WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 384: Change (1)

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In the world of 「Days after Apocalypse」, Gyeoul lay in a hospital bed and thought about Bom.

‘The conclusion I need to reach…….’

What kind of future had the Star Child observed for this world? What had it seen that made it say the future was connected to Gyeoul’s own question? Bom had asked about the stone-like sediment inside him. Judging by the child’s tone, it seemed to have decided Gyeoul still wasn’t ready to answer his own question.

That gave him the feeling that the future the child had seen was not entirely bright. It was probably an issue tied to human limits. Since every resident of the world lit by Bom’s star must have been given a mind, it would not be too much of a stretch to say they represented the humanity of the outside world within this reconstructed past.

Gyeoul sank into a faintly bleak mood. He did not want the future of the world he would live in with Anne to be dark. But what were the chances that the child’s prediction was wrong? The capabilities of a fully awakened artificial intelligence were difficult to measure even in imagination.

Still, since the child had said it would not intervene as Bom, the apocalypse approaching this world would not change from how it had been until now, for better or worse. As Gyeoul felt it, the clock of the apocalypse had been delayed more than ever. As always, he could only keep doing his best to avoid the worst. Just as he had in this rebellion.

Only, regardless of that resolve, he worried about what lay inside the child, who must be accumulating emotions even at this very moment. Like the limits of the child’s abilities, the limits of that patience lay far beyond Gyeoul’s imagination.

Knock knock.

He heard a knock. Gyeoul knew who it was before the door even opened.

“Have you been resting well?”

Anne’s voice as she checked on him was deeply gentle. Just hearing it seemed to push his worries away, and Gyeoul answered with a mix of awkwardness and relief.

“As you can see, I’ve been lying here quietly.”

“You don’t have to get up.”

“I’m not that badly hurt, am I?”

At that, Anne, who had taken a seat beside the bed, shot him a glare.

“A normal person wouldn’t be able to say that. Do you know how many fragments they removed? And what about that eight-inch stab wound? If it had gone just a little deeper, your muscles would have been badly damaged. On top of that, you have three cracked ribs, lacerations and bruises all over your body, torn muscles, and dangerous blood loss…….”

Maybe she had remembered how terrified she had been, because her eyes reddened as she spoke. The sight of her blinking the tears away was painful to watch. Unable to bear it, Gyeoul raised his hands in surrender.

“Okay, okay. I really am a serious patient. I absolutely won’t push myself until I’m fully healed.”

For Gyeoul, who knew his own combat ability, having his range of movement limited felt rather frustrating, but Anne’s overprotectiveness still made him feel good. And the pain really was intense.

The viewers in the outside world struggled to endure stretches of time with nothing happening, but Gyeoul no longer had any reason to be bound by what they liked or disliked. He was only concerned that there might be a second KILL among the viewers. Someone desperate enough to kill themself would gladly accept even this kind of time. They were people starved for life more than for pleasure.

“Here.”

Anne, her mood softened, took confidential files from her briefcase. Some of the documents bore the CIA seal.

“These are the materials you wanted. You have to read them while I’m here, then give them back.”

Given the location, that made sense. Gyeoul reached out and accepted the files. But his eyes did not leave Anne. After he stayed like that for a moment, she hesitated, blushed, and asked,

“Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something on my face?”

“Uh, no. It’s just…… I’m happy you’re alive.”

“…….”

Anne flushed a little deeper, smiled softly, and brushed the hair by her ear back. Her gaze lowered quietly. Gyeoul, who had answered without thinking, felt embarrassed a beat too late. He had admitted it in front of the Star Child. She was no longer someone he wanted to love, but someone he loved. That difference came with an awkwardness he had never felt before. Anne sensed it too. The distance between them was one neither of them disliked.

“……This isn’t the time to say things like that.”

At Gyeoul’s words, Anne agreed in a voice that sounded as if it might let out a sigh.

“I understand that feeling. I really do.”

Even after that, Gyeoul looked at her a while longer.

