The Weight of a Life
The new lodgings reminded me of my previous life's home, a place I'd only visited a handful of times. It was officially a dormitory, but looking at the room alone, you'd have sworn it was a detached house.
"Are you sure I should live somewhere this big all by myself?"
"Well, you're special."
Hong Seong-hwa, who had followed me all the way to the dormitory, filled in the rest of the explanation. As it turned out, this wasn't a cadet's room at all—it was officer housing, the kind reserved for instructors and training officers.
I'd been told it was somewhere a little special, but I never imagined it would be in the officers' quarters. My eyes swept over the living room, kitchen, bedroom, study, and bathroom.
"See that tablet PC over there? Put in any requests you need through that. Check the handbook for the rules, and if anything's unclear, ask. Nobody's going to give you grief for it."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Most important thing. When you go out, you have to notify someone at least twenty minutes in advance. Without fail."
"Yes ma'am, without fail."
I'd expected life as a cadet to be brutally rigid, but maybe because I hadn't formally enrolled yet, the treatment was extravagant.
I carved every word of Hong Seong-hwa's briefing deep into memory. Since going out was permitted as a given, with no need to negotiate special conditions, I was thoroughly pleased about that.
"One more thing—if you fail to keep the Twin Dragon Swords under control, your leave privileges are revoked on the spot. You understand? That condition stays in effect even after you enroll."
"Of course."
I gave the sword slung across my back, wrapped in cloth, a little shrug. Because of its length it hung at a slant, and even so the tip rose higher than the crown of my head.
"I'll make absolutely sure that never happens."
And that wasn't empty confidence.
Throughout my discharge process, I had begged the Twin Dragon Swords, over and over. That I hated the idea of living locked up, so please, help me out. That I'd even appreciate it if they refrained from showing off their power the way they had earlier.
Astonishingly, the Twin Dragon Swords had granted my request. Their cooperation bordered on the bizarre, but for the moment it was nothing but good news for me.
They never did tell me why they treat me so well, no matter how I pressed…… but they swore that unless they were physically removed from my body, they would never exert their power without my permission.
Why the Twin Dragon Swords had chosen me was beyond knowing. But then, there was no way to find out until they deigned to explain it themselves.
So I shelved what I couldn't solve right now and thought only of what mattered to the me of this moment: the oath the Twin Dragon Swords had sworn, and the freedom that oath had bought me.
"Oh, Major."
"Hmm?"
Separately from all that, I held up the Major for a moment as she was about to leave. To tell her or not. The deliberation didn't take long.
"The thing is……"
I spilled everything about the orphanage, drawing on the records the original Yahui had left behind. What had looked like a carefree expression on the Major's face gradually hardened as I spoke, and by the end it had turned flat-out murderous.
"……So that's why it vanished?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The Sudden Gate that hit Geumhak-dong the day before the exam. You got caught up in it and slipped out without anyone knowing, didn't you?"
"How did you know that, Major?"
"Because I was there."
Hong Seong-hwa had been there? Then why hadn't she responded immediately…… oh, wait, she hadn't been there from the start?
"Then the soldier who talked to me……?"
"That's right. We did see each other inside the building, didn't we?"
Come to think of it, the clues had been right there. Like the audacious soldier who'd smashed through a window from midair, or the strange phantasm that swooped over the road devouring lizardmen.
It was only that the me of back then had been too desperate to survive the lizardman to notice, and afterward too drained wringing out an exhausted body to spare it a second thought.
Hong Seong-hwa had been one of the soldiers dispatched to contain the incident that day.
"You went through hell. Don't worry about the aftermath—I'll handle all of it."
Her hand ruffled my hair. Since I was taller than her, it made for a slightly awkward picture, but it didn't feel bad.
"Oh, right. I grabbed a MacGyver knife from there without realizing…… what should I do about that?"
"Hm? Ahh, hand that over too. It qualifies as an emergency evacuation, so don't worry about it."
The clothes I wore now were my original outfit, returned to me. Thanks to that, the MacGyver knife was still in my pocket.
I passed it over to her. The tool that had saved my life was now leaving me, and I felt oddly wistful about it.
『What a crude little implement.』
『A shoddy piece of work.』
"……Are you two jealous right now?"
The Twin Dragon Swords said nothing. Not that their silence made the words they'd spat out any less real.
I saw the Major off with a suppressed chuckle, one of her eyebrows arched at me. She caught on quickly that I'd been talking to the swords, gave the same repressed little laugh, and went on her way.
『What will you do now?』
『What is the plan?』
"Hmm. For today, it's an awkward hour and I'm exhausted—utterly exhausted—so I won't be going out."
