Chapter 187. A Moment of Silence
"Wow. It's pitch black! It looks like it'll taste like a delicious Americano."
Serin was delighted.
The moment the UN speech ended, the members and I came to a nearby craft-beer pub.
The first and second quarters of the Super Bowl still hadn't finished.
We'd made the best possible choice, but I still felt a little regretful about missing the live stage.
I almost wondered whether doing the opening show would've been better.
Of course, in terms of results, getting the Halftime Show broadcast was easily twice as valuable.
If I felt disappointed, the members probably did too.
So I brought them here to drink a little and make some memories.
There happened to be a television hanging in one corner of the pub, showing the Super Bowl.
Don't Germans like soccer?
This place was a little unusual.
At least we'd be able to check the reaction to our stage immediately.
"Apparently this is a dark beer made by a company called Pauruno. Is it expensive?"
Not really.
Aran took one sip of the dark beer, then immediately stopped touching it.
"This kind of tastes like ale."
"You mean it's really bitter?"
"No, that's not what I... Yeah."
I ordered everyone another glass of something easier to drink.
The regular beer disappeared much faster than the dark beer we'd ordered first.
"Uuugh, there are so many people..."
Serin sank into her chair and looked up at the television.
"Unni, it hasn't even been ten minutes since you started drinking. Are you already drunk?"
"Mmm. I think I'm tired..."
Serin squeezed her eyes shut.
Fortunately, the only drink left in front of her was the extremely bitter dark beer.
Youngchae unnecessarily started massaging Serin's arm.
"You did really well on the speech today too. Do you still wish we were over there performing live?"
"It's not that I want to go. It's just... seeing a huge crowd gets me excited, you know? Every time I perform in front of a lot of people, it still feels like a dream to me. You guys all seem used to it already."
Serin said that no matter how much she ate, she was always hungry.
Even the day after performing five consecutive solo concerts in front of crowds of over five thousand people, she'd watch 〈Music Bang Bang〉 and feel jealous.
Even after holding number one on Mango for ages with a new song, if another group released a song and appeared on a variety show, she'd feel jealous of that too.
It was almost as if two Serins existed inside her.
The successful Serin.
And the Serin who still hadn't succeeded.
Youngchae said,
"Your greed really has no end. What, do you want to use a clone technique or something?"
"Clone technique? Oh~ That sounds nice."
Youngchae had said it as a joke at first, but after thinking about it herself, she bit her thumbnail as though the idea was suddenly appealing.
"Having two or three clones would actually be useful. One could be over there, one could be at the speech, and one could stay right next to CEO-nim like this."
"Exactly! Then I want four! I need enough free time for one of me to follow CEO-nim around all day!"
Aran enthusiastically joined Youngchae's fantasy.
"What would you even do following me around?"
"Obviously watch all the incidents and accidents. CEO-nim is like 〈Detective Boy Nam Jeon-il〉. Trouble follows you everywhere."
Youngchae said I understood people well, so she wanted to follow me around and learn from me as a person.
Anna said she wanted to talk with me all day.
What am I?
An Intangible Cultural Heritage?
A living oral-tradition archive?
All four of these dazzling moons, each bright enough on her own, wanted to spend time with me.
Youngchae tapped Serin's shoulder while Serin kept her eyes closed.
Was she tired?
Should we head back soon?
"Unni! Wake up. If you could make clones too, would you have one follow CEO-nim?"
"Mmm? Mmm."
"What would you do while following him?"
Serin half-opened her eyes and pressed one fingertip against her cheek as she thought.
"I'd just... just look at CEO-nim."
"Look at him and do what?"
"Just look~. Stare at him~."
Even while saying that, Serin closed her eyes again.
Instead, Youngchae, Anna, and Aran took over the job of staring at me.
Three pairs of eyes watched me carefully.
Let's see.
Where's the AED in this place...?
There it is.
Next to the restroom.
Just then, a group of people gathered in front of the television groaned in German.
The first two quarters must've ended and the Halftime Show had begun.
They were probably disappointed that the first half of the game was over.
But soon, they'd see something so precious they'd forget all about that disappointment.
Everyone, get excited.
Of course, I needed to be excited too.
Because I was finally about to learn what that breaking-news report was.
The Halftime Show began.
The prerecorded Blue Moon performance started playing.
Serin, who had been half asleep, snapped her eyes open and quickly put on a hat and mask.
Apparently, she'd recovered enough consciousness to monitor reactions.
The farther Blue Moon's stage progressed, the louder the cheers in the pub became.
Then came the final highlight.
When the images of Michael Jason and Kerins appeared and disappeared, the roar that shook the pub was so loud it caused momentary chaos.
Some people clutched their heads and cried openly.
Those who wanted to scream could scream.
Those who wanted to cry could cry.
[Wow... Blue Moon barked...]
┗[Why "barked"? Shouldn't it be "tore it up"?]
┗[Can't use "tore it up." That's Youngchae's thing.]
[Youngchae dances insanely well ㄷㄷㄷ Isn't she basically the god and king of dance at this point?]
[What the hell was that hologram? Sob... The planning was insane ㅠㅠ]
[Michael Jason and Kerins came out? Damn, I missed them because I was watching Youngchae.]
[Blue Moon is performing at the Super Bowl. My national pride is overflowing...]
┗[Why "national pride" instead of "national high"?]
┗[Drugs are illegal in Korea, so no getting high.]
