WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Natty

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◈ Black Badger ◈

Chapter 70: His Right Hand (2)

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I had to break the ropes with brute force the moment an opportunity arose, then throw a punch.

Trying to calm my racing heart, I glared at the man before me.

Jaeyeon exhaled roughly, his face flushed with excitement. The blade he held flicked against my throat.

“You really did lose your memory and turn stupid, huh?”

I could feel his hand trembling slightly with excitement. A shallow cut opened, and blood trickled from it.

“It is refreshing to see you rattled, though.”

“What’s the problem?”

My vision settled a little. I gauged the tension of the ropes binding my arms.

“As you can see, I don’t remember anything. What the hell did I do?”

“This is fucking ridiculous.”

Jaeyeon spat the words and slapped me across the face.

My head snapped to the left with a burning pain.

“Then explain it properly.”

I slowly turned my head back.

“If you’re not just beating people up on a whim.”

Thud.

A punch.

This time, it was the right side again. It was so like Jaeyeon to pick the exact same spot every time. The taste of blood filled my mouth. Frowning, I spat out the blood rapidly pooling there.

As I turned my head back, I considered how to provoke him. If I got under his skin, I might get a chance to free myself and fight back, while keeping his attention away from Ye-hyeon.

“Jaeyeon. Tell me what you want with some dignity.”

“Why are you being so cold? I’m trying to help you.”

His attitude changed in an instant.

I stared up in disbelief at the person looking down at me with a wounded expression.

Come to think of it, that was right. He had always been someone whose mood changed this pathologically fast.

Jaeyeon stared down at me with lowered brows, then bowed his head and rested it against mine. A quiet sigh brushed my ear.

“Haah. You won’t believe me.”

“I’ll believe you if you tell me.”

I gently played along.

“How are you planning to help me?”

I did not mention Ye-hyeon at all.

I acted as if the man lying sprawled out there was not present. If I demanded to know why he had turned him into such a bloody mess, Jaeyeon would surely get crazily excited and beat the unconscious man even more.

Jaeyeon grinned.

He lifted his head and lowered his face before mine. A drop of blood, probably Ye-hyeon’s, ran down his nose and fell onto my face. I felt him playing with my hair using his free hand.

Fiddling with it, Jaeyeon spoke softly.

“You said you forgot everything. I should help you remember.”

I answered in a gentle tone.

“Then you need to tell me.”

I could feel the blade he was playing with making a shallow cut on my throat, but I ignored it.

“What did I do to you?”

“You betrayed your own kind.”

My eyebrows rose in disbelief.

“Why are you angry about that?”

“If you were going to inflict this cursed immortality on us, you should have joined hands with your kind and won the war. Or you should have betrayed your kind without inflicting immortality on us....”

For the first time, his voice went on for a while, thick with rage.

His face twisted with fury. Something that looked like fire burned in his eyes.

The blade gleaming near my throat shot into the air.

“You can’t even hope Colton will die of old age now!”

Stab.

The knife plunged into my shoulder. Its well-honed blade sank into the muscle. A short cry escaped me at the sharp pain spreading from my right shoulder.

It had been a while since I had been stabbed with a knife like this.

When I got the chance, I had to punch him with my left hand. I clenched and unclenched the uninjured hand tied behind my back, frowning as I looked up at Jaeyeon, who was breathing heavily.

“Is this about Colton?”

Judging by the rage filling Jaeyeon’s eyes, I had guessed right.

“It’s not my fault that bastard won’t die, is it?”

He kicked me in the stomach.

For a moment, I could not breathe. Only after coughing several times did I manage to draw a proper breath again.

“It’s not your fault?”

Jaeyeon looked genuinely insane as he repeated the question.

“It’s not your fault? Humans grew old and died before you people came. They got Botox, pulled their skin tight with threads, swallowed anti-aging medicine, even built the Great Wall, and they still grew old and died. They died when wounds festered, when fire burned them to ash, when rubble crushed them to death!”

