Black Badger

Society moved to damage control.

Something like a natural disaster that had produced countless casualties.

While dealing with the aftermath, Black Badger prepared a joint funeral. It was something they had been unable to do since the outbreak of the epidemic. A funeral for several Badgers who had died during the epidemic, and for three Badgers who had died in the incident involving the rampage of a 10th-class Creature.

Amid the internal and external chaos, Personnel Director Kang Ju pulled a blue ribbon.

The Personnel Department, after reading each will in full, either disclosed the full text publicly or incinerated it according to the author’s wishes. Wills addressed to specific individuals were delivered only to those individuals.

Jin Silver’s will was delivered to the Supreme Commander, the Personnel Director, and Hildebert Taleb.

The Personnel Director read the message addressed to him without missing a single letter.

[You know I waited until the very end.

I didn’t even burn the will I wrote before I deserted.

Thank you for not giving up on me even after marking me as deceased.

You cared so much, and I’m sorry for betraying that and running away.

I wanted to keep apologizing.

If you’re reading this, doesn’t that mean I died in action as a Black Badger?

I hope that’s the case. If I died on a mission rather than from illness or an unfortunate accident, I’d be happier than anything.

Thank you for helping make that possible.

Thanks to you, I lived and died as a Badger.]

Ju cried for a long time.

Then, as usual, he pulled himself together and separated the portions that needed to be delivered to the other recipients.

He wouldn’t be able to pass them along right away—both of them were too busy at the moment.

Yehyeon had so many memorial events to attend that it was hard to see his face even once.

Ju recalled what Yehyeon had said without a flicker of emotion when they finally managed to meet after the disaster.

‘Someone has to take responsibility for what happened.’

Too many people had died to brush it off by saying it had been handled.

‘I’m sitting in this position to take responsibility.’

On top of that, there was the matter of hiring Hildebert Taleb.

The special recruitment and Hildebert Taleb’s identity—things that had been carefully smoothed over until now.

They became visible in the media at midnight on the day the 10th-class Creature incident was brought to a close.

[Golden eyes?]

The suspicions raised alongside photographs turned Center Core upside down. For a while, stories related to him flooded the media like mad. Claims that he had taken online courses, yet no trace of that remained. That both rampaging 10th-class Creatures had golden irises.

The fact that he used a sword as his weapon.

The renewed spotlight on the similarity between his swordsmanship and that of the Supreme Commander.

Everything except photographs from before the First War was uploaded online.

Surprisingly, the reaction wasn’t as bad as they had expected....

‘Put Hildebert on leave for the time being.’

That had already been done.

‘If the press asks, say it’s medical leave.’

‘When will he come back?’

When Ju asked, the finger Yehyeon had been tapping against his phone screen stopped.

The Supreme Commander remained still for a moment.

Only after an aide knocked and entered did he mutter,

‘He’ll come back when he wants to.’

Yehyeon finished typing his message and sent it, then stood up from the desk he’d been sitting at.

Before leaving, he twisted his upper body back and added a word of encouragement.

‘Thanks for keeping things together in the middle of all this. Keep it up, just like this.’

Ju smiled faintly.

And told him to come collect the will once everything had been settled.

The superior officer nodded with a bitter look and left his seat.

Black Badger was running at full tilt.

Flashes constantly going off near buildings and sites under reconstruction.

Returned uniforms and broken weapons.

Amid all that commotion, the memorial service was held.

***

Rain fell.

Attendance was not mandatory. There were Badgers who couldn’t attend due to work obligations, against their will. There were also those who found no meaning in events like this.

Even so, the majority of Badgers showed their faces.

Countless general staff members also attended voluntarily.

Since civilians with no issues in their records could attend if they applied, there were many civilians as well. Reporters attended in droves, and several figures from political and business circles were present.

The main focus was Black Badger.

Cameras followed the Badgers as they held black umbrellas and walked toward ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) the chapel.

Clear raindrops running along the ribs of the umbrellas.

Shaaah....

Reporters spread out in front of the chapel fired off flashes one after another.

Those with shorter careers usually scowled at the cameras thrust in their faces.

Or tilted their pitch-black umbrellas to hide their faces.

Those with longer careers, on the other hand, did not react. They walked the road in front of the chapel as if the cameras didn’t exist.

Ricardo Sordi, Jonathan Kudo, and Sophia Kalak walked in expressionlessly and entered the chapel.

Next, Carl Dow arrived. He carried a wheelchair with a civilian man seated in it up the steps with one hand.

After stepping onto the final stair, he used his umbrella to shield the civilian’s face and pushed the wheelchair inside.

Behind them, first-generation Black Badgers such as Jason Trevain, Chen Koenig, and Richard Green appeared.

Beep, click! Beep, clickclick!

The flashes grew even more frantic.

By now, people knew that Jason Trevain and Chen Koenig had been on the front lines of the disaster.

Yet the first-generation Black Badgers didn’t blink once at the exploding flashes.

No reporters threw questions at them as they climbed the steps in black uniforms and headed for the chapel.

Their expressions were too rigid, too hardened, to invite questions.

Clickclickclick! Clickclickclick!

Part of it was because public opinion toward Black Badger had turned positive after the disaster. Criticism poured toward the Supreme Commander, who had failed to stop the headquarters infiltration and the rampage of the 10th-class Creature in succession, but praise and gratitude burst forth for the Badgers who had risked their lives on the front lines.

And so, on the eve of the memorial service, most reporters showed respect toward the Black Badgers who had devoted themselves amid the disaster.

Shaaah....

Public opinion toward Hildebert Taleb wasn’t entirely bad, either. Some hurled criticism, saying he had tried to ‘save without killing’ the 10th-class Creature, but when footage was released of Hildebert swinging his sword as if to sever its neck, stabbing from behind and from the front, much of that criticism died down.

