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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Xrecker
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“What now?”
After leaving the director’s office, Red first asked Blue, who had suggested they retreat, what to do. Team Hunter Killer had defeated Spacetroe’s Team 4, and Team Guerrilla had been utterly defeated by Spacetroe’s Team 3.
But just because this situation had occurred didn’t mean anything would change. Public interest in Spacetroe had already waned worldwide, and citizens were directing their arrows only at the tax-funded Earth Defense Alliance.
It was taken for granted that the Earth Defense Alliance would win, and even if they lost, it was none of the people’s business. Because everyone in the world already knew that a single victory or defeat changed nothing.
Team Hunter Killer would face Team 3 next week as if nothing had happened, and the same days would repeat. Nevertheless, the reason Team Hunter Killer was so heated about Team 3’s first victory was because their first victory, which no one cared about, would set a precedent.
Team Hunter Killer had never once been defeated since its inception. Even though the team had been switched, the fact remained that the opponent Hunter Killer was in charge of had achieved its first victory.
Blue, the longest-serving member of Team Hunter Killer, was well aware of this. Above all, having seen the director for a long time, she knew that a conversation would be impossible in such a moment, which was why she had told the members to retreat for a while.
“We can talk to the director when the time is right. For now, we can save more time by going to the parties involved.”
At Blue’s mention of the parties involved, the members looked at each other, and after getting on the elevator, Blue pressed the button for the floor where Team Guerrilla’s office was, not the 3rd floor where Hunter Killer’s office was.
The opponent had been changed on the day of the duel without any notice. But it was unlikely that the director had acted alone. There must have been others who had planned this with him, and it was highly probable that it was the parties involved in the duel. This was the conclusion Blue had reached.
The members also quickly grasped Blue’s intention, and as soon as the elevator doors opened, they strode towards Team Guerrilla’s conference room.
Yellow, who was in the lead, kicked open the office door, and the members of Team Guerrilla, who were sitting in their chairs in the conference room as if they had lost their minds, were startled and turned their heads.
“What? Is that all?”
Not all the members were in Team Guerrilla’s office. There were only three, and one of them was Khaki, who was always with Indigo and often appeared in articles related to crime.
“What’s with the sudden commotion?! We’re busy right now…!”
The moment Khaki was about to shout, Red, who had approached at a speed that was impossible to follow with the naked eye, grabbed him by the collar and pushed him against the wall.
“Keoheok!”
With a strong impact, the conference room wall cracked, and Red, her hand tightened, lifted him by the collar.
Although Khaki was taller than Red, when he was lifted by the collar, his feet couldn’t touch the ground and he struggled, his feet dangling in the air.
“Talk. Who was it that arranged the duel like this?”
“L-let go…!”
The remaining members of Team Guerrilla belatedly stood up to save Khaki, but Yellow and Pink blocked their way, preventing them from approaching.
Khaki didn’t answer Red’s question properly, but Red had come to this place already knowing who the culprit was.
‘A bastard who always just talks a big game, praising himself, but is empty on the inside and not even flashy on the outside.’
It was highly probable that it was Indigo, who was not here now, or Gainsboro, who was always by his side like his aide. If she had to choose between the two, it was definitely Indigo.
Indigo was the one who was always in cahoots with the director, who never listened even when she reported that Spacetroe’s Team 3 was a strong team that was difficult to compare with other teams. So it was not just a simple guess, but a well-founded conviction based on his past actions.
“Where’s Indigo?”
The director had said he had been taken to the research institute. But Red couldn’t even trust that. There were various races in the world, and after superhumans appeared, various opinions emerged.
Naturally, there was a lot more negative public opinion, and among them, religion had consistently hated superhumans and was still holding protests against their creation. In addition to religion, there were many who extremely denied superhumans, and the director was one of them.
The director, an extreme esper hater, had no trust that he would have told the members of Team Hunter Killer the truth, even if it was a business matter. On top of that, since Hunter Killer was a team that always raised objections to the director’s opinions, it was perhaps natural that the director did not look favorably on them.
“Indigo was, uk, taken straight from the scene, to the research institute!”
Even though he was being choked, Khaki answered Red’s question, and Red lifted the hand holding his collar even higher, tightening her grip.
“Proof?”
She couldn’t believe his words either. The reason Team Hunter Killer continued their activities as superhumans was to improve the perception of superhumans. The members, who had not been united even with the same opinion until now, had recently achieved team harmony, and after learning that they were all working as superhumans with the same thought, they were able to be more motivated.
