The reason Lin had not acted was the tearful look in Hun's eyes, hinting for him to look at the child in the corner—the other person in that photograph.
At the very least, don't do it in front of the child.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at the boy, who had been startled and terrified when he drew his gun. Judging from the boy's awful complexion and cracked lips, he had likely been trapped in this room for days, watching his mother's entire transformation from normal to mutated.
The boy's pupils were unfocused. His throat, unused for so long, produced meaningless syllables, while his wandering gaze did not know where to settle.
Three days ago, his mother had stumbled home. Claws had already grown from her hands, and she was delirious, yet she had still told him to find some chains and bind her to the bed.
From his corner, he had watched his mother, who had initially comforted him, gradually descend into incoherent rambling and agonized struggling, her body slowly stained deathly white until she became a monster, leaving behind only terrifying growls.
The boy had not known what to do. Go find someone? But who? The police? A doctor? His mind was a mess. He had merely curled up numbly in the corner, going nowhere as he stared blankly at the mother who no longer recognized him.
Not many people lived in this old apartment building. Even the landlord never came here except to collect rent. After all these days, no one had noticed anything unusual about this room.
Until Lin and Hun arrived.
Were they going to kill Mom?
The coldness in Lin's eyes as he held up his gun carved itself deeply into the boy's mind, making his unfocused pupils contract.
Somehow finding the courage and strength to stand, he let out a strange roar and tried to rush forward to seize the gun. But before he could even take his first step, Lin instantly swung the barrel around and steadily aimed it at the boy's forehead.
The killing intent and terror of death made the boy stop in his tracks.
"Wait, Team Member Lin!" Hun stepped in front of the boy as well. Facing Lin's indifferent gaze, which even his sunglasses could not conceal, she could not help swallowing before gritting her teeth. "Team Member Lin, how can you point a gun at an innocent person?"
"..."
Lin looked past Hun's shoulder at the boy without saying anything, but he lowered the gun. That motion made Hun sigh in relief.
Before she could continue trying to persuade him, Lin tossed a syringe into her hand.
"This is... an inhibitor?" There was no need to ask which laboratory had produced that shimmering green liquid. This medicine could suppress the erosion of Honkai Energy. MOTH regularly distributed a certain amount of inhibitors to its soldiers, but never many. They were too difficult to manufacture, their effects were merely average, and overuse could even create drug resistance.
Lin had far more missions involving Honkai Energy than other people. Considering that he was a valuable elite soldier with low Honkai Energy resistance, he was allocated more inhibitors than most.
Lin tersely pointed his pistol at the vacant-eyed boy. "Use it on him."
Those words, cold enough to freeze water, made Hun shudder. She turned her head with difficulty and looked at the boy's neck.
His deathly pale skin made her pupils shrink.
What would happen after three days of close contact with Honkai Energy?
The boy noticed her gaze too. Following it downward, he saw that pallid skin.
The exact same color as his mother's—a color that symbolized death.
Suddenly, one hand covered his eyes while another pulled him into a trembling yet warm embrace. A faint fragrance made the nerves he had strained without rest for days finally loosen.
"I-It's okay. There's an inhibitor. You can still be saved, so don't worry." Cold sweat seeped down Hun's back as she clutched the icy syringe and gasped for breath, relief rising in her heart.
Luckily, Lin had an inhibitor. Luckily, they had arrived in time...
Tears flowed once more from the boy's dry eye sockets, and hope appeared in his dull eyes. "Really?"
"Really."
This time, Lin answered. He put away his pistol and walked over to the boy. His originally cold, stern voice carried a hint of warmth. "You and your mother will both get better. We got here in time. It isn't a serious illness. You'll be fine once you get the inhibitor."
"Really? Then you won't kill my mom?"
"No. I never kill people."
"That's great..."
Hun could no longer bear to watch. Making a child barely in his teens go through this was simply too cruel.
Especially when, after he woke up, those gentle lies would be brutally torn apart.
Lin comforted the boy in a soft voice until the boy, who had not slept for three days, finally relaxed completely and was overcome by drowsiness, falling into a deep sleep.
"Inject him with the inhibitor." The instant the boy closed his eyes, frost once again covered Lin's voice. Without even half a second of hesitation, he smoothly drew his pistol and aimed it at the Deadwalker on the bed.
This time, no one would stop him.
Lin pulled the trigger.
Blood splattered across the pale wall.
"Team Member Lin, are we taking this child back to MOTH?"
After Lin contacted the appropriate personnel to handle the aftermath, Hun carried the boy, who had already been injected with the inhibitor, over to him and looked at Lin with some fear.
Lin lowered his communicator. "No."
"Then what do we do with him..."
"Kill him."
"..."
For a moment, Hun thought she had misheard.
Had that man whose face could never be seen just casually uttered that word?
"Why..."
Holding the boy, she backed away step by step, as though she had seen a monster even more terrifying than a Honkai Beast. Lin ignored her and drew his gun once again to inspect the bullets in the magazine.
"Click."
The sound of bullets knocking together struck Hun's heart.
As meticulous as he was before every sortie, Lin checked his equipment with painstaking care—for the sake of killing the enemy. "Inhibitors have poor effects on deep erosion. Moreover, the speed of Honkai Energy erosion is influenced to some degree by the host's emotions and mental state. His mind is fragile. The inhibitor can at most help him get through this sleep peacefully."
In a few hours at most, perhaps in only a few dozen minutes, the boy would become a Deadwalker.
"But we can take him back to base and stabilize his condition..."
"There is no such thing as stabilizing his condition. No one knows how long it will take to develop a cure for Honkai erosion, how many resources it will consume, or when it will be his turn to use it." Every word Lin spoke was like a blade piercing Hun's heart. "And MOTH will not keep a Deadwalker. In the best-case scenario, he would only be cut into pieces by some laboratory. It might even be your parents who do it."
"But he's human! His mother was human before this too! Don't you have even the slightest bit of compassion?"
"The Deadwalkers you killed—weren't they human before they died too?"
Lin's simple words made Hun collapse to the floor completely.
"Those who died, those we killed—we bear their lives. So any hesitation or pity toward the Honkai is..."
A desecration of life.
Lin did not say the final sentence. He merely took the boy silently from Hun's arms and headed toward the deserted rooftop.
"Team Member Lin, if I were eroded by the Honkai too, would you pull the trigger?" Hun looked at his back and revealed a desolate smile.
"Yes."
The boy woke hazily from his sleep and happened to see Lin, who had removed his mask and sunglasses, quietly gazing out over the city beneath the evening glow.
"Big brother..."
The blazing sunset reflected in Lin's deep pupils as he said softly, "Your mother is already being treated. Go back to sleep."
"I can't sleep." The boy shook his head. "Big brother, you're so pretty. I want to talk to you."
"...What do you want to talk about?"
"Can I go back to school? My classmates all tell me to drop out, and my teacher said I owe tuition and told me to leave... But Mom told me she had lots and lots of money now. She said she would pay the tuition soon, and the rent too, and buy me new clothes..."
"You can. You'll return to school very soon. You need to study hard."
"That's great. Mom told me to study hard too, so I can become rich someday..."
Lin silently listened to the boy's murmuring, his lips pressed tightly together. He said nothing.
Until the sunset vanished beyond the horizon.
Until night fell.
Until innocent words turned into growls.
Under a starless sky, the gun fired.
Humans Aren't Special. You Aren't, and Neither Am I
"The mission's over? Then stay in Canghai City for a few days."
"Where do you think all these missions are supposed to come from? Do you think MOTH only has Squad Five?"
"Cut the nonsense. If you dare return to headquarters early, I'll submit your disability application and make you a mascot at headquarters for the next few months."
"Take Hun under your wing more. She's a promising newcomer. Of course, don't teach her your work ethic of exhausting yourself to death. If other people pushed themselves as hard as you do, they'd shorten their lives."
Lin frowned throughout his conversation with Himiko. He could hear her shouting about drinking on the other end of the line. She was probably having a drinking party with several comrades from her generation, chatting about topics only vulgar old women and crude old men would discuss.
Perhaps people were simply like that. They relaxed to their hearts' content whenever they could enjoy themselves, so they could forget past sorrow and face the disasters bound to come.
Looking at it that way, he was the odd one out.
There was nothing more to say. Lin ended the noisy call, then turned to the girl with streaked inner hair, who stood there at a loss. "We may be staying for a few days. Let's find somewhere to stay first."
"O-Okay."
As they walked, Hun could not help glancing at Lin's expression, but all she could see was the tightly wrapped mask and sunglasses. His airtight attire made him seem like an iceberg from every angle.
When he had the cleanup crew take away the two corpses and deal with the room, he had stared at that photograph for a long time before casually tossing it away.
Lin seemed cold and ruthless, decisive in everything he did, never soft-hearted when he pulled the trigger. Yet he had stayed with that child until he had no choice but to shoot and end his life.
What had he been feeling when he said those things?
"What are you thinking about?"
Hun's distraction was easy for Lin, who constantly watched his surroundings, to notice. As he searched for a hotel, he asked her the question.
Hun jumped, but Lin's gaze had already moved away from her face. She hesitated for a moment, but ultimately could not bring herself to voice the question in her heart.
So she changed to a lighter topic—one of the bits of gossip frequently discussed on MOTH's internal network. "I was wondering why Elysia always comes looking for you, Team Member Lin. Are you two very close?"
That was a pointless question. If they were not close, would people see them appearing together every day?
To her surprise, Lin pondered for a moment before giving an unexpected answer. "I don't know."
"Huh?"
"If disliking someone means deliberately avoiding them, slandering them, and rejecting them, then everything I do plainly tells her, 'I hate you.'" Lin crossed his arms. He was also puzzled by his relationship with Elysia. "But she takes that as my... what would you call it? Saying one thing and meaning another?"
Lin struggled to find a word to describe it. Hun had a sudden flash of inspiration, and one word slipped from her mouth. "Tsundere?"
"..."
Lin's gaze at Hun became particularly strange, but in a certain sense, the word did seem accurate.
"Anyway, after she subjectively decided that my behavior was saying one thing and meaning another..."
"Tsundere."
"Saying one thing..."
"Tsundere."
"..."
Hun smiled slyly. She had not expected this iceberg to have a weak spot. Perhaps because he had always overwhelmed others with his subzero aura, he was not good at arguing with people verbally. When someone turned the tables and overwhelmed him instead, he did not know what to do.
His reaction was so cute. No wonder that book said teasing the helmeted man was fun.
After being silent for a while, Lin said somewhat resentfully, "Anyway, after she subjectively decided that my behavior was tsundere, nothing I did could stop her from approaching me. Now even I don't know whether our relationship is good or bad."
The fact that Lin could discuss this sort of topic with Hun eased some of her earlier grief. She asked teasingly, "Hmm... Team Member Lin, have you ever considered that maybe Miss Elysia likes you?"
"..."
"..."
"Hm?"
As soon as she said that, a long silence followed. It was only after they passed another full intersection that Hun came to her senses and turned curiously toward the hooded man.
"What is it?"