Black Badger

I thought I was a bit late because I'd been on my phone, but it turned out Yoon had just come out early.

So, what do we do starting today? Are we going to get beaten up like last time?

I was worried, but things proceeded in a sensible direction.

We started with warming up and running. We set off from the cabin, took a long route around, and returned to the cabin. Everything necessary was neatly placed where it belonged along the streets. The city basked in warm sunlight, and Yoon and I ran in silence.

After returning, we walked ten minutes to the gym and did strength training. The gym was spacious, filled with rows of well-maintained, state-of-the-art equipment, but there wasn't a single person there.

It was so strange that I couldn't hold back and asked.

"Why isn't there anyone here?"

"Because this gym is mine."

Crazy.

"When I'm busy, just come and work out on your own. I'll register your fingerprints."

This guy was seriously rich.

I'd suspected it from seeing his vehicle, but I hadn't realized he was wealthy to this extent.

Anyway, we worked out there. Yoon seemed to want to gauge my abilities, so he had me do a variety of exercises: lower body, upper body, flexibility training, and so on.

For some reason, my body wasn't keeping up.

It had been the same during the run earlier. It felt like I should have been able to run faster and farther, but my body wouldn't cooperate. The weights and sets for strength training were the same issue. My ankle flexibility seemed reduced too. When I tried juggling, my dynamic vision was definitely off.

How did this happen...

Like this?

"Were you a trainer?"

I straightened my back.

"Pardon?"

"Even if you can't do the exercises well, you've done them for years."

Yoon squinted at me, examining me.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his black windbreaker and furrowed his brow slightly.

"It seems like you've taken a few months off from training. But no matter what exercise I give you, you do it with perfect form and hit the right muscle groups."

"Is that so? That's a relief. It does feel like I've been off for a few months. I was just thinking my body isn't responding..."

"Don't you remember your training?"

Not really.

Whenever Yoon suggested an exercise, I reflexively knew how to do it. Deadlifts, bench presses, push-ups, pull-ups, and so on.

When I explained the facts, Yoon fell into thought and was silent for a moment.

Then he said.

"You even used a natural rolling technique when that mushroom hit you."

Did I?

"How much muscle do you plan to build?"

"I don't want to bulk up too much. That would reduce flexibility, leading to more injuries and limiting my movements."

"See?"

Yoon said.

"From what I can tell, you weren't someone who exercised as a hobby. You must have done it professionally, or been in the military or police, or maybe a stuntman."

Was that the case?

I still couldn't remember.

But Yoon didn't dwell on my answer. Instead, after finishing the strength training, he dragged my exhausted self to the shooting range.

The shooting range was below this gym.

How rich was this guy?

"I take back what I said about you possibly being military or police."

As soon as I finished shooting, Yoon commented flatly.

"You handle exercises well, but why are you so bad with guns?"

Sorry.

Yoon spent the entire afternoon having me practice shooting. He didn't seem to mind wasting live rounds, letting me fire as much as I wanted, then dragged my utterly drained body to his house.

More precisely, he pulled me to the spacious lab in the basement of his house.

It was a cool place with a faint smell of disinfectant.

There, he showed me a model of the small core.

A glass dome, like a half-snow globe, covered a city model.

"It's made of exactly the same material as the Breath protecting the Center Core."

"Breath?"

"The original name for the barrier is Breath. Most people call it the core. But strictly speaking, the core refers to the entire area enveloped by the barrier. The barrier itself is precisely called Breath."

"I see."

"John Mullen invented Breath. I commercialized it."

"Pardon?"

I was so surprised that my pronunciation came out a bit off. I widened my eyes and looked at the man beside me.

"Isn't that an incredibly amazing achievement?"

"If you want to get technical, yes."

He wasn't humble.

But now I understood why he was so rich. He probably had patents on it. It made no sense for someone who contributed to commercializing an indispensable device for human life not to be wealthy.

Yoon looked down at the toy-like small core and pressed somewhere on its base.

Then, a small hole opened at the bottom of the semicircular dome. It was arched, like a tiny door for little people.

Yoon pointed at the small hole with his finger.

"When leaving the core, you create a door in the core like this to exit."

"Do you go outside?"

Why go out? Wasn't the Breath there to protect the city from weird creatures like mushrooms or spiders?

A dry voice provided the answer.

"Civilians don't go out. We do."

The low, even voice explained.

"We have to reclaim the lost land, don't we?"

For a moment, I was swept up in a strange feeling.

I couldn't pinpoint exactly what emotion I was feeling or why. I just knew that the moment I heard that flat explanation, my mood turned peculiar.

It felt like a faint afterimage flashed before my eyes. Like a forgotten memory surfaced and vanished. It was too quick to grasp clearly.

I stared intently at my mentor.

"What's out there?"

The response came lazily.

"Creatures."

Then I'll go outside the core once my term was up! The outside must have been dangerous.

"You have to serve your term before entering the core."

What?

"The core is full of civilians."

That was true.

Yoon turned on a screen mounted on the lab wall.

The display split into multiple sections, like monitoring surveillance cameras. Then it began showing bizarre things. The backgrounds varied: some bluish grasslands, others desolate gray landscapes reminiscent of apocalypse movies.

