GB 118

Haero tilted his head as if hearing something completely unbelievable for the first time.

“Brigadier General has exceptional bonds and loyalty to the military. I believe he felt responsible for his subordinate’s kidnapping and attempted something out of frustration. Desertion? That’s absurd. Isn’t the Brigadier General the face of the navy?”

The inspector laughed coldly.

“Yes. The face. The face, indeed.” He waved his hand with an extremely tired and disgusted expression. “You can go for now. The next interview will resume tomorrow at 3 PM.”

Haero stood up holding his IV stand, saluted, and left the room.

As soon as the door opened, the noise of the busy hospital corridor could be heard, giving a sense of vitality as if he had crossed into another world.

The debriefing of Military Doctor Haero, who had miraculously survived, and Brigadier General Yoon Moo-hwa, who had rescued him, was taking place secretly in a temporarily soundproofed space within the hospital. Officially, it was because of their injuries, but in reality, it was the military leadership’s decision to avoid publicizing the incident.

Haero was walking with his eyes on the floor when he noticed a foot that had bumped against his leg, and slowly raised his gaze.

Yoon Moo-hwa, with half his face covered in bandages to conceal his left eye, was sitting with his legs crossed, reading a book.

“……”

Haero saw him and saluted. Yoon Moo-hwa nodded without looking at Haero. Only after they had passed each other like strangers did Yoon Moo-hwa rise from his seat. Then he entered the room Haero had just left.

The two people under investigation were not allowed to talk to each other. Officially.

The inspector swallowed another sigh as he looked at Yoon Moo-hwa’s face.

While the military doctor with his cast and disheveled face was one thing, it was quite awkward to face Yoon Moo-hwa, who was literally “the young face of the navy.”

Perhaps due to frequent dressing changes, Yoon Moo-hwa’s patient gown, like the military doctor’s before him, had its buttons fastened messily. As the inspector stared blankly, the brigadier general simply said “Ah” nonchalantly, without fixing it.

The inspector stared at the bandages visible through the open collar and asked, “How is your wound doing?”

“Well. A soldier can’t complain about something this minor.”

Though true, he seemed excessively cheerful for someone who was injured and under investigation. Suspiciously so.

Moreover, according to their account of returning to the South African Republic base via a neutral country, Yoon Moo-hwa was also hit by a stray bullet from pursuing smugglers, but there was no close combat. Yet why did his face look like that?

“Would you like a cigarette?”

When the inspector offered gently, Yoon Moo-hwa smiled with a grimace.

“Smoking in a hospital? Besides, I don’t smoke.”

This wasn’t the only lie Yoon Moo-hwa told.

Yoon Moo-hwa claimed his face was injured from hitting the fishing boat due to rough seas, but this was a flimsy, half-hearted excuse. What had really damaged Yoon Moo-hwa’s face was his father, Yoon Sang-won.

As soon as Yoon Sang-won entered Yoon Moo-hwa’s hospital room, he made him stand up like a subordinate and beat him. While he had occasionally been hit on the calves or palms as a child, such brutal violence was a first. Nevertheless, Yoon Moo-hwa neither panicked nor resisted, simply taking the punches as they came.

“You must have risked flying through turbulence to get here. You seem that angry.”

“I took boats and helicopters and boats and helicopters, you bastard.”

“Surely not. It would have been difficult to arrive so quickly otherwise. And is it appropriate for you to call me a bastard, Father?”

Having successfully rescued Haero and reclaimed his life, Yoon Moo-hwa was constantly grinning as if he’d inhaled laughing gas. There was no reason not to smile. Everything was too good.

At that nonchalant response, the enraged Yoon Sang-won struck his face, and as a result, Yoon Moo-hwa, who had recently undergone artificial eye reinsertion surgery, needed sutures again. His left eye would now have an even more menacing scar.

“Seeing how they’re treating me as a brigadier general, it seems my discharge hasn’t been processed yet. I wonder if it will be processed as a dishonorable discharge?”

When Yoon Moo-hwa asked leisurely, the inspector fiddled with the recorder. It was still turned off.

“Whether it’s a dishonorable discharge or just a discharge, this is the first I’m hearing of it. Surely the military wouldn’t simply let a valuable talent like you go?”

It was as expected. When submitting his resignation, he had genuinely hoped for discharge, but upon returning, through the treatment he received and the strangely controlled media exposure, Yoon Moo-hwa vaguely realized that naval headquarters had decided to bury this incident.

