for stating my last will.
If the Boss hadn’t broken my arm, hadn’t choked me, hadn’t pierced through my body, perhaps my remaining lifespan wouldn’t be just two weeks.
I might have been able to live a little longer by his side.
So I hoped he would accept this much selfishness. I won’t hold any resentment for the lifespan he took from me, if only he would remember me a little.
Even if it’s just guilt.
The Boss maintained an inscrutable silence at my words.
* * *
In a room where monitors mounted on the wall were frantically running, Zenon was continuing a call with someone.
“I won’t do as you say anymore.”
Zenon spat out the words as if crushing them. These words were directed at the other person, but they were also words he was saying to himself.
He didn’t want to be dragged around by them anymore. He didn’t want to cause harm to ‘Alice.’ It had become his reason for living. Zenon didn’t want to ruin such a shelter with his own hands.
At his determined words, the woman on the other end of the call couldn’t help but laugh mockingly.
“Have you forgotten who your master is?”
It was a statement that treated Zenon as less than human. At her attitude, which treated him thoroughly as a tool, he bit his lip hard.
Because of those words, he had lived as someone’s dog until now. With his breath choked off, he could only follow orders.
But now, he would not do so anymore. Because he had found something worth protecting, even at the cost of his life.
For them, he could betray these people’s orders.
“I won’t be anyone’s dog anymore. I’m going to live as Zenon, an executive of ‘Alice.'”
His words were infused with the belief that he would not waver at any words. The other party maintained silence, perhaps not expecting Zenon to be like this.
But only for a moment, she then uttered words of warning to Zenon.
“…Even so, the leash is in our hands. Don’t forget that fact.”
As long as the leash called lifespan was in their hands, they judged that there was nothing he could do.
They had always been like that. Whenever he tried to escape from their grasp even slightly, they threatened him like this. Because of this, Zenon had always knelt before them.
He had lived as if dead, with his head trampled by them.
However—
“Even if I die, this is where I belong.”
Now there was a reason he couldn’t do that. Zenon hung up before the other person could speak. The dial tone of the phone quietly rang in the room.
With this, he had become a body that could die at any time. He might even die right now.
But he had no regrets about that fact. A relieved smile spread across Zenon’s face.
After this mission, he would confess everything to Kay. After all, he had committed an inerasable sin against him.
He would have nothing to say even if he died. But he could no longer hide it.
Whatever the outcome, he had to tell Kay.
His true identity.
* * *
I quietly looked at the things hanging on the wall. From faded photographs to glossy ones. Not only did they show the passage of time, but they were also diverse in kind.
Looking at them this way, I realized that except for a few, traces of him were embedded in them—the sky the Boss had shown me, the candy he had bought for me, the formal suit, and so on.
When memories of the past tried to consume me, it was the Boss’s existence that helped me fend them off. So it wasn’t unreasonable that I had unconsciously chased after traces of the Boss when taking these photos.
What should I do with these photos?
I couldn’t easily come up with an answer. I had never shown them to others. But when I die, naturally someone would see this room. Then these photos would also be revealed.
So currently, burning them would be the most correct choice.
“…”
But I didn’t want to do that. There was still some discomfort at the thought of someone seeing them, but these photos were proof that I had existed.
I didn’t want to erase that proof. Although it was a short life, it was sufficiently meaningful to me.
Even if I die, I wanted the fact that I had lived in this world to remain.
“For now, I’ll just keep them…”
With that thought, I turned my gaze away from the photos. But in the end, until the day I died, these photos never burned.
* * *
As I put on the in-ear device, the faint static disappeared, and Fenil’s clear voice came through.
—Can you hear me?
“I can hear you well.”
“I can hear you too.”
Zenon, who was beside me, spoke immediately, indicating there was no problem on his end.
—We’ll start exactly three minutes from now.
Fenil spoke with a voice more tense than usual.
Since we had already been briefed on the operation, our job was simply to complete the mission without any mistakes. Today would finally end this long, prolonged operation.
A little over a month had passed since I first infiltrated. I didn’t know that I would change so much in this short time, nor that I would die.
It must have been the most eventful month of my life. And to think I even confessed to the Boss. That fact was even harder to believe than my death.
I had thought about death occasionally. After all, you can’t kill others without thinking about death. Not that death was nothing, but it had seemed more familiar than confession.
But I had never once imagined a scenario where I would confess.
I had continuously thought that I shouldn’t reveal these feelings. I thought love was just devotion. Killing myself to serve others. That’s what I believed love was.
If I hadn’t infiltrated, I would have lived that way forever. Even if death came, I would have surely buried these feelings until my death, thinking it couldn’t be helped. That’s how foolish I was in the past.
The reason I could change was because I infiltrated Peace and met them. I couldn’t understand why. It hadn’t even been a long time since I’d met them. But I had to acknowledge that I had been changed by them.
Ben and Tade had gradually colored me. The goodwill that approached so slowly and gently that I couldn’t notice had somehow changed me over time.
As a result, I was able to make the confession to the Boss that I thought I could never make. Thanks to Alex’s advice, I was also able to let go of any remaining lingering feelings.
A future where I was just waiting endlessly for death had been changed because of others. I made my own decision and chose for myself. A slight smile formed at that realization.
