How Could I Forget?
I'd calmed down a little.
As time passed, my nerves settled on their own. Was that the rain's doing?
Not that the ghost story had stopped being scary. It was still lodged in the back of my head. I was fine for now, but once our shift ended and we headed back, who knew what would happen.
Still, for the moment I was all right. Probably thanks to Jeong Seung-a staying right beside me.
"Haa..."
"Hey, Seung-a. You okay? You step out for a bit and come back looking worse than Harang. Was my story that terrifying?"
"Mm... No, ma'am. I'm fine. Just collecting myself for a moment."
"Collecting yourself? What's that supposed to mean?"
"I just have a lot on my mind, briefly."
Honestly, Jeong Seung-a was the one who looked like a wreck.
She sat with her eyes closed, focused on something. Five minutes, ten—no, over twenty minutes like that. I was starting to worry.
"You're not asleep, are you? Seung-a? Even with Harang here..."
"I'm not. I'm thinking."
At least she answered when spoken to. Setting aside the fact that her tone sounded a lot like Han Jihye saying I'm not asleep, why are you changing the channel?
"Not like there's anything to do anyway. No work either."
"Which is exactly why you should stop planting those flags, ma'am. I'm genuinely getting anxious over here."
"Anxious about what? We've only got a little left on today's shift!"
"Again! There you go with another flag!"
"You're off duty after this too, aren't you? Let's just think happy thoughts. Happy—"
Someone once said you shouldn't open your mouth so carelessly.
Bee-yoo, bee-yoo. A siren blared from the Situation Room computers.
Unlike the daytime sorties, the signal didn't flood the entire base.
"Ah."
"See?! That's why I told you not to say stuff like that!"
"Hey, I honestly didn't think anything would actually show up..."
A monster appearing during lights-out. I'd long since memorized how night watch was supposed to handle this.
The senior on duty woke the sortie living quarter; the junior stood by ready to wake the reserve sortie living quarter.
Jeong Seung-a was the senior—but given the state she was in, it seemed far better if I went to wake that side myself.
I was about to say as much when, as if timing it perfectly, Jeong Seung-a rose from her seat.
"I'll go wake them."
"Then I'll stand by to wake the reserve sortie unit if needed."
"Oh, look at that. Senior and junior in perfect sync? You two really click."
Haha. Yes, ma'am.
I answered the officer with a proud little smile, then took stock of the room. The easy atmosphere from moments ago was gone; in its place sat the sharp, polished presence of professionals.
Confirming the location. Assessing damage and threat level. Exchanging opinions on whether the sortie personnel could handle it. All of it wrapped in under five minutes. Proof enough of just how formidable these two were.
...
Time passed, and it was time to wake the next shift.
"Ah, heading out to get your relief?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Already that late, huh. Between the kids' sortie and everything else, I completely lost track. Take care of it."
"Understood."
Leaving the officer's greeting behind, Jeong Seung-a and I split up to wake the next watch.
On the way back after rousing the next night-watch pair from Living Quarter 2, I stopped short. Someone who should have been sound asleep was sitting in the smoking area. I hurried over.
"Superhuman Yeon Byeori?"
"Huh? Oh. Harang."
"What brings you out here? You don't smoke, do you?"
"Yeah, I don't. I just don't sleep much to begin with."
"...Is something wrong?"
"Hm? No? Why?"
"Your expression looks a little off."
"My expression?"
Yeon Byeori lifted her phone and checked her own face.
Truthfully, her expression wasn't bad. It was the same indifferent look as always.
But there was something I couldn't quite let slide.
The fact that she'd picked up her phone at all.
The phone that was usually always on wasn't in her hand. Meaning she'd put it away in her pocket.
You could argue, Well, she just woke up—that happens, but Byeori's eyes were far too sharp for someone who'd just rolled out of bed.
Even under the lit smoking area, she hadn't squinted or flinched once.
"Actually, the bit about your expression was a joke."
"Oh? So Harang's making jokes with her seniors now?"
"I'm sorry!"
"Nah, I was joking too. I'm just glad you're settling into our living quarter so well. Why wouldn't I be?"
As if determined not to leave me room to answer, Yeon Byeori kept going.
"We've had a lot of juniors who couldn't hack it and left, you know. It wasn't what they'd pictured. The unit life they'd heard about on the outside wasn't like this. Did you hear that stuff too? That Awakener units have gotten a lot more comfortable these days?"
"Ah... I've seen some of it, yes."
"And you came believing it, right? Thinking, Well, they say it's easier now."
"No, ma'am. I came because they said the pay was good."
"I heard that, but there's still a part I don't get. You could make easy money, couldn't you? Streaming or something. With a face like yours, you'd take off no problem."
"Come on. I'm not the type who can just talk freely in front of people. Even if I tried streaming, I'd be so boring I'd never make it."
"What are you talking about? You're plenty entertaining."
And besides, unlike streaming, where the income was unstable, here you got paid steadily no matter what. I'd even gotten paid once after two weeks of absolutely nothing happening.
I told her that. Yeon Byeori made a low hmm sound. She didn't seem all that interested.
"The way you grabbed your phone when I said your expression looked bad—it really does seem like something's going on."
"It's nothing."
"Even so..."
"It's. Nothing."
The way she cut the words off twice shut my mouth. Her demeanor was different from usual.
"Harang. I get that being girls together makes it feel less awkward, but women who dig like that aren't popular, you know?"
