Watcher
"Everyone gather up. Emergency meeting."
"What happened?"
"Did Iris cause trouble again?"
Right after the broadcast ended, I immediately called the two comrades I was living with into the living room.
Dragged out without any idea what was going on, they stared at me for a moment in confusion; then, sensing something ominous in the air, their faces quickly hardened.
"Have either of you gotten any messages from someone you didn't know lately?"
"No, not me."
"Neither have I. What's going on?"
Whether I should count that as good news or bad news, I couldn't say, but at least it seemed the two of them hadn't noticed anything unusual.
Gathering my tangled thoughts, I forced the information I'd managed to piece together out into the open.
"Looks like the NIA is watching us."
"The NIA? Isn't that Solomon's intelligence agency? Why would they suddenly show up?"
Akira, seated beside me, tilted her head in confusion.
Iris looked just as lost, narrowing her eyes as she questioned me.
"Did something involving the NIA happen during today's stream?"
"Yeah. A username written in Hebrew flashed by in chat for a second."
"Couldn't that just have been a viewer from a country that uses Hebrew?"
Iris asked that back in a troubled tone.
What she was wondering was perfectly normal and reasonable.
Internet streaming was a service available in countries all over the world, after all, so it was entirely possible for a foreign viewer looking for something worth watching to stumble into my stream by accident.
At first, I thought I was just overreacting too.
At least, until I figured out what that Hebrew ID actually meant.
"Mitah."
"Huh?"
"It's a word used in Hebrew to mean 'to watch' or 'to monitor.'"
A foreigner comes into a Korean nobody's stream, and he's Hebrew-speaking, at that—and he uses the word "monitor" as his username?
However I looked at it, something about it felt rotten.
Judging by their expressions, Iris and Akira seemed to agree, because both of them went pale at once.
"Hmm... Yeah, that is strange. It's too much of a coincidence to pass off as chance..."
"If that ID showed up in chat, doesn't that mean they actually sent a message? Did you check what it said?"
Of course I had.
After combing through the chat log, I finally found the single line left behind by "Mitah."
"Keep your mouth shut (יד לפה)."
"...Hah."
At that blunt, simple line, Akira let out a dry laugh, while Iris squeezed her eyes shut and frowned.
Keep my mouth shut, huh.
They were probably worried that information about the Cerberus Squad and the existence of SINS might leak out to the outside world.
I wasn't some lunatic who went around cheerfully blabbing foreign military secrets, so on stream I'd only talked carefully about the old stories from when I served as an ordinary soldier in the International Legion.
One wrong word from my mouth, and there'd be nothing strange about waking up tied to some unfamiliar basement the next morning.
"I deliberately didn't mention anything classified at all..."
Even when I introduced myself to viewers, I only spoke about my record of having fought as part of the International Legion. I hadn't mentioned the Cerberus Squad's name, let alone said I had served in a special forces unit or taken part in special operations.
In other words, there wasn't even a scrap of material for the NIA, Solomon's intelligence agency, to nitpick.
Still, it seemed the NIA was a far more security-obsessed organization than I'd expected.
To go so far as to assign people specifically to watch retired soldiers...
Were they trying to seal every possible leak before it started?
"Using a Hebrew username to send a message like that was probably a warning. Because internet broadcasts are exposed to an unspecified public, even if I slipped and let one thing out, that information would spread uncontrollably fast."
"That does seem likely. The leader hasn't mentioned anything classified on stream, but if they're still doing this..."
"...How do you know that?"
"Huh?"
It had been so natural I almost let it go.
How did Iris know I'd never mentioned anything classified on stream?
Feeling my suspicious stare, Iris visibly flustered and lowered her head.
Even so, when my silent pressure continued, she confessed the truth in a voice so small it was practically a whisper.
"Actually, I've been watching the stream on my phone every time the leader goes live..."
"...Fuck."
That was somehow embarrassing.
I hadn't been acting cute or putting on a show like the male streamers in this world, but still, the fact that the person closest to me had been watching me broadcast like that made me acutely self-conscious.
"N-now! Let's not wander off topic! Finish what you were saying!"
Clap.
Clap.
Just as the conversation was about to veer completely off into the weeds, Akira clapped her hands to get our attention back.
Right. This wasn't the time to feel embarrassed because I'd just gotten publicly roasted.
I needed to deal with the problem in front of me first.
