And Tomorrow
The Team Leader's body gave a faint tremor, then settled back into calm. Scraps of cake still clung here and there across her face.
"I am well. You need not comfort me."
No. There she went again. One more knock on the head and she was—
She shot to her feet and came toward me, already speaking.
"I cannot claim to be cured."
Black hair swayed, and a few scraps of cake fell away in time with it. She sat down beside me, dipped a finger into the whipped cream on the table, and smeared it across my face.
"You rascal. I have lived long enough."
Then she showed me the two dog tags hanging at her throat.
"After I cried, I learned how to smile."
Kim Seungjun. Park Jangwon. The owners of those tags.
Who was Park Jangwon...?
"I don't buy it. You're not going to collapse and bawl the second I walk out, are you?"
I watched her with open suspicion. Without a word, the Team Leader picked up a cherry resting at the edge of the table.
And—pop. She slipped it into her mouth.
"Sweet."
Then she began gathering the scattered cake, and I watched in silence. Broken sheets of sponge went back onto the board, whipped cream was spread over them, and kiwi, mandarin, cherries, and the rest of the fruit were set on top. A lopsided cake, dust and all, stood complete. The Team Leader looked at it with the corner of her mouth faintly lifted.
"Later, tell me more of the old stories."
"I shall."
"I'll be back."
"Take your time."
Right. The surprise Hana had prepared. It couldn't end like this.
I ran. Simply, madly. There was nothing else I could do. I didn't have it in me to keep standing in that room a moment longer.
My breath climbed all the way to my throat, and I stopped.
The Seoul Entry Tragedy Memorial.
Gasping, I traced the stone with my fingers. Name after name passed beneath them, and then—Park Miwon.
Mom.
Dad had never told me the details of that day. Only in pieces, like this.
Someone who looked like their leader abandoned us.
I knew, because our eyes met.
Even so, the Librarians protected us to the end. That's why we lived.
Every kind of feeling toward Librarians seemed to live in him at once. So when I said I was going to become a Librarian, I couldn't tell at all whether he was glad or whether he hated it. I tried to look into the incident, but nothing had been made public. A single memorial went up, and the case was closed.
So I must have resented him without even realizing it. That leader—no. The person they called the team leader.
Once my head cooled a little, I understood. A defense team leader would not have left her post for no reason. I knew that much. I had even started to think that baseless resentment was losing its direction, thinning away.
And then I was face to face with her. With someone I had trusted all this time.
Before I knew it....
Before I knew it. No. I had simply dumped it all on her, knowing full well. She would have had her reasons, and if the defense team leader had been Hwaran-unnie, then all the more—there would have been circumstances she could not help. I had just thrown out everything inside me. The resentment, the longing, the pain, the grief. Whatever was easiest for me. Everything I had been holding in until now.
"Haa...."
And words I never should have said.
Murderer.
Maybe the running had settled me, because all at once I saw her—the Team Leader, small as she was. Standing perfectly still with cake smeared thick across her face. Head bowed. Not moving an inch.
That was too much, Seo Hana.
Night had settled thick over the park, and the dead outnumbered the living. They had left their last traces on the stones and now waited only for the day they would be forgotten. Bleak moonlight and the lamps along the path were all that lit the place, lonely and thin. Night wind stirred the grass in soft waves, and at the far end of the path the wind had combed, a single blue figure crouched before the memorial.
"You're not crying. Looks like you've calmed down a little."
Hana startled so hard she toppled over.
"Make a sound when you walk up...."
I crouched down beside her. I was still turning over what to say first when her voice reached me.
"I'm sorry."
"I went too far with our little unnie."
Embarrassed, she scratched at the ground with a finger.
"There really were circumstances, weren't there?"
"Yeah. Want me to tell you?"
"Yeah. The Team Leader heard my story behind my back, so we're even."
Hana's face had eased considerably. While I talked she smiled a little, frowned, and closed her eyes as if swallowing pain. When the story ended, a small tear was running down her cheek.
"The Team Leader must have had it hard, too."
"Yeah."
"She lost a lot of comrades, didn't she?"
"The names carved here aren't only civilians."
I said it looking at the memorial. Kim Seungjun. Kim Seona. Seo Hyeonjeong. Choi Hyeongjun. I closed my eyes for a moment in mourning, and Hana's sobbing grew harsher.
"The Team Leader... must have cried a lot, too...?"
"Our little unnie... all this time... with the guilt... sob...."
I patted her back without a word.
"It was hard, wasn't it?"
Hana began to cry out loud. The sound stretched on and on, spreading without end, as if she were pouring out every feeling she had swallowed until now. To her heart's content. Cleanly.
She looked up at the sky once, then moved her gaze to the memorial. A faint smile—an expression I had never once seen from her in front of that stone.
At last, you've learned how to let them go.
"Jaehee. Thank you."
The tips of her ears were as red as the tip of her nose.
"Really."
She was still crouched there, looking at me steadily, and the mood was turning strange, so I changed the subject.
"Enough of that. Ahem."
