One Day, My Dad Disappeared - Chapter 13

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 13
“My, you’re still in one piece, aren’t you? That’s why I said we should just lob the bomb from the carriage.”
A youthful voice drifted through the acrid haze of dust.
“You’re supposed to kill people, not horses. Poor things.”
The speaker was a young girl with neatly cropped pink hair that fell to her chin—her cute voice at odds with her merciless words.
Incongruously paired with her eerily radiant face, several finger-length weapons lay nestled between her fingers, honed to lethal sharpness.
“Still, it’s better to be precise about your target.”
The man beside her spoke while letting his long, unkempt hair hang freely. His hollow eyes and deeply sunken cheeks cast an unsettling pallor over his face.
“Who are you two?!”
Aeidan drew his sword. He should have brought a guard escort for this.
Snap, snap.
But the girl didn’t bat an eye, blowing a bubble with the gum in her mouth before it popped with a sharp burst.
“Answer me. Why did you attack us?”
“Hmm, so you don’t know anything about us?”
The woman answered while still chewing her gum.
“Since you’re going to die anyway, I’ll at least tell you our names. I’m Maybis. One of the great members of Aclor.”
The girl who introduced herself as Maybis drew another weapon with her left hand, smiling.
“After you meddled in Eastern Central Neodymium and then the Southern Region, we figured you knew about our plans and were trying to interfere.”
“Plans?”
“Yeah. That’s why you hid all the Headron Cores, isn’t it?”
The man pulled a bomb from within his long cloak as he spoke.
“Who wouldn’t know you snatched them first when you found out we were gathering Headron Cores to open a Gate?”
“……Gather the Cores to open a Gate?”
I parroted his words blankly.
So gathering Cores could open a Gate?
“This idiot.”
Maybis stepped on the man’s foot as she spoke.
“What possessed you to babble all that? They didn’t even know!”
“Oh, is that so?”
He seemed a bit more foolish than I’d expected. When I glanced at Aeidan, he was staring at them with equal disbelief.
“Anyway! This is exactly why I didn’t want to come with you, Malachi. Why are you spilling everything when they don’t know a damn thing?”
The man called Malachi, caught off guard, lit the fuse on the bomb.
“We just kill them and destroy the evidence, right?”
Sensing the ominous turn, Aeidan leveled his sword at them. Destroy the evidence? Were they really about to throw that bomb at us?
It struck me as a rather crude statement, but Maybis nodded as if there was no helping it.
“The Headron Cores belong to Aclor. We will fulfill the Great God’s will!”
And she hurled her weapons. Sharp throwing knives pinned our clothes to the carriage wall.
“Well, farewell then.”
The bomb he’d thrown arced through the air toward us, its fuse burning.
“Ah!”
In the moment I thought there was no escape and everything would end, Aeidan’s blade sliced through the air, severing our pinned garments from the carriage wall in one fluid motion.
Then Aeidan pulled me against his waist while simultaneously batting the incoming bomb away with the flat of his blade.
“Huh, what—?”
The bomb flew back toward where Aclor stood.
Boom!
A massive explosion erupted, flames roaring skyward. Aeidan stayed crouched, cradling my head, before slowly raising his upper body.
“Where did they go?”
“Did we… let them escape?”
“Seems like it.”
I heard him click his tongue. There was nothing to say about a situation like this.
“Um, by the way.”
“What?”
“C-Could you let me go?”
Only then did he realize he was still holding me, and he quickly stepped back.
Thanks to that I didn’t get hurt, but my heart was pounding from the fright.
What was that just now? I’d thought we might cross paths with Aclor someday, but I never expected them to find us so quickly.
And…
Did my hair not smell bad when my head was pressed against him? I brought the end of my bound hair up to my nose and sniffed furtively.
It seems fine so far.
“What, did you think I was happy about it? I save your life and this is the thanks I get?”
“I wasn’t angry, exactly.”
Aeidan brushed the dirt from his clothes, appearing completely unbothered by the whole affair.
‘Right, could we even call that an embrace? He was just saving me, that’s all.’
“You heard what the Aclor members said earlier, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It seems my father really did take the Core to open the Gate.”
I kept staring at the spot where the Aclor operative had been just moments before.
They thought we were the ones who’d taken the Core.
“If Aclor’s hunting for the Core too, we need to move faster.”
If they were truly after it as Aeidan said, we had to find it first—by a wide margin. Should Aclor succeed in opening the Gate, the world itself might be doomed.

