Codename Vestia

Chapter 13: Joonie

Doyeong suddenly stared at Gamal and said,

“Salt.”

Gamal handed him the salt shaker. Doyeong stared at the salt shaker for a moment. When he didn’t do anything, Gamal asked,

“Why?”

“Nothing.”

Doyeong shook the shaker and sprinkled some salt.

After finishing their meal, Gamal began to make a pump drill (a friction ignition tool using the pump principle) for starting a fire. It was fortunate, at least, that he didn’t have to rub wood together by hand to start a fire, but it still felt like something straight out of the primitive age.

It would have been much more convenient if they could make a fire piston (an ignition tool using pressure), but Gamal didn’t even have a knife to carve wood. He was really using a stone knife, like a person from the prehistoric era—a stone knife.

But even three thousand years ago, hadn’t Egypt already built the pyramids and more?

At this point, it felt more accurate to call him a survival enthusiast who deliberately chose primitive methods.

“Now that I think about it, where’s my knife?”

It was something he mentioned only now, but the knife Doyeong used to attack Gamal in the beginning was also stolen from Spetsnaz. Knowing it belonged to that guy probably made him quite upset.

“It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t play with things like that.”

Gamal spoke as if scolding a child. Doyeong was speechless. Nevertheless, he reached out to Gamal and said,

“Hand it over.”

And he ended up making the pump drill instead.

As Gamal took out some flowers, he watched Doyeong skillfully assemble the pump drill and asked,

“Major, how do you know how to do all this?”

People who had come to the island before Doyeong, the older they were, the better they were with hands-on skills, but even they were helpless and confused in the wilderness to this extent. Doyeong, however, was as skilled as a tribal warrior.

Without stopping what he was doing, Doyeong replied nonchalantly,

“My father used to take me out to forests and mountains a lot when I was a kid.”

He couldn’t exactly say it was because he had been in the special forces, but since it was also true thanks to his father, it wasn’t a lie.

Fortunately, Gamal didn’t seem to realize that the clothes Doyeong was wearing were military uniform.

“What about your mother?”

Out of the blue, Gamal felt curious about Doyeong’s family.

“A regular office worker.”

Doyeong answered.

It was a well-known cosmetics company that would immediately come to mind when thinking of France, but compared to Doyeong’s or his father’s former occupation, it fit under the category of ‘ordinary.’ So how did she end up marrying his father, who had been in the special forces…

“How did the two of them get married?”

Gamal asked, right on cue.

“They had lived in the same neighborhood since they were kids. Even so, they weren’t particularly close because of the age difference. But one day, when my mother was a university student, she started working part-time at a McDonald’s where my father often went.”

In fact, considering they lived in the land of gourmet cuisine, the French weren’t particularly fond of American fast-food chains….

“My father had an irregular work schedule. He often had to be out and about when all the other shops were closed, so he frequented the 24-hour fast-food restaurant.”

He already used to go there, but since someone he knew began working there, he started visiting that McDonald’s even more often.

“But then one day, he suddenly got curious. Why did my mother insist on working the early morning or night shifts, even though it was exhausting? So, one day, when he went to the store, he asked her. Why, he said.”

And then, from behind the counter, his mother replied with an indifferent, almost uncaring look in her eyes….

“Why do you think?”

Doyeong shrugged.

“It was just like that.”

Gamal understood and let out a small sound of admiration.

“That’s so cool. Really….”

Gamal wanted to find the right expression but couldn’t think of the word, so she clenched and unclenched her fists.

“Romantic, you mean?”

Doyeong asked knowingly, and Gamal nodded repeatedly.

“Yes.”

Doyeong chuckled.

“My uncle, who heard the story from my father, apparently scolded him, saying, ‘You only just figured that out?'”

“You have an uncle too.”

Doyeong looked at Gamal. A peculiar atmosphere seemed to hang in the air for a moment, then Doyeong casually said,

“I had one. He passed away.”

At the hands of a vampire.

It happened when Doyeong was ten years old. His father had tried to save his uncle, but it left him confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. No longer able to run, his father inevitably had to leave GIGN, the French counter-terrorism unit he had been so proud of, and their family went through a very difficult time for a while.

Even so, because they were a family, because they were family, the ones who remained held on and kept their place. His mother didn’t leave her husband who had lost the use of his legs, and his father, despite losing his brother, his legs, and along with them, his dreams, didn’t succumb to despair and give up on life.

For that reason, Doyeong, too, didn’t have the luxury of being consumed by hatred or resentment for what had taken his uncle away.

When he glanced over at Gamal, she seemed so absorbed in the story that she had forgotten about eating the flower she was holding.

One day, the vampires had brought flowers as a symbol of peace.

There had been a time when he couldn’t help but hate vampires, but over the course of time, he now had a vampire friend, colleagues, and even more….

He was starting to feel sleepy, perhaps because he had eaten too much.

“Sleepy. I’m going to sleep.”

