Etranger Chapter 1

The Derailment(1)

“Ten thousand, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, forty thousand!”

As always, a chant loudly and repeatedly rang throughout the room. His right shoulder was tingling. Even though he jumped out the door with all his strength, he hit the very fast moving fuselage once. Because of that, his body was put into a spin and he lost his bearings. Nevertheless, like a seasoned veteran, he shouted the chant while calmly waiting for the time.

‘To-tuk – cheolreoung!’

He felt a pleasant shock from his waist to his shoulders. He lifted his neck and looked at the sky. With the night sky full of percussive noises, a large, round canopy stretched wide over his head. Finally, he felt like he would live.

He cut the cord placed on the plane, the automatically unfolding parachute, a lifeline guaranteeing his survival. Some space to maneuver in appeared. [TN: Author puts 이제 조금 여유가 생겼다 which literally translates to “Now a little room appeared” in other words, the MC now has a small margin of error to work with] He looked around. The feeling of lightly floating in the air was truly the best. The C141 aircraft deployed a team of paratroopers, seemingly filling up the night sky. Laughing with a beaming smile on his face, ‘San’ [TN: San(산) means mountain]  watched the ground. Now he needed to find a panel buried somewhere in the ground. The advance team had probably already marked it with lights. 

He hung in the air for some time. The time it would take for the parachute to hit floor is probably a minute at most. In recent times, many bright lights have come to pop up in even these backwater mountains, so identifying these markers wasn’t easy. However, ‘San’ is a true veteran. His sharp eyes shone. Towards his left at 10 o’clock he saw a ‘T’-shaped panel. If you considered the drop height and the travel distance, it was very far away. ‘San’ tugged the parachute’s shoulder strap take line, rotating his body. Fortunately, the wind was pushing from behind him. He would be able to proceed faster. A military jump chute has a rounded shape to them, and also have a round ‘blown up’ spot towards the back. This blown up part is called a ‘pore’, and as a person’s body descends, the pressure beneath the parachute increases with the parachute itself becoming taut. As a result, an expulsion effect will happen, where the ‘pore’, like the mouth of a balloon, will jet out the air beneath the parachute, propelling the person forwards. Tugging on the take line either left or right will result in the ‘pore’ opening or closing. If you pull left, you’ll go left, and if you pull right, you’ll go right. If you pull both, it’ll block the ‘pore’, and at the same time, the air trapped beneath the surface of the parachute will decrease, causing the person to descend faster. If you release the lines at the same time, the unfurled parachute will immediately start to hang in the air. With the correct headwind, one’s horizontal movement can come to a halt, while with the correct tailwind, one’s horizontal movement can more than double. The wind direction determines where the parachute goes.

It felt like the parachute was flying steadily forward.

So I’ll go with excitement.

However, as he got closer to the panel, he started to feel more tension. It was because all the parachutes were gathered at that location. If he was unlucky, the objective…

“This! Damn it! Ah you retarded dumbshit! Can’t you quickly change your direction? You dumb little shit!” San urgently yelled. Suddenly from his right side, a parachute approached in close proximity. Watching his movements, a recruit was piloting the chute. He’s looking in the wrong direction with his mouth agape. The area around the panel is always tumultuous. Here and there I hear the screams. It’s mostly swearing and other abusive shouts. The other parachute hissing by is fearful.

It’s coming too fast.

San slightly shut his eyes. It was already too late to change course. But his eyes were already coldly looking above him. That dumbass recruit’s foot had inserted itself in between the parachute strings. Now, with no way out, his entire body will become entangled in the parachute strings. There was still about 200 meters between him and the floor. His body reeled, and in his instant his body spun round and round. The tangled parachute turned back while consumed by its spin. [TN: Definitely butchered this translation. No idea what the author was saying, so I just made do with the MTL] It looked like he was tangled up with his parachute and was going to fall straight down. Ah! He’s dead now. How unlucky… San shouted.

“What?! Not this retard again! What kind of bullshit situation is this…!”

Even while falling, San carefully observed the basic airman’s behavior. He stretched out his arm and grabbed the falling airman’s collar. Without any hesitation, he pulled the airman’s waist towards himself. While twisting his body, he used the rebounding force to quickly lift his boots above him. With nowhere to go in the air, he struck down with all his strength. He accurately hit the helmet of the airman and extracted himself.

“Kuh, ugh.”

With an ear-splitting scream, the airman’s neck shrank forward. Because of the impact between San and the airman, the two began to spin in the air towards the opposite direction. This result is pretty good. Tobacco is referred to in a strange sort of way, while the parachute was spinning backwards, it once again received some air and opened up again. Now it’s returned back to the normal routine. While one parachute stays open and the other stays closed, San descended while alternating between the two.

San was taking deep breaths. He had roughly taken care of the situation, but at least the rate of descent was fast. There’s no way one parachute could support two people. A thing or two might break, but where? The chance of surviving is pretty big, I think the stupid airman is just unconscious. It probably doesn’t matter. Whatever, who knows if descending while he’s unconscious might be safer than falling while he’s freaking out. Anyways, we’ll be landing on the ground feet first.

Ah, I really want to smoke a cigarette. I really do.

Even the seasoned San looked tense as he scanned the ground beneath him. Anywho, if he could pilot the parachute to somewhere that wasn’t the ground, like above a tree and get the chute stuck there, that would be the best result in this circumstance. Prickly gravel is no good. [The word the author uses is 삐죽한, which can be used to describe a rocky cliff face. Prickly probably isn’t the best choice] Rocks are no good as well. It hurts a lot I tell you.

“Hmm? What’s that?”

The ground within his field of vision began to disappear. Light is dimming. The lights around the panel wavered as they disappeared. And a world of darkness descended. Is it a blackout? Tch, that’ll be the day. It seems as if the world turned off all the lights. It looks like the mouth of the abyss covered the world. It was dark in all directions, and there was no way for him to separate the light and the darkness.

San’s parachute did not stop even after passing where the floor used to be. Like falling into the devil’s mouth, San plunged into what looked like an endless black forest. The surroundings felt dim and stuffy while San waited to reach the ground.

Chapter end