Chapter 109
Chapter 109
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 109
Chapter Title: 58. Cosmos
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When dragonflies flit about, cosmos blooms, and the sparse rice paddies turn golden with ripeness, a certain memory sometimes comes to mind.
It was probably from the early days of our deployment to China.
Back when the world was still a bit brighter, full of hope, and greedy for other realms.
I'd taken a minor injury during a mission.
Nothing serious.
Just some scrapes and a hairline fracture in a bone.
But the world back then was livable, with some leeway, so even someone like me with light injuries got shipped to the rear for top-notch care.
For some reason, the Chinese government treated us well.
The Chinese soldiers we'd fought alongside got treated in noisy, filthy, chaotic field hospitals, but we were sent to a state-of-the-art medical facility with a beautiful garden overlooking some nameless Chinese palace.
It must have been autumn then, too.
True to their love of the flashy, the Chinese had planted all sorts of eye-catching flowers whose names I didn't know in the garden. But what really caught my eye was at the garden's edge—cosmos blooming sparsely amid construction materials, gravel, and an unkempt rocky patch.
I liked its simple yet unplain beauty.
Maybe I was just tired of all the excessive splendor and drawn to it instead.
I soon learned why the Chinese had sent us there.
A fluent Korean-speaking Chinese guy who tended to me kept quietly urging me to defect.
He promised enough money to live on for life, a beautiful wife, guaranteed status, even honors money couldn't buy.
I don't know how many fell for it, but I'd seen a few acquaintances—guys I knew by face—succumb to the temptation, pin the Five-Star Red Flag to their chests, and fight alongside us.
China was at its strongest back then.
Even America was floundering against the rifts, and its allies, fed up with America's extreme America-first policies, broke away en masse.
The split with Europe especially signaled the end of the Pax Americana era.
But more people resisted the temptation—that's undeniable.
One day, as usual, after my medical checkup and hoping for an early return to the front, I went to gaze at the cosmos beyond the garden edge.
There was a woman I knew well but had never spoken to, staring straight at the cosmos I'd been watching.
I knew her name.
Na Hye-in.
The woman who always ranked right after me and Lee Sanghun.
She wasn't pretty so much as unapproachable, with eyes that always seemed fixed on some distant point.
I still don't know what she was looking at then, but she was seriously skilled.
If she'd been a man, she might've even threatened me with her talent and instincts.
In team-vs-team sparring matches, she'd nearly knocked me out once.
But her luck was bad.
She was a disciple of Go Jong-beom, who'd lost a power struggle to my mentor Jang Gi-yeong, defected to China, and sold out every technique and trick he knew.
You could tell Jang Gi-yeong was no saint just from how he tried to rein in Go Jong-beom's faction.
Go Jong-beom's line—especially his disciples—got forced into the dirtiest, messiest battlefields.
Na Hye-in was one of those unlucky ones.
I'd heard through the grapevine before she was admitted that her entire team had been wiped out, leaving her the sole survivor who made it here.
Unlike me, she was wrapped head to toe in bandages, with colors like cosmos blooms seeping through in spots.
Spotting her, I turned away.
Not a deliberate choice—more like habit.
"Like cosmos?"
A voice I didn't quite recognize stopped me as I started to leave.
"Not particularly."
I remember my stance then was awkwardly uncharacteristic for a professor—halfway between leaving and staying.
"How's it over there?"
"Over where?"
"Where you were. Monsters everywhere?"
"Not that many."
I straightened up and turned to face her.
Her profile was hidden under tight bandages, but her gaze was definitely on the cosmos.
"Plenty here."
I'd turned to her because she'd brought up monsters.
Monsters—my object of hatred—could override petty feelings like mentors, factions, classmates, all that noise, then and now.
"What got you?"
Of course, at twenty, I lacked that kind of tact.
Digging into her trauma when I knew her team was gone proves it.
Her reaction to my question wasn't anger or grief—it was laughter.
"You."
She turned to look at me.
"You really like monsters, huh."
Her distant gaze was fixed right on me.
That was our first encounter.
After that, she started appearing in my field of vision.
In the cafeteria, the garden, rehab facility, and that gravel patch at the garden's end.
I avoided her because I saw no need to meet.
All I wanted was a quick return to the front.
Killing even one more monster—that was the sole mission for me, left alone in this world.
