Magical Thermite

Helen crawled laboriously through a narrow passage that looked exactly like the ventilation shafts you’d see in movies—crawling with every kind of rodent droppings, filthy beyond belief, and filled with dust that swirled in real time.

A crude makeshift bag, cut and stitched together in slapdash fashion, hung from her back. It was stuffed so full of bottles that it clinked and clanked with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠every movement.

“Huk… huk… God, my whole body’s killing me.”

From our perspective it might seem absurd for someone freshly born to whine about body aches, but when you considered that she had crawled without rest through a passage so long and narrow that only quadrupedal movement was possible, the complaint became entirely reasonable.

After crawling like that for a while, whenever an unexpected fork appeared, she would pinch a bit of flour from the pouch tied at her waist.

Rubbing her thumb and index finger together like Saltbae—the guy who got famous for sprinkling salt before turning into a universally hated troll—the finely ground flour would scatter into the air and then all fly off in one consistent direction.

Helen took the opposite direction from where the powder drifted and pressed on.

It wasn’t perfectly accurate, but since everything except Seoul and exchange rates inevitably flowed from high places to low ones, the method was surprisingly sound.

“What the—fuckers…! Emergency! Emeeeergency!”

“Ugh… Have I been spotted already?”

The long, drawn-out shouts rolling in from afar made Helen’s limbs scramble even faster, her hands and feet pattering desperately.

Unfortunately, the beating she had received left her with a suspected rib fracture and a collection of bruises that severely limited her mobility, so there was a clear ceiling to her speed.

“Ugh, ack, ow, eugh.”

With every single crawl, a sharp pain shot through her, forcing strange groans from her throat.

Then, at some point, an even worse agony—like needles stabbing every joint—began to creep in, and the groans turned into bizarre shrieks.

“Squeak! Mng! Hik! Ppyak! Ing!”

She was starting to wonder whether she was still human or had become one of those squeaky children’s tracking shoes. The crushing certainty that she would be caught if she kept going pressed down on her.

So Helen recalled her legendary elementary-school title—“the girl who didn’t shed a single tear during her first butt injection”—and somehow forced the screams back down.

“Mmph… hup… ung…”

It was mortifying, but it worked. Better to drown in self-loathing than be beaten to death. She kept crawling.

“Where did she go! Find her! Find her, you slug bastards!”

“The warehouse! The warehouse door is open!”

The smugglers’ urgent cries rose from below, chaotic and trailing long tails of panic.

“You brainless idiot! What are we supposed to do if you only bring yourself?!”

“Huh? Me? What did I do?”

“You can’t see anything! Go get a torch!”

“Y-yes!”

At the word “torch,” Helen flinched, then flattened her body forward, lifting her stomach slightly with her toes.

She clamped both hands tightly over her ears and opened her mouth a little.

Familiar.

Far too familiar. The posture you had to assume at least once a year… the one so ingrained it made her sick just looking at it. Its meaning was crystal clear.

“W-wait! Don’t come! I said don’t come!”

“No… why are you suddenly acting like this?”

A sealed underground warehouse.

High-proof rum spilled across the floor, already evaporating into the air.

Ultra-fine flour dust floating like white fog.

A low-ranking smuggler waving a torch with a dazed expression, running in a frantic hurry.

And a veteran smuggler, face deathly pale, shaking his head and waving his arms like a madman.

Any readers with proper intellect who fully understand what these combined elements imply—and who can correctly predict the interesting, violent chemical reaction that must follow—will not require any further tedious explanation.

“Stop! Can’t you smell the alcohol on the floor?! The flour’s flying everywhere too! Drop that damn tor—”

The roar and shockwave tore through the smugglers’ dying screams and slammed into the ventilation shaft, flipping everything inside it upside down.

In the midst of this sudden chaos, the only person who ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠remained calm was Helen, who had covered her ears to protect her eardrums and opened her mouth to equalize internal and external pressure.

