The aberration's gruesome appearance left the group speechless for a moment.
"You people... aren't soldiers."
Breaking the tense silence, the aberration spoke.
"But you're too late."
"Too late? What do you mean?"
"If you were going to investigate, you should've come long ago. Before I died, before I ended up like this!"
The aberration began spewing out his rage along with blood.
"'Before I ended up like this'... you mean before you died?"
The aberration quietly acknowledged Chang-ho's question.
But that silence didn't last long.
"When everyone was tormenting me, what were you doing? When I was suffering and begging someone to save me, what were you doing?! Did you even care that I was being stuffed into the gun locker and tormented every way possible?!"
At the aberration's anguished cry, Jae-hwan felt a moment of sympathy.
Anyone in that situation would feel powerless and resentful.
But that was no license to cause carnage like this.
"I'm sorry about that. But now that things have come to this, there's no other way. So..."
The moment Jae-hwan reluctantly raised his hand to attack the aberration.
Chang-ho grabbed Jae-hwan's hand.
"Team Leader...?"
"Let me ask one thing before that."
Chang-ho abruptly asked a question.
"You. Is this really what you wanted?"
"What...?"
At Chang-ho's out-of-the-blue question, the aberration looked puzzled for a moment.
"I'm curious, that's all. You must have been killing your tormentors one by one for revenge. Right?"
"...That's right."
"Then what's this now? Tormentors or whatever the hell, you're just killing everyone in this unit indiscriminately. This doesn't look like the way you've been doing things, does it?"
At Chang-ho's words, the aberration bit his lower lip as if thinking something over.
After a moment's thought, the aberration asked Chang-ho a question.
"So what are you trying to say?"
"I'll get straight to the point. Did someone put you up to this?"
"......."
At Chang-ho's words, the aberration fell silent.
After a long while, the aberration finally spoke.
"Well, yes... That man definitely said this would work..."
"That man?"
The group reacted to the aberration's words with a question.
"That man, who was he?"
"I don't know either. He just said he'd help me."
Weeping tears of blood, the aberration slowly shook his head as he answered.
"He called himself the Angel."
"...The Angel?"
Hearing the aberration's words, Jae-hwan reacted sharply at once.
'What a nasty sense for names. Calling himself the Angel when he's the one stirring up carnage like this...'
"So, what about his looks or description? Don't tell me that's all?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see. He had his hood pulled up."
Even to Chang-ho's urgent questions, the aberration gave no clear answers.
"Then how did he help you?"
"He... he made me stronger. He gave me greater power, and at the same time, a greater grudge."
Hearing the aberration's answer, Chang-ho spoke to the group.
"Looks like my guess was right. Someone stepped in and made this whole thing bigger."
"Yes, that settles it. Otherwise..."
"But who on earth is it? Isn't the existence of aberrations strictly classified?"
Chang-ho couldn't answer Jae-hwan's question lightly.
Instead of answering Jae-hwan, Chang-ho asked the aberration a question.
"So you just jumped at that suspicious man's offer? Without thinking it was strange?"
The aberration knit his brows at Chang-ho's question, looking angry.
"A suspicious man's offer? Without thinking it was strange?"
"Thinking it was strange...?"
Catching his breath for a moment, the aberration erupted in fury.
"He helped me, and that's strange? When everyone cursed and ignored me, you want me to doubt the only one who helped me? If you didn't want to see this, you should've helped me while I was alive! He was the only one who ever said he'd help me! Only after I died, only after I ended up like this, did anyone help me!"
The aberration poured his fury out at the group as if exploding.
Hearing this, the group forgot his grotesqueness and felt sympathy.
Silence fell.
An idea came to Jae-hwan, and he quietly spoke to the others.
"I'll handle this."
"Are you serious?"
"Yes. I guess... I want to give him a chance."
Chang-ho reluctantly nodded.
"Fine. But if we're in danger, we step in right away."
"It's fine. That won't happen."
Done talking with Chang-ho, Jae-hwan quietly stepped forward.
"You probably know this, but... Now that it's come to this, there's no going back. Even if you kill every innocent person too, you can't come back to life or anything."
"I know. But there's no such thing as an innocent person in here."
The aberration answered gloomily.
"Is that so?"
Jae-hwan answered briefly and went on.
"But... I think I can help you a little."
"......."
As if suspicious of Jae-hwan's motives, the aberration ground his teeth.
"What do you want me to do? Let go of my grudge now, of all times?"
"There are three ways for you to disappear. You let go of your resentment yourself, you get rid of the object of your resentment, or we kill you."
"Then kill me already. Or how exactly are you going to help me?"
At the aberration's question, Jae-hwan hesitated a moment, then turned to Chang-ho and spoke.
"Team Leader. That gun, just for a moment."
Chang-ho shot him a suspicious look, but only for a moment.
"...All right."
Deciding to trust Jae-hwan, Chang-ho handed him the pistol.
Taking the pistol, Jae-hwan stared at it for a moment.
"Take it."
"...What's this?"
"It's the pistol the officer you got killed was using. There are still bullets left in it."
Still unable to let go of his suspicion, the aberration accepted the pistol.
"So what am I supposed to do with this?"
"I'm giving you a choice."
