Even though he said it as if it was nothing, Sun Jin quickly understood the meaning behind his words and smiled bitterly.

Certainly, the work that Sun Jin and Seung Joo did was too difficult to be done while loving someone else at the same time.

“So I thought it was okay to do it. Because you can only do it if you really like them.”

“Right. It’s impossible if you don’t really like them.”

Putting your body against someone else’s meant that. Sun Jin was readily agreeing and nodding her head when, at that moment,

Na Eun, who had been silently listening to the two’s conversation for some reason, glanced around for a moment before opening her mouth and dropping a bomb.

“That… you don’t necessarily have to like them to do it, right?”

“……”

“……”

In the bustling pub, silence fell upon their table for a moment.

Seung Joo stopped fiddling with his side dish chopsticks, and Sun Jin also put down the glass she was about to drink from.

For a split second, but professionally, the two made eye contact.

Sun Jin, who read the signal from Seung Joo, deliberately asked Na Eun as if nothing was wrong.

“You’re saying you can do it even if you don’t like them?”

Even though Na Eun noticed that the atmosphere between the two had intentionally changed, she didn’t realize the seriousness of the situation and rolled her eyes before carefully saying,

“Rather than that… you don’t necessarily need to have feelings of liking them to do that, right?”

Na Eun alternately looked at her two friends, whose expressions had hardened without any reaction, and fidgeted, not knowing what to do, thinking she might have said something wrong.

Then what kind of feelings would allow you to do that? After hesitating for a moment at Sun Jin’s question, she drove the point home.

“Can’t you also do it as a form of comfort?”

Amidst the clamor inside the pub, a frightening silence once again descended upon the table where they were seated.

Exactly 5 seconds later, Seung Joo, with a stiff face, loudly put down the chopsticks he was holding onto the table with a clack.

“…What kind of nonsense is this again.”

“Teacher, did you see the thirteenth hero appear?”

The more difficult life is, the harder you have to work to make a living.

Even in the midst of being mentally exhausted from experiencing too many things recently, Na Eun was still doing more than 3 private tutoring sessions.

Considering that she had a lot of free time due to the vacation, this was already reduced.

Na Eun, who was grading the English problems the child had solved, glanced at the video the child was showing her on their phone before lowering her gaze.

Black military uniform, black hat, and mask.

Although they were all dressed the same, Na Eun, who knew very well who was hidden inside, deliberately avoided looking.

Since learning about her friends’ hidden occupations, she had refrained from actively seeking out their exploits because she disliked how she would prematurely become fearful and worried about them.

The sparkling screen continued to display new chat windows at the bottom, as if informing that it was in real-time.

“Oh, he just stopped a falling signboard with one hand! Amazing.”

It seemed that a terrorist attack had occurred at a department store in the center of Seoul.

The video was very chaotic, with the screams of people who had turned into a living hell in an instant, the voices of reporters conveying the incident, and even the voices of those admiring the exploits of the heroes saving citizens from a distance, all tangled together.

“Turn off your phone. It’s class time right now.”

Trying hard to focus on grading, Na Eun said firmly, and the student across from her pouted while holding the phone.

“Aren’t you curious, Teacher? I’m telling you, the thirteenth one appeared!”

Then what’s the next alphabet…

While the child’s nonchalant words, as if a new celebrity had debuted, were deplorable, Na Eun felt bitter inside at the thought that she would have had a similar reaction if she hadn’t known them personally.

Na Eun was about to put down the colored pencil she was grading with to stop the kid who still wouldn’t let go of his phone despite her warning.

“Oh no. What do we do.”

Seeing the child startle and shrink his shoulders while looking at the screen, Na Eun almost threw the colored pencil she was holding and snatched the phone from the boy’s hand.

Bringing it to her side and hurriedly checking the screen, Na Eun’s complexion turned pale white.

On the screen, a close-up of the hero who disappeared after being crushed under the building while rescuing a hostage was shown.

Confirming the hellish scene where the person crushed was not visible at all due to the building debris and dust, Na Eun covered her mouth with one hand to suppress a scream.

“Teacher?”

What’s wrong? The student, who was more surprised than Na Eun by her reaction, called out to her in bewilderment, but Na Eun couldn’t give any answer.

The white hand covering her mouth trembled violently.

Terrorist attacks that occurred two to three times a month were now a part of daily life, although unwanted.

Bombs exploding in crowded downtown areas, helicopters crashing, or suddenly appearing assailants randomly killing citizens were quite common occurrences.

So, there are bound to be unavoidable sacrifices.

Although heroes prioritize suppressing terrorism and protecting the weak, in the end, they are not gods, so they cannot be omnipotent in everything, and it was inevitable that there would be those they could not protect in every terrorist attack.

In each battle, Hee Won coldly distinguished between ‘hostages that can be saved’ and ‘hostages that cannot be saved’.

