The lungs that had been constricting suddenly released, and breath came flooding in deep. Sensation returned to his numb arms and legs like blood rushing back all at once.
The cold, near-silent corridor vanished from sight, and the familiar structures of the training facility reappeared. They had succeeded in opening the corridor escape hatch within ten minutes.
He lifted his head and looked around. In the distance, the team members were visible — Anna at the front, everyone sprinting toward the injured Fred.
“…You little shit.”
Only Major Kapu Adim came charging straight at Doyun. Using her ability to close the distance in fewer than three steps, the fury on her face was plain — she wasn’t even trying to hide it.
Doyun faced her anger with a bewildered expression. Even replaying everything that had happened up until the escape, he couldn’t find a reason that would warrant the Major’s rage. Either way, hadn’t he completed the mission?
“Did you not hear the order to hold position?”
Doyun squeezed his eyes shut as she grabbed him by the collar, but no punch came flying.
“Major, restrain the emotional response.”
It was Colonel Odin Quaid’s voice. He separated Kapu and gave her a light push toward the training facility exit — a clear signal to go cool off outside.
“What is this…”
Only then did Doyun turn his attention back to the commotion unfolding behind Odin. Someone was carrying Fred on their back at a run, and Fred was coughing up blood. Fred, who had mentioned injuries to his back and legs, seemed to have sustained internal injuries as well — contrary to what he’d implied, he kept hemorrhaging.
One of the team members placed him inside one of the long capsules set up in the corner of the training facility. The urgency with which they pressed the buttons told Doyun the injuries were worse than he’d thought. He looked at Odin with a stunned expression.
“Internal injuries that severe — he can recover in a bio-capsule within three hours.”
“……”
“When you force open a damaged escape hatch in a corridor that’s already had its structural integrity weakened by a rift, internal injuries are unavoidable — not just for whoever’s inside, but for anyone stationed outside as well.”
“I… didn’t know that.”
Odin extended a hand to Doyun, who was still on the ground. The moment Doyun hesitated and then took it, he was hauled upright almost like a weed being yanked from the ground.
“Ugh…”
“You don’t need to know. The Major knows how to handle unexpected situations.”
Meeting those light blue eyes again, Doyun swallowed. The gaze was far colder and more detached than it had been at the disciplinary hearing.
“So why did you disregard the order and carry out the mission on your own terms? A new recruit, of all people.”
Doyun furrowed his brow as he felt an immense grip tightening around his captured hand. A groan finally escaped him at the sensation of his knuckles being crushed.
“Ngh…”
“If this had been real combat instead of a training exercise, Fred would be dead on the spot, and every team member inside the corridor would be critically wounded.”
Doyun’s eyes wavered slightly.
“Which means you alone would have made it out safely, while everyone else might not have come back. Do you now understand the gravity of the situation?”
“…Understood.”
Only after hearing Doyun’s answer did Odin let go of his hand. He took one look at the knuckles swelling red in real time, then grabbed Doyun by the back of the neck and dragged him toward an empty bio-capsule.
“W, wait a moment–“
“Did the Major seem beneath you?”
“Pardon?”
“I’m asking why you ignored her orders, and then in the situation that followed, opened the escape hatch with help from the injured Fred instead of the Major.”
Doyun couldn’t answer immediately. For someone like him, who was accustomed to solving problems on his own in any situation, there was no particular reason behind a decision made under the pressure of a time limit. There was no logic that could properly explain his decision-making process. It was simply instinct. A habit.
Back at the Zervia Talent Development Institute, Doyun had always received the same feedback without fail. You think you’re better than everyone else, don’t you. What do you think a team even exists for. All you care about is your individual ranking. Selfish bastard. Guy who only lives for his own ego. Self-centered piece of shit.
When Doyun’s lips, which had parted slightly, closed again without a word, Odin let out a low scoff.
“Kapu Adim is an excellent Major. If you can’t respect her, then no matter how perfectly you execute your Guiding, the Genius Strike Force has no use for a new recruit like you.”
And with that, he dropped Doyun into the capsule as if throwing him in and shut the lid. He pressed a few buttons with indifference, and white vapor began drifting out.
“What is this–“
Sealed inside the enclosed space and gripped by the terror of losing consciousness, Doyun raised his heavy arms — but the hand that swiped through the air a few times dropped down lifelessly. Getting tortured like this just for disobeying a stupid order!
As he inhaled the anesthetic vapor and his consciousness began to fade, he could hear the murmur of voices.
