Cola Zone Meetup
The commander, working through documents in his office, lifted his head at the sound of children's voices drifting in through the window.
Checking the time, a faint smile touched the corners of his mouth.
They should be starting about now.
He rose from his seat, crossed to the window, and nudged the blinds aside just enough to look out. Below, the tops of children's heads were visible in scattered clusters, enjoying a barbecue.
Among them, picking out a black-haired Asian child was no difficulty at all, so the commander soon found his own son.
The big kid next to him must be the one called Taejeong… but who's the blond?
The red-haired boy with the large frame standing at the child's side was a face the commander recognized, yet the blond beside him was a stranger.
Judging by the properly fitted military uniform, the boy appeared to be a child soldier…
Did he know that one from the slums as well?
According to Meursault, his son Heydam had run with the children of the slums in those days, hunting to secure their own food.
Even when someone was gunned down right in front of him, the boy had not so much as flinched—enough to make anyone realize he was no ordinary child.
But when that same boy who claimed to be going hunting returned dragging a monster dozens of times his own size… the commander had felt an unnameable sense of crisis.
The impact had been so intense that the leader of an entire zone had felt threatened by a ten-year-old child.
Even Meursault—who knew no one but Daphne—had stood before him with a face flushed with excitement, rattling off Heydam's heroic tales.
He stabbed his own hand to lure a hippo-pig and brought it down with a single shot?
Anyone else hearing the story would have dismissed it as exaggeration and laughed it off.
Commander Hayden, however, knew instinctively that every word of it was true.
Heydam Goodman was Luna Moon's child.
A wound on the back of his hand would heal almost at once, so he could carry out a tactic that required injuring himself without the slightest hesitation.
From the very beginning, asking me to arrange a meal gathering like this was not the idea of an ordinary person.
Add to that his boldness at the officers' meeting, and the way he had personally hunted a monster to prove his marksmanship.
Everything far exceeded the commander's expectations.
So even a hero's child turns out to be a hero, is that it?
Commander Hayden thought back to the day he first saw Heydam.
Recognizing at a glance that the child offering him the ring was Luna Moon's had not been difficult.
Because the boy had worn the same eyes Luna Moon once turned on them—
the eyes of someone looking at something that was not human.
The eyes of an observer regarding a creature of an entirely different species.
Perhaps Heydam, too, like Luna Moon…
No. That was going too far.
The commander snorted a quiet laugh and shook his head, brushing the baseless speculation from his mind.
Heydam could not be the same as Luna Moon.
After all, Heydam was the child Luna Moon had borne in this world.
Unlike the immature ShutInHubby, Taejeong offered a proper greeting.
"I'm TaejeongTaeSeBeyonce. Looking forward to working with you."
"TaejeongTaeSeBeyonce? What kind of nickname is that long?"
"You can just call me Taejeong, hyung-nim."
Huh? Was ShutInHubby going to call me hyung-nim too?
"ShutInHubby is twenty."
When I casually dropped the real age, ShutInHubby nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Hey!! Are we going by real ages here? We're all the same ten years old!"
"Not at all. If you started the game first, you're hyung-nim. Since you're young, I'll call you little hyung-nim."
"Whatever… call me however you like."
ShutInHubby's wariness seemed to ease at Taejeong's slick, respectful manner of not looking down on him for being young.
Until now I had assumed they called me hyung because they were younger than me.
If starting the game earlier made you hyung, did that mean this Taejeong guy was actually ancient?
I had no desire to start using honorifics if ages got revealed, so I decided to leave it alone.
"But…"
ShutInHubby, whose edge had briefly softened under Taejeong's smooth attitude, fixed me with a glare again.
"Little hyung or whatever—why didn't you enlist that bastard?"
"Because he's already completed his service. You haven't. Did you already forget why I enlisted you?"
Having to explain this again.
"I told you—you need to know how to handle firearms to survive."
"Ah, right."
Ah, right?
"You… are managing military life okay, right? Though I have a feeling you're a total washout."
"Come on, hyung-nim! That's harsh. There's no way little hyung-nim is a washout—he's a player, after all!"
"…"
I could have sworn ShutInHubby just made a deeply troubled face. Maybe I imagined it.
"First, let's share our progress on the strategy. After that, we'll plan how to proceed from here."
"Yes, sir! Then I'll go first."
Taejeong stepped up eagerly and shared his current situation.
"I've been hired as a servant at the mansion and am learning the work. I don't have any exclusive duties yet—they say watching and learning is important, so they take me around to observe various places. What I've discovered is that, because they think of me as a child, everyone casually discusses confidential matters right in front of me. I believe the information I gather that way will be a great help to our strategy."
Hmm.
He had a point.
Our greatest advantage and disadvantage was precisely that we were young.
Physically we were at a disadvantage, but there was no better camouflage for lowering someone's guard.
"Anything useful among what you've heard so far?"
"Yes. Lieutenant General Radu is having an affair."
"…And how is that useful information?"
"We can blackmail him with the affair later!"
Had this guy watched too many soap operas?
More than that—the idea that an affair would even work as blackmail material…
"Taejeong, I'm the commander's illegitimate child born outside."
"Oops."
