WeTried Translations

Translator: Coughing Baby

Editor: Coughing Baby

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 416: Wind from High Places (14)

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“Of course. I meant that even by the standards of my faith, you are an admirable person. I believe I also told you that in cultivation, the heart matters more than form. Though you may have no faith, you walk the path of a true heart, and at the end of that path, there will surely be the name of God. Is that right?”

Exactly.

Gyeoul answered with silence, and Major Singh asked,

“But why bring that up all of a sudden?”

“I just have some things to think about.”

“Things to think about?”

“Why is it a name?”

That was it. Why call it a name? Gyeoul went on.

“Back then, you said conscience, compassion, courage, and love were the names of God dwelling in the human heart. You said that was Sikh doctrine. But why call them the names of God? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to call them God’s will or teachings?”

Follow your conscience. Have mercy on the pitiful. Have the courage to stand against injustice. Love your neighbor. Other religions had plenty of similar teachings. The proper direction for life, presented by the Creator to the created. But Sikhism was the only one that called those directions the names of God. At least as far as Gyeoul knew.

“Ha ha. A good question.”

Major Singh smiled warmly.

“To answer simply, a name represents the identity of the being who bears it. The name of God symbolizes God’s identity and His very existence. In other words, God is conscience, love, compassion, and courage. Each virtue is like a compass pointing toward God. We are seekers who follow that compass and search for a life that becomes one with God.”

“Identity...”

“Yes. He shaped all things with love and placed His own existence within every living, breathing creation, so that we would carry it in our hearts from birth. That is why we can love, know compassion, and find the courage to fight injustice even without being taught.”

The battalion staff and Alpha Company officers looked as if they had no idea what this was about. But for Gyeoul, it was a meaningful conversation. After protecting one heart in the afterlife and giving a name to the Deus ex Machina, Gyeoul had been wondering all along what kind of season Bom would become. In a sense, this too was no different from the identity of a god. That was why Major Singh’s words came to him as a powerful metaphor.

Gyeoul turned the Major’s words over in his mind.

‘A life that becomes one with God.’

Bom had asked Gyeoul whether “god grapes” would truly taste sour.

Gyeoul knew it himself. He had protected his heart so desperately because there had been nothing else left. In the afterlife, where he had lost everything else that made him human, he had only wanted at least his heart to remain Han Gyeoul. That Han Gyeoul had been something like a fossil from the days when he had been alive.

But the days when he considered himself already dead were over.

Now it was time to choose life, not a fossil. That was why he hesitated so much more.

No, rather than hesitation, it might be more accurate to say that the very feeling of being alive was unfamiliar, and he did not know what to do with it.

“Um, this...”

Yura, who had been watching for a chance to cut in, returned the sword to Gyeoul. He accepted it and put it away, wearing a bitter little smile as he thought how strange it was that he had survived a brush with death with this very sword.

“Do you have any other questions?”

At Major Singh’s words, Gyeoul was about to say no, but stopped for a moment. Then he asked defensively,

“In your eyes, Major, am I the same person I used to be?”

“By used to be, do you mean when we had that conversation?”

“For now, yes.”

“Hmm.”

The Major stroked his beard as he considered the intent behind the question. His gaze came to rest on Gyeoul’s scabbard. Then his expression changed, as if he had realized something. How had this conversation started in the first place?

“It seems you feel you have changed from before.”

“...Yes.”

“Ha ha.”

The Major laughed again. He must have understood the fear of the moment when Gyeoul had been forced to draw the blade. But conscious of the eyes of his subordinates, he gave his answer indirectly.

“Perhaps I should put it this way. I believe in you. So simply listen to what is inside you and walk the path your heart leads you down. A path cannot always be straight. There will be moments when you doubt yourself or feel ashamed, but in the end, your best will be the best of humanity. Battalion Commander, of all the people I have met, you have the most human heart.”

My best is the best of humanity. Gyeoul gave him a troubled smile.

“I’m grateful, but that is also a heavy thing to hear.”

“I apologize if I burdened you.”

“No. It helped.”

In truth, it had not. A weight different from stone still remained, but Gyeoul no longer showed it. Regardless of Major Singh’s character, from Gyeoul’s position, he was still a subordinate officer. Nothing good would come of showing weakness for too long.

Once that baffling conversation came to an end, Yura asked something new.

“Sir. Have you ever learned swordsmanship separately?”

Gyeoul shook his head.

“No.”

Though 「Melee Weapon Mastery」 existed, the weapon handling it provided did not follow any set form. It was simply a function that awakened an instinctive sense of how best to use a weapon.

“Then this is a lie?”

What she showed him for confirmation was the newspaper that had been sitting on an empty ammunition box. In the section analyzing the battle at Oaxaca International Airport, the reporter cited an expert opinion claiming that Gyeoul had used Gatka, the swordsmanship of Sikhs. Gyeoul skimmed it and handed it back.

“People who believe what they want are everywhere.”

Major Singh glanced at it and shook his head.

“I did learn that swordsmanship in my school days, but it has practically no real combat value. Drawing attention this way will only backfire...”

“Really?”

“Yes. Gatka lost its nature as a practical martial art during the period of British colonial rule. Now it has fallen to the level of sword-dance yoga. Even the schools said to be relatively practical were heavily influenced by fencing introduced from Britain. It is a tradition with only half of itself left.”

A few officers took that seriously. Most belonged to Alpha Company. The severing of tradition that Major Singh mentioned overlapped with the refugees’ own circumstances. For people in refugee zones, an American way of life was something to admire, a dignified way to live. Because their environment was so poor, they often clashed with other refugees, and eventually they came to hate the things they had in common with them.

