The Sparrow Mage
"Haa... Why do we even have reserve duty?"
Having arrived at the reserve training ground first thing in the morning, I heaved sigh after heavy sigh. It hit me the same way every time I showed up: I already wanted to go home. The uniform didn't sit quite right on me either, which only sharpened the urge.
"Reservists! Time to head in! Vehicles, park on the right! Anyone who came on foot, this way!"
Ah. So we were going in. Figuring that showing up early only meant waiting around early, I followed their directions at once.
"Heh... Good call."
On my way through the entrance I ducked into the bathroom at a carefully chosen moment, then slipped back into the flow and neatly dodged squad leader duty. Nothing in the world was a bigger pain than being squad leader.
Rather than properly donning my helmet and ammo belt, I slung them over myself and filed into the auditorium. Men more or less like me sat down in a row at my side.
"We thank you all for taking the trouble to participate in reserve training again this year..."
A soldier's speech marked the official start of training. Needless to say, most of them already had their heads down, well on their way to vanishing into their phones. I was no exception.
Seeing this, the soldier hesitated a moment, then opened his mouth with the look of a man who had made up his mind. Summarized, the speech came down to a single point. Any squad that worked especially hard would be granted the special privilege of dismissal after lunch.
"Oh... Out after lunch... Gentlemen. Feel like actually trying?"
The moment early dismissal was mentioned, our squad leader quietly floated the suggestion. Early dismissal was that sweet a proposition.
"We bust our asses and get home early. Call it a light workout."
"Let's aim to get out after lunch. I told my wife this would take eight hours."
"Huh? You too? Same here. Want to hit a billiards hall or a PC cafe after we're done?"
The men who had come for reserve training rallied around a single shared objective: getting out.
"Then we will begin training with Squad One."
Training started at the very moment the reservists were uniting around their common cause. For my squad, the first exercise was firearm disassembly and assembly, then live fire. I did as the instructor said, more or less, watched the safety video, and before I knew it the time to shoot had come — though we still had to wait a little, since the squad ahead of us hadn't finished.
And then a squadmate beside me tapped my arm.
"Um, is that bird yours?"
"Sorry? What bird?"
"On your shoulder..."
"Gah! Shit, that scared me!"
I turned at his words and nearly jumped out of my skin. A sparrow was sitting on my shoulder, cocking its head this way and that.
"What are you? Where did you come from?"
"I followed you from the very start, cheep!"
"Haa... From the start? So you came from home? Why would you follow me here? Wait. You mean you clung to the car the whole way?"
"That's right, cheep!"
Looking closer, I could tell it was one of the sparrows that had settled in at my house. They didn't roam much, cowed by the presence of Yubu's underlings, the magpies and crows — but they had made a great show of forming a crew of their own, parting the feathers on their chests into a V, and that was how I recognized this one.
"Um... excuse me. You wouldn't happen to be Mr. Shinsoo, would you?"
One of the squadmates who had been watching me appear to hold a conversation with the sparrow had figured out who I was. Feeling awkwardly embarrassed for no real reason, I gave a stiff smile and nodded.
"I'm a fan. Could I get your autograph later?"
"Sure. Anytime."
"Yes!"
I was letting out a snort of laughter at the squadmate clenching his fist in triumph when an instructor sidled over.
"Seniors. Time to move up."
He handed each of us an earplug as he told us it was our turn to shoot, and we promptly stuffed them in. Even with the plugs in, the gunshots came through. Bang. Bang. The reports rang out, and a little tension crept over me. Not fear of the firearms themselves — more the worry of what I'd do if my shooting turned out to be complete garbage.
"Let's all give it our best."
Casually fired up for the sake of early dismissal, we moved to the range, took a lane each, and dropped prone.
"Ready shooters, commence fire!"
Tat-tat-tat-tat. The sound rolled across the range as my squadmates blazed away. Somehow every last one of them seemed to be shooting the mountain behind the targets rather than anything near the paper, but I did my own best regardless.
For all that effort, the results were miserable. Six rounds fired, and only one had struck anywhere near the target. At this rate, forget early dismissal — I was looking at a full day of grinding out every last minute. So I decided to break out the last resort.
"Hey. You go over there, there'll be some paper, all right? It'll already have holes in it. Punch six tight little holes in a cluster, same kind of pattern. If there's already one, just add five. Got it?"
"Got it, cheep!"
I gave the order to the sparrow still lingering by my shoulder, and the little thing fluttered off and punched clean through the target. Naturally, I had sent it in the pause after everyone finished shooting, while we were waiting, so there was no chance of the sparrow getting hurt.
The instructor and the others only stared in mild wonder at a sparrow turning up on the noisy range. Nobody made any move to chase it off.
And that sparrow overdelivered on my request by about nine hundred percent.