"Well, for now you'll only be doing odd jobs, and the range of information you can hear will be limited. Once you get more deeply involved in the mansion's work, you should start picking up more useful intel. Do your best."
"Yes! Next time I'll definitely bring back information that actually helps."
I looked at Taejeong with satisfaction, then shifted my gaze to ShutInHubby.
"Assa, what about you?"
"Me… well… nothing special…"
"Have you handled firearms yet?"
"Still stuck on basic physical training…"
The way he can't even meet my eyes and shrinks the moment military talk comes up—he's having a pretty rough time of it.
It wasn't as if I had never done military service myself, so I could guess what ShutInHubby was going through.
But if I took his side even a little, the guy would march straight up to his senior and announce, "My friend is the commander's son, so don't mess with me, yeah."
Once he had more of a foothold it might be different, but for now I needed to keep the distance dry and clear.
Only if he believed I would not automatically take his side would he be careful enough to survive military life on his own.
"Have you heard anything about the subjugation campaign?"
"Ah! I did hear I might get conscripted for the next one."
The subjugation campaign took place in the season when the snow melted the most.
Not far from the zone stood a low mountain marked with a red flagpole; once the snow on its peak was observed to melt, the campaign began.
When I had gone hunting with Meursault the mountain had still been buried in snow, so there was still some time until the next subjugation.
ShutInHubby should be able to take part in the subjugation event without much trouble…
I had no intention of sending Taejeong into the campaign.
If both ShutInHubby and I went down in the first subjugation, we would need a player left to clean up the mess.
I had never died in the first subjugation while playing Safety Zone, but this was reality now, so I intended to plan for the aftermath of my own death as well.
"Now I'll tell you what I've figured out. But first—"
As I spoke, I held out Luna Moon's ring, which I had been wearing like a pendant on a leather cord around my neck, for the two of them to see.
"Both of you, touch this ring."
They each laid a hand on Luna Moon's ring.
Judging by their expressions, nothing happened.
As expected, mere contact with the meteor item was not enough to open a status window.
I tucked the ring back inside my clothes and spoke again.
"For starters, I've opened a status window."
"You opened a status window? There is a status window?"
Taejeong, who already knew from hearing it from me, merely nodded, but ShutInHubby—who had believed he had been possessed without any special privileges—looked stunned.
"There was a condition for opening the status window."
"A condition? What is it? Can we open one too?"
I shook my head at ShutInHubby, who was asking with the hope of gaining a privilege of his own.
"At first I thought it opened upon contact with a specific item… but it seems only the first player to make contact can open it. That's why neither of you got a status window."
"What? So we have to clear this without a status window?"
"Even with a status window, the only functions are character profiles, inventory, and chat. There's also zone development, but in the Cola Area it's meaningless. The only really important function is chat."
"Chat? What good is that?"
"If two or more people open a status window, they automatically join a public chat room."
Both ShutInHubby and Taejeong looked startled at my words.
They had probably both suspected there were players in other zones, but hearing it directly was a first.
"There are currently eight people in the public chat room. Meaning, besides me, seven other players have opened a status window."
"Damn it, how many people got possessed into this place?"
Tell me about it.
"Hey, so about that…"
ShutInHubby suddenly dropped his voice low, and I wondered what he was about to ask.
"Among the players who opened a status window… is DopamineAddict there?"
Why is this guy so obsessed with me?
Taejeong, who already knew I was DopamineAddict, looked at ShutInHubby in confusion before hastily managing his expression with an "oops."
He had remembered my instruction to pretend not to know I was DopamineAddict in front of ShutInHubby.
Fortunately ShutInHubby had been staring at me the whole time, so he failed to notice Taejeong's suspicious behavior.
I'll have to tell him soon. Keeping a secret between only two allies isn't a good look for the team.
But I intended to reveal my identity to ShutInHubby only after creating at least one debt between us.
If the DopamineAddict he had been grinding his teeth over ever saved his life, he would be too embarrassed to turn on me.
When I didn't answer, ShutInHubby frowned and pressed me.
"What? Why aren't you answering? He wasn't there?"
"He was. DopamineAddict opened a status window too."
Technically, I hadn't lied.
ShutInHubby's questions didn't stop there.
"Which zone did that bastard drop into?"
"As if he'd tell us that."
That one was a lie.
"Yeah… no way that rude bastard would just tell us his zone."
I had been the first one to announce my zone, actually.
"Were there any other players in the same zone as us?"
Only when Taejeong asked that did the topic finally move past DopamineAddict to the other players.
"There weren't. It seems there's only one item that can open a status window per zone. And from what I checked a moment ago, the only players in our zone are us."
The only children who reacted to "samgyeopsal" had been ShutInHubby and Taejeong. During the meal the three of us had worn awkward expressions, but the other children… had looked happy.
I had arranged the gathering for a purpose, yet seeing those kids eat so well had left me a little proud.
In any case, the only players in our zone were the three of us.
If the players who chose "Cola"—including Safety No. 8, who had already retired—numbered only four, then the players in other zones probably weren't that numerous either.
"And this is just my guess, but…"
I looked back and forth between ShutInHubby and Taejeong as I spoke.
"Luna Moon might have been a player."