Chapter 33 - Luminaries of Science (5)

I would rather he had been a ghost. A ghost of John Mühlen wouldn't have the strength to drag me back into that hell.

But was this really happening? Had that man actually come all the way to the old residential building on a weekend?

A smile of utter resignation escaped me.

Tom and Heshy stood frozen, staring blankly. Ami had both hands pressed to her cheeks. She looked as shocked as I felt.

Having known John Mühlen the longest, she must have found it even more shocking.

Mühlen fixed his blue eyes on me.

"You..."

THWACK

?

With a dull thud, Mühlen crumpled to the floor. We all stared in the same direction, wide-eyed.

As the tall man fell, a familiar face appeared behind him. Curly hair and his trademark striped T-shirt.

It was Giacomo Ro.

"You creepy fucking bastard."

His hand was still rigid in a chopping pose.

"Fuck, that felt good. I've wanted to chop him in the neck ever since he got me trapped for three days."

Ro scowled down at the unconscious man, his thick brows drawn together.

Heshy and Tom stared at their senior in disbelief.

"Three days?"

"Because of his fucking carnivorous plants."

"Carnivorous plants?"

My fellow recruits repeated the words, baffled.

I wasn't particularly surprised, though. By now, I knew perfectly well that the unconscious man over there was exactly the sort of bastard who would cause something like that.

The genius scientist lay draped over the threshold like a deflated inflatable doll.

I was glad Ro had dirtied his hands and dealt with Mühlen for me.

After staring sullenly at Mühlen, Ro looked up.

"Hey, Peanut."

He meant Ami.

Ami, whose face had resembled the figure in The Scream, came to her senses. She blinked her round eyes a couple of times.

"Whaaat?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Gaming."

She had recovered her composure.

"Hilde's really good at games, so we were beating a boss I couldn't get past."

"Games?"

Ro craned his neck to look around the room.

Regardless, I kept my eyes on the unconscious Mühlen. I was relieved he was out cold, but I didn't feel any better.

This creepy obsession... I should have realized from the start that he wasn't someone who would take no for an answer.

The moment he was out of sight, I would contact my training officer.

As I was thinking that, Ro strode over.

"Hey."

He stopped in front of me. I looked up, puzzled.

It was a pleasantly sunny Saturday morning. How had this senior found his way here, too?

Ro planted a hand on my arm.

"I've wanted to beat the shit out of him someday. Thanks to you, I finally got to."

His voice was solemn.

"Normally, people stop me. They say if John dies, I'll get hauled before some country court or whatever."

"A national tribunal," Ami corrected him, deadpan.

Ro ignored her.

"You're a useful guy. I like you."

"Thank you."

I was pretty sure I'd heard something like that on my first day, because of the head of HR.

But it didn't matter. I was simply grateful to Ro for personally ridding me of Mühlen.

A cool breeze blew through the open window. Mingling with the sound of the wind came the sound of our characters dying to the boss's attack. We'd only needed to land the finishing blow. Still, it hadn't been that hard. We'd clear it on our next try.

"Take Mr. Mühlen away," Ami told Ro. "But why did he come here? I seriously thought I was seeing a ghost."

"To experiment on this guy."

I could almost see transparent question marks appear over Tom, Heshy, and Ami simultaneously.

I chuckled weakly at their bewildered faces.

"Experiments? What experiments?"

"Come to think of it, you said you had somewhere to go last weekend."

"Hilde, did you do something stupid again?"

Again?

I put on a look of mock hurt, quietly considering how to explain the situation. I could tell Ami the truth, but these two knew nothing about my circumstances.

After some thought, I skipped all the context and simply said,

"He asked me to be a test subject, and I said yes."

"Huh?"

"Again!"

Heshy frowned as he exclaimed, while Ami shrieked. Tom just stared at me as if I were talking nonsense.

Now fully aware of how stupid my decision had been, I gave a sheepish chuckle and held up both palms.

"I was an idiot. I'm deeply regretting it."

