WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 174: Alliances and Maneuvering (9)

──────

“Why wouldn’t there be? I don’t know the details, but there must be many. Probably.”

The woman, her wrinkles hard as old bark, did not deny the accusation.

“I told you before. Flaunting wealth is also a way to maintain power. When people see wealth spilling over, some of them will think this: How enviable. I wouldn’t mind becoming that person’s dog if it meant I could get even a little of it. I want to live more comfortably. I want to win that person’s favor....”

She let out a short sigh.

“For Zhang San Li Si, people with no courage to overturn society, no ability to become exceptional themselves, and no real purpose in life, that is their limit. Even those who insisted otherwise changed their attitude once they stood to benefit.”

Zhang San Li Si. The Zhang family’s third son and the Li family’s fourth son. It was a phrase for common, ordinary people.

“You must have seen that kind of baseness in the average person too.”

“I have.”

Gyeoul answered at once. How common had it been online? Whenever an article about some rich Arab or oil magnate appeared, the comments would overflow. I’m jealous. I want to be friends with him. Friends? I’d be fine being his butler. Please give me just one billion won. That’s pocket change to you. I’ll do anything you want.

“Simple desires like that have more power than conscience. I was no exception.”

The lieutenant general assessed herself coldly. She said she had been one of Zhang San Li Si.

“There may have been another way. But it was impossible for me. I was never that great a person. What made me who I am now was a little skill and a great deal of luck.”

“I think you are being far too humble.”

“No, no. The me of the past simply wanted to succeed. Think about it sensibly. In a country full of corruption, in an unfair society, how could someone who was simply clean succeed? Every ladder upward was inside someone else’s fence.”

A ladder beyond the fence. The metaphor came easily to Gyeoul. She could state it so simply because it was wisdom learned through experience.

“At first, I too knocked on someone else’s fence in desperation. Please let me in too. I will offer my loyalty. As if there could have been any noble conviction in that. I was nothing more than a shameless woman who joined the scramble. I had no room to be picky. Now and then, I missed having a conscience, but does it matter what color a cat is as long as it catches mice?”

There was no other path for me.

That was the general’s meaning.

“Still.”

Her tone changed.

“At least after I built my own fence, I take pride in having kept to a minimum line.”

With indifferent eyes, she stared at the watch that now belonged to Kurt Lee.

“Of course, it is true that I satisfied my own desires first. But among ordinary people, there are those who become kind only after their desires are satisfied. Like those Western bastards who built the foundation of their wealth through colonial plunder, then acted virtuous once they lacked for nothing.... Even an average person like me had that much conscience.”

Gyeoul answered.

“I understand. There are cases like Schindler too, who only learned to pity people after growing rich by clinging to the Nazis. The people he saved were extremely few compared to everyone who was massacred, but there must have been meaning there beyond numbers.”

The number of Jews Schindler saved from the Holocaust was 1,200. Compared to the six million who died, it was a very small number, but nobody denied its nobility. Assuming they were sane.

The general, having been compared to one of the Righteous Among the Nations, gave a faint chuckle.

“You are rather sharp-tongued too. It is a similar case, yes, but I am not that great a person.”

“That is my expectation of you.”

“Expectation.... I will try to live up to it. This is an era that calls for it.”

The Chinese officers listening to this conversation showed a wide range of expressions. Xieru’s fanatical supporters were especially easy to pick out. The problem was that there were not many of them.

Like them, Gyeoul hoped the lieutenant general’s words were true.

He had placed the same expectation on Jinryu’s captain, Commander Umehara Atsu. The higher people like this rose, the better the future of this world would become.

Lieutenant General Xieru seemed like she could become a reasonable partner. At the very least, wasn’t she the best Chinese person he had met so far? If the operation ended well, regardless of Kurt Lee’s existence, she would gain the position she wanted. Perhaps someday, a connection might form between her community and the Gyeoul Alliance.

“You asked what was different between me and them.”

Gyeoul followed the general’s gaze and looked at the condemned prisoners. He saw hollowed eyes crushed beneath their crimes. One pair begging for pity, one pair that felt wronged, one pair angry, one pair deep and unreadable, one pair that did not dare meet his gaze, one pair that felt nothing....

“At the root, we are not different. No, it would be more accurate to say we could not be different.”

She folded her arms.

“But there is a difference between becoming human when the time came to become human, and failing to do so.”

“I think I understand.”

“Do you really?”

“When someone’s circumstances are terrible, it cannot be helped if they become ugly. Once someone starts becoming ugly first, it gets even harder to avoid getting dirty among people like that. Who should be held responsible? The environment was simply bad. Nobody is born because they want to be born, and nobody can choose the environment they are born into.”

“Good. Very good.”

A faint satisfaction spread across the general’s dry face.

“I felt a certain amount of despair too. Even after I gained power, our great motherland was far too huge. If I was only clean by myself, that was nothing but self-satisfaction. But if I tried to change the world, far too many people would point blades at me. Looking back now, I think that was where I felt helpless. It would not be wrong to say I lacked courage.”

