Please Shoot Me - 12

Yuyeon’s face stiffened, and Ryung let out a small laugh as if he knew she would.

“I told you, there’s nothing I don’t know about you.”

At his words, a vague memory flashed through her mind.

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I don’t know what I don’t know.”

The source of his confidence must be there after all.

“How did you know…?”

“Well, I wasn’t trying to find out, but my daily routine is to observe you, so I guess I could see it.”

She was aware that he was always watching her, but when it came to secrets, she was pretty good at hiding them, and she prided herself on being discreet. As she pondered her mistake, she remembered an incident from a previous day.

“Did you… ever leave your post during a mission, and not because you had an upset stomach…?”

After a momentary hesitation, he replied in a clear voice.

“Oh, yeah. I just wanted to see what you were up to. You’re interesting, so there’s a lot of stuff that we, in the field, don’t know about.”

He was always thorough and conscientious in his work, so it seemed off that he would neglect his duties. Yuyeon had no idea that he was following in her footsteps.

All the information in the lab was confidential, and to take it away was to betray the organization. If A/Z’s top brass found out, Yuyeon would not only be kicked out, but expelled from the safe zone.

While Yuyeon’s face grew serious, he let out an amused breath.

“It’s good to see you recognize this. I was afraid I was going to just be some slacker to you.”

It was a casual remark, but Yuyeon felt an inexplicable sense of betrayal as memories of her ordinary days with him flashed through her mind.

“What do you want?”

“What?”

“There must be a reason why you’re talking to me like this.”

“Why are you so serious, I just…”

“Are you treating me like an idiot? If you were simply curious about the truth, you should have asked me instead of going after me. What are you going to do with my secrets?”

Yuyeon’s heart, pounding from surprise, calmed and her head grew cold. The storm of emotions dissipated, leaving only a sharpened sense of reason to gauge his intentions as she stared into his golden eyes. Sensing her calm, his eyes half-closed, and a low sigh escaped his lips.

“It’s going to be like this.”

“… What?”

“If I tell you I know, you’ll stand guard like this. I don’t want that.”

“…”

“I figured that someday… you would open up and tell me first, so I held back. I’m sorry I stepped on your toes, but I needed to know what you wanted, and if that someday put you in danger, I needed to think of a way to get you out of it.”

“Why… you.”

“It’s not easy to like a girl like you, and once I tried, I can’t recommend it to anyone else.”

Anxious eyes, unlike his usual easygoing manner, searched her face.

“I want to be on your side. I don’t have any family left, and A/Z doesn’t mean anything to me. You’re the only one who means anything to me.”

“…”

“Today at coffee… I was actually going to tell you this, the more I like you, the more I want to talk to the real you. I kept thinking about how you’d react if I told you I knew your secret, and you’d probably throw a fit and tell me to mind my own business and stay out of your dangerous business.”

Ryung hit the nail on the head. Yuyeon chewed her lip and lowered her eyes.

“Things are different now than they were a few hours ago. Now, I don’t know when I’m going to die, and I don’t know if…”

“…”

“I just want to know who my crush is before I die, can’t you show me? I’m desperate, so desperate.”

He concluded in a tone that was both persuasive and playful. It was out of habit, his carefulness to not burden Yuyeon. She looked deeply into his eyes and spoke.

“Yes, you’re right. Headquarters could be dangerous.”

His eyes sparked as if he recognized the subtle change in tone. He knew what was about to come out was not a thinly veiled lie.

“Maybe it’s already… abandoned.”

“You’ve been doing that, too, haven’t you?”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t need to elaborate on her words. They both nodded at the same time and turned their attention to the body on the ground. Clearly, the body belonged to a m*mber of A/Z, who had gone missing during a mission.

A/Z was a military alliance of 26 teams, each with 200 to 300 members, so it was difficult to recognize faces, let alone names unless they were on the same team. If they did, they were most likely part of Team B, which was often involved in joint missions.

“They said he was missing in action… I thought I was looking at the wrong person, but if you felt the same way, it was probably a crew m*mber.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird that he’s MIA inside a safe zone, not outside?”

There was no such thing as leaving the body of a fallen warrior unattended during a mission. A/Z was an army that protected civilians, and they were treated as martyrs and always given a proper funeral. So why didn’t headquarters know what had been done? Isn’t it the officers who order the missions in the first place, and the men below who simply follow orders?

“Maybe I’m also a m*mber of the zombies like him, so does that mean that the headquarters set this up?”

“That would explain why… I was sent here.”

“What are you saying?”

“To kill me when they realize I’m stealing lab materials? Or maybe… to test something else.”

That got a chuckle from Ryung, who had a general idea of the experiments his superiors were running in the lab. A/Z was created to kill zombies, but the secret experiments being conducted by the organization’s top brass was the zombification of humans. They called it Human Evolution.

It was literally an experiment in human evolution. The officers were usually ex-military men who were no longer in combat but had become wealthy by making a lot of money from policing.

Like many rulers throughout history, they were coveting something they shouldn’t have: eternal life.

Zombies don’t die of natural causes. They can starve but continue to live and breathe without food, walk on asphalt in the summer sun, and survive winter cold and blizzards. Their cellular regeneration is unparalleled, and they can quickly recover from injuries other than to their heads, their weakest point.

If researchers could eliminate the trait of losing intelligence and attacking people, the zombie virus would not be a crisis, as the executives said, but an opportunity for humanity to take a step forward. The problem is that they need human test subjects.

“Sunbae, you’ve been getting called upstairs a lot lately. What’s going on?”

“Not much… Just making sure I’m not sick, that the mission isn’t overwhelming, and that I’m sleeping well…”

As she talked, she realized that they were just checking to see if she had the qualities to be a test subject. The zombification experiments required robust test subjects with physical abilities that exceeded those of the average person, and those were likely to be those who performed well in A/Z.

She had survived in the unit for a long time and was in excellent physical shape. She was an elite team leader at a “young” age, so she was a young, fresh “guinea pig” to look out for. James, who was supposed to be with her today, was the nice captain of the A-Team and had a similar flexibility and reputation.

“I thought it was just a formality from above…”

“If our theory is true, you must have been disappointed to hear from me earlier because nothing happened…”

Instead of words, Ryung expressed her anger by stomping on the floor. The vibration was powerful despite the distance.

“It was my arrogance that made me think it wasn’t possible. I thought you were still in the lab rat stage at best…”

Yuyeon closed her eyes tightly in guilt. She had once been a soldier herself, so the idea of using her subordinates as guinea pigs never occurred to her. Isn’t there something called human decency?

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I knew, but you didn’t.”

“I’m in a different position than you. I’m the team leader, and I have to protect you.”

“Yeah, that’s why you’re the guinea pig, assh*le. I paid for all of the burden.”

After muttering a bunch of profanities, Ryung was unimpressed. Yuyeon’s eyebrows shot up at his reaction.

“Are you laughing? Why?”

“Because I’m glad you weren’t one of their lapdogs.”

“Hah…”

“Anyway, you did great, my girl.”

He smirked as if he was proud of her. She chuckled.

“You, don’t you hate me for taking over? You followed me out here and now you’re like this.”

“Now that I know how it happened, I’m actually glad I’m stronger than you.”

His voice was bitter with laughter. She knew it was dangerous, and she didn’t want to interrupt. Especially not with the guy who seemed to follow her every word.

She closed her eyes and pushed out a shaky breath.

“God, I can’t believe I’m hoping their experiment works.”

“… You want me to live?”

“Yes, desperately.”

He was silent for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.

“Me too.”

Kofi