I Didn't Want to Use My Hands
A peaceful afternoon. Dan Chuyeon was diligently inhaling the snacks Mama had made him.
"Mama. Make more hotcakes."
"No. I'm tired."
"Please...! I'm begging you!"
"Go away."
Dan Chuyeon clung to Na Wangrang, who shoved him off with one foot and kept working the controller. On the television, a stubby little character sprayed paint furiously over the walls and the floor.
"You're pushing me. I'm gonna lose."
"Mama! Hotcakes! Hotcakes!!!"
"I'm not making them!"
"Waaah!"
At Mama's icy shout, Dan Chuyeon flung tears in every direction and fumbled at his own controller. But the snowball sent rolling by his flailing could not be saved, and the screen lit up with its verdict.
The match is lost.
"Sigh. I can't live like this. Fine, wait there. I'll make them, since I'd rather not die."
"Mama's the best!"
Dan Chuyeon whooped as he watched Na Wangrang tie on an apron. Spread-eagled on the living room floor, he kneaded a belly gone plump with meat. Soft flesh filled his whole hand—the reward for never once missing the three meals a day Na Wangrang set on the table.
"Is this heaven?"
No school. Playing with his friend every day, freeloading in the house, looking after a lizard at most. A comfortable life. At first he had worried how he was supposed to live with someone he wasn't used to, but with Pyeonam and Dolbomi around he had adapted in no time. There were no parents here to read the room for, and his master was in Japan. The more he thought about it, the surer he was that he would never be this free again. Dan Chuyeon resolved to enjoy this happiness at full strength.
"Haa……. If I could just live like this forever……."
Riing.
"………"
A bell went off beside his face. Three syllables of a name glowed on the smartphone. The death knell of happiness had rung.
"……Hello. Master, is that you?"
"Disciple."
A voice both hard and soft drove straight into his ear. Dan Chuyeon dropped to his knees at once and took a respectful posture.
"Yes, Master. Your disciple is here. Have you been well?"
"Are you getting along well in Korea?"
"Of course. I take three meals a day without fail and spend each day to the fullest. And your business in Japan, Master—how did it go? Did it end well?"
"You have no need to know my affairs now. When I return, you will know all of it. And yet here you are, neglecting the training you were given and playing about."
"………"
How does he know?!
"This master knows everything. First, plant that head of yours on the floor."
"Yes, sir!"
Dan Chuyeon immediately slammed his head straight down.
"What are you doing……?"
Na Wangrang stared at him, baffled by the sudden strange behavior. Dan Chuyeon tried desperately to send the meaning across with his face alone.
Go! Just go!
"………"
Catching the scent of instinctive danger, Na Wangrang quietly drew his feet back. Getting tangled up in whatever that was seemed like a very bad idea.
"Disciple."
His master's voice came soft and smooth.
"I rather think I shall have a great many things to say. Until I am finished, you will hold exactly that posture."
"Understood, Master!"
Dan Chuyeon clenched his teeth and braced himself. It looked as though he would be staying like this for the entire day.
Yamaga worked his gum and pulled apart the two hands he had cupped into a circle. He had been watching a certain house from a good few kilometers off, and he clicked his tongue.
"I really don't feel good about this, I'm telling you."
The plan to kidnap the King's friend.
"It is necessary. If His Majesty is to awaken, a danger of that scale is indispensable."
Peril answered, honing their nails.
"But are you sure about this?"
Doubt had hold of Yamaga.
"I know people pull out strength you can't even imagine when they're in danger. But will that really reach all the way to an awakening? Isn't that kind of awakening decided by fate?"
"There is sense in that. However."
Peril's eyes lit with a nasty gleam.
"If he cannot overcome even a danger from greenhorns like us, then he has no qualification to be king."
"Tsk. You're not wrong."
Yamaga smacked his lips.
"He is our king. He won't step back that easily. He'll surpass what we expect, and lightly."
"You think so?"
Yamaga sighed.
"Haa. It's already decided. A little late to argue about it now."
"Then that is enough. Success or failure—we can think about it afterward."
Peril looked in the same direction Yamaga was looking. A boy stood on his hands, framed in their eyes.
"Today is the day we carry out the operation. Yamaga, harden your resolve."
"Quit posing and worry about yourself, idiot."
"Hmph. I have always been excellent."
"Bullshit. Guy who can't even clean a room properly."
Yamaga shook his head and shoved the unease aside.
Right. It's only a show. A deeply worthwhile job where nobody gets hurt except us. All that's at the King's friend's house is some man who looks like a guardian, and a patient in a wheelchair, isn't it?
What could possibly happen?
A full moon hung in the sky. With the wall between them and the house, Peril, Yamaga, and Shar finished their final check. All three were bound tight in black infiltration gear. The full moon poured down, and yet the place where they stood alone was sunk in darkness, pitch-black.
"Hoo. I'm nervous."
Shar fanned her face with one hand.
"If you're nervous, you may sit this out."
Peril let out a short laugh.
"Sit out? You always have to pick a fight."
"Your tongue is sharp, so your spirit hasn't died. Keep it at about that level for this operation."
"Anyway, aren't you something."
"Both of you, quiet. It's time."
Yamaga's wristwatch announced the hour of the operation. The time was 22:00. Two hours remained until midnight. Peril's presence turned over in an instant. A rough, refined beast-aura wrapped them, and the other two were no different. For a moment they rewrote Seoul, that concrete jungle, until it called to mind the wide fields of open grassland.
"We take only the King's friend, quickly, and move to the designated place. Touch no one else. Speed is life. His Majesty must be summoned before midnight."
Then—
"Move in."
Assimilated with the dark, they vaulted the wall and slipped into the garden. The surveillance devices guarding the house never activated. To a machine's eye, the children of the full moon could not be told apart from the night. A person, however, recognized them.
"……What."
The instant their foot touched the garden, Peril knew something was wrong. The wolf instinct that had lain quiet foretold a violent danger.
"This brings back old memories."
Step. Step.
Down the garden path to the front door, across the stretch dressed in stone, a man set his foot. A military knife in his right hand, his left tucked into a pocket, he looked over the three adorable intruders.
"The situation being reversed is nonsense, I'll grant you."
"………"
A keen edge filled the garden—an edge that seemed to pare flesh away in slices. Bounded by the wall and the front door, a prison of that edge took form. There was no escaping it. It was empty air, with nothing there at all, and yet above the wall an ultrasonic cutter had been laid: a blade spinning hundreds of millions of times a second, permitting nothing through but air.
Alexei flicked the military knife.
"Not coming? If you'd rather not, I'd prefer you turned back. I did take on being a guardian, but dealing with bastards like you was never part of what I signed up for."
He had the ease of a man just back from the convenience store down the street. The three werewolves were nailed where they stood, unable to twitch. Even on the night of the full moon