The backgrounds shifted rapidly, like changing game stages, with creatures lurking within.

Notably, there were no signs of humans anywhere.

That must have been the outside of the core.

"The area near the core is relatively safe. Badgers have cleared nests there. The farther you go from the core, the more dangerous it gets, and there are regions where drones vanish for unknown reasons. We divide areas by danger level. But just watching footage like this doesn't give you a real sense, does it?"

I had a bad feeling.

I immediately gave a polite response.

"The video quality is excellent; it's as vivid as reality right in front of me."

"Explaining it in words won't stick in your head."

Yoon had no intention of listening to me.

He pressed keys firmly, switching the footage. As the images changed rapidly, I grew more intimidated.

What were those incomprehensible things that occasionally appeared on screen...

My mentor continued his explanation, unconcerned with my expression.

"If creature danger levels are divided from 1 to 10, the zones outside the core are divided from A to F. A is the farthest zone badgers can reach, and F is where new recruits start."

"Ah. So the creature swarming in the top right corner screen is in A Zone?"

"That's an off-limits S Zone."

"Huh?"

I thought A Zone was the limit?

Yoon explained without taking his eyes off the screen.

"There are places even seasoned badgers can't enter. We group all those and call them S Zone."

"Then how was that footage taken?"

"By drone."

Ah.

"Good thing it's S Zone. We probably won't encounter it."

"S Zone will eventually become F Zone and be incorporated into the core. That's why we go out."

"I'll correct myself: it's a relief because it's a distant future for me."

"Let's go outside in a week."

I knew it!

I knew you'd say that! From the moment you said words alone won't make it stick, I had a bad feeling.

This guy... I'd felt it since the mushroom creature incident: he definitely believed in learning through direct experience.

Yoon glanced at me as I opened my mouth, then raised an eyebrow.

"Why the face?"

"Are you seriously asking because you don't know?"

"No."

This human.

Yoon turned off the screen.

Every action from my mentor felt efficient. No unnecessary movements at all.

He pulled out what looked like a tablet from under the desk.

"Let's build up your stamina for the week before we go out."

"Is it possible in just a week?"

"Your current condition isn't that bad."

Really?

I asked in a voice that couldn't hide my joy.

"That's a relief. I was really worried..."

"But you're still far from being field-ready."

Giving with one hand and taking with the other.

This time too, my mentor ignored my reaction.

He swiped through the tablet, explaining the training schedule for the week.

Breakfast, then exercise from 9 a.m. Lunch. Rest, then exercise again from 2 p.m. Ends at 6 p.m., then study the world online on your own. Ask questions via messenger whenever something comes up.

It was more straightforward than I'd expected. Ending at 6 p.m. and having legal internet time was nice too.

Thinking about the self-introduction in a week made my stomach twist, but the week ahead itself seemed decent, lifting my mood.

"Considering your situation, I'll advance one month's salary. Use that to manage your living expenses."

Before leaving Yoon's house and heading back to the cabin, Yoon handed me a card and said that.

I smiled and accepted the card he offered.

"Thank you."

Having usable money made me feel much more at ease. I should check the ATM to see how much was in it. Now that I had a place to stay and work, I could buy basic necessities like clothes and groceries.

Ah.

I'd been worried, but everything seemed to be working out. I was glad...

BOOM!

"What was that!"

"What else? A creature."

Yoon smacked the fox-sized creature that had lunged at my face with his phone, then said.

The creature crashed to the ground along with the phone screen, splatting.

A phone wasn't a ping-pong paddle—how did you swat that with a phone? As I stared dumbly at the twitching lifeform on the ground with a blank expression, Yoon walked lazily toward it.

My mentor bent down to check the creature that had bounced up from the ground.

"Strange. It seemed to be luring toward me, but why did it jump at you?"

It was a creature similar to a whale.

Practically a whale, really.

Crack!

Yoon crushed it underfoot, killing it.

What a waste.

The thought flashed through my mind.

...Huh?

"Why is that a waste?"

"What?"

I couldn't understand why I'd thought that and muttered to myself, when Yoon straightened up and asked.

I hurriedly shook my head.

"No, it's nothing. But can this be used as bait?"

"Yeah. These things make sounds in frequencies humans can't hear. The creature alert had been going off since earlier, getting closer, so I deliberately used my phone to make noise and lure it in to catch it."

Yoon said, arching his brow.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

"Why did it go for you?"

"It probably thought I looked easier to take down."

Even if I were that thing, I wouldn't want to mess with Yoon.

It hadn't been long since I met him, but Yoon still moved with an eerily minimal motion, exuding an intimidating aura that made him hard to read.

"We weren't that far apart anyway."

Yoon seemed oddly unconvinced by my answer.

He didn't say anything, though.

He just stared at me for a moment before sending me back to the cabin. He said if I reported the carcass, the cleanup team would handle it.

I nodded and returned to the cabin.

On the way back, I kept having this inexplicable feeling of regret.

Even I couldn't understand the source of the thought.

But it was regretful all the same.

It was a rare, hefty specimen.