Black Badger

Chapter 74

Ye-hyeon's mother died giving birth to him.

Lee Seung-hyun thought of Lee Ye-hyeon as the son born from killing his mother. Because of that, he couldn't bring himself to feel any affection for the baby from the moment he was born. Ye-hyeon said he learned the "real reason his father hated him" in his third year of middle school.

During those anxious teenage years, he rebelliously demanded to hear about his mother and got beaten badly for it.

I couldn't hold back and said something.

"Does that even make sense?"

"But aside from when I rebelled, he didn't hit me."

Ye-hyeon offered an unhelpful remark.

From the side, Yoon rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. From his reaction, it seemed like an excuse Ye-hyeon made often.

I barely suppressed the urge to roll my eyes too when Ye-hyeon continued anyway.

"That was the year I realized my father wasn't aging at all—it was creepy." Lee Seung-hyun had always been young.

Until his third year of middle school, Ye-hyeon was too afraid of his father to look at him properly (and apparently, he often left Ye-hyeon alone for days at a time). So he hadn't noticed anything strange. But once he started rebelling in earnest, he picked up on the oddity.

Of course, Lee Seung-hyun didn't explain properly.

Ye-hyeon tried rebelling several times to get answers, but Lee Seung-hyun was stubborn. Eventually, Ye-hyeon gave up. He stopped crying, throwing tantrums, and getting slapped for defying him. He quit scouring the internet and books for cases of people who didn't age. He dropped the wild imaginings that Lee Seung-hyun might not be his real father, or that he could be something like a vampire.

Resigning himself and accepting reality as it was wasn't hard.

Ye-hyeon quietly endured Lee Seung-hyun's cold indifference, his irritable nagging, and the rare, capricious moments of warmth that could be counted on one hand.

Right up until the war broke out.

"Right up until?"

"About six months before?"

Ye-hyeon said, slicing into the walnut pie crust with his fork.

"Or seven months? Anyway, less than a year."

Lee Seung-hyun, who had shown up out of nowhere while Ye-hyeon studied at university in the U.S., started drilling him like crazy.

There was no explanation, as usual. Ye-hyeon just did as Seung-hyun ordered: running, getting hit, hitting back, and running again. He had to learn survival techniques that seemed like they'd never come in handy in a lifetime, plus various martial arts. It was a hellish time. Lee Seung-hyun was an excellent soldier, but not a merciful teacher.

And that's when Ye-hyeon first witnessed Lee Seung-hyun's inhuman healing ability.

Ye-hyeon paused, staring down at his walnut pie plate, then dropped his fork with a clatter.

"I found out by stabbing him with a knife."

"I don't get why that became your trauma."

Yoon grumbled softly from the side.

"If it were me, I'd feel relieved. Weren't you covered in bruises back then?"

"I stabbed a person in a fit of anger, and it turned out to be my own father."

Ye-hyeon muttered so quietly it was hard to hear, then shuddered slightly.

He furrowed his usually unlined brow.

"It was really awful."

Amid that physically and mentally draining time, the war broke out.

He received an augmented body and was thrown onto the battlefield. Only then did Ye-hyeon realize his birth father wasn't a dracula or a yokai, but someone with an augmented body. And it seemed Lee Seung-hyun had known the war was coming in advance.

All the things he taught proved helpful.

The seniors didn't share detailed stories about what the war was like.

They probably didn't want to relive the horrific memories. And it wasn't like they were necessary tales anyway.

What mattered was that Lee Seung-hyun—who often visited the unit, apparently because he didn't want his son to die, always found Ye-hyeon somehow, pulled him aside, gave some awkward nagging, and left—dragged him out from the front lines one day.

Ye-hyeon rebelled, insisting he stay at the front, and got beaten until he was on the brink of death.

"Of course, no explanation."

"Yeah. Well, when I rebelled saying I planned to die at the front, he did say something."

Ye-hyeon explained to me, who fully understood why the mentor would make a dad joke.

"If you want to die that badly, I'll make sure you get a proper spot, so don't worry."

Why did he say it like that?

From the side, Yoon let out a sigh, rolling his eyes upward. He didn't seem surprised by this new atrocity from Lee Seung-hyun. I was starting to lose control of my expressions too. Ye-hyeon recounted his past in a flat tone, but I wasn't dumb enough to miss the horrors unfolding behind those matter-of-fact sentences.

How had he grown up without anyone to rely on?

Without a single warm hug, amid neglect and abuse.

Unaware or uncaring of my darkening gaze, Ye-hyeon continued the story. According to him, this was where the main part began.

Lee Seung-hyun slung the battered Ye-hyeon over his shoulder and returned to the civilian areas.

Then, out of nowhere, he handed Ye-hyeon a greatsword.

Greatsword.

"The one from the video?"

When I asked softly, Ye-hyeon smiled faintly for a long moment.

"He didn't hand it over from the start."

But he sparred with a sword of exactly the same width.

Ye-hyeon said he couldn't leave the unidentified building until he perfectly mastered the swordsmanship Lee Seung-hyun passed down. To return to the front lines where comrades like Yoon, Ami, and Joo were, he attempted to escape multiple times, but failed every time. People presumed to be Lee Seung-hyun's comrades blocked his escapes.

And they all said the same thing.

"Don't worry; they'll prepare a spot for you to die soon."

As promised, a spot to die was prepared not long after.

"You said you saw the video."

I nodded at Ye-hyeon's question.

"That only captured the final part of the battle. Hundreds of badgers perished because of that one thing."

A disaster struck when victory seemed in grasp.

They said even dropping bombs or charging with badger units wouldn't end it—it never stopped breathing. It kept reviving and massacring everything in sight.

