Chapter 123 - Eric Earhart (1)

“Do you think he told the truth?” murmured Gilbert, Yehyeon’s second aide.

The commander-in-chief nodded slowly.

“He knows how important Hilde is, too.”

After a brief silence, he continued.

“And by his own standards, Falcon genuinely considers Hilde his friend.”

“Surprisingly, that does seem to be the case. Though he’s capable of killing even an old friend without batting an eye if they cross him.”

“Yes. Jaeyeon is the only one who will never die at Falcon’s hands.”

Yehyeon’s reply to Ska sounded almost like he was talking to himself. His gaze drifted through empty space, lost in thought.

“He won’t permit Jaeyeon to die...”

The conversation paused there. Yehyeon rested his forehead against his interlaced fingers, deep in thought.

A heavy silence settled over the senior leadership’s office. The only sound was the alert announcing an incoming report.

Only after a long silence did the commander-in-chief speak, his voice heavy.

“It seems that thing has fully awakened.”

The coordinated, hostile ambush left no room for doubt.

“Let’s reclaim our territory before the year is out.”

His aides assented in silence.

* * *

Hilde was ill for three days.

The surgery had gone well, but his fever showed no sign of breaking. Samuel said it was probably stress. Not an aftereffect of the portal, but something like a bout of flu.

Even an enhanced body could certainly react badly to extreme stress.

So when Ami visited his hospital room on the third day of his stay, she had no expectation of finding her junior lucid. She knew plenty of people had been in and out, but no one was there when she arrived.

It was a spacious private room.

She shut the door behind her and sat in the chair beside the bed. Then she idly played a game on her phone, its cheerful chimes ringing out.

“Ah...”

Until her junior, who had been lying motionless, suddenly turned toward her.

“Ami...”

“Aah!”

Ami was so startled she dropped her phone. She jerked back instinctively, clutching her pounding heart as she stared blankly at him. Hilde was looking up at her through half-open eyes.

His white hair was plastered to his skin with cold sweat.

After staring at him dazedly, Ami came to her senses.

“Hilde! You’re awake!”

She reached for the nurse call button, but he caught her arm before she could press it.

“I’m all right,” he mumbled. “I’m going to sleep a little longer.”

“Oh, ’kay. Get some more sleep. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Ami.”

She blinked, then bent down to meet his eyes.

“What is it?”

“Were you in a coma for two years?”

Puzzlement crept into Ami’s round eyes. She looked at her junior, drenched in cold sweat, then nodded.

“Yeah. My fighter jet crashed.”

“In the final battle?”

“That’s right. The final battle of the First War. I blacked out watching the ground rush toward me, and when I opened my eyes, two years had passed.”

The new recruit gazed quietly up at her, his expression unreadable.

She wondered why he was asking, but then again, it was the sort of thing someone might be curious about after hearing it from others. Ami didn’t mind. She could tell him the whole story from beginning to end if he wanted.

After a moment of silence, he asked another question.

“Who took care of you...?”

“Brother Yehyeon and Brother Yun did. The Choi family mostly helped financially.”

As she spoke, memories of that time came flooding back.

It had been so very long ago now. Yet whenever she recalled that day, it still felt like only last month. Ami smiled as she retraced it.

“When I woke up, I had no idea two whole years had passed. But Brother Yehyeon started crying his eyes out the moment he saw me. He cried so much I thought Brother Yun had died at first.”

She giggled.

“But he was perfectly fine.”

“How did Yun react?”

“My youngest big brother? He didn’t cry, but he stayed beside me for ages. And for a while afterward, he kept waking me up out of the blue. That was rough.”

Of course, she had never forgotten their kindness for a single moment.

The fact that they hadn’t given up on her through two years in a coma. The devotion that had made them carve time out of schedules too busy to allow much sleep, caring for her for those entire two years.

The love in the arms that had embraced her when she awoke.

The hands that had tirelessly helped her up, no matter how often she fell while learning to walk again.

Hilde’s hoarse voice drew her out of her memories.

“I’m sorry.”

Ami’s eyes widened.

“What are you sorry for?”

Hilde didn’t answer. He only gave a faint smile instead. There was something sorrowful about it. Hadn’t he smiled like that when answering Riccardo’s questions outside the core?

Ami studied him, still looking so unwell, then added,

“It’s okay. It doesn’t bother me at all. Those two were the ones who went through all the trouble. When I woke up, Brother Yehyeon had become everyone’s hero. Talk about a surprise.”

“Was he commander-in-chief by then?”

“No. He was an aide then.”

“Was becoming commander-in-chief what he wanted?”

It felt as though he was asking something he hadn’t dared ask anyone else.

Ami answered with a little smile.

“I don’t think so. There were a couple of other qualified people, and Brother Yehyeon kept saying he hoped one of them would get the position. But as I understand it, he ended up becoming commander-in-chief because that video made him famous. It gave them the perfect justification, you know.”

Hilde’s expression darkened.

Ami watched something like guilt settle in his vivid golden eyes.

Why had her junior been acting like this all this time?

It wasn’t a story to be this sad about. Other people said, “Waking up after two years is a real miracle,” or, “He was so lucky that footage miraculously survived and made him a hero.”

His reaction was very strange.

