WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 216: The End of April (3)

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After Gyeoul returned, the number of soldiers claiming to be sick or insane suddenly increased.

“Those things aren’t even men.”

That was Private Brady Harper. Gyeoul gave him a mild warning: keep his eyes on the horse. The two of them were holding longe lines and training the horses. The soldiers learning alongside the private were leaning on the railing or sitting comfortably as they watched.

Two horses tied to long ropes traced wide circles. When the person standing at the center with the line changed the direction of their body and gaze, the horses practiced walking, running, or stopping to match the pace.

“Not everyone who wants evacuation is a man, is it?”

The private answered Gyeoul’s question proudly.

“Women are allowed to, Sir.”

At that, one female enlisted soldier raised her middle finger. “Fuck you!” She put such satisfying force into it that the rest of the soldiers snickered.

Whatever it looked like from the outside, they shared a fierce common bond: contempt for weak comrades. In Gyeoul’s eyes, this was also a kind of self-hatred. Why wouldn’t they want to run away too? If they wanted to suppress that urge, they had no choice but to lash out.

The embedded press gathered off to one side filmed the scene. The clatter of laptop keys was loud, as if they had that much to write. Watching closely, it was clear they were hitting the keys hard on purpose.

“By the way, what’s the point of this training?”

“It teaches the horse to focus on the person. There are other purposes too.”

Since the person set the speed, the horse’s attention naturally fixed on the center of the circle. If that focus slipped, the trainer had to correct it by pulling the line, sending a set signal, or reducing the radius. If the horse followed instructions well, the line was lengthened to give it more room to move.

A horse used to this would follow a rider’s intent fairly well. If the goal had simply been to exercise the horse, Gyeoul would have told them to hold the line above their head and stand still no matter how the horse circled.

“Weaver! You come out and try it now.”

Gyeoul handed the line handle to Sergeant Madeline Weaver. Since this was not her first practice, she soon handled the rope skillfully. Whenever the horse’s head turned another way, she clicked her tongue. “Tsk, tsk!” It drew the horse’s attention back. She was not as good as the mobile unit members with cowboy experience, but she was decent enough.

Everyone had regained that much breathing room thanks to the ammunition. Of course, some people still had not calmed down.

“You’ve never used a credit card, have you?”

That was what Captain Langford had asked Gyeoul right after distributing ammunition to the soldiers.

“That’s correct.”

“If possible, don’t get one in the future either. You get this feeling every month. Even when the paycheck you’ve been desperately waiting for comes in, it all drains away before long.”

As he said that, the captain pointed at the ammunition boxes and ammo cans that had emptied in an instant. He had a more sensitive and worry-prone personality than he looked, so he probably would not relax until more ammunition arrived. Still, it was a relief, if that was the right word, that he had recovered enough composure to make a small joke.

There was still no news of the follow-up supply aircraft. Considering the value of the young war hero, that was a little strange. As the old veteran from the Pararescue had sworn, the White House should have been turned upside down. Thinking back, he had also said something else. For some reason, entry into this airspace was restricted.

‘It probably isn’t just to concentrate support on an area with lots of routed soldiers...’

Even then, one or two aircraft should have crossed the line by now. Survivors had already made it this far. It was more reasonable to assume there was another reason.

The absence of contrails stretching from the sea toward land was also worth noting. No matter how important it was to maintain the maritime blockade, with millions of lives at stake, they should have sent air support.

Had the carrier strike group suffered heavy losses in combat against the former Chinese fleet? Or was that situation still ongoing? In light of his earlier suspicion, the latter seemed more likely.

As he watched the training and thought this over, someone called to him.

“Lieutenant. May I have a moment?”

The person who spoke carefully and politely was one of the embedded press, Gilbert Martineau. The very man who had been the hardest to rescue. After regaining his senses, he had treated Gyeoul with an attitude close to worship.

“Do you need something from me? Should we find somewhere private?”

“No. I’ll just tell you here.”

Even after saying that, he hesitated, so Gyeoul asked the nearby soldiers for some space. The soldiers, who liked the young lieutenant, grumbled as they moved away. Martineau sighed.