There was a possibility this was no more than rationalization. But Gyeoul decided not to dwell on that possibility. What mattered was the fact that she believed it.

‘There are truths that begin as lies too.’

He did not know about anything else, but that was how the human heart worked. How could anyone know what was inside a box that would not open? How could anyone find out whether another person truly loved them, or whether that love was the same as the love they felt for that person? People could not even open their own boxes.

The self one believed to be false might be real, and the self one believed to be real might be false.

Then perhaps meaning existed in the process of building oneself.

Because he thought that way, Gyeoul was still protecting his heart in this world as well.

“I have gone on too long, but in the end, it means I have only done what I could. Within those limits, I was conscientious. Within those limits, I kept faith. Within those limits, I was honorable.”

“People capable of more than that are rare. Most people who have the ability still do not do it.”

It was an issue Gyeoul often thought about, the limits of humans.

The lieutenant general nodded deeply.

“I will continue doing what I can. This is a troubled age that humans did not create. It would be good if a hero appeared, but since one has not, even an ambitious villain must step forward. Though I doubt I was ever a capable minister in times of peace.”

A capable minister in times of peace, an ambitious villain in times of chaos. The phrase originally referred to Cao Cao. Gyeoul thought of the old woman Kang Yeong-sun, who had compared him to Liu Bei and told him to win people’s hearts. What advice would she have given if she had heard this conversation? He wondered. She, who had long used writing in place of speech, was also no ordinary person, like Min Wan-ki.

This world was a mirror reflecting the past of physical reality. Here, Gyeoul felt his understanding deepen day by day. He understood how the world of his lifetime had ended up that way.

That was why Gyeoul felt a rare interest in his conversation with the lieutenant general.

The general’s self-defense, filled with aspiration, ended.

“So, what do you think after hearing what was inside me, as you wanted?”

Gyeoul did not give a long answer.

“When should the test begin?”

Lieutenant General Xieru gave a small laugh. She beckoned her adjutant over. It was not one of the lieutenant general’s fervent supporters he had noticed earlier. The look sent toward Gyeoul also carried a sense of, why someone like this?

‘I can see why she is making a show of it this way.’

Even calling it a test, the format was strange. At first, he had wondered if it was simple entertainment. People could not live without enjoyment. The madman from April Pacific had babbled that line, but even words spoken by someone wrong were not always wrong in themselves.

Lieutenant General Xieru, who coveted Kurt Lee, would not turn him into a spectacle without any thought.

The makeup of her guards was probably also the result of connections. How much one provided might also be an index reflecting how much favor one received from the lieutenant general.

“Choose the weapon you will use.”

The adjutant demanded it. Gyeoul put down his rifle and handed over his pistol.

“You may enter with only as many rounds as there are targets. I assume you have no complaint?”

“None.”

When Gyeoul showed no agitation, the adjutant wavered. With deep suspicion on their face, the adjutant removed bullets from the magazine. They counted them one by one. The number held separately was nine rounds.

Once inside, facing an empty table, Gyeoul disassembled the pistol without being told. The speed with which he laid the parts out neatly made the adjutant waver again.

A little ferocity entered the eyes of the condemned prisoners facing him.

The adjutant declared to them.

“As you have already heard, this is the final chance given to you officers. Anyone will do. Kill this man, Kurt Lee. Then all of you will be allowed to serve honorably once more. Be grateful to the lieutenant general for showing you mercy.”

The reaction was poor. They were focused on murderous intent.

The adjutant raised the bullets and placed them on the table one by one, as if counting them.

“This man has been given exactly as many bullets as there are of you. That means he must not only assemble the gun faster than you, he cannot miss even a single shot. These are highly favorable conditions for you. Do your best.”

The last words carried unusual weight.

The adjutant’s rank was senior colonel. By another country’s standards, that was equivalent to colonel or brigadier general.

So there was no way someone like Kurt Lee would matter in the adjutant’s eyes. Gyeoul wondered how much of Lieutenant General Xieru’s plan to make him the Chinese community’s Han Gyeoul had been shared, and even if it had been shared, how much sympathy it had gained. It could have been dismissed as nothing more than a vain fantasy. The general is overestimating a mere mercenary. There is no way a case like Han Gyeoul can be created so easily.

‘Is this also a place to verify that, and make them accept it?’

If so, it meant he had to show them as much as the Han Gyeoul they had seen here. He suspected there would be other tests prepared as well.

Gyeoul divided the targets in the order of 「Threat Level」 that registered against his skin through correction. The condemned prisoner who had been the calmest was also the most dangerous. They were loosening their hand, clenching and opening it. Those were no longer human eyes.

The nine condemned prisoners waited for the signal.

============================ Author’s Note ============================

Q. Weasel Tribe 1-nim: @<Days after Apocalypse> Are the game’s initial values something like infection of U.S. West Coast states, a blockade line installed, the player starting in a refugee camp, and a tutorial mission to find food? Can you start as something like a regimental commander?

A. In the setting, it is possible if you pay real money. You are given points, and they are deducted based on the valuation of the starting conditions you want. So if you have enough money, you can even start as president. Of course, that would invite another round of spending. Haha.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried