Passion Novel - Chapter 85

Silence fell over the place at his words. Ilay twirled the axe between his fingers like a toy and chuckled.

“And the next one will be a vertical cut to the shoulder. If you’re lucky, you might survive.”

“…”

“Maybe the one after that will be the neck…”

Perhaps they thought Ilay’s words were a joke. Even while treating it as a joke, they hesitated to confront him, seeing their colleague rolling on the ground, clutching his bloody leg. However, Jeong Taeui—and other Asia branch members—knew that Ilay’s words were no joke.

He thought it would be problematic if it didn’t stop here. Although the organization superficially stated that people might inevitably die during training, if this man were left alone even in such a case, the justification for claiming “inevitability” would disappear. Jeong Taeui released the man he had been holding by the collar, preventing him from charging at Ilay.

The man had been about to charge, casually muttering before the third man’s leg was half-severed and dangling, “It’s easier to deal with a guy carrying an axe. Even if they carry something like that, they can’t just swing it around recklessly, so such a weapon just becomes a nuisance and an obstacle.” His words weren’t entirely wrong. Most people would tend to be somewhat restrained, fearing that swinging an axe carelessly might accidentally hit someone and cause serious injury.

However, that also depends on the person. This man had gravely misjudged his opponent. Consider your life saved by me today, Jeong Taeui muttered to himself, looking at the man who was no longer trying to charge at Ilay.

I’ve done so many good deeds, so I’ll go to heaven when I die. Though my body will accumulate plenty of relics while I’m alive.

“You know that instructors, in principle, don’t spar outside of demonstration matches, right?” Jeong Taeui spoke quietly from behind. Ilay looked back at Jeong Taeui with a blank expression.

“Jeong Taeui. I told you not to interfere in my affairs. Did you forget already?”

“Not at all. But it’s sparring time now. Good things come to those who do good, don’t they?”

Although there was no connection between sparring time and “good things come to those who do good,” Jeong Taeui shrugged as if to emphasize his point. Ilay grimaced disapprovingly, then opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again, as if he had decided to be good-natured today. He muttered, “Do as you please,” and still with a displeased expression, raised the axe and threw it directly at Jeong Taeui.

“…!”

A chilling sound cut through the air as it flew. It whizzed by his ear, grazing a few strands of hair. And then, with a thwack, a loud impact, it embedded itself beside Jeong Taeui. The axe, with its blade stuck in the stone pillar, seemed to pause for a moment, then clatter, it fell to the floor with crumbling stone dust. The axe rolled a couple of times before stopping, glinting eerily beside Jeong Taeui’s foot. He must have truly resolved to be good-natured after all. Still, to throw it so close.

Jeong Taeui, realizing he could maintain a composed expression even in such a situation, felt a little sad, but there was nothing he could do.

While Jeong Taeui gloomily picked up the axe and put it back in his pocket, the men wisely retreated like an ebbing tide. He deliberately wiped the bloodstains off the axe before putting it away, and by the time he finished, only Ilay and he were left standing in the corridor.

To put it cynically, those bastards abandoned me with that bleak serial killer and ran away. Jeong Taeui, feeling gloomy, sighed, turning his thoughts in a melancholic direction. He just wished this damned joint training would end quickly.

***

It was correct to say that the joint training with the South American branch was proceeding quite smoothly compared to the European side. This was most easily seen in the casualty situation of the members.

In the previous training, there were several fatalities, and the infirmary was overflowing with countless injured every day. This time, although injuries were continuous, no one had died yet. The joint training would end in about three or four days, and at this point, with hardly any life-threatening training left in the program’s structure, one could even predict zero fatalities.

Jeong Taeui, as a adjutant, who could be considered the instructor’s errand boy, had to do odd jobs from early hours before regular duties began. These weren’t important tasks. The important matters within the branch were handled by the head of operations and the adjutant; the adjutant simply performed minor chores assigned by the instructor.

Ilay was a capable instructor. If it weren’t for his personality issues, being Ilay’s adjutant wouldn’t have been difficult. At least, he had almost nothing to do outside of regular duties. So, Jeong Taeui, who often managed to skip his adjutant duties in the morning by subtly observing, was surprised but readily agreed when Ilay called him in the morning to get some documents ready. (In reality, it wasn’t an agreement but one of the tasks he was naturally supposed to do.)

