Black Badger

I strode into the cabin and picked up the game lying on the table.

Igor, who had been sitting on a beanbag, pushed himself upright. Milk, who had been perched on his chest, sprang down to the floor and dashed toward Kairos.

Kairos bent at the waist, scooped Milk up, and muttered,

“I’d like you to rest a bit and play.”

I headed for the stairs leading to the second floor.

“Thanks. But I don’t have time. Did you at least figure out what the Easter egg is?”

“I checked, but apparently the Easter egg only opens if you kill this ridiculously annoying boss. And after you beat it, you can’t save?”

Deltei explained as she followed behind me.

I could hear Igor and Kairos following behind her.

When we reached the second floor, Yoow was still tied to the bed, just as before.

“So to open the Easter egg, you have to kill the boss every single time. Apparently it’s a huge pain.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

A boss was something I could kill over and over again.

Yoow pushed himself up into a seated position. I stopped at the foot of the stairs and tilted my chin.

“I’m going to play.”

Yoow stared at me with eyes that revealed nothing.

“You’re going to watch, right?”

The tactician answered by getting off the bed.

I turned back to look at the kin who had followed me.

“Kairos. Can I borrow your place for a bit?”

Kairos slipped a hand into his pocket and held out a smart key to me.

“It’s a spare. Just keep it. You remember the password, right? I told you last time.”

“I remember.”

I didn’t actually need the smart key.

But returning it felt like it would be refusing his goodwill, so I thanked him and slipped it into my pocket.

Deltei, who had been watching the whole exchange with a faintly puzzled expression, suddenly looked like she’d realized something and blurted out,

“You’re going to Kairos’s place to play alone with Yoow?”

“Sorry.”

I gave the Saint a bitter smile and apologized.

“If it’s something I can show later, I will. But for the first run, can I play it just with Yoow?”

To be honest, if it were up to me, I wanted to open the Easter egg alone.

Because I wanted to read the letter Adam’s parents had left by myself. That was also why I hadn’t told Ricardo. Of course, the main reason was that casualties had occurred and I hadn’t been able to bring it up, but part of it was that I couldn’t bring myself to show him the contents.

Deltei pressed her lips together, then lowered her head.

“Okay. If I were you, I’d probably do the same.”

“Then I’ll wait outside the tactician’s house.”

Igor informed us with his arms crossed.

He didn’t care about the game, but he clearly didn’t like the idea of me being alone with Yoow.

I gave a bitter smile.

“It’ll be cold.”

“I’ll wait too. Call me if anything happens.”

Igor didn’t respond to my words, and Kairos laughed easily as he headed down the stairs.

Milk’s tail swayed as she sat on his shoulder.

“Help yourself to anything in the fridge.”

I entered Kairos’s house together with Yoow.

Compared to the cabin, it was vast. Despite being as spacious as Yehyeon’s place, there was no chill in the air. It seemed Kairos had turned on the heating the moment I mentioned coming over.

There was an enormous TV screen in this house.

I quickly installed the game and booted it up. Normally, I would have played the game from the very beginning. But I didn’t have that kind of time right now.

Fortunately, it had auto-saved at the point right before the boss fight.

Yoow crouched beside me.

As I opened the saved slot, I muttered,

“If I try three or four times, I should be able to clear it. Wait.”

Yoow didn’t reply.

I didn’t add anything either. I honestly didn’t have the mental space to spare for the tactician.

Without waiting for an answer, I started the game. A game rendered almost entirely in black and white. The BGM was extremely old-fashioned. Amid a beeping, boinging soundtrack, a white skull fired bullets. The player dodged the bullets and hurled stones in return.

The protagonist was a young boy wearing a black T-shirt with a white apple printed on it.

Adam.

Something bitter rose up my throat.

So Adam is the protagonist of this game.

Ddiroriroring!

Ding! Ddidididing!

Kwagwaang!

On the third attempt, I killed the boss.

Cracks spread across the skull with sharp sounds before it crumbled into powder and fell to the bottom of the screen.

The protagonist clapped in delight.

He jumped around on top of the skull’s remains, celebrating, until the motion abruptly cut off.

Then the BGM stopped, and the player turned his head to look beyond the edge of the screen.

Pitch-black eyes.

『What will the protagonist ask of you, one last time?』

☞ Praise

☞ Money

☞ Trophy

☞ Murder

☞ _______

“So that last free-response slot must be the Easter egg.”

