You Are My Precious Comrade
After Gwon-sun finished her story, I had no choice but to sit in silence for a while.
It was a tale heavier than anything I had imagined. And for someone who had heard the official reports of that incident while serving as adjutant of the 28th Guild, it hit all the harder.
The 13th Guild's desertion and the recapture of Pyongyang… There had always been something off about it. I never imagined the truth ran this deep.
The truth was, sacrificing a unit for the sake of a greater achievement was a tactic used more often than most people cared to admit. For reconnaissance. To lure the enemy. Sacrificing the few for the many had, historically, proven its tactical validity more than once.
But even so — to thoroughly betray your own allies, discard them like a spent hand, and then desecrate their honor on top of it — that crossed a line no amount of "effectiveness" could justify.
And more than anything… what disgusts me most is the filthy, transparent motive those bastards must have been nursing the whole time.
Officially, they would have spun it like this: that it was a necessary sacrifice of the few for the many, and that it had been essential for raising allied morale. Better to say they had dealt with deserters than admit they had sacrificed their own people mid-operation — cleaner for the ears, better for discipline. An unavoidable sacrifice made for the nation, they would claim.
But that was nothing more than the dog-shit rhetoric they always wheeled out under the banner of "the greater good." I knew perfectly well that more than eighty percent of what they had done was simply sacrificing their own for personal power and career advancement.
A truly capable commander does not build results on sacrifice.
When the so-called sacrifice of the few for the many becomes routine, you may win for a while — but the accumulating losses will eventually destroy you. It is no different from mortgaging the future for a victory today. Whether in manpower or in the army's overall loyalty, a victory bought with sacrifice has a hard ceiling.
The highest form of tactics is to avoid friendly losses as far as possible and fight only those battles you can win completely. That had been the ultimate goal I had pursued all this time. People called me rigid for it, but the idea of sacrificing allies for a win had never once entered my calculations.
Most soldiers, including the upper brass, thought differently. Their goal was to produce results as fast as possible, prove their competence, and climb higher. And for that, even when other options were available, they would sacrifice their own people for the sake of a dramatic achievement — over and over again.
This was not mere speculation. As an adjutant, I had seen and heard with my own eyes and ears exactly how the adjutants and guild masters of other guilds ran their units. Some of them managed their people decently. But more than a few treated hunters — especially the lower-ranked B- and C-class ones — as pure consumables.
They wrapped it in the fine-sounding pretext of victory and nation, but in reality it was a place crawling with trash who treated human lives as chess pieces for their own power and advancement. The higher you went, the more of them there were — so there was no need to elaborate on what kind of garbage dump the upper ranks had become.
The pattern showed itself most clearly during large-scale operations, when adjutants' authority shrank and the command staff's expanded. The only difference was one of scale: the sacrifices adjutants demanded of lower-ranked hunters in peacetime were, during major operations, demanded of entire guilds.
Still, I never once received an order to become a consumable myself… Looking at it honestly, that was only natural. Our guild master is the daughter of the Deputy Minister of National Defense, after all.
With that kind of high-level backing in place, there was no chance we would be sent on a suicide mission as disposable pieces. We had taken on a few genuinely dangerous S-class assignments, but only because the battlefield situation left me no choice but to handle them myself — and even then I had to endure endless pushback from the upper brass. I heard plenty of "why are you taking such risks," but I never once received a mission with a one-hundred-percent fatality rate, the way Gwon-sun had been abandoned as a discarded pawn.
And so, as someone who had once been a soldier — and as someone who understood the full picture — I sat there feeling nothing but sorrow and regret.
After a stretch of silence, Gwon-sun spoke again, her voice a little lighter than before.
"Still… luckily, that story didn't end in total darkness. After everything, the woman called Jogs wandered for a while… but she managed to find people she could lean on, even a little. People like Are and Glass, the ones behind me right now."
"…Yeah. That's… good to hear."
I answered with a strained smile. Looking at me, she put on that familiar mischievous expression of hers — though in that moment, it did not look particularly bright to my eyes — and went on.
"Anyway, that's the boring story. You get it now, right? What kind of connection I have with that Ro Dae-seung. There's nothing like what you're worried about — no collusion with her on this current business, nothing. We hadn't even spoken once in two years. This time I just happened to recognize her face, that's all."
"No. That wasn't what I was worried about."
"Hm? Why not?"
She asked with a faint note of confusion. I looked at her and answered in a clear, steady voice.
"Because I already knew. Jogs isn't the kind of person who would get involved in something like that. As I've said before — you're a good person."
"…"
At that, Jogs turned her head slightly away. Still facing aside, she asked me in a voice that trembled, just a little, for reasons I could not quite place.
"Wh… what? Then why did you even ask? I thought you were trying to pin something on me, so I went and told you everything in detail on purpose."
She muttered it with a faintly sulky edge. In response, I told her the truth of why I had asked the question in the first place — without a single lie.
"Because I was worried, of course. When a comrade is wearing a face like that, there's no way an adjutant can just ignore it."
"Ah…"
"Even if the time we've spent together hasn't been all that long, Jogs — you are my precious comrade, and a hunter I am responsible for supporting. If something is weighing on you, or if you need someone to talk to, don't hide it. Tell me. I'll resolve what I can, and if I can't, I'll at least listen."
At my words, Gwon-sun — still turned away — flinched, just slightly. Then, the tips of her ears faintly red, she spoke in a voice that seemed to shrink into itself.
"…You really… this is why people call you a soft touch. There's a limit to being nice…"
She said it as if she were complaining. But then, in a small voice meant for me to hear, she added one more thing.
"…Still… okay. Then… when I need it, listen to me sometimes."
"Yes. Of course."
I let a small smile touch the corner of my mouth. For all her grumbling, she looked a good deal better than she had a moment ago — and that, in turn, settled something in me as well.
And then—
"Glass, phones on a plane are—"
"This is not the time for that! Aide! Get over here, now! Jogs, you too!"
The next instant, Glass's urgent voice called us over. Exchanging puzzled looks, we headed straight to where she was.
She had the internet open on her phone even inside the aircraft. Newer models were known not to interfere with flight systems, but it was still a practice best avoided as a precaution.
In that moment, though, looking at what was on Glass's phone, none of us had the luxury of caring about any of that.
"Wh… what is this…"
"The Republic of Korea… a crushing defeat… against the Abyss…?"