Black Badger

The scientists approached and supported me.

They sat me down in a chair and pressed a canned coffee into my hand, something I had no idea where they had gotten.

I only came back to myself after spending a long time feeling the cold surface of the can.

“Why is it shutting down?”

I grabbed Hiroshi’s arm and asked earnestly.

“Why on earth...?”

“The owner says he’s retiring.”

“Retiring?”

Retiring after even making a franchise?

It was not like it had no customers?

I stared blankly into the air. I did not want to believe the situation.

One of the only real pleasures in my life was disappearing; I could not believe it.

This could not be reality.

Baek Byungyeong muttered in an absurd tone, “You’re acting like this because the store closed today?”

I ignored his reaction. I also ignored Sophia, who let out a scoff as if she could not believe me.

Ami and the scientists patted my shoulder.

Yun, sitting opposite me, crossed his legs and scoffed.

“At last the world is turning the right way.”

My mentor looked down at his phone disinterestedly.

“It should have gone under ages ago.”

“Oh~ that shitty franchise~?”

Ricardo, who was sitting next to Yun, lifted his head from his phone.

“It wasn’t bankrupt until now~?”

Too much.

Life was too much, and the seniors’ reactions were too much.

I slumped back against the sofa, dazed.

Shawn picked up my phone from the floor and placed it gently into my hand. Hiroshi kindly opened the can for me. I blankly drank the canned coffee, unable to tell what it tasted like as I held my phone.

I stayed slumped in the chair for a long time.

Until a message came from Aide-de-Camp Ska.

***

“I guess you’ll be the one who has to contact Falcon.”

It seemed the leadership had been tearing their hair out trying to figure out what to do with the bomb I had brought them.

Of course. Baek Byungyeong was a bomb that could explode in any direction. And he really did roll his eyes all the way to Personnel Director Ju’s office, searching for an escape route.

Fortunately, the Personnel Director welcomed him with a smile.

While sending away a woman who was obviously in a lover-like relationship with him.

“You’ve worked hard!”

Baek Byungyeong stared blankly at the Personnel Director, who smiled so brightly it looked like flowers would bloom behind him.

“Come in. What would you like to drink? Coffee? Tea? Or just water?”

I had to leave the rest to him.

Interrogation was the Personnel Director’s domain. After bowing and entrusting him with the matter, I went upstairs to the leadership’s office. There I met the aides wearing troubled expressions.

Yehyeon supposedly had an official event he absolutely could not skip.

Which was why, the moment I closed the door, Ska—who had been pressing his forehead with his fist—said that.

“Falcon would guarantee his identity best. And you have that previous contract.”

“I’ll contact him.”

“If it’s uncomfortable, we can call him instead.”

Ska narrowed his eyes and scrutinized me.

I let out a small laugh.

“I’ll do it.”

I had things I wanted to ask.

“I’ll send in the report soon too.”

“First time writing one, right? Get Yun to help.”

So I did.

Yun showed he was annoyed, but he still readily looked through my report. I had to listen to him nagging nonstop the entire time I was writing it.

There was a separate standardized Badger mission report format, separate terms I had to memorize, and I also had to cut and upload the footage recorded in the cameras embedded in earrings or weapons, so it took quite a while.

The collected specimens were already submitted to the scientific building by Kai.

As for what we obtained from the dragon, everything except for one claw was submitted. The scientists had been so delighted they nearly fainted.

I gloomily finished writing the report.

Once everything was finally done, I returned home with my mentor.

I stopped Yun, who was about to go back to the residence across from mine, and handed him two games.

“Can you tell me who I and R are?”

“Yeah.”

Yun took the games.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

After coming inside the house, I prepared to call Colton.

More accurately, I prepared to receive his call. I had already sent him a message asking him to call me if he had time today.

He would call when it suited him.

It was already evening. The days had grown short, and outside was dark.

I looked through the cabin’s window at the bluish dusk that had descended.

The fact that I could no longer order Lexic noodles hit me painfully.

That this was reality.

I did not want to believe it.

Sunk in loss, I searched articles on my phone.

As I combed through articles that contained no real information and community reactions, a call came in.

I exhaled and answered Colton’s call.

[So you’ve returned.]

“Yeah.”

Lowering my gaze, I replied gloomily.

“I have a favor to ask.”

Colton conveyed his permission to speak through silence.

