Don't Step on That Landmine
After that, I ended up talking with Tasha for quite a while longer. Despite her looks, she turned out to have a far more honest and straightforward personality than I expected. She answered every question I asked without dodging or holding back. Thanks to that, I learned more about her than I’d anticipated. The most important detail was that Tasha’s mother had been Korean. Which meant Tasha was half-Korean, half-Russian. She had lived her whole life in Russia, but she wasn’t entirely disconnected from Korea.
“So you learned Korean from your mother?”
“Correct. She taught me herself.”
Her wording was oddly stiff for someone who learned it from her own mother. “That sounds pretty rigid. Did your mother work in the military by any chance?”
“Not the military, but I was told it was something similar.”
Not the military, but something similar. That phrasing gave me a strange sense of déjà vu…
“Was your mother a superhuman?”
“Affirmative. How did you know?”
“Just a hunch.”
A superhuman. A place similar to the military. And on top of that, speech patterns so familiar they practically screamed PTSD. This… was it for real?
“Then you came to Korea alone? What about your mother?”
“She passed away.”
“Ah, I see. Sorry.”
“There is no need to apologize. It is already in the past.”
Something felt off. If her mother had already passed away, why would she come to Korea? And with no money at all? Plus, there was a very high chance her mother had come from that place.
The average service length in the Special Task Force was around five years. The brass rode you like dogs, the public cursed you like dogs, and the work itself was lethally dangerous. It was the poster child for 3D hell jobs. Unless you were forcibly conscripted like I had been, surviving past the five-year mark was brutal. That was why the Special Task Force officially allowed retirement after five years. For women especially, the most common route was retiring through marriage. In those cases, your records were cleanly erased and you returned to civilian life. Since the only thing the public ever knew was your code name, once the Superhuman Bureau wiped your file, there were no loose ends.
Former female operatives from the Special Task Force were surprisingly popular. Anyone with the guts to volunteer for that infamous unit had to possess extraordinary resolve and mental strength. As a result, most of them had decent personalities too. The only real drawback was their unfeminine, muscular builds, but unless you were a freak like me, most developed lean, attractively toned bodies. Men who liked that sort of thing went absolutely crazy for it. On top of that, because they’d lived such harsh lives, they found joy in small things easily. To men, they seemed like living national treasures, so they snatched them up without hesitation.
I suspected Tasha’s mother had followed that exact path—retired through marriage and officially left the unit. Honestly, that part didn’t matter much. Finding traces of an unnamed senior from my past in my surroundings was just mildly interesting. But if that senior had already lost her life and her daughter Tasha had suddenly shown up in Korea with no resources, it would be strange not to sense that something darker lay beneath the surface. Coming to your dead mother’s homeland completely broke? Anyone could see how abnormal that was.
And there was one more thing. The fact that a former Special Task Force member had already died felt wrong in itself. A few years in that unit turned your body into something that simply didn’t die from ordinary accidents. Of course, it wasn’t impossible. No one was truly invincible. If it was illness rather than an accident, even a superhuman could pass away young. Our recovery and immune systems far surpassed those of normal people, but certain aggressive cancers could still be fatal, and diseases like leukemia were particularly dangerous.
Yeah. That would work. So I’d just ask Tasha one more thing—whether her mother had truly died from an illness.
But my instincts were screaming at me not to ask. This is a landmine you must never step on.
Someone might ask what kind of leap in logic that was. But my entire life had been painted with those kinds of leaps and misfortunes. If I ignored my gut and charged forward anyway? No sane person would make that insane choice.
Damn it. This was exactly why I tried not to pry into other people’s personal lives.
The reason I avoided digging into others’ private affairs went back to my Special Task Force days. When comrades or juniors you’d shared so many stories with suddenly died in the line of duty, it would completely ruin your mood for the day. No, not just the day. Once something like that hit you, you could expect to be a wreck for nearly a month. After enough experiences like that, you naturally became extremely cautious about touching anyone’s personal matters.
If I asked Tasha about the circumstances of her mother’s death and it turned out to be exactly what I feared, could I really just ignore it? I had lived for ten years with the mindset that once you were in the Special Task Force, you were in it until you died, and that anyone who messed with it—even if they were already dead—would never rest in peace. Could I really brush it aside just because I wasn’t an operative in this life?
To be honest, I didn’t need long explanations. The moment I heard that her mother hadn’t died from illness, my tactical mind would immediately kick into gear.
