Episode 14
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14. Week 4 (1)
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"Whoa...?"
Cha Eun-ha, having entered the Internal Front Command’s visitation room, let out an unidentifiable exclamation upon seeing Jae-hak’s face.
"Why... why are you doing that?"
"Are you okay, Do-hyeon? You’ve lost so much weight...!"
Jae-hak, flustered, caught his reflection in the window. Is that so? It’s hard to gauge changes in one’s own face when you see it every day.
"......."
On the other hand, Kang Ji-seul and Han Sang-jun were laughing, looking as if they were enjoying something. It was that wicked smile that friends who have finished their military service make when they see a soldier out on leave.
"Is the training manageable?"
Ji-seul asked with a grin.
"What came out of the pit?"
At the mention of the pit, Jae-hak shuddered involuntarily.
"......A Human-Faced Spider."
"Wow, a tough one. It was a Nahema when I was there."
When you were there?
"......Did you complete this course too, Ms. Ji-seul?"
"I was the top graduate."
Ji-seul pretended to clear her throat with an "Ahem." Beside her, Sang-jun shook his head with a look of exhaustion and spoke.
"Don't let her get to you. You only need to place in the top three, Do-hyeon."
"That's... I'm currently in 16th place, though..."
"You still have the final fourth week left. That's plenty. The fourth week has the highest point value. I can't tell you what the training is in advance, though."
While they were talking, Eun-ha received a call, stepped outside, and returned with an armful of plastic bags. It must have been a delivery call.
Fried chicken, pig's trotters, pizza, stir-fried seafood noodles, cola.......
Foods you couldn't see inside the military base poured out of the plastic bags one after another. Every single one of them looked glossy and delicious. They looked delicious, but.
"Ms. Eun-ha... isn't this too much?"
Ji-seul laughed. No matter how you looked at it, it was far too much food for four people. Even counting in the Awakened Jae-hak and Ji-seul, it was an amount they couldn't possibly finish.
"It is... a bit much, isn't it?"
"This is one of those things."
Sang-jun thought about something with a serious face, then said with his eyes sparkling.
"Eun-ha, you've never been to visit a soldier before, right? Not a boyfriend, not even just a friend."
"Ah... yes......"
"Girls who come to visit for the first time often do this. They worry about what to order. 'Oh, they said chicken is a safe bet. They said pig's trotters are good. Then let's just buy both...' and so they end up buying chicken, and pig's trotters. 'Oh, the extra spicy noodles are only 2,000 won? Let's get that too...' and so on."
Sang-jun continued his deduction nonchalantly.
"......Then they think, 'Oh? Is this too much?' but then, 'No, it's fine! They always said soldiers are hungry. If there's leftovers, I'll just tell them to share with their peers...' and that's how it ends up. Am I right?"
That’s right, that’s exactly it. Ji-seul nodded, trying to suppress her laughter. It was a world away from her own experience, having enlisted right after graduating high school, but she seemed to have seen and heard a few things.
"Ahahaha. Did your girlfriend do that too?"
"Three out of five of them did."
Five? Jae-hak doubted his own ears.
"Are you saying... you dated five people while you were in the military?"
"It just sort of happened."
Sang-jun answered without any particular air of boasting.
"Back then, I wasn't working at a company yet, so... it wasn't really a problem to date anyone."
That doesn't seem like the issue, Jae-hak thought to himself, but he didn't say it out loud.
"Anyway, let's eat. Eun-ha's face is about to burst."
And they began to eat. Jae-hak glanced at Eun-ha’s face, which had turned as red as the stir-fried seafood noodles, and did his best to shovel the food into his mouth.
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As always, pleasant times were bound to pass quickly.
The three days of rest on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday given to the trainees melted away like a lie, and before he knew it, Jae-hak was loaded onto a long transport helicopter with the other trainees, flying over the blue sea.
"Ugh......."
Jae-hak learned for the first time in his life that helicopters were this difficult to ride. The vibrations that rattled his very navel, the floor that felt strangely flimsy.
On top of that, the sound of the rotors was so loud that you had to shout to be heard by the person sitting next to you.
-What you see on the right is the 4th-week training zone, Bijeokdo Island.
So, all instructions were relayed through headphones installed in the cabin. Looking to the right, he saw an island in the middle of the deep blue sea. Blue tin roofs were clustered here and there among the dense thickets, and the island was surrounded by a pure white sandy beach.
