Blue Flame

Perhaps as part of her effort not to stand out to people, Tikhonov didn’t ride her bicycle but ran towards the dormitory with it strapped to her back. Just as I was thinking that this appearance of hers was even more absurd and eye-catching, a lively voice calling me was heard from behind.

“What an interesting conversation!”

“Lieutenant Duey?”

Damn it. The French lieutenant who was the subject of the gossip… would it be right to call it gossip? … we were just having suddenly popped out and patted my back. I trembled like a rookie agent who had been asked to show identification by a local official in the middle of espionage work.

“Why are you so surprised?”

Duey’s two blue eyes were shining like jewels as always. It’s hard to believe that this woman who looks like she jumped out of a cartoon is actually a terrifying war maniac and nationalist. I won’t say it’s unbelievable, but there’s no doubt that her appearance and ideology are quite contradictory.

There was no need to beat around the bush. I asked her directly.

“Did you hear everything, Lieutenant?”

“If you’re asking if I heard, what? That I’m just a 21-year-old young adult who doesn’t know the ways of the world, that kind of talk?”

“It seems you heard almost everything…”

“I’m a bit upset. To have to hear such things when there’s only a two-year age difference between you and me, Platoon Leader.”

“It’s not about age.”

“That’s right. It’s a matter of experience. There’s innate temperament too, but it’s a matter of experience.”

“What do you think about Colonel Tikhonov’s assessment of you?”

“Barbie’s eye for people is top-notch. You can trust her words.”

“That assessment that you’re a crazy warmonger who desires a world war?”

“Please soften it to ‘someone who occasionally has slightly extreme thoughts in desiring the glory of their homeland.'”

“Nationalists have only turned the history of the world in a bad direction. Honestly, it’s hard to view it positively.”

“You know what? It was those stubborn nationalists who started this thing called history. No, perhaps they were innovators at that time? Wrong. It’s not that nationalists started wars and led history in a bad direction. The very concept of history was born together with nationalism. Because they succeeded in making everything before that meaningless.”

“I’m not in the mood to discuss views on history right now.”

Hearing this, Duey suddenly thrust her face close to mine. Our two faces became so close that we were almost kissing, and I was startled by her sudden approach, slightly stepping back and dragging my feet.

Duey grabbed both my shoulders to prevent me from retreating.

“Then shall we talk about biology?”

“…What kind of biology?”

“Of course, the biology of humans. But in the end, even humans are just organisms.”

“Please get to the point in a way that’s easier to understand.”

“Why can humans kill humans?”

“The topic is too big. And it’s also a bit out of the blue.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? Humans shouldn’t kill humans originally. Because humans are genetically so close to each other. If we go back in time to before primitive times, humans ultimately came from one root, and it hasn’t been that long since we branched off from monkeys that seem completely different, and it’s even more recent that humans became different beings from each other. But think about it. Humans were born to kill. Everyone is born with an outstanding talent for murder. That’s what was naturally selected. Why on earth?”

“I guess the people who killed survived more.”

“The group that shares the most with me is my group. The tribe I belong to, the… family I belong to. What stimulates the most primitive murder desire in humans? There might be several answers, but I see it this way. Killing the man who stole my wife. And killing my wife who received that man’s seed. Even killing my offspring whose father is unknown.”

“Let’s stop this uncomfortable conversation.”

“Listen!”

Duey breathed heavily.

“So what I’m saying is that ethnicity, the nation-state, and the wheel of history that made us think ethnically, changed our lives forever. We suddenly realize. That other people’s families are also my ethnicity. That those people from other tribes over there are also people of my ethnicity. The scope of what needs to be protected expands. The category of people with similar genes to me broadens, and conversely, the hostility towards enemies who touch people of my ethnicity grows. In the pre-historical era, if a city tens of kilometers away was attacked, it might have been a story that could be ignored. But after history began, the news that a city tens of kilometers away was bombed by the enemy became news that we must be indignant and angry about. Why? Because history began. Now we must kill. We must take up weapons and kill those foreigners. That’s how it becomes. Isn’t that so?”

