Professional Bunny Girl (2)
Our eyes met over the martial arts novel.
Jeong Chae-rim's arm shot out straight. The extended arm flipped over at once, palm facing me. The fully spread hand waved left and right, left and right—like someone frantically waving a white flag—trying to stop my misunderstanding dead in its tracks.
A voice thick with pure injustice burst out right after.
"It's not like that! Please don't get the wrong idea! I'm completely sane! I'm Jeong Chae-rim, Korean!"
"R-right? I believed you the whole time."
At that exact moment, my body had instinctively dropped into a boxing guard. And I still hadn't let the stance go.
"Have you always been interested in martial arts novels?"
"No……."
"I see."
Still not relaxing. Instead I quietly tightened my fists a little more.
"The truth is…… they say Regression/Possession/Reincarnation Syndrome usually never fully heals. Memories don't just erase themselves because you want them to, right?"
Ah. That made sense.
The Regression/Possession/Reincarnation Syndrome that had hit Jeong Chae-rim was an anomaly that forcibly implanted memories. In her case, the memories of having been the Heavenly Demon Pacheonhui and then reincarnating. She probably wouldn't go berserk again, but memories that had already taken root didn't vanish easily.
So what she needed was certainty. Certainty that the implanted memories were false. She needed to feel, deep in her bones, that those memories were nothing more than fiction.
Only then did I finally drop the stance and sit back comfortably.
"Whew. Lately I've been reading the novel Pacheonhui appeared in. It's exactly the same as the memories."
"You've had it rough, Chae-rim. Of all the weird anomalies to get hit with."
"It's better than when I first awakened. I awakened the day after I got selected for the national team. And got cut from the national team right after."
"Ah……."
I hadn't particularly wanted to know a backstory that sad.
Come to think of it, I'd heard she had been selected as a national athlete, yet the Hunter Management Department said she had zero overseas travel experience. So this was the reason I hadn't known about.
"It's fine. Awakened and ordinary people can't compete, so it couldn't be helped……. If only the awakening had given me some amazing ability…… but it didn't, so I just do odd jobs every day……. It's fine. I eat well enough……."
The misfortune was too heavy. I had no idea what to say to comfort her. And I doubted my comfort would fix anything anyway. Pretending I hadn't heard and running away would sting my conscience a little.
So the choice I made was this.
"Uh, Chae-rim?"
"Yes……?"
"Want to go eat some beef with me? My treat."
"Yes! Yes! You're really buying, right? I eat a lot—is that okay?"
The absolute cheat key that always worked on people like us. Perfect solution, if you ignored the state of my wallet.
It was exactly that night.
While I was peeling open a chocolate under the cool blast of the air conditioner, the news was delivering the world's latest stories the way it always did. The world had turned into a circus, so the news it delivered was a circus too.
Truly an age when comedians' livelihoods were looking bleak. A territorial dispute between the Dragon Palace and the merfolk? Had the merfolk claimed Sokcho Beach as ancestral domain handed down since their ancestors' time or something?
When public broadcasting had to treat topics like that with a straight face, it was only natural that the comedy programs couldn't make people laugh anymore.
And now dolphin corpses were washing up. So the soldiers the Dragon Palace had sent out were dolphins? Then the general-rank ones would be orcas, and the grand general a blue whale or something?
I found myself freshly curious about the Dragon King's true identity. A dragon? It had to be a dragon, right? But there was already Hogukryong, the State-Protecting Dragon of the East Sea.
As expected, the world of anomalies was hard to understand. On this tiny scrap of land and the sea beside it, there were already three anomalous factions. Hogukryong, treated as a divine beast. The Dragon Palace, friendly-to-neutral toward humans. And the still-unknown fishfolk.
Then again, the ocean remained a space full of the unknown even in the modern age. Even with modern technology there were countless things we didn't know about the deep sea. The unknown easily twisted into fear, so of course the ocean floor would be crawling with anomalies.
That was about when my phone rang. The moment I checked the caller I turned off the TV and started changing clothes. There was only one reason this person would call at this hour.
"This is Director Cheon Kang-heon of the Hunter Management Department. Do you have a moment to talk?"