With the carriage destroyed, Aeidan and I had walked the rest of the way to the villa. The loyal handmaids of the Winslow Family, seeing us caked in dust and grime, shrieked and rushed to prepare a bath.
“Ah, this is perfect.”
Warm water really was the greatest luxury.
To sink one’s body into a proper tub like this—it was pure indulgence.
Houses with bathtubs were expensive; when I was younger, my father had carved a large wooden basin for me himself.
“The scent is lovely too.”
I’d watched the maid add bath additives earlier—this must be the finest kind. As I poured the water over my arm, my skin gleamed with sudden luster.
“So that’s why Aeidan’s skin is so flawless.”
When he pulled me close just now. No, correction—when he saved me, I’d seen his skin up close, and it truly was magnificent. That porcelain complexion, flawless and pale as winter snow, made me feel a pang of envy.
I found myself absently touching my own face. Perhaps I should start taking better care of my appearance.
Pushing aside such idle thoughts, I sank deeper into the hot water.
I’d suspected that opening a Gate would require a Core, but I hadn’t known the method.
Aclor knew it, though.
‘Simply gathering five Cores wouldn’t open a Gate.’
Otherwise, it would have opened long ago, before the Gate Research Institute had even processed the Headron Core.
“What could the method be?”
The Headron Core itself was something few people knew about, so there probably weren’t many research findings on it.
“How did my father find out about it?”
Could it have been a simple enough method that he’d managed to learn it? Or—could Father actually have been part of Aclor?
“No, he’d have hated anything to do with Gates.”
Given his station, it would have been nearly impossible for him to become an Aclor member in the first place.
“Did they raid Aclor’s headquarters?”
Was there any clue to be found at their base?
Of all my father’s possessions, only his diary remained; everything else had vanished. I had no idea where he’d even gathered his intelligence.
“The diary…”
Now that I thought about it, all my father’s belongings had disappeared except for that diary. Unusually thoughtful of him—he’d left clues behind, written in that journal.
Perhaps there was something more he’d wanted to tell me, hidden within those pages.
Glub-glub—
My held breath burst free, sending bubbles to the surface. The moment this realization struck me, I knew I couldn’t afford to lie about in the bath any longer.
Splash—
Steaming water cascaded onto the floor as I scrambled out. It was wasteful, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me rest until I pursued this lead. I barely dried off before pulling the diary from my belongings.
What could be the clue?
Something related to the Core…
“The names that appeared didn’t lead anywhere, no matter how I rearranged them.”
Even examining the deployment regions my father had meticulously recorded from the mercenary company’s mission logs didn’t help.
“Hmm, this isn’t working either.”
No matter how I combined the letters, nothing emerged.
“If my father could figure it out, it shouldn’t have been some complex method.”
Father wasn’t exactly a strategic genius—he was simple, straightforward. It would have to be something like a name cipher, surely.
But despite rearranging the letters in every way I could think of, I found nothing useful. Should I just focus on collecting all the Cores first?
Once I had them all, there might be clues hidden within the Cores themselves.
With all five gathered, I could run various experiments.
The problem was that I had no idea where to even begin looking for them.
“Ugh. My mind won’t work.”
All-nighters required sugar or caffeine to function properly, but I couldn’t very well raid someone else’s kitchen. Perhaps I should call it a night.
I lay on a bed as large as my entire room back home, staring at the ceiling. Even the wallpaper here was elegant. My room had such faded, shabby paper.
“I suppose I’m just using what the previous owner left behind…”
Left behind. The things that were already there…
“Wait!”
I bolted upright.
Why didn’t I think of that sooner?

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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