Not the Only One
"Hey! Can't you stop already, you villain!"
"Huh?"
I sprang to my feet and lunged forward in the same motion, driving a fist at him. But he simply swung that massive gun.
Crack!
"Aaaargh!"
It throbbed so viciously that my vision blacked out and I half-feared a blood vessel had burst in my brain. The monstrous bastard had smashed my arm with that absurd cannon of a gun and shattered it clean through!
"Die! Han Se-gun!"
The instant I crumpled, a venomous scream rang out from the girl he had been beating. Pain vanished. I could not trust my own eyes.
Out of nowhere a colossal monster had erupted behind the girl and struck at the man. It looked like an enormous snake, and when it raised its scales every single one glittered like a blade. Body length… eight meters, maybe? At any rate it was huge.
Snap!
The man dodged the serpent’s strike with astonishing speed, but the blow clipped his helmet and laid bare a sliver of his face.
"Hmph!"
In that same breath the muzzle of his gun belched fire.
BOOM!
One shot. The gigantic snake was blown cleanly in two. I had expected a weapon that size to pack a punch, but this was beyond anything I had imagined.
"Ugh!"
Then the girl vaulted sideways, landing lightly atop a two-story building.
"J-just you wait, Han Se-gun! Once night falls I won’t go down this easily."
"Sure you won’t."
He answered and swung the muzzle toward her again, but she was already gone, racing away beyond the rooftops. No human being could move like that!
I stared after her, thunderstruck. C-could she be the same as me? The thought swept every last fragment of pain from my skull and left only raw curiosity in its place.
Until now I had believed I was the only one of my kind in the world. Of course, somewhere in the back of my mind I had always wondered whether the mother whose face I could not even remember might have been the same, but I had long since given up hunting for her and never bothered to pursue the idea. Yet here, all at once, two beings that could never be called human had appeared right in front of me. Wait—two?
"…Broken legs, broken arms, and they knit themselves back together that fast?"
Ugh! Right—the man was still here! I had no leisure to let my mind wander. He leveled the gun at me. Even though the shattered bones had already regenerated, the pain lingered, and I had zero confidence I could dodge whatever came next. After witnessing that earlier blast, the thought alone was terrifying.
"Ah… um, look—"
"Your legs are shaking. You already know running is impossible, don’t you?"
He was watching me, and the look in his eyes was… how to put it? Extremely calm. Through the cracked gap in the helmet I somehow felt he would not kill me. Of course, he might still do something worse than death. But then—
Weee-ooo, weee-ooo!
Police sirens wailed in the distance. Someone must have reported the accident. Of course they had. This was the Republic of Korea, a nation of laws; open fire in a residential street and expect nothing to happen? Only a crook would think that.
"Hmm. Lucky you. But get some sleep."
"Eh?"
In that instant the man in the black racing suit raised his gun and slammed the stock into my head. Pain barely registered; consciousness simply dissolved.
"Urgh!"
I blacked out in the most undignified fashion imaginable.
The moment I truly began to understand my own body was… embarrassingly enough… the fourth grade of elementary school, during a circumcision. Until then I had only vaguely thought I was stronger than other kids. That day taught me I was something far removed from human. The instant the scalpel touched me the wound closed, making any normal operation impossible.
Fortunately the doctor assigned to me was the rarest of eccentrics. Not only did he keep the secret, he quietly arranged every medical convenience I would ever need. In short, he became my personal physician.
Luckier still, he was expert in pharmacy and physiology as well as urology, his true specialty was surgery, and he happened to be the heir to a massive pharmaceutical conglomerate. My life has never been the sort where you can joke that luck is on my side, yet meeting Dr. Kang was unquestionably a stroke of fortune.
"…Urgh."
"Awake?"
Dr. Kang was right in front of my face. Startled, I sat up and looked around; I was in a hospital room. He sat in a chair he had pulled up to the bed, white coat neatly buttoned.
Doctor or not, he was still only in his late thirties, not a single white hair on his head. Wealthy family, handsome enough face, medical license—women should have been lining up. Yet he remained a thoroughgoing bachelor. Why, I never knew. In any case this was no time to analyze Dr. Kang.
"W-where is this?"
"My hospital. They brought you in after a car accident. Stop showing up for this kind of nonsense. I may be a genius whose degrees fill entire bookshelves, but the general hospital still assigned me to urology. When I insist on treating you myself, do you know what the rumor mill says? That I’m staring at your backside and lusting after your ass."
He grumbled and rapped me on the head with a file folder. I felt a quiet surge of relief. My secret was still safe. If Dr. Kang was handling things and the worst I got was a file to the skull…
"…This is the first time I’ve ever come in for something like this, you know."
I protested as I stood. Dr. Kang sighed.
"True enough—getting hit by a car wouldn’t put you down. Still, this is a regular ward, so keep your voice down. An ugly nurse is ogling my good looks as we speak."
"…She’s glaring at you. Ah, and if I don’t get up right now… I can’t pay the bill."
"I know, I know. No insurance either. I already covered the charges, so just rest and then leave."
"…Thank you."
I bowed deeply. He smacked me with the file again.
"I’m not doing this for your gratitude. Don’t try to settle accounts with cheap words—hit the lottery and pay me back properly."
"…"
For a rich-boy doctor, he sure worried about a few measly IV bags… I glanced at the clock while the thought ran through my head.
"I didn’t sleep the whole day, did I?"
"No. You’ve only been here two hours."
"What about Mr. Song?"
"Ah, the man who was with you? Hairline fracture of the collarbone. He needs rest, but it’s nothing serious."
Dr. Kang muttered the words and stood.
