Chapter 47.2

Chapter 47.2

At Wooshin’s brief instruction, she thoughtfully drew her eyebrows together. On the paper she unfolded, she saw a set of coordinates she didn’t recognize.

59.9343°N, 30.3351°E.

Once she’d gotten those irrelevant numbers out of her head. Lee Wooshin checked the military electronic watch on his wrist and said, “We will start the information leakage denial drill from now on.”

“Ah!” Someone let out a groan.

“Politely, that’s what we call it, but I call it torture training.”

He habitually pulled up his sleeve.

“The information on each of your slips of paper is the name of the operation, objectives, communications, infiltration routes, rallying points, and air supply. The principle is simple. All you have to do is stick to the information you just memorized.”

The ragged breathing of the troops died down a bit.

“From now on, your instructor is going to use all sorts of shitty methods to get you to talk.”

His cold and ruthless voice jolted them to attention. Seoryeong mulled over the coordinates she had memorized once again. 59.9343°N, 30.3351°E. For some reason, her tongue felt dry, and her heart raced.

“There will probably be a lot of dropouts along the way, but on the flip side, those who make it through this training have a high probability of making it to the end.”

His gaze suddenly seemed to bore into Seoryeong’s, but it was hard to tell through the sunglasses.

“This training will teach you the mental strength to overcome pain, and how to respond to interrogation.”

Finally, his lips tilted upward in a meaningful nod.

“Then I’ll see you again, hopefully with all your limbs intact.”

And before he could finish his sentence, one of the men in the front row wobbled on his legs and collapsed to the ground.

“–!”

Everyone’s stiffened gazes turned angrily downward, but what was even stranger was the silence, with no one making a sound.

A man had suddenly collapsed, and the instructors were just standing there, pretending they hadn’t seen anything. The only ones panicking were the men on this side.

Seoryeong, whose face was equally stiff, was checking the surrounding dynamics when her vision suddenly turned around.

“Uh….”

It felt like all the strength was draining out of her body. She tried to resist, but her knees gave out first, and her upper body leaned towards the dirt floor.

Struggling to keep her eyes open, she realized she wasn’t the only one who had collapsed. Most of the soldiers who had been standing at attention began to stagger and collapse suddenly.

The last thing Seoryeong saw was a pair of black sunglasses.

*

Around the age of twenty-four, Han Seoryeong first met her husband.

One day, her dry leaf-like routine as a caregiver was swept away by a sudden retinal disease. The progression was rapid, and each day her world began to narrow rapidly.

Seoryeong became blind without properly preparing for the changed life. No matter how much she blinked, the hazy mist in her vision didn’t disappear. She realized she hadn’t even prepared a cane to walk with immediately.

Days passed when she couldn’t even step outside the room. She was only twenty-four then.

Not much older than college graduates. With the thought that she couldn’t just die in the corner like this, she hastily grabbed an umbrella and left.

Having lived solely relying on vision, everything that came through her senses of smell and hearing felt noisy and disorienting.

Were human senses originally this sensitive? Seoryeong felt endless dizziness as she barely found her way into a store.

It was there, where she went to buy a stick for the visually impaired that she met Kim Hyun.

He was an employee of another company supplying medical equipment, but Seoryeong mistook him for the store owner.

She consulted him on products, paid, and even learned how to use the stick.

It was a mundane first encounter.

But what she couldn’t forget about that day was the sudden downpour.

Holding a stick and an umbrella, she couldn’t bring herself to return home. She had no confidence. She ended up sitting in the store to avoid the rain, and the more she thought, the more frustrated she became.

Why do I have to live with a stick? I’ve lived being good; why do I have to suffer like this…

She still couldn’t accept anything. It simply wasn’t a problem she could accept.

She didn’t have a family who would recharge her energy, who would give her strength when she was down, who would cry and be stubborn. She had been alone since she was born. How could I be lonelier than this?

Yet, she had come here, struggling to live, feeling both pathetic and miserable. It was when her heart, which felt like it would burst at any moment, fluttered.