TO&FQ: Book 2 - Chapter 18 (RAW)

Chapter 18 - Mother of the Nation

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate. 

- Hubert H. Humphrey.

“And why,” asked the moderator, voice quivering slightly as she touched one of her earrings, “should the people of the Democratic Republic of South Korea place their trust in you, Ms. Myeong, particularly on critical issues like the economy?”

Mirae Myeong smiled with practiced poise, tilting her head in a manner that spoke of both confidence and condescension. It was obvious to anyone watching that the moderator’s nerves matched the tension in the studio. After all, the debate’s questions had been pre-ordained. The moderator’s hesitation, the shuffling of those cue cards—bought and paid for.

“Because we, as a people, are prospering,” Mirae replied with easy confidence. “Are we not?”

There was a moment’s pause while the moderator adjusted her cards, clearly trying to hold onto some semblance of journalistic integrity. “Ms. Myeong, would you care to elaborate on that?” she ventured, tone polite but eyes uncertain.

Mirae flicked her eyes at him and gave a light laugh, reaching up to smooth her raven hair. “The people already trust us with their lives. Look around you. For three generations, the Myeong Group has powered our cities. Our generators light your streets, our gas heats your homes in winter, our construction teams build your roads and houses, our trains take you to work, and our farms feed Korea. Have we ever failed the Korean people?”

Before the moderator could press further, the other presidential candidate, Mr. Baek—balding head glistening under the lights—interjected hotly. “You mean the people have been put on an economic leash,” he spat. “Your de facto monopoly stifles independent growth and innovation. You and the rest of your family are tyrants! It’s only now that you’re brazenly showing your true faces!”

Mirae’s smile was sweet, but her dark eyes flickered with annoyance. “Are you saying it’s wrong to be rich, Mr. Baek? Would you prefer everyone to be poor?”

Bong Baek ignored the trap. “I have reams of evidence,” he thundered, brandishing a bulging folder. “Evidence that the people deserve to see—tax avoidance, income understatement… but I’m sure none of it is ‘spicy’ enough to grab the press. And let’s not forget, you’ve probably purchased half the justice department.”

Mirae shrugged elegantly. “I didn’t write the laws,” she said with a casual wave of her hand. “I simply use them—just like everyone else. Or shall I add, just like the officials who put you where you are?”

“If we could refrain from personal attacks and insinuations without evidence,” interjected the female moderator with a too-polite smile. She was clearly trying to maintain control, but the debate was already devolving into a battlefield.

“Well,” Baek insisted, glaring at Mirae, “even if it’s only three percent tax understatement, that means trillions lost! It’s—”

“I believe you’re losing will lose ground there, Mr. Baek,” Mirae cut in smoothly, an amused gleam in her eye. “After all, who enjoys paying taxes?” Her comment elicited a smattering of low chuckles from the audience.

She seized the laughter like a lifeline. “Should the people entrust me with power, one of my first actions will be to lower taxes for all—especially that ridiculous VAT. Families need relief, and I understand what it is to worry about putting the next meal on the table.”

Mr. Baek’s scoff was loud, the sneer behind it palpable. “You wouldn’t know real worry if it bit you on the heel. Perhaps you fret over whether your organic produce is fresh enough, but not about putting food on the table! You were born with a silver spoon.”

Mirae’s eyes narrowed—but only for a heartbeat. Then she gave a theatrical flick of her hair. “I was born in Guryong,” she stated softly, letting the name of the notorious slum hang in the air. “We later moved to Jungnang-gu. So, yes, Mr. Baek, I know exactly how hard it can be for everyday Koreans.”

A ripple of shock coursed through the audience, a collective murmur punctuated by gasps. The Myeong Corporation’s acting president was admitting to being from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. It was an abject scandal.

The moderator cleared her throat, regaining some composure. “You’ll forgive us if we’re a bit skeptical, Ms. Myeong.”

Mirae stepped forward and handed her a folder of her own. “I thought you might be. You’ll find all of the relevant documentation here.”

The moderator’s eyes widened as she scanned the pages. “We’ll need to verify all of this,” she said hurriedly. “But these do look like genuine documents.”

“Nonsense!” Baek roared, face reddening. “Fabrications! Lies! Does this woman have no shame?”

“This woman?” Mirae echoed, her brow arching. “Is there something about women you find objectionable, Mr. Baek? I recall you voting against the Women’s Development Act back in ’95.”

“That was—” He stammered, clearly caught off guard.

“Unfortunately,” the moderator cut in, “we need to move to our next topic—your views on women’s choice, Ms. Myeong, which have recently come into the spotlight.”

“I’m not quite finished with the economy—” Baek tried to say, but the moderator pressed on, her voice firmer now.

Mirae gave the moderator the pre-arranged signal, tapping her earrings.

“Mr. Baek, we really must move on to the next topic.”

Mirae effortlessly stole back the moment, gripping the edges of her podium like a queen upon her throne. “I feel quite strongly about women’s choice,” she declared, voice resonating through the studio. “After all, my own father—President Myeong—tried to force my mother to terminate me. The decriminalization of abortion in 2021 is a travesty before God.”

The crowd rippled again with alarm. Mirae was dominating the debate, controlling its pace. She made every second in the spotlight count, her polished demeanor overshadowing the moderator’s best attempts at impartiality.

Baek lifted his chin, pushing his glasses up his nose in agitation. “Your personal circumstances aside, women deserve the right to decide what happens to their own bodies,” he countered, voice brimming with a sense of moral exasperation. 

But it was a line that was overused and lacked bite in the here and now.

“Typical,” Mirae shot back with a short laugh, “a man lecturing a woman on her choices. Next, you’ll be telling us to stay home and raise children quietly, like we’re still just after the cataclysm.”