That was why I had to stop here. If I took one more step…
My mouth suddenly felt bone dry.
I shouldn’t have asked about personal matters in the first place. Living through the second round had changed a lot of things, and my iron rule about never touching private affairs had been slowly crumbling. This incident felt like it had snapped my discipline back into place.
That’s right. No matter how close a teammate she was, I shouldn’t show interest in personal matters.
“By the way, that tint has a unique scent.”
“Ah, you think so too? The base is cherry, but it’s not overpowering—just subtle and pleasant. I really like it.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I did not buy it. I received it. From Yu Hana.”
“You seem to get along well with Yu Hana.”
“Does it… appear that way?”
“Probably everyone feels that way.”
My lips had been so dry I’d put on tint, but Tasha’s attention shifted to it and the topic naturally moved on. Was this lucky? The situation had been getting awkward, yet the mood had flowed elsewhere on its own. My reason, which had been waffling between curiosity and self-control, finally seemed to be doing its job again.
Just for the record, this tint was something Yu Hana had given me as a gift. The original Na Yeri had owned quite a few cosmetics since she liked heavy makeup, but her taste was questionable, so there weren’t many usable ones. Since I didn’t enjoy putting on makeup anyway, all those useless items were just more clutter. I’d thrown most of them out, keeping only a few basics. Using that stuff would only ruin the skin that would become my reliable future asset.
Yu Hana, after watching me, had handed over several cosmetics. Since they came from someone as well-off as her and she’d clearly put thought into it, they were all fairly high-end. The standout among them was this tint. Its scent was so nice it became my favorite out of everything she’d given me.
The fact that even Tasha—who didn’t seem interested in dressing up—showed interest in this tint proved it really was a quality product. As the topic shifted to the tint, the awkward atmosphere melted away like water. To think I’d end up owing Yu Hana a favor. Truly, the longer you live, the more you see.
Of course, Tasha’s comment about me seeming especially close to Yu Hana was a bit annoying, but I decided to let it slide this time. After all, she wasn’t entirely wrong.
“Ah, I’m a bit late, aren’t I? I’m sorry. Something suddenly came up…”
“Did you finish your work?”
“Yes. Making busy people wait like this… You’re the ones from Cha Entertainment, right? So this is Miss Na Yeri. And this is Miss Tasha.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Haha, nice to meet you. I’m the rapper Roadkill.”
And just then, Roadkill—who had left saying he had something urgent—burst into the studio, panting. Nice timing. Thanks to him, the personal conversation I’d shared with Tasha slowly sank beneath the surface of my memory. Along with the relief of not having crossed the final line.
Roadkill was a more normal person than I’d expected. For starters, even though he looked to be in his late twenties, he didn’t immediately start speaking casually to us. That alone showed his character was at least somewhat acceptable. There were far too many people who couldn’t even manage basic courtesy like that.
“Miss Tasha, your Korean is much more fluent than I expected. I’ll be honest—I was a little nervous when I heard you were Russian. Foreigners usually have different diction and such. And rap is heavily dependent on diction, so…”
“My mother was Korean.”
“Ah, I see. That’s really fortunate.”
His tone was lighter than expected too. It was hard to believe this was the same Roadkill who had screamed about cursing the world and wanting to kill everyone. Rap with this kind of personality? It had to be part of his gimmick. Anyway, the word “sincerity” seemed to have been completely deleted from the entertainment industry’s dictionary.
The only thing that was undeniably real was Roadkill’s voice tone. Looking at the comments on his tracks, many said things like “He tore it up from the first line” or “The tone carried everything.” His tone really did mesh perfectly with heavy, aggressive drill beats. Extremely low with sharp, scraping edges in places—it was a rare quality.
“Even though it’s called a rap lesson, it’ll probably be easier if you think of it as exchanging opinions rather than strictly learning something. Once you learn the very basics, the rest is up to you. Just take my opinions as reference.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. In the end, if it’s not your own story, the lyrics won’t come out properly. That way your style stays alive and your skills improve faster. The other rappers from our label will give feedback together too. More opinions are better, right? Of course, just take those as reference as well.”
His mindset was better than I expected. Suggesting we exchange opinions instead of one-sided teaching and learning meant he was acknowledging us as fellow rappers on equal ground. It wasn’t easy for a mid-tier rapper to say something like that to idol trainees who hadn’t even started rapping yet. Then again, that kind of thinking was probably what allowed him to take on teaching rap to idol trainees in the first place.
As expected, the world was wide and full of interesting people.