The man of the hour, Hildebert Taleb.

“Is he even going to show his face?”

Reporters were frantic, searching for him.

The reason there were so many reporters in front of the chapel was because many thought that, if anywhere, they might be able to catch even a single hair of Hildebert Taleb here.

Since that day, the rumored Badger had vanished without a trace.

The last footage showed everything engulfed in white light.

After that, the live broadcast cut out, and Hildebert disappeared from the scene.

There was no way those who had remained behind hadn’t seen him leave, yet the Badgers said nothing at all about his whereabouts.

Even when asked whether they had known his identity, no one gave a straight answer.

Almost all of them refused to respond.

Only a very few glanced back at the thrust microphones and replied.

‘What? Kumbeor?’

Those were the words of a first-generation war hero Black Badger, answering with deeply furrowed brows.

‘You asking if he’s not human? What kind of bullshit is that! Don’t you know he’s a Badger?’

When pressed again—sure, he was a Badger, but wasn’t his identity non-human, maybe even a Creature?—the answer came back: ‘He looks human, doesn’t he? What, are your eyes crooked?’

When reporters who had given up asked if he knew where Hildebert was, that Badger picked his ear and replied,

‘Probably at home.’

When they said it didn’t seem like it, the war hero stared at the reporter who’d said it with a shocked expression.

‘What are you, a stalker?’

The point was, no one knew Hildebert’s whereabouts.

He was someone who, in normal times, was exposed to media he very much didn’t want, yet now, with the eyes of the entire world focused on him, there wasn’t even a hint of his presence to be found. That fact was strange.

Naturally, his disappearance didn’t have a particularly good effect on public opinion.

Still, every time public sentiment threatened to turn sharply negative, footage surfaced of him charging unflinchingly toward a 10th-class Creature.

As a result, Hildebert came to be regarded as ‘a lonely and powerful human-shaped Creature who loved humans too much and turned his back on his own kind.’

Of course, there were many who, having known him as a solid rookie Badger, felt betrayed or repulsed by his identity.

In other words, Hildebert had become the most famous figure in Center Core at the moment. There was a reason reporters were camped out everywhere he might possibly appear.

“Ah.”

Separately from all that, the memorial service itself was also excellent material for coverage.

“Those are the Choi family Badgers.”

Flashes fired off busily once more.

Choi Yun and Choi Ami walked toward the chapel without blinking once.

Reporters photographed the famous siblings for various reasons, while also checking whether Hildebert was nearby.

It was a waste of effort.

“There’s no way he’s really planning not to show his face even at a memorial service.”

“That’d really tank public sentiment.”

“Seriously, where did he hide? There’s not a single person who’s caught even a trace. Is he a Creature who can turn invisible or something?”

“The top brass is coming.”

At someone’s words, the chatter cut off at once.

An even louder burst of camera shutters rang out than when the first-generation Black Badgers appeared, or when the Choi siblings climbed the steps. They shot the leadership as they ascended the stairs one by one.

Supreme Commander Lee Yehyeon and Chief Aide-de-Camp Ska Owen.

Aide Gilbert Lowell, followed by secretaries and staff from the secretariat.

Raindrops splashed around the black dress shoes they wore.

Rumors were circulating that Supreme Commander Lee Yehyeon was on the verge of resignation.

Stories spread that, rather than appointing an outsider as his successor, preparations were underway to seat Ska Owen as planned.

That an official announcement expressing his intent to resign would likely come soon.

Of course, none of it had been confirmed as true.

Still, as someone who had long been an icon of Black Badger, the public was pouring intense interest into his movements.

“This time, he’ll really resign.”

“I heard the president already signed off on it.”

“What matters isn’t the resignation, it’s who the successor will be. Whether they can safely seat Ska Owen as the next one....”

Amid such conversations scattering into the sound of rain, the leadership disappeared into the chapel.

Once the aides had all entered as well, the open doors closed.

No one else climbed the steps.

The reporters who had been searching for Hildebert grumbled and lowered their cameras.

“Guess he’s really not coming.”

“Cold bastard.”

Some went inside the chapel, while others stayed in front of the building, saying they’d wait a little longer.

The rain kept falling.

***

Just as the reading of the memorial address was about to begin.

Some of the Badgers standing in formation in black uniforms flinched.

Ricardo and Jonathan’s heads turned slightly toward the door.

Ami, lips pressed into a straight line, lifted her head and looked toward the chapel entrance. Yun, standing beside her, didn’t turn to check, but raised one eyebrow, expressing that he had sensed something amiss.

Sophia rolled her eyes toward the door. Shu, gripping the hand of the father standing beside her, turned her head.

Hesh and Tom, unable to hold back, widened their eyes and turned around.

Despite sensing the disturbance, the only ones who maintained perfect poker faces were the leadership.

Jason Trevain and Chen Koenig frowned.

Richard Green let out a sigh, while William Walker and Asil Fiscer threw their gazes backward.

Leeho rubbed his dry face.

An outrageous clamor of flashes pierced through the chapel doors.

The reporters’ excitement was almost leaking in through the cracks.

Shaaah....

The doors opened.

A massive long umbrella was folded shut. Red hair entered the field of view. Jack Black set the dripping tip of his umbrella down beside his shoe.

The man next to him also folded his umbrella.

And instead of the greatsword he always carried, he held the umbrella in his right hand. With his left, he brushed away the water droplets clinging to his suit, then slowly lifted his head. Slightly damp white hair fell over his shoulders.

Golden eyes.

Gold irises that, unlike usual, revealed nothing of what lay within.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

Hildebert Taleb said.