I brought the focus back to the central issue: the NIA watching us.
"Anyway, at this point it's basically certain that I'm being monitored. I guess because I'm streaming online, they deliberately sent that message. And you two said you haven't received any texts or calls or anything, right?"
"That's correct."
"Yes. We haven't had any contact from abroad since before coming to Korea."
"...Still, be careful. We're all from the same squad, so there's no way it's only me being watched. They must be monitoring you in real time from somewhere unseen too."
That was basically one hundred percent certain.
SINS and the existence of the Cerberus Squad were secrets Solomon's government had to keep buried, so of course it would be unsettling for the people carrying those secrets to be wandering around freely outside the country's borders.
Even if we'd signed confidentiality agreements, if someone truly intended to leak classified information, they could simply ignore a piece of paper like that.
They'd probably monitor everything we did online, send agents to keep an eye on us, and record our every move twenty-four hours a day.
Maybe there were even people hiding somewhere around our house right now, watching us.
Thinking about it that way gave me a faint chill.
What, were they some kind of voyeurs? Watching other people's daily lives without the slightest consent from the people involved?
"For now, let's contact the others overseas too. Tell them to keep their mouths shut so they don't accidentally leak anything classified."
"That would probably be best. Those guys aren't the type to run their mouths carelessly, but 'what if' is always a possibility."
"Mm... This is getting really annoying... I thought all the hard stuff would be over the day our squad was disbanded..."
"Well, they have their own circumstances too. I won't pretend it feels good to be watched, though."
I lightly stroked Akira's head to soothe her as she lay there pouting and grumbling, then pulled out my phone.
First, we needed to decide who would contact whom.
"I'll handle Jennifer. Iris, contact Frida. Akira, try Tessa."
"Understood."
"It's been a while since I contacted Tessa... She's probably going to chew me out for not calling sooner..."
Ignoring Akira's quiet muttering, I flipped through my contacts and found Jennifer's number.
Jennifer had been in touch recently while helping me prepare for the stream, so if I called her, she was likely to pick up right away.
Without the slightest hesitation, I moved my finger over her number, and...
"...?"
Just before I could place the call, the phone rang suddenly in my hand.
Unfortunately, it wasn't someone I knew.
Unknown caller.
"..."
The smell of something rotten was already thick in the air.
I couldn't remember ever seeing a normal case from an unknown caller like this.
"Hello?"
Still half doubtful, I answered the phone.
[It's been a while, Demon of Solomon.]
"...NIA."
Sure enough. The kind of unknown number you could never trust.
Hearing the NIA agent's voice speak my moniker in fluent English, I sighed and stood up from my seat.
"Are you the one who sent the chat message today under the ID 'Mitah'?"
As soon as the name NIA slipped out of my mouth, Iris and Akira stared at me, their red eyes blinking like meerkats, and I waved a hand to reassure them before speaking to the person on the other end.
[You don't need to know that.]
"Fine. That's not really important anyway."
When the NIA agent refused to answer me in that cold, businesslike way, I shrugged it off.
This wasn't the first time an intelligence officer had treated me with such a dry, impersonal attitude.
Rather than drag this out with an annoying exchange of cautious probing, I decided to get straight to the point.
"Get to the point."
[Something has happened in Solomon.]
"What happened? A coup?"
[I can't discuss the details. It's classified.]
Then what was I supposed to do about that?
Annoyance creeping into my voice, I snapped into the phone.
"Then what do you want to say?"
[Soon, the NIA will be making direct contact with you. Until then, please exercise extreme caution regarding classified information.]
Click.
"Hah."
In the end, the NIA agent said only what he wanted to say and hung up.
What a joke.
While I was quietly marveling at the agent's incredible lack of manners, Iris walked up beside me and asked cautiously,
"What did they say? Is it serious?"
"Nothing major. Same as always with the NIA—they can't tell me the details because it's classified, or whatever..."
That's why I hated intelligence officers.
Everything was classified this, classified that.
If you're going to give me information, then give it properly. Don't leave me hanging in some vague half-answer; there's nothing more irritating than that from the listener's side.
"Oh, right. And they said they'll be contacting me directly soon."
"The NIA said that?"
"Yeah. Something happened in Solomon, apparently."
Whatever it was, one thing wouldn't change: it would interfere with my peaceful life as a streamer.
They'd better hope it's nothing serious.
Otherwise, I'd make them into minced meat.
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