WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 281: Boar Hunt (9)

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By the time the main act on stage had changed five more times, the officers had emptied the alcohol assigned to their table and were comfortably drunk.

“A fact about Major Han Gyeoul.”

Lieutenant Evans, fiddling with a Net Warrior terminal, read out a throwaway joke.

“Major Han Gyeoul was actually bitten by a mutant once. After a month of writhing in extreme agony, the mutant finally died...”

Foster gave a soft snort.

“Isn’t that originally a Chuck Norris joke? He got bitten by a viper.”

“Times change.”

“But the jokes don’t?”

“Maybe not... Oh, noble King of Spain, His Majesty. Would you like something to eat?”

Evans scooped up the dachshund that had been trotting around. But the dog, already full from being fed here and there, was not after food. It stared at Gyeoul and barked in little bursts. According to Schultz, who doted on it the most, it seemed to know this group’s hierarchy by instinct. In the end, Gyeoul took the dog. It wagged its tail hard in his arms. Its injury had healed long ago, and now that it was clean, it was simply cute. Though it was summer, in an over-air-conditioned room, a body warmer than a human’s was pleasant to hold.

“There’s something I’d like to ask everyone while I have the chance.”

When Gyeoul brought it up, the officers looked at one another and shrugged. Captain Singh nodded as their representative.

“Please ask.”

“Are you having any trouble with unit life? Complaints about me, or... well, our soldiers also come from somewhat unusual backgrounds.”

He had asked a similar question once before. But that had been when the staff officers first met him. Corporal D’Angelo was an exception, but there might have been new sources of discomfort after Gyeoul joined.

“I have no complaints. If anything, I’m very satisfied.”

Foster looked as if he had heard an even funnier joke than before.

“But I do sometimes get a strange feeling.”

“A strange feeling?”

“Yes. Something that can’t be written off as simple talent... A familiarity you’d only expect from someone with a certain amount of military life behind them... I often get that feeling from you, Company Commander.”

That was true. Gyeoul simply smiled and let it pass.

This time, Corporal D’Angelo, who had joined the conversation partway through, quietly raised a hand.

“It isn’t exactly uncomfortable, but I was surprised by the soldiers’ education levels. Somehow, every one of them has either graduated from college or was attending one. In the old days, I would’ve recommended they apply to become officers. I’d have asked what the hell men with degrees were doing staying enlisted. Even now, there are times when it feels odd, like I’m dealing with officer candidates.”

Gyeoul smiled again.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“If I had to say, it isn’t a bad feeling, but...”

“Once they build up more combat experience, they’ll probably be used as officers. There are still many refugees who will enlist for citizenship, and it would be better if the officers commanding them came from the same background. That makes the NCOs’ role important. Please guide them so they won’t be lacking even if they become officers.”

The last part was not directed only at the corporal. First Sergeant Merriweather answered.

“I’ll run them hard during every sergeant drill.”

“Please do.”

Since the topic she had raised had turned that way, Corporal D’Angelo laughed under her breath.

“Now I feel pointlessly sorry. The unit members should’ve heard this.”

“It’s for their sake. If they survive in exchange for the hardship, they come out ahead. We’re also scheduled to fight in urban terrain soon. They say the combat intensity will be low, but it’ll be an unfamiliar environment for the soldiers, so I’m honestly worried... What do you think, First Sergeant?”

The first sergeant answered with blunt severity.

“They received proper training before being deployed to the front. That means they have the basics. But as you said, it’s an unfamiliar environment, so there’s no guarantee they won’t do something stupid in the field.”

“I thought so.”

After listening to the conversation, the communications officer shared a thought that had just occurred.

“This is something I’ve wondered about from time to time, but wouldn’t flamethrowers be useful against mutants? Especially in cities, mountains, or jungles.”

Gyeoul shook his head.

“Cities? Are you planning to burn down every building? It doesn’t really reach the front line, but I hear urban battles raise a lot of property-rights issues. That matters to disaster refugees who had to leave their homes.”

And politicians paid attention to the fact that those disaster refugees also had the right to vote. To those starved for power, this was one more pretext for attacking the president. The current president’s position was that civilian property damage on the quarantine front had to be endured. If he had not held to that conviction, field commanders would have had headaches in every direction.

When it came down to it, the communications officer could talk casually about flamethrowers thanks to the president.

‘Flamethrowers would set public opinion on fire too.’

Gyeoul could almost see the newspaper headline. The Military Becomes Arsonists. Something like that.

In truth, air force bombing caused far greater destruction, but agitation appealed to emotion, not reason. And that was the image flamethrowers had.

“No, well, I didn’t mean burning everything down...”

Lieutenant Evans tried to walk the remark back.

“I mean using them in a limited way, only when thermobaric munitions seem useless. Even when exterminating roaches in an abandoned residential area, if there are too many and nothing else works, people set the place on fire, don’t they?”

“I’m sure other people have already made the same suggestion several times.”

The fact that it still had not been accepted meant there was a reason.

