Chapter 19

March arrived, bringing the new school term and the spring thaw. Subjugation dispatches had been scarce through the dead of winter, but as temperatures climbed and hibernating nests stirred, private contractor gigs flooded the agency board. Before leaving for school that week, newly minted eighth-grader Ji Gyu-hwa had admonished me not to overwork myself—or rather, had looked me up and down with cold clinical detachment and remarked, At the rate you’re burning the candle, your bones will be porous as a sponge before I graduate high school—which, translated from Jaguar-speak, amounted to a heartfelt plea to stay safe.

Still, what use was a twenty-five-year-old special-forces physique if I kept it wrapped in cotton wool? If I wanted to keep our pint-sized squad leader fed on Hanwoo beef and supplied with study materials, I had to rake in cash while the season was hot.

“Well, look who’s back! Heard you busted your forearm up in the northern ridge last month, kid—how’s it holding up?”

Outside the dispatch agency, several weathered regulars I’d run winter sweeps with grinned and clapped my shoulder. When I rolled up my sleeve and flexed a completely unblemished forearm for them, one clicked his tongue in disbelief while another barked out a laugh.

“Last time you cashed out, you talked like you were retiring to Hawaii! What dragged you back to the meat grinder?”

“Retiring, my ass—he pulled double shifts last week and the week before!” a burly veteran chimed in. “Come clean, kid. Is it underground casino debts?”

Gambling debts, my foot. Just hearing the word gambling brought Ji Gyu-hwa’s bastard of a father to mind and made my jaw tighten.

“Crypto futures gone south?” another guessed, while theories flew from all sides around the smoking area: Pyramid scheme? A sick girlfriend’s hospital bills? Loan sharks?

Naturally, not a single man came within a light-year of the truth. Who in their right mind would guess that their youngest point-man had been blasted sixteen years into the past by a mad physicist’s time bomb and was working unregistered day-labor gigs to put his future commanding officer through eighth grade?

“I’ve got a wife and a growing kid at home to feed, alright?” I shot back, field-stripping the agency-issued K2C4 assault rifle across my lap with practiced ease. “Mouths don’t feed themselves.”

“A kiiid?” Half the circle nearly choked on their cigarette smoke. “What the hell was the rush that a baby-faced punk like you got hitched so young?”

“Told you guys! A mug that pretty never stays on the market for long—some girl locked him down before the paint even dried!”

Having carried a K2C4 from basic training right through my first years in the battalion, I could strip the receiver, inspect the firing pin, and snap the assembly back together in twenty-five seconds flat with my eyes shut. Clacking the charging handle back to test the spring tension, I kept my face completely straight.

“How old’s your boy, then?” the oldest contractor asked.

“Just started eighth grade.”

“Eighth—wait a damn second, son. How old did you say you were?”

“Turning twenty-five this year.”

For two seconds the yard went dead silent; then a roar of belly laughter rattled the corrugated tin roof.

“Your kid brother, you little bullshitter!”

Realizing I’d been pulling their legs the whole time, the older mercenaries tripped over themselves revising their assessment of my character on the spot.

“I knew it! Look at that sharp jawline and those clear, honest eyes—took one look at him and knew he was a dutiful eldest son busting his hump to raise his baby brother!”

In the span of ten seconds, my slick playboy mug had been promoted to the noble visage of a self-sacrificing family patriarch.

“What’s the boy nagging you for that’s got you pulling double shifts?” one of the men asked, leaning against the van’s fender. “Asking to move out of Hwaryeong-do? Kids these days all think Seoul’s paved with gold.”

“Nah, at that age it’s gotta be a gaming rig or one of those fancy Pineapple Pads!”

“What kind of spoiled brat drives his own brother into a live creature nest just to buy a tablet?”

“My kid isn’t like that,” I cut in sharply, the smile vanishing from my eyes before I could stop myself.

Having spent my entire life as the coddled youngest child at home and the baby of my squad, hearing the words our kid roll off my own tongue felt strange—and yet a sudden, fierce irritation churned in my gut at the thought of these loudmouths badmouthing Ji Gyu-hwa, even in passing jest.

“Ain’t like that, my ass!” the burly contractor scoffed, oblivious. “If he’s such an angel, why are you out here risking your neck every day?”

“Because the pay’s good and I’m good at it,” I replied coolly, locking a fresh magazine into my vest. “Besides, did you old-timers raise such filial saints that you’re out here hauling ammo crates at fifty?”

“Whoa, listen to the mouth on this cheeky little—!”

“Alright, gentlemen, mount up!” the dispatch boss hollered from the office doorway.

Before the older men could grab me in a headlock, I vaulted into the back of the armored van and claimed the window seat, staring out through the tinted glass with my chin propped on my fist while they grumbled and loaded the heavy gear crates into the trunk.

Normally, rough mercenary banter rolled right off my back. Men who danced on the edge of a grave for a living always developed gallows humor and a habit of stepping across polite boundaries; if I actually had a spoiled kid brother back home, I would have bragged right back that I was saving up to buy the brat a penthouse. Yet the moment anyone cast even a hypothetical shadow over Ji Gyu-hwa’s name, my blood ran cold.

Why do I always lose my temper when it comes to him?

