A Dark Fantasy Spy

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Sometimes, I have dreams like this.

When I open my eyes, I see a dense forest under the pouring rain.

The headlights of a vehicle parked in the middle of an unpaved road illuminate the forest, where about five burly men huddle together, gazing at the roadside.

“Vietnam weather is such a nightmare. I feel like I’m going to lose my hair. Didn’t anyone bring an umbrella?”

“Who carries an umbrella while on field duty? Quickly search the vehicle.”

My colleague grumbles, leading the deputy down the slope.

Our destination is just below the roadside—the vehicle that got lodged in a tree.

“What do you see?”

“Uh, there’s a badger here. In the driver’s seat.”

“Is he alive?”

“Looks like he’s done for.”

While my colleague bends down, scanning the interior of the vehicle with a flashlight, I adjust my suspenders, slinging my 56-style rifle over my back, signaling to gather the team as we head down the slope.

Bouncing down the brief incline, the deputy pulls out the red guy from the driver’s seat, shining the light of his Opscore helmet on the guy’s face.

“…Choi Cheol-min, from the 166th Engineering Institute of the Ministry of Defense under the Workers’ Party of Korea. Confirmed dead. His wife is in the passenger seat.”

“What’s the cause of death?”

“How would I know? I’m not a forensic specialist.”

The deputy pointedly poked at his own face with his fingers.

“Judging by the looks of it, the badger seems to have died instantly from the crash impact. There are a lot of glass shards embedded in his face. As for the wife, a rotten tree root as thick as an adult male’s forearm has punctured her chest.”

“Identification?”

“Yes, well. Both faces are damaged with shards of glass, so it’s a bit hard to make out… But it can be recognized. However, Team Leader, why is the airbag intact when the vehicle’s been lodged in a tree?”

“I took it out a few days ago.”

“Who did?”

“I did.”

“Om-mama….”

While we shared some light-hearted jokes, the deputy took a photo of the badger’s face. He went around to the other side to peek inside the passenger seat. Inside the upside-down vehicle lay a woman, her chest pierced deeply by a tree root, frozen in a joyous pose reaching for the ceiling. The airbag was still intact.

As I stood still, looking down at the dead badger, someone tapped my shoulder—Chief Park.

“Team Leader, look at this.”

“What is it?”

“The cargo the badger was transporting.”

Chief Park illuminated a brown briefcase with his light. Inside, stained with bright red handprints, lay the usual scraps of blueprints and a few Chinese-made smartphones. Chief Park pulled out a blueprint and showed it to me.

“This is a design for a ballistic missile booster. It’s clearly different from what the Belarus operations team obtained. It appears to be a booster for sure, but I can’t recognize the language written here.”

“…It’s Persian. This looks like something that came from Iran.”

“Iran?”

“The North Koreans have been quite chummy with Iran. They sold weapons during the Iran-Iraq War and sent military advisors and technicians several times. They must’ve bought it or stolen it. Let’s fold it nicely and put it away before it gets ruined by the rain.”

Putting the blueprints and smartphones back in, I closed the bag.

Click.

Click.

…Cough!

Someone coughed. It was a youthful voice. The sound came not from outside the vehicle, but from inside it. Without a moment to think, everyone turned their gaze toward the vehicle at once.

Rustling. I raised my pistol, crouched in the mud, peering inside the vehicle.

In the rain-soaked, dense forest, the only sound that echoed was the faint cough, while a frantic voice from my colleague came from behind.

“Executive Director, sorry to interrupt, but there’s a survivor inside the vehicle. …No, it’s not the badger. It’s a girl. I distinctly heard during the briefing that you left her back in North Korea… We don’t know why she’s here either. …Yes. …Yes, understood. I’ll switch now.”

A voice crackled through the radio handed by my colleague.

—“The situation is urgent, so answer with a simple yes or no. Did that girl witness our entire operation?”

“…Not sure.”

—“I said yes or no.”

“…Yes.”

—“……”

In the back seat of the overturned vehicle, a little girl clutched a frilled teddy bear, tethered by the seatbelt. Unable to fully open her eyes, she looked at me through the hazy glow of tritium.

