Chapter 109 - Year-End Party (2)

I spent quite a while being dragged from place to place. Excited seniors kept calling me over from every direction. They were delighted, saying it had been six years since a new recruit had made Yehyeon drink vodka.

But I hadn't meant to make Yehyeon drink vodka.

Could he hold his liquor? Now I felt bad. But it seemed awkward to go back and ask him at this point, and too many people were calling me over. I diligently accepted their drinks.

There were so many seniors I'd never met that I couldn't remember their names.

"Wow, you can really drink!"

"Not a single broken glass, even after drinking something that strong."

"Are you even feeling it?"

The seniors gave me every kind of alcohol imaginable.

"Chug! Chug!"

"Vodka! Woo! Vodka! Woo!"

"Hard liquor! Woo! Hard liquor! Woo!"

"Yun taught you well."

It was a death march.

I made the rounds of the tables, drinking as I went. Everyone poured me something different. Getting to try so many kinds of alcohol was nice, but all that liquid was filling my stomach.

Let me have some paella, too.

As I mourned my plight, someone tugged at me. I turned toward the person pulling my arm and saw a familiar pair of dark circles.

"Excuse me, seniors. I'm borrowing the new recruit."

Iho dragged me behind him.

"And stop making him drink so much, for crying out loud."

"Hey! You've already been on a mission with him!"

"Exactly. It's been a while, and I want to catch up."

Iho maneuvered me behind him, where Aki was waiting to drag me away.

A tremendous chorus of protests erupted, but the two pretended not to hear as they hauled me off. They sat me down at another round table. I was so frazzled I couldn't even tell where in the hall I was.

Aki and Iho sat down on either side of me.

"Eat."

Iho took the glass from my hand and thrust a plate at me. Slightly tipsy, I looked down at it.

"Beef tataki."

"Oh, what a rare treat."

I snatched up a piece and ate it. The meat melted on my tongue. Watching my expression as I ate, Iho let out an amused sigh.

"Anyone would think you'd been starved."

"It's just that I've only had liquids, so I wanted something solid."

"Huh?"

Iho's eyes widened and his voice rose. He paused in the middle of opening a soju bottle and blinked.

"You haven't had anything to eat this whole time?"

"No, sir. I never got the chance."

"This table has the most expensive food, so eat plenty before you go."

Aki watched me as she leaned back comfortably in her chair, sipping wine. She was as cool as ever, her face betraying little expression.

"Everyone's going to get drunk soon and start calling you over like crazy."

Her words proved true.

I respectfully poured a drink for each of the seniors who had seated me at the table with the most expensive food. We shared a casual toast, and I was busy eating beef when someone approached.

More precisely, someone stopped beside me while Iho was grilling me: "How are you this sober when you haven't eaten anything?"

I turned toward the familiar figure.

"Hilde."

Ami beamed.

"Have a drink with me, too."

"You're drunk," Iho observed, swallowing a mouthful of soju. "You'll be sprinting around here any minute now."

Ami blinked. Her face didn't seem flushed, but her reactions seemed a little slower than usual. She answered a beat late.

"I'm not druuunk."

Drunk, then.

"Have a drink with me too, Hilde. Please."

"Oh, of course. Let me pour you one."

"Hey, what are you doing? Come on!"

Giacomo Ro popped up behind Ami. He grabbed us both by the arm and tugged. I hurriedly said goodbye to Aki and Iho as I was hauled out of my seat.

Across the hall again, to yet another table. Empty beer and soju bottles were neatly lined up on the floor beside it.

John Mühlen was sitting there.

"Um, uh, excuse me, wait a moment."

"Oh, just sit down!"

Ro planted me at the table. He pulled over an empty glass and poured beer into it with a generous splash.

"Here!"

"Wanna sausage?"

Ami thrust a sausage at me.

I gave an awkward chuckle as I lifted the overflowing glass of beer.

"Thank you."

The sausage was stone cold, but delicious.

And, thank heavens, John didn't look at me sitting across from him. He was silently drinking beer without touching the sausages or fries in front of him.

The sausages and fries sat cooling on aluminum foil.

At this rate, I might manage to have a drink and escape without him noticing I was here, I thought as I accepted an onion ring Ami held out to me.

"Don't even think about going home tonight!"

Ro shouted as he poured beer into John's glass.

"Let's drink ourselves to death!"

A question suddenly occurred to me.

It was something I'd wondered about before, though I'd never dared ask. In truth, I was still a little afraid to ask, but perhaps the alcohol was starting to kick in, because my mouth blurted it out all on its own.

"How did you two end up living together?"

Ro turned his head at my question. Ami burst out laughing.

"Because Ro did something stupid!"

She completely ignored her colleague's thuggish "Huh?" Her two little hands drummed merrily on the table.

"Ro made Mr. Mühlen do sit-ups!"

She really was drunk, spouting nonsense like that. It didn't even seem relevant to my question.

"Hey! You fuckers were the ones with no loyalty!"

As I was thinking that, Ro suddenly exploded.

"If one of your fellow recruits is lacking, huh? Of course you look out for him! The test was right around the corner!"

A test?

What test was he talking about all of a sudden?

"How could you just stand by and let that half-wit get his body scrapped?"

"Why would he lose his enhanced body?"

"Badgers have regular fitness tests."

Ami giggled.

"If your fitness drops too low, you become a candidate for having your enhanced body scrapped."

I see.

But what did that have to do with John Mühlen?

Like Samuel Han, this man had received an enhanced body because of his exceptional intellect. He was the creator of the cores that had given humanity a peaceful life. He and Samuel Han were exempt from mandatory battlefield duty despite possessing enhanced bodies. I'd heard that, as a result, he'd only undergone the bare minimum of fitness testing before and after the implantation.

By standards completely different from those applied to most Badgers...

Wait a minute.

"No matter how many times we told him Mr. Mühlen's situation was different from ours, he wouldn't listen!"

Laughing wildly, Ami stabbed her fork into a sausage.

"We kept telling him Mr. Mühlen didn't have to be able to do sit-ups!"

"Seriously, how the hell did this bastard become a Badger?"

Giacomo Ro was genuinely baffled. He wasn't listening to a word Ami said. I couldn't decipher all the extravagant gestures accompanying his words, but it was clear he still regarded John Mühlen as a colleague who needed looking after because he wasn't up to par.

"He can't even do three proper push-ups! And not one of those bastards was looking out for him. Those... rotten bastards. Heartless fuckers, every last one."

"That's what I'm saying, Ro. It's fine if Mr. Mühlen can only do two push-ups!"

"Fuck, I said three!"

"You idiot, two is less than three!"

What a mess.

It was the sort of conversation that threatened to lower my intelligence just by listening to it.

Ro was simply being his usual self, and Ami was completely drunk.

I'd better get her to take a little break.

With a faint smile, I poured sparkling water into Ami's glass.

"Have some of this."

"Okay. Thanks."

"It's not like you can just ignore how god-awful his coordination is..."

Giacomo Ro seemed to be thinking of the other (sane) Badgers who hadn't helped train John Mühlen back then. He shook his head.

"Trash, the lot of them."

"The only thing that's trash is your intelligence, Giacomo."

"Have a sausage."

As Ami set down her sparkling water to argue, I hurriedly offered her a sausage.

"A tasty sausage."

"Fank you."

"How long can that dimwit possibly last as a Badger...?"

With a hand to his forehead, Ro looked at John Mühlen with the deepest pity in the world. Heavy emotion filled the eyes beneath his thick eyebrows. No one could have been more sincere. No one...

John Mühlen set his glass down.

"Huh? You empty?" Ro asked.

He frowned hard as he looked for beer, then swore and picked up a soju bottle.

"Ah, shit... We're out."

Still, Ro had the kindness to pour the liquor into a soju glass rather than a beer glass before pushing it toward John.

"Just drink this shit."

John mechanically lifted the soju glass.

The gray-haired man blinked as he drank the soju. Did he even realize he was drinking alcohol? He'd been drinking his beer like it was water all this time.

Was this him drunk?

"Oh!"

I flinched at Ami's cry.

"Mr. Mühlen gets drunk if he drinks anything other than beer!"

What?

I blinked at this latest bizarre claim. For a moment, I had to consider whether Ami was talking drunken nonsense or telling the truth that merely sounded like nonsense.

Could she actually be telling the truth while drunk?

John Mühlen emptied his soju glass. Then he stood up.

"Oh. Looks like Mr. Mühlen's drunk," someone whispered. "He's heading for the corner."

... John Mühlen went to the corner.

Then he stood there, ominously motionless. My jaw dropped. This tall, handsome genius of a scientist.

This luminary of the scientific world, this deranged mad scientist, stood in the corner watching everyone without moving.

Was that his drunken habit?

"Mühlen tree~."

By the time I came to my senses, Ami had dragged a chair over and was placing a star ornament on top of John Mühlen's head. Where she'd found it, I had absolutely no idea.

"Christmas~."

"This is fucking hilarious!"

Delighted, Ro stood in front of him snapping photo after photo.

My mind grew a little hazy.

I watched the seniors trying to fetch a string of fairy lights, then closed my eyes.

If I watched any more, my intelligence really would drop.

A moment alone in the bustling hall. I shut out the noise and meditated, until someone approached me.

By now, I could recognize this man from his footsteps alone.

"Are you here to collect her?"

"Not yet."

Yun looked just as immaculate as he did during morning training. My training officer shoved his hands into his suit pockets and looked at his younger sister.

"I'll collect her once she starts running."

"She seems pretty drunk already."

"She's fine like that."

He seemed all too used to this sort of thing. His expression didn't change in the slightest as he watched his sister giggling with the fairy lights in her hands.

Instead, after observing her condition for a moment, he looked away from his sister and down at me. His eyes were as cold and black as ever.

"I'm going to take Yehyeon to the senior leadership's bedroom and come back."

"Oh."

I remembered the terrible thing I'd done.

"Is he very drunk?"

"Thanks to you."

Ugh...

Lamenting my own stupidity, I craned my neck. My eyes darted everywhere in search of that pale face. My finely built superior in his immaculate black suit.

I couldn't see him.

Yun pointed.

"He's right there."