Yehyeon’s mother died giving birth to him.

Lee Seunghyun apparently thought of Lee Yehyeon as the son who had killed his own mother by being born. Because of that, from the time he was an infant, Seunghyun could not bring himself to feel any affection for his own son. Yehyeon said he only discovered the “real reason why his father hated him” when he was in the third year of middle school.

In that uneasy adolescent period, he had rebelled by demanding to know about his mother, and had been beaten savagely for it.

I couldn’t stop myself from speaking.

“Does that even make sense?”

“But except for when I rebelled, he didn’t hit me,” Yehyeon said — something that was no help at all.

Next to him, Yun rolled his eyes up at the ceiling. From his reaction, it seemed like this was an excuse Yehyeon used often.

I also had to fight down the urge to roll my eyes when Yehyeon continued anyway.

“That was also the year I realized my father wasn’t aging. It was creepy.”

Lee Seunghyun was always young.

Up until his third year of middle school, Yehyeon had been too afraid of his father to look him properly in the face (and Seunghyun would often leave him alone for days on end, he said), so he hadn’t noticed anything strange. It was only when he began to rebel in earnest that he caught on to the anomaly.

Naturally, Seunghyun gave no proper explanation.

After several bouts of rebellion in which he tried to get answers, Seunghyun stayed inflexible. At some point, Yehyeon gave up. He stopped crying or losing his temper and getting slapped for it. He stopped combing through the internet and books for cases of people who never aged. He stopped fantasizing that Seunghyun wasn’t his real father, or imagining that he might be some kind of vampire.

Accepting reality as it was, in resignation, wasn’t so hard.

Yehyeon simply closed his mouth and endured Seunghyun’s cold indifference, his irritable nagging, and the rare, unpredictable moments of warmth that could be counted on one hand.

Right up until just before the war.

“Just before?” I asked.

“About six months before,” Yehyeon said, slicing the walnut pie crust with his fork.

“Seven months? Anyway, less than a year.”

Lee Seunghyun had suddenly appeared in America, where Yehyeon was attending college, and started working him like a madman.

Again, there was no explanation. Yehyeon simply ran, got hit, hit back, and ran again as Seunghyun ordered. He had to learn survival techniques and various martial arts that seemed like he’d never use them in his life. It was a terrible time. Seunghyun was an outstanding soldier but not a merciful teacher.

And that was when Yehyeon first witnessed his father’s inhuman healing ability.

Stopping his hand, Yehyeon looked down at the plate and dropped his fork with a clatter.

“I found out by stabbing him with a knife.”

“I don’t know why that left you traumatized,” Yun muttered low beside him.

“If it had been me, I’d have felt relieved. Weren’t you covered in bruises back then?”

“I stabbed someone in a fit of anger — and that someone was my father,” Yehyeon murmured so softly it was hard to hear, then shuddered slightly.

A crease formed between the brows he so rarely furrowed.

“It was really horrible.”

It was during that physically and mentally bad time that the war broke out.

He had an enhanced body implanted and was pushed onto the battlefield. Only then did Yehyeon realize that his father was neither Dracula nor a monster, but a holder of an enhanced body. Seunghyun had apparently known in advance that the war would break out.

All the things Seunghyun had taught him proved useful.

The seniors didn’t tell me any detailed stories about what the war was like. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

They probably didn’t want to dredge up awful memories. And maybe it wasn’t necessary.

What mattered was that even so, Seunghyun didn’t want his son to die — he often came to find Yehyeon at the unit. He would locate him with uncanny precision, summon him, nag uncomfortably, then vanish again. And one day, he pulled Yehyeon out of the front line.

Yehyeon had resisted staying at the front and been beaten almost to the point of death.

“I suppose there was no explanation.”

“Right. Ah, though when I rebelled saying I meant to die at the front, he did say one thing.”

I, fully understanding why my superior had made a crude joke earlier, listened as Yehyeon explained.

“He told me not to worry — he’d arrange a place for me to die.”

Why would you say it like that.

Yun exhaled with ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) a long “ha—” and rolled his eyes upward. He didn’t even seem surprised at this new tale of Seunghyun’s misdeeds. My own expression was starting to slip. Yehyeon recited his past in a monotone, but I wasn’t stupid enough to miss the reality behind those flat sentences.

How had he grown up with nothing to lean on.

Without a single warm embrace, in neglect and abuse.

Whether he noticed the darkness creeping into my gaze or not, Yehyeon continued. He said the next part was the real point.

Seunghyun had carried the battered Yehyeon on his back and taken him back to an area with civilians.

And then, without warning, he handed him a greatsword.

A greatsword.

“The one in the video?” I asked quietly.

Yehyeon smiled faintly.

“He didn’t hand me that one from the start.”

But he did spar with him using a sword exactly the same width.

Yehyeon said he wasn’t allowed to leave the unidentified building until he had perfectly mastered the swordsmanship Seunghyun was teaching him. He tried many times to escape to the front where Yun, Ami, Ju and the others were, but failed every time. People presumed to be Seunghyun’s colleagues also blocked his escape.

And they all said the same thing.

They’d arrange a place for him to die soon, so not to worry.

As they’d said, the place to die was prepared before long.

“You said you saw the video.” Yehyeon asked.

I nodded.

“That only showed the very end of the battle. Because of that one thing, hundreds of Badgers were killed.”

A disaster that came just when they had seized the advantage in the war.

It was said that even bombs dropped on it, even Badger units charging it, could not stop it from breathing. It would revive and revive again, slaughtering everything in sight.

Because that one creature inflicted such catastrophic damage, all forces were concentrated on it.

Many names I knew came up in the description.