"Well then, I’ve loafed long enough—time to go prepare. If nothing else is wrong, head home. Check out at the administration desk. Police and insurance will want statements; handle them as you see fit."
"Ah—Dr. Kang!"
I called after him as he reached the door and hurriedly shoved my feet into the hospital slippers. He looked back.
"What?"
"I… actually have something I need to discuss about the accident."
"What is it?"
"I’d rather not talk here."
"That so?"
He sighed, spun the file folder on one fingertip, and adjusted his glasses.
"Then follow me."
He stepped into the corridor. I trailed after him and stopped beside the elevator. Dr. Kang kept spinning the file as he turned to me. Evening visiting hours; every room blared a television and kids raced up and down the hall, making a racket.
"Noise is the best cover. Speak. What’s going on?"
"Well… today I ran into someone extremely strange."
"Extremely strange? Stranger than you?"
"…I got beaten unconscious by him."
Embarrassing, but true, so I said it straight. A spark lit in Dr. Kang’s eyes. At last curiosity had him; he stopped the spinning file and fixed me with a look.
"…Stranger than you, then."
What was that supposed to mean? I wanted to object, but arguing with Dr. Kang never worked, so I let it go.
"And there was another one—a white girl who hopped over houses like they were stepping stones."
"Ohhh. I’d love to call that nonsense, but with you standing right here I can’t dismiss it. Remarkable. So there really are more of your kind in the world. Did the two of you at least exchange phone numbers?"
"No time for that, and I don’t even have a phone."
Still, a pang of regret hit me. I had been knocked flat by the man in black almost immediately, so there truly had been no chance—but if only I had gotten the girl’s contact information…
"Hmm. I see. It bothers me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Go home already. I didn’t call your father so he wouldn’t worry, so don’t fret."
"Yes, sir. Thank you."
"Want another hit? Mouthing ‘thank you’ a hundred times means nothing. The world runs on money and women. Okay?"
Still grumbling, Dr. Kang vanished into the elevator. But gratitude was gratitude. I murmured another silent thank-you and headed outside.
Police officers and insurance adjusters were waiting for me in the hospital lobby.
The cops would be satisfied with a few sentences. The insurance people, however, were the modern equivalent of heresy inquisitors.
They had to twist every incident into the victim’s fault. Plenty of fraudsters staged accidents for payouts, true—but watching them grill people who were already traumatized with “You faked this for the money, didn’t you?” never left a good feeling.
Still, I couldn’t really blame them. Most comprehensive policies paid hospital stipends the moment you were admitted. If a driver and vehicle were found wrecked in an empty alley—especially an old, cheap commercial vehicle with low premiums—the suspicion that someone had deliberately wrecked it for the insurance money was almost automatic.
If it hadn’t been my own story I wouldn’t have believed a word of it either. Out of nowhere a motorcycle and a person just drop into an empty alley, and someone leaps over houses? You’d get labeled a lunatic for saying that out loud.
"We’d like your account of the incident. You’re Seo Rin, correct?"
They crowded around me like entertainment reporters swarming an actress high on meth.
"Why is one eye closed? Blindness?"
Ugh. What a headache. I decided to keep it short.
"…You can see the situation for yourselves. Some lunatic threw people around and tried to crush us with a motorcycle! I have no idea where he even came from!"
I shoved through them and escaped. I had no time to waste on these people. The sun was already down, the gift shops were closed, and I had blown several part-time shifts.
To stay on schedule I would have to skip school tomorrow! Just then a man rudely shouldered the insurance agents aside. He had the solid build of a judo champion, and his eyes burned so brightly I half-expected photon beams to shoot out of them.
"You said a motorcycle!?"
"Uh… yes. Could you move, please?"
Something about him made me uneasy; I avoided his gaze. He probably wouldn’t actually fire beams from his eyes, but locking stares with a man whose eyes glowed like that felt like a one-way ticket to disaster.
Then he pulled a photograph from his coat and proved he was not a pervert.
"Was it something like this?"
The picture showed the infamous terrorist Han Se-gun astride a motorcycle, gun leveled.
It somehow reminded me of Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, yet the bike itself was slim and sleek—exactly the one I had seen. A chill raced down my spine.
Of course… from the moment he defeated me I had known he was no ordinary human. He had brushed aside attacks that already surpassed human limits as though I were an elementary-schooler, then dropped me with a single counter. If after all that he turned out to be a regular person, I would be the real idiot.
But if the opponent was the legendary terrorist Han Se-gun, the story changed completely. And the instant I realized who he was, the first thing that flooded my mind was pure, bitter regret.
Damn it—if I had caught him I would have pocketed fifty billion!
Fifty billion won would wipe out every debt at once and rewrite our entire fate. I could pull my little sister out of that adoptive household with our uncle, buy a proper house, and let the three of us who had suffered all these years live well for once. Of course… only if I actually caught him. Informant rewards only paid out when the tip led to a confirmed capture.
"That’s him."
"Goddamn it! I knew it!"
The man shoved the photo back into his coat, muttering.
"Any idea which way he ran? No—asking is pointless! Damn it!"
He smashed his fists together in frustration. Built like a bear, he looked perfect for catching people. But no matter how impressive the physique, a human could never beat that monster. A thought struck me and I asked,
"Um… is there no reward for tipsters or informants?"
"Only if he’s caught. And your information isn’t all that useful. The bastard’s a ghost."
He pulled out a notebook, scribbled a phone number, tore out the page, and handed it to me.
"If you ever see him again, call this. Got it?"
"Ah—yes."
I took the scrap of paper and walked out of the hospital.
Mercury lamps cast their pale light across the entrance.