"We should go see little nunim."
I turned my head for no good reason.
"We should."
"Nunim is seriously sulking."
I told a small lie.
"What?"
"She was bawling. I've never seen her like that."
I really hadn't, so it wasn't a complete lie.
"R-really?"
Hana's half-lidded eyes flew wide.
"W-we have to go, now! Get up!"
Before I could say it was a joke, she bolted. She ran shouting sorry, sorry, over and over. She was also yelling that nobody was allowed to die.
What on earth is she imagining?
The door burst open with a crash. The Team Leader stared at the two of us, startled and out of breath.
"Ah...."
While she floundered for something to say, Hana screamed and threw herself into her arms.
"I'm sorry!!"
"None of it was what I really meant!! I heard everything—no, the truth is, I also...."
Babbling, she clung to the Team Leader and seized a handful of her hair.
"What is this... the cake... why didn't you wipe it off...."
And she had slipped into casual speech without even noticing.
Hana, calm down. How am I supposed to handle you like this.
"I threw it... I'm sorry!!"
She broke down sobbing again and started a commotion, gripping the Team Leader by the hair.
"L-let go of me! You rascal... I understand...!"
The Team Leader was flailing, sunk in Hana's sea. A kraken of the deep might as well have wrapped her tight. On the sofa the two of them tangled and thrashed.
"I'm really sorry I called you a murderer!! I swear I didn't mean it... you know that, right?"
"I—I know, so let go already... you rascal!!"
I really did seem to be seeing the Team Leader flustered an awful lot today. Quite the spectacle.
Whew. My heart settled another degree. Even when I had asked about the Seoul Entry Tragedy after our first operation, I never thought it would come to this.
I let myself down onto the sofa, and my body sank into the cushions. Watching like this—yeah. This was good. This team.
"Jaehee, help me. Do not simply sit there and watch—!"
"Why? It's a nice view."
I chuckled and stretched right out to enjoy the scene. By now Hana was pulling little nunim's cheeks out like an accordion. Little nunim's hair was completely wrecked, the kind of mess you wake up with, and cake and cream were starting to smear Hana's clothes and face as well.
When it became clear that words would never get through, the Team Leader tried to escape. She roughly pried Hana's arms off, and in the instant she tried to stand—
Splat.
She lost her balance, fell, and planted her face in the cake.
"Ugh...."
A groan slipped out of her, and silence followed.
"Ah... I'm sorry, Team Leader, that was...."
The air froze in an instant, and all of us went tense.
"Delicious. You ought to try some, too!"
With that she scooped up a handful of cake and shoved it into Hana's mouth. While Hana sat there stunned, a wad of cake struck my face. It really was a strike. I hadn't even seen it. And why only me.
"You eat as well!"
One cheek plastered in cake, the little Team Leader grinned and began spraying cake in every direction. The lump mashed into Hana's face dropped off; she snatched it up and threw it back. I wasn't about to lose, so I started hurling whatever I could grab.
Sofa, table, everything a mess of whipped cream, the floor a carpet of crumbs. Fruit had burst and was leaking juice everywhere, and whether it was snowballs or whipped cream, things flew in a mindless free-for-all. The Team Leader's once-immaculate office had, before I knew it, turned into an innocent playground.
After a while of that, the three of us collapsed in exhaustion.
"All of this must be cleaned."
"If it needs cleaning, we'll clean it."
"Jaehee, are you going to clean all of it?"
Idle jokes passed between us.
"What are you talking about, Team Leader. So—what's your answer?"
"What? What were the two of you discussing?"
The Team Leader snorted.
"Must I spell it out for you to understand?"
"What is it? What did you two talk about?"
"Why? Too embarrassed to say? If you're embarrassed, you don't have to."
I looked at her with a provoking smile. Her gaze was aimed at the ceiling.
"...."
A short silence. Then—
Color spread red across the Team Leader's cheeks, and she whipped her head aside. A moment later not only her cheeks but her whole face had gone beet red.
"What!! That's so cringey...."
Hana beamed and shoved her face in close, and the Team Leader kept turning away as if she could not bear it. On the two faces that met for an instant hung a shy, overflowing happiness.
This is good.
A bruise might never fade. And so this happiness I felt today—I believe it, too, can remain forever.
A middle-aged man sat in a chair. His hair was combed back with pomade, neatly kept, and every line of his clothing held a crisp, sharp press. A cigar in one hand, a document in the other. Across from him, another man stood without so much as a twitch.
The subjugation of White Night's Hide-and-Seek: successfully completed.
Previously deployed unit, Ground Flood Response Team 2: annihilated, save for one.
However, the whereabouts of one corpse from Team 2 remain unconfirmed.
Cigar smoke poured from his mouth. Force went into the hand that tapped the cigar against the ashtray.
"So the work in the shadows is finished. Is that it."
"Then we, too, must prepare to take the stage."
Genshin gave his order to the man across from him.
"Han Taeseung. We are going to Korea."
"To Lantern Headquarters."