[Whose voice is that in the middle of 〈Smooth Desperado〉 going "everybody okay~"? That chorus is broken-tier.]
┗[I wanna know too.]
┗[Any Apollo elders here?]
┗[It's Youngchae~.]
The performance was also airing on KBC in Korea.
Naturally, real-time reactions were spreading online too.
At first, I thought I'd accidentally opened the Apollo fan café after they'd redesigned the site like an internet browser for April Fools' Day.
The entire nation seemed united in fanboying.
After Lady Gagarin's performance ended, the long-awaited Mary Wild appeared on screen.
The roar of the live crowd completely filled the audio.
Well, well.
You showed up at the perfect time.
You'd been especially arrogant.
Let's see just how good you are.
The intro to her signature song, 〈The Sphinx〉, began.
As the instrumental played, Mary Wild sharpened her gaze and confidently strode around the stage.
Every step she took made the audience's cheers surge.
Even before the first lyric, her determination to seize control of the entire stadium reached all the way here to Germany.
But she only managed to seize it.
That was all.
The instant she brought the microphone to her lips, the long-awaited, eagerly anticipated, desperately awaited breaking-news report cut in.
A German anchor with an urgent expression spoke breathlessly while a photo of a bearded man in a turban appeared on screen.
"What's he saying?"
This was it.
The breaking news.
This report was the reason the remaining performances would be pushed until after the game.
I'd tried all kinds of things to figure out what it would be beforehand, but couldn't.
That meant the future spam had cared more about the delay in the Halftime Show broadcast than the incident itself.
Still, I'd been curious the whole time about what had happened.
Anna narrowed her eyes and concentrated on the report.
"They're saying Ali Zahed, the leader of El Cairo who terrified the world after the civilian terrorist attacks against the United States, was killed by US special forces."
This isn't English or Thai.
It's German.
How is she translating it?
"Apparently, they'd been in a standoff for several hours when a US Army sergeant named Robert Wimby was shot. He must've realized his wound was already fatal, because he charged into the room where Ali Zahed was barricaded, fired repeatedly, then detonated a grenade and blew himself up. Ali Zahed was taken to a hospital but died soon afterward. The rest of the rebels were badly injured too, and the operation ended without greater casualties, but they couldn't save Sergeant Robert Wimby. He died instantly."
I was stunned.
Not only by the news itself.
But by Anna's translation skills.
"Isn't this German? How did you translate all of that?"
"What? Ah, no. I'm just picking out the words I roughly know, reading them one by one, and guessing the rest."
So she had just guessed that the leader of El Cairo, Ali Zahed, who had terrorized the world through attacks on civilians, was killed in an assault by Sergeant Robert Wimby of the US special forces.
That Wimby's sacrifice prevented greater civilian casualties.
And that Wimby himself could not be saved.
She figured all of that out by guessing?
...Well.
Anna was the kind of person who could probably guess her way into a doctorate in any subject.
Anyway.
Enough admiring Anna.
I searched for Ali Zahed.
Apparently, more than a decade ago, he had masterminded a horrifying attack that sent three fighter jets into the United States and unleashed missiles and gunfire across several urban areas, killing hundreds.
If he had been willing to do that in a foreign country as distant as America, then the massacres he'd committed against civilians in his own region must have been unimaginable.
Sergeant Robert Wimby had chosen to stop future casualties even knowing he would bear the moral responsibility of killing Ali Zahed.
The customers who had been completely absorbed in the Halftime Show moments earlier quietly lowered their heads in mourning.
The members and I awkwardly stood too and observed our own moment of silence.
If I were Hyeonui-ong guarding the Samdo River, I'd gladly overlook a few of his minor sins.
"They tried to save both Ali Zahed and Sergeant Wimby at the scene but failed. Still, they're saying Ali Zahed will be judged with the full severity of the law, and Sergeant Wimby will receive a medal for distinguished service. The government will support his family. They're dedicating the glory of the operation's victory to Sergeant Wimby."
The glory of the operation's victory to Sergeant Wimby...
That sounded similar to what the commentators had said in the future-spam video.
So this was what happened.
Was I supposed to be happy?
Or sad?
I knew almost nothing about ethics, but even just searching through a few articles made it seem fair to say Ali Zahed barely qualified as human.
He was someone who deserved to die.
I was glad that a monster among monsters would never commit another atrocity.
But I was saddened that a righteous man like Sergeant Wimby had died in the process.
The news continued for a while, giving a detailed explanation of the operation.
Even Anna couldn't fully translate the anchor's report once it became mixed with frantic dialogue from soldiers caught on camera.
Still, it was obvious what was happening.
US troops were fighting through an urban battlefield.
Every so often, bullets struck nearby surfaces and clouds of dust burst up without warning.
Eventually, the news ended and the third quarter of the Super Bowl began.
The customers in the pub quietly and awkwardly returned to their seats.
I hadn't expected the breaking news to be tragic enough to crush the atmosphere this completely.
"Uh... This is..."
Serin, looking considerably more sober now, opened her mouth hesitantly.
"Huh? Serin, are you already sober?"
"Yes. I didn't drink much, so I guess it wore off quickly."
Serin looked up at the television.
"But that news report just interrupted the Halftime Show, right?"
"That's what happened."
"...Then out of the six performers, only us and Lady Gagarin actually made it onto the broadcast?"
Uh...
Well.
Yes.
Lady Gagarin.
Congratulations.
