Answering God's Call - Chapter 17

There wasn’t even time to be surprised by his strange memory, remembering not just Rebecca West’s address but even the mole on her face and her accent. The moment the mercenary’s reflexive, honest reaction slipped out, Tatyana realized what it meant and slowly rose to her feet.

What should she do?

If she had been moving alone, she would have finished off the remaining two without a second thought. Since they were mercenaries hired for a one-time job, there was no more information to extract, and leaving them alive might only cause trouble if they decided to chase her later to earn what they were paid.

Right. Trouble.

No matter how many times she thought about it, it was better to deal with them than leave behind unnecessary problems. After all, they had come at her with the intent to kill first.

Meeting Ruslan’s gaze in the darkness, Tatyana checked her remaining ammunition. After looking away from the man whose expression she couldn’t read, she raised her pistol toward the mercenary with the crushed jaw.

“I don’t hold any personal grudge. Consider it bad luck.”

***

“Father, does it hurt?”

After inserting a needle shallowly into Ruslan’s shoulder and pulling it out, Tatyana asked. Even after waiting to push the needle in again, no answer came. Wondering if he had lost consciousness while she was stitching him up, she lifted her gaze from the wound.

“What is it? Why are you just staring? Are you not answering because it hurts?”

“…It’s not that.”

Ruslan, with bandages tightly wrapped around his waist, shook his head. As the light focused on the wound, his strangely shadowed eyes silently lingered on the injection marks left on his right arm and on Tatyana’s left arm. Coincidentally, they shared the same blood type, and it was the trace of the blood transfusion she had given him.

“I can manage. Thanks to the painkillers.”

“That’s a relief. Your complexion looks fine too.”

Tatyana glanced at his still pale but more stabilized complexion and lips compared to earlier. At least he no longer looked like a walking corpse.

As Tatyana’s gaze left him to finish stitching the wound, Ruslan asked, “And you?”

“What about me?”

“You have a lot of cuts.”

“Even if you add them all up, they don’t compare to yours, Father.”

No matter how much others’ things look bigger, that doesn’t mean even their wounds look more serious. She didn’t know why he would even say something like that.

And. Was this only about the wounds from today?

Throughout treating Ruslan’s injuries, Tatyana had to make a constant effort not to let her gaze drift anywhere other than his shoulder and waist wounds. It wasn’t because he had taken off his top and she didn’t know where to look.

Back, chest, abdomen, waist….

Everywhere her eyes landed, there were marks. More precisely, scars that had long since healed, leaving only traces behind. Flesh that had been torn once before it could fully heal, then torn again, rupturing over and over, layering wound upon wound, leaving behind marks like cracks.

Since she knew well what kind of process created scars like that, Tatyana felt slightly unsettled. She felt like she could vaguely piece together a fragment of Ruslan’s past that she did not know, and she desperately wanted to look away from it.

And yet.

For someone whose entire body was covered in scars that would never fade, worrying about her scratches seemed absurd. Unless he was being overly concerned, did she really look like the kind of woman who would fret over a few shallow cuts? She was a woman, yes, but she was also an operative who had survived every hardship imaginable.

The moment her thoughts reached that point, Tatyana spoke bluntly, “It doesn’t hurt.”

“Hm?”

“Unless it’s a deep cut like yours. This is nothing. It’s not the first time you’ve seen me like this.”

A body soaked through, large and small cuts, bluish bruises, a fairly cozy interior, medicine scattered across the sofa table….

It was clearly a familiar situation, but the difference from before was that she was treating Ruslan’s wounds while he had his top off.

Ruslan, unable to take his eyes off Tatyana as she skillfully stitched the wound, asked, “Those wounds back then, did you make them on purpose?”

“…Not on purpose.”

Tatyana, having finished the treatment, cut the thread. As she wiped away the blood around the wound and applied disinfectant, her movements gradually slowed. Fixing her gaze not on the wound but on the disinfectant over it, she added after a brief hesitation, “I just made use of wounds I got during interrogation.”

“Interrogation?”

“Investigations carried out in the basement of the insurance company aren’t done through conversation alone.”

‘Insurance company’ was a code name for Lubyanka’s Military Intelligence Directorate. After the labor revolution, ownership of all buildings had been transferred to the Lubyanka government, and a building that originally belonged to an insurance company came to be used as the Directorate’s headquarters.