"Wow......."
"It's pretty."
Someone muttered. At first, Jae-hak agreed. But as the helicopter got closer to the island, the smiles disappeared from the trainees' faces.
The tin roofs he saw up close were covered in red rust. The concrete, eroded by the salt and sea breeze, revealed bleak skeletons... and only ownerless fishing boats bobbed desolately at the lone pier.
Bijeokdo was not an island. Bijeokdo was a corpse, its island-self dead and rotted away, leaving only the shell.......
-Prepare for landing.
Tat-tat-tat-tat.......
As the transport helicopter descended as if to touch the sandy beach, sand dust surged like waves in every direction. The armed trainees covered their noses and mouths with their hands and jumped out in a line through the open rear door.
-You should already be familiar with this, but I will relay the background information one more time.
As he planted both feet on the sandy beach, a radio transmission rang in the earpiece he was wearing.
-This is Bijeokdo. It was a small island where about 200 people lived. That is, until a couple of months ago, when a one-sided massacre occurred due to an attack by marine-type monsters. I wondered why fishing boats passing through the nearby waters kept disappearing... it was a situation worth being suspicious of, but well, that’s how the higher-ups are.
Massacre... he already knew this, but Jae-hak frowned involuntarily.
-After that, the Navy went in and swept the place once. But in a photo taken by a satellite last week, several shapes presumed to be the offspring of low-level monsters were captured.
What could those seal pups possibly do right, Baek Jeong-ju sneered.
-The 4th-week training is a live-fire evaluation of monster combat here on Bijeokdo. Each team will conduct search and extermination operations within their assigned zones under the team leader's direction. There might not be a single one, so don't be too impatient. The operation time is two days. We will assemble here on the beach at 17:00 tomorrow. Proceed cautiously while adhering to the basics of search and extermination operations you have learned. That is all.
Baek Jeong-ju said that and cut the radio.
-Team 6, move out.
And immediately after, a radio transmission was heard on another channel. A voice completely different from the always-sly Baek Jeong-ju, a voice that seemed to be trying hard to hide its tension.
The name... was it Jo Yeong-hwan? A second lieutenant who had just been commissioned. He had graduated from the Korea Military Academy with excellent grades and was assigned to the Internal Front Command in recognition of his potential, so one should never view him the same as other clueless second lieutenants.
......That was what he had said himself while gathering the trainees and giving a passionate speech.
He must be the type to hide his inferiority complex with bravado, Jae-hak thought.
'Honestly... I don't find him very reliable.'
But regardless, he was the team leader of Team 6, to which Jae-hak was assigned, and was in the position of being responsible for the trainees' safety. Questioning the commander's qualifications in the field was something to be avoided as much as possible.
Hooooo...... The sound of the wind, like someone wailing.
Team 6 followed Jo Yeong-hwan up a steep, winding path. Their assigned operation zone was a small village on top of a northern cliff. As they finished climbing the eerily quiet mountain path, they came upon a rusted iron gate with dried blood on it. Beyond the collapsed stone wall, red and blue house roofs and a strangely unnatural lighthouse were crying out like a gloomy witness.
-Moving in.
Creeeeeak...... Jo Yeong-hwan pushed the iron gate open. The trainees entered the village in formation.
"......."
Jae-hak moved silently, guarding his assigned direction. At the entrance of the village, there were eerie-looking totem poles... and trees hung with what looked like sacred straw ropes embedded with brass. Since it was a fishing village, perhaps they had some folk beliefs.
'For something like that... it's somehow....'
Squish, Jo Yeong-hwan, who had stepped on something, stopped walking. Among the withered bushes, there was something whitish. The texture resembled mucus and rubber, but it was translucent and large. And above all else... it had traces of eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
-It appears to be... a molted skin.
Jo Yeong-hwan said calmly.
-It doesn't look like it's been long since it shed it.......
The implication was clear. There was a monster nearby. Gulp, the trainees swallowed their saliva.
-Continue moving in.
Abandoned houses lined up on both sides. As they went deeper into the village, a strange stench crept into their noses. The smell of the sea. The fishy smell... and the smell of something rotting. Enduring the nausea that kept rising, Jae-hak gripped his rifle tightly.
And he saw it.
"......2 o'clock direction."
Jae-hak said quietly.
"Center village hall. Behind the collapsed wall. One. It's looking this way. About 100 to 150 meters."