Most of the documents exchanged during this period were related to the progress of the joint training simultaneously taking place in each branch. Jeong Taeui occasionally saw the documents passing through his hands and realized that things were proceeding smoothly elsewhere, with no major incidents, and the training was nearing completion. He read the data from his uncle’s branch in Australia a few seconds more carefully, and it was the same there.

“Perhaps it was a very excellent selection, despite some side effects.” Jeong Taeui muttered, pointing to the statistics that indicated zero fatalities so far. It seemed he could tentatively say that the monster-like killer had become an instructor and stopped killing people. Even if an accident occurred later, there was still room for such an excuse for now.

If someone had predicted this and put that guy in the instructor position as soon as it became vacant, whoever that person was, they deserved an award. Although he had caused widespread resentment within the European branch and ruined many people’s lives. And Jeong Taeui, one of those whose life had been ruined, briefly thought about his situation and sank into depression, but then he quickly shook his head. Still, he hadn’t died yet while sticking by that guy. Thinking about that, perhaps Jeong Taeui was surprisingly lucky.

Jeong Taeui tried to think that way, somehow feeling a sense of sadness. When he arrived at the instructor’s office, fanning himself with the documents he had received from the office as Ilay had requested, it was not yet 8 AM. When Jeong Taeui opened the instructor’s office door, which was open about a hand’s width, there were two instructors inside.

Excluding the two who had led the members to the Australian branch and one who rarely stayed in the instructor’s office, preferring to wander around on errands, one person was missing. And the one missing was Ilay, who had asked Jeong Taeui to bring the documents.

He must have stepped out briefly, as there were still traces on his desk showing someone had been sitting there just moments ago. Unfinished work was scattered across the desk.

The two instructors—Crimson and McKin—merely glanced at the person entering and continued their work. Crimson, who seemed a bit idle, checking something on the computer and occasionally reading a newspaper, was in the innermost seat. Next to him was his uncle’s empty seat, and across from it sat McKin. Next to him was Ilay’s seat.

“Is that the report? May I see it for a moment?” As Jeong Taeui neatly placed the documents on Ilay’s desk, grumbling to himself about where the hell the guy who called him was, McKin gestured from beside him. He must have somehow spotted the documents Jeong Taeui was carrying, even though he was behind a partition. Jeong Taeui replied, “Ah, yes,” and handed the documents to McKin. After all, these kinds of documents were shared by everyone, not just Ilay’s personal property. McKin said, “Thanks,” briefly and took the documents.

Jeong Taeui waited beside him for him to finish reviewing and return the documents, quietly observing McKin, who was focused on the papers. There was no particular reason for an UNHRDO branch instructor to look unusual, but McKin was just like any neighborhood uncle if he took off his uniform. Perhaps because his eyes drooped and his face was somewhat round, he looked gentle at first glance. However, in reality, he was the most difficult person to get along with among the instructors.

He seemed to talk a bit with his uncle, perhaps because they served the same sub-head, but Jeong Taeui had never seen him comfortably joke and laugh with others.

—Come to the instructor’s office now.

It was past midnight last night. When Jeong Taeui, who was just about to go to bed, picked up the phone, McKin’s voice, tinged with the unique mechanical sound of the telephone, came through the receiver.

Looking at the clock, which was past midnight and almost 1 AM, Jeong Taeui thought, Aha. His uncle had told him to help McKin. Although he had used soft words like “help,” it actually meant to do whatever McKin told him to do. Jeong Taeui had felt suspicious and bothered ever since his uncle mentioned it, but he felt even more reluctant now that the call came so late. Moreover, he had an inkling of what kind of task McKin would assign.

He didn’t know the method, but it was certainly related to the “power struggle.” Not only what Ilay had hinted at, but these days, Jeong Taeui sometimes felt a knife-edge atmosphere in the instructor’s office. Should he say it was tense, or to put it more grimly, a sinister air hung around. It was better now that the number of instructors had been halved. Before the training began, when all the instructors were present, the atmosphere was so sharp that even amid laughter, his skin would prickle with palpable intensity.

Although the desire for power drives much of the world, he would decline to be swept up in its whirlpool, he sighed. Yet, Jeong Taeui had made a promise, so he had no choice but to go as McKin called.

