Answering God's Call - Chapter 7

“Excuse me. I’m sorry I’m late. There was a bit of traffic.”

A woman who revealed her presence as if she had been concealing it sat carefully between Ruslan and Damian. As she apologized politely and met his gaze as if facing a mirror, Ruslan’s spine stiffened.

She was a nun.

A nun dressed neatly and modestly in a dark gray habit with a bluish tint, a veil of the same color that fell to her chest, and a white collar rising slightly above her neck.

Ruslan stared wordlessly at her clear face without makeup and her vivid green eyes, and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed once, noticeably. For the past year and a half, while he had been stuck at the Vandenberg church, he had dreamed of a reunion with no set time, but he had never imagined a scene like this.

Was it because his imagination was lacking?

A nun. This goes beyond anything he imagined in more ways than one. Swallowing a quiet, hollow laugh, Ruslan fixed his gaze on the nun in front of him as if this were only the beginning, but the woman withdrew her gaze without hesitation and didn’t look back at him. Like a statue coming to life, her expressionless face made Ruslan’s eyes narrow.

“I heard you arrived in Vandenberg today, so I called you over to say hello. I’d only heard about you and hadn’t seen your face before, so I thought this was a good chance.”

“Nice to meet you, Branch Chief Hawkins.”

“Call me Damian. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Damian, who had added sugar to his espresso, jerked his chin as if to say there was no need for unnecessary formalities. As Ruslan’s gaze at the woman, who responded with a faint smile, gradually turned crooked, Damian, who had finished stirring in the sugar, spoke up lightly.

“I told you to greet each other. Why are you just sitting there staring?”

Whether Damian pointed it out bluntly or not, Ruslan didn’t budge. Watching him, Damian’s brow slowly furrowed. He thought he was being unusually cooperative, so what’s with him now?

He’d assigned them together because, in nearly ten years of working as an agent, Ruslan had never once caused trouble over a woman. If he was going to start acting like this right from the beginning, that would be a problem. Looking at him as though he’d turned out to be an unexpected headache, Damian narrowed his eyes. Just then, Ruslan tilted his head toward him and asked bluntly, “I’ve heard enough nagging, so why are you kicking me under the table?”

“Trying to frame me? What did I even do?”

“….”

“….”

After a brief moment of silently exchanging inexplicable looks, the two men turned to Tatyana, who was still sitting without moving. At their questioning gaze, Tatyana gave an awkward smile and offered a short explanation.

“I got a cramp in my foot.”

“How long have you been sitting there to get a cramp already?”

When Ruslan asked back lazily, with no intention of letting it slide, the neat curve of Tatyana’s lips stiffened for a moment as if something had caught. But only for a moment. Softening the corners of her lips again, Tatyana deftly dropped her gaze to the table to avoid him.

“I must’ve been more nervous than usual. I’m sorry.”

“That can happen. It’s fine.”

“…Yes, thank you for understanding.”

“You’re thanking me over something so trivial.”

“….”

Her effort to stubbornly avoid him was almost admirable, but Ruslan wasn’t the type to let that go even knowing it.

“So, have you looked over the operation planning report?”

“Yes, I read it on the train on the way here—”

“Here, finish reading it with this.”

Cutting off Tatyana before she could finish, Ruslan smoothly pushed the documents he had tucked between the newspaper toward her.

“…?”

At that moment, Damian, who had taken a sip of his espresso, blinked as if nothing was wrong and rolled his eyes downward. With every word they exchanged, the subtle tension between the two grew stronger, stirring the instincts of a former operative who had spent years in the field.

Those two are a bit strange.

It’s not the look of two people who’ve fallen for each other, but the atmosphere is oddly suspicious. There’s no way they had time to build something like that after just meeting. It feels like they’re keeping each other in check, or quietly probing one another….

Even for agents, relationships between men and women are usually obvious, but no matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t quite grasp what was going on with those two. Suppressing his confusion, Damian casually looked over the woman disguised as a nun.

Codename: Mor. An agent of Lubyanka’s Military Intelligence Directorate who had defected to Lytton. She had now been serving in Lytton’s Military Intelligence for a little over a year, but since she wasn’t one of his assignments, even Damian didn’t know much about her.

At most, he knew that her name had been completely erased the moment the staged death for her defection began, and fragments of a harsh, grueling past that couldn’t even be carved onto a gravestone.

Her past seems just as complicated as that priest of ours….

