Black Badger

My consciousness returned slowly.

Ah.

I furrowed my brow as the pain in my leg started to throb again. I could also feel someone else's body supporting mine. It was a sensation I always got when I woke from the Dream's Voice.

I drew in a breath of cold air.

"Senior."

Why did my throat feel so scratchy?

"I'm sorry. Since I'm awake now, please put me down."

"You're awake~?"

Gasp.

The nape of my neck prickled.

In an instant, all my senses sharpened, and the situation came into clear focus.

There, in the distance, stood the abandoned building where I'd fought with my senior. It looked pristine now. The fog that had blanketed the streets was gone.

Streetlights and the darkness cloaked the road.

I was being carried horizontally by Kudo.

And two pairs of eyes looked down at me.

"Your leg hasn't healed yet."

"...I can walk."

Why was Ricardo here?

I shoved my hands into my pockets and avoided the green gaze looking down at me. I quietly responded to Jonathan Kudo's words while wriggling to plant my good foot on the ground.

My senior frowned slightly and refused to set me down.

"Your wound will reopen. Stay still."

"...The creature...?"

"Handled it."

Kudo replied coolly.

I pressed my lips into a straight line and blinked awkwardly.

It wasn't surprising. Ricardo and Kudo must have taken care of the Ashen Cloak. It was something they could manage easily as long as they didn't get shaken by the illusions.

Illusions....

I ignored the churning in my gut and deliberately avoided Ricardo's gaze.

Why was he really here?

Had he come after seeing the missed call log?

Hadn't that call been deliberately ignored? Or had it been that I couldn't answer it?

Lacking the nerve to speak first, I looked around busily.

"Hilde...."

Why was he calling me?

Pretending not to feel the awkwardness, I rolled my eyes.

They met deep green eyes.

Ricardo stared at me with an inscrutable expression.

"Yes, senior."

"Let's talk later~...."

Ah, why?

"After you're fully recovered."

I was trying not to show my dread when Kudo interjected into the conversation.

Fortunately, he seemed fine and showed no intention of putting me down.

Ignoring my flailing good leg, he started walking.

A car was parked right nearby. My seniors tried to lay me in the back seat of the vehicle with its emergency lights flashing. It looked like Ricardo's car. No clutter, clean seats in a deep green....

Wasn't this a Maserati?

I was about to obediently climb into the back seat when I freaked out and resisted getting in.

"Senior, blood will get on your car!"

"What the hell is this.... Just get in already~."

"The seats are suede!"

Ricardo shot me a look of utter disdain.

But I was dead serious. How expensive was this car?

My minor rebellion was ignored.

Kudo shoved me into the back seat in a flash. My protests about bloodstains not coming out of the seats were completely dismissed. They crammed me into the car, took their seats up front, and started driving.

I gazed uneasily at the car's ceiling.

Then, slowly lifting my injured leg, I checked the back seat....

Ah.

"I'm sorry, senior. I'll cover the cleaning costs...."

"Shut up with that nonsense and lie down~."

"It's such an expensive car...."

"How do you normally treat your juniors that they'd react like this?"

Kudo, who had been sitting silently in the passenger seat, suddenly joined the conversation. His voice carried genuine curiosity.

Ricardo raised his voice in response.

"Wow~! This is so unfair! Is it my fault he's overreacting~?!"

"Given your behavior...."

"Neither of you is right. I'm being perfectly reasonable here."

Of course, if it were Colton's car, I wouldn't have cared.

That guy had so many cars they were practically rotting away, so it wouldn't have mattered to him. Besides, I felt like I could shamelessly ask Colton for favors now. We'd tried to kill each other and failed, after all. After going that far, would a few requests really have bothered him?

I couldn't remember why I'd tried so hard to kill him.

That felt important somehow.

The memories overturned by the Dream's Voice stabbed at my insides. What had I been about to say to Kyle? Why had I been so desperately devastated by failing to kill Colton?

That damn thing—if it was going to mess with the past, it should have flipped it completely.

Ah.

I bolted upright.

"Kudo senior."

Kudo turned to look at me.

"Did you keep the ring safe?"

Had he dropped it during the fight?

The answer didn't come right away. Kudo stared at me for a while with an unreadable expression.

Had I overstepped? I still didn't know what kind of relationship this senior had with someone named Sara Perry.

As I hesitated about whether to apologize, Kudo nodded.

I let out a sigh of relief and lay back down in the seat. Silence filled the car, a mix of cool fragrance and the smell of blood.

Ah, the seat was getting sticky with my blood. It really bothered me.

"Don't even think about paying for cleaning...."

How had he known?

I gave an awkward smile while staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, I felt exhausted. I lay still like the dead, listening to the tires gliding over the road.

The green sedan smoothly arrived at Black Badger headquarters.

*

"Hildebert?"

I'd just finished treatment for the thigh laceration and was sitting in my hospital room when a visitor arrived.

I'd been staring blankly into space. They'd told me to stay for two days. Hospital stays no longer felt miserable; I was relieved it was only two days. I planned to spend them lying in bed, reflecting on the past fragments that had surfaced and my scattered mistakes.

That's when Sara Perry showed up.

She had a much stronger presence than when she'd been next to Kudo. Her demeanor seemed different too.

Caught off guard by the unexpected visit, I blinked several times.

"May I come in?"

"Ah, yes. Of course."

I gestured to the chair beside the bed.

Sara strode in and took a seat.

Clear blue eyes. Unlike before, they were sharp and unwavering.

She elegantly brushed back her bright hair.

"I came to say thank you."

"Ah. Are you feeling okay?"