Because that one entity inflicted such devastating losses, all forces concentrated there.

Several names I knew appeared in the explanation.

The unit led by Richard Green: total annihilation, with only three survivors including Richard. The unit Choi Yoon was in: total annihilation, with only four survivors including Choi Yoon.

In the process, the critically injured Richard and Yoon were evacuated to the hospital and didn't witness its end.

The fighter jet piloted by Choi Ami crashed, putting her in a coma for two years from the impact. Joo's unit got caught in an explosion, leaving most unable to fight.

Lee Seung-hyun and his comrades also didn't see its end. Lee Seung-hyun succeeded in severing the creature's arm but took a fatal wound in return. Eric, called Shashinsky, and his red-haired retainer didn't see its conclusion either. Many of the elders' retainers lost their lives there too.

But those who received augmented bodies much earlier than civilians dealt it significant damage.

And Jason Tvain and Lee Ye-hyeon, who witnessed the finale.

Tvain was injured but didn't leave his post.

If Ye-hyeon failed, he planned to charge with a bomb for mutual destruction. On the day Ye-hyeon received permission from Seung-hyun to leave and returned to the battlefield, he was assigned to Jason Tvain's unit.

It was the final force.

If even Tvain's unit failed, an atomic bomb would drop.

In that heavily shadowed place, before it could rampage through the ruins, Jason Tvain received a high-yield bomb, and Ye-hyeon was handed the sword.

And that's when Ye-hyeon first met Jae-yeon.

A woman with fox-like elongated eyes and shimmering hazel bobbed hair.

She held a sword in her arms.

"She looks eerily like Lee Seung-hyun."

"What?"

The woman, who had barged in and scrutinized Ye-hyeon's face, smiled faintly at his confusion.

She thrust the sword she held toward him.

"A gift from Hilde."

"What?"

"She said to pin our hopes on this."

The bobbed-haired woman kept spouting incomprehensible things.

Just like Lee Seung-hyun and his comrades, who never gave proper explanations.

"Good luck. I don't care who wins."

"...Excuse me, but who are you exactly?"

"Don't look at me like that. You're the same, aren't you?"

Jae-yeon extended a hand with red manicured nails and brushed Ye-hyeon's hair behind his ear.

Their gazes met in the air. The man who hadn't even washed after rolling through the battlefield, and the woman who was eerily clean and beautiful.

Jae-yeon observed Ye-hyeon's eyes calmly, then laughed brightly.

"I hope the world just crushes you and moves on, right?"

Ye-hyeon succeeded in slaying the creature.

*

The story ended.

As the steady murmur of words cut off, silence settled over the high-ceilinged living room. I stared at Ye-hyeon, speechless for a long while.

It was midnight. The day had ended before I knew it. Outside the living room's floor-to-ceiling windows, darkness like ebony had descended, and the cool, wind-scented space mingled with the smell of night. A heavy silence pressed down on my shoulders. The ticking of the clock's second hand struck my ears.

The weight of the silence choked my throat.

I took in Ye-hyeon watching me with unreadable eyes and Yoon observing him inscrutably, then parted my lips.

No proper voice came out.

"My sword."

"Yeah."

Ye-hyeon replied in a husky voice.

"The sword you handed to me."

"I..."

The one I named hope and passed on.

"My greatsword."

"Do you want to hold it again?"

Pretending not to hear my stammering voice, the pale one asked back.

"Do you want to hold it again, Hilde? I have it."

My breath caught.

I was already shedding tears without realizing, and now I couldn't handle my own breathing, starting to gasp. I clutched my heaving lungs with both hands. I coughed in futile effort to calm my breath.

Tears blurred my vision, and my breathing grew faster.

My heart hurt.

"Hilde!"

"Hyperventilating."

The seniors' voices buzzed in my ears.

"I'll get a paper bag. Stay still."

"Cup your hands over your mouth, Hilde. Cover it with both hands."

Memories burst forth.

I coughed and sobbed. My sword. The one I always carried, gripped every time Kyle and I swept the battlefield. There was no need for swords on Earth. Humans used guns, bombs, and robots instead of long, heavy lumps of metal.

So my sword had rusted away in its scabbard for so long, under the name of precarious peace.

I had no intention of letting go of something I cherished like a clone.

"Ye-hyeon, the paper bag."

"Hilde."

A white paper bag approached.

"Hilde, grab the bag."

In the end, I would hand over the sword.

To a human.

To the ally I ultimately chose. But to someone whose identity I didn't even know.

On some day I couldn't precisely recall, I left a sword—unsure if it would ever be used—with a short video message for an unknown person.

Memories surged.

"Hold this."

I recorded the message in an empty room.

"If the worst happens, if mutual destruction is the only path left. Before pressing the nuclear switch, grip this and charge in.

And hope that a fragment of emotion remains in him. That he recognizes the weapon of a comrade he's shared so much time with, and hesitates for even a moment.

That in that moment of hesitation, you're cold and capable enough to drive a blade into his heart.

And if no fragment of emotion exists, that you're prepared to embrace him and perish together, or that you have no attachment to life."

The message left to the last capable human who knew how to wield a sword among the remaining forces.

"Let's hope for that. Slim chance, but."

Lee Ye-hyeon would grip my sword.

My sword. The one like my other self. The one my kin recognized instantly. The one I brought all the way to Earth. It passed into the hands of a human with no lingering attachment to life—yet ironically, one who stood firm on the battlefield until the end, who cultivated judgment and courage amid abuse and neglect.

To the young man who knelt before me then, desperately trying to steady his breathing.

"Hildebert."

"Ye-hyeon."

I squeezed out the names amid my ragged breaths.

"So you received my sword."

Humanity won the first war.