At least the Gyeoul Alliance was relatively free from that problem.

“Too bad.”

Yura folded the newspaper and murmured as if to herself.

“If the commander had learned it, I was going to learn it too.”

Gyeoul had a slightly different thought after hearing that.

‘She said I was a living virtue.’

When he had been hospitalized with injuries after suppressing the coup, Anne had quoted President Washington’s speech to him. Tradition, virtue, identity. And, as with Yura, something people wanted to share with Gyeoul. A vague sensation tickled at Gyeoul’s mind. It was an idea before it had taken shape.

His contemplation did not last long.

Before much time passed, the next transport plane landed, and the members of Alpha Company boarded in lines. The company officers followed after them. Only a small number of personnel needed for additional equipment transport remained.

“Then, though I’m ashamed to go first, I will head on ahead.”

At the salute from Jin-seok, the company commander, Gyeoul gave a gentle instruction.

“As I said earlier, let everyone get plenty of rest. This may be the last rest before Ground Zero Vacuum. Proper rest, I mean.”

“...I will keep that in mind.”

His reaction was somewhat reluctant, but Jin-seok would not disobey Gyeoul’s order.

After sending off Alpha Company, Gyeoul went around the previous engagement site to prepare a report. In the process of reassessing the mutants’ digging capability, Gyeoul’s opinion as one of the field commanders was essential reference material.

“The tunnels themselves still don’t look useful, right?”

At Gyeoul’s words, every member of the staff, led by Major Singh, agreed.

Captain Foster said,

“Digging blindly is not enough. It seems they still can’t maintain depth or direction. That wouldn’t work even if a Trickster went in personally. Though it would be too dangerous for them to do that anyway.”

The trench line formed when the tunnels collapsed was crude in many ways. To begin with, there were few sections that ran straight. There were also many broken-off sections and sections that curved away from the airport. Underground, there were no markers to confirm direction or depth. Radio waves did not pass through either, so the cunning monster must have been quite frustrated. It deserved high marks just for suddenly reducing the engagement distance, but the technical level of the tunnels had not improved in any meaningful way.

‘They also lack the ability to respond when flooding occurs.’

Buildings that had so far been exempt from bombing and shelling, namely the Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption and Santo Domingo Cathedral in the city center, also showed traces of exhausting excavation. They had been used as places to remove the excavated dirt while avoiding observation. But those underground spaces were already empty before the search team arrived. Ankle-deep filthy water that stank of rotting corpses had collected on the floor.

When they sent unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) into visible tunnel entrances, the tunnels grew more deeply flooded the farther they went.

The answer appeared once the directions of the tunnels were applied to the map. The river crossing the middle of the city. They had failed to pass beneath that waterway. It was obvious the river, swollen by the rainy season, had pressed down with even greater force.

The conclusion was that they only needed to watch for cases where tunnels were used in irregular ways, like this time.

Still, he had to write the report, so Gyeoul spent quite a long time tracing the signs of the tunnels. By the time he had gathered enough photos and notes, another day in Oaxaca was already drawing to a close.

Some days passed after that, and on the day before Independence Day, Gyeoul returned to Colorado and stayed in Denver. The reason he was not in Leadville, where they were normally stationed, was that the Independent Battalion was taking part in the parade. On the holiday itself, the entire unit was scheduled to march through the city streets. He had expected as much.

‘At least they didn’t call us all the way to D.C.’

They might well have done so to quiet public anxiety over Ground Zero Vacuum.

Either way, Gyeoul welcomed this schedule.

It gave him a chance to see Anne after so long.

For a meeting that would last less than a full day, she had declared that she would come all the way here from D.C. It was a tiring 2,400-kilometer round trip by air. Gyeoul was grateful for her eagerness and felt deeply sorry too, but stronger than either of those was the anticipation that made his heart race.

How long had it been since they last met?

The last time he had seen her was in the season when cherry blossoms bloomed, so more than three months had already passed since he left D.C. For two people who had only then promised themselves to each other, it had been too long and too harsh a wait.

Today, Gyeoul admitted that he had underestimated that longing.

The words that said if you knew you would meet at four, you started being happy from three were exactly right.

「At four o’clock, I’ll already be excited and restless.」

It was the last line Anne had quoted. Today’s Gyeoul was exactly like that.

Gyeoul kept making mistakes he normally would never make, and from time to time, he failed to even realize he had made them. The battalion staff and related personnel were visibly bewildered. Everyone he met worried about his condition, and each time, Gyeoul felt a little embarrassed. The bigger problem was that even that feeling did not last long.

And now, on a cool Denver night, Gyeoul, allowed a personal outing, visited a hotel in the city center in civilian clothes. The room Anne had reserved was on the top floor. Even the ride up in the elevator felt long.

Knock knock.

He took off his sunglasses and knocked on the door. From beyond it came a nervous voice.

「Who is it?」

“It’s me.”

When Gyeoul answered, he heard running footsteps, and the door flew open.

“Gyeoul! I missed you so much all this ti-”

Anne’s eyes widened. Gyeoul let out a long breath as he kissed her. In his tight embrace, Anne, who had gone stiff for a moment, softened. Her hand mussed the back of Gyeoul’s head.

After their lips parted, Anne, eyes closed and lingering in the afterglow, spoke quietly.

“I had other plans, but I don’t think I can wait.”

She closed the door and spoke again.

“Let’s take care of the urgent business first.”

Gyeoul nodded. Anne undid her tied hair, then looked straight at Gyeoul as she swept it back behind her neck. A ring glittered on that finger. It was the same sight he had seen once on the day she confessed. Gyeoul truly loved that side of her.

Footnotes:

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