If you picked praise or a trophy, you’d probably get the true ending.

The hidden ending would come from choosing money or murder.

Yoow broke his silence for the first time.

“Figure it out.”

I turned my head to look at Yoow, who had his fingers interlaced.

“If you put in the wrong answer, it’ll just keep telling you that you aren’t that person.”

“So that’s how you knew it was an Easter egg.”

I watched the mix of frustration, grief, irritation, and self-reproach on his face, then turned my gaze back to the screen.

What Adam would ask of me at the very end.

Yoow continued, murmuring almost to himself.

“I tried everything you could possibly type. Revenge. Forgiveness. Understanding. Charity. Mourning. Condolences. Allowance. Game console. Game titles. Money I lent him. Kick scooter. Hat. Bicycle. Condoms. From clothes. Dress shoes. Watch. Cigarettes. Alcohol. Plum wine. Drugs. Apple. Snake. Woman. Man. Life. Puppy. Kitten. Memories. Old stories. Kisses. Sword. Swordsmanship. Master. Disciple. Initiation. Swordmaster. Monsters. Sports car. Sex. Books. Songs. Job. Human....”

“I think I get why you went insane.”

It was frightening, the way he recited the list like a madman.

There were things mixed in there that I couldn’t possibly understand, but I didn’t dare point them out. Until I returned, he must have typed those in, failed, typed them in again, failed—over and over.

And every time, he must have heard the words, ‘You aren’t that person.’

The fact that he hadn’t smashed the game was admirable.

“If I get it right in just a few tries, are you confident you won’t go berserk?”

I felt like I already knew the answer.

After he’d failed hundreds of times, if I got it right in one go, wouldn’t he snap?

Should I shove him out the door right now?

Yoow whipped his head around.

He turned so fast it was a wonder he didn’t dislocate his neck.

“If you don’t solve it within ten tries, I won’t be able to hold back my anger.”

Sharp as a ghost.

“Do it. Now.”

I turned my gaze back to the screen.

Staring at the blinking cursor, I adjusted the controller and began typing into the free-response field.

An empty space.

Without hesitation, I typed in the answer.

The moment I saw the question, the answer came to me. I had remembered this for a long time. Ever since I thought of Adam, I had never forgotten these words.

‘One Thursday.’

It felt like I could hear Adam’s voice.

‘Please give me one Thursday of Hilde.’

He was a child on the verge of adulthood.

Around the time he was about to graduate high school, I had barely been able to make time for him. Everything was moving at a breakneck pace back then. I was busy, on edge, and my hands carried a faint scent of blood every day. It was a period when I was killing radical humans and couldn’t afford to do anything else.

Those were the words the child had said to me then.

That he knew I was busy, but he wanted me to set aside just one day to spend with him.

‘With me?’

I had asked back with a smile.

‘Wouldn’t that be boring? And I heard you’ve been busy hanging out with your girlfriend lately.’

‘Exactly. That’s why I need a day with Hilde even more.’

What did that mean?

‘You know I’m about to become an adult, right? You can give me one day, can’t you? Is even that too much?’

Like everyone else, I was weak when it came to Adam.

I picked the Thursday three weeks later on the calendar. I could vividly see him grinning as he typed the schedule into his phone. After that, every time he saw me, he sang about it like a refrain. Captain. One Thursday. Hilde! One Thursday!

The promise was never kept.

Adam lost his life at human hands.

Three bullets were embedded in him. In the heart. In the forehead. In the neck.

That was the signal humans sent.

Because we had killed the Frost Emperor that way.

Three shots. That’s how I sent off the captured Frost Emperor. With a human weapon, I ended the life of the most hardline and powerful human of that time. One shot to the forehead, one to the heart, one to the neck.

Adam died because of what I did.

The child who had lived more like a human than any of our kin...

「You remember, don’t you?」

The sentence that appeared on the screen stole my breath.

「You haven’t forgotten, even now.」

I...

「The child will be happy.」

I,

「He counted the days until that one day.」

I know.

That the promise was never kept, and that before grieving Adam’s death, I worried first about the war that would follow.

All of it.

「We were the ones who first said we wanted to send the child to a kindergarten run by humans.」

White letters continued across the black screen.

「We said that to you first. Do you remember that as well? How you were utterly surprised, then thoughtful, and finally nodded with careful consideration. That it seemed like a good idea, that you would talk to them, but that you asked us to wait a little longer—you said that cautiously. Strangely, that memory sometimes appears in our dreams. It must have been that memorable a moment for us as a couple.」

I didn’t want to read anymore.