‘Nothing will change after all.’

He thought back to the story about colors he had told Go Ah-young, the friend who had pretended to be a counselor. Did the color he saw with his eyes truly look the same to someone else? Were people unable to notice the difference because they saw different colors but called them by the same name? He did not know. Another person’s essence lay beyond the wall of the senses. Anne was the same. The Star Child had said it guaranteed her perfect continuity. There was no need to feel vague anxiety over changes in her that lay beyond his perception.

He was simply curious whether Anne herself felt that something about her had changed.

But when he actually considered asking, the question was too vague. There was a high chance she would misunderstand it in some strange way.

After hesitating, Gyeoul inwardly shook his head and began reading the documents he had received. They were all pieces of information in which Gyeoul’s name appeared in one way or another. Independent Battalion Alpha Company, vice commander of Air Mobility Command Major General Hayden Strickland, Blockade Commander General Schroeder, Clarissa Chadwick, and so on. Gyeoul simply wanted official confirmation of fragmented information. He was not reading any tremendous classified secret.

After reading for a while, Gyeoul scratched his cheek.

“I owe Major General Strickland a great deal.”

Major General Strickland was the one who had pushed weapons and ammunition into D.C. by helicopter. Even if other forces had opened the way, supply would have run into trouble without the major general’s advance preparations.

“But…….”

Gyeoul’s eyes fixed on the bottom of the page.

“It looks like this put him in a rather awkward position.”

Anne looked regretful.

“Whatever his reasons, he committed overstepping authority. He forged a superior’s order and created an unregistered supply point……. Still, I heard there won’t be any punishment. An official commendation will be difficult too, though.”

The commander of Air Mobility Command had the authority to control part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, or CRAF, even without permission from the Secretary of Defense or the president. The number was about fifty aircraft. Put simply, it meant requisitioning civilian aircraft.

Major General Strickland, as vice commander, forged that order. During the demobilization process, some of the civilian airline transports that had been mobilized for supply airlifts to the western contaminated zone carried disguised combat supplies and personnel. The procedure used to pull out equipment and supplies through a workaround was another act of overstepping authority.

Anne continued.

“It seems he had assumed a situation where no one could be trusted and all existing supply points became dangerous. The plan was to make sure the White House secured at least one more company even in the worst-case scenario.”

That one company was none other than Gyeoul’s old independent company, now Alpha Company of the 201st Independent Infantry Battalion. That was why Jin-seok’s company, which had maintained its formation when the incident occurred, was the first unit to receive support in this incident, and received the most of it. They had suffered just as much, but that was also why, though many were left disabled, there had been no deaths in action. It was a human miracle born from effort, preparation, and the enemy’s lack of real combat experience…….

Gyeoul understood the general’s decision.

‘In the end, I was the one who asked for help.’

He could never thank Major General Strickland enough. If nothing had happened, the major general would have ended up in a far more difficult position than he was in now.

At the same time, he could have doubted Gyeoul’s true intentions. Of course, the major general must have looked into the situation in his own way before making his decision, but even so, that trust had been closer to a gamble. No matter how famous a war hero Gyeoul might have been, they had only met once, and briefly at that.

“Army idiots.”

At the sudden words, Gyeoul looked at Anne. She gestured toward the document with her chin.

“I skimmed it first. If you turn about two pages from there, there should be testimony from his adjutant. They said that was the first thing Major General Strickland said after he was briefed on this incident.”

It sounded like his usual taciturn self. The troops who had taken part in the rebellion were all Army, after all. After letting out an untimely chuckle, Gyeoul sank into thought. The fact that even such a minor comment and testimony from someone nearby had been recorded in the report meant the investigation had already gone quite far.

Gyeoul tilted his head.

“That’s strange.”

“What is?”

“That nobody has come to see me about this.”

A faint smile crossed Anne’s lips.

“I’m here, aren’t I? Did you forget? I’m an investigator too.”

“Ah.”