"Just hold on a bit longer. The front lines are stable. Plenty of time. No rush to deploy until you're fully recovered."
The expedition leader—some junior of Jang Gi-yeong's from the academy—refused my return.
I soon realized his "care" wasn't for me, but because I was Jang Gi-yeong's prized disciple.
Rage boiled over, uncontrollably.
Some of it aimed at Jang Gi-yeong.
His so-called theories were all bogus, and because of that crap, I was lounging here in comfort.
I went to Na Hye-in.
Got straight to the point.
"Switch teams?"
Unwinding the bandages around her face, she was strikingly beautiful, but back then, looks meant nothing to me.
"Join my team in my place."
"No one left on mine but me. It's basically disbanded."
"It'll get reorganized anyway. I want in on that."
"...Why?"
She asked, then laughed bitterly—uncharacteristically—and answered herself.
"Monsters?"
I gave no reply, which apparently led to a misunderstanding.
She started seeking me out.
Cafeteria, garden, rehab, gravel patch.
"Coincidental" meetings, over and over.
No idea why, but I didn't mind.
I was college-freshman age in Korean years—youthful, everything thrilling.
Even when she approached from afar as I gazed at the nearly petal-less cosmos, I didn't leave.
"Winter's almost here?"
She held a book.
Didn't catch the title, but I remember it was Schopenhauer.
A fragile petal fell in the light breeze she brought.
"If human fate is predetermined from birth."
She spoke.
"All luck, tragedy, even death set in advance—how should we live?"
I saw no value in answering, but oddly, I played along, uncharacteristically.
"So we're like Blu-rays or records—you saying that's what you mean?"
"Could see it that way."
Her distant gaze held me, a faint smile playing.
"Maybe. If so, isn't our role to play out the full capacity?"
"What if someone else's data's stored inside?"
She stepped closer.
She smelled unlike the cosmos—better.
For some reason, I avoided her eyes, watching meaningless dragonflies.
Big-eyed, shiny bugs that sometimes doubled up, monster-like.
"What do you mean?"
Turning back, she was looking at the ground.
"Just suppose."
I thought hesitation and Na Hye-in didn't mix.
Her voice trembled lightly.
"If our fates were set from the start to bring us close, but we lived ordinarily somewhere else, normal lives—what would that feel like?"
"...Doubt that's in my fate."
I said flatly.
Reading the dismay and disappointment on her face was easy, but I showed nothing.
"Thanks to you, early front-line return looks good."
That's what I was back then.
A guy who knew he'd hurt someone but didn't care if it served his goals.
I bowed politely to her.
"Team switch approved. New one's forming."
"...Okay."
Her gaze drifted far again.
Her scent hit me anew, but I ignored it.
Still, some lingering attachment, apparently.
"...Quitting?"
Uncharacteristic question.
Back turned—probably to the cosmos—she nodded lightly.
I thought that was our last meeting.
Then I forgot her completely.
Her sector turned into a bloodbath—one regiment down to company size in a day.
One day, spotting a blooming cosmos by chance, I recalled her briefly, heard she'd kept going.
Glad, considered reaching out—but didn't.
Time passed; she reappeared as my teammate.
We greeted casually, professionally—no surprise.
As if nothing happened.
She must've thought the same, but the current her looked nothing like the past one.
Not the Na Hye-in who'd gazed at cosmos with me under rare blue skies, dragonflies over gravel.
That disconnect wasn't just her farther gaze—I still firmly believe.
Sidenote: Back when we watched cosmos, I knew Kang Han-min was watching us from afar, casted up, on crutches.
Now they're both awakened saviors of humanity.
I didn't resent her for leading the "abandon him" call when I went missing after a general-type critically wounded me in a rift.
Cosmos means "order," they say.
Order means different things, but believers think divine providence.
Fate predetermined.
She'd said human fate's set from birth.
By her logic, she was destined savior; me, the watching hermit.
"..."
Hard to accept—and shouldn't.
Unlike before, the board had devolved—no replies to my philosophical musing.
But next day, I found one comment.
I quietly hit backspace and stood up.
Felt refreshed somehow.
Fate predetermined or not, the sense of "we're fucked" hits this vividly.
"..."
Gazing at field cosmos, I felt the chill settling fast.
Winter's coming.