Awakener Jeong Jae-ha (4)
It had been a group training camp, as I remembered it.
Every one of them had been called a genius in their own school fencing club, or in the youth squad of their own club. Gather that many from every corner of the country, though, and the air honed itself on its own, keen as a bared blade.
"I hear that one's really something."
"Want to go a round?"
They raked each other up and down, taking stock. Every time eyes met, someone flinched. A snort for no reason, a click of the tongue—little wars of nerves, waged over nothing.
Then the head coach who had organized the camp announced he would grant the first chance to swing the new blades, called up the three who had been making the most noise, and pressed fresh swords into their hands. He set them, one after another, against the coach who had only just arrived.
All three were skilled enough, even to my eye, to have earned the right to talk that big. And all three were swept aside without scoring so much as three points on him.
"Huh? What?"
Later, when the fencing mask came off, their opponent turned out to be an Olympic silver medalist of that era. The head coach had known we would show up acting like this, and had pulled strings ahead of time to break our spirits.
I hadn't liked watching punks who weren't stronger than me—and who didn't love fencing more than I did—sour the whole room. So I thought the head coach's strategy had been genuinely brilliant.
At the same time, another thought came to me.
What if I had stepped up? Could I have won? How strong was the national team, and how much fun would a match against someone that strong have been?
"Three of you. No one?"
Years had passed, and this was today. I looked up at the platform, caught in that very same feeling. Could I beat the Jack-o'-Lantern? Among human beings I no longer had an opponent—so how fiercely would a fight with that monster set me alight?
"Five points is no small score. We're being generous because it's the first day."
Hunter Ji In-hwi beamed at us, all bright smiles. Not a single hand went up. The smile looked light enough on the surface, but everyone must have felt a weight those words could not carry, because no one stepped forward lightly.
"Me."
One hand rose then. Kim Kang-oh.
"Oh? Your name and your dan certificate, if you would."
"Kim Kang-oh. Third dan, kendo."
"Casual speech? Ha. Friendly, aren't you. Fine. Kendo—so you'll be wanting a curved blade?"
Ji In-hwi gestured toward the weapons laid out in a long row. Up on the platform, a long table bristled with blades great and small.
Step. Step. Step.
Kim Kang-oh climbed onto the platform, and every eye in the place poured over him.
"This one."
He hefted several katanas in turn, then chose one.
"Very good."
Hunter Ji In-hwi stamped one foot lightly. Centered on the Jack-o'-Lantern, a broad circle some thirty meters across drew itself across the floor.
"Step inside the circle, and we begin."
"Got it."
Kim Kang-oh turned his head and shot a glare at the pretty-faced man who had been standing beside him. Then, as if hunting for someone else, he looked around—and when his eyes found me, he flared them wide and twisted his face into a scowl.
It was extremely funny. Not only because of the objective gap in skill between us. What was pathetic was the attitude itself: he had before him not merely a stranger, but a species he had never seen, and still all he could do was worry about the crowd. I tipped my chin, light as anything. Look in front of you.
"Fuck!"
His face crumpled all at once, and he turned on the Jack-o'-Lantern.
"That pumpkin bastard—I'll take its head off in one shot!"
Kim Kang-oh rolled both sleeves and flung the sword once toward the sky.
"Ohhh!"
"Get him, Boss Kang-oh!"
"Poison Needle Kim Kang-oh!"
The scorpion tattoo on that thick forearm seemed to writhe as his crew roared. The Jack-o'-Lantern turned its head—carved, it seemed, straight out of a pumpkin—and fixed him with a glare. Kim Kang-oh stepped into the ring.
"Chesto!"
He drove a thunderous kiai out of his chest and kicked off the floor.
Whoosh!
Even to my eye, the speed was not bad, and neither was the power. The distance between Kim Kang-oh and the Jack-o'-Lantern closed in a rush.
Shhhk!
The blade he cut upward flashed like the afterglow of moonlight.
Thud!
"Huh?"
The sword bit into the Jack-o'-Lantern's neck about a third of the way through, like an axe sunk into a tree too thick to get one's arms around.
"H-huh...?"
The Jack-o'-Lantern neither screamed nor twisted. It only spat from that maw an infrasonic rumble that locked the muscles rigid, and raised an arm bristling with thick thorns.
"Nnngh—!"
Kim Kang-oh tried to wrench the katana free, but a blade buried halfway would not come easily.
Thud!
The Jack-o'-Lantern lashed him with a thorned tentacle.
