Moon Theory (ABO)Ch67 - closer, and further too

Yang Rong is never one to hold such attachments.

Tens of thousands of his men have felled to the radiation and there will be tens of thousands more to follow – it is precisely this that Yang Rong keeps himself so distanced. IhXmp5

However, there comes peculiarity in the form of silver hair and heart-wrenchingly pretty eyes. Noah looks as bewitching as when he’d first seen him unconscious underneath an Arctic ravine, covered in flakes of snow. Exceptionally eye-catching – but it is only now that Yang Rong sees beyond superficiality and into the hollow shell of a young, forsaken man.

He had mentioned he was twenty-one. Really too young to be so broken.

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.

Noah has lost so much and will continue to lose more – yet, Yang Rong is selfish enough to want to have him (to want to shackle him by his side like the depraved person he is).

Indeed, he is the worst kind of person. qkYdhB

Noah still allows his touch. It is delirium, of course, for the younger man is bleeding out, too faint to reject even if he wanted. What seems to be gallons of crimson pool onto brown soil, proliferating like deep carnations and Yang Rong steps on the petals in full bloom. He carries Noah in his arms and makes a mad dash to…

He doesn’t know where. All he knows is that Noah is damaged in his arms yet again, and Yang Rong promises this time to protect. He cradles the younger man so closely – ignores the stinging pain of his left arm – and simply keeps running.

The moonlight is abnormally bright tonight and so are the specks of radiant blues and greens in the sky – the borealis, he remembers Noah telling him about it. The polar lights do very little to calm his increasingly aggrieved state. There is a manic red glint in his crazed eyes and what a state he must be in – his clothes tattered, his hair disheveled, his entire body more wrecked than ever before.

Among raspy breaths are soft, pained whines that Noah lets out when unconscious. Yang Rong can scale up hills in a minute, trek up mountains in two, circumnavigate the globe in three, but he cannot for the life of him think about where to go right now. There are zero open hospitals in the slums, there are zero places they can stay, zero refuges that aren’t jampacked with black-clad army men.

Just then, the thudding of footfall and the snapping of tree branches.

Without hesitation, Yang Rong reaches for his dagger and flings it mercilessly ahead. Heavy bloodlust. The tree branches seem to part in its trajectory. The polished blade zips through the air in unrivaled speed, cracking past atmospheric pressure, propelled by heavy winds to land on its target.

The unknown person on the other end dodges in the nick of time, the knife flitting only a millimeter away from impaling them in the face.

“—H-Holy cr—!” comes a surprised yelp. cVi84q

A few meters away where the forest trees finally dither out stands a familiar black-haired, doe-eyed soldier. Private Jae brings with him two others – Li Jiayun who looks equally as surprised (shocked) and Yoo Seok whose hawklike eyes are intently measuring the colonel’s unbalanced state.

“C-Colonel Yang!” Jae cries out as he calms his rapidly beating heart. He has one hand clenched onto his chest and the other holding onto the tossed-out blade.

Yang Rong, soaked in blood and sweat, only gives him a cold look. The soldiers of the First Unit are only dark inkblots in his wild, unseeing eyes. The color of his irises is less green than dark scarlet, reflecting none of the sky’s radiance. He holds Noah even more protectively, shifting his body so as to hide the young man from the scrutiny of the crowd.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

Yang Rong’s aura is that of dark miasma and his pheromones are so pungent they would render anyone paralyzed. Before him, the three soldiers are rooted in place. Even unarmed, Yang Rong is domineering enough to assert his presence. DE9zqf

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“Come closer and I will snap your neck,” Yang Rong says, his syllables laced in frost.

Yoo Seok’s lips purse. His brown eyes lower to the pallid young man. “The blood loss is extreme. He will be dead in less than thirty minutes if you do not tend to his wounds. And you, Colonel Yang, are in no condition to move.” YGoXhN

Belatedly, Yang Rong feels a sharp sting on his lower leg – some sort of injury when he’d been bitten some minutes ago on the run, perhaps. He doesn’t care for the details.