It wouldn’t hurt to know, but it wasn’t particularly useful now. After briefly recalling several such thoughts, Damian drained the rest of his espresso.

They’d exchanged greetings, so the purpose of calling them here was fulfilled.

Masking his expression as though he knew nothing at all, Damian picked up the fedora resting beside him. Now that he’d entrusted the mission approved by headquarters to the operatives, there was nothing for the branch chief to do for the time being. As always, the operatives would act independently according to their own judgment, and all he had to do was respond quickly whenever they requested support.

“That’s enough greetings. Good luck.”

“Wait a moment.”

At Ruslan’s call, Damian, who had risen from his seat, tilted his fedora slightly, as if asking what it was when the business was already finished. Ruslan, who had ordered coffee for the woman, pointed at the empty espresso cup.

“Pay for the coffee before you go.”

“….”

“I’m broke.”

***

With a parting remark that sounded like sincere encouragement or a threat to eat and drink well, Damian Hawkins stuffed a generous amount of money for coffee into the man’s hand. Watching the branch chief recede into the distance and the coffee the man had ordered for her without asking, Tatyana lifted her head as if she had made up her mind.

“Hello, Father.”

The smile on her face as she faced the man again was the one she had practiced all the way to Vandenberg, neither excessive nor indifferent.

Even after she offered a clear, formal greeting, the man said nothing. Hoping he wouldn’t spit on a smiling face, Tatyana, careful not to let the corners of her lips drop, added softly, “It’s a pleasure to meet you—”

“It’s nice to meet you, but have we met somewhere before?”

“….”

It was a question that felt extremely familiar. As if something inevitable had come, Tatyana swallowed and her smile stiffened awkwardly. Damn it. As expected. He has no intention of letting this slide easily. Facing her like that, the man’s smile slowly deepened. At a glance, it looked gentle, but it was a smile whose meaning she couldn’t read.

“Your face looks very familiar.”

“….”

“Sister, you’ve really never seen me before?”

If you know, why do you keep asking? With the man pressing persistently, Tatyana grew quite uncomfortable and pressed her lips shut. He slowly crossed his arms, as if to see how far she would keep pretending not to know.

“This time you didn’t ask ‘Me?’”

“Back then, that was—”

“That’s enough.”

He raised his hand and cut her off, then glanced at the untouched coffee in front of her and asked, “Aren’t you going to drink it? The coffee here is good.”

“Ah, strong coffee like this isn’t my taste.”

“You’re not avoiding it because you think I put something in it, are you?”

“….”

“I’m joking.”

Joking my ass. That’s not just pricking someone’s conscience, it’s tearing it apart.

In the end, Tatyana wiped the smile clean off her face and let her shoulders droop, as if to say do as you like now that it’s come to this. Even if she went back to that moment, she would do the same thing, but in the current situation, she at least had to pretend to bow her head.

Feeling as if she were sitting on a bed of thorns, she glanced at him, and the man let out a short laugh and took the coffee he had ordered for her. He had lived in Dochen, famous for its beer, during the Balder War, and the way he drank the coffee, the steam barely faded, wasn’t ordinary. He emptied the cup in one go, wiped his mouth, and gestured with his chin.

“Get up.”

“…?”

“We’ve got a lot to talk about. Should we continue somewhere else?”

Tatyana couldn’t answer rashly. For a moment, she only pressed her lips together in silence, and the man watched her just as silently. Then he slowly rose and let out another short laugh.

“What? Do you think I’ll eat you if we’re alone?”

Tatyana looked at the man with a dubious expression as he calmly adjusted his crisp white Roman collar, as if he might pull it off at any moment.

What’s wrong with him in broad daylight?

Is that really something to say while wearing a pitch-black priest’s cassock? For a moment, her expression nearly faltered. Not knowing what he intended, Tatyana almost snapped back that he should cut out that kind of joke, that it wasn’t funny, but she soon rose and followed him.

Right, what’s done is done.

One way or another, it has to be settled.

***

He said there was a lot to talk about, so why isn’t he saying anything?

Even as Tatyana, seated on the sofa across from him, quietly swept her gaze over the rather sparse office, the man didn’t open his mouth. Sitting on the worn but spotless sofa, he merely flipped through the documents with an expressionless face.

This is uncomfortable. Tatyana silently pressed her lips together.

Even after moving locations, even though the man wasn’t openly hostile, the discomfort of this situation didn’t change. Suddenly, she wondered if he might be waiting for her to apologize first for what happened that day.