For now, I set the Twin Dragon Swords on a stand prepared in one corner of the living room. It wasn't that I disliked carrying them; they were simply so long that they clattered about whenever I moved. Thankfully, the swords understood this much.
"In exchange, I'm planning to think ahead about what to eat for dinner, what to do tomorrow, and what to do the day after."
In the bedroom wardrobe hung several sets of clothing that looked as though someone had procured them in my size ahead of time.
I picked out something comfortable for lounging at home.
"If you don't mind, would you help me think it over?"
『Of course.』
『We shall comply.』
Come to think of it—what kind of things lay ahead of me now?
Unfortunately, this era existed only as fragments of Seong Gwon's recollections. My past-life advantage amounted to knowing a mere incident or two; this was a period with no perfect answer key.
At least, not until the original webtoon's timeline began—and that wouldn't start for a full fifteen years.
"Right. I'll go wash up first, then."
But so what?
Even if this era had been depicted in the original comic, nothing much would have changed. Ever since I'd broken away from the future where I was a death row inmate, the situation was bound to diverge.
And besides, human beings were never meant to know what tomorrow held. So it was fine.
If anything…… I'm rather curious how far I can go.
In my past life, I used to imagine a scenario where Yahui enrolled at the academy properly and flourished, flaunting that talent. Sure, that Yahui was now me…… but still, you know how it is. There's just something about it.
I couldn't become the perfect Yahui. I had no intention of trying, either.
But when I strove and strove with this body and this talent—how far could I push the future off its rails?
I've made it as far as the academy. So could I get past the incident where the original Yahui dies—could I stop even the events of the main story?
A future where Major Hong Seong-hwa—destined to become an instructor someday—sacrificed herself to eliminate a crisis that had come for her.
A future where one of the protagonist Baek San's motives lost an entire arm in exchange for saving him.
A future where the protagonist's childhood friend, unable to overcome the misery of reality, fell down the path of corruption……
Now that I've come all the way to the military, there's no dodging them. I can't afford to dodge them, either.
If I didn't stop those things, Korea—the society I lived in right now—would fall apart. In that sense too, I had no choice but to stand against what was coming.
Which means……
Wasn't there a saying—if you can't avoid it, enjoy it?
Maybe I'll aim for the strength and standing that Seong Gwon held in the original. Someone everyone believed no matter what they said, whose after-action reports were exceptionally allowed to precede authorization. Someone capable of handling whatever catastrophe came along.
Then I, too, would be right to savor everything I'd been given, exploit it, and rise above it.
Yes. Let's start there. Let's change it that way.
If the world turned out different from the one I knew, that itself would be proof that I had changed the future.
"Here at Hwadam Military Academy, we have a special tradition."
Time flew, and enrollment day at Hwadam Army Special Military Academy arrived.
Perhaps because I'd been allowed a taste of the outside world, something impossible in my past life, the intervening days had felt as short as an hour each. If my stay could have been extended, I'd have gladly extended it. The only problem was that it couldn't be.
"However, before we proceed with that tradition, one thing."
Separately, the entrance ceremony itself was nothing special. Cadets and their families were gathered in the auditorium for roughly two hours of solemn proceedings, and that was all.
"Everyone here—do you know what the Hwadam Army does?"
Now that the ceremony was over, all of us freshmen stood gathered in the auditorium in front of the dormitory, facing the first tradition of Hwadam Military Academy.
The training officer swept his gaze over us from the stage.
"As one arm of the nation's war readiness, a military force that maintains equipment and personnel against Dimension Gates in peacetime and wartime alike."
While everyone else hesitated, someone brave enough spoke up. A young man with golden hair and blue eyes, unmistakable for his blue-blooded, fastidious air.
"And?"
The man standing before us was not satisfied with the dictionary definition he'd been given.
The training officer's eyes swept across us, drilling for an answer.
"We kill otherworldly creatures."
In the end, I opened my mouth too. Knowing the answer, I had no desire to endure that heavy silence a moment longer than necessary.
"Correct. The Hwadam Army kills otherworldly creatures and destroys Dimension Gates. I trust you all know at least that much."
Only after my answer did the training officer nod slightly. His satisfaction didn't last.
"But did you stand here today truly knowing that?"
He whipped his head around and swept his gaze over the assembled crowd, and those eyes were exactly like a hunting falcon's.
"Otherworldly creatures is the collective term for the beings that dwell inside Dimension Gates and try to spill out beyond them. They are hostile and aggressive toward us to an almost uncanny degree."
"……"
"And yet they are still living things. You there—do you know what a living thing is?"
The training officer picked out a single cadet and posed the question. He seemed to have realized that if he simply waited for answers the way he had before, only the same handful would ever speak.
The chosen cadet flinched violently.
"S-something that's alive……?"
"Correct. Living things are things that live. Life. As we do, and as the countless creatures dwelling in this world do."
