130. Yarman

As long as I complete this mission, I should be promoted to department head, right? Then I can finally stop charging into battle myself and dump all those irritating, exhausting dirty jobs on my subordinates.

Yarman raised a hand, signaling the team behind him to halt and rest in place.

Leaning against a mottled concrete wall, he pulled a high-calorie chocolate bar from his tactical vest pocket, tore open the wrapper, and shoved it into his mouth.

The cloying yet bitter taste spread across his tongue, reminding him of military rations, though the two tasted worlds apart.

During that brief moment to catch his breath, the thought that he could relax once this job was done surfaced in his mind again, as it always had—like a tiny thorn that neither hurt nor itched, yet remained lodged there, soon to be pulled out.

The name Yarman carried the meaning of "soldier, a soldier's courage and light," and his life had indeed remained inextricably entangled with a military career, just as his name foretold.

When he hastily signed his name at the recruitment office at eighteen, he had thought he was making the first independent choice of his life.

During six years in New America's military, from crawling through the mud on training camp fields to witnessing flesh and blood explode amid gunfire on foreign battlefields, he had never retreated—though rather than courage, it was more like numbness. On the day he retired, he tore up every document related to the military, believing he had finally escaped that miserable experience.

Until mountains of bills and payment notices filled his inbox.

Militech's recruitment letter arrived at just the right time. Their offer was enough to pay off his parents' medical debts at the hospital and his younger sister's tuition, so he returned to