By Zephyria 
“What are you doing? Are you okay?”
Ire had been up for two nights straight, so his mind was blank, and he didn’t even notice Seo Young-jun coming to his side. The unit members who had been dispatched to deal with the rebel forces had returned, and since they were on a special four-day, three-night leave, most of them had left the base.
Thanks to that, Ire was able to escape Park Woo-jin’s tyranny for a while.
“How long do I have to stand guard?”
“It looks like it’ll be over today. They say they’re transferring them to the Intelligence Agency tomorrow.”
“Park Woo-jin, that son of a bitch. Originally, each team was supposed to take turns, but he volunteered to do it himself, they say. But he’s conveniently ducked out and left it all to you.”
Ire gave a bitter smile, and Seo Young-jun patted him on the shoulder. Seo seemed concerned because he knew Ire was troubled by Matteo’s situation. He offered to take Ire’s guard duty that night, but Ire told him not to. If Seo was unlucky, the trouble could spread to him.
While the two of them were talking, Oh Nam-gi appeared.
“What are you two doing, leaving me out?”
“What else? We were talking about you. You never show your face when your superiors are around.”
“Don’t say that. I have a plan.”
“What plan?”
“Listen carefully. We’re going to go on operations later, so we need to know something, right? My Non-commissioned officer really dotes on me, more than anyone else. So he tells me all sorts of things.”
“Like what?”
Oh Nam-gi looked around once and lowered his voice.
“About the hostages locked in that warehouse. Our squad captured them. Isn’t that awesome?”
Seo Young-jun scoffed at those words.
“Wow, I thought Park Woo-jin caught them. He’s been bragging so much.”
Ire was also curious about Oh Nam-gi’s story. He urged him to tell him more and sat close beside him. In fact, he hadn’t told anyone, but he had been feeling uneasy all along. The song he had heard while standing guard on the first day, and its name.
There were instructions not to talk to the hostages, so he had pretended not to know, but Ire guessed that they might be the people he had seen in the sewer. If so, why were only they captured here?
“They had orders to capture those three from the start, it seems.”
“Why?”
“It was an order from above, so I don’t know. I heard they got the photos before the infiltration.”
“So, are they key figures in the rebel forces?”
“They said they were young to be that. About our age?”
Ire, who had been listening quietly, asked Oh Nam-gi if he had seen the photos. He couldn’t hide his disappointment when Nam-gi said that all the data had been deleted after the battle. When Nam-gi asked if he should inquire with his Non-commissioned officer about what they looked like, Ire told him no.
Even if they were the right people, there was nothing he could do.
“Did they really kill people? Do we have to do that too?”
Seo Young-jun seemed scared now that he was facing the real thing. He had never hit anyone in his life, so he couldn’t easily imagine killing someone.
Ire wasn’t much different. Thinking about the nightmares he had endured for days after that incident at the inn, he wondered if he could handle it. On the day Park Woo-jin returned, he had bragged about killing a few guys, and even that had made Ire feel uncomfortable and queasy.
Seo Young-jun leaned back on the bench with a troubled expression and tilted his head to look up at the sky.
“Ah, I should have dropped out before the graduation ceremony. I don’t really like killing people.”
“It’ll be different when you go. You’ll pull the trigger automatically when your life is in danger. It’s the same when your comrade gets shot next to you. Combat is originally brutal. No blood or tears. Right, Ire?”
Ire agreed with that. He knew that you had to be ruthless to survive and protect the things you cherished. In that sense, he wasn’t a person suited for combat. But he would adapt, and someday he would become like them.
“Were all the rebels there killed?”
At Ire’s question, Oh Nam-gi shook his head.
“No. This is really a secret, but when they raided, the leaders had already run away. There’s also a rumor going around that there’s an informant from that side hiding in our unit.”
Seo Young-jun trembled excessively.
“Wow, that’s the scariest thing you’ve said so far. Spies are scarier than guns.”
“But aren’t spies usually good-looking? In movies, they’re all handsome and beautiful.”
Hearing Oh Nam-gi’s words, Seo Young-jun looked at Ire with a meaningful expression.
“Then this guy is a spy.”
Ire shook his head with a dumbfounded expression.
“If a clumsy guy like me was a spy, I would have been caught already.”
Seo Young-jun and Oh Nam-gi both nodded.