"Why would he ask you to be a test subject...?" Tom asked slowly.

I held a noncommittal smile for a moment, then explained.

"Because Yun is my training officer, and I had the bad luck to run into him?"

"Ugh, why is he so fucking long?"

Ro had already lost interest in our conversation and hoisted the unconscious scientist up.

He wasn't tall, so Mühlen's legs dragged along the floor as he hung over Ro's shoulder like a wet rag. A different position might have made for a more secure hold, but Ro walked off without caring whether the scientist's limbs dragged on the floor.

THUNK-CLATTER-THUD

The scientist's arms and legs banged into the threshold and walls.

Accompanied by a series of bizarre noises, Ro and the unconscious scientist disappeared from view.

"Is it really okay to treat him like that?"

"Right? That sounded pretty awful earlier, too."

As I asked Ami, Heshy craned his head out and joined in. He seemed to mean the sound Ro had made when he struck the back of Mühlen's neck.

It certainly had been something.

Lips pressed into a straight line, Ami stared after Ro before answering.

"Probably. Yun hits Mr. Mühlen in the back of the neck like that sometimes, too."

"Senior Yun does?"

"Apparently he sometimes tries to set off things like chemical bombs."

My fellow recruits stared down at Ami in disbelief.

Gazing at her youthful face, Tom said,

"Isn't he that incredibly famous scientist... the one in textbooks?"

"I guess geniuses are all a little weird. My brother isn't exactly normal, either," Ami replied readily.

Then she looked up at me, nodding vigorously beside her, and our eyes met.

She stared at me with those cute, round eyes before saying,

"No more stupid decisions, Hilde. And do your best to stay off his radar."

Absolutely. I intended to tell Yun all about this first thing Monday.

* * *

As soon as Monday came, I tattled to Yun about what had happened over the weekend.

"He came all the way to the dorms?"

In a rare display, Yun looked surprised. Then, apparently amused by something, he pulled one corner of his mouth up into a broad smirk.

"Looks like he's really fixated on you."

"Please save me."

I gave him a desperate look and slid the sword in my hand neatly into its sheath. I'd been using this sword since last week.

Ever since our return from outside the core, I'd been practicing swordsmanship with Yun. He insisted I needed to hold on to those memories. I enjoyed sparring with swords, too, so I had no complaints. None, but I hadn't managed to cut so much as a scrap of his clothing all last week.

His assessment had been:

["You definitely used a greatsword, but your body's grown sluggish and can't keep up with your memories."]

He was never one to put things gently.

["It'll take a month to get your full capabilities out of you. Don't even think about fieldwork for a month."]

That was why I'd come to the training hall today, ready to be put through the wringer again. Another day much like those of the previous week.

The only difference was that I now knew Mühlen's obsession hadn't ended. Judging by what had happened two days ago, he would undoubtedly come looking for me this weekend, too.

I approached the man with the utterly dry expression.

"Please, sir, save this wretched soul from John Mühlen's rampage. I failed to recognize your good intentions."

"Indeed. You've finally recognized your benefactor."

Yun accepted my heartfelt plea without a shred of shame.

It was just like him to say something like that without the slightest change in expression.

We were in the high-ceilinged hall where I'd fought the mushrooms with brute force. Unlike me in my protective gear, he wore a black T-shirt and lightweight joggers.

"I'll try dumping some other research work on him. Just wait. We need something else to catch his attention."

"Can't you talk him out of it?"

"Do you think that would work?"

"No. What if someone higher up ordered him to stop?"

"Do you think he'd listen?"

"No. Would threatening him work?"

"Do you think it would?"

"No. What exactly is that man? Some kind of sociopath?"

"No. Unlike me, he does have a conscience. His standards are just very different from most people's."

That did seem to be the case.

John Mühlen seemed to draw his lines in entirely different places from normal people. He saw the world in a completely different way.

Amazing. So even that man felt pangs of conscience sometimes.