Doyeong suddenly lay down. Gamal, wide-eyed, asked,

“All of a sudden?”

“Sleep always comes all of a sudden.”

Then Doyeong closed his eyes.

And before long, he actually fell asleep. His breathing shifted to a steady rhythm.

Gamal, who had been absentmindedly chewing on the flower she had forgotten about, stared at Doyeong. Beneath his closed eyelids, his pale lashes lay neatly, like a gentle line.

He looked just like a sculpture she had seen in ancient Athens, Greece.

Compared to the era she was born in, where rugged, overtly masculine men were hailed as the epitome of true manhood, Doyeong’s features were smooth and delicate enough to appear almost feminine. Yet, his masculinity remained unaffected.

His shoulders were broad, and the last time she had touched his stomach, it was firm. His hands were large….

For some reason, she had the urge to trace the bridge of his nose.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

She could hear the strong, rhythmic beating from within his ribcage.

The sound of his heart.

The sound of life.

Gamal moved closer, following that sound. As the distance narrowed, she could feel the breath slipping through the slightly parted, smooth-looking lips.

This feeling was unfamiliar to her.

Doyeong’s mother, who had chosen to work at the restaurant at odd hours just to see the man she liked.

Was this how she felt?

‘This kind of feeling?’

Gamal unconsciously questioned the thought.

Did that mean she liked Doyeong the way his mother liked his father?

But, no matter how evenly matched their fight had been at the beginning, Doyeong was just a human. Though, to be fair, he was certainly different from any of the other humans who had come to the island before….

At that moment, Doyeong suddenly opened his eyes.

Gamal flinched.

She expected him to frown and ask what she was doing, but instead, his sleepy eyes, a shade of blue mixed with gray, gazed at her—calm and deep, like the sea before a storm.

‘It’s because I was too close.’

Gamal thought and started to pull herself back.

“Sorry….”

But Doyeong pulled her towards him. Gamal was caught off guard and ended up being drawn in. Doyeong then laid her down next to him.

“You sleep too.”

Then, like soothing a baby, he gently patted her shoulder. Though he soon moved his hand away, warmth lingered on the spot where he had touched. Gamal lightly brushed over that area.

A soft smile formed on her lips.

***

Morning came, and Doyeong opened his eyes. But Gamal’s spot was empty. Judging by the neatly arranged blanket, she must have left with a purpose.

On the neatly folded blanket, there was a note.

*I gon outside.*

It seemed like she had tried her best, but her spelling was quite creative.

“What a mess.”

Doyeong muttered as he picked up the note.

For some reason, the crooked handwriting that showed signs of effort seemed cute, and Doyeong, baffled by his own reaction, put the note back in its place.

On the stove, like a mother who had made a pot of pasta before leaving on a trip, Gamal had left a pile of food for breakfast.

Doyeong finished his breakfast, stood up, and limped outside. The beach was empty.

“Where did she go?”

He wondered, but she wasn’t a five-year-old child left by the water, and he thought of her like a cat that would naturally return by sunset, so he wasn’t particularly worried.

Doyeong washed up briefly, then sat under the shade of the tree where he often spent his time. He pulled out a book he had brought with him.

*“Moby Dick.”*

It was a book he had found among a pile of books in various languages, likely left by visitors who had passed through this place. It was his first time reading it since he was a child….

As he was reading, he noticed something stuck between the last page of the book and the back cover.

“What’s this?”

He flipped the pages and found an old, faded envelope wedged inside.

Doyeong opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. It was written in an old style of French, with words and sentence structures that hinted at a Germanic language. But it wasn’t German….

It was Dutch.

“Johannes.”

For some reason, Doyeong immediately understood who had written this letter.

It seemed Johannes was quite an educated intellectual associated with the Dutch East India Company, and considering that French was the international language back then, he must have been quite proficient in it.

Doyeong couldn’t read Dutch, but judging by the similar length, he assumed the letter was written twice, probably with the same content.

He began reading the letter.

*”I taught Gamal my native language and about the world outside.”*

The old-fashioned language made it difficult to understand at times, but having read all of Molière (the national playwright of France), it wasn’t completely unreadable.

*”I have lived on this island for exactly 22 years.”*

He paused for a moment.

Twenty-two years…?

Suddenly, a sense of unease washed over him, mixed with an odd feeling—was it jealousy? The thought that Johannes had lived with Gamal for such a long time stirred something inside him.

No, he reminded himself, don’t forget. He and Gamal were nothing to each other, and they had no plans to be anything.

Doyeong continued reading the letter.

*”I missed my wife and children who were at home. Every day, I waited for a rescue team. I begged Gamal to help, and at times, I lashed out in anger, but she only told me there was no way off this island.*

*There was a time when my relationship with Gamal couldn’t have deteriorated any further. But in the end, it was just me and her on this island. We reconciled.*

*I fell in love with Gamal. She was beautiful and strong, and she cared for me devotedly.”*

Doyeong forced himself to keep reading as he turned to the next page.