“Go ahead.”

Gyeoul urged him on. Still, the man’s mouth did not open easily. Several times, he mumbled, then swallowed the words again. At some point, even the sound of typing had stopped. The reporters were looking their way. What kind of story could this be? Since he was watching over training anyway, Gyeoul waited patiently. How long had passed? Martineau wiped his forehead and finally forced out the difficult words.

“I... no, we want to report from the field.”

It made Gyeoul tilt his head.

“If you want more than what you’re already doing, you mean you want to go out with us on operations.”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t the Company commander already say no?”

“...That’s why I’m asking you. You’re the one practically in charge, Lieutenant.”

“No. And it’s a problem if you ignore the chain of command like this.”

He could not take his eyes off the training, since an accident could happen at any moment. He thought making his voice cold would be enough. But the reporter did not back down. He seemed to have come after steeling himself.

“We’re not simply chasing a scoop. Nor do we have some vague belief that it will be safe. We also know we’ll only get in the way out there. But we crossed the blockade with a sense of duty. Before we were dispatched, we left behind notarized wills. So...”

His words continued after a sighing pause.

“If the situation doesn’t allow it, you may abandon us. We won’t resent you.”

“...”

Gyeoul stopped the training for a while.

After that, he moved with Gilbert to where the other embedded press were. The tense reporters focused on Gyeoul. From that alone, it was clear they had reached a firm consensus in advance. Gyeoul met each of their eyes, then asked bluntly.

“Do all of you feel like you’re walking on eggshells here?”

Several people wavered for a moment.

“That wasn’t why I brought this up...”

Gilbert Martineau tried to deny it at once, then trailed off while looking back at his colleagues, or perhaps his competitors. One cameraman and one reporter had failed to hold back their distress. The black cameraman, whose plump build had not fully faded despite the brutal flight, shed hot tears in big drops. The reporter’s low sniffles joined in.

The soldiers and officers were kind to the boy officer without exception, but that was only because Gyeoul was special. They could not all be like that by nature. Some must have treated civilians as burdens and glared at them. Not because they were evil, but because they were weak. Because they were worn out too. To embedded press who knew the Company’s situation was bad, those few people must have loomed even larger.

Helen Tamiris, the gaunt reporter, spoke honestly about their hardship.

“The way they look at us is so cold. Sometimes when we pass in the hall, they curse like they want us to hear it. I know. I know the soldiers are struggling too. I know, but we’re not the only reason everyone is stuck here. There are plenty of people besides us who can’t fight... It’s just so unfair.”

For a good while, Gyeoul listened in silence.

They had obtained enough ammunition for their immediate needs, and additional supplies were expected soon. With the situation improving, it was unlikely they sincerely meant to risk death.

‘They want someone to pay attention.’

Gyeoul did not think weakness was a sin. He was weak himself. Every day he kept himself alive for Gaeul, for a season already past, was so difficult. Why else did he avoid reading most of the thoughtless messages sent by the audience from another world?

After enough of their story had flowed out with their feelings, Gyeoul opened his mouth.

“You all know about the Captain Harris incident, right?”

The reporters focused on Gyeoul. Martineau nodded.

“We’re reporters, at least in name. There’s no way we wouldn’t know. You received the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star for that incident, didn’t you? To be honest, even the Medal of Honor would not have been too much, but... I understand the circumstances.”

“I heard the combat record from that day, uploaded by the Department of Defense’s official account, and the scene of the miracle child’s birth passed thirty million views in just one day. Lieutenant, if only you hadn’t been a soldier, you would have become tremendously rich. Though even becoming a multimillionaire would be useless if the world ended.”

That was said by one of the reporters, Trevor Baptiste. The miracle child was what they called the baby born in the engineer office by the shore of Santa Margarita. Apparently, the baby was now the youngest celebrity in the United States. The couple was said to be recalling that day on various channels too. The medic White even had a statue built somewhere.

Gyeoul said, “That night, there was someone who told me he was sorry, then called his lover’s name and killed himself.”

The name he called was Emily.

