"One minute you were muttering to yourself, then suddenly you were shivering, then you smiled again, and then you shook your head."
"……I did?"
"Yeah. You did."
"Guess what I was thinking leaked out into my actions……. It’s nothing."
Only after Taesu said that did their gazes move away.
The four of them were sitting in the office of the PKO’s External Cooperation Department.
Taesu had let his mind wander because Colonel Clark, who had summoned them, had yet to arrive.
Kim Hyeokgwon, who had been lightly jiggling his leg, asked Taesu,
"But why do we have to sit here like sacks of barley someone borrowed?"
"Right? He’s not the type to do this."
"I’m asking because I know that too. The only thing that could make Mr. Clock thirty minutes late is a natural disaster."
Kim Hyeokgwon spoke firmly on that point.
Taesu agreed with him.
Which was why his thoughts drifted in a strange direction.
"Did he get struck by lightning?"
"Dr. Choi. Don’t jump straight to the worst-case scenario."
"What kind of accident are you imagining, Brad?"
"Hmm. A meteor strike?"
"……Let’s both stop."
Taesu smiled bitterly.
It seemed it was time to stop with the light jokes meant to kill time.
At first, he had simply been curious about the reason for the delay, but now he was slowly beginning to worry.
Even when they asked the soldiers in the department, all they did was shake their heads.
Just as that worry was growing heavier—
Bang.
The door opened, and Colonel Clark and Squad Leader Sam came in with grave expressions.
Colonel Clark approached them at once and began with an apology.
"I’m late. I apologize."
"You look terrible."
"No, I’m fine. I stubbed my toe on the way here. It was only a light bump, so it hurt for a moment, but I’m all right now."
Colonel Clark forced a gentle smile.
Scrape.
He and Squad Leader Sam immediately took seats across from them.
But the medical team’s expressions remained oddly unchanged.
‘He stubbed his toe lightly while wearing combat boots, and it hurt?’
It made no logical sense.
Taesu knew that all the more clearly because he had worn combat boots during training.
Colonel Clark had not even noticed the flaw in what he had just said. That meant something complicated must have happened.
They could guess that much, so they let it slide.
Once seated, Colonel Clark took a thick envelope from inside his coat and held it out as he spoke.
"This is why I contacted you and asked you to come."
Everyone’s eyes went to the thick envelope on the table.
Taesu was the first to gauge its thickness and said,
"If this is a letter, isn’t it enough to have copied out an entire chapter of a book?"
"If you put that in a pocket with a snap button, it’ll never close."
"Why are you all thinking of it that way? Imagine it’s money. Doesn’t it look like enough to make you cry out, ‘A hundred million!’?"
Kim Hyeokgwon asked from an extremely subjective point of view.
Then Colonel Clark answered.
"It is money."
"A hundred million!"
Thud!
Kim Hyeokgwon was so startled that he clutched his chest.
Taesu, Jeong Minsu, and Brad Kim felt much the same.
Among them, Taesu asked,
"This is money?"
"Please confirm it."
"Why me?"
"What you were supposed to receive has arrived."
The subject was missing from his answer.
But everyone was thinking of that subject.
‘Compensation money.’
It seemed the case that had dragged on and on was finally over.
Thud.
Taesu placed his hand on top of the envelope with a bitter expression.
‘First, we divide out the shares for the people who newly moved into the Korean village.’
They came first.
It was right to hand it over to President Gu Seungheon and let them settle it internally.
But there was also something bitter about it.
"So this is……. the price for threatening people’s lives?"
"That’s right."
"Whenever this happens, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The fact that even a person’s life can be given a price."
"If the other party doesn’t know how to offer a sincere apology, then there is no choice but to substitute it with tangible value."
There was a deep meaning to his words, somehow.
Taesu and the others clearly understood and nodded.
Regarding that, Brad Kim said,
"I heard that because of this incident, communication between the PKO and both armies has not been smooth."
"They were never cooperative to begin with."
"I don’t think it’s a matter we can laugh off."
"The squad leader here and his squad members went through the same crisis. As their commanding officer, do you think I would be shaken by a problem like that?"
Colonel Clark put strength into his voice, then slowly let it fade.
It seemed the time he had wasted during all this was deeply regrettable to him.
Brad Kim smiled bitterly, as if thinking he had said something unnecessary.
The atmosphere was about to grow a little awkward.
So Taesu dragged Squad Leader Sam into it.
"Sam and the squad members received theirs too, right?"
"We received ours first."
"That’s good. And today is D-Day. Ba-bam."
Taesu deliberately made the sound effect with his mouth.
That D-Day referred to the day they would drink.
They had not been able to fulfill that promise even as the seasons changed.
Since this was a moment when they could drink freely, Taesu immediately brought up the promise.
Jeong Minsu, Brad Kim, and Kim Hyeokgwon quickly chimed in as well.
"That’s right. Let’s drink ourselves to death today."
"We’ve got plenty of funds now. What could be the problem?"
"We do all this to eat and live anyway, so the department chief just needs to give us permission. No, join us."
Kim Hyeokgwon boldly included Colonel Clark as well.
With an uncalculated amount of money coming in, it seemed an error had occurred in his miserly nature.
Normally, they would have laughed heartily and accepted.
"Well……. It’s a good idea."