“I have never—!” Baek tried to interject, face turning crimson, but she was already forging on.

“The question, Ms. Cha,” Mirae pivoted neatly toward the moderator, “is how many more brilliant minds—people like me—are we willing to kill before they can even draw breath? We have an aging population in this country, yet we destroy our future before it starts.”

The moderator, Haeun Cha, placed her cards down, eyes flicking between the two candidates. “And what would you specifically do about it, Ms. Myeong?”

“Penalizing women is not the answer,” Mirae answered, voice pitched low with sympathy, “but we need more than lip service. If I come to power, I plan to incentivize life—support those who are wavering. The Myeong Group stands ready to take these unwanted children and shape them into the future of our nation.”

Mr. Baek let out a derisive snort. “So, you’d be what—‘mother of the nation’?”

Haeun Cha attempted a gentle laugh. “That’s quite a title to take on, Ms. Myeong.”

Mirae’s lips curved in a supremely confident smile. “If that’s what it takes to protect our future, then yes. We face immense challenges as a country, and we cannot afford to lose any potential gifts these children might bring. Our world is in crisis; our nation needs strong, willing arms to guide it. If I personally have to take care of the unwanted, I will.”

And in that moment, with the cameras trained on her and millions of viewers watching, Myeong Mirae stood like a conquering heroine—utterly commanding, and utterly terrifying to those who dared oppose her. Even though it was a debate meant to clarify policy, she had transformed it into a stage for personal victory, leaving Baek struggling to catch up and the moderator blinking in the harsh studio lights.

***

Baek had suffered a brutal drubbing at Mirae’s hands for the remainder of the debate. She had an agent embedded deep within his campaign staff, gleefully feeding her every bit of juicy intel. Time and again, Baek attempted to expose her—like when he dredged up a minor incident about her past self allegedly assaulting a police officer with a stack of banknotes. The entire thing had been recorded on the patrol car’s dashcam, but Mirae neutralized him with chilling ease: she produced a video of that very officer claiming he was one her fans and had requested Mirae to hit him, calling it “one of his lifelong dreams.” It was bizarre, but the public found it oddly amusing—and she ended up more popular than ever.

Worse still for Baek, he tried leveraging her youth against her, insinuating that someone so young was unfit to lead. Mirae, in turn, showed everyone watching scandalous photos of the married man and father of three cozying up to far younger women in questionable circumstances. The resulting outrage from conservative elements in Korean society effectively sealed Baek’s fate. She could have deployed this tactic in the press beforehand, but the live television ambush was far more dramatic—and Baek never recovered.

Despite this triumphant performance, Mirae couldn’t help acknowledging that her rise to power had been neither entirely smooth nor wholly difficult. The real challenge had come from trying to integrate her “other self’s” memories. There had been moments of confusion—like in her verbal skirmish with Baek—when the old Mirae’s recollections nearly collided with the current Mirae’s. From time to time, she wondered how her other self was faring now. Being Seraphina is a raw deal, she thought with a wry grin.

Meanwhile, the staff around her buzzed with post-debate cleanup. A mousy woman—an aide whose name Mirae could never seem to recall—appeared at her side, wringing her hands. “Madam, there are concerns about your use of the word ‘cataclysm’…”

Mirae rolled her eyes, radiating impatience. “Issue a statement that I was referring to World War II or the Japanese occupation… something like that,” she snapped. “Honestly, haven’t I given you enough gold to manage these trifling matters?” The aide bowed quickly and scurried off, wearing the same baffled expression Mirae’s staff often sported when dealing with her imperious commands.

If only her last secretary, Hana, hadn’t departed in such a dramatic, selfish fashion. Mirae missed the efficiency of that woman—this new crop of lackeys and minions simply wasn’t on the same level.

Just then, a young man equipped with a headset rushed up. “Ms. Myeong,” he said breathlessly, “our latest polls show an approval rating at nearly seventy-three percent!”

The group around her burst into a round of applause, cheering her meteoric popularity. Yet, Mirae merely shrugged. 

Mirae didn’t quite know what he was so excited about. The results spoke for themselves; it meant that over a quarter of the country did not approve of her. A truly sobering thought. 

When she finally ruled this little nation, she would make sure to find all of those little dissidents and make examples of them. Mirae was already planning to create work camps, maybe she would take a leaf from a close neighbor’s example and call them “re-education facilities.”

But before all of that, she had to unify the nation. The country remained divided, a condition she found intolerable. Her other self had been too complacent, too busy swimming in money and influence to bother unifying the peninsula. This Mirae had little interest in living a similar lifestyle.

With the majority of the male population capable of using the weapons of war of this world, it should be a trivial feat to unify the country, she realized starkly. All it required was the will to make it so.

It was too easy to fall into such a trap in this country, where the average citizen had more wealth at his fingertips than the kings of old. The people were surrounded by miracles, and they never, ever took a moment to acknowledge it.

“Clear the room,” she commanded abruptly, and her staff filed out with practiced obedience. Alone at last, she sank onto a cushioned seat, rummaging through her diamond-encrusted, white elephant leather handbag to retrieve a small mirror. Irony never ceased to amuse her: the reflection staring back was Eloise’s face—a poor, beautiful girl she had treated so terribly. A flicker of guilt crossed her doll-like features. Was the other Seraphina treating Eloise better than she had?

And now she could sing—oh, how she could sing. She was certain her voice could coax birds down from the highest branches. It was the product of a lifetime of practice, a skill honed to a razor’s edge. For her, it had become one of the greatest joys of this new life.

Fate was ever the master of irony.

But maudlin regrets were for another time. She tapped a manicured nail against the mirror, lips curving into a satisfied, dangerous smile. A mere five-year term would never be enough. She needed something more permanent, something more befitting her ambitions. Yes… “President for life” had such a wonderful ring to it.