The instructor’s office, past midnight, was empty. Only one person, McKin, sat waiting for Jeong Taeui. The instructor’s office in the middle of the night, with no one else around, felt somehow unfamiliar, so Jeong Taeui looked around the interior as soon as he entered. Seeing his expression, McKin, perhaps thinking something else, said, “There are no recording cameras installed in the instructor’s office, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Jeong Taeui thought he understood why he had been called here and sat down in the chair as McKin suggested. The conversation wasn’t prolonged. It wasn’t even a grim or dangerous topic, as Jeong Taeui had worried about all the way to the instructor’s office. In a way, it could even be called ridiculously simple and easy.

—The day after tomorrow, no, now that it’s past midnight, it should be tomorrow, the 27th, from 4:30 AM to 4:40 AM, for 10 minutes. It absolutely must be that time. During that time, connect to this side and receive a document. The document name is written there, but just in case, check the contents after receiving it. You probably won’t understand the contents just by looking, so just check if the first three or four lines and the last three or four lines match. It should match what’s written there. And then send that document to the address at the very bottom.

McKin said, handing him a memo. Jeong Taeui glanced at McKin, unfolded the memo, casually skimmed the few lines of content with a few addresses and passwords, then put it back in his pocket.

Indeed.

Even coming here, and even while listening to McKin, he had been puzzled. No matter that he was Instructor Jeong Changin’s nephew and not an official branch member, was it really okay to be involved in a matter that should clearly be classified as secret? If he helped with the work, he would naturally get some idea of the contents, so could they really entrust him with it so casually?

If his uncle hadn’t mentioned it, Jeong Taeui would have thought, Will I be killed secretly after I finish the job? But after looking at the memo, he understood. This task surely had to be kept secret from beginning to end, but while doing it, Jeong Taeui would be unable to know what he was doing. No, to be precise, he would only be able to guess, but he wouldn’t know what he was touching. The few lines of text given to him to confirm the contents were not characters he could understand. McKin was staring at him intently, so he didn’t feel like examining it closely on the spot and quickly put it away, but it was a complex sequence of alphabets and numbers, and symbols.

Indeed, it seems like someone is extracting classified information from somewhere and transferring it somewhere else… but I have no way of knowing where or what the content is.

But even so, even if he didn’t know what it was but found it suspicious, if he were to leak it… Jeong Taeui chuckled to himself, cutting off that thought. He could immediately list five cases he had heard about in his World Security History lecture, where people had lost their lives after carelessly releasing something they didn’t understand.

Jeong Taeui nodded and put the memo away. McKin, not intending to stay long, rose from his seat as soon as Jeong Taeui put the memo away. After reinforcing one last time, “Don’t forget, and be sure to be on time,” McKin left the instructor’s office first. And Jeong Taeui waited for his footsteps to fade in the corridor before slowly following him out. That was last night. In terms of time, barely a few hours had passed.

McKin sat in the exact same spot he had sat last night, his face calm, and skimmed the documents Jeong Taeui had handed him.

“Hmm. It seems Makadi got injured in the Australian branch.”

As McKin said this casually, Crimson, who seemed to have heard it from across the partition, said, “Makadi? Tsk, tsk. Bring that document over here too.”

Instructors knew each other even if they worked in different branches, as joint training sessions between branches occurred frequently, and there were monthly UNHRDO general meetings. There were also often cases where they had worked in the same branch in the past, even if they were in different places now. So, when an instructor from another branch was injured, they would react somewhere between a stranger getting hurt and a close friend getting hurt. They wouldn’t worry excessively but would feel a momentary twinge of sympathy.

Normally, it would end with “Injured? That’s too bad.” The fact that they insisted on seeing the document now might be due to the current atmosphere, where a grim tension flowed among the instructors.

It doesn’t seem like someone else’s problem.

Jeong Taeui muttered to himself, then delivered the documents, which he had received back from McKin, to Crimson this time. And then he looked up at the ceiling, wondering when this damned guy, who had called him and then left, would finally arrive.

An old feeling surfaced. In high school, he had been part of a film studies club. Of course, they didn’t do anything as grand as film research; they just watched one suitable movie every week. The only time they did anything resembling research was once a semester, at the end of the term, when student activity evaluations meant writing and submitting film reviews. Three or four members would choose a topic and write about a single film.

The group Jeong Taeui belonged to had, with the youthful recklessness common among boys their age, chosen hardgore as their theme. He remembered going to a friend’s empty house on a Sunday afternoon and spending two hours watching a hardgore film they had painstakingly acquired.