“Follow us to the vehicle,” Yoo Seok says. He is carefully weighing his words, shooting acute glances at the colonel. “We will head to the 39^th shelter.”

Chrysanthemum Garden.

The last words are a dangerous tick. Yang Rong pulls out his pistol, points it at the young man’s head and unhesitatingly presses the trigger – once, twice, thrice. No shots ring out.

Yoo Seok is pensive yet calm. Jae has lost all his composure, his mouth agape and his hands shaking in disbelief. Li Jiayun is flickering her eyes nervously from the unloaded pistol to the murderous look on the colonel’s face. kD80d1

In a bout of bravery, the redhead soldier steps forward as well and says tentatively, “…Colonel Yang, the shelter is empty. Ming Tang has been sent to the city for protection as well. Perhaps we… should settle in a safer space to treat both you and Noah. The medical supplies are aplenty, and the environment will be more suited for recovery.”

Yoo Seok says, “I do not know what has escalated to your current situation, Colonel Yang, but it would do nothing to shoot a foot soldier like me.”

Yang Rong only snaps out of reverie when Noah lets out another unconscious whine, his chapped lips parted to intake air. With a shuddering exhale, Yang Rong rearranges his thoughts and tries to will away the turbulence that threatens to consume him once again.

“…He is hurt,” Yang Rong says, uncharacteristically unsure. He’s always had a way with words, but it now takes him a whole minute to form any sort of coherency. “Noah is hurt, so I need to…” heYUlq

“Colonel Yang, you are worsening his injury,” Yoo Seok tells him. “Do not grasp him so tightly, else his abdomen will tear.”

A flash of surprise overtakes his features and then finally, some more cognizance. Yang Rong loosens his grip. With slow and unsteady footsteps, he walks forward and hands Noah away – gently, because he is so afraid of hurting him.

“…I’ve fucked up again, Yoo Seok,” he whispers coarsely. “Hold him so I can’t get close.”

A million conflicting thoughts conglomerate into one distorted mess. Yang Rong is, quite irrevocably, fucked up. 0KdpVB

“Alright,” Yoo Seok tells him. “But you will be the one to stitch him up. Colonel Yang, it is your own responsibility.”

The next he knows, he’s situated inside a military vehicle speeding over a hundred miles an hour, skidding past abandoned roads and drifting southwest. Rainfall arrives in trickles along the tempered windows. The wind carries over small transparent droplets.

No other noise sans the pitter-patters. Nobody tries to start conversation, either.

Yoo Seok mans the vehicle as expertly as always. Jae is wrapping Noah with enough heavy gauze to hide all the scars on his languid body. They’d mentioned something about removing the bullet later but Yang Rong didn’t quite catch that conversation. Li Jiayun is tending to his left arm – she’d mentioned something too about painkillers and medicine, though he didn’t quite catch that part either. pE0H3I

Uncomfortable silence extends all around.

Yang Rong doesn’t have his eyes closed, but his sight is drilled downward, staring at nothing but the dirty vehicle mat.

“It would not hurt him if you look,” Yoo Seok had said to him when in the middle of unbuttoning Noah’s blood-soaked shirt. He had administered quick first-aid before Jae took over. “He is not as fragile as you’d think, Colonel Yang.”

“I have no credentials to be in the same space as him,” Yang Rong replied. “When he awakes, I will send him far away.” Lg8mc6

Yoo Seok only looked at him with a gaze that screamed volumes. “So you will throw him away?”

“It is only natural that he despises me.”

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“Understood,” Yoo Seok had said. “Then perhaps you should forgo any lingering attachments and let him go. However, Colonel Yang, I have always pegged you to be a selfish person.”

