Even as the Hour Draws Near, Will It Still Be So?
"Damn it. Hard enough finding anyone worth trusting, and now I'm getting jumped by those Jap bastards."
Hwang Seokgu peeled off the bandage soaked red and bound a fresh one in its place. The disinfectant stung. He winced and looked around.
Heroes lay groaning where they had fallen, while people marked with the red cross hurried among them. Shattered concrete and spent brass casings cluttered his sight until it swam.
"Yeongsik! The kids hurt bad?!"
Yeongsik, half his head wrapped round and round in bandages, answered between ragged breaths.
"Yes, sir! More of them are hurt than we expected, but nobody's dead!"
Hwang Seokgu let out a sigh of relief.
If Dan Miryu hadn't warned me ahead of time, we'd have been done for.
The members of the Korea Hero Association had chosen to break from the government and go their own way. At first they had sat down together to discuss how to deal with the Heavenly Punishment, but a handful of idiots going off and acting on their own had been the spark that started it all.
When Hwang Seokgu saw blameless soldiers who had served the nation, and police who worked for the country, torn apart in the Heavenly Punishment's hands, he went straight to the government and demanded an accounting. Why had they shut the heroes out and started this? The government brushed him off. They knew nothing of it. It had been, from beginning to end, one individual's deviation.
Men who spent every other day too busy fighting one another had, for this once, joined hands and offered up a sacrifice. How could the police and the army moving as one ever be a single man's misconduct? Unable to stomach an attitude that took him for a fool, Hwang Seokgu cut the government off.
Had the Dan clan been there, something might have gone differently. But in a national emergency, he had no intention of wasting time on tiresome power struggles. If the government meant to see them as dogs, then the dogs would simply become proud wolves.
And in the middle of those talks, a welcome call came through.
Dan Miryu.
Dan Miryu: "Elder. Listen carefully. You may be in danger right now."
Hwang Seokgu: "You're back?!"
Dan Miryu: "We'll save the greetings. Every second counts."
Hwang Seokgu: "R-right. I understand."
Dan Miryu: "An organization called the Shrine may attack you. Fortify your defenses."
Hwang Seokgu: "The Shrine?"
Dan Miryu: "A vast organization that pulls Japan's strings from the shadows. They have set foot on Korean soil."
Hwang Seokgu: "......Damn it all. There's nowhere left to turn!"
Dan Miryu: "Save your anger for later. Stay on your guard. Always."
Hwang Seokgu: "I won't forget!"
"Good thing I heard it. If I hadn't, I'd be digging more graves than one."
Had they not been moving as a group, the attack would have picked them off one by one. That the enemy had kept to at least some minimal line was a mercy, if it could be called mercy at all. Had they played the villain inside the city and scattered the heroes, there would certainly have been dead.
Hwang Seokgu's wounds prickled and throbbed. The injuries the Heavenly Punishment had given him had broken open again in this fight.
"Tsk. The things that happen in this cramped little country."
So it had been in the past, and so it was now. A nation that never knew a windless day.
"Ch-Chairman. A call for you."
Yeongsik held out his smartphone. Hwang Seokgu's own had been destroyed in the battle.
Hwang Seokgu put the phone to his ear.
"Hello."
"Elder, are you all right?"
"Oh. Dan Miryu, that you?"
A steady voice came through.
"......Hearing your voice, I'd say you're all right."
"Thanks to someone. I owe you big this time. Well, I've owed you from the start, but...... I wonder if I'll live long enough to pay it all back."
"You don't need to repay it. You've devoted yourself to this country since long ago, Elder."
"That's all in the past. Forgotten, too."
Hwang Seokgu shoved the bitterness that had welled up back down where it belonged. Maybe he was too old. He slipped into the past too easily.
"You all right over there? What happened with the Heavenly Punishment?"
"There's good news and bad news. Which would you like first?"
"The good news."
"The Heavenly Punishment you fought has been captured alive."
"Truly?!"
Hwang Seokgu shot to his feet before he knew it. His startled voice boomed across the grounds.
"Chairman! Please keep it down! The patients' wounds are tearing open!"
Several heroes groaned, and a doctor scolded him for it. Hwang Seokgu dipped his head in a small apology.
"......What was that just now?"
"Don't mind it. Nothing important. More to the point, you captured the Heavenly Punishment......"
The man in rags who had left Hwang Seokgu a wound that would never fade. Because of that bastard, young people with bright futures ahead of them had died. He could not forgive the powerless self of that day, no matter how he tried.
"......So I'll get to see that smug face of his one more time."
A tiger's roar threaded the human voice. A faint crack ran through the smartphone in Hwang Seokgu's grip.
"Ah. My phone."
Yeongsik lamented. Unfortunately, it never reached Hwang Seokgu.
"Where is he? I'll head there this instant."
"Please calm yourself. Even if you met him, he's in a state close to brain death. It would mean nothing."
"......Tsk. Mutilating a corpse isn't a hobby of mine."
What good would it do to beat a dead man half to pieces? For a moment, Hwang Seokgu felt hollow.
"Then what's the bad news? You couldn't catch the other one?"