A blue head that resembled a human's. And yellow eyeballs split vertically. It was staring at them from between the sunken steel frames and materials. Without a single blink.
Is it scouting?
"Should I shoot?"
-Uh... can you hit it?
But the moment Jae-hak aimed his muzzle, the creature immediately hid itself.
At least it was a creature that knew what a gun was.
-......Pursue.
Behind the wall of the village hall, where the creature had been standing, there was an unpleasant white mucus. The same kind that was on the molted skin earlier. Like bloodstains, it continued in dots toward the inside of the village hall.
Is it a lure? No, it's hard to think that a low-level species would have that kind of intelligence.......
-Number 78, 11, and 2, move in. The remaining four, guard the rear from here. Move in when ready.
Jae-hak nodded to the other entry teams, signaling them, and then kicked the door open.
BANG!
The tin door flew open as if it were being torn off. The other two rushed in, and Jae-hak followed right behind them.
He scanned from left to right, from wall to wall. But there was nothing. The small village hall was empty.
'......No.'
It couldn't be empty. It smelled this terrible.
"Above......."
At that moment, someone gasped. As he snapped his muzzle upward, there was a pair of yellow eyes on the rafters. Blue skin and red gills fluttering. It was that same creature.
But it wasn't alone.
"That... no way......."
The ceiling of the village hall was completely white. And round, squishy things were stuck all over it, like wet tissues thrown against a wall. Pulsing like a heart, dripping with sticky mucus.
"It's a nest of eggs......."
Trainee 11 spoke with a look of disgust. Jae-hak slowly examined the bizarre, abstract scene.
A marine species that laid clusters of eggs on land instead of in the sea. They had webbed feet but no dorsal fins, and though they were humanoid, they were small. Their height was... perhaps around 140cm.
Bloodgill. It was certain.
-There is a Bloodgill egg sac inside the hall. There are roughly 60 to 80 of them. What should we do?
For some reason, the Bloodgill tilted its head and stared in this direction. Without taking his eyes off the creature, Jae-hak quietly keyed his radio.
"Don't. Just wait."
Whether it was because the sight of the pulsing egg sac was repulsive, or because he was impatient at the thought of an opportunity to earn credit, Trainee 11 immediately raised his rifle, only to be stopped by Trainee 2.
"It’s strange that the egg sac is this unguarded. We’ve confirmed the location, so let’s not provoke them rashly..."
Jae-hak said the same, reaching out with one hand to pull Trainee 11’s arm down.
And that was a mistake.
Trainee 11 turned his head. As he looked at Jae-hak’s face, he flinched as if he had been stung by something. Then, slowly, his complexion twisted hideously.
"You..."
Jae-hak was momentarily taken aback. What? Why is this guy acting like this? The name "Kim Dong-hyeon" was attached to the top of Trainee 11’s combat uniform.
"Who do you think you are... to me..."
Kim Dong-hyeon shook off Jae-hak’s arm. Before anyone could stop him, he raised his rifle and aimed at the Bloodgill hanging from the ceiling.
Bang!
A damp gunshot echoed through the hall. The Bloodgill flipped its body and fell from the rafters. Then, it stopped moving.
"See? Nothing happened, did it?"
Kim Dong-hyeon spun around and sneered at Jae-hak.
"Huh? You... you son of a b*tch."
Kim Dong-hyeon was clearly an excellent marksman. Far better than Jae-hak, who was not yet accustomed to the rifle. But the moment he aimed at the Bloodgill, his breathing, agitated by inferiority, caused his aim to drift slightly away from the creature's vital point.
In other words, the Bloodgill was still alive.
Enemy. It’s an enemy. With the last remaining instinct before death, the Bloodgill made that determination. Must signal. Must signal...
"Look out...!"
Trainee 2 pointed urgently at the Bloodgill. Jae-hak and Kim Dong-hyeon, who had been glaring at each other, turned their heads toward it.
The neck of the Bloodgill, which had blood-red gills as its name suggested, was rapidly expanding. Like a balloon about to burst. Or a fuse about to detonate. And before Jae-hak could even react, the Bloodgill released all that pressure in a long, howling cry.
Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo...
It was low. Low, and heavy, as if it were traveling through something other than air. Like a ship’s horn in the deep sea, or a war horn signaling the march of things that were not human.
And.
Woo-woo-woo-woo...
Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo...
From all directions, the replies began to ring out.
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