The cold sensation of the trigger felt sharper than ever.

—“You do know if that girl survives and testifies to the Vietnamese police, that’s when real war will break out, right?”

Raindrops streamed down from the muzzle.

Like tears.

—“Make your own judgment and act.”

I raised my gun, aiming for her head.

Through the sight, the girl appeared.

Red hair. Fresh blood. Those blue eyes stained in crimson. The girl looking back at me was a blue-eyed girl.

“…Camila?”

Episode 7 – Daily Life

Only after getting up from bed did I realize I had been dreaming all along. Beyond the window, instead of towering modern skyscrapers, there were strange buildings nestled against the deep blue morning sky.

The cool morning air filled my lungs. I leaned against the headboard, shaking off my dazed mind.

The cold sweat that had dried made me feel sticky, and a slight fever hinted that I might have slept with the window open all night.

“…….”

For a long while, I sat on the mattress, staring blankly out the window, struggling to distinguish between dream and reality. I still didn’t know if I was dreaming.

As I sat mindlessly, gazing into space, someone beside me stirred and spoke in a low voice.

“Um… What’s going on…?”

“…Veronica?”

It was Veronica.

*

Veronica rubbed her eyes like someone waking from a light slumber, tossing around in bed. The scent of alcohol still clung to her, even in the cool morning air.

“Are you awake…? You were tossing and turning a lot in the morning…”

“…Was I moving?”

“Yes….”

Veronica nodded lightly, laying her head on her arm. Struggling to shake off the effects of the previous night’s drinking, she appeared to be still half-asleep.

I gazed at her blankly, then, as a habit, powered on my device to check if any communications had come in during the night. Messages that had been stacked up over the past month had vanished, leaving only a message from the Defense Attaché Office stating that it was okay to arrive late.

It was certainly a welcome message, but my head felt so foggy that I couldn’t think straight.

“…….”

So, I sat on the bed without any context, lost in thought. Chewing over my reawakening memories.

Staying up alone in the room until the night got late, I had telegraphed the Military Intelligence Agency to set an appropriate return date, and I had told the noisy people in the adjacent room to drink moderately and go to sleep without causing trouble.

Preparing to sleep in the morning, I chatted with Camila, who had come to my room.

As we talked about this and that, the unexpected arrival of Veronica and her gang suddenly cornered me into drinking.

I surely had intended to drink moderately, but before I knew it, I was downing various drinks, from some unknown distilled spirits to palm wine, cocktails made by alchemists, and several years worth of some strange wine brewed by the cult. Of course, the culprits were Veronica and her gang, who were right here beside me.

Veronica was the ringleader. I could imagine the Pope being enraged if he found out, but she brushed off the agents of the Inquisition with her holy powers and sent them away. Lying stretched out on the floor was Lucia, offering to take responsibility and insisting she’d sleep without being late, while Francesca lounged on the couch, smiling warmly and passing all the blame onto Veronica and Lucia.

…What did she say? Something about how we couldn’t trust each other unless our cups clinked together while working together, so we must drink today. I don’t recall who said that; it might have been either Veronica or Francesca.

I tried every trick I could think of to keep my wits while drinking, but I eventually couldn’t take it anymore and ended up throwing up before collapsing into sleep.

“……”

The more I thought about it, the more embarrassing memories surged.

The time I got completely smashed during my school’s cadet days, frying pancakes against a telephone pole, came rushing back too.

I didn’t know it then, but looking back now, they all seemed like shameful memories. If only I could turn back time, I’d do anything to erase that past. Why does only the embarrassing memories pop up at times like this? Perhaps people genuinely remember their embarrassing past better than their happy memories.

So, هنا I sat, unconsciously reflecting on my life amidst the cold morning air, when it suddenly hit me that this was my hotel room.

“Uhm, Saint?”

“Yeah…?”

“Why are you in my room?”

Veronica looked up at me with dazed eyes.

As I slowly scanned the room, I finally lifted an ice bucket that had melted all the ice and—

—Splash!

“Get out of my room!”

“Kyahhh—!”

Veronica let out a shriek like a startled cat, jumping up like she had been doused in water.

A new day had begun.