WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 387: Change (4)

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Min Wan-ki burst out laughing during the call with Gyeoul.

“You really do like her.”

It was a relief this was not a video call. Gyeoul was not sure what kind of expression he was making right now. He was embarrassed and flustered all at once. Naturally so, since he had not said a word about his relationship with Anne. He had only told Min Wan-ki about the conversation he had with her and asked for an opinion.

“Um, is it that obvious?”

When Gyeoul asked hesitantly, Min Wan-ki answered in a voice still full of laughter.

“Yes. You sound like a boy in first love. Well, you are not a boy anymore, but...”

A boy in first love. Faced with that sharpness, Gyeoul had nothing to say.

“Was it Supervisor Gibson? When you talk about her, even your voice changes from how it usually sounds, so it is difficult to pretend not to notice. If you still want to keep it secret, I recommend avoiding any mention of her around other people.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. It’s not that I especially want to keep it secret...”

There was no reason to go around announcing it, either. Anne would be the one who grew tired of it, more than Gyeoul. After one last laugh at Gyeoul’s sigh-laced answer, the middle-aged department head changed tone.

“Returning to the main point, I agree with her opinion.”

“You do?”

“Everyone is bound to feel anxious. Little Captain, you have already disappeared once before.”

“When I was dispatched to San Francisco?”

“That is right. Lieutenant Han Gyeoul, missing in action. The memory of when that news arrived must remain like trauma for most people in the alliance. Captain Park Jin-seok was no exception. I received a great deal of help from him in bringing the overall mood under control, but in the process, he seemed to develop deep skepticism toward people. He also seemed disappointed that he could not take your place.”

“Disappointed...”

“Did he not have some ambition from the beginning? As Agent Gibson said, perhaps anxiety lies at the root of that ambition. In any case, what is certain is that it would not be strange if he had developed an obsession with the idea that a person named Han Gyeoul was absolutely necessary. After all, he learned through bitter experience what happens to the refugee zone if you disappear.”

“I understand, but it is a little unfortunate.”

“What do you mean?”

“The thought that I’m absolutely necessary and the worry that I might leave are, strictly speaking, two different things.”

“They are connected.”

“They are, but still. Looking at everything I’ve done so far, I think it should be enough to realize that I might die on the battlefield, but I’m not someone who would leave easily.”

“The heart does not listen to the head by nature. More often than not, reason becomes the slave of emotion. Above all, people change when they rise in the world. In their eyes, you are a person just like them.”

“...”

“I view the anxiety people share as a useful phenomenon.”

“A useful phenomenon?”

“As long as the people of the alliance and the soldiers from the refugee zone hold such worries, they will not take Little Captain’s help for granted. No one feels grateful for what they take for granted. People often say that continued kindness is mistaken for a right, do they not? The alliance has received a vaccine against an illness that was bound to come. The ground has hardened after the rain, so to speak. It is ideal power.”

“...Now that you say that, I’m curious again. What is the mood like in the alliance and the refugee zone? Everyone must have been badly shaken by this rebellion. The presidential election is tomorrow, too.”

“It is as you imagine. At present, whether one likes it or not, America is the last bastion of human civilization. The sight of that America’s capital becoming a battlefield was a shock difficult to put into words. Even I thought my heart would stop when I first saw the news report. Should I say it felt like watching the end of the world broadcast live? I must have lost several years of my life.”

That day, there had been brave reporters. Many media companies based in D.C. had risked the danger to report from the scene. After confirming that the wired network was still alive, they broadcast the course of the rebellion and its suppression almost in real time. So the live broadcast of the end was a literal account.

“On top of that, Little Captain and the independent company members... Ah, I suppose I should call them Alpha Company now. Anyway, many of our people were on that battlefield, were they not? People fainted one after another all over the place, and among the elderly and infirm, some even died of heart attacks.”

“Oh no...”

Gyeoul was stunned. Even on that brutal battlefield, there had been no combat deaths within the company, yet people had died somewhere entirely unexpected.