“What are you really trying to say?”

It was very burdensome because she was still thrusting her face close to mine. But Duey did something that not only didn’t alleviate my burden but rather greatly increased it. She suddenly overlapped her lips on mine.

I was startled and pushed Catherine Duey away, but the French lieutenant, strongly trained in the military, wasn’t pushed very far by my gesture. She brushed her swaying bangs to the side and continued speaking.

“The desire burning with love for one’s country is no different from the primitive desire of a monkey, that’s what I was saying.”

“…”

“So I realized as soon as I saw you. This person doesn’t love the country called Korea to begin with. A person who loves the country that gave birth to them would have at least a minimal, very minimal primitive spark, but you don’t have any such spark. You don’t have an organization you’re attached to. You don’t have a society, a world, a universe you belong to. Ah, what a pitiful and strange person.”

“…Your words might not be wrong. I don’t particularly like my country.”

“But a flame has flared up, I’m telling you!”

Duey shouted loudly.

“It’s a very simple thing for an ordinary person to love the country they were born in, and sometimes love it fanatically. It’s no different from an ant sacrificing itself to protect the queen ant, and it’s as natural a desire as a monkey cub flirting with a female. The desire for reproduction and loyalty to one’s country are fundamentally the same. Because it’s the manifestation of a filthy, brazen, criminal desire, but! You’re a person who doesn’t have that, right?”

I’m naturally a person who has no reason to like Korea.

I lost my entire family in a terrorist attack while going to see the Korean President.

I should have died, but at that moment, my ability ‘awakened’ to protect me, and I alone survived on the spot.

The American and Korean Presidents, who were the targets, survived thanks to the ironclad protection of the soldiers.

The only ones who died were me and my family, and the people who had gathered to watch. The country did nothing for me. The ones who reached out to me were the men in black suits from the CIA who were in charge of guarding the American President.

They weren’t kind to me. They became my home and my family, but in a true sense, I never felt… familial with them. There was a blade hidden in frivolous jokes, and a warm word was sugar-coating to send me on dangerous missions.

I became an orphan, but I wasn’t an orphan who grew up not knowing family love. I spent five cruel years that made me wish I hadn’t known it. I spent five years enduring by cutting, cutting, and cutting my heart again.

Why should I love Korea, or love America for that matter?

Why should I love the organization I belong to, the society I belong to? There’s no such thing for me. In the first year of my life as an operative, that naive young man who believed that he might be able to love people even while doing this job disappeared along with that Japanese civil servant who died on the execution stand.

Or… had disappeared.

“The love that ignited a fire in your heart won’t lead to any productive work. You know that yourself, don’t you?”

Duey said. I silently glared at her and wiped my mouth.

“Is this a criticism of all homosexuals now?”

“There’s no need to criticize or not criticize. It’s just, such things happen. Not everything that happens in the world has meaning. Going around in circles in the same place without any meaning, or tossing and turning in bed reading comics. It has no meaning, no productivity, but it’s not particularly something to be criticized. Same-sex relationships are like that too. They don’t lead to families, they don’t lead to genetic reproduction, they don’t particularly lead to belonging to any society or ethnicity.”

“…”

“It’s just something I’m not interested in.”

“If you’re not interested, couldn’t you just let it pass?”

“I see a very powerful destiny in you. Because the flame that has flared up in your chest is burning blue. Very blue and powerful. It means you have a desire to be swept up in a great whirlpool of destiny. Since coming to this school, I’ve only seen such a flame in two other people besides you.”

“Who?”

“Chen Yayuan and Zhou Lizhi.”

“…Have you seen Chen Yayuan?”

“I saw her in passing. Are you curious about my story?”

“…”

“If you’re curious, embrace me too. I need to confirm. Whether it was simply sex with a woman that lit such a fierce blue flame in a woman who had no flame at all, or if it was some other kind of communion.”