Black Swan Chapter 15

Looking back step by step now, there was more than one or two questionable points. Starting from the fact that the slaughterers hunted the very unit he belonged to, it was puzzling. The 2nd Echelon was not a favorable location to raid. It would have been more suitable for the slaughterers to pick the 1st Echelon than the 2nd Echelon to enjoy a hunt and flee. Above all, the fact that they launched a sudden raid on the 2nd Echelon at a time just two days before the invasion was most suspicious.

This is no simple hunt. It is clearly a military operation executed with another purpose, not the intention to secure sacrifices for a ritual as usual.

Then could it be….

The young snake stared at the one-way mirror on the right wall. The one-way mirror, thickly dried with bloodstains, looked down lazily at the prisoners. In the meantime, Brigadier General Yang Jeo and the prisoners were raising their voices and chattering noisily. The young snake took a deep breath for a moment and then opened his mouth.

“Everyone shut your mouths.”

The prisoners’ gazes turned toward him. The young snake whispered softly.

“They might be wiretapping us. They must not gain information from words we blabber thoughtlessly. Everyone keep quiet.”

The prisoners’ faces turned pale in unison. Before long, they gathered and sat down in a corner hesitatingly. The young snake also leaned his back against the wall, sat down, and dropped his head low. To anyone’s eyes, it was a appearance that would be judged as a prisoner paralyzed with terror who had lost all energy. Disguised as a terrified prisoner, the young snake sneered silently.

If you want to wiretap, go right ahead as much as you like. Because there’s nothing to salvage anyway.

There was no information the slaughterers could extract from him. Because keeping silent was easier than anything else for the young snake.

As always, I just need to quietly keep my mouth shut.

∞ ∞ ∞

Yoo Nanoh opened the door and entered the room. Lee Hwanmae was staring lazily past the one-way mirror with his arms crossed.

“Are you still wiretapping?”

To Yoo Nanoh’s question, Lee Hwanmae merely gave a simple nod of his head. For that Lee Hwanmae—who overflowed with leisure in every matter—to not even answer, he seemed to be exerting his concentration without reservation. Yoo Nanoh looked past the one-way mirror. The seven snakes captured alive last night were sitting huddled in a corner.

This is absurd.

Yoo Nanoh rubbed his chin while glaring at the ‘reception partner’ in question. Because he was said to be a big shot who would even block a war, he had naturally guessed him to be a balding middle-aged man. But the opponent Lee Hwanmae was wiretapping right now was, at most, a greenhorn in his mid-twenties.

Yoo Nanoh examined the greenhorn’s rank insignia. Because he was a fellow who had fended off that Lee Hwanmae’s blade seven times, he had thought the rank would be quite high, but absurdly, he was a low-ranking administrative officer.

However, Yoo Nanoh soon let out a light whistle. Next to the rank insignia, he had spotted two feathers embroidered in red thread.

Was he a Staff Officer, despite his look?

A Staff Officer was a position specially created by Mukso, a so-called strategist—a talent with outstanding intellect selected mainly from company-grade officers. A Staff Officer was in charge of establishing military operations and military administration, and in emergency situations, they were also deployed to actual combat. As they had many duties, experienced and seasoned officers in their thirties were mainly chosen. Yet for a greenhorn merely in his mid-twenties to be a Staff Officer, he did not seem ordinary.

Is he a fellow holding important information related to the war? Or do you intend to use him to covertly assassinate Mukso?

Either way, it was absurd. He understood Lee Hwanmae’s perfectionism, but even so, this was severe. Taking precautions for every contingency was fine up to a point, but taking the opponent’s pederastic tendency into account was going too far. Could not a mere greenhorn like that be quickly buttered up with a three-inch tongue and a fat stack of money?

Then again, since war is on the line, it’s worth being cautious.

Yoo Nanoh nodded his head back and forth. At any rate, it was a relief. If a mere greenhorn like that was the negotiation partner, the body lobbying situation he had worried about in the first place would not take place. In fact, even the snakes had long since turned their backs on Mukso the ‘King of Murder’. To the extent that seventeen coup attempts and as many as eighty-seven assassination attempts had occurred since his ascension to this day, the anger of the people of Usaguk toward Mukso was great. The greenhorn Staff Officer before his eyes would plunge a dagger into the tyrant’s back without hesitation the moment he received Lee Hwanmae’s offer. Unless that greenhorn was Mukso’s son, betrayal was a foregone conclusion.

Suddenly, Yoo Nanoh slightly knit his brows. But it’s a bit strange…?

The behavior Lee Hwanmae had shown as an ‘answer’ to the question he had tossed about how he intended to stop the war stuck in his mind only belatedly. Yoo Nanoh sank deep into thought.

Throwing darts at a map of the Western Continent while comparing it to the 3rd century Three Kingdoms Period, wasn’t it…?

The Western Continent map. The Three Kingdoms Period. And the greenhorn Staff Officer.

As for the greenhorn Staff Officer, Lee Hwanmae’s intention was visible right away, but the problem was the map of the Western Continent and the Three Kingdoms Period. Yoo Nanoh took the words Lee Hwanmae had casually tossed out as puzzle pieces and tried fitting them this way and that. The Western Continent and the 3rd century Three Kingdoms Period…. Three years ago, as ‘Irhwawolguk’ fell to ‘Usaguk’, the Western Continent faced a new Three Kingdoms Period. And the greenhorn Staff Officer was a traitor who would stick a blade in Mukso’s back.

The problem was the connection. A connection threading the Western Continent, the Three Kingdoms Period, and the greenhorn Staff Officer in one stroke did not come to mind at all. No matter how he fitted it this way and that, the puzzle pieces kept playing separately.

At any rate, a wicked bastard. A fellow who doesn’t know a damn thing about teamwork.

Yoo Nanoh glared fiercely out of the corner of his eye at Lee Hwanmae, cursing him internally to his heart’s content. Having eaten out of the same pot for seven whole years, it should be natural for some unexpected good side to be revealed as often happens in novels, but somehow that fellow lacked even that. What good side? Only his hysteria index broke new records day by day. It makes me mad enough to want to throw him into a psychiatric hospital again, just bam.

Ever since his student days at Hwado, Yoo Nanoh had harbored deep suspicions about Lee Hwanmae’s mental state. Although Yoo Nanoh, the youngest Seo Jukgyeong, and his second-cousin brother Ryu Hopi were all somewhat damaged in their minds, compared to that half-brother, they were merely on the side of being slightly less fresh. Even so, during their student days at Hwado, Lee Hwanmae managed to suppress his true colors after a fashion (strictly after a fashion, that is), but it seemed he could not bear the stress received from the standoff on the border line at all. Lee Hwanmae’s mental sanity, which had been rife with rumors since his student days at Hwado to begin with, had deteriorated to an irreversible degree. In fact, Lee Hwanmae had even received psychiatric treatment the year before last.

His comrades wondered why Lee Hwanmae was like that when he was, in his own way, living an easy military life. Some comrades tsk-tsked, saying it was because his pride had been hurt after suffering a bitter taste late after succeeding time after time. But Yoo Nanoh knew the real reason his half-brother’s mental state had shattered. Thinking that it was unavoidable to prevent war, he had left his elder brother’s condition unattended until now, but it was different now. Before Lee Hwanmae truly fell into a madman unable to distinguish between dreams and reality, he intended to take measures somehow.

Would his condition get a bit better if he gets married and has kids?

Yoo Nanoh worried seriously. That’s right, kids. The moment he gets discharged, I’ll marry off that mental patient. Right, he ought to get married. In a situation where the second and third among the brothers ended up marrying men, who else would have kids if not that fellow? By rights, the cry of a baby ought to ring out loudly in the house, and he ought to give birth to a baseball team as a default. Isn’t it about time for me to see a nephew or niece, too? I’m sick and tired of murder, so from now on, I should spend time playing excitedly with cute nephews and nieces.

“He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

Lee Hwanmae spoke out of the blue. Yoo Nanoh snapped to his senses.

“Pardon?”

“That fellow, I mean. Isn’t he handsome?”

Lee Hwanmae made a frame with both hands toward the greenhorn Staff Officer and moved it this way and that. Yoo Nanoh kept his mouth shut tight.

“He’s a fellow who photogenerates poorly. Because he’s so different from the face the god showed me, even I almost failed to recognize him. The real thing is much better. To tell you the truth, it’s my first time seeing a fellow that handsome. That chiseled nose bridge is especially art. The atmosphere emanating from his face is top-notch, too. Isn’t it a face that fits the cliché expression ‘a face filled with melancholy’ perfectly?”

Lee Hwanmae lowered his hands and pulled out a cigarette. Yoo Nanoh suppressed his displeasure and lit Lee Hwanmae’s cigarette. He felt like he had been doused with cold water. Just when he was feeling happy imagining a future where he played excitedly with nephews and nieces, Lee Hwanmae suddenly praised a guy’s face. The timing felt disgustingly unpleasant.

Did he do that on purpose?

Yoo Nanoh bit his lip while observing Lee Hwanmae. If he had read my mind clearly and spouted those words on purpose….