That would also be why Yoon Sang-won was particularly angry. His pride would never allow his only son to be dishonorably discharged. And he must have had to swallow his enormous pride because of it. Yoon Moo-hwa expressed insincere regrets to his father in his mind.

“I’d like to ask about the disposition of the fishing boat you used.” The inspector asked, turning on the recorder.

“It was damaged by the harpoons of the pursuing smugglers and had to be sent to the scrapyard. I paid fair compensation, and there was no exposure or exploitation of my position in the process.”

“As you mentioned, smuggler appearances are frequent in that area. However, we haven’t found their base, and the military doctor can’t specifically recall which island it was due to the trauma. How did you know the rendezvous point?”

“I guessed, how else would I know? I got lucky.”

The inspector’s face contorted sharply.

In fact, this questioning itself was something that had been repeated several times already. There must be another purpose behind making him repeatedly say the same things while pretending to just casually ask about this matter.

Yoon Moo-hwa pulled a chair up to the desk and sat down. Leaning forward, he took the recorder from the inspector’s side and turned it off.

“You came to ask about the pirates’ base, right?” Yoon Moo-hwa threw a direct question in a very low and subtle voice, “I’ll tell you what you need to know, so let’s not waste too much time.”

Above all, Yoon Moo-hwa had reached the limit of his patience. In this hospital, which lacked spaces like a ship’s function room or boiler room, secretly meeting with Haero to rub lips and explore each other’s bodies wasn’t enough. The reason their patient gowns’ buttons were messily fastened was due to their efforts to respect boundaries while holding each other’s parts and licking each other’s bodies until the inspection time approached.

“I’ll point out the pirate ship’s location.”

Mysterious ghost islands whose physical existence couldn’t be confirmed had been around since ancient times. Sandy Island and Brasil Island were typical examples. It’s just that their numbers had increased due to climate change causing unexpected turbulence, magnetic field changes, severe sea fog, and extreme tidal differences.

The inspector’s expression became serious at Yoon Moo-hwa’s offer to reveal one of these tricky ghost islands. He put away the recorder and pulled up a screen with a very high security clearance.

When he turned his laptop toward Yoon Moo-hwa, he manipulated the screen and pointed to a spot. “Around here.”

“This area has many reefs that prevent ships from approaching. How could a pirate ship dock there? If you’re providing false information to avoid punishment, I’ll have no choice but to report your violation seriously, Commander.”

“Why would I joke about this?”

As he said this, Yoon Moo-hwa took the cigarette the inspector had placed on the desk and put it between his lips. Just moments ago, he had said he didn’t smoke.

Him holding the unlit cigarette in his mouth made it confusing whether he was really a non-smoker or not, whether he was joking or not.

“An arms dealer and a pirate who’s a former deserter recently escaped from prison have joined forces. The arms dealer is the daughter of a black market bigwig. I’m not interested in the dealer. Just let me handle the deserter pirate. I don’t care if it means I have to work in the outskirts and miss out on promotion.”

He was already as good as marked by the higher-ups anyway. That’s why Yoon Sang-won flew in personally to beat him up. But at the same time, he wouldn’t be completely expelled, which is why he gave up after the beating.

Yoon Moo-hwa had paid enough penance to his father. The beating he silently endured was an apology for having personally walked the path to death as a child. And it was an advance payment for the future when Haero, whom he had absolutely forbidden to join the family, would become family in a different sense.

Having finished what he needed to say, Yoon Moo-hwa stood up. 

The inspector’s face crumpled. “We’re not finished yet. Where are you going?”

“No. We are finished. I don’t need to convey my message since it’s already been heard.”

“What do you…?”

Yoon Moo-hwa tilted his head and tapped the inspector’s tie pin. Being knowledgeable enough about machinery to personally upgrade the performance of artificial eyes was Yoon Moo-hwa’s secret that he hadn’t revealed even to the military.

“By the way, rather than catching me, I think it would be better to first figure out how the latest military supplies with cutting-edge technology are circulating in the black market.”

After giving advice to the invisible party on the other side, Yoon Moo-hwa paused his steps as he was about to leave and emphasized again.

“The deserter is mine. I don’t need a promotion, so please make sure that part is assigned to me.”

He wanted to declare bluntly that they should hand it over to him without argument, but he did his best to maintain final courtesy. At least in Yoon Moo-hwa’s mind.

When he released the tie he had been pulling, the inspector was looking up at him with a dazed expression.

He asked the inspector in his own version of kindness, “Now, can I meet my military doctor who has been through hell?”