The conference room where the disciplinary committee had convened quickly erupted into noise. After a lengthy deliberation, the committee chair and the other members ultimately accepted all of Odin’s requests.
“We will launch an immediate investigation into the black market dealings, and in the meantime, all three parties are hereby ordered to serve a three-month pay reduction of eighty percent. Everyone is to return to their units immediately.”
The gavel struck, and Doyun slowly closed his eyes. His body, having been interrogated all through the early hours of the morning, seemed to sink and slide down the chair like sediment settling.
At the news that eighty percent of a first paycheck he hadn’t even received yet was being docked, Doyun swallowed a groan inwardly. The late fee would stack on top of this month’s interest, and if it ran three months behind consecutively, he started mentally running the numbers on whether he could even pay it all back — and a pained sound escaped him on its own.
Everyone was rushing to get out of the conference room, but Doyun and Odin alone remained where they were.
The image of his younger sibling surfaced — the one who had talked until their throat went raw about how the first three months were the most important — but Doyun had no idea how to go about salvaging a first impression this thoroughly ruined.
“Ando.”
“…Yes?”
Doyun belatedly rose from his seat at the name he had never once heard in his life. Odin was already right in front of him. He frowned as he undid the restraints around Doyun’s wrists.
“How much did you have to fight back for you to be the only one tied up?”
Doyun rubbed his now-free wrists and looked at Odin directly.
They said the people of Varnas Space Station had frames twice the size of Earth people from the bone out — and judging by the Colonel’s build, that wasn’t an exaggeration. It felt as if he were a different species entirely from the old humanity of Earth.
Eyes of a blue he had never seen before. The color of those eyes was striking enough, but what was even more striking was the face. Looking at that refined face — the kind that probably had never once received a debt collector’s text — Doyun felt as though he were standing before a wall. So he undid one of the buttons at his collar that had been done all the way up.
For someone who had just wielded the influence of his rank to cover for a subordinate, he gave off a distinctly principled air. Taking in the precisely angled beret and all, Doyun swallowed against a dry throat.
“Within United Space Forces bases, certain items banned on Varnas can be specially brought in. That’s why black market dealing isn’t treated as a regulatory violation — it’s processed as theft of military assets. The baseline is ninety days in solitary confinement, and depending on the circumstances, the enlistment itself can be voided. Did you know that?”
Doyun answered without leaving a gap in the conversation.
“I didn’t.”
“Consider yourself fortunate it ended with a pay cut.”
He needed to respond right away again, but something seemed to catch in his throat and Doyun’s voice sank back down. How exactly is an eighty percent pay cut fortunate? He was in a special forces unit that, aside from the high salary, had not a single redeeming quality — and now they were cutting eighty percent of his pay. For three whole months?
Odin caught the faint twitch at the corner of Doyun’s eyes and asked with a sneer.
“Oh, are you unhappy because it’s a pay cut?”
Doyun raised his head and met the gaze bearing down on him from above. How did he know? There was no shame in the look he turned on the superior who had read him like a mind reader. Doyun opened his mouth on the slim chance it might matter.
“…I would honestly rather take solitary confinement than a pay cut.”
In that instant, the faint trace of a smile that had been lingering at the corner of Odin’s mouth disappeared.
“What?”
Doyun steadied his breath and continued.
“Solitary confinement just costs me time, but a pay cut…”
“Warrant Officer.”
Odin cut him off with a quiet, low call. Not his name — his rank.
“Do you actually hear the words coming out of your own mouth?”
Odin took a step forward. From a distance close enough that their breath nearly touched, he deliberately leaned down to bring his gaze level with Doyun’s. What lived inside those lovely sky-blue eyes was a contempt so cold it burned.
“Whether solitary confinement is better or not is for me to decide.”
That cold gaze swept slowly over Doyun’s face. His eyes. His mouth. The line of his jaw, tight with tension.
Doyun’s eyes were far too defiant for a twenty-two-year-old who had barely finished his training program. Like something wild that had never been broken in.
Sun-darkened skin and thick brows. A gaze honed hard as if refusing to let any emotion through. Long eyes with corners that curved faintly upward as if drawn by a brush, and eyes so black they looked as though they could swallow everything whole.
The new guide’s expression was so unbothered — free of any remorse or guilt — that it stoked Odin’s irritation. He kept his eyes on Doyun and murmured.
“Most people would lead with ‘thank you for helping me.’ Seems our new recruit never learned even that basic courtesy.”