But I couldn’t stop.

I kept reading.

「We do not regret the choice we made back then.

Adam was a happy child. It would be a lie to say there were no hardships, but isn’t raising a child always like that? If we set aside the common yet uniquely painful struggles of parenting, we were happy. We believe Adam adapted quite well to the human world. In kindergarten, in elementary school, through adolescence, and even up to the brink of his coming-of-age ceremony.

To be honest, wasn’t it because he was our child that he adapted so well? As you know, Captain, our boy was exceptionally bright. He took after me—his face was fairly handsome, his personality refreshingly straightforward, and he was good at sports. Though he failed to land a major role in his middle school drama club, shattered every piece of tableware in the house during puberty, and all three Swordmasters eventually gave up on teaching him the sword. He was a really sharp kid. Wasn’t he, Captain? Wasn’t that so?

You were proud that he was the first among our kin to live like an ordinary human.

You found it admirable that he walked boldly down a path no one else had taken—a path whose thorns were unknown.

We know.

We can tell. Because we are Adam’s parents.」

That’s right.

Quietly ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) crying, I continued reading the letter.

That’s how it was. Back then, all of us.

「But that is precisely why Adam could not become an adult.

Because he was the first child to take that step.

Though we never intended it, he had already become a kind of symbol. Foolish and naïve, we realized far too late that our child had become such a symbolic existence. We only understood after three bullets were lodged in his body. No—more precisely, only after the coffin lid closed, after the coffin holding our child was lowered into the ground. Only after we heard the whispers beside us as we stared stupidly at the earth.

The symbolic three shots.

We heard that it was when you fired a gun for the first time. That you picked up a human weapon and extinguished a human life that seemed unbreakable.

Forehead. Neck. Heart.

It would be a lie to say we never resented you. We resented you for a long time. We needed something to resent. A mere culprit was not enough.

At that time, we hated everything. Ourselves, for letting our child take the first step. Our kin, for failing to protect him. The humans who hated our kin. You, who fired a gun at them.

You, who could not give the Thursday that Adam so eagerly awaited.

We heard that after Adam’s death, you refused to hold a gun. That you came to hesitate to aim it at anything living.

Back then, we thought that was terribly hypocritical. Someone who fled as soon as the funeral ended, pretending to regret.

We had such twisted thoughts.

How are you now?

Have you become good at shooting guns now?」

I didn’t even think to wipe away my tears.

Unable to move a single finger, I read on.

「Loss will always remain there, but...

In the end, we stayed here.

Beside humans. Beside those who made the weapons that took Adam’s life, we continue to live out our days.

We also wait for news of you, should it ever reach us.

It’s not because we forgave everything.

Nor because we overcame Adam’s death, or because we heard that the culprit who murdered Adam met a miserable end at the tactician’s hands.

There is only one reason we stayed.

After everything that happened...

Like you, we too could not give up on humans.」

Adam’s smiling face came to mind.

The child smiled so brightly.

Whenever I faced that innocent smile, the grief knotted inside me melted away like cotton candy.

「Adam loved humans.

And humans loved Adam as well. We cannot forget the eyes of the children who came to see us after he was gone. The vivid grief of those children—some barely adults, some not yet—who came with bloodshot eyes, clung to us, and wept.

The searing sense of loss shown by the humans who loved Adam.

The hands his friends’ parents extended, asking for nothing in return. Those who did not turn away from the sticky swamp of grief we were drowning in. Even in the face of sorrow so suffocating it stole the breath, some humans did not run away.

So we stayed.

Because we couldn’t bring ourselves to shake off their hands and turn away.

You stayed under them because you opposed the war until the very end.」

The letter was drawing to a close.

The final words left to me by those who were no longer on Earth.

「In the end, we write this letter to offer you our thanks.

To you, who could never give up loving people to the very end, and who therefore could never be happy no matter which side you stood on, we leave these words.

Thank you, Captain.

Thank you.

Thanks to your help, our child lived a happy life and passed on.

And we, too... as well as the humans who loved Adam.

So, if it’s all right, please visit Adam’s grave one Thursday.

Then Adam will be happy.

He may still be waiting for you.」

The letter ended.

With that final farewell, there were no more words.

「Thank you, Hilde.

With love and respect.

From Adam’s parents.」

I collapsed onto the floor.

For a long time, I cried, having forgotten how to breathe.