"Yes, it's fine. What's going on?"
"We have another Green-rank designated mission. Would you like to hear the details?"
"I'll move right away. Where should I go?"
"Please come to Hunter Management Department headquarters as soon as you're ready. We'll have a helicopter standing by."
Perfect timing. I'd been planning to call him around tomorrow anyway. If this job went well, I needed to ask him to connect me with a decent management company.
I tossed one last tiny chocolate into my mouth and sprinted at full speed.
Three hours earlier, East Sea of the Republic of Korea.
Southern edge of the Yamato Bank. Approximately 81 nautical miles northeast of Ulleungdo.
Navy 1st Fleet, 16th Fast Boat Squadron, Chamsuri-class patrol craft.
On the deck a man smacked the back of a soldier's head. The palm landed on the steel helmet, but it was more than enough to jolt the soldier awake.
"You useless piece of shit."
"Ughk?"
"No wonder the guy who'd been yapping all day suddenly went quiet."
The soldier who had just woken wiped the drool that had run down his chin. Inside his hazy mind, memories reassembled one by one.
Until a moment ago he had been assembling a rare plastic model kit. Something he'd wanted for ages, and he'd gotten lucky…… no.
Snap out of it. That was a dream.
The soldier quickly recognized reality and rewound his memories again. Dark night. A glimpse of military uniform. The face of a senior who looked extremely pissed off.
Only then could the soldier remember what he had been doing. He had been…… on watch.
"Hey."
"Private Kwak Tae-man."
"You out of your mind? I told you, whatever else you do, you never fall asleep on watch, didn't I?"
"Private Kwak Tae-man. I'm sorry. I'll correct it."
"Just now you almost got us all killed, you know that? See me after the shift."
Ever since anomalies had been discovered, the military had undergone large and small changes. One of the biggest was the discipline around watch duty. Anomalies tended to be more active at night than during the day.
On land they sometimes disguised themselves as humans; at sea, outright giant monsters appeared. If you didn't keep combat-level vigilance, people really died in numbers.
Worse, modern equipment barely worked on anomalies. Advanced gear like new radars and sonar was completely useless. That was why they still posted soldiers outside in the middle of the night. Some anomalies could only be spotted with the naked eye.
Ten-odd minutes later, the thoroughly angry senior let out a long sigh.
"Haa. You think I'm doing this because I hate your guts? If anyone else had caught you it would've been the brig immediately."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You heard about it too, right? Two warships went missing in the South Sea. Atmosphere's bad these days, so try to stay sharp, yeah?"
"Private Kwak Tae-man. I'll do better."
Fortunately, once the soldier had been woken up he didn't doze off again. His eyes stayed fully open, fixed on the night sea.
The sea before him held the night sky and looked like a sheet of black drawing paper. The sound of wind. The sound of waves rising where the wind had passed.
A Milky Way that looked ready to spill down. Moon and stars shone brightly in the darkness, and the sea took that light back into itself and drew the outline of the horizon. It looked exactly like brilliant jewels glittering and sparkling.
The soldier's eyes sank deep into that black-and-white painting. Staring at the sea as if entranced, he suddenly tilted his head.
"Corporal Kim. Nature's really pretty and amazing, isn't it, sir?"
"What's that supposed to mean all of a sudden?"
"I was thinking how pretty the stars are, but over that way there's a round patch where there are no stars at all. Isn't it weird how that can happen?"
Inside the beautiful picture the soldier had found a single flaw. In one corner of the overflowing Milky Way, a small black dot had been drawn like a misplaced drop of ink. The soldier wondered how the painting called the world could look like that.
Corporal Kim's reaction, however, was completely different.
"No stars? What the hell are you even—hey, you crazy bastard, that's an anomaly!"
In fact, everyone else's reaction seemed a little different as well. Fifty seconds later, the captain of the Chamsuri-class delivered this particular review:
This is the captain addressing all hands.
Current time 21:13. Unidentified anomaly sighted at bearing 030.
All hands to battle stations. I say again, all hands to battle stations.
This is not a drill. This is an actual situation.
A rather bleak review, all things considered.