“We die too.”

My voice held no emotion.

“You too. Colton too.”

He kicked me again.

The chair toppled backward. My body slammed hard against the floor. Before Jaeyeon could rush at me in rage, I tore apart the ropes binding my wrists with brute force.

As Jaeyeon pulled the knife from my shoulder, I swung my left hand.

Thud.

I struck his right cheek cleanly. Jaeyeon flew to the right and slammed into the wall with a thud.

I needed to take the knife from him. I cut the rope around my ankles, sprang to my feet, and rushed at Jaeyeon.

Even while steadying himself, Jaeyeon landed an accurate kick. Though his foot struck me, I ducked sharply and reached for the knife. I could not grab the handle, so I gripped the tip of the long blade with my right hand.

“You brainless bastard...!”

Jaeyeon shouted as he threw a punch with his free hand.

“Looks like you remember how to swing a knife, at least!”

We grappled for a while.

His strength was incredible. The blade we were both trying to seize snapped. I gripped the broken piece and swung it, while Jaeyeon gripped the remaining blade and swung that. Our flesh was cut, and blood sprayed.

Damn it. My right shoulder would not move properly.

Crash!

A numbing impact hit the back of my head. Taking advantage of my hesitation with my right arm, Jaeyeon had slammed me into the corner. He spat blood and approached me.

The wounds on his body were healing.

This suddenly feels unfair. They say we passed enhanced bodies on to them, so why is our recovery this lousy while theirs is so good?

Jaeyeon stepped on me with his right foot as I tried to rise.

“I need to take care of the task I was given.”

He muttered as if speaking to himself, plunging a hand into his pocket.

“I’m very diligent, aren’t I?”

What he pulled out was a syringe.

The moment I saw it, I remembered what Colton had said at the meeting. That Colton would help me. That Colton would at least try.

Was that it? It had to be. There was no doubt.

But I did not want to obediently let him inject me with some unknown liquid.

I kicked Jaeyeon’s left foot hard. A curse burst from his mouth as he stumbled.

“Fuck!”

Even as he fell, he braced himself on my right shoulder and pressed down.

“Ah, that crazy bastard!”

I cursed as I pushed the needle approaching my throat away.

“Is this any way to treat an old friend you’ve reunited with?!”

“Then you should have gone straight to Colton’s side the moment you got back.”

Dear God.

With those words, I understood everything. Why Colton had briefly loosened Jaeyeon’s leash, allowing him to kidnap Ye-hyeon and me together as soon as the meeting ended.

Colton did not like that I had become Ye-hyeon’s person.

Colton was probably not angry enough to take my life, but I must have irritated Colton. That was the kind of person Colton was. The world had to be beneath Colton’s feet.

“I’d rather burn it all than hand it over.”

What context had he said that in?

A fragment of memory surfaced, distracting me, and Jaeyeon did not miss the opening.

The sharp needle pierced a blood vessel in my throat.

Stab.

“Ah.”

“Good.”

Jaeyeon gave a long smile as I reflexively grabbed his arm.

“Don’t struggle.”

The needle, which had felt as though it had pierced my muscles, slid free.

A stinging pain came. My body felt lighter. Jaeyeon smiled as he moved away from me.

My senses opened up.

Gasp.

What is this?

“I’m dizzy...”

I could not even finish speaking.

Information flooded in. Covering my mouth, I tried to process the sensations rushing over me.

My five senses had become overwhelmingly intense. This felt different from being drugged. Everything was too vivid.

The pain in my shoulder, Jaeyeon’s sharp laughter, the feel of the wall I leaned against. The smell of blood and blades stabbed strongly into my nose, and my vision became even clearer. There was too much information pouring in. I did not know what to take in first.

And another sensation settled over those overwhelming senses.

A continuous flow of sensation traveling through the moving parts of my body.

I had never managed to make Colton understand this.

“Looks like it opened up?”

Jaeyeon’s amused voice reached me.