Richard Green’s unit — only three survived including Richard, the rest annihilated. Choi Yun’s unit — only four survived including Choi Yun, the rest annihilated.

During this, Richard and Yun were seriously wounded and sent to the hospital, so they didn’t witness its end.

Choi Ami’s fighter crashed; Ami was in a coma for two years from the impact. Ju’s unit was caught in an explosion and most were rendered combat incapable.

Even Lee Seunghyun and his colleagues did not see its end. Seunghyun succeeded in cutting off the creature’s arm but received a fatal injury in return. The red-haired minion of Erich, called Shashinsky, also did not see its end. Many of the Elders’ minions lost their lives there as well.

But those who had received enhanced bodies far earlier than the general population inflicted heavy damage on it.

And the last to engrave its end in their eyes were Jason Trevain and Lee Yehyeon.

Trevain was wounded but did not leave his post.

If Yehyeon failed, he planned to go in with a bomb and die together with the creature. On the day Yehyeon received Seunghyun’s permission to return to the battlefield, he was placed in Jason Trevain’s unit.

It was the last remaining force.

If Trevain’s unit failed too, a nuclear bomb would be dropped.

A place shrouded in deep defeat. Just before diving into the ruins where the creature rampaged, Jason Trevain received a high-powered bomb, and Yehyeon was handed a sword.

And that was when Yehyeon first met Jaeyeon.

A woman with fox-like elongated eyes and shimmering hazel short hair.

She was holding a sword in her arms.

‘You look disgustingly like Lee Seunghyun.’

‘What?’

The woman who had approached out of nowhere scrutinized Yehyeon’s face, then smiled gently at his confusion.

She pushed the sword she held out toward him.

‘A gift from Hilde.’

‘What?’

‘He said to pin your hopes on this.’

The short-haired woman went on spouting incomprehensible things.

Just like Lee Seunghyun and his colleagues who never gave proper explanations.

‘Good luck. I don’t care which side wins.’

‘...Excuse me, but who are you?’

‘Don’t look at me like that. You’re the same.’

Jaeyeon reached out a hand with red-painted nails and tucked Yehyeon’s hair behind his ear.

Their eyes met in the air. A man who hadn’t even been able to wash because of rolling through the battlefield, and a woman who was chillingly clean and beautiful.

Jaeyeon calmly studied Yehyeon’s eyes, then smiled brightly.

‘You wish the world would just crush you and pass you by, don’t you?’

Yehyeon succeeded in killing the creature.

***

The story ended.

When the quietly flowing words stopped, silence filled the high-ceilinged living room. For a long time I lost my words and stared at Yehyeon.

It was midnight. Somehow the day had ended. Beyond the living room’s full-length window, ebony darkness had descended, and the night’s scent mixed with the cool wind smell of the space. A silence heavy enough to press down on my shoulders. The ticking of the clock striking my ears.

The weight of the silence choked my breathing.

I looked at Yehyeon’s unreadable eyes watching me, and at Yun’s sly gaze watching Yehyeon, and moved my lips.

No sound came out whole.

“My sword.”

“Yes,” Yehyeon answered in a husky voice.

“The sword you handed to me.”

“I...”

The one I’d named Hope and passed on.

“My greatsword.”

“Do you want to hold it again?”

Ignoring my stammering voice, the pale man asked again.

“Do you want to hold it again, Hilde? I have it.”

My breath caught.

I was already crying before I knew it, gasping for air I couldn’t manage. I clutched my wildly heaving chest with both hands, coughing as I made a futile effort to calm my breathing.

My vision blurred with tears, my breath coming faster and faster.

My heart hurt.

“Hilde!”

“Hyperventilating,”

The seniors’ voices buzzed in my ears.

“I’ll get a paper bag. Stay still.”

“Cup your hands over your mouth, Hilde. Cover your mouth with both hands.”

Memories burst out.

I coughed and sobbed. My sword. The one I had always carried, the one I held in my hand every time I swept the battlefield with Kyle. On Earth there had been no reason to use a sword. Humans used guns, bombs, robots instead of long heavy lumps of metal.

So my sword had slept in its sheath, rusting under the name of precarious peace.

Since it was like a part of me, I had never thought to let it go.

“Yehyeon, the paper bag.”

“Hilde.”

A white paper bag came toward me.

“Hilde, take the bag.”

In the end, I had handed over the sword.

To a human.

To an ally I had chosen at the end. But to someone I didn’t even know.

On a day I can’t precisely remember. I had left the sword, which might or might not be used, with an unknown person along with a short video message.

The memory jumped out.

‘Take this.’

I had recorded the message in an empty room.

‘If the worst comes, if there’s no option but mutual destruction. Before you press the nuclear button, take this and run in.

And hope that he has a shred of feeling left. That he recognizes the weapon of a comrade who fought beside him for a long time, and hesitates for an instant.

Hope you’re cold and competent enough to drive the blade into his heart in that moment of hesitation.

And, if there’s no shred of feeling, hope you either embrace him and die together or have no attachment to life.’

A message left for a pitiful human who could use a sword, among the last remaining forces.

‘Let’s hope for that. A slim chance, but still.’

Lee Yehyeon took my sword.

My sword. The thing that was like a part of me. The thing my kin immediately recognized. The thing I had carried carefully all the way to Earth. It passed into the hands of a human who had no attachment to life, but who had ironically stood on his own two feet on the battlefield to the end, developing judgment and courage despite abuse and neglect.

Into the hands of the boy now kneeling in front of me, desperately trying to steady his breathing.

“Hildebert.”

“Yehyeon.”

Through ragged breath I squeezed out the name.

“You received my sword.”

Humanity had won the first war.