Infiltrating the Superhuman Training Girls’ School of the Republic of China!

“Y-You really are a spy after all!”

I took the action that an ordinary Korean woman who encountered a Russian in the bushes would naturally take. That was to accuse the woman right in front of me of being a Soviet spy. At the same time, I continued to try to interpret the current situation in one part of my mind.

The CIA had missed the identity of one foreign student after their investigation. Marilyn Jefferson leaned towards the possibility that the CIA had misunderstood the ‘total number’ of foreign students, but was that really the case? Could such a thing happen? The basis for the CIA’s understanding of the total number of foreign students was that they had obtained information about the number of scheduled interviewees. If the organization had missed something, it seemed that it would be the issue of who the last foreign student was, not that they had gotten the total number wrong.

If she was the tenth student that the organization had missed, the reason is neatly explained.

It’s because this is nonsensical. That China would accept a student from the Soviet Union. That the Soviet Union would willingly send a student to China.

The Generalissimo is known to despise communists. The ambiguous diplomatic relations between China and the Soviet Union seemed to have ended forever with Stalin’s death. While Stalin was alive, Chiang Kai-shek also maintained ambiguous exchanges with the Soviet Union, but as soon as Stalin died, he immediately revealed his true colors, brutally suppressing Chinese communists and declaring the severance of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and Japan.

Since 1950, even Soviet diplomatic delegations have not officially visited China. In this situation, a student from the Soviet Union is something that even the CIA couldn’t have anticipated. They wouldn’t have even tried to investigate, so how could they have found out?

“Ah, no, I’m not a spy. I’m not.”

The strange-looking silver-haired woman was still pedaling her unicycle in circles, showing no hostility towards me.

“Ah, I came in the middle of the night because I thought it would be like this. This school, the security is especially tight at night, so people don’t usually come, so I thought if I came at night, no one would be here…”

“That’s why coming at night is even more suspicious!”

“Ah, how can I prove this. Oh, I have an invitation. An invitation with the national seal of the lifelong principal of Huangpu…”

“The Soviet government could forge a Chinese national seal.”

“Hmm, should I show you the email on my portable terminal? The sender’s email address is written, so it might ease your suspicion…”

“If the Secretariat was involved, it wouldn’t be impossible to manipulate emails either.”

“Hmm, hmm…”

Suddenly, the silver-haired woman’s eyes sparkled. Or it might have been that the flashlight I was holding trembled slightly and its light reflected in her eyes.

“Your answers are sharp. Are you also from an intelligence department? Or military personnel? Wow, Korean military, I’ve only heard about it but never seen…”

“‘Also’?”

Instead of protesting her words, I chose to counterattack. The suspicious Russian shook her head as if giving up and sighed.

“Yes, yes. Colonel Barbara Tikhonov of the invincible Red Army.”

For a moment, I almost instinctively said, ‘Your surname doesn’t sound Russian.’ I need to be careful. No matter how much of an honor student I am, I shouldn’t casually distinguish ethnic surnames within the Slavic family right now. It’s already dangerous enough. I can feel that woman starting to take an interest in me.

“Ah, but really, a Red Army colonel didn’t come here for a suspicious purpose. And on a unicycle at that.”

“It’s a bit odd to ask in this situation, but that unicycle… and more than that… how did you know I was Korean just now…”

“Your Chinese, it’s not your mother tongue.”

The Russian colonel shrugged.

“How should I put it. You can just tell when you hear it. Anyway, I studied Chinese very hard. It seems you studied based on standard Chinese, but your foreign accent shows. You learned Chinese for some reason, but not professionally, right? It’s clear you studied hard though.”

…Well, I didn’t perfect it to a native level because I wouldn’t have covert missions in China. But I can’t say that.

“Y-Yes. I’m just a student after all…”

“Just a student. Is that really true?”

“A college student… I was. Though I dropped out. Ah, anyway, this isn’t the time to be chatting leisurely! A Soviet army colonel, instead of becoming less suspicious, it’s only becoming more…”

To be honest, I didn’t want to continue the conversation. My suspicions about her were mostly resolved. This Chinese proficiency. In other words, if she can judge whether a foreigner’s Chinese is awkward or not with just one sentence, she must undoubtedly be an exceptional Chinese language expert.