Even if their financial situation remained difficult.
Team Guerrilla was a group that used their position as superhumans to cause social trouble. There had been articles in the news several times, but the director would contact the media and have the articles about them immediately deleted.
But he couldn’t prevent their public image from worsening, and the story that he was deleting negative articles about Team Guerrilla from behind the scenes had already spread implicitly in society. In the end, as the situation overlapped, Team Guerrilla was currently the worst group that was making the perception of superhumans worse, and they were the polar opposite of Team Hunter Killer.
“Phone, phone!”
Khaki, who was struggling and choking, pointed to his smartphone on the conference room table, and Red threw him to the floor and picked up the smartphone on the table.
She threw the locked smartphone in front of him and looked down at Khaki, who was lying on the floor.
“Open the messenger you received from the research institute. If you’re talking bullshit, you’ll die right here.”
Guerrilla, a group with a completely different personality from Hunter Killer, always ridiculed the members of Hunter Killer and verbally sexually harassed them. Feeling that they weren’t worth dealing with, they had ignored them until now and had been holding back because they shouldn’t cause fights between superhumans.
Those guys had finally stepped into Hunter Killer’s territory and had ruined everything, and with their pent-up annoyance exploding, Red, no, all the members of Team Hunter Killer were in an extremely sensitive state.
“A-alright.”
Khaki hastily unlocked his smartphone and showed Red the text message he had received from a researcher at the research institute.
As Khaki had said, Indigo, who had been seriously injured, had been taken by a research institute ambulance that had come to the scene and had been rushed to the research institute. In the text exchange was a photo of Indigo, covered in blood, lying on a bed with an oxygen mask on.
It was a photo that was naturally disgusting to look at, and it was normal to look away from the sight, which was too gruesome to bear, but Red smiled with a sense of satisfaction that relieved her accumulated stress. She felt no pity for the battered Indigo.
“Who did this to him?”
“I don’t know. All the Spacetroe guys are dressed the same, how would I know who’s who…”
Red felt pathetic at Khaki’s answer, who couldn’t even properly identify who it was. First of all, since they were all dressed the same, the opponent was not the officer, Ruche.
In other words, it was one of the ordinary soldiers. As Khaki said, all the ordinary soldiers of Spacetroe were dressed the same. But they could be distinguished by the difference in their builds, their assigned positions, and their fighting styles.
Even if they didn’t know their names or faces, it wasn’t difficult to know that the ordinary soldiers were different people and that they were all professionally trained soldiers. Team Guerrilla had been active as superhumans for as long as, or even longer than, Red, but she couldn’t help but sigh at the answer that they didn’t even know such simple things and couldn’t even figure out who was who.
Indigo, who was confirmed to be the mastermind of this incident, was currently in the hospital, unable to escape the patient’s life. But it was unlikely that Khaki was completely unaware of this.
“Today’s duel. When was it planned like this?”
“Huh?”
“Hey.”
Red spoke in a low voice and looked down at Khaki, who was questioning her without answering.
“If you make me ask more than twice from now on, I’ll smash that pretty face of yours to a pulp, so answer me at once.”
It wasn’t just a threat. Superhumans had excellent healing abilities. The difference in physical abilities between the members of Team Hunter Killer and Team Guerrilla was like heaven and earth, but there wasn’t much difference in their healing abilities.
Indigo would surely recover and return soon, and Red knew that even if she smashed Khaki’s face to some extent here, he would heal quickly, so she was being sincere.
“Y-yesterday! It was suddenly relayed by Indigo and Gainsboro yesterday. I don’t know exactly what was said between them and the director!”
Khaki, feeling the murderous intent in her words, answered in a loud, urgent voice.
‘It doesn’t seem like he’s lying.’
Red heard Khaki’s words and confirmed that he was not heavily involved in this duel adjustment. Then she had to find the culprits, Indigo and Gainsboro. As mentioned earlier, Indigo was currently in the hospital due to his injuries. Then she had to find Gainsboro, who was acting as Team Guerrilla’s aide, first.
“Where’s Gainsboro?”
“…….”
The moment Khaki hesitated to answer, Red didn’t hesitate to punch him.
“Ugh!”
Khaki, who had lost consciousness from a single punch, fell to the floor, his body twitching and convulsing. Red just looked at him coldly with her cold red gaze.
