Walker had rounded up illegal transplant recipients by the bunch. Shu and I had caught roughly equal numbers. The police led away the recipients one by one, their bodies limp from the Green Dream.

Most of those being taken away were in bad shape. I watched uneasily as the police cars disappeared from sight.

“Not bad,” Walker remarked offhandedly, looking at us. “You won't embarrass me if I take you to the Old Spider.”

“Thank you.”

Not that I'd done anything special.

Walker set off without another word. Shu and I took the hint and followed. All that chaos had cost us a fair bit of time. It was well past dinner. I was hungry and a little tired. It also stung to have gone all the way to a game shop without buying a single game.

But after all this, I was going to meet the Old Spider before leaving, no matter what. I did feel a little bad for Shu, who'd ended up missing dinner too.

We walked without much conversation until we reached our destination. The Old Spider's house wasn't far away: a house deep in the slums, its rusted steel framework lying bare.

Walker threw open the door of the house, which seemed entirely divorced from the boisterous Halloween atmosphere outside.

“Wow.” Shu, standing ahead of me, peered inside in admiration. “Someone's seriously rich.”

She was right. The battered metal door opened to reveal an interior utterly unlike the exterior walls.

A marble foyer with a gold-plated sculpture hanging from the ceiling. A sleek mirror that looked over two meters tall. A taxidermied bear holding a silver tray. Not a single thing looked cheap.

Mouth hanging open, I stepped inside onto the ivory marble floor. A faint scent of musk hung in the air.

Taking in the pleasant scent, I followed Walker. Soon we entered a drawing room laid with a warm-colored Persian carpet.

Someone was already sitting on the sofa, waiting for us. There was only one person in the spacious room, and drinks had been prepared for exactly the right number of guests. This had to be the fabled “Old Spider.”

I stared down blankly at the small elderly figure sitting there in a cable-knit cardigan, holding a cup of cocoa. She looked... small and kind.

“There you are, Walker.”

She even sounded like a friendly grandmother.

“I suppose those morons running amok again held you up.”

I took that back. Her words were vicious, in contrast to her smiling face.

Still, my overwhelming impression was of a sweet, kindly grandmother. The sort whose appearance would make you want to help her if you passed her on the street.

Walker stood in a corner of the drawing room without answering. The Old Spider smiled, then turned her gaze.

“Mr. Hildebert.”

Ah. She knew my name.

“And our young Badger. You can't have had dinner yet. Sit down and have some panini with me.”

“Just say what you want and get it over with.”

“You might not be hungry, but these two might be.”

Sipping her cocoa as she spoke, she was every inch the friendly grandmother.

“Please, sit. I haven't poisoned anything. Goodness, look how skinny you both are.”

Shu quietly went over and sat beside the Old Spider. And so we found ourselves having an unexpected dinner at a table decorated with cute little jack-o'-lanterns.

Swallowing a stretchy strand of cheese, I studied the Old Spider sitting nearby. She said she knew me.

I couldn't remember her. It wasn't even like Lee Seunghyeon, where the memories had hovered just out of reach. She simply felt like a stranger. Was it because the years had etched themselves into her face?

The only sound in the polished drawing room was that of us eating. Just when I thought it was about time she started talking, the Old Spider looked at Walker and Shu.

“Would you give us a moment alone?”

Shu and Walker looked between me and the information broker.

“I have something private to discuss with this new Badger.”

“Don't try anything funny with our junior.” Walker rose without hesitation. Still, he looked down at the Old Spider and added, “I don't want the commander-in-chief tearing me a new one for failing to look after a subordinate he's fond of.”

With that pointed warning, he made his way out of the drawing room as though he knew it well. Shu followed without argument. Just before leaving, she even remembered to mouth, “Call me if anything happens.”

I nodded as the door closed before me. The moment their footsteps faded out of hearing, the Old Spider spoke.

“Do you remember me?”

Oh dear. She turned to me with a kindly smile, and I looked back at her awkwardly.

“... I'm sorry. Not at all...”

“Oh, that's understandable.”

The Old Spider wasn't offended. Instead, she chuckled, her cup of cocoa in hand. She looked as though she'd expected that answer.

Feeling troubled, I apologized as she drank her cocoa. “I'm sorry.”

“Not at all. It really is understandable. I admired you from afar, that's all. I'm not sure we could even have said we knew each other.”

“You admired me?”

Why? Apparently, the thought showed plainly on my face. The Old Spider chuckled and set down her cocoa.

“It seems it's true that you've lost all your memories.”

“Yes...”

“You were someone a little girl could look up to.” She gazed into my eyes with a gentle smile. “You wore your unruly white hair long, and it looked wonderful. You were always at the center of a crowd, smiling at ease. Whenever I went to the lab holding my parents' hands, I'd watch you from a distance.”

“The lab?”

I'd heard plenty about having long hair, so that didn't surprise me. I remembered a spotless white floor. Remembered sitting there playing games with Ray. Had I been in some sort of laboratory after all?

Was that where I'd given humans eternal youth?

Meeting someone who knew me back then—the me who'd spent his time on that smooth, spotless floor—made my stomach churn. Yehyeon hadn't known me then, and Colton had no intention of telling me about that part of my life.

Perhaps she could give me answers.

The Old Spider swallowed a marshmallow that had been floating in her cocoa.

“My parents were brilliant scientists, and at the time, despite my age, I too was recognized as a scientist in my own right.”

She must have been a prodigy.

“Thanks to that, I was occasionally allowed as far as the reception room of the most heavily secured lab. I couldn't go any farther inside, unlike the authorized scientists.”

“The lab had a reception room?”

“Of course. You were always the one who came out as their representative. Don't you remember?”