If so, there must be some grand plan here. She is a professionally trained Chinese speaker. This means she’s a Chinese expert, which would have been the most difficult thing to cultivate in a situation where exchanges between the Soviet Union and China have been cut off. Learning a language itself is easy, but mastering it to a native level is nearly impossible without mixing with the natives.

There’s only one way for a Soviet person to master Chinese to a native level. The so-called ‘Chen Duxiu’s successors’. That is, gathering exiles from the fallen Chinese Communist Party to educate the government’s special operatives.

Someone who received such education is absurdly riding a unicycle around the outskirts of Guangzhou and gets caught by me and ends up arguing?

It’s impossible. She’s not a spy. She’s a real exchange student. The reason is that she looks too much like a spy. A real spy couldn’t be this clumsy.

In this situation, I was honestly afraid to question her further. I couldn’t exactly gauge where the line of ‘questions that an ordinary college girl would ask’ was. This was a type of mission I had never performed before… and the opponent was sharper than any high-ranking government official I had dealt with. Catherine Duey, Zhou Lizhi, and this Barbara Tikhonov too. As if superhumans shared some kind of sense, they immediately suspected my identity as soon as they caught my subtle characteristics.

My desperate wish for the conversation to end was fulfilled by a savior who suddenly intervened.

“You two, what are you doing there?”

I quickly turned my head towards the direction of the welcome voice. Zhou Lizhi. The first-year foreign student instructor at Huangpu Girls’ School.

This Chinese major, surrounded by dark rumors both officially and privately, had scared me during the last interview, but now she felt like a goddess coming to save me.

“M-Major Zhou!”

“Call me Instructor, Shin.”

Zhou replied gruffly. Was it because I had abruptly turned my upper body and shined the flashlight brightly at her?

“And Colonel. I thought I asked the Colonel to come to the school without being noticed.”

Zhou turned to Colonel Tikhonov calmly, as if she had already known about the Soviet officer’s visit. I honestly couldn’t help but smile a little at her words. It was slightly amusing that she, who didn’t even treat Lieutenant Duey as a foreign officer, deliberately called Tikhonov ‘Colonel’.

“I’m sorry, Instructor Zhou. But… it’s not that I tried to be discovered, I just didn’t know there would be visitors at this hour…”

Tikhonov’s tone didn’t sound apologetic at all. Considering her Chinese proficiency, it must have been intentional, but Zhou just calmly pointed at the unicycle the colonel was riding.

“Can that really be considered the best effort to avoid being noticed?”

“But if there’s no one around, whether I ride a unicycle or a tricycle, I can’t be noticed, right? Something like that?”

Zhou seemed a bit angry at Tikhonov’s attitude. The Chinese major approached the Russian woman and rang the bell attached to her bicycle with a ‘ding’. Usually, the rider rings it themselves when there’s an obstacle ahead, but it was the kind of bell that makes a slight metallic sound even when passing over rough roads without deliberately ringing it.

“Seriously, Colonel Tikhonov?”

“Aha, ahahahaha…”

The Russian woman finally couldn’t talk back to Zhou anymore and scratched her head. She looked at me and Zhou alternately, grinning.

“What’s so amusing?”

“No, it’s just that you two look alike. That’s the kind of thought I had. Somehow, I feel like you’d get along well. Something like that. What do you think?”

“I-Is that because we’re Asian?”

I asked. The Russian woman shook her head.

“No, no. Not because you’re Korean or Chinese, nothing like that. Talking to you, I can see that you’re similar as people. How should I put it, your vibes are similar. Somehow, I feel like you’d really hit it off. Just, you’re the same kind of human, I’d say…”

“If you’re done talking, follow me.”

Zhou cut off the Russian officer’s words. But judging by her slightly softened voice, it seemed that Barbara Tikhonov’s words this time didn’t particularly bother her.

“Shin. Student Shin Eun-young.”

“Yes, Instructor Zhou.”

“She says we’d get along well, what do you think of Colonel Tikhonov’s words?”

“W-Well…”

I felt genuinely perplexed and scratched my head.

“I’ll think about it after receiving your instruction, Instructor.”

“Good. You’ll have a lot to learn.”

Zhou nodded.

“Even compared to the other students.”

“Y-Yes, yes, because I don’t have any m-military experience and was excessively ordinary.”

Of course, I couldn’t be sure if that was the meaning behind Zhou’s warning that I would have a lot to learn.