"That is......"
The voice beyond the phone grew very small, as if the speaker hesitated to say it.
Hwang Seokgu found a secluded spot where he could be alone and posted the tearful Yeongsik as a screen. Then he whispered, low and steady.
"Tell me. There's no one here but me."
"......Every last one of the Heavenly Punishment has gathered in Korea."
"...............What?"
Hwang Seokgu's head rang. He thought he had misheard.
"......You mean they're on their way to Korea?"
"......No. At present, all of them have gathered at Teacher Hong Yumin's old home. Excluding only the one we captured."
"What do you mean......"
Has Heaven truly abandoned this country?!
Hwang Seokgu felt as if the sky were falling. Not even when the nation had been swept up in war had it been this bad.
"Why?! For what?!"
What is there in this land?!
"......Please calm yourself, Elder. It isn't over yet."
"Damn it. Has this gotten out?"
"So far, only we know. If the Heavenly Punishment begins to move, there's no telling what will happen."
"It must never get out. Two of them already have the country in enough chaos. If word spreads that all of them have gathered, the nation might actually collapse."
Worse than falling by the Heavenly Punishment's hands, the people themselves might run wild and deal the country a grievous wound.
"That won't happen. I've come back."
At that vow, heavy with resolve, Hwang Seokgu's agitation sank.
"......Where do I need to go? This isn't the end, is it."
"No. Please come to our house. I'll tell you the rest of what I couldn't finish there."
"All right."
The line went dead.
"Haaaaah."
Hwang Seokgu stared down at the smartphone and heaved a sigh deep enough to sink the earth. He handed it back to Yeongsik, who was waiting outside. The phone was a breath away from splitting in two.
Looking sheepish, Hwang Seokgu cleared his throat.
"Sorry. I'll buy you a new one."
"......I'll be taking a very expensive one."
Yeongsik grumbled that the installments weren't even paid off yet.
"That's all fine, but find a car first, and fast. There's somewhere I need to be in a hurry."
"Yes, sir."
Quick to read the air, Yeongsik folded his complaints and put his legs to work.
Hwang Seokgu looked up at the sky.
The moon hung there, aloof.
A throb.
One side of his head ached. An unwelcome memory clawed through his mind. He pressed a hand to his temple and drew a long breath.
Before long he set out with Yeongsik, who had brought the car around.
Jingle. Jingle.
Fwoosh!!!
Fire caught on the black talismans and the blue, and they burned. What had turned to black ash sifted down, fine as dust, onto the incense burner.
Jingle. Jingle.
A bell was ringing. The steady chime seemed to comfort the dead.
Crunch.
A flinch.
The last yellow talisman, hung in empty air upon a red cord, trembled.
Crunch. Crunch.
Tooth marks showed themselves. One by one they multiplied, staining the yellow talisman black.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
They spread. No—it was being eaten. Little by little.
"Hmph!"
Whoever had been ringing the bell yanked the red cord. The cord spread wide, like wings unfurling, then wound about the yellow talisman the way thread balls up.
Gazing at the thing that had become a red sphere, that someone plucked off a bell and threw it. The bell crumbled to powder, grain by grain, and the powder sank into the red sphere as if absorbed. The sphere grew hotter and hotter, then burst into brilliant flame, just as the talismans reduced to ash had done.
"How can such a thing exist?"
Someone let out a low groan.
The flame was wicked, and it was sinister. And yet it was clear, and brimming with life. This was not the same as yin and yang dwelling side by side. Yin and yang were a theory the world was meant to hold, a principle, a law fully capable of coexistence. But that was a calamity: things that could never mix, mixed together.
"O power of the Divine Soil that guards this place,"
"drive out the evil now defiling this ground."
⟨ Ward of the Divine Soil ⟩
Forming a mudra, the figure muttered the words in a rush. At once, three-colored light flickered above the flame.
Black, yellow, and blue—three lights bore down upon it. They did not merely suppress the flame. They crushed it until it vanished.
Wiping the sweat from their brow, the figure bowed toward the three-colored light. Of the three, the yellow light drew near and whispered.
"Understood."
The three-colored light vanished where it stood.
"Is anyone there!"
"Yes! You called!"
With a soft whisk of cloth, a figure in black appeared, turning a somersault through the air, and received an order.
"Tell each of the captains that I am convening a council. Not a single one is to be absent from this meeting. Absence will not be permitted."
"Yes!"
"The Great Shrine Maidens are no exception."
A flinch.
"The Great Shrine Maidens are......"
"If they throw a tantrum, tell them this."
"Yes!"
"Withdraw."
A soft whisk of cloth, and the figure in black was gone.
The one who remained looked up at the sky.
"Upon that lonely peninsula, the hour of fate is coming."
Long, if one called it long. Short, if one called it short.
"Even amid this chaotic world, you keep your silence still."
"Indeed."
"Even as the hour draws near, will it still be so?"
That—only fate would know.
The figure turned and sat before the incense burner. In the vessel buried under ash lay a scrap of the yellow talisman, the very one they had thought extinguished.
Gazing at it, they sank into thought.
Deeply.
Very deeply indeed.