Watching him shift restlessly, she spoke.

“Be honest. Some of your memories have come back, haven’t they?”

Hilde choked. He coughed painfully.

His reaction was more violent than she had expected, and Ami hastily added,

“Sorry. Take it easy.”

“... I’m sorry. But they haven’t all come back.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She hadn’t actually intended to hear about them.

It didn’t seem like something she ought to know. Ami knew how to respect that boundary. Just as meeting Lee Yehyeon’s father, Lee Seunghyeon, hadn’t made her pry into who he was, she decided not to pry into Hilde’s past, either.

He didn’t seem to want to talk about it himself.

She just felt sorry to see him suffering.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Someone who seemed capable of shaking off almost any hardship was struggling this much. It looked like PTSD, just as Riccardo had said; perhaps some bad memories had resurfaced. Though she couldn’t imagine what sort of past he had.

In any case, she never wanted to see him in as much pain as he had been the other day.

Ami resolved to be kinder to him.

To this strange junior of hers...

“But it’s funny, Hilde. Sometimes you feel like a big brother.”

The thought slipped out unbidden.

Hilde blinked at her words. Those unforgettable golden eyes widened, then he gave a faint smile.

“Little one.”

“I am not.”

Ami scowled at him.

“I’m seventy-one now. I’m a granny.”

Hilde burst out laughing.

Then he said nothing more. After that low laugh, he began nodding off again, perhaps exhausted. Ami stayed still and silent until he fell asleep.

Once his breathing had become regular, she left the room, faintly wondering why being called a little one by Hilde hardly bothered her at all.

⁕⁕⁕

Should we have gone down with our world?

I remembered often asking myself that long ago.

I’d never confided it to anyone. But at some point, I had begun thinking it often. Perhaps we should never have jumped into the portal. Should we have accepted our fate and turned to ash with the old world?

Had the tragedy begun the moment we set foot on Earth?

But every time, I reached the conclusion that it hadn’t.

That it was an utterly foolish, arrogant thought, and that every living being was born with the right to resist approaching death, rise again, and find a way to live. The struggle to find a way to survive could never be a sin.

So I didn’t regret leading my people to Earth.

What I regretted was...

“Oh, you’re awake.”

At the unwelcome voice, I reluctantly lifted my heavy eyelids. Then I stared sullenly at the ceiling for a while.

“I didn’t expect you to come all the way here.”

“I heard you were terribly ill.”

The voice sounded distinctly more cheerful than last time.

“I was worried, you see.”

“There’s no need for empty words. You came because you wanted to see me miserable.”

“My, you really do despise me!”

Quick on the uptake.

But he wasn’t the sort to take offense at a little contempt from me. If he’d been that ordinary, he would never have risen to his position in the first place.

Hah...

I held out as long as I could before reluctantly turning my head.

Platinum-blond hair came into view.

A handsome middle-aged man, once again pulling off a flashy three-piece suit to perfection. He sat in the chair, beaming.

The hospital corridor was eerily quiet.

The agents standing outside the room had an unmistakable presence.

Their master’s smile broadened the instant our eyes met. It held genuine rapture.

“Prometheus! You look so much better!”

“You really are one of the worst perverts I’ve ever met.”

“Ah, I hear that often.”

Don’t answer that so shamelessly.

“It’s good to see you after so long.”

“Yes.”

“Truly... Ah, now I understand why Falcon treats you as someone special. Ha... I could slap my past self for giving you only a cursory glance.”

“No, I’m sure you still don’t understand. He may be a psychopath, but he’s not a sexual deviant.”

“Sukhoi’s foremost agent is your pupil, so you have ties to her side as well.”

Eric Earhart, the third most powerful person in the Center Core, had perfected the art of ignoring what other people said.

All those bastards at the top were the same.

Colton was no different, and Sukhoi would be the same. I’d never expected them to listen to me anyway, so I settled for looking sullen.

The very idea of being interrupted was foreign to them.

Eric’s gray eyes gleamed.

“I seem to be the only one without a connection to you, so I came to establish one.”

“Must we really establish something like that?”

“I would very much like to.”

“And I suppose I have no right to refuse.”

“Haha.”

Look at him smiling.

It was the smile of someone with absolute power. What an infuriating breed. I rolled my eyes at that smile, which brought to mind Colton, the political enemies who would have met their ends at his hands, and the imperial royalty Kyle and I had served.

“You have nothing to lose by forming a connection. Surely I wouldn’t harm you, a friend of Falcon’s and one of Yehyeon’s people.”

“I just want to live like an ordinary new recruit. I seem to attract trouble even when I do nothing.”

“Then you need only live like an ordinary new recruit.”

“I mean I’d like you to form your special connection with someone else.”

“Even if I offered to help you uncover your past?”

I bolted upright.

My head spun. My vision warped, and nausea surged through me.

But I ignored the sudden dizziness. Swallowing it down, I propped myself up on my arms and stared at the man sitting before me.

The man who said he loved the sight of sickness.

The sexual deviant who claimed to find ecstasy in lifting the unfortunate out of their misery.

The man whose power ranked just below Colton Wiseman’s and Yekaterina’s.

Eric Earhart.

“How exactly would you help me?”

At my quiet question, Eric smiled radiantly.