“Ah~”

Having perfectly executed the nuclear-fallout posture she had learned in her soldier-ant days, Helen waited for the delayed sonic boom to pass, then immediately resumed crawling through the vent.

“I’m sorry……”

Helen listened in silence to the screams that erupted right after the terrifying explosion and repeated an apology no one would ever hear.

As she herself admitted, it had been unavoidable. Criminal organizations’ secret bases tend to value security and secrecy above all else.

Which meant guards were always stationed inside. They were obstacles that made escape difficult. Even in perfect condition she would have been caught; in her current broken state it had been inevitable.

So she had set it off. To draw attention away, even a little. Of course people might get hurt or die in the process, but to Helen it was a heartbreaking yet unavoidable necessity.

“……”

As she crawled through the vent, Helen no longer felt the searing pain. Whether the adrenaline pouring madly from her brain had diluted it, or the monstrous guilt of murder had outrun the pain and begun acting like an anesthetic, she couldn’t tell.

Either way, the wind brushing her cheeks grew steadily stronger. The exit was close. Still wearing the expression of someone who had committed a terrible sin, she crawled desperately toward the headwind.

After advancing for some time, the end of the long, tedious ventilation shaft slowly began to reveal itself.

The four walls of the dark, cramped passage converged toward a single point, exactly like the vanishing point of perspective lines drawn on an old sketchbook.

And toward that spot where all the lines finally disappeared into one point—the end of the vent where faint rays of light seeped in, the so-called vanishing point—Helen crawled with everything she had until she finally reached the dense wire mesh covered in dust that served as a filter.

She easily pried the mesh away, the barrier between the vent and civilization, then flipped her body into the office-like space filled with familiar desks and mysterious office equipment, gasping for breath.

“Puhah!”

Savoring her reclaimed freedom with her entire body, Helen tried to steady her ragged breathing…

“Here! The sound came from here!”

“Shit…”

Having neatly violated the famous horror-movie cliché of “never breathe loudly when you think you’re safe,” Helen cursed her own mistake and untied the sack hanging at her waist.

“Slowly… no need to rush, Helen…”

When she upended the open sack onto the floor, two lemons tumbled out.

“Oww… sour.”

Since she had no knife, Helen tore each lemon into five pieces with her teeth, then zigzagged a copper one-shilling coin and a galvanized nail from a wooden crate into every segment.

Five 0.9-volt lemon cells connected in series produced more than 4.5 volts—the minimum required to generate a spark.

She rubbed the remaining coin from the first piece and the nail from the last piece vigorously against a cloth to increase surface area, then scraped them together roughly. Smoke curled upward, and a flame flared to life.

“Oh! Ohhh! It caught! It caught fire!!”

Like a primitive man seeing fire for the first time—or rather, like Prometheus—she rejoiced with dignified delight and pulled out the glass bottle she had been eagerly waiting for from behind her. At that exact moment the smugglers burst through the doorway.

“Haha! We looked everywhere for you, you damned bitch!”

The first smuggler to spot her drew his knife.

“Jeehahaha!!! Come quietly and I’ll only take two fingers!”

“Kishishit! Then I get an eyeball!”

Convinced she was trapped, they approached with their usual sloppy speech and swaying gestures.

They looked extremely careless. Their numbers were overwhelmingly superior, and they took it as natural law that no one could beat them in raw strength.

…However.

“You red bastard commies.”

“?”

Where in the world does anything truly count as “obvious”?

“Do you even know what I’m holding?”

“Wh-what is it?”

Philosophers have warned since ancient times that “obvious” is nothing more than a soft pillow manufactured by intellectual laziness.

“Try moving even a single hair.”

Yet these smugglers, drunk on the cheap intoxication of casual violence, had sunk too deeply into the crude superstition that weight and muscle decided everything.

Helen could not defeat several healthy adult men. That was common sense.

“But if you move any further from there…”

That common sense would be reduced to ashes by the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠large, magnificent, and perfectly competent flame now rising from her hand.