"Ahem. The team members will like it."
They answered and smiled, but it did not feel refreshing.
Finding that strange, Taesu asked in a deliberately calm tone,
"What’s wrong?"
"……I don’t know how to tell you this."
"Tell us what?"
Taesu calmly guided him toward an answer.
In the meantime, everyone seemed to sense the strange atmosphere and became serious.
The air around the table seemed to sink heavily.
In that atmosphere, Colonel Clark wavered again and again.
"Hmm……. Hmmm."
Low groans escaped him from time to time.
Squad Leader Sam had already turned his head and was avoiding their gazes.
As expected, this was no ordinary matter.
But there was something odd about their behavior.
Suddenly, as if his instincts had kicked in, Jeong Minsu asked with a firm expression,
"Is it related to us?"
"Pardon? Ah, well……."
"If it weren’t, you would have already told us to get up and go. Or else you would have brushed it off and said there was no need for us to worry."
"……."
Colonel Clark could not say a word.
Jeong Minsu had undoubtedly hit the mark.
The sharp eye he occasionally displayed was not something most people could dodge.
At the fact that now was one of those times, Taesu, Kim Hyeokgwon, and Brad Kim nodded vigorously.
That moment lasted only briefly.
Still wearing a heavy expression, Taesu asked Colonel Clark again,
"Is it really related to us?"
"Hmm……. It seems I have no choice but to tell you. If you found out later, you probably wouldn’t ever want to see me again."
"What on earth is going on for you to act like this?"
"One moment……. Squad Leader."
When Colonel Clark called him calmly, Squad Leader Sam responded.
"Sir."
Tap.
What he placed on the table was the file folder he had been holding in one hand.
It was the kind usually used for approvals.
Slide.
Squad Leader Sam merely pushed it forward and did not open it.
With a puzzled expression, Taesu moved his hand.
When he opened the file, there was a black-and-white photograph taken by a military satellite.
At a glance, there did not seem to be anything special about it.
Seeing that there were several more pages, he slowly flipped through them.
Rustle. Rustle.
From the next page onward, various symbols had been added—circles, arrows, hatching, and more.
Taesu’s expression, along with the expressions of the three people watching with him, gradually hardened.
At last, it was time for the final photograph.
The moment he saw it, a curse burst from Taesu without him realizing it.
"These fucking bastards!"
It was not only Taesu.
"Are they seriously insane?"
"Is this right? It’s not my eyes that are messed up?"
"Ha. Wow……. Damn. What the hell are we supposed to say to this?"
Reactions followed—denying reality or being so dumbfounded that they were left speechless.
The reason the four of them were furious was all contained in the photograph.
To the north, the Pakistani army was moving south.
To the west, an arrow showed the Indian army moving east.
But that was not the end.
To the east, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army—in short, the Chinese army—was heading west.
Lastly, to the south.
Countless small dots had been marked.
And they had been enclosed in a large circle with an annotation.
- Terrorists.
The photograph contained information that the greatest forces currently surrounding Kashmir were gathering in one place.
That could happen.
One could think they were going to clash properly this summer.
But the problem was the central area they were all heading toward.
That was near the Korean village.
Taesu and the other three’s flabbergasted reactions were entirely normal.
They looked, and looked again.
They even turned it upside down to look, rubbed their eyes, and looked again.
But the red dot in the center remained clear.
There was an annotation beside that dot as well.
- GPS 3435.
It was the unique GPS number attached to the military radio stored inside the Korean village hospital.
Rub, rub.
Taesu rubbed the unique number with his finger.
It was a gesture suggesting that it might be erased and reveal a different number.
When there was no response, he rubbed it harder and harder.
Scrub, scrub!
Still, there was no change whatsoever to that unique number.
In the end, Taesu’s irritation exploded.
"Ah, shit!"
Thud!
He shoved the file folder away in frustration.
At the same time, he asked Colonel Clark,
"Department Chief, this is in the mountains. Deep in the mountains, where there’s nothing."
"I know."
"No. I don’t think you do……. Sam. You took us there back then. Say something."
"……."
Squad Leader Sam kept his gaze averted and did not budge.
At the reaction of the two people in front of him, Taesu was utterly dumbfounded.
"This is driving me crazy."
Clench.
He ran his hand through his hair and even grabbed a fistful of it.
Taesu was not the only one.
Jeong Minsu had taken out one of the photographs entirely and was staring hard at it.
"No. This place……. No, it isn’t. Just looking at it, it can’t be."
"This place is too green. It’s a snowy mountain there, that……. That’s right. We know because we deployed there."
Kim Hyeokgwon also could not believe it and kept denying reality.
Brad Kim was the same.
"The satellite made a mistake. The satellite camera’s focus was off. This isn’t it."
"……."
Colonel Clark merely listened with a heavy expression.
They said strong denial was as good as affirmation.
No matter how much Taesu and the other three threw a fit and denied it, reality did not change.
Taesu realized that further denial would not solve anything.
Then they had to know the reason.
Bang.
He slammed both hands on the table.
Then he asked Colonel Clark,
"Why? Why the hell are these worm-like bastards gathering in these mountains where there isn’t even another trace of human presence?"
"First of all, the Chinese army has been preparing meticulously for several months."
"……Huh?"
When Taesu flinched, Colonel Clark asked.