Five minutes later, Yang Rong was slumped against the backseat of the vehicle, his thoughts tossed in rigmarole, his countenance wholly different from the calm and collected colonel he was meant to be. Five minutes more, Yang Rong looked at the tag hanging from his collar and decided it was only a piece of scrap metal. There wasn’t a point in getting rid of it anymore, however, when he firmly decided that he would walk a path that Noah would never trek – that way, neither of them would meet face to face. VWgouH

Now, fifteen minutes later, Yang Rong sits on top of a table in the 39^th shelter, his fingers gripping hard against the steel edge. The place he’s in is no different from the tens of other shelters – monochrome walls, dingy floors, all of them lacking personality and none of them like the underground home Noah’s lived in.

While his three soldiers are some rooms over tending to Noah’s bullet wound and performing some botched patching that would for sure leave lingering scars, Yang Rong sits by his lonesome. Just two weeks out of commission and he suddenly feels everything is so foreign – the tasteless black furniture, the empty walls with no hung paintings, the lack of bookshelves, sofas and soft duvets.

Yang Rong is deep in contemplation, though he has reassumed the same indecipherable façade.

Time passes by and he remains rooted in the same position. kdrDVX

Perhaps a whole night had passed before Yoo Seok appears from the doorway to throw him a warm towel.

The dark-haired soldier has always been oddly cognizant. Contrary to his aloof exterior, Yoo Seok bears more empathy than Yang Rong could ever muster. The young man gives him a single once-over and decides not to comment on his obviously fatigued state.

“Wipe off his sweat once in a while,” Yoo Seok says instead. “To delegate such menial tasks to your subordinates is certainly befitting of you, but I reckon you’ve grown more compassionate in the time we’ve separated.”

“Have I?” Yang Rong responds as he catches the towel. His voice is detached. “I feel the same, more or less.” SG4srM

“A visible change. Though it is entirely too late to redeem your character.”

He lets out low hum. “Well aware, I suppose.”

“Colonel Yang,” Yoo Seok says before he turns around to leave. “Is it still appropriate to refer to you by this title, or have you decided on another vocation?”

Yang Rong watches the soldier’s retreating back. pJbIoh

“Colonel Yang is correct.”

Author’s note: i want to throw in a little note to address some confusion from last chapter! a lot of these will be addressed in several more chapters, but to quell some current concerns:

1) is there a misunderstanding?

yes, there is currently a misunderstanding on noah’s part that yang rong brought the military here! noah walked in to a sea of dead bodies, and to general xie handing yang rong a rifle. he has every qualm to believe yang rong is involved in this. however, the misunderstanding isn’t going to be a long-lasting one at all. w47zxl

2) why does yang rong feel guilty?

hmm there are a multitude of reasons, and they do have a conversation on this later. for now, one reason is that he was definitely prepared to shoot and kill hyun. it’s been stated that yang rong doesn’t hold any attachments to anyone here in the shelter. he doesn’t exactly care for any of these infectees besides noah. the second is he may have realized how overbearing he comes off and why exactly it is that noah was/is afraid of him — sort of, he sees himself in general xie’s shoes.

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3) is noah projecting his attachment issues onto yang rong?

yes he definitely is. i98kXl

4) what’s with the sudden plot development?

there have actually been some (very!) subtle foreshadowing of this event. the first is when general xie went inside the shop/shelter to do a bulk purchase of anomalies a month ago, and he noticed an oddity with hyun (this is in chapter 25). the second isn’t that subtle, but (in chapter 62) allaire and hyun were conversing about ‘spotting several military men in the area’, ‘a whole group of men in the forest’, ‘command has gotten ahold of rumors that they shelter the infected.’ this also relates (super!) subtly to the little boy and his father who died (in chapter 54) — the military had come to clean up the forest in the aftermath of such an event. it is also why the first unit appears in this chapter (this is never explicitly stated though)!

i’m sorry i haven’t been able to get back to the comments from last chapter! i’ve been super tired + busy and i slept like the dead for the past few days. my unhealthy boomer body is finally breaking down ; w ; as always, i read every comment and i appreciate them all ! thank you~