I delivered my request in a businesslike tone. That outside the Core I had restrained one of my kind, and he was currently being interrogated at Badger HQ. I did not know how the interrogation would end, but once the situation was sorted out, I wanted him to be quietly integrated into society without trouble.

Because that was the content of our contract.

Colton stayed silent until I finished explaining, then said:

[I shall do that.]

There was no unnecessary commentary.

[Is that all?]

...No.

In truth, there was much more I wanted to ask. Much more I wanted to learn.

But I still had not made the decision. I did not know how far I was allowed to ask.

So, pressing my clasped hands against my forehead, I whispered.

Thinking of Sophia and Baek Byungyeong.

“Why can I not feel the presence of my kin?”

The presence of those who should be living inside the Core.

“Did they cut off their intuition?”

[You would not be able to feel their presence.]

I heard the sound of papers turning beyond the receiver.

[But if they wished, they could detect your presence. They only erased their own, but they can still feel the presence of others.]

My eyes widened.

It was an instinctive reaction. I lifted my head, eyes enlarged.

I stared at the phone lying on the table.

The screen displayed the word “adversary.”

“...Is that possible?”

[Did you not ask for them to be perfectly hidden?]

Colton spoke in the tone of someone wondering why I was asking something with such an obvious answer.

[You asked for complete concealment. So I found the best method to grant your request.]

That had been the promise.

I could not speak for a long time.

He was a busy man, so I thought he might end the call midway, but Colton did not. Even as he continued turning documents, he did not hang up.

Thanks to that, after quite a while, I finally gathered myself enough to ask:

“Are they all doing well?”

My voice trembled faintly.

“They’re all... safely inside, right?”

[You want a report on their current state?]

The old friend asked in a voice without emotion.

I reflexively tried to answer yes.

But I swallowed the words back down my throat in a hurry.

Because the fact he had told me a few minutes ago pressed heavily on me.

Colton’s statement that they would have been able to sense my presence.

People like Kairos could not possibly have failed to detect me. I remembered the names of those whose intuition was razor-sharp, and I had been here for over a year—yet none of them had come to find me.

So....

“No.”

I swallowed bitterness.

“Knowing they’re all inside is enough.”

[I can guarantee that much.]

“Yeah.”

I lowered my head and rubbed my face with both hands.

“That’s enough....”

For a moment, I became unbearably sorrowful.

But I quickly gathered myself again. A long time had passed since the war. Hesh and Tom did not even know what Earth had been like before the war.

That much time had passed; surely many things had happened, and they must have changed greatly too.

I pressed my knuckles against my eyelids.

“That matter is finished.”

I needed to end the call quickly and get my head straight.

“One last thing. I want to ask one more question.”

I hesitated whether I should ask it, but in the end I should.

“For the record, this is just a personal question.”

[What’s gotten into you.]

“I’m too desperate.”

I spoke seriously, fingers interlocked.

That is what friendship is for, is it not.

I lowered the hand that had been pressing my eyelid. I placed both hands neatly on my knees, lifted my head, and looked at the lit screen showing we were still connected.

Even his voice was hateful, but he was someone I desperately needed right now.

Reading the word “adversary” displayed on the screen, I asked:

“Do you know Lexic noodles?”

Colton did not answer for a long time.

After a long while, the man let out a heavy sigh.

[Let’s end the call here.]

“No, hey! Listen to me to the end!”

Click.

The call disconnected.

Beep-, beep-, beep-. The continuous call-end tone.

I stared down at the screen blankly.

Heartless bastard. An old acquaintance asks like this, and he cannot at least listen to the end.

After glaring at the phone, I went to the beanbag.

And I lay there for a long time, until sleep began pouring over me. Trying to accept all the new things I had learned.

***

The next day.

My day off.

I felt something wrong with my body the moment I woke up.

“Huh?”

After getting up from the bed, I grabbed my throat and blinked.

“Why does my throat hurt?”

Not just hurt.

It hurt in a bad way. It was a sore throat of a severity I had never experienced before.

What.

The unexpected situation stunned me, and I could not move right away.

I was flustered.

Really flustered? Back when the Blue Disease was spreading, I had shared food with confirmed patients and talked with them in a cramped room. I had taken over their duties and stayed up several nights in a row.