Jae-hwan slowly began laying out his offer.
"Whether you take this, kill Private First Class Hong Jun-young, and settle your last grudge, or... let go of your grudge and end this peacefully."
"Wh... what? No, no!"
Jun-young panicked at Jae-hwan's words.
"No! I, I had no choice! I was just a Private First Class! There was nothing I could do!"
Seeing this, the aberration looked tormented for a moment.
Jae-hwan, on the other hand, showed no reaction to Jun-young's pleas.
So Jun-young looked back and forth between Ji-yeon and Chang-ho and cried out.
"Please...! Please save me...! I didn't want to do it either! I was just following orders...!"
Hearing Jun-young, the aberration looked lost in thought for a moment.
"Yeah, I'm sure you were... just following orders..."
But.
The aberration quietly raised his hand and aimed the muzzle at Jun-young.
"That's... exactly what the others said too."
The aberration's eyes, awash in tears of blood, were utterly drowned in hatred.
In the end, unable to overcome that hatred, the aberration pulled the trigger on Jun-young.
BOOM!
But what they heard wasn't a normal gunshot.
Only a blast, like metal bursting apart.
As pain surged through him, the aberration looked down at his gun.
But there was no longer anything there that could be called a gun.
Only a lump of dark red metal, torn to shreds and belching smoke.
"Uh... uhh?"
The gun had exploded the instant it fired, and the shrapnel left the aberration's body gravely wounded.
"Ugh... ah... aaaaagh!!!"
After a moment's silence, the aberration let out a piercing scream.
"Why, why?!"
Jae-hwan looked at the aberration with pity for a moment.
After all, it had been an obvious trap.
The pistol's muzzle had been plugged with blood.
If the aberration let go of his grudge, he wouldn't fire, and Jun-young would survive.
But even if he fired, the barrel was blocked, so he couldn't kill Jun-young.
'...There's no way I'd hand over a loaded gun without any safeguard in the first place. Least of all to an aberration full of resentment...'
If the aberration had been able to think even a little rationally, he wouldn't have made that choice.
With that bitter inner monologue, Jae-hwan went on.
"If you'd truly let go of your resentment... you'd have found peace with that. Too bad..."
Jae-hwan said it with genuine regret.
"Aaaagh!!! This can't be! This can't be happening! What did I do wrong?! Why did I have to go through all that bullying?! Why did I have to die?!!"
Driven to the edge of the cliff, the aberration kept flailing his ragged arms in every direction.
But the aberration soon realized that the more he moved, the more the pain subsided.
Before he knew it, the aberration's grievously wounded body was slowly turning to dust.
"No! Not yet! Hong Jun-young!! I... I...!"
No one would ever know what the aberration had been about to say.
Because before he could leave his last words, the aberration's throat had crumbled entirely to dust.
"Uh... uhh..."
With only his head left, the aberration opened his mouth as if trying to say something to the very end.
But only the sound of escaping air leaked from his mouth.
Jae-hwan looked at the aberration with pity.
"I'm sorry."
But that was all Jae-hwan could say to him.
In the end, he was an aberration.
There was no better solution than this.
While the group stared blankly at the traces the aberration had left.
Chang-ho quietly went over to Jun-young and reached for his head.
"It's all over. So now I'll have to erase your memory too."
In tears, Jun-young offered his head, as if accepting that Chang-ho would erase his memory.
"Team Leader."
Jae-hwan stopped Chang-ho.
"What?"
"I think it'd be better not to erase his memory."
At Jae-hwan's sudden words, Chang-ho and Jun-young turned in surprise.
"What do you mean by that?"
"If we erase all his memories of the aberration now, we won't be able to settle the aberration's last grudge. So..."
"You're saying we leave this guy as he is to ease Private First Class Lee Jin-hyuk's injustice even a little?"
"Exactly."
Hearing this, Chang-ho asked Jae-hwan back, expressionless.
"...Was this your plan from the start?"
"Yes."
Jae-hwan answered firmly.
A little later.
Chang-ho slowly nodded.
"That's not a bad idea."
"W-wait! But I...!"
Jun-young, on the other hand, clung to Chang-ho's pant leg, begging.
"You said you can erase memories! Just erase all of it! Let me forget everything! H-how do you expect me to carry all this around?!"
Chang-ho gave Jun-young a pitying look at his pleas.
But Chang-ho soon shook his head and spoke to Jun-young.
"Because you survived. You stood by, you didn't help Private First Class Lee Jin-hyuk, and you still didn't die. So you have to stay and let people know about this. That's how you pay for your sins, and how you honor Private First Class Lee Jin-hyuk."
"Th... that's...!"
Jun-young's face crumpled as he stammered, but he couldn't find the words.
"Let's go."
Chang-ho coldly turned his back and led the group outside.
"We've got a lot to do. First, we go back to HQ and report what was unusual about this incident. The snow's stopped, so we might be able to get back somehow."
"No! Don't leave me! I... I just... I had no choice...!"
Jun-young's cries echoed through the blood-soaked room.
But without sparing Jun-young another glance, the group stepped out into the desolate snow.
"Don't abandon me...!"
Leaving behind an endless cry that might have been Jin-hyuk's, or Jun-young's.