Honestly, he thought it didn’t really matter if they died, but since the mission he was assigned was to rescue civilians, Hee Won was doing his best to save people ‘if possible’.

However, when it interfered with the battle, when it hindered the progress of the work, or when he judged that the benefits of not saving them outweighed the effort to save them, he mercilessly discarded the lives of civilians.

He didn’t feel the slightest guilt for such actions.

What can you do about something that can’t be helped?

Even when people around him pointed fingers, calling him a psychopath and saying he wasn’t fit to be a hero, he had no intention of changing the way he had been doing things.

He judged that it was the most efficient way, and the high mission success rate so far proved that his choices were not wrong.

The hostage caught in today’s terrorist attack was the same.

It was only one person.

If they got caught up with that one person, not only would they not be able to catch the enemies aiming guns at them from behind, but the lives of other civilians hiding in the building that had not yet collapsed would also be in danger.

‘Abandon them and go to the building in the back and stand by.’

The team leader’s orders are absolute during a mission.

But perhaps the curse of Ji Hwan, the center director and his uncle, who said, “Let them suffer a bit,” had worked, the kid who had just started his activities would not listen to Hee Won at all.

He insisted that he had to save that one person, and in the end, he chose to save them and get crushed under the large department store building himself instead.

Fortunately, he didn’t die. Although he almost died from his injuries.

“If you wanted to play hero that badly, you should have said so.”

After the situation was settled, Hee Won, who had safely returned to the center with all the team members, expressed anger towards his younger brother who had regained consciousness in the center’s hospital ward, which he had not shown before.

Hee Won, who walked towards the hospital bed where Jae Won was lying with his hands in his pockets, tilted his head and smirked.

“If you had told me earlier, I would have just let you die there today. Did I save you for nothing?”

“……”

“If you had died there, they would have praised you on the news, saying it was a noble sacrifice or whatever. Isn’t it a pity?”

Jae Won, who had never properly faced his brother’s anger as he had never openly opposed him before, just shrugged his shoulders and kept his head down without answering.

Seung Joo and Sun Jin, who had followed him to the hospital room out of concern, remained silent without defending Jae Won even in the face of Hee Won’s sarcasm.

Although they couldn’t say that Jae Won’s choice was wrong, it was clearly a mistake not to follow the team leader’s orders during the mission.

Moreover, the team leader was not just Jae Won’s superior, but his older brother. They accepted that Hee Won’s anger was justified.

“Answer me, Seo Jae Won. I’m asking if you wanted to play hero.”

“……”

“You think you’ve become something just because people praise you, calling you a hero or whatever.”

How dare you ignore my orders during a mission and act on your own? And you, a rookie who just started activities today?

Even in the midst of this, instead of saying, “I was worried because you almost died,” Hee Won was angry, asking, “Why did you ignore my orders?” Seung Joo and Sun Jin silently clicked their tongues inwardly.

They had forgotten because he had only shown a devoted attitude towards Na Eun, but Seo Hee Won was originally such an ice-cold person.

“…I couldn’t believe it when you told me to abandon them.”

Jae Won, who had been keeping his head down as if acknowledging his mistake, finally spoke for the first time.

Hee Won frowned and retorted. What?

“As soon as that one person was caught, you said to abandon them.”

“So what.”

“……”

“If you have a narrow view, just shut up and follow my orders. If we had gotten caught up with that one hostage, forget catching the terrorists, the rest of the civilians would have all died too.”

“…Did you tell me to do that because you were afraid more people would die?”

“Are you showing off your stupidity? Can’t you do the math?”

The angry Hee Won spoke relentlessly.

“There were at least twenty people behind the building. You did that stupid thing, trying to save one person while abandoning those twenty.”

“…I admit that it was wrong of me to ignore your orders. But then, is that one person’s life worth less than the twenty? Just because it’s one person?”

Because the number is small? Looking at his brother as if he really couldn’t understand, Seung Joo sighed and Sun Jin swallowed a sigh inwardly.

Because they felt strange seeing the youngest one now starting to have the same concerns they had countless times since starting this life.

The two could understand both Hee Won who was angry and Jae Won who was arguing back.

It was for similar reasons that they had rebelled against Hee Won in all sorts of ways while being entangled as the same team until now.

But as they got older and continued their activities, the two gradually began to accept that they could not save the lives of all people.

It meant that they were finding a good compromise between the team leader’s cold judgment and their own sense of justice to save everyone.

Jae Won, who had not yet done that, inevitably clashed with his brother.

“Seo Jae Won. It’s better to save twenty people than one person. If you’re going to argue that the weight of human lives shouldn’t be judged by numbers, go and blabber in the philosophy department.”

Jae Won stared at his brother, who was saying such cold-blooded words that it was doubtful if his blood was blue, and asked,

“…Could you still say that even if that one person was Na Eun noona?”