He’d heard the new recruit had beaten down an A-class Esper, so he’d wondered if he might be a capable combat-type guide — but an attitude this incapable of submission was the most dangerous kind in a combat situation.
Odin made up his mind to put the new recruit in his place and straightened up. Doyun wasn’t short, but there was nearly a ten-centimeter difference between them.
Hands in his pockets, Odin looked down at him with unmistakable pressure in his gaze. Not bothering to hide the condescension, he stated it as fact.
“If you go into the field in your current state, you won’t last an hour before you’re dead.”
Doyun’s brow twitched. The other man wasn’t simply trying to frighten him — his tone was that of someone who genuinely believed it. The contempt underlying those words pricked at Doyun’s pride.
“If I had sent you to solitary confinement as you asked, you would have gone into your first reconnaissance without proper training and come back as a corpse. If you had any consideration for the unit members who would have to carry back a new recruit’s body, you wouldn’t be able to let words like that leave your mouth.”
Twenty-two. Born and raised on Earth — had he even completed proper training, let alone seen any real action? Odin exhaled shortly and removed his beret. He ran his fingers through his bangs, turned his head away for a moment as if suppressing something, then looked back down at Doyun.
“From the moment you enlisted, your life is my responsibility, and I made the best choice available to keep you alive.”
Doyun fell silent at the refined threat of having his lifeline held in another’s hands. Odin’s voice dropped lower.
“If you have a problem with that, you’re free to leave the Genius Strike Force right now. A colt that won’t be reined in is utterly useless to me.”
Doyun fixed his gaze straight ahead, back and spine held perfectly rigid. The posture, stiff with effort, had the look of someone accustomed to being reprimanded one-on-one like this.
“And if you don’t have the guts to do that, then don’t even think about letting your petty grievances show — swallow every last one of them.”
In the silence, only the air between the two of them grew strangely taut.
“Understood, Ando?”
Why does he keep calling me Ando. Doyun blinked, and without quite realizing it, slowly nodded his head. Odin’s eyes narrowed further at the sight.
“Don’t just bob your head — answer me.”
“Understood.”
Doyun answered without moving a muscle, staring straight ahead into the air. He had already decided there was nothing more to be gained by saying anything.
He had never once in his life tried to make someone else understand his situation. This time wouldn’t be any different.
In the end, there was no other choice but to obey the superior’s order to be grateful for a mercy granted without knowing what an eighty percent pay cut actually meant to him.
Colonel Odin Quaid gave off the air of someone who had come up through the space station elite through and through. He was probably the finest result among the finest fetuses, gene-selected and optimized. Of all the faces he had seen since arriving here, this was the first one so striking it nearly overwhelmed him. Like that galaxy he had seen for the first time today. That a face like that had been out there fighting in interstellar combat — somehow, it didn’t feel real.
“Your eyes are insolent.”
“They’re not.”
“Haa. Get out of here.”
Odin pressed two fingers to his temple and gestured toward the door with his chin.
“…I’ll take my leave.”
Doyun walked out of the conference room with a vaguely unsatisfied look on his face. It had ended more anticlimactically than he’d expected. He’d braced himself for at least a round of physical punishment — it was almost deflating. In the military, when you made a mistake, there was no scenario where you didn’t receive a punishment to match it.
Only after the conference room door closed did Odin raise his wrist and send a message to Major Kapu Adim, the officer in charge of overseeing training for the Genius Strike Force.
Crank today’s training intensity up to 200%.
A response vibrated through a moment later.
Why all of a sudden?
Odin sat back in his chair, eyes closed, and sent his reply.
The new recruit seems to have energy to spare.
Only after sending that message — his way of saying, whip him into shape — did the corner of his mouth shift slightly. The laughter he had been holding back since earlier came rushing in belatedly.
A guide who had beaten down a Lieutenant Colonel-level Esper and never once admitted any wrongdoing, with a face full of grievances all the way to the end. Talked back to the committee chair every step of the way, and didn’t yield an inch against Odin’s own authority. A short laugh broke free at the new recruit’s singular presence.
Ignorance makes you bold, they say.
Just how ignorant he was, Odin couldn’t even begin to gauge. He swept his gaze around the empty conference room.
The disciplinary committee had been called in a rush in the middle of the night, so the chairs hadn’t been properly straightened, and the floor was covered in dirt and footprints. The sun had only just risen, and the dust floating through the conference room was finally becoming visible.
“What an absolute mess, first thing in the morning.”
At the arrival of a new recruit who had caused a full-scale incident on day one, Odin found himself absently rubbing his temple.