"Thanks to you. Thank you for saving me. I came because I have something to tell you about Jonathan."

Hm?

The flow of her words felt off....

"He said it's okay for me to tell you?"

She smiled faintly at my puzzled look, as if she'd anticipated my reaction.

"He thought it would be better if I explained."

"You, Perry?"

"Please call me Sara."

The woman replied straightforwardly.

I nodded slowly and looked at her. I was glad she seemed fine, but I had no idea what to say to someone I'd never properly talked to.

But before I could ask anything, she continued.

"As you might have guessed, we're not actually married."

Her tone was refreshingly direct.

"It's a contractual arrangement."

"Yes?"

A dumb sound escaped me.

I couldn't process her words for a moment.

Sara laughed brightly.

But I didn't get a chance to ask questions. The explanation kept going, as if she understood my feelings but wanted me to hear her out first.

"His late wife was someone he was deeply attached to. He's never made any demands that crossed the line, but my role is to dress and act like her."

"Yes? Role... what?"

"I've played real-life figures in indie films a few times, and somehow he knew about that."

"No."

"It's not all day, just starting when he gets home from work. He's like a stone who barely holds hands, so for me, it's a pretty good gig. For him.... Well, it's mutual help."

I stared at her, at a loss for words.

Sara grinned and met my eyes directly.

Her gaze said my reaction was perfectly reasonable.

But her next words carried pity.

"That man lives in the past."

"Ah."

A brief memory flashed in my mind and vanished. My senior using an old cell phone that was oddly outdated for someone like him.

Stubbornly refusing to upgrade it.

The story about him rebelling against an order to remove his ring....

"He was stuck in that happy time and couldn't move on."

"...That's why he clung to old things."

"Was it just things? Probably with relationships too. He probably didn't even bother getting to know people he'd met since the Second War?"

That's why he struggled to remember my name at first.

If I were younger, I might not have accepted his behavior. I might have started keeping my distance, thinking he was a weird guy. I'd have judged him as unreasonable and creepy.

But I grew up in an era riddled with violence, and I'd often witnessed the aftermath.

The wounds of the heart manifested in various forms.

Desperate struggles to turn back the irreversible.

"Well, I'm acting with the mindset of helping a patient with rehabilitation."

Sara said slowly.

"Though it's a circumstance I couldn't explain to just anyone."

"But Kudo told you to explain this to me?"

"I was surprised too. He's never said anything like this before."

Sara smiled faintly and looked me over with a grin.

I sat there blankly on the bed, unable to guess the meaning of her smile.

Until the blonde woman apologized for the late hour and left.

"It seems like an exceptional case for you."

Her voice, laced with amusement, mingled with the sound of the closing door and echoed in the room.

I stared at the closed door for a long time.

*

"How are you holding on?"

Around 3 a.m.

This time, Kudo came. I'd thought he'd gone home.

I couldn't respond to his question for a while.

When the ticking of the clock became unbearable, I finally spoke.

"Is holding on too burdensome for you?"

When I quietly asked back, Kudo slowly sat in the chair by the bed.

I knew he was silently affirming it. My senior, dressed in his usual neat clothes, still stained with my dried blood.

Loss never got better.

There was no end to loss, and where a precious person once was, a pitch-black hole remained that could never be filled. I knew this man was still staggering because of that massive void.

The beautiful scenery before the war....

I spoke slowly.

"I have things I need to wrap up."

Kudo blinked.

I smiled faintly.

"I have things to clean up, so I'm living with a sense of purpose burning inside me."

Kyle....

Even if I killed him, the world wouldn't magically revert to its old state. I'd seen many creatures I never encountered before. Life forms that didn't seem to originate from where I was.

Even if I killed my kin's killers, they wouldn't disappear.

I needed to find out more about where those strange things came from.

But for now, I had to stop Kyle.

And until then, I didn't want to die if possible.

"Senior, I'm sorry for peeking into your past without permission."

"...We're even."

Kudo replied like he was talking to himself, crossing his legs.

I smiled at the man who now seemed much more human.

I used to think he was like John Mullen.

"Even if holding on is burdensome, please keep holding on."

His gaze, which had been on the tip of his shoe, lifted.

"For the sake of your remaining cohort members."

Kudo stared at me intently.

It was that signature unreadable face. The eyes like a cat observing a bug, from when we'd faced each other in the collapsed tower.

He slowly broke the silence.

"I told Rick not to visit until you're discharged, so rest easy."

"Yes?"

"You seemed uncomfortable around him."

My senior said clearly.

His next words carried conviction.

"Visits would hinder your recovery."

I burst out laughing.

His words were unbearably funny. I didn't know exactly why, but whether it was amusing that Ricardo was getting this treatment from a close friend, or that this man became quite human around his friend.

Anyway, I laughed heartily.

He'd probably hate me too if he knew my true identity.

Until then, I should have enjoyed this small kindness.

With that thought, I gathered my laughter.

Leaving a faint smile, I expressed my thanks.

"Thank you for your concern, senior. I'll be back on duty soon. They said two days will do it."

"...Focus on fully recovering."

"It'll heal in two days. The doctor said so."

After discharge, I needed to buy a new phone and contact Ye-hyeon.

And from now on, I should have kept a close eye on this senior. He might have made an extreme choice when he was in a bad state.

I quietly thought as I saw my senior off.

Still not understanding what Sara's words—"It seems like an exceptional case for you"—meant exactly.

*

Two days passed quickly.

Discharge day.

I ran into Ricardo in the hospital lobby.

My senior approached, and I flinched reflexively.

His green eyes narrowed menacingly as he observed me avoiding his gaze.

"Hilde~... Shall we talk now~?"