"Gaaahk!"
Kim Kang-oh flew like a bowling pin struck by the ball and tumbled across the floor. Once he was flung outside the ring, the Jack-o'-Lantern did not give chase. The medical staff waiting off to one side ran in as if they had been hoping for exactly this, loaded the still-twitching Kim Kang-oh onto a stretcher, and carried him out.
I had known he would end up like that.
I watched the Jack-o'-Lantern draw the katana out of its own neck, and muttered it inwardly. Thinking you could take the head off a monster more than three meters tall in a single stroke had been absurd from the start. Swordsmanship had never grown up as a system built around a three-meter monster.
"Shit. How the hell do you beat that?"
"It doesn't even cut, does it?"
"Not even our strength is enough?"
The air in the gym went cold.
"No one else? You don't need the points?"
Hunter Ji In-hwi went looking, gently, for the next sacrifice. Awakeners here and there took one another's measure, then dropped their eyes.
"I need the points."
That was when I raised my hand.
"Athlete Jeong?"
Hunter Hong Si-yu looked at me with question and dismay caught in the same gaze.
"......Oh! Athlete Jeong, you were here. But are you sure you're all right? As you just saw, this one is no pushover."
Hunter Ji In-hwi faltered for a moment, then seemed to reach some conclusion and asked it in a needling tone. If I, a gold medalist, went down in a single hit, he could seize the mood of the room right at the start. I felt a little sorry, as if I were disrupting the class against my will.
"If it looks like I'm going to lose, I'll just run."
The pounding in my chest was louder than the apology. Five points were still five points, just as the man had said—and the moment I saw the stage, the crowd, and a sword, an athlete's hunger to contest boiled up without restraint. How strong was I now? How strong was that monster? Could I beat it? Among human beings I had no opponent left, so how fiercely would a fight with that monster set me alight? Those thoughts filled my head until nothing else would fit.
"Come this way and take your pick. You were a fencing champion, weren't you? I'm afraid we didn't prepare a fencing sword."
"That's fine."
Step. Step. Step.
Called up by Hunter Ji In-hwi, I climbed onto the platform.
"Well, well. His Majesty the gold medalist has arrived."
"Think that one can even handle it?"
"Fencing isn't a martial art. He'll poke, poke, poke like a mosquito, get his ankle snagged on a tentacle, and go flying. I'll bet your wrist on it."
"Why are you betting my wrist?"
"Bullshit. Does the athlete look like a fucking moron to you?"
"You bastards duck your heads the second some national-team junior walks in, and a number-one athlete is a joke?"
The awakeners tossed their remarks my way.
Envy. Jealousy. Admiration. Longing.
Those familiar feelings, those familiar voices, those familiar gazes—all of them settled onto my shoulders in a temperature and a weight I had missed. I thrilled at the sensation, and chose a sword from the table.
"I'll take this."
There was no fencing sword. But there was one endlessly close to it. An estoc. A sword like a long awl, built for the thrust. Unlike an ordinary blade, its cross-section came out oval or diamond-shaped, so in practice it had no edge at all. Here, in this place, this was my hand.
"A sword without an edge—are you certain? I'll give you a chance to switch."
Hunter Ji In-hwi asked it of me.
"What kind of sword is that?"
"Isn't that an awl?"
"Doesn't look like he can cut at all."
The awakeners stirred.
"Athlete Jeong, wouldn't you at least take a longsword?"
Hong Si-yu smiled with a brightness so forced it almost hurt to look at, and moved as if to stand in my way. I could tell it was meant as kindness.
"I'll use this."
Which made me a little sorry to refuse her.
Sssk.
I leveled the estoc and felt for its balance. A pleasing weight. A temperature hard and smooth, and warm besides. Without meaning to, I closed my eyes for a moment.
"Is that thing all right? Shouldn't someone tell him to switch?"
"Look at his face—he seems sure of himself. Maybe he'll be fine...?"
This. I had longed for this for a very long time.
"Shall we begin at once?"
"......Yes."
When I held to the estoc all the way to the end, Hunter Hong Si-yu and Hunter Ji In-hwi both finally stepped aside. I crossed the low lip in the floor and entered the ring.
Thump. Thump!
Tension and excitement drummed my heart like a war drum. I had waited four years. I had thought I would have to wait ten. I had thought I might never do this again. But the age, and the circumstances, had returned this temperature and this weight to my hand.
The Jack-o'-Lantern lifted its head and looked at me. In that instant a single-log bridge, fourteen meters long and two meters wide, laid itself over my sight.
