Villainy (3)
"You always disappoint me."
I hung my head low, biting down hard on my lower lip, then slowly lifted my eyes to look at her—her brilliant blue eyes flashing, staring straight through me. At the blonde woman boring a hole into me with her gaze.
"And what is it this time?"
"……"
"No matter how many times I read the reports, I simply cannot understand."
Mrs. Luna Luvia. A supervisor dispatched from the UN, the Bureau of Security's superior organization. Her principal duties were surveillance, auditing, and personnel coordination for the Bureau. Any commotion or conflict like today's was always mediated by her.
"Do you perhaps feel that my line of questioning is unreasonable right now?"
I shook my head. I had never once thought so. Luna was a person who genuinely strove to assess every situation objectively. The very fact that she treated me—a woman who did nothing but invite contempt—the way she did was proof of that.
"Look me directly in the eye. And say something, eve—... Ah."
She let out a sharp intake of breath and clapped a hand over her mouth.
"I'm sorry. I had no intention of insulting you. I know your situation better than anyone."
I nodded slowly. Everyone in the Bureau knew I was mute. Luna was no exception.
"Phew... Is there anything you'd like to say for yourself?"
Luna held out a notepad and pen.
"Even something trivial is fine. Why you spilled coffee on her—write me, in detail, what you were feeling and what you intended by that act, and I will do my utmost to judge you fairly and objectively."
"……"
I shook my head firmly. Luna's gaze turned complicated.
"You have nothing to say?"
Nod.
The moment I nodded—
"Commander. If you're going to be like this, it puts me in a difficult position as well. I'll have to determine your disciplinary action based solely on the reports filed and the agents' statements—"
Luna paused for a moment.
"...Every single testimony is against you."
I nodded.
"Taken together with everything you've done before, it means I'll have to hand down a fairly heavy disciplinary sanction."
I could accept that. I had braced myself for it from the start, after all.
"Do you want to be driven out of your post?"
A jolt. I opened my eyes wide and stared at Luna, shaking my head firmly—again and again, over and over.
"Phew. Of course, it won't come to that. It's a simple personnel management matter, and I don't have the authority to expel you anyway."
Hoo.
I let out a sigh of relief, and Luna blinked—a faint expression of surprise on her face.
"Then let's do it this way."
"……"
"A full three months' salary docked, plus a reduction to the pension you'll receive after your term ends. We'll close the matter at that."
I nodded. A sign of agreement.
"You've offered no statement at all, so there's nothing to be done. A sanction of this weight... surely it will be enough to make you reflect on yourself from now on."
A heavy sanction, was it. It didn't feel that weighty to me. A full salary cut. The commander's position came with a considerable salary, but not a single won of it ever reached me—it meant nothing. And the pension was the same. Something from so far in the future that it barely registered.
I accepted Luna's terms with a small bow, offered a shallow courtesy, and was slowly making my way out of the supervisor's office when—
"Commander."
"……"
"Don't answer. Just listen."
What could this be about? I turned my head to look at Luna.
"You truly don't belong here."
"……"
"You do nothing but stir up discord and earn everyone's resentment. And every time trouble breaks out, I'm the one who has to step in and mediate. That has its limits, you know."
What was she trying to say? My eyes went wide.
"So let this be where it ends."
"……"
"There are still plenty of other paths open to you. There's no need for you to stay here. This is advice, given for your own sake."
I shook my head. Words I had no need to hear any more of. And just as I turned to leave—
"...Commander."
She blocked the door with her body in an instant—a span of time so brief I could hardly call it a moment at all.
A psychic ability...?
Luna Luvia. She had appeared in the original game too, playing a major role in rebuilding the Seoul that had been reduced to ash. The protagonist's steadfast ally. But I'd never known she had abilities of her own.
"Now, look."
Luna pulled off her suit jacket and blouse. Half-naked, nothing but a bra beneath.
"……"
Luna's left arm—was machinery. Precisely, a prosthetic. It had been crafted so meticulously that no one could tell while she was dressed. And there was more. Across her abdomen ran a huge scar, carved horizontally through her skin.
"I never told you, but I too was once a Unit, active in Spain. This is my medal of honor."
"……"
"Do you know what happened back then?"
I didn't.
Luna, with unwavering resolve, gripped my hand tight. Towering over me, pressing down with her full height, she continued.
"The base was annihilated. A single person's mistake exposed the base's location completely, and the Angels from across Europe came swarming down on us all at once."
The Gibraltar Annihilation Incident. I did have a memory of hearing about it—according to the lore, the entire doctrine and deployment guidelines for Units had been overhauled in the aftermath of that event.
"The survivors, myself included, numbered fewer than ten. The world believes we were wiped out to a man. But I—I survived."
"……"
What could she be, telling me this?
"This work is not the easy, simple thing you imagine it to be. It does not earn you the public's applause, or honor, or anything of the kind."
I averted my eyes. Trying to avoid Luna, trying somehow to escape the supervisor's office—
"Look me in the eye! I am talking about human lives!"
A jolt. Luna's shout rang through the room. It was the first time she had ever pressed me like this. Flustered, I couldn't find my voice.
