"Then I’m off to guide Yuri~ You’ve already seen it once, so you’ll be fine~"
"Um... Han... good luck!!"
That damn senior... Is it really okay to just leave me here in front of an Abnormality like this?
Still, it wasn’t the first or second time Nova had pulled something like this, and there was work to do, so I should get started.
I operated the system in front of the Abnormality’s containment unit and opened the door.
Click.
The containment unit door slowly opened.
When I stepped inside, I was greeted by red lighting and the smell of metal.
Looking toward the wall, I saw the Mercenary sitting there with her back against it.
She looked just like she had yesterday: a dark crimson coat and red hood, an old long gun, and an axe with dried bloodstains caked onto it.
Without even raising her head, she was sharpening only the axe blade against a whetstone.
Scrape.
Scrape.
"This time, it’s Insight... ?"
Her voice was low and heavy.
I checked the terminal.
[Work Start - Insight]
"Uh, looks like it."
"Hello. Starting today, I’m the employee assigned to you. My name is Han."
The sound of the axe being sharpened stopped for a moment.
The gaze beneath the red hood slowly lifted.
"You... You’re the one I saw yesterday? You survived."
"What... Were you going easy on me?"
"Don’t get the wrong idea."
The Mercenary laughed under her breath.
"Back then, I was just tearing apart everything in front of me."
Scrape.
The axe blade scratched across the whetstone again.
"Still, it’s funny. Someone who looks much weaker than the usual ones came in."
"You keep saying that, and you’re going to hurt my feelings."
"It’s true, isn’t it?"
Hiss... I couldn’t argue with that. Even at my strongest, I was only a Grade 3 employee right now. If I couldn’t wield Repentance, I’d be even weaker.
For a while, the containment unit was filled with nothing but the sound of metal scraping.
"But why are you people always more tense during Insight?"
"Huh?"
"You come in, talk to me, watch my reactions, check whether I’m scared... Isn’t that what it comes down to?"
"That’s true."
"So don’t be scared and just stay still. At least in here, I don’t kill much. Of course, that’s assuming you don’t get on my nerves."
The Mercenary snickered and resumed sharpening her axe.
Scrape.
Scrape.
"Well... Sitting still for thirty minutes is boring, and it’s been a while since I had a rookie..."
The gaze beneath the red hood slowly rose.
"I’ll make a special exception and tell you a story."
I cautiously sat down in the chair placed across from her.
"...The Big and Will Be Bad Wolf."
The Mercenary abruptly began speaking.
"That bastard ruined everything."
"My family, my life, my dreams—everything I had."
The hand sharpening the axe paused for just a moment.
"I used to be a florist’s daughter."
"Huh?"
This was a story I didn’t know. It hadn’t appeared in the original Red Hooded Mercenary’s story either...
"You look surprised."
She gave a short laugh.
"Did you think I’d been some crazy bitch who beat people up and killed them from the very beginning?"
"A little...?"
"I like your honesty."
Scrape.
The axe blade scratched over the whetstone again.
"I liked flowers. Their scent, their colors. I even hated the sound of a flower stem snapping. But now... I’m just sharpening an axe."
She laughed quietly. It was a low, bitter laugh.
"One day... that Wolf came. And it attacked my family. It killed them all—brutally, without leaving anyone alive. If I hadn’t gone to my grandmother’s house that day, I would’ve died too. At first, I was scared. My family was dead, and I’d lost everything. So I kept running. As if something were chasing me, I did whatever I had to. But after being chased for so long, at some point..."
Scrape.
"All I had left was the name Mercenary. In the end, there was nothing left for me except killing. So I’ll kill it. Someday, that damn Wolf that took everything from me."
"I’ll chase it down, shred it to pieces with my axe, pierce it through with bullets, and that head it has left in the end!! I’ll hang it over my bed..."
I silently listened to her.
The Big and Will Be Bad Wolf and the Red Hooded Mercenary. What a pitiful fate.
Abnormalities endlessly pursuing and killing one another in order to kill each other—this was a familiar story to someone like me, who had played Lobotomy Corporation.
But the being before me was not the original. She was not the Red Hooded Mercenary located at Headquarters.
She was a subspecies.
A being implanted into existence, copied with only the original’s memories, emotions, obsession, and hatred.
In other words... the Wolf had never actually ruined her life.
Her memories of being a florist’s daughter, the terror of being pursued, and the endless time spent killing and being killed—all of it was fabricated memory.
And yet...
The Mercenary before me felt those emotions sincerely.
As if it truly had been her life.
I felt a little... No, a great deal of pity for her. Wasn’t she a marionette, hanging from and controlled by the thread called rage...?
Even so... I couldn’t say those words aloud.
If I said something stupid, that axe might end up buried in my skull.
"Why are you making that face?"
"It’s nothing."
"I’ve seen plenty of people, and you have the kind of face that can’t lie."
Scrape.
"Still..."
The corner of her mouth slowly curled up.
"Don’t pity me. It makes me feel like shit, and it makes me want to kill you."
There was silence for a while after that.
Only the sound of the axe being sharpened continued to echo.
A little later, a notification announcing the end of the work arrived.
Ding.
[Insight Work Complete]
"Already over?"
The Mercenary muttered indifferently.
I slowly rose from my seat.
"Then I’ll be going."