Watching the gravel yard blur past the window as the van rumbled onto the highway, a memory from three months after I transferred into Jaguar’s squad—my ninth month in the Special Operations Task Force—drifted up from the dark.

“Hey, kid.”

It had been outside the battalion armory. Because the senior operator blocking my path wore mirrored aviators, I didn’t recognize him at first, but as the youngest twenty-three-year-old in the detachment, answering to kid was second nature. Snapping my heels together, I saluted crisp and textbook.

“Sir, yes, sir. Did you call for me?”

“Now that you’ve been running under Lieutenant Ji Gyu-hwa for a few months, what’s the verdict?” the man asked, hooking his thumbs into his tactical belt. “Is Jaguar really as much of a cold-blooded psycho as they say?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“The hell do you mean you wouldn’t know? You’re on his team.”

“Haven’t had the chance to hold a personal conversation with him yet, sir.”

Only when he hooked a finger over the bridge of his sunglasses and lowered them did I place his face: Sergeant First Class Noh Seong-yeop from Charlie-3. Flanking him were two operators from his squad, grinning like hyenas.

“What about the other rumor, then?” one of them sniggered. “Word around the barracks is that your team leader’s a eunuch.”

“Bullshit—we’ve all seen him in the communal showers, and the bastard’s hung like a horse,” Noh Seong-yeop spat around a toothpick. “Which makes it even creepier that he never comes out drinking with us after deployment.”

I didn’t need to ask what kind of drinking Noh Seong-yeop meant. Even in an elite counter-terrorism unit, statistics guaranteed a few rotten apples who mistook wallowing in red-light districts for camaraderie. Thankfully, the veterans on Charlie-2—men like Choi Ho-gyeong and Hong Kwon-jin—were either devoted family men who worshipped their wives or clean-living soldiers who shared the same bedrock decency my father had raised me with. Charlie-3, clearly, had scraped the bottom of the barrel.

“Forget the brothels—the guy doesn’t even touch cigarettes,” the third man muttered, shaking his head. “Never met a combat officer who doesn’t smoke.”

Wait—Lieutenant Ji Gyu-hwa doesn’t smoke? Standing at attention, I blinked inwardly. Apparently my observational skills as the squad’s youngest member were abysmal; until that exact second, I had only cataloged three facts about my commanding officer: his bone-deep hatred of separatist cultists, his ability to drink two crates of soju at battalion dinners without slurring a syllable, and now, his spotless lungs.

Leaning in closer, Noh Seong-yeop dropped his voice to a greasy Stage whisper. “You want to know why Jaguar never hits the red-light district, kid? Because the only time that lunatic’s dick gets hard is when he’s got a prisoner strapped to a chair in the interrogation block. Why else do you think he’s always busting our balls with live-capture orders when we could just double-tap the bastards on site? He wants fresh meat for his hobby.”

My head tilted a fraction of an inch. For a second, I genuinely wondered if my ears had malfunctioned.

Every operator in the battalion knew live-capture directives came straight down from intelligence command, never from field lieutenants. And on the ground, Lieutenant Ji Gyu-hwa’s tactical calls were ice-cold perfection—the kind of decisive, textbook leadership that kept junior operators like me alive when everything went sideways. Hearing a lazy coward whine because following rules of engagement interfered with his trigger finger made something snap behind my ribs.

“Lieutenant Ji isn’t that kind of officer, sir,” I said evenly.

Noh Seong-yeop’s brow twitched upward. “Say what?”

Ah. Stepped on a landmine. And naturally, guys like Park Chan—who materialized out of thin air ten times a day whenever there was a chance to flick my forehead or steal my dessert—were nowhere in sight when an actual bastard was in my face.

“Look at those pretty little eyes rolling around in his skull,” Noh Seong-yeop sneered, stepping into my personal space. “Hey, rookie. Just because your squad elders coddle you like a mascot, you think the rest of us are your drinking buddies?”

“Not at all, sir. You’re terrifying, sir.”

Because I had earned an early meritorious promotion and passed selection at twenty-three, guys like him always forgot I was already in my sixth year of active service. Dealing with barracks bullies was child’s play. Letting all the tension melt from my shoulders, I curved my eyes into the harmless, disarming crescent smile that had earned me the title of battalion charmer.

“It’s just that our team leader is ten times scarier up close, sir,” I whined softly, rubbing the back of my neck. “If I don’t defend his honor out here, I’m the one who gets run into the ground during afternoon PT.”

Mollified by my apparent cowardice, Noh Seong-yeop snorted and drove the heel of his palm hard into the back of my skull—a heavy, malicious shove that bore zero resemblance to the affectionate cuffs Hong Kwon-jin or Choi Ho-gyeong gave me. “Watch your mouth around seniors, punk.”

Watching the three of them swagger off toward the mess hall, I kept the sweet smile plastered to my lips while my tongue pressed against the inside of my cheek.

Dead man walking. Let’s see how I bury you.

Over the next week, I played the eager, wide-eyed junior whenever I crossed Noh Seong-yeop’s path, laughing at his rotten jokes until he started puffing out his chest and telling me to call him hyung-nim. Meanwhile, through an old military police contact at the garrison clinic, I quietly tracked down the name of an off-base massage parlor currently under investigation for a virulent, drug-resistant strain of genital herpes—and casually let slip to Noh Seong-yeop that a buddy of mine had raved about the VIP room there.