Jeong Jae-ha, Jeong Jae-ha, Jeong Jae-ha!
A phantom roar filled my ears, and high overhead the Olympic flag streamed in a vision. I murmured it, small, inside my mouth. Come on. Let's enjoy this.
Today's opposing athlete: the Jack-o'-Lantern. A powerful opponent, four thorned blades and a height of three meters. Long experience let me feel it in the body. The distance between us now was about ten meters. Even before, that had been a distance one or two great attacking steps could close. And now a basic charging step alone could reach it.
Right foot reaching forward, left foot driving the earth—I charged.
Whoosh!
I came flying in, folding those ten-odd meters as if I were creasing the ground itself.
"Huh?"
"Whoa!"
"He flew?!"
Thuk!
I loaded every bit of that speed into the point and drove it toward the Jack-o'-Lantern's eye socket.
Thud!
The pumpkin head snapped far back. That bulk of three meters staggered hard. A pleasant recoil ran up my wrist along the blade that had pierced the pumpkin head.
It landed.
The fact that my technique worked on this thing too filled my head with a joy like fireworks going off. Not one thing I had honed had been in vain. Of course, I had never expected it to fall from this alone. This was a creature that had begun recovering at once even with its neck cut nearly a third of the way through.
Whoosh!
The mate of the Advance I had shown Medic Kim the day I rose from the wheelchair. I drew my body back by exactly the distance I had charged.
Shwaaaak!
An instant later, four thorned whips scythed through the place where I had been standing.
I was not surprised. I had been a fencer, not a soldier drilling with a bayonet, so the situation itself—an opponent my attack failed to neutralize—was familiar. Only the satisfaction of a prediction coming true fizzed like sparkling wine.
"Hah."
My sword was about a meter. Those thorned whips were over three. A deeply unfair rule, and I had no complaint. I was too worked up to complain, and stepping up while knowing what I was walking into meant I had agreed to a penalty bout. And in the simple fact that my attacks could land no matter what weapon the opponent held, it was at least fairer than my retirement match. So whatever weapon it carried, I only had to thrust faster.
Whoosh!
I leapt once more and drove the estoc into the pumpkin bastard's other eye.
Thud!
The Jack-o'-Lantern's head snapped back exactly as before.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
⚔ Lunge — Retreat ⚔
Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!
I repeated the advance and the retreat, driving the sword deep into the Jack-o'-Lantern's head and neck and drawing it free, again and again.
"Ha!"
Facial muscles that had gone a long while without a reason to smile pulled taut, and the corner of my mouth trembled. The drop of sweat sliding from my brow to brush my eye was far too vivid. Goosebumps rose at the thought that I might have lived my whole life unable to do this. This—this was what it meant to be alive.
Every time I kicked off the ground, bark burst from the Jack-o'-Lantern's body and green fluid streamed down. The more times the sword sank into its neck, the slower its movements grew.
"Whoa."
"See? What did I tell you? It's not even a match!"
"He's insane."
I could feel the gazes. That formless pressure—itchy, and sticky, and sweet. Below the platform, the awakeners were looking up at me. Even Kim Kang-oh's crew, and that pretty-faced man, stared up as if spellbound.
"Is he moving slowly on purpose right now?"
"Surely not. Why on earth would he do a thing like that?"
Hunter Hong Si-yu and Hunter Ji In-hwi whispered as they watched me. Their dumbfounded faces were so much like an opposing coach's, soul gone clean out of him, that I felt proud. I had been an athlete who drew longing even from his opponents. It seemed I had become that again.
"Even if he used to be an athlete—a freshly injected Artificial Awakener going up against a Jack-o'-Lantern and winning? For real?"
"We don't know yet. One hit from that whip and he's gone."
Of course it was too soon to grow careless, and I had no mind to. An athlete stays on the opponent until the very end.
Vwoooom!
The Jack-o'-Lantern's thorned whips were tremendously powerful.
A leap to the side. I slipped the whips cleanly and set the counter.
Shhhk!
The sharp kiss of a thorn grazing my cheek. It helped, now, that I had been a foil fencer. Unlike épée or sabre, foil could only seek the torso. Which is to say I was looking at those thorned whips as blades to beat aside, not as a torso to attack. That made a more realistic judgment possible.
Yes.
Now.
Once again, the opponent's chest lay open.
Whoosh!
I leveled the estoc at the Jack-o'-Lantern's neck and leapt.
Thuk!