She was trying to hide it, but the irritation was already plain. She knew it too—she was forcing her face into something else.
"I have a wide meddling streak."
"Yeah, I can tell."
"And that meddling has never once gone in a good direction."
"That's how the world works. Stick your nose in and you just get burned more often than not."
"But you know what? Even when I got cursed out and torn down for it, I still shoved my way through somehow. Want to know why?"
"What is this, a quiz?"
A faint smile tugged at Yeon Byeori's mouth as she offered her guess.
"Because you're an idiot?"
"Ah! Well, that's not wrong, but..."
"I'm kidding."
Her face looked nothing like a joke, and it stung a little.
"People with a meddling streak are all like that. They take the insults, back off for a second—then come charging right back in."
"Exactly. And sticking with it has gotten me something before, too."
"Gotten you something?"
I almost brought up Kim Heejin. She was doing better now, but she hadn't said it out loud herself.
Better leave that story alone.
But then the flow of what I was saying would turn awkward.
What choice did I have? I'd have to use my own story.
"A while back, when I was working construction sites properly—not day labor—there was someone who really couldn't stand me."
"Someone who couldn't stand you? Hard to imagine anyone disliking Harang."
"I had no work sense."
"Ah. Well, yeah."
"That's harsh!"
"You thought I was going to say I was kidding, didn't you? This one's real."
I almost wished she had called it a joke.
No—wait. If she had, I probably would have gotten stubborn and just made more mistakes. Honestly, I was grateful she'd said it straight.
"Anyway, one day I saw that person sighing. I used that as an excuse to keep talking to them."
"...So you were being a nuisance."
"Looking back, yes. If things had gone really sour with that person, I could've been buried at the job site."
And in the end, I won.
I clung on so stubbornly that they finally spilled their situation. Then they drank like crazy and poured their heart out.
"I hadn't Awakened yet, so there was nothing I could actually do to help. All I managed was nodding along and offering some sympathy."
"Mm..."
"I think that got a little rambling. Anyway, to sum up—whatever Superhuman Yeon Byeori is dealing with, I—"
"Before that, there's something I want to ask."
Yeon Byeori looked at me with a suddenly serious face.
"...That person. Were they a man?"
She asked if it had been a man.
Of course it was a man. There had only been men there to begin with.
Boisterous types. They'd explode in fury on site, then the next day act like nothing had happened. That coolness had left an impression.
"Yes."
"...And you went to a man's place that unguarded?"
"Yes?"
"...You didn't get anything bad done to you, did you?"
"Ahaha. Nothing like that."
"You really are defenseless, Harang."
It wasn't exactly like that. It was before I'd Awakened, after all.
...Or so I thought! But wait—wasn't Byeori kind of right?
That person hadn't liked me much to begin with. On top of that, I'd kept being a pest. If I'd walked into their place and gotten hit or worse?
"Now that you mention it, maybe a little."
"And it seems like you've still got that streak. You keep digging even when I'm sending every signal that I don't want it."
I couldn't deny it, so I stayed quiet.
"That's why you asked what was going on, right? Want me to tell you?"
Watching me sit there like that, Yeon Byeori—hit by who knows what impulse—suddenly offered to explain her situation.
"You're going to tell me?"
"If you don't tell anyone else?"
"My lips are sealed."
"Good. Here. This is why."
Yeon Byeori unlocked her phone and held it out to me. What was open wasn't an ordinary banking app.
Under the words Remaining Debt Amount sat a number with a completely different number of digits.
It was a debt-repayment app.
"'Why the sudden change of heart?' ...That's what you're thinking right now, isn't it?"
I was still reeling at a figure far higher than what she'd handed over to Kim Heejin back then when Yeon Byeori smiled again.
"I wanted you to know there are things even meddling can't fix."
It was a bitter smile.
"I'm not the self-controlled person my seniors think I am. If anything, I'm way worse off than the rest of you."
She pressed the heels of her hands hard into her eye sockets.
"It started as curiosity. Then I took one real loss and my head spun. If I can just fix this. If I win this one, I'm back to even. That kind of thinking."
The hands left her eyes and dropped limp.
"Thinking like that, I bet bigger. Thinking like that, I lost bigger. By the time I came to, I was like this. Funny, right? Playing the senior like I've got the world figured out—when I'm drowning in gambling."
"It's not fun—"
"You're going to say it's not funny. Because you're my junior. But you know what? I think it's funny. I think I'm hilarious. If I just held out a little, I could pay it all off. But I can't even do that—I take the sortie pay and dump it straight back in. That's what's so goddamn funny about me."
Yeon Byeori's head dipped slightly.
"Maybe it's the hour. I'm talking too much. Anyway, this isn't something you can do anything about, Harang. It's already ballooned past the point where I can ask anyone for help. So..."
"Ah! Harang! Superhuman Yeon Byeori too? What brings you out here?"
"Couldn't sleep."
Yeon Byeori gave Jeong Seung-a a vague answer, then leaned in to whisper by my ear.
"Just forget about tonight."
Forget it.
But how was I supposed to forget? I'd finally seen Yeon Byeori's real heart.
"What were you talking about with Superhuman Yeon Byeori?"
"Nothing much. Just whether the early hours felt lonely."
I mumbled something past Jeong Seung-a's question and watched Yeon Byeori head into the living quarter.
Like I'd said before—we were family, sharing the same living quarter. I couldn't just leave this alone.