Saying this, the training officer tapped the box that had been set before him.
Bwok bwok bwok, flap flap. Something presumed to be a chicken thrashed wildly inside the box.
The cadets who finally caught on to what the box was shuddered as one, for good measure. Some of the cadets seated in the auditorium chairs fidgeted, avoiding the training officer's gaze.
"Kill, or be killed. A famous saying—you all know it. But do you know the words that follow it in 'The Wilderness'?"
"'……Which is why I must face squarely what it is that I kill.'"
The closing line someone offered was the very sentence that represented the Hwadam Army—and the reason I had loved the webtoon Codename: Baby.
As the training officer lingered over one of the famous quotations of this Earth, he touched the box once more. Coo-coo-coo. A chicken's clucking, woefully mismatched to the solemn atmosphere, stretched on and on.
"Otherworldly creatures are a threat to humanity. Therefore humanity has the right to stand against them in self-defense, and we are the executors and guardians of that right."
"……"
"But the righteousness of our right does not render everything we do absolutely right."
My tongue moved reflexively inside my mouth.
"We must remain conscious, at all times, of the weight of what we do. We must know the weight of the act of taking a life."
The training officer's words overlapped with what I'd always told myself.
"Bear this in mind. We do not kill otherworldly creatures because killing them is right. We exclude them because we must go on living."
With those words, the training officer opened the lid of the box.
COOO-KOOORRRK!
His thick hands lifted the chicken firmly into the air—one hand gripping near its neck, the other holding its head.
The cadet seated beside me reflexively turned away.
"Do not look away."
Had he predicted someone would do just that? Or had he simply learned it from experience?
The training officer did not immediately perform the act everyone expected. Instead, he gave every soul seated in the tiered auditorium time to fix their eyes on him.
"This tradition exists not to torment you. It exists to teach you the weight of killing in order to live. By witnessing firsthand how the meal you will eat tonight comes to be made, you will come to understand the deaths that await you."
Crack!
The chicken's neck turned lightly, almost gently. A life that had been alive until that very instant snuffed out in the blink of an eye.
"Do not avert your eyes—face it. Never forget what kind of deaths we live atop. That is the greatest respect we can show to the lives we have taken."
Well then. An academy that didn't let up from day one.
Thanks to having encountered this in the comic beforehand, I wasn't particularly shocked. And asking whether wringing a chicken's neck was a big deal for someone who'd already killed a lizardman—I had no rebuttal to offer, admittedly.
But killing an enemy in a life-or-death situation and killing in the middle of peaceful daily life were, after all, rather different feelings.
"For the record, on the evening of the last day of the first week, every one of you will kill a chicken."
Still, there was no room to say you couldn't do it. Setting aside the mockery of being unable to kill a chicken while claiming you'd kill monsters, failing this test would bloom a very different kind of hardship.
"Anyone who feels they truly cannot manage it will report to a qi-training cadet or a training officer before then. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Sir, yes, sir!"
After all, as the training officer had just explained, this was the probationary enrollment period. Because we were not yet formally enrolled, this was the window in which anyone deemed unsuitable was cut without mercy.
Back out here meant straight out of the academy.
"I say this only so you know: you may give up. Being unable to take a life is nothing to be ashamed of, and it will not make you cowardly deserters."
Of course, forcing yourself to do something you felt you couldn't, out of fear of dismissal, wasn't right either. As the training officer's parting words, added out of an old man's kindness, suggested.
"Remember this. The Hwadam Army is an organization that kills otherworldly creatures, and the Mobile Special Task Force that Hwadam Army Special Military Academy produces is deployed to the most brutal frontlines of them all. Before you ever face squarely what it is you kill, this is a place where the premise—kill, or be killed—comes first."
"……!"
"Grasp, objectively, what you are and are not capable of—and accept it. The ability to acknowledge your own shortcomings is a capability in itself."
Put somewhat coldly, the message amounted to: if you can't even kill a chicken, don't dream of joining the special task force that hunts otherworldly creatures.
No one could call that an insult, though. Facing otherworldly creatures was a matter of staking your life.
And so it was better to be filtered out here than to cling on and die in the field. Better for the Hwadam Army, which would otherwise have to watch precious, hard-raised personnel die for nothing—and better for the cadet, who would otherwise pay with his own life.
"For the record, this tradition produces roughly twenty dismissals a year on average. So you needn't feel the fear of 'what if I'm the only one who gives up.' Be honest with yourselves."
And so, depending on the eye of the beholder, this tradition was either cruelty…… or a necessary evil.
"Move out in accordance with your squad leaders."
And with that, the first day of Hwadam Military Academy came to a close. Quite different from anything I'd imagined—but the most realistic starting point there was.