"Sure. If you’re my assigned employee now, I suppose we’ll keep seeing each other anyway."
"Probably?"
"Hmm... If it’s Instinct Work, bring bread."
"Huh?"
"The previous ones only brought disgusting food."
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
An Abnormality being picky about food? Then again, she was probably around my age.
"Well then... See you next time."
Click.
The containment unit door shut.
Was it fate playing a joke on me...? The next work was Instinct...
I grabbed some bread and soup from a locker in the hallway, then went back into the containment unit.
There were all sorts of strange things inside the locker, like chunks of weird meat and orange liquid.
But that orange liquid... It wasn’t Kyungkoongi, was it...?
When I entered again, the Mercenary was still in the same place, sharpening her axe.
"Oh... This one understands what he’s told."
"You said you liked bread. There wasn’t anything particularly normal around, either."
"Why would I dislike it? It reminds me of the good old days, at least..."
She looked at the soup in my hand and laughed quietly.
"Give me that too."
I cautiously handed over the bread and soup.
Unexpectedly, the Mercenary accepted them quietly.
After roughly tearing open the wrapper, she took a bite of the bread.
Then she dipped the bread into the soup and ate another bite.
I couldn’t say for sure, but it looked as though the corners of her mouth had lifted slightly.
"That bread’s cheap. Is it good?"
"You eat when you’re hungry."
She took a sip of the soup.
Steam slowly rose from it.
"Instinct Work is definitely better."
"Why?"
"It’s quiet."
Scrape. The axe blade in her other hand scratched across the whetstone again.
"No prying, no pointless attempts to understand me."
"..."
"I hate Attachment."
Her voice was low and heavy.
The hand gripping her axe stopped for just a moment.
"The ones who come in for Attachment always make that face. Eyes that say I’m pitiful, eyes trying to understand me... You did it earlier too."
Red eyes slowly turned toward me.
"Seeing that makes me want to kill them. It’s disgusting. Revenge is all I have left, you know?"
"And Repression is just a contest of strength. If you’re weak, you get torn apart and killed."
I kept my mouth shut for no reason and only stared at the soup.
I felt like my head would really come off if I said the wrong thing and ruined the mood. So she had been considerate earlier too...
Ding.
[Instinct Work Complete]
"It’s over..."
The Mercenary set down the empty soup cup.
"Take it."
I slowly rose from my seat.
"Then I’ll get going."
"Sure."
Scrape. The axe blade slid over the whetstone again.
"But you adapt quickly."
"Huh?"
"When you first came in, even your breathing was stiff."
The corner of her mouth rose ever so slightly.
"At least you look like a person now."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Who knows."
The Mercenary snickered.
"I like that you’re not dying. Stay alive for a long time. You’re the first employee I’ve liked in a while."
Click.
As the containment unit door closed and I stepped outside, cold air rushed over me.
And at the other end of the hallway...
Yuri was leaning against the wall, looking practically soulless.
"Han... I think I’m really going crazy..."
"Why?"
"The Funeral Director keeps whispering in my ear, butterflies are flying around beside me, and he’s calling out the names of everyone who’s died so far—Kevin, Donghun, Java..."
"Wow... Are you sure you’re okay?"
"Ha... Thankfully, whenever I feel like I’m about to go crazy, Nova gives me an injection of some weird drug, so I’m okay..."
"You don’t look okay at all..."
"Anyway, what about you, Han?"
I briefly looked back toward the Mercenary’s containment unit.
Through the iron door, I could faintly hear metal scraping. Just how hard was she sharpening that axe? Jesus.
"She just keeps sharpening her axe."
"That’s plenty scary too, isn’t it? Thinking she could come to kill you with that thing... Ugh..."
She had a point. That was why I needed to be careful.
After that, the work continued.
Insight.
Instinct.
Organizing records.
Then work again.
When Instinct Work came up repeatedly in the middle of it all, the Mercenary being visibly flustered was kind of cute.
Before I knew it, it was time for the next work session, and the ordeal passed in no time.
Nova came by now and then just to check on our condition before disappearing again. Damn it, she didn’t even help.
The Mercenary still sharpened her axe and glanced my way whenever I entered to manage her. Later, we had nothing left to say, so we sometimes just sat there looking at each other.
And meanwhile, Yuri’s face kept looking more and more like she was dying... Seriously... Hang in there, Yuri!!
Maybe it was better not to get assigned to a mental-related Abnormality after all...
And only after we’d been run ragged in a daze for several hours...
The end-of-day announcement sounded over the hallway speakers.
[All Work Complete]
[Employees, please prepare to leave work.]
"It’s over..."
A long sigh escaped me.
At the same time, the hallway door opened and Mir walked in.
"Oh~ The rookies are still in one piece."
"Is that supposed to be a greeting?"
"You’re alive and your arms and legs are intact. What more do you want?"
Mir snickered and pointed at the two of us.
"Now... You know what the last item on the schedule before clocking out is, right?"
"...Excuse me?"
"Training, obviously?"
Yuri’s expression immediately froze.
"Now...?"
"Come on. You said you wanted this, didn’t you? Did you lose your resolve after one day?"
And so, we were practically dragged to the Safety Team training room.
Then, under the excuse of it being our first sparring session, we got the shit kicked out of us.
My entire body hurt. Fucking Captain Mir.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register