“Even after the rebellion was suppressed, things were intense for a while. News had spread that you had been seriously wounded and transported to a hospital. So many people stayed up all night watching TV... What a shame. You should have seen it for yourself.”

“Just hearing about it feels overwhelming.”

He meant it. The hearts of all those people must have changed in ways fundamentally different from the past. From the beginning, Gyeoul had treated them as people regardless of their essence, but even so, there was no way he could remain completely unaffected by what Star Child had told him.

“Please tell the families of the wounded soldiers that I’m sorry. And that I promise to do everything I can for aftercare support... Of course, that is comfort I should deliver in person, but my return has been delayed far longer than expected. Until then, I’ll leave it to the two department heads. I trust you’ll handle it well.”

“Is the delay because of your hospitalization?”

“No. Even after I’m discharged, I’ve been ordered to remain stationed in D.C. with the rest of the company until early next year. It is a sensitive time, after all.”

“Ha ha. I understand.”

Min Wan-ki sounded amused.

“With Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul, who displayed such absurd combat power, still there in person, there should be no fools stupid enough to cause another incident. The citizens will think the same. Little Captain, your presence alone will put many people at ease.”

“To be honest, that is a little burdensome.”

“You showed them that kind of battle, yet your humility remains unchanged. Then will Brigadier General Laughlin continue as commander of Fort Roberts until Little Captain returns?”

“No chance. The brigadier general’s regiment is scheduled to be deployed in Continental Partition operation. An important troop movement plan like that will not be canceled so easily. He will probably have to leave on the scheduled date.”

“Does that mean the base commander position will be left vacant?”

“That is what I heard.”

“That will be troublesome.”

Gyeoul shrugged.

“What can anyone do? There’s no one available. This was a country where even the government shut down when it ran out of money.”

“...”

“Still, don’t worry too much. They say they’ll take measures to keep the minimum duties running. The Military Government Command’s main office will probably provide remote support. Even so, separate preparations will be needed for that, so the brigadier general must be suffering quite a bit.”

It was the pain of having Gyeoul, of all people, as a successor.

Min Wan-ki changed the subject.

“By the way, which candidate did you vote for?”

The presidential election began tomorrow, November 8, and would run for two days, but Gyeoul had already voted. Since his address was in California, he had cast an early vote together with disaster refugees who still could not return home. Full recovery was still a long way off, but getting to the polling station had not been too difficult.

The disaster refugees greeted Gyeoul’s appearance with near-mad enthusiasm. Since most of his activity so far had been based in California, the disaster refugees saw Gyeoul as someone who had made a major contribution to reclaiming their home. Naturally, their affection burned even hotter than that of people from other regions.

It made him wonder if half of the 10% the public affairs office had mentioned were California disaster refugees.

Gyeoul answered the department head’s question with a hint of laughter.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that.”

“It is a secret even from me?”

“They say birds hear the words spoken by day, and mice hear the words spoken by night.”

It was a hint that this call might leak. The possibility itself was extremely low, but there would be plenty of people eager to use the fact that Gyeoul had voted for a particular person.

“So I plan to keep my mouth shut from now on, too.”

“I understand what you mean. Then could you answer this question?”

“What question?”

“That Supervisor Gibson person.”

It was mischief pretending to be serious. Gyeoul covered his forehead with his free hand.

“...Why are you being so mean today?”

“Please understand. Other people’s love stories are as thrilling as watching the house next door catch fire.”

“Does that apply even to people as old as you, Department Head Min?”

“Do they not say that as people age, their hearts grow younger in reverse?”

“I think you still have ten or twenty years left before you’re that old... What did you want to ask?”

“It is nothing major. I wondered if the grateful person you mentioned before was perhaps her. You said there was someone who helped you in many ways. Am I right?”

“A grateful person? I don’t really remember when I said that.”

“It was during a call from when you were in San Francisco.”

“San Francisco... Ah!”

After fumbling through his memories, Gyeoul barely managed to remember. Anne, banging her head against the cabin wall after hearing him call her a grateful person who helped him a lot. Since his feelings toward her were so drastically different now compared to back then, remembering a scene he had forgotten felt like a gain.