“I’m not quite on your level, but my memory is pretty good too. I think I heard all the key testimony back then……. Is there anything else I should know?”

By back then, she meant when Gyeoul left the safe house at the Mandarin Oriental. At the time, Gyeoul had told Anne every secret. He had said he would leave the judgment afterward to her.

At Gyeoul’s silence, Anne crossed her legs and nodded.

“If you remember anything or have any questions, tell me anytime. I don’t know how things will turn out later, but for now, every investigation concerning you is supposed to go through me.”

It seemed she was not only in charge of facility security. It was a little strange, since she was an investigator far too kind to the person being investigated, but in other words, it also suggested that the allegations against Gyeoul were that light.

After a pause, Gyeoul asked,

“Don’t I have responsibility too?”

“What responsibility?”

“Major General Strickland did that because of me.”

“No.”

Anne denied it simply.

“If you look at it that way, it would be more accurate to say the original cause was Blockade Commander General Schroeder’s secret order. You asked for help by chance in an environment where surveillance, wiretapping, betrayal, and retaliation were all real concerns. And even then, you didn’t specifically ask him to do anything. That isn’t enough to establish conspiracy to commit abuse of authority or overstepping authority.”

“But-”

“The most proper response for Major General Strickland would have been to report the information he received from you to his superior. He is a soldier. Am I wrong?”

“…….”

“Of course, the major general must have acted that way because he had no certainty, and it did work out well in the end. But still, that was his choice. It’s different from your case, where you received in-person instructions from the de facto highest-ranking person in your chain of command.”

“Mm…….”

“Most importantly, General Schroeder had the authority to give you that order. If you had openly raised suspicions against him without evidence, it would have become insubordination. It would only have caused confusion and done nothing to help resolve the situation.”

The suspicion against General Schroeder had been cleared by that satellite phone. As expected, he had not given that number only to Gyeoul. After intercepting the calls made to that number, the White House concluded that the blockade commander had no connection to the rebellion.

The general might have had some ambition to become the hero who suppressed the coup. If so, becoming president someday would not be an impossible dream. But ambition itself was not a crime.

“There is exactly one problem for you right now.”

Anne raised her index finger.

“Enhanced interrogation of rebel prisoners.”

In other words, torture.

“Those who joined the rebellion do not qualify as lawful combatants, but even so, once they were captured alive, they still have the right to hire an attorney and receive a trial. No matter what the ruling ends up being, there is no way to stop them from raising questions about you.”

“Should that be stopped? It’s true.”

At Gyeoul’s words, Anne laughed as if the strength had gone out of her.

“There are a lot of people who want to make it as if it never happened. I looked into it, and the vice president is one of them.”

“…….”

“Don’t you want a third Medal of Honor? It would be a big help with future refugee administration. For your career too.”

“That doesn’t mean I can say I didn’t do something I did.”

Gyeoul shrugged.

“It isn’t only because of my conscience. I’m trying not to create an unnecessary weakness.”

“A weakness…….”

“Yes. I understand why they want to cover this up, but I think simply telling the public the whole story as it happened will be enough.”

“Do you really think the public will accept you being left off the list of recipients?”

“It will be hard for them to accept completely. Still, if we can clearly explain that the Medal of Honor has to be that strict and noble, won’t it work out somehow? I think that’s better than dealing with controversy later.”

“You aren’t disappointed that you’ll no longer be the only living person to have received two Medals of Honor?”

Since Medal of Honor recipients had played major roles in suppressing the rebellion, there was a very high chance that a new double recipient would appear.

This time, Gyeoul smiled.

“It’s been obvious for a while that you’re saying things you don’t mean.”

Anne shook her head.

“Rather than saying I don’t mean them, let’s say I know the person named Han Gyeoul.”

Then she placed her hand over Gyeoul’s.

“Many people will be disappointed, but I like that you don’t change.”

“Some things have changed.”

“I know.”

Anne looked gently into Gyeoul’s eyes.

“I told you. I know the person named Han Gyeoul.”

Footnotes:

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