And she threw the water that the members of Team Guerrilla had been drinking until a moment ago, which was on the table, on his face.
“!!!”
Khaki, who had come to his senses, felt fear at Red’s sharp gaze more than the extreme pain in his face. He belatedly remembered that he had fainted from a single punch, and when he saw Red’s clenched fist, he was terrified at the thought that she might hit him again.
“Answer. Gainsboro?”
“H-he went to the research institute with Indigo… I don’t know what happened after that…”
The moment she took a step towards Khaki, who was trembling and answering, the terrified Khaki flinched and wet his pants.
“I-it’s true! I really don’t know! That guy Gain, he told us to go back first and then left in a research institute car!”
“Tch.”
Red, who had clicked her tongue and furrowed her brow, turned her back on Khaki, who was cowering on the floor.
“Let’s go. I don’t think we’ll get anything more out of him.”
“Okay.”
The other members were also convinced that they wouldn’t get a proper answer from the current members of Team Guerrilla, and they left the conference room one by one. Before Red, who was the last to leave, left, she looked at the silent conference room and opened her mouth.
“Stay out of our business and just do your own thing. If you stay quiet, you’ll be halfway there.”
It was a warning. A warning with many meanings, and after leaving those words, Red left the conference room.
“Th-those fucking bitches!”
The members of Hunter Killer, who had come out, heard Khaki’s shout from inside the conference room, but they didn’t care. They didn’t want to care.
“Let’s just disband for today.”
Feeling a lot of stress in a short period of time, she just wanted to go home and rest.
After work, I came home and lay on my bed. I looked at the familiar ceiling and felt nothing. I just wished for the day to pass.
It was our first victory in a whopping 10 years, but I wasn’t happy at all. It wasn’t that I was in a bad mood or angry, but that’s why it was even more complicated and subtle.
The unknown sometimes becomes fear. I prided myself on having had a lot of experience, but I still didn’t know much about myself.
‘Should I just sleep?’
I sat up in bed and looked out the dark window, thinking it would be better to sleep than to continue feeling this complicated. But it was too early to sleep, and if I woke up at dawn in this state, my head would just get more complicated.
And then I heard the sound of the front door lock.
“?”
There was no one who would come at this time. No, there was. Regardless of the time, regardless of the date, there was one person who was allowed to enter my room freely, and she was the only one who would come to my house.
“Oppa, I’m here.”
Yu-bin opened the door and came in, smiling. Her slightly awkward smile seemed to say she was sorry for coming without notice.
“Welcome.”
I also smiled at Yu-bin, and she, who had taken off her shoes at the entrance and come in, immediately ran to me, who was sitting on the bed, and buried her face in my chest.
This was the first time in several years that I hadn’t seen Yu-bin, or Red, in the duel. So I suddenly became curious. What was she thinking during the duel today? Did she know that the opponent had been changed today? How did she fight in the duel today? How was she feeling today?
But Yu-bin and I had secrets from each other. I knew she was a superhuman and the leader of Team Hunter Killer, Red, but officially, Yu-bin had never once mentioned being a superhuman to me.
She must have wanted to hide the fact that she was a superhuman from me.
And I was hiding from Yu-bin that I was Spacetroe. To be precise, I was hiding it from everyone. We were in a situation where we couldn’t freely share the reason that could be the biggest issue of the day.
“……Oppa.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re warm.”
“You’re warm too, Yu-bin.”
Yu-bin must also be feeling frustrated about the current situation, about what happened today. The Red of Team Hunter Killer that I knew was that kind of person. Just and fair.
“……Ah.”
With a small sound, I realized why I was feeling so complicated and subtle about our first victory.
It was our first victory in 10 years. Spacetroe’s Team 3 had won against superhumans for the first time, and even though the opponent wasn’t Team Hunter Killer, whom we always dueled, a victory was a victory.
And through that duel, I had poured out the stress of the humiliation my colleagues had suffered and the fact that Team Hunter Killer’s efforts had been in vain. And I had even achieved victory. But the reason I wasn’t happy was,
because this victory changed nothing.
I had to know more. Then maybe something would change.
Only then would I be able to make them even a little happier.
I wrapped my arms around Yu-bin’s shoulders, who was in my arms, and pulled her closer. Yu-bin also wrapped her arms around my waist and hugged me.
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