I had done every possible thing that should have gotten me infected, but I never ended up catching the Blue Disease.

So I thought maybe I had gotten it asymptomatically and recovered, gaining immunity.

And I ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) do not catch colds.

Even the healers and knights had acknowledged that I had iron immunity....

“Now, of all times?”

I murmured to myself blankly as I stared ahead.

It was at least fortunate that humans were not contagious with this disease.

“It has been decades?”

Ah.

Even mumbling these thoughts made my throat hurt.

Stiff in shock at the unexpected situation, I only came back to myself when I felt stabbing hunger.

I raised my heavy, water-soaked-cotton-like body and staggered down to the first floor. Walking sluggishly, I yanked open the refrigerator and grabbed anything.

Now what am I supposed to do?

Maybe if I stay home all day and sleep, I will get better.

Have I ever even caught a cold....

After wandering like that, forcing down breakfast, I decided that I should stay inside all day and sleep.

If I sleep, I will get better.

It has always been like that.

***

I did not get better.

“Hey.”

Dragging my feet through headquarters, I lifted my head at the voice in front of me.

And met faces I had not expected.

“Senior Trevain. Senior Chen.”

“Oh? The kid remembers my name?”

The man Ami had called “the Jini guy” at the year-end party spoke back as if amused.

I smiled faintly.

“Yes, senior. It has been a while.”

“What’s with your face?”

Trevain raised an eyebrow with his usual sloppy posture.

“Your face is a wreck?”

Because my throat pain had not gone down at all.

I had even developed a headache. That was why I had driven to headquarters. To buy medicine for a throat cold at the pharmacy attached to the hospital wing.

I had reported to Yun yesterday.

When he came to the cabin as promised with the names of I and R,

Yun had calmly told me the names.

“Igor and Rose.”

“My god.”

Why did completely unexpected people leave something behind for me?

...Are both of them safely inside?

Anyway, Yun had detected my condition the moment he saw my face, and after hearing my confession, he scoffed.

As if he had known it would happen.

“Go to Samuel Han.”

I had muttered that maybe if I slept all day I would get better, but it did not work.

“Did your kin ever get better by sleeping all day?”

“...No, but. I really do have strong immunity. I do not even have a fever.”

“Make an appointment. You are not an emergency case, so you cannot get examined immediately tomorrow, but at least take medicine.”

So I had come today to buy medicine.

I had asked for sore throat medicine and was heading toward the cafeteria to swallow it with water.

I faintly smiled at Trevain’s blue eyes.

“I think I have a bit of a cold. I was heading to the cafeteria to take medicine.”

“Lunch?”

Chen tilted his body to one side and spoke.

“What, you going for lunch too?”

Ah.

This context is... surely....

“Alone?”

No.

No....

***

I was dragged along.

There was no refusing. Or more accurately, these were people who would never accept a refusal. They could not even imagine a junior rejecting a senior’s invitation.

Even the group Ami must never run into, the so-called “Three Jinis,” had shown up, worsening the situation.

I had wanted to go home and rest.

I stared gloomily at the chicken curry.

I glared at the food that refused to shrink and then turned my head.

It was late, so the cafeteria was nearly empty.

A faint sound came from the TV attached to the side of the cafeteria. The clatter of dishes and the TV sounds filled the emptying space.

With my headache worsening, I frowned between my brows and stared blankly at the TV.

The seniors who had tormented me the entire time I was getting my food were now chatting among themselves about clubs.

Please finish your conversation quickly and let me go.

I could barely taste anything.

Thinking that, I blankly watched the sports channel.

An award ceremony was airing.

Formula 1.

A professional car racing competition....

Clang!

I dropped my spoon.

“What the hell?”

Trevain, who had been giggling and drinking cola, lifted his head.

“What’s wrong with you?”

I had no strength to answer.

I was too busy staring at the screen. Half out of my mind with a terrible headache.

I scrutinized the face of the person walking up to the podium as if possessed.

I had planned to look for Asil as soon as I returned, but after Colton’s words, I had given up the search.

Before the call, I had jokingly asked Ricardo, wondering if he had any lingering memory of him, but I had not gotten any positive answer.

So I had thought I might never see him again in my life.

Those sun-like, dazzling eyes.

Sparkling with the joy of victory.

“Kairos?”

As he lifted the F1 championship cup high, he smiled brightly amid the fireworks.