My training officer said he had a conscience, unlike himself...

...

Wait a minute.

"That sounds like you're saying you don't have a conscience, sir."

"What? Ami didn't tell you?"

Yun asked as casually as if he were asking what was for lunch.

"There's a congenital abnormality in my brain."

I wished he'd at least put some emphasis on his words when dropping a bombshell.

I stood there for a long time, trying to take in the momentous fact my training officer had tossed out so casually.

Meanwhile, facing me, Yun drew his sword in one clean motion. A long, slender blade.

Apparently, out of all these Badgers, only two knew how to use a sword "properly": Jonathan Kudo, who used a katana as his primary weapon, and Lee Yehyeon, who had received formal sword training from someone in the past.

Yun said his own sword skills were merely passable. If mine eventually surpassed his, he intended to try handing me over to Yehyeon.

But the man standing there with his long sword drawn was plenty threatening enough for me.

I looked at my training officer's neat features.

"Are you a sociopath?"

"That's what people usually call it."

"Shouldn't you have your enhanced body disposed of?"

"Insubordination already?"

Yun replied lazily, pointing his sword at me. The white overhead light gleamed on its tip.

"Right. You should at least have the skills to back it up. Draw."

I drew my sword without another word.

* * *

And so time passed. Weekdays spent training with live blades under a training officer born without a conscience. Weekends visited without fail by a genius mad scientist whose idea of common sense was nothing like anyone else's.

Mühlen didn't give up easily. More precisely, he failed to find "another research topic as interesting as Hildebert Taleb." He came every weekend, collapsed to Ro's knife-hand strike every time, and disappeared from view slung carelessly over Ro's shoulder every time.

I suffered. While Ro's opinion of me rose steadily, Heshy's prejudice against science geniuses hardened. Tom began to suspect there was something about me, and Ami continued to worry.

And Yun...

"Go stay at my place this weekend."

It was the day before the fourth weekend. The day Yun finally told me, ["It's time to send you back into the field."] (I still hadn't managed to cut so much as his clothing.)

My training officer gave the order in a flat voice.

"Looks like we need to get you out of John's sight."

"I feel like I'm imposing too much..."

"I'm getting sick of this, too. Just do as you're told."

He meant it, and I didn't have the courage to ignore him.

Putting a cigarette between his lips, he showed me a string of numbers on his phone screen.

"I've booked you a taxi. Pack your things and be ready on time. Don't leave the house over the weekend. I'm putting an end to this this weekend, no matter what."

Hearing irritation in the voice of someone normally so emotionless was terrifying. The sword in his hand, crusted with my dried blood, might have made it even scarier.

I did as Yun said.

* * *

The house was so spacious it impressed me every time I saw it.

Just as Yun had said, the house readily opened its door for me. It was Friday evening, with a light dusk settling in. I entered my training officer's house, studiously avoiding the spot where the cabin had once stood.

The house, which I'd visited a few times before, was quiet.

The expansive ceiling, the open sweep of the living room.

The long sofa in the living room, and...

Huh?

Someone was asleep on it, buried under a blanket.

"Ami?"

I'd heard Ami might be returning from outside the core today.

I walked carefully over to the sofa, then stopped to watch the blanket rise and fall steadily.

Why was she sleeping on the sofa?

"Ami. Are you asleep? It's getting late. Why don't you go to bed and sleep through until morning..."

"Mm."

A voice husky with sleep.

The instant I heard it, I froze. I stood there in a daze, forgetting how to speak.

The steadily rising and falling blanket shifted as the person beneath it stirred out of a light sleep.

Then the person sat up, emerging from beneath the covers.

There was no longer any doubt who had been under the blanket.

Beside my frozen form, he sat on the sofa with his eyes closed, still groggy with sleep.

After a long while, he opened his long eyes a sliver and looked up at me.

"Hilde?"

"... I'm terribly sorry, Commander."

"Mm."

My workplace's highest-ranking superior mumbled,

"Hi."