Chapter 113
Chapter 113
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 113
Chapter Title: Emergency Assembly (1)
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Yoon came and took Ye-hyeon away.
Ye-hyeon, with swollen eyes, silently handed a photo to the expressionless man who greeted him.
Yoon peered into the photo.
And smiled faintly.
“You look alike.”
That's what I mean.
While I smiled silently, Ye-hyeon looked at the photo again.
Even as he walked toward the house directly across from us, he glanced down at the photo several times. An uncountable delivery truck dropped off gifts and drove away.
Ye-hyeon reached the front gate piled high with boxes and stopped in his tracks.
I greeted him without erasing my faint smile.
“Come in. Happy birthday.”
“Hilde.”
Ye-hyeon turned to look at me.
I blinked once.
“Yes?”
“Don’t get caught for as long as possible.”
It was clearly an order, but it strangely sounded like a desperate plea.
“After you’re caught, I can’t stop the resentment and hatred that’ll pour out.”
I smiled quietly.
That must be bothering him.
But that was something I rightfully had to face. If we hadn’t come to Earth, this war wouldn’t have happened. The lives of those around us would have been different too. Ricardo’s family wouldn’t have ended up buried under their home collapsed by an airstrike, for starters.
They had reason to hate me.
My comrades had more than enough reason to hate me as well.
“Is the administrative issue okay?”
“We can make up some reason one way or another.”
Ye-hyeon replied in a hoarse voice.
“We might apply pressure to keep it from becoming an issue. But if it does become one, it’ll be announced that you bore the greatest fault.”
“Isn’t that the reality?”
If I hadn’t suddenly appeared, none of this hassle would have happened.
Of course, there had been the option to place me under Colton. But that would have made Colton’s influence too great. Eventually, it would have shattered the balance.
That was why Ye-hyeon had taken the risk and registered me in the Black Badger.
I would have made the same call.
I was grateful for that judgment. I could kneel before Ye-hyeon and press my lips to the back of his foot, but before Colton, I couldn’t lower my body even if my knees shattered.
“I can’t cloud the organization’s atmosphere just to protect someone like me. I believe you’ll handle it the proper way.”
Ye-hyeon stared at me for a long time with bloodshot eyes.
To ease the anguish in his eyes, I added,
“In the past, I betrayed my own kind of my own free will.”
A fact I couldn’t deny even if I wanted to.
“So I should rightfully bear the consequences.”
I had no right to complain about the pain.
After I finished speaking and smiled, Ye-hyeon quietly stared at me.
Chilly winter air.
The faint warmth of sunlight slipping through the cold warmed my body. Yoon kept silent, waiting for our conversation to end.
Ye-hyeon slowly and softly broke the silence.
“Thank you for the photo.”
He became childlike again.
Thinking that, I bowed my head.
***
A few days later, a message came from Ricardo.
[You gonna come to your senses only after cracking your head open and dying?]
I’d heard he got drunk and went up to the rooftop.
It seemed to support voice input. Feeling my blood run cold, I quickly replied. It wasn’t rudeness, and I had no intention of doing anything dangerous. Sorry if you were worried.
No reply came.
Ricardo read my message and ignored it.
Such a senior-like response.
‘Well, whatever the reply, it would’ve been scary.’
And so the year-end party passed. My short vacation ended too. It was a better end-of-year than I’d tensed up for. As the new year drew near, Yoon started working me hard again. The intensity ramped up to recover the muscle loss from alcohol and rest.
I didn’t complain. I wanted to regain my original strength quickly too.
It was good to fall asleep dreamlessly after hard workouts.
The stability from a regular, simple life felt good too. So for a while, I forgot all about the games. I completely forgot the one Yoon had taken before and the new one Jaeyeon gave me, just repeating training and sleep.
Until Yoon showed up with ‘From E’ on the first weekend of the new year.
[My main function.
copyright Copyright Eve. All rights reserved.]
There were many lines above and below, but I only understood that one part.
Eve’s name was there.
Yoon explained flatly from beside me, frozen stiff.
“A developer named Eve made it, and the creation date was one year after the end of the First War.”
The master crossed his arms and fixed his gaze on the screen.
“That’s all we found out. Strangely, no more info turns up. It’s old, but not finding even photos or a biography is downright odd.”
“Probably erased them all.”
I muttered while staring at the line with Eve written on it.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
“She said she erased everything to come face us.”
I’d remembered the name when I was strung out on drugs.