“How does it feel?”

Drenched in cold sweat, I barely lifted my head.

Breathing hard, I looked at the person standing before me. The person who had thrown the empty syringe onto the floor and was smiling like a monster, broken knife in hand.

If he charged me now, I would die helplessly.

But he would not kill me. Colton would not have permitted it. Of course, he would not let me go peacefully either. All that remained was for Jaeyeon to unleash his rage and rain violence down on me.

There would be an opening amid the violence. I had to wait for it....

The moment Jaeyeon lifted his boot, the wall of the cramped room exploded.

Crash!

Yoon’s boot struck Jaeyeon squarely in the side. Jaeyeon flew into the opposite wall. Clutching my right shoulder, I watched my senior partner walk toward Jaeyeon, his coat fluttering.

“Yoon.”

Jaeyeon lay sprawled on the floor, coughing blood and laughing.

“It’s been a while.”

He could not continue.

Without a change in expression, Yoon seized Jaeyeon’s black hair. Then he slammed the back of his head against the floor several times. Bang! Bang! Bang! The blows were powerful enough to crack the floor. Jaeyeon thrashed violently enough to be terrifying as he struck at Yoon, but my senior partner did not budge as he moved his arm.

I was afraid Jaeyeon might die like that.

Jaeyeon did not die. In the end, he passed out, bleeding.

The surroundings fell silent at once. My senior partner released the hair he had been holding and slowly straightened his bent back.

“Yoon.”

When I called to my senior partner in a hoarse voice, Yoon asked back in a dry voice.

“Do you feel like you’re about to die right now?”

I looked at my senior, whose face showed no expression even as fury was plain to see, then slowly shook my head.

“I’ll live. Please check on Ye-hyeon.”

Yoon looked at me for a moment, then turned away.

He stepped over the unconscious Jaeyeon and walked over to my superior, who had been reduced to rags. I followed him with my eyes.

Looking at my motionless superior again, fear came over me belatedly.

How was he?

He had clearly lost too much blood. Yoon knelt on one knee before Ye-hyeon, then gently turned him over. His hair fell aside, revealing the unconscious man’s face.

A face pale as wax.

At least his face was uninjured.

“Better than usual.”

My senior partner muttered in a low voice.

“Guess it’s hard to give both of you a thorough beating at once.”

Was that something to say in front of someone with nails driven through his wrists and ankles?

But I knew Yoon had experienced this sort of thing often, and that was why he had been so tense throughout the social gathering. So I wisely kept my mouth shut. Without changing expression, Yoon checked Ye-hyeon’s pulse and wounds, took a blood syringe from his inner pocket and injected it into Ye-hyeon, then stood.

He came toward me.

“You need to be hospitalized too.”

“What about the ambulance?”

“It should be coming. I gave the Assistant our location.”

“He was not only nailed through in a few places. He must have severe internal injuries. Please keep an eye on him.”

“His organs have probably all ruptured. But that one recovers quickly, and you don’t.”

Yoon answered calmly, then knelt before me and took a first-aid kit from inside his coat.

I quietly watched him use the small kit to stop the bleeding in my arm.

My senior partner’s face showed no expression. I knew it was because he was barely forcing down the rage about to explode. If he let it slip, he might explode and kill the unconscious Jaeyeon. So he was ice-cold as he exercised his boiling patience.

They could not kill Jaeyeon.

Colton’s right hand. Colton’s one exception.

If they killed what belonged to the person at the top, ruin would come. A ruin they could neither ignore nor avoid. With extraordinary luck, they might defeat Colton, but the losses would be immense. My senior partner and superior were not stupid enough to be unable to judge that.

That was probably why they had lived like this until now.

Since before I had fallen out of the portal....

“Hildebert.”

After finishing the bleeding control, Yoon met my eyes.

As I looked at him silently, my senior partner slowly broke the silence.

His voice was dry and rough.

“You did well.”

That was the greatest praise Yoon could give me.

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