I had only said paper. It went and pierced every sheet of paper downrange — mine, of course, and every one of my squadmates' besides.
"I'll be. This squad must be nothing but expert marksmen. Not one of you missing a grouping... You didn't poke these with a pen, did you?"
"Come on... Who even pokes a target sheet with a pen these days? We all just got lucky and shot well, that's all. We don't even have pens."
Fortunately, nobody caught on to what the sparrow had done. The officer in charge had eyes only for the shooters, as if the sole concern were preventing a firearms accident, and the idea that a sparrow might have punched the targets never seemed to cross his mind.
Thanks to that, our squad turned in a result none of the others managed: a perfect hit rate, one hundred percent, every man. Someone had certainly shot the mountain. But if you looked only at the target sheets, that was the story they told.
"Wow. Actually being able to talk to animals really is something."
My squadmates had been watching the target sheets, so they had seen the sparrow punch through their own. They could also see that same sparrow now sitting on my shoulder.
"We're counting on you today. With you here, Mr. Shinsoo, early dismissal is basically in the bag, isn't it?"
"Exactly! It's not much of a thank-you, but I'll buy everyone ice cream in a bit!"
After seeing what I had done, my squadmates turned the brightest, most sparkling eyes on me. With early dismissal on the line, they looked genuinely desperate.
"I want to get home early too, so I'll do what I can. Still, you know you have to put in some effort yourselves, right?"
I snorted a laugh at the squadmates nodding so hard their heads might as well have been flapping, then followed the instructor to the next training ground.
"Next up is urban combat training. Think of it as a survival exercise run on digital gear. You'll be split into teams. Finish with excellent results, and... you know what that gets you, right?"
At the words of an officer waiting on the training ground, not only my squadmates but the men from the other squads began to burn with fighting spirit.
We watched the others train for a little while, and then, before we knew it, our turn arrived.
"Let's give it everything, so we can actually earn that early dismissal!"
We steeled ourselves at the entrance and scattered at once to our positions. Some hid behind vehicles. Others concealed themselves at the backs of the buildings.
I hid at the very rear and launched the sparrow from my shoulder. Recon was a drone's job, after all.
A moment later the sparrow returned with the enemy team's positions, and I briefed my teammates on the spot.
"One behind the vehicle out front. Two at the corner to its right. One in the second-floor window of the building at ten o'clock. Multiple by the oil drums, far rear."
Having mapped the enemy in advance, we moved fast. Slipping along the outermost line without a sound, we found them: reservists standing around in a vacant, halfhearted daze.
"Clear behind the vehicle."
"Corner clear."
"Ah, sorry. Failed to clear the window."
"One down by the drums."
The callouts kept coming as if they were playing an FPS.
And then a squadmate's shout rang out, brimming with joy.
"We won! Winner winner, dismissal dinner!"
Our squad managed to crush the opposing team without losing a single man.
Unsurprisingly, the officer was thoroughly satisfied at the sight of us moving as one — organized, overwhelming the enemy — and bestowed upon our squad the glory of early dismissal.
"I have been in charge of reservists for a good long while, but I have never seen anyone as proactive and intense as all of you. You are the very model of the reserve forces!"
The officer went on and on with remarks that sounded like a school principal's lecture. Perhaps catching sight of his listeners' expressions slowly freezing over, though, he cut himself short.
"Still, for the sake of fairness with the others, you may head home after lunch."
"Oh!"
The moment early dismissal was confirmed, our squadmates' steadily stiffening faces lit up in an instant. All the more so because they had even been given break time while the other squads trained hard.
"Shall we hit the PX?"
"I'll come too."
"I looked a minute ago. It's closed right now."
"Aw, damn it..."
But at the news that the PX doors were shut, their faces drooped all over again.
The letdown hit me just as hard. And in the middle of it, the sparrow on my shoulder, busy preening its feathers, caught my eye.
"Head on over there, round up some friends, and pick me some fruit or something, will you? Something edible."
"Will wild raspberries do, cheep?"
"Yeah. That's plenty."
The sparrow took off the moment it heard me, and by the time it returned, it had brought quite a crowd.
"...You all should have some too."
Dozens of sparrows kept hauling in wild raspberries until my helmet was heaped full, and I passed them around to my squadmates. Being wild, they weren't what you'd call delicious, but they had a taste all their own, and the squad looked fairly content.
There was just one problem.
"This human feels nice, cheep!"
The sparrows that had come back with the raspberries stuck to my side and would not leave. Some of them even kept bringing more.
Thanks to those sparrows, a nickname attached itself to me: Sparrow Mage.
Between doctoring the targets with a sparrow, sending one up as a drone to pinpoint the enemy, and procuring rations by way of sparrows on top of all that, there was no way the name would fail to stick.