“Agreed. A guy who runs away just from kissing a girl, a spy my ass.”
The two of them snickered and laughed, which made Ire angry, so he wrapped his arms around their necks and tormented them. He told them not to bring that up. It was because the alcohol had been strong, not because of the kiss.
“Then have you ever had a proper kiss?”
Ire opened his mouth halfway and then closed it. He had. With Kim Ha-yoon. But that was a secret until he died. No, he didn’t want to reveal it to the outside world even after death.
“Your expression says you have?”
“Who is it? Tell me honestly.”
“That older sister from before?”
“I knew it.”
He pretended not to know, but they were now tormenting him from the side, telling him to confess quickly. In the midst of that, a comrade who shared a room with Ire came to find him. Ire wondered what was going on and asked, and the comrade said that he would stand guard at the warehouse where the hostages were being held that day.
Was the comrade feeling sorry for running away like that on the first day? Or was there another reason? Ire was too tired to think any further. As soon as he said okay, the comrade turned around and left, and Seo Young-jun grumbled as he watched his receding figure.
“That bastard is kind of creepy. It makes me feel bad.”
Oh Nam-gi subtly agreed.
“He’s become close to Park Mu-jin. Is it thanks to Park Woo-jin? I saw them coming out of the cafeteria earlier and talking for a long time.”
At those words, Ire asked with a puzzled expression. Just the two of them?
“Yeah, just the two of them. Park Mu-jin kept giggling, I don’t know what he liked about him. It was annoying.”
It was a strange thing. No matter how he looked at it, there seemed to be no common ground between the two. The puzzlement didn’t go away, and after parting ways with the guys, Ire returned to the barracks. The empty barracks were as quiet as a mouse. After washing up and lying still, all sorts of thoughts came to mind.
He couldn’t fall asleep, so he tossed and turned restlessly, and eventually got up and sat down. The uneasy feeling he had felt earlier grew uncontrollably. The stories that the unit members joked about regarding the captured hostages kept echoing in his ears.
After much deliberation, he went outside and walked down the darkened hallway, stopping in front of the barracks where Park Mu-jin was staying. It was quiet as expected. He gently opened the door and went inside, but the bed was empty. His ominous premonition was correct.
Ire went to the fitness room nearby and grabbed the whistle hanging on the wall. It was used by the Non-commissioned officer in charge and hung there out of habit, so he took it and hurried towards the warehouse.
After arriving, he used the wall of the annex building as cover and peeked out. Sure enough, Park Mu-jin and his gang were gathered in front of the warehouse. He didn’t know what they were plotting, but soon one of them took a key out of his pocket and stood in front of the door.
“Damn it, why won’t it open?”
“Are these bastards really tied up?”
“Are you scared?”
“Who’s scared, you idiot.”
“Shut up and open it quickly, you bastards. Before someone comes.”
After a while, the door opened, and they looked at each other and smiled broadly, showing their teeth. The moment they stepped inside, Ire blew the whistle he had brought with all his might.
Pee-wee—! “Hey, what are you doing, you bastards!” he shouted. The guys cursed and ran away in the opposite direction without looking back.
After confirming that the guys had completely disappeared, Ire strode towards the warehouse. He was about to close the open door when a terrible stench wafted out. They had been trapped there for two days, so it was a natural result in some ways. Covering his nose with the back of his hand, he was about to look for the key that had fallen on the floor when someone made a noise.
“You!”
When he raised his head, he saw three people sitting on the floor in handcuffs in the darkness. They had expressions as if they had seen a ghost. When his hunch, which he had only suspected, turned out to be correct, his mouth felt bitter. He tried to ignore it and close the door, but the person sitting in the middle shouted, calling his name.
“Ire!”
Surprised, he looked at them without realizing it.
“What?”
“Is that you? Are you Ire?”
He was speechless with shock. How did they know his name? He had never told them. Could they have heard the comrades talking? Don’t trust the hostages. Don’t be swayed by their words.
Remembering the Instructor’s instructions that he had heard so many times during training, he picked up the key that had fallen on the ground. Just as he was about to close the door completely and lock it, a desperate cry came from inside.
It was a name he couldn’t ignore, a name he couldn’t turn away from.
“Ma, Matteo!”
His heart sank.
“Our leader said you would know if he said that!”