‘Dear father,
I am in a vill on the coast of the Paramus Sea. You should be familiar with it – it’s that small town, one of those summer retreats that you’ve mentioned you’ve been to when you were young. It’s a shame I had forgotten the name now. Many things were lost in history.
I say I am in a vill, but I am actually living underground, so in terms of exploring... there isn’t much. For good reason, of course. The First Unit’s been stationed in the 42nd bomb shelter for a week. Recently, we’ve been… not doing much. Two weeks after Hannes passed, the atmosphere’s been taking a dive. He had always talked too much, but it’s a little strange now that there’s no one to fill the noise.
If he were here, he’d be bragging about his literacy, spewing vulgar jokes, and talking about getting a beer or two with all of us.
It’s been two years since I’ve stayed in Unit 1. We’ve lost so many and I should be used to it by now. I may be too emotional and I feel the need to apologize. Nobody talks of our deceased comrades and yet I am writing this to you, talking about a ghost everyone’s forgotten. Yoo Seok and Jae, who have been here… longer than me (three or four years, I judge with my limited knowledge), did not mourn. They aren’t emotionless (though who would dare judge), but I can see they’ve learned to handle these situations better than I.
And as for the colonel? There’s no need to say. He’s the same as always.
Well… not quite, I suppose. Before that… Recently, there’s been an addition or two. One is a peculiar person and doesn’t seem to fit in with any of us – not in the bad way, nothing like that. If I had to describe him, he’d be—'
“Xiao-Yun.”
A pleasant voice interrupts her halfway. Li Jiayun looks up from where she’s sitting by the desk and immediately puts her pen down. She earnestly stares at the colonel, expecting herself to be assigned a task. Even on break times, the soldier is prim and proper… sans the fact she’s dressed in cute, pink pajamas.
“Ah, Colonel Yang, do you need something from me?”
Eleven in the evening and Yang Rong looks like he’d just walked the runway. He always looks so flashy – even dressed in full noir, he has the charm and magnetism to draw everyone in. Calm, confident and with a side of coquettishness… The colonel’s been described to be ideal. For Li Jiayun, she thinks of him as an unshakeable pillar and views him with young, revering eyes.
“I want you to take a look at Noah,” he says with both hands in his pockets. Carefree. “He hasn’t woken up. It’d be troublesome to care for a comatose patient while traveling.”
Li Jiayun opens her mouth to say, “…But Colonel, you asked me to check last time, too. I’m not a doctor… Perhaps if we bring him to the city, he can get treatment.”
“Huh?” Yang Rong sounds genuinely surprised. “You don’t know?”
“N-No... yes. Let me think...” Li Jiayun digs at the information in the back of her mind. Thankfully, she’d studied very comprehensively every single task force manual there is – from the one on weaponry to another on dated military phonetics, there’s bound to be a medical one somewhere. She doesn’t have photographic memory, but she does remember some snippets of text. “Well, a coma is a state of deep unconsciousness wherein the patient is not responsive. The possible causes are injuries to the head, a stroke, potential infection, diabetes…”
“I’m not asking for what a coma is.” Yang Rong slaps a hand on his forehead. “I’m asking you to wake him up.”
“Sorry, Colonel… It isn’t within my expertise…”
“Aren’t you a beta?”
“…Yes?”
“Then don’t you know how to, well, solve beta problems?”
Li Jiayun looks at him awkwardly. She’s usually so well-mannered around him but even this has her taken aback. The colonel is really, horrendously, terrible at understanding regular people. She had caught a glimpse of his cluelessness a couple of times.
Once was when she’d first applied for provisional training.
It was two years ago when Li Jiayun saw a particularly memorable scene. A recruit had a bullet embedded in his kneecap during training – a mistake gone horrendously wrong – and then buckled down and yelled out in pain.
Yang Rong had instructed for the freshman to spit on his wounds and “not be a goddamn wimp,” as he’d so politely put it. He proceeded to give personal lessons on the importance of perseverance and then repeated his favorite slogan back in the day, “pain is for the weak.”
He was vicious during drills and even more tyrannic during hand-to-hand training. Of the thousands of applicants, only ten were selected every year – and as for why those soldiers stayed, it was simply because the pay is high and the benefits even better. Five years of service then a lifetime of free meals, free housing, zero-cost medical treatment.
The singular digit units are specialized units, consisting only of top mercenaries willing to venture out in the most hazardous red zones. These are suicide squads going out to recover as many rare and dangerous anomalies as they could to send back to the Nexus for research.
It’s unfortunate not very many of them survive. Li Jiayun thinks that she herself isn’t capable enough to be classified a “top mercenary,” but Unit 1’s always had its own way of doing things under the colonel’s command.
The colonel himself is… odd, to say the least. It is fortunate that he had become less severe over the years.
“That… Colonel Yang,” Li Jiayun hesitates to inform, “a coma isn’t a beta problem. It’s a medical condition.”
“I’ve never been into a coma before.”
“Well, yes…” She nods slowly. “That is true. Perhaps it’s your natural alpha constitution that allows you to withstand more harm than the average person.”
“I am aware of how amazing I am, Xiao-Yun,” Yang Rong says without a stutter. “But the problem at hand is that the little kitten is unresponsive to my touch.”
Li Jiayun decides to not comment on the nickname. “Your touch? It is natural that an… unresponsive patient is unresponsive, Colonel.”
“Hence I would like you to wake him up.” Yang Rong gestures one thumb toward the door. “Look at how nicely I’m treating him. I gave him my clothes and my blankets. Two of them. I even lent him my bed. I’ve been sleeping on the floor for a week, and I’ll be damned, if I have to wash his body up one more time, I swear on my left nut I will fucking—”
He pauses and runs a hand through the back of his neck with a groan. There’s a strange expression on his face, bordering agitation and fluster, before he says again, “I will lose my mind. So, Xiao-Yun, be a good girl and help daddy out, alright?”
Li Jiayun, forced to be the colonel’s assistant – or consultant, whichever is more suitable – summons up all of her beta energy and follows him to the other room.
There’s an array of candles lit on the table. The air has a light fragrance of wax and crystal mint. As dulled as her senses are as a normal beta, she still identifies the scent coming from Noah. The latter is deeply asleep on the metal bed, lying still on his back, and… not covered with a blanket. He’s at least half-naked, with the duvet pulled to the side – the colonel’s doing? – and then, a second later, Li Jiayun notices that his trousers are unbuttoned and unzipped.
She pauses awkwardly.
Yang Rong tells her to go ahead.
“It’ll be like you’re his mother helping him clean. Just take off his pants and use a towel. It’s not like you’re touching his bare body, yeah?” Yang Rong explains the process to her and hands her a white washcloth. “Alright, I’ll be outside. Let me know when you’re done washing and we’ll wake him up after.”
Li Jiayun is at a standstill. Sure, she’d taken the towel but it was more of a conditioned reflex to receive anything the colonel hands to her. She lets it dangle on her hands. “…Um, Colonel, don’t you think Jae would be a better helper…”
“Do you think I’d let that cruddy Jae touch him? Do you know what creatures are the dirtiest on earth?” Yang Rong places a hand on her shoulder. “Men.”
Li Jiayun blinks owlishly with her eyes. “…Colonel, but I’m female… Isn’t it worse—I-I mean, I am able to assist but it wouldn’t be proper? Not to mention I haven’t reached that stage where I’d want to be a mother and—no, no, I meant I’m a young female and Noah is a young male. Taking gender and age into consideration, it would be less appropriate for me to do this…”
Yang Rong seems to think about it deeply. When he narrows his eyes and frowns, he had come to a conclusion. “Indeed, it wouldn’t be appropriate. You two are young and who knows what can happen behind closed doors. Ideally, I’d like for Noah to not be your type, but still, I can’t shake the possibility of such an indecent act. Li Jiayun, do women like flower boys like him?”
“I—Maybe,” Li Jiayun stammers for the tenth time tonight. “Objectively speaking, Noah is very attractive.”
“I see.” Yang Rong narrows his eyes some more, straining them so much his brows have creased. “Get out.”
And with that, he snatches the towel back from her and almost physically throws her back out the door, leaving Li Jiayun worried, stressed out, and very much confused.
---
‘If I had to describe Noah, he’d be the type to be here today and gone tomorrow. Silver hair, pale skin, golden and blue eyes – he reminds me of snowflakes in wintertime. My intuition tells me it won’t be long before he leaves us. It was his appearance that threw us off initially, but I’m beginning to think there isn’t much suspicion held against him… or rather, nobody seems to care about what he is except for the colonel.
And the colonel has done some very strange things lately… It’s almost out of character.
…I am beginning to bore you, father. It isn’t often I get the time to write to you like this.
When I see you, I will deliver this letter and the one before, and the other ones before that as well. Then, there will be many more.
Until you wake,
Ah-Yun.’