It was amazing that seeing the name on the screen now brought back another memory. Eve was a scientist who madly loved her field of research. She was upright by nature too. I recalled how, even when experimenting on me, she’d always carefully checked if it was harming my health.
Meaning she was nothing like Choi Yoon or John Mullen.
“She was kind.”
“You picking a fight?”
“Just stating facts.”
After replying, I quickly offered Yoon an unopened bottle of alcohol.
A late birthday gift and bribe.
“Ah, this is a birthday gift. January 4th, right?”
“Sure.”
The master taking the alcohol.
Now Yoon naturally parried my reactions.
He set the bottle down on the desk and turned back to the screen. I too stared gloomily at the screen.
One year after the First War.
When no one knew the Second War was coming. She’d made this game amid the ruins of a fallen city.
“Eve definitely survived the First War.”
“Assuming this info’s accurate.”
“Where was I then?”
I tried to recall a time where, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even feel the shape of the fuzzy memories.
Life before the war broke out. The world before coming to Earth—fragments of those remained.
But I couldn’t figure out how I, who’d vanished to stop Kyle, ended up falling out of the headquarters portal decades later. I had no memory of seeing the war end. I remembered preparing for its start, though.
That blank in my memory had left my body in terrible shape too.
“I don’t even know if I was on Earth.”
Yoon muttered in a low voice.
“Back then, Ye-hyeon and I were barely thirty… If you were alive in the core, Lee Seung-hyun would’ve definitely taken your sword back from Ye-hyeon.”
“Yes. I think so too.”
“At least Lee Seung-hyun and his gang didn’t know your whereabouts.”
The master’s low voice resonated in the cabin.
“And there’s not much they can’t track down.”
Did I live outside the core like gin?
Or was I in a coma? Hiding in someone’s house without ever going out? The problem was that no matter how plausible the hypothesis, none of it connected to the fact that I’d fallen out of the headquarters portal.
Unknowingly, I let out a huge sigh.
Yoon rose from his chair.
“Played K yet?”
“Not yet. In case you wanted to watch like last time.”
“Ah, good. Then I’ll watch like last time, so start right now.”
I didn’t answer.
Instead, I studiously ignored Yoon’s gaze and stared hard at the screen.
Before the other could speak, I said,
“Was this game made to commemorate me?”
“For now, it looks that way.”
This time, the master cut in before I could add anything.
I’d thought he had no interest in people, but after spending so much time together, Choi Yoon knew me too well now.
“If you don’t want to start K, do it next week.”
Caught red-handed trying to change the subject on purpose.
“Instead, find the easter eggs in E during that time.”
I turned my head.
The other was looking at me with cold, black eyes.
Meeting those icy eyes, I nodded.
This order was far more comfortable mentally.
K definitely wasn’t Kyle—Kyle had despised “computer games” themselves. Even so. I wasn’t ready to play a game with who-knew-what messages inside.
Reaching out to shut down the computer, I mumbled,
“Thank you for looking into it.”
The man headed to the entrance without a special reply. I pretended to follow him and vaguely saw him off.
I couldn’t look straight up until Yoon’s footsteps faded away.
***
No easter eggs?
I started thinking that around when the sun had passed and the moon had risen once more.
Two days before the first weekend of February.
I still hadn’t found any notable easter eggs in ‘From E’.
“Unlucky, but I’m really good at finding these things.”
“Probably. You’re a game addict, after all.”
Addict, huh.
I reflexively made a sulky face but continued without a proper retort.
“Since I haven’t found any yet, it seems highly possible there’s no easter egg element at all. Or maybe I just can’t find the clues.”
“Then drop it and play K first.”
Yoon replied as we walked the headquarters corridor.
The day was ending. Time when the office workers left in droves.
Having closed up the shooting range, we were headed to the cafeteria.
“There might be an easter egg that only unlocks after playing the whole series.”
“Huh, you know games a bit.”
A bit surprised.
“You even knew about easter eggs like that?”
The master raised an eyebrow at me.
Still the man who efficiently conveyed intent without words.
I matched his stride.
“No, I just thought you wouldn’t touch unproductive stuff like games…”
Last time, he’d even asked if this was fun, right?
“Never imagined you’d look for easter eggs…”
Weeeeng weeeeng weeeeng!
A blaring noise shook the headquarters.
Interrupted conversation.
People stopping in their tracks.
Gazes simultaneously dropping to phones.
Half a year into the Black Badger. Now I knew well this alarm meant an assembly order.