“Why is the new recruit losing consciousness so fast?”
“Colonel, didn’t you inject too much anesthetic?”
The small, scattered aches he’d been carrying throughout his body eased, and his limbs grew languid. The moment the thread of his consciousness snapped, Doyun felt a flash of terror — am I dying like this?
In that instant, a montage of memories played before his eyes — the moment his fellow recruits, who had all been congratulating him on joining the United Space Forces, went pale the second they heard it was the Genius Strike Force.
“The Genius Strike Force? Isn’t that the unit with the lowest injury rate in the whole United Space Forces?”
“The lowest?”
“They say the Guide fatality rate is so high there’s no chance to even get injured. Go out on a mission and die — that’s it.”
His fellow recruit’s joke repeated on an infinite loop in his head. A unit where you die before you even get the chance to get injured. He hadn’t known that applied to training as well. Was he going to lose consciousness and die right here…
He shouldn’t have left his younger sibling behind. Should have just stuck it out in Zone 4 whatever way he could. Even as he was losing consciousness, Doyun’s thoughts went to his sibling, who would be left alone.
Memories of Zone 4 flickered past. Doyun and Seoyun. Ahn Seoyun.
But Seoyun wasn’t here. Beneath the vast, pitch-black sky of Varnas Space Station — as wide as the universe itself — Doyun was alone. This wasn’t Earth.
Only then, as the reality of having arrived at Varnas Space Station — called the second moon — finally sank in, Doyun lost consciousness completely.
“Mmm…”
Had he ever felt this refreshed in his life? Doyun sat up in the bed with a blank expression. It wasn’t the dormitory room, but a rest room inside the training facility.
“You’re up?”
Anna asked, holding out a cup of water. She must have come back from eating — there was something smudged at the corner of her mouth. Doyun’s hand reached out on reflex, the way he always did with his sibling, then stalled mid-air and dropped back down onto the bed.
“What time is it…”
“Eight in the evening. You were sleeping so soundly no one could wake you. Apparently it’s common to sleep the whole day the first time you use a bio-capsule.”
After draining the cup, Doyun found Anna’s bright, eager eyes too much to deal with and lay back down, pulling the covers over himself.
“I heard from Fred. Apparently radiant Guiding is more efficient than most contact Guiding?”
Even after he turned completely to face the other way, Anna climbed onto the bed and shook his shoulder.
“Your coordinates weren’t even showing up on the display — how did you Guide Fred? I’m dying to know.”
“They showed up. I looked and did it.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t get — how you sent Guiding straight to the coordinates where Fred was. Is that why his gauge dropped so fast? Do you also draw a map in your head using wave patterns?”
Doyun turned his head in surprise, and Anna murmured with an expression entirely free of teasing.
“Wow, if your radiant Guiding is like that… you could keep things under control even if everyone Rampaged at the same time.”
Most Guides couldn’t perform radiant Guiding at all. Only a select few high-ranking Guides were capable of it — but even then, precise control was difficult, and the method only covered a wide, indiscriminate area within a few hundred meters directly ahead of themselves. In other words, the efficiency was extremely poor.
Doyun, however, could pinpoint the exact location of whoever needed Guiding and deliver remote Guiding precisely to that spot and nowhere else.
Anna tried to pull the blanket away to keep talking, but Doyun burrowed deeper under the covers.
He’d gotten on the Colonel’s bad side the moment he enlisted by causing a scene, and now, during a training exercise, he’d gone and gotten on the bad side of the Major directly below him too. It had been the worst day. Doyun wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep just like this.
Then the door opened, and a long, enormous shadow stretched across the room. Doyun recognized from the sheer length of those legs alone that Odin had walked in.
“What are you two doing?”
Anna, who had been fully perched on top of the blanket, smiled sheepishly and climbed off the bed.
“I came to visit.”
The moment Anna’s eyes met Odin’s, she immediately snapped to attention. Doyun scrambled off the bed in a hurry and tried in vain to press down his staticky hair. Anyone who looked at him could tell he’d slept hard.
Odin gestured behind the door with his thumb.
“Anna, you can head out.”
“Yes, sir!”
Once Anna was gone, a heavy silence settled over the rest room. Odin left the light off and left the door slightly ajar as he came inside, settling onto the bed directly across from Doyun.
Creeeak–
The mattress groaned, and an awkward tension filled the air. This space wasn’t simply where team members came to sleep. In urgent situations, it was also where more direct Guiding took place.
“Sit.”