“The reputation I mentioned before isn’t exaggerated at all.”

After several rounds of construction, they had built not only cells but also soundproof rooms with thick walls for torture, an execution chamber, and even an incinerator for disposing of executed bodies and confidential documents. It said enough. There was a reason people said that once you were dragged into the basement, you would never see sunlight again.

The underground rooms of the so-called insurance company were, quite literally, terror itself.

A single light bulb illuminating a windowless room, a naked body hung upside down, ordinary objects turned into instruments of torture, a pitch black cloth covering the face with ice cold pepper water poured over it, a riding whip striking the back, chest, and thighs without restraint, saltwater sloshing at one’s feet, and the shouts demanding why a person was killed when they had not even been killed….

She didn’t want to admit it, but it was the same for Tatyana.

It was frightening. She could endure it only because more terrible and distant fears had taken up space within her long ago, not because the torture in the basement wasn’t frightening.

It hurt, terribly. She only lasted longer than others because there was nothing left to break in her, not because the torture that tore into her wounds again and again didn’t hurt.

She was human too. Like anyone else, she was afraid, and it hurt.

That was why she hated it.

No one had asked. No one was even curious, yet Ruslan kept asking her over and over whether she was hurt anywhere, whether she was okay. She hated it. The unfamiliar concern she had never asked for was unwelcome. It felt like he was forcing a confession that it had hurt, a private admission that she still wasn’t okay.

His persistence and effort might be admirable, but she had not the slightest desire to share memories of similar pain with the man in front of her.

“Any aftereffects?”

There he goes again. Asking another question. At the question from the man who had been silent for quite some time as if lost in thought, Tatyana let out a short laugh, as if she’d expected this. It wasn’t because she found it funny. It was because the whole thing was so ridiculous.

What would he do if there were lasting aftereffects? And what if there weren’t? Why was he even asking? Were operations officers always this full of questions?

“Was it a denunciation?”

“Why do you think it was because of a denunciation? I could have caused insubordination. I could have beaten my superior, or killed them.”

Instead of answering, Tatyana posed a question while tidying up the remaining thread, blood-soaked bandages, cotton towels, and wet cigarettes. At that, Ruslan looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then nodded.

“That’s possible. I won’t deny it.”

“….”

What do you mean possible? Do I really look like the type to commit insubordination?

Gathering the trash together and tossing it roughly into a corner, Tatyana leaned back against the sofa as if half lying down. She didn’t forget to place the loaded pistol behind her back. Perhaps because she had exerted herself after a long time, fatigue rushed in all at once.

She had showered and changed out of her wet clothes, and finished treating the man’s wounds. She wanted to rest comfortably now, but it didn’t seem like his questions would stop unless she said something appropriate, so she decided to briefly mention a common kind of incident in Lubyanka and end it there.

“My fiancé was executed. Someone informed on him. The charge was treason. It was obvious enough. I wanted to find out who the informant was, so I went to see the operations officer, but by the time I arrived, he was already dead. Whether it was a coincidence or not, the secret police showed up at that exact moment. Anyone would have assumed I was the killer, so I was arrested at the scene. After that… well, you can imagine the rest.”

Leaving the rest unsaid, Tatyana checked the wristwatch that had somehow kept working through all of that. As she blinked at the time, which had already passed midnight, Ruslan slowly climbed onto the sofa and asked.

“…A fiancé?”

“Yes. If we married, I was scheduled to be dispatched to the Lubyanka consulate in Lytton. Consulate staff are recognized by the Directorate as legitimate personnel. They have diplomatic immunity too. I was aiming for that safeguard, but we were purged together.”

Tatyana, who muttered lightly that she had grabbed the wrong rope and ridden the wrong line, picked up the blanket that had fallen to the floor.

“You had someone you were going to marry?”

“…That’s not the point.”

Tatyana rubbed her forehead at Ruslan’s expression, which looked genuinely surprised.

“Why are you so surprised? Is it strange that I’d get married?”

“But you didn’t.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“To me, it is.”

“…?”

What’s with him? Looking completely unable to understand his reaction, Tatyana stared at Ruslan. It’s not like I’m actually a nun, so what’s wrong with having a fiancé or getting married? It’s not uncommon at all for operatives to marry each other for diplomatic assignments.

Whether it’s a cover or a contract.