“He didn’t die even after detonating a grenade under his stomach, so I had to end his suffering.”

They would have seen that indirectly as well. The helmet camera had been working then too.

“I have no intention of letting Baker Company’s people end up in such a miserable state.”

“Isn’t that a very different case?”

They seemed to think it was too much of a leap for comfort. Gyeoul lightly shook his head at Martineau, who seemed unable to accept it, and at the other reporters.

“It will end up similar. Look. This Company isn’t an official formation. The Coast Guard and the 116th Regimental Combat Team Artillery at least shared the same original garrison, but after Sergeant Osborne’s group joined, even that stopped being true. It will only get worse from here. Troops gathered from dozens of different units through different routes have to maintain unity somehow.”

“Unity...”

“Yes. Of course, it depends on how the officers and NCOs handle it, but wouldn’t a sense of duty to protect the civilians right in front of them help well enough for now?”

“...”

“Even if many people like and rely on me, I think that alone is unstable. Things will creak somewhere, and trouble will happen somewhere. And in this situation, they throw away the civilians? That’s absurd. If the soldiers, if the officers and NCOs go through something like that, well. Only the people who abandoned their conscience would remain. I’m sure the Company would hold together wonderfully then.”

Even if the Company did not completely fall apart, it was entirely possible that people who did not need to die would die. In the sense that they would lose their justification as soldiers, Captain Harris served as a lesson.

Gyeoul thought the cause was a kind of disappointment. I’m only this much of a person. Once someone lowered themselves like that, the next time became easier. Because it was easy, they sank lower, and because they sank lower, it became easier. At that point, a person became something no longer human. There must be so many people like that out in the world.

“I’m telling you this so you don’t think of yourselves as burdens. Wouldn’t reporting on the soldiers alone help boost their pride? I don’t know who cursed at you, but most of them probably aren’t like that.”

After a moment of silence among the reporters, one of them, the cameraman Jordan Crook, smiled bitterly.

“You really are unrealistic.”

He paused briefly, then continued.

“I mean you, Lieutenant. I believed most of the reporting about you was staged.”

The black man, his hair gray with age, shook his head.

“I did, even though a colleague on the editing team confirmed the footage hadn’t been manipulated. I suppose you could call it an occupational disease for reporters... To be honest, it was too fantastical.”

“I understand. Someone looked at me once and asked in shock whether I was a real person.”

When Gyeoul answered lightly, stiff smiles spread across their faces. Another reporter cut in.

“I know. Callsign Meerkat, Lieutenant Edmont Durant of the 79th Regimental Combat Team, right?”

“How did you...”

“I’ve been a fan for a while. You can’t imagine how much detailed information about you has been made public, even if most of it is limited to operation details. Though I suppose it isn’t normal to memorize even minor details the way I do. Hah, unlike someone here, I never suspected you were fake.”

For some reason, it reminded Gyeoul of the comic where Winter Boy roared. A world where the government still functioned properly was different in ways like this too.

“In any case, I’ll speak to the captain separately about this issue. For your sake, and for the enlisted soldiers who have trouble moving. I’ll be careful so no harm comes to you.”

Gyeoul soothed the reporters with a gentle promise.

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

#Alien Covenant

I watched the new Alien movie on opening day.

I had high hopes, but it was disappointing.

Of course, true to the Alien series, the aesthetic direction is still there. It was pleasing to the eye.

In conclusion, it has many shortcomings, but it is still a movie worth watching... I would say.

#Q&A

Q. Hyunbihwa: @I looked into buying the ebook, but managing several apps is difficult, so I’ve been keeping everything on one platform. Do you happen to know when places other than Bookcube will be updated? On other sites, only the free version and volume 1 have been updated. If it was released as an exclusive, I’m curious when the exclusivity will end.

A. I don’t know much about Bookcube, and on Ridibooks, volume 6 was released as of yesterday. Exclusive... I don’t think so... Naver did ask for first exclusivity, but as far as I know, there is no exclusivity beyond that. I think I’ll have to ask why some platforms only have volume 1.

Footnotes:

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