"Do you know who died the most cruelly of anyone that day? It was the commander of Gibraltar Base! Once they discovered he was the commander, he could only die after enduring endless, endless torment. Right before my, my own eyes—"
"……"
"And I could do nothing, nothing at all, as he died in a way that horrific."
Thud.
Luna seized my shoulders, hard—hard enough to hurt. Grip locked, she began shaking me senseless.
"So you too."
Luna's voice grew quieter and quieter.
"...If you value your life at all, then put an end to this work. I mean it as sincere advice."
Nod. I nodded my head.
...It doesn't matter anyway.
If my life had ever been precious to me, I would have left Korea long ago. In the prologue, all of Seoul is annihilated. And I will be the one to stop it. For their sake. To protect them.
"I got a little carried away there. You may go."
I left my seat. I could feel Luna's gaze on my back, staring after me, dazed.
"...She really is a strange one."
Luna Luvia sank deep into thought over the Commander. She simply could not get a grasp on what the girl wanted.
Why did she insist on holding the commander's post at all? With a body like that. With the treatment she received.
"Phew."
The Commander. A naive girl barely come of age, who—whether she knew it or not—flaunted her inferiority complex at the other Units, picking fights with everyone around her at every turn. The very source of discord within the Seoul Bureau. If there was a single thing she had going for her, it was one thing only. Her looks.
Raven-black hair that paired beautifully with her sharp, keen eyes. Skin far paler than most Easterners'. An elegant, refined set of features drawn in graceful lines—a beauty that carried at once an Eastern mystique and a cold, wintry air. Just sitting still was enough to command a room. And there was even something achingly sorrowful about her, something pitiable—in a word, a desolate beauty.
A face that could be loved by doing nothing at all.
And yet the Commander's beautiful face was forever twisted with sulkiness and irritation.
"Honestly, walking a different path with that face of hers would suit her far better."
Luna had shown the girl her sincerity without meaning to. Had exposed even the wounds she never, ever revealed to another soul. The scar that had made it impossible for her ever to become a mother again. She had bared the vivid mark across her abdomen and pressed hard, because she had wanted to open a different road for the Commander.
But the Commander had refused her proposal without a moment's hesitation. Even with death itself put into words, she had remained eerily composed. Not the slightest tremor of doubt.
Why? Why was she so desperately determined to stay in the commander's seat?
"Fool."
Luna slumped over her desk and thought, and thought.
"I hear she's getting disciplined. Couldn't have happened to a better person."
A woman with flowing sky-blue hair. Lee Sera delivered the words with a perfectly blank face.
"It's all thanks to you, Sera!"
"That damned woman. Knew it'd come to this."
While the other Units all chimed in with their agreement—a small figure with a head of snow-white twintails and the air of a tomboy through and through, Kang Yerin, shuffled awkwardly in place and stared at the floor.
This was the Units' private conditioning hall. A training facility outfitted with the finest of everything.
Unable to join the conversation, Yerin kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Lee Sera, who had been watching her for a while now, spoke up.
"She made you cry, so she brought it on herself. It's only right she takes her punishment."
"U-um, unnie?"
"Why the long face?"
Yerin couldn't bring herself to say it. Wasn't it all... a bit much?
What she'd heard from Sera had come as quite a shock to young Yerin. Young or not, she was still only a first-year in high school.
"It's nothing. Just... nothing."
"You're worried about her. The Commander."
Yerin's eyes flew wide.
"No! I couldn't care less about someone like her! Really, honestly!"
"It's okay. You've always been kind-hearted. But still—"
Sera lowered her voice.
"That woman doesn't deserve your sympathy. I mean it."
"...Yes, unnie."
"That's right. She pushed some ridiculous job onto you and then treated you like absolute garbage, so why waste your feelings on her? Don't give it another thought!"
"Okay."
Right. Time to forget it.
Like the way, when Sera had gone up to see what was happening in the commander's office that day—
the Commander had been alone in the bathroom, sobbing.
Time to forget that too. And the utterly heartbroken look on her face as she wept.
...
There's just no way that's possible, right...?
But with the image of the Commander like that circling round and round in her head, somehow—her condition was starting to suffer.
"May I head out first? I have school tomorrow."
"Sure. I'll walk you—"
"No need! I'm fine, really!"
Dash!
Yerin bolted for the changing room in a flash.
And then, having changed her clothes and climbed into the elevator with her heart in a fluster—
"……"
The Commander. She was getting off work.
Her eyes were puffy and swollen—had she been crying again?—but even that looked beautiful.
Ah, um...
Should she say something? Offer a word of comfort, maybe?
...No. Even Yerin's shallow grasp of social cues told her this much: this was not the moment to strike up a conversation.
A jolt. The Commander flinched slightly, then stole a glance at Yerin, who had stepped into the elevator beside her. She could feel it—the way the woman was trying, desperately, not to be conscious of her.
...What was going on?
Her curiosity shot up like a rocket.
Ding.
Ground floor. The Commander stepped out first, and Yerin followed.
The Commander, slowly holding her ID card to the exit gate, walked on toward the end of her shift. And Yerin, holding her own ID card to that very same gate, just as slowly—began to trail after her.
R-right. This is payback for her calling me garbage. If I find out where she lives... unnie will be happy too!
All while telling herself exactly that.