The underworld information broker said something strange.

“You represented them alongside Kyle, didn't you?”

What? I leaned toward the Old Spider.

“I was what?”

“Their chief.” The information broker fixed me with sharp, intelligent eyes. “You were their leader, Mr. Hildebert.”

My body went rigid. For a long time, I forgot how to move. I stared stupidly ahead, barely aware of the expression on my face.

Then voices sprang from somewhere in my brain. Not just one or two. Many voices spoke to me, each in its own distinct manner. I recognized every one. Deltei, Nol, Yvonne, You, Rin...

And so many others. The people I'd sworn to protect until my dying breath. And the moment I'd set foot on Earth beside them.

Another mass of memories came crashing down. Nausea surged up.

“Where's the bathroom?”

“Leave the drawing room and walk straight to the end of the hall.”

The Old Spider showed no surprise even though I'd leapt to my feet to ask.

“Let me know if you need a sedative.”

I headed for the bathroom without looking back. I wrenched the door open. I had no strength left to close it.

The moment I reached the toilet, I threw up everything I'd eaten for dinner. Even that didn't settle my stomach. I gagged and retched until I was bringing up stomach acid.

Its sour smell stung my nose. Tears blurred my vision. After retching for a long time, I leaned against the wall and sank to the floor.

I barely suppressed the urge to cry. The memory of swearing on my sword, so very long ago, that I would devote my life to my people was stabbing at my heart. Now that memory remained only as a faint shape, like a daydream. Every attempt to bring it into focus only made it dissolve into haze.

With the sword I'd sworn on to protect my people, I had ordered Ray's death. Saying we should hope that some fragment of feeling remained in him.

And that sword was in Yehyeon's hands now.

“No wonder they want me dead so badly.” I gave a hollow laugh, remembering what Jin had told me. “Even grinding up my corpse and drinking it wouldn't be enough to satisfy them.”

Why had I betrayed them? Why... had I turned my back on Kyle and pointed a blade at Ray? Why had I abandoned those I'd sworn to protect and sided with humanity?

I'd known war was coming. I'd known the time would come to fight Ray. It had to have been a decision made after careful deliberation.

But whatever my reasons, they couldn't change the fact that I'd abandoned my people.

A lifetime of atonement would never erase that sin. Not even if I took my sword back from Yehyeon and slit my own throat with it. Not even if I was brutally butchered by Colton, whose hand I'd clasped.

“And on top of it all, I forgot everything and lived without a care.” A desolate laugh escaped me as I mocked myself. “Am I the worst leader in recorded history or what?”

I didn't even have the right to cry that I was sorry.

I sat on the bathroom floor for a long time, surrounded by the sour smell of stomach acid. Until Walker and Shu came, took me by the arms, and dragged me out.

* * *

I had no strength to stay any longer. The Old Spider told me to go home and rest. In truth, she said, she didn't have much more to tell me anyway.

Brilliant though she was, she'd still been a child, and only a visitor to the lab. She could watch me from a distance, but she'd had few chances to approach and speak to me. I was always surrounded by people, she said, busy discussing important matters with them.

She said she'd spoken briefly with me exactly twice.

“You gave me chocolate both times.” The Old Spider laughed behind her hand. “You said my parents had told you I liked it. You looked so wonderful, pressing chocolate into my hand while I stood there pouting.”

“Did I?” I smiled weakly.

I truly couldn't remember. Nor did I have the strength to recall anything more just then.

I gave her an apologetic smile. “I'm sorry. I don't remember.”

“It would be strange if you did. You were meeting so many people back then. I was just an immature little girl who desperately wanted to be one of them. My parents were very fond of you too.”

“What were their names?”

At my faint question, a curious smile appeared on the Old Spider's lips.

“If I told you that, you'd learn my name too.”

I'd completely forgotten she was a major player in the underworld.

And so our brief meeting ended. The Old Spider handed me over to my seniors waiting outside the drawing room. Walker grumbled as he supported my limp body.

The information broker saw us to the door with a kindly smile. “Get home safely, Mr. Hildebert. Come and see me whenever you like.”

“Pretty smooth farewell for someone who's reduced the kid to a wreck,” Walker said gruffly. “And stop blushing. It's disturbing.”

I left the Old Spider's house practically carried by Walker. I never got to ask how a promising young scientist had become a famous underworld information broker, how she'd come to know Walker, or why she lived in such a rundown neighborhood when she had so much money.

I had no strength to ask.

Shu kept peering at my face, a faint worry on her otherwise impassive features, but I could barely react. A single remark from the information broker had reduced me to a complete wreck. Without Walker, I wouldn't even have been able to walk properly.

Utterly vacant, I let my senior drag me along. Somehow, he knew to dump me at the cabin rather than the dorms.

“Call if anything happens,” Shu said, worry in her normally impassive blue eyes. “We'll let Yun know.”

“Thank you.” My voice was hoarse as I said goodbye to my two seniors. “I've been far too much trouble.”

“Get some sleep.” Walker's voice was ominous as he stepped outside the cabin. “I'll hear the rest of the story later.”

The door closed gently, cutting off my view of Ami and Yun's house opposite, festooned with pumpkins. I was left alone.

Silence gradually settled as their footsteps receded. Long after I could no longer sense them, I stood where I was without moving.

Only when my legs began to ache unbearably did I turn and walk toward the bed. I didn't remember anything after that.

Perhaps I hadn't wanted to.

* * *

It was Yun who woke me the next day. He came into the cabin and gently shook me where I lay sprawled on the floor.

“Ah.”

“I heard what happened.” True to form, my training officer went straight to the point. “Can you get up? Let's take a look at that game first.”