She had been cute.

Then Gyeoul wanted to bang his own head. Was this not going too far?

“...You have good intuition and a good memory. How did you figure it out?”

“It was a guess that happened to be lucky. The Little Captain I know is not so careless as to open your heart deeply to someone in a short time. You are also the sort of person who would carefully guard against temptation at a time like this, when your popularity is through the roof. Love is a difficult emotion to pin down, but in your case, Little Captain, it was hard to imagine such passionate romance.”

“...”

“Then it is possible to assume at least several months have passed since your first meeting. And if there was an incident where you, who had been on battlefields the whole time, could have contact with an FBI supervisor, that secret operation is the most likely candidate, is it not? Since I had heard something from you at exactly that time, I connected the two. Even then, you spoke of her in a fairly familiar tone.”

Gyeoul let out a hollow laugh. Min Wan-ki even remembered the tone of a conversation from more than half a year ago?

“You’re amazing. In several ways.”

“My head is still useful for now.”

After that joke, Min Wan-ki spoke again.

“I am relieved.”

“About what?”

“It seems you will not become like me, Little Captain. I feel a little disappointed as well, but I am glad.”

It was implicit, but Gyeoul understood easily.

In the past, Min Wan-ki had described the world before the plague as a garbage bin. Order and law were nothing but accidental products born from different forms of disorder, from foolish and selfish individuals colliding with one another. Because of that, cynicism lived in Min Wan-ki. Min Wan-ki had said it was more enjoyable now, after everything had collapsed and people were building anew. It was the world built up by human limits, that murky, filthy current, that Min Wan-ki despised.

In other words, Min Wan-ki was someone who found it hard to love people. And Min Wan-ki had no Gaeul.

“Anne... no, Supervisor Gibson told me something. She asked me not to be disappointed in people.”

“Oh.”

“People are only capable of so much to begin with. I won’t expect more than that... She said she felt that from watching me. The more I thought about it, the more striking it was. I really do think that way sometimes. Is it really the flower’s fault if it cannot bloom in winter?”

“Do you mean, why is the environment taken as a given, while only the person is blamed?”

“Mm, something like that. Though most of that environment is also people, or something people made.”

“Camellias bloom even in winter.”

“I can’t kill everyone except people like camellias, can I?”

“That is true. Unfortunately. Life is such a cumbersome burden.”

That “unfortunately” was precisely the difference between Gyeoul and Min Wan-ki. The difference in the warmth of their pity for people.

“Supervisor Gibson went on to say that people, herself included, can become better. She wanted me to believe that.”

“For an FBI agent who must be familiar with the bottom of humanity to say such a thing... You met a good person.”

“Yes. She really is a good person.”

“I do not know whether the day will ever come when this world meets that expectation, but the two of you certainly suit each other well.”

Min Wan-ki laughed, and Gyeoul ended up following with an embarrassed laugh.

The call did not last much longer after that. Min Wan-ki and the other alliance officers had become fairly used to Gyeoul’s absence. At least, unlike before, no one had been told that Gyeoul was dead, so there would be no chaos too heavy to handle. Song Ye-kyung had also promised active cooperation.

“It seems I spoke with you too long without considering the time difference. Let us end the call here for today.”

“It’s not even midnight yet. I don’t mind if it’s late, so please contact me right away if something happens. If I’m in a situation where I can answer, I definitely will.”

“What could possibly happen here? That side is important, and you are important, Little Captain. In any case, please rest now.”

“You too, Department Head.”

Gyeoul set the phone down. The time appeared on the screen, then vanished. The date would change in about two hours. It would be election day. America’s presidential election was not a direct election, so the Electoral College vote in December still remained, but when the gap in support was as clear as it was this time, that procedure lost its meaning.

After turning off the light and lying in bed, Gyeoul looked up at the dark ceiling.

He thought about what answer he would give Star Child on a day not far off.

Footnotes:

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