Without properly organizing my thoughts and with my eyes wide open, I spent the night and greeted the day of the match. In my current state, could I fight properly?
I had already been experiencing a slump in my condition over the past few weeks, and I felt that it was causing some hindrance during the matches. Since the matches were only once a week, I forced myself to muster the strength, and fortunately, I didn’t cause any harm to my teammates. But today was different. The problem was serious.
I was in a state of conflict, not a conflict but something similar, and my already sensitive state persisted. Now, with something weighing on my mind, I was worried about whether I could properly engage in the match.
Until now, I had thought that even if I were dating the HunterKiller members, I shouldn’t let it affect the matches, and I had acted accordingly. However, the impact of feeling my own limits was significant.
I had no idea how to handle today’s match or my future actions. Should I behave as I have until now? I even thought about what would happen if Yubin didn’t accept my apology after I got angry at her.
Thinking like this made me reflect on my actions so far.
It wasn’t that my girlfriends avoided talking about work-related topics when they saw I was tired. It was because I had been blatantly avoiding the subject that no one brought it up.
At a time when I believed happy times were continuing, I had been unknowingly venting stress on my girlfriends. I hadn’t directly said anything, nor had I shown it through actions, but the atmosphere I gave off when we met was like that.
Ultimately, I was scrambling to solve everything on my own, unable to properly resolve any of the issues, and dragging along an uneasy situation. So, in an unchanged situation, I couldn’t help but continue to have various thoughts, and the vicious cycle of not sleeping properly and accumulating fatigue repeated.
“Fuck.”
A curse escaped my lips when I realized this. It was a curse directed solely at me, with no one to hear it, and even as I cursed, I felt that I deserved even more curses.
Such situations had happened often since the past. I had a strong tendency to solve things on my own rather than seeking help from those around me, and I tried to do alone what I believed I could handle alone.
It was a habit that stemmed from feeling apologetic about causing others to help me and feeling like receiving help was causing harm to them.
After leaving home, I looked around to see if I was being followed today. Fortunately, I didn’t sense anyone watching me, and pulling my tired body, I headed to headquarters.
Even on the way, my thoughts didn’t stop. At some point, I realized that I was repeating the same thoughts without finding an answer, and now I truly felt that there was nothing I could do.
Maybe giving up on trying to solve things alone was for the best. Until now, I had never given up on something I intended to do alone. In the end, I always ended up receiving help from those around me, but I had never messed up the task itself or tried to let go of it from my hands.
It’s not that I want to completely let go of this matter and abandon it entirely. It’s just that, for the first time in my life, I felt a sense of incongruity with the thought, ‘I don’t think I can do this alone.’
Was it that I overestimated my own abilities? Or did I underestimate the current situation? I couldn’t tell where things started to go wrong.
It’s clear that I underestimated the challenge of hiding my emotional collisions from everyone and trying to handle it simultaneously with five people, believing I could do it.
I had resolved to make everyone happy, but was I even satisfying one person now? It suddenly struck me how difficult it is for one person to satisfy just one other person.
“Why do you look like that?”
As I entered the headquarters lobby, I coincidentally ran into Siera, who had just come out to the lobby. Seeing me full of fatigue and looking like death, she approached.
“I just didn’t sleep well.”
As I had known Siera for a long time, we knew a lot about each other. What we disliked, what we liked. What kind of personalities we had in general.
“What have you been doing? You’re not the type to do nothing…”
At that moment, the suppressed irritation surged again. And for the first time since knowing her, I expressed hostile feelings toward her.
“Can you stop talking about that?!”
Irritation, anger. A mix of emotions boiled over as I yelled at her, and the gazes of people in the lobby turned toward us.
Siera, quite startled, looked at me with wide eyes, and I, still in a sensitive state, let out words without thinking, directly pouring them onto her.
“What did I do so wrong to you? What annoying thing did I do that you keep bringing it up for a lifetime?! Do you know how irritating it is to hear those useless words every time?!”
The history of Siera telling me not to do anything dates back quite a while. From the time we were very young, living in the same neighborhood and seeing each other every day, she’s been saying that.
Although the tone was quite different back then and now, having heard that phrase for a long time hadn’t changed. Initially, I was bothered, but at some point I stopped caring, and then it became irritating again.
After shouting loudly, I walked up the stairs without looking back. Startled, Siera stood still, not calling out or chasing after me.
I wondered if I had been too harsh, but I had no regrets about pouring out my thoughts. Since coming to Earth, our communication had dwindled, and at some point, I felt a growing rift between us.
Perhaps it would be better to end the relationship now and remain on professional terms.
“Sigh…”
After suddenly shouting and feeling a bit dizzy from the rush of blood, I leaned against the wall for a moment before entering the dressing room on the 3rd floor.
Perhaps the others hadn’t arrived yet since the dressing room was quiet. Even though all I had to do was change clothes to be ready, I stood still, staring into the void, not wanting to do even that.
“What are you doing?”
Luche, who had arrived at the office, approached as I leaned silently against the wall by the dressing room door. Maybe it’s because she’s currently the person I can rely on the most professionally? Upon seeing her, I felt an inexplicable sense of relief.
Luche looked up at me silently as I stood there with clear signs of fatigue, and I stared back at her. Noticing that I seemed to have something to say, she tilted her head, and in the deserted Team 3 office with just me and Luche, I spoke up.
“I have a girlfriend.”
“….”
Luche’s expression froze the moment those words came out. But unable to read her expression properly, I rambled on.
“After watching Red, somehow I ended up dating all the HunterKiller members. I wanted to keep it a secret from everyone and somehow make the situation better, but I guess it’s beyond my abilities.”
If it were the Luche I knew, she would certainly furrow her brow and call me an idiot. Maybe she’d even get angry, asking why I hadn’t reported such a thing until now.
No matter how she reacted, I wanted to lay out the current situation clearly and hear her advice on what to do moving forward.
With my head bowed, I told Luche everything that had happened, from the circumstances of meeting Yubin and starting to date, to being busy meeting everyone every day recently.
“So yesterday, I blew up without realizing it. Pretty foolish, right?”
I finished with a hollow laugh, but Luche still said nothing. I thought she’d immediately give me a piece of her mind, but as there was no reaction, I raised my head and met Luche’s expressionless gaze.
“…How long has it been?”
Luche asked me in a subdued voice, her expression blank. Caught off guard, I stammered.
“Uh, it’s been a while… About four months? It’s different for each…”
“…What are you doing?”
The next words made me feel even more pathetic about myself.
What am I really doing right now?
“Let’s talk after the match today. Don’t tell the others.”
“Alright…”
I couldn’t say anything more than a brief reply to Luche’s cold voice, which I’d never heard before. She turned around and went into her office, and I only let out a sigh after watching her back until she disappeared.
“Pathetic.”
Since she said we’d talk after the match, it seemed best to focus on today’s match for now.
Just as I started changing clothes in the dressing room, my teammates started arriving one by one. We exchanged light greetings and started changing, and after switching into my suit, I stood dazedly with my helmet in hand.
“Why do you look like you’re chewing on shit?”
Krüger approached me as I stood there dazed and waved his hand in front of my face. No matter how hard I tried to act normally, I just couldn’t.
“Just didn’t sleep well.”
“You’ve been looking off lately, have you got a lot to investigate?”
“Yeah, this and that.”
My teammates also knew that I’d been busy investigating recently about hyper-humans and thought that’s why I hadn’t been sleeping well.
“Take a break. No one’s chasing you.”
Jack and Longo looked at me worriedly, and Ben slapped my back with his palm. A pain that wasn’t painful was transmitted, and I turned to look at him.
“When you’re really struggling, a company dinner is the best cure.”
As I laughed and was about to decline Ben’s offer for a company dinner, Daniel messed up my hair.
“We could have one right away if you didn’t run away. What do you say?”
The thought of the last company dinner messed up by Indigo made me not want to go. Maybe it would be good to take a break as my teammates suggested?
But I had to discuss with Luche today and apologize to Yubin when I got home.
“Next time. Next time.”
“This guy’s always saying next time.”
As if they expected me to decline, my teammates laughingly voiced their complaints, and as they changed, they left the dressing room one by one.
As I silently watched them leave, Krüger was the only one left in the dressing room.
“Got something on your mind?”
Though not as much as Siera, Krüger had also known me for a long time, and seeing my clearly troubled expression, he wondered if something was wrong. As he suspected, I was burdened by many things, but explaining everything would take too much time, so I decided to put it off.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Alright. Tell me when you feel comfortable talking about it.”
Krüger smiled and left the dressing room, and I soon followed him to the underground parking lot.
We all piled into the cramped car, and as usual, I sat in the back seat. I placed my helmet on my lap, thinking that having my view limited might complicate my thoughts. It was okay to just wear it when getting out, and many of my teammates didn’t wear theirs either.
Daniel drove while Luche took the passenger seat.
“Today we’re taking the Olympic Bridge.”
“Yeah. It’s faster that way.”
Luche fastened her seatbelt and replied to Daniel’s route suggestion, and after checking that everyone was onboard, the car departed.
I wondered what Luche thought after hearing my words. Maybe she was listening with a more business-like and cold perspective than I had imagined.
I worried about what to say and how to say it when we got back, staring blankly at the darkened window that hid the view outside.
As the car, driven by Daniel, entered the Olympic Bridge and was about halfway across, suddenly there was a loud noise and the ground shook.
When the noise was heard, everyone tensed up. The ground shook as if there had been an earthquake, and Daniel stopped the car and looked around.
“What’s that?”
At that moment, Luche spotted something through the side mirror and asked in a voice full of curiosity, prompting Daniel to unfasten his seatbelt.
“I’ll get out and take a look. Just a moment.”
Unlike his teammates dressed in combat suits and Luche, Daniel was wearing inconspicuous clothes for driving, so he decided to check the situation outside.
“It seems like an accident behind us, so be careful just in case.”
At Luche’s advice, Daniel answered affirmatively and got out of the car, and in an instant, a flash of light covered my vision.