Gyeoul knew the reason, but it was exactly the kind of thing only “someone with a certain amount of military life behind them” would know. It would look strange if he knew too much about a weapons system that had been out of the military for ages.

And there was someone besides Gyeoul who knew.

“Leaving everything else aside, the fuel efficiency is far too low.”

Corporal Timothy McArdle. The company supply NCO.

“Which do you think uses more fuel, a flamethrower or a twin-engine jet?”

The communications officer sounded doubtful.

“Don’t tell me it’s the flamethrower.”

“Yes.”

“You’re joking...”

“I’m serious. The flamethrower tank the Marine Corps used before, the M67, could fire for 55 seconds, and it consumed 365 gallons, or 1,385 liters, of fuel. It was easy to memorize because it matched the number of days in a year.”

“...”

“According to a friend in the air force, a fighter-bomber, the F-15, has a basic tank capacity of about 2,000 gallons. If you compare fuel use by time, the difference is enormous.”

“...”

“With the fuel two platoons of flamethrower tanks would use spraying for just over a minute, you could launch one fighter-bomber and drop bombs anywhere within thousands of kilometers. I’d choose the fighter too.”

Lieutenant Evans looked sour. Gyeoul thought the expression looked like that of a child who had just realized Santa Claus was fake. The other officers seemed to have enjoyed the story.

Gyeoul put the dog down and rose from his seat.

“I’ll go make the rounds now. Keep talking.”

Corporal D’Angelo laughed.

“When an officer comes over while the soldiers are having fun and asks, ‘Are you all having fun?’ that’s often when they stop having fun... But yes. There’s no way they’d dislike you, Company Commander. There’s also the bond from before you were officer and soldiers. If anything, they’d be disappointed if the officers kept to themselves on a day like this. Go on.”

As she said, Gyeoul was welcomed at every table. One soldier asked if he had waited until the bottles were empty because he was worried they might offer him alcohol, while another, after a long hesitation, asked for a group photo. The personnel from the engineer detachment, who had joined fairly recently, seemed a little surprised by that closeness. To them, Gyeoul was a war hero and an object of respect they could not help keeping at a distance. The bond Corporal D’Angelo mentioned meant the connection from the days of the Gyeoul Alliance.

During a break between songs, the singer on stage pointed Gyeoul out.

“My hero is over there. I dedicate this song to you.”

Then she told the band what to play. Mischievously, what she began to sing was a love song, sweetly melting in both melody and lyrics. When their eyes met, she even winked with a little gesture. Officers, NCOs, and soldiers alike answered with cheers and jeers. As Gyeoul stood there troubled, Martineau, standing to the side of the camera, gave him a thumbs-up. Martineau was trouble too.

The night deepened that way, until the time to wrap things up drew near.

Amid the people regretting how little time was left, Gyeoul’s senses caught a disturbance outside. It sounded like someone arguing.

He seemed to be the only one here who noticed. With all the noise inside, that could not be helped.

‘What is it?’

He looked around. An empty section caught his eye. It belonged to the morale performance troupe, whose members had returned to their quarters one by one after their turns were over. The few who remained until the end smiled brightly and waved enthusiastically when their eyes met. Gyeoul answered with a nod and looked for the exit.

“Where are you going?”

The reporter, satisfied with the filming, asked why he was heading outside.

“Ah, it’s nothing. I just have something to take care of.”

“Ho. Something to take care of.”

Whatever the reporter was thinking, he nodded with a meaningful smile.

“You must have taken a liking to Miss Woodbury. I wish you luck.”

“...Miss Woodbury?”

“Oh my. Don’t tell me you didn’t even know her name. She’s a diva who reached number one on the Billboard chart.”

Only then did Gyeoul realize. It was the name of the singer who had sung the love song. It seemed the misunderstanding had started because he had looked toward the morale performance troupe while checking the empty seats.

“You’re misunderstanding.”

“Yes, we’ll understand it as a misunderstanding and stay here. We don’t want to create a scandal for you.”

“I said that isn’t it.”

“Yes, of course it isn’t.”

The reporter, firmly mistaken, shrugged.

“Anyway, I hope it goes well. Though I suppose there’s no way it won’t.”

“...”

“You should go before it’s too late. It would be troublesome if only the glass slipper were left behind.”

Gyeoul gave up trying to persuade the reporter.

When he stepped outside, it was still a summer night. Without 「Environmental Adaptation」, the air would have clung to him unpleasantly. Even more so if the air was stained with ugly emotions.

“Nihao! Nihao! Ching-chang ching-chang!” A man with split purple lips was screaming with a monstrous expression. He was the person who had cheered most wildly when he saw Gyeoul. Across from him stood a muscular guitarist, holding a guitar like a weapon. The guitarist was huffing, clearly furious. It seemed this guitarist was the one who had split the other man’s lip. One military police officer was attached to each of them, trying to stop the fight.

Beyond them stood Major Ju Wei, her face utterly expressionless.

Dragging the military police officer trying to restrain him, the guitarist swung the guitar through the air with a vicious force.

“You fucking XXXX! You look like someone ground your head in a shit barrel and XXXXed it, you XX piece of shit! You XXX who looks like you crawled out after ripping open a fucking zombie womb, you don’t even think about your own XX face and run your XXX XX mouth!”

The local accent was thick, and his emotions had exploded, so the abuse was hard to understand.

Not to be outdone, the man wearing makeup screamed back.

“You fucking piece of shit, you got nothing better to do than protect a Chinese bitch? I didn’t even say anything wrong! Every last Chinese bastard should die!”

Seriously...

As Gyeoul approached, the uproar died down at once. Both sides froze like broken dolls when they saw him. The guitar stopped in midair, the struggling that had been giving the military police trouble stopped, and their twisted faces returned to something human.

“Sir!”

The military police officer who saluted seemed oddly nervous. It was the face of someone who was not quite innocent, so Gyeoul deliberately asked in a cold, stiff, authoritative tone.

“Ensign. What is going on here?”

“...A dispute broke out between protection targets, and we were stopping it.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, sir.”

The guitarist in the FUCK YOU T-shirt, apparently unhappy with the military police officer’s answer, shouted.

“The hell it is, you XXX! If you people had done your damn job, it wouldn’t have come to this!”

After hearing that, Gyeoul asked the military police officer again.

“That person says otherwise. What do you think, officer?”

The ensign wearing the military police armband looked troubled.

========== Author’s Note ==========

#Q&A

Q. no name: @I feel like Gyeoul opening his heart to Anne is also kind of close to a bad ending. Virtual personalities more alive than real living people, and Gyeoul, who only has his brain left but is still alive... I’ll trust the author’s childlike innocence!

A. Yes, trust the happy ending I promised.

Q. Marauder: @While rereading, I had a question. Back when they were deciding the name of the Gyeoul Alliance, the provisional government was mentioned, and it said the government of the Republic of Korea was still functioning. If so, I feel like they would have contacted Han Gyeoul somehow. Did the U.S. government block them?

A. Answering this would be a slight spoiler... For now, the government of the Republic of Korea’s position is weak, and the U.S. government does not like it.

Q. Dipeulleon: @(Omitted) This seems like a hard question to answer, so I’m writing it last. At the end of the story, will Gyeoul be happy both physically and mentally?

A. Of course. To prevent controversy, I will add that I mean happiness in the dictionary and socially conventional sense. Since I am wholesome, I like happy endings.

Q. NoblesseBuffer: @Author, seeing how you dislike being told you look like Won Bin, you must have such incredible looks that even Won Bin can be dismissed as nothing... I’m jealous.

A. Yes... I look incredible. People who see me all say their Sanity points run low... It is one of the reasons I rarely leave the house.

Q. UnlimitedOne: @There was a lot to think about in the last Q&A. I wondered if Gyeoul’s apocalypse draws other people in because the Virtual Reality created by virtual personalities who become more human than ordinary humans through interacting with Gyeoul is better than the reality made by real people.

A. The intent of my answer was a bit different, but it isn’t a very important issue, so you can pass over it lightly. :)

Q. Amironiraz: @Gyeoul is still a minor, so isn’t it a problem if he drinks alcohol? Is it being glossed over because of the war, or is it an unavoidable choice because of his position as an officer? It feels like everyone in the story naturally offers him alcohol.

A. In every state on the U.S. mainland, drinking is allowed from age 21. The only exceptions are overseas dependent territories. So Gyeoul’s drinking is indeed a violation of the law. Strictly speaking. But in the military, people don’t care about that sort of thing. You don’t say to a comrade who fought alongside you and came back, “You’re not twenty-one yet, so stay out of the drinking party.” It’s a little hard to explain that feeling in writing...

Q. Geupgeupyeoullyeong: @Ah, whew, I saved up 150 chapters over one year and unleashed the spirit bomb this holiday, haha. I can’t believe I held back until now. While reading, I saw that you mixed in all sorts of things that are fun if you know them, and it was really interesting. But I think there are many parts where someone who doesn’t know would just go, “What’s this?” and move on. Since the author writes so well, the readers also have to know more. Maybe this is a true reader-author relationship where both develop and encourage each other. I bought and read all the physical books, and they were really thick, wow. It kills me that I used up all my coupons and can’t give you any. I’ll go all in here with my next coupons, so eat snacks and keep going.

A. If it was 150 chapters, you really held back for a long time. I’m glad you didn’t forget. I hope reading made your holiday a little more enjoyable.

Q. HoneyJarL: @A reader who owns both the published ebooks and physical books asks. At what interval are the physical books published? The ebooks seem to come out at roughly one volume per month, but I still don’t know the exact schedule for the physical books.

A. To be honest, I don’t really know that either. (...) When they say it’s coming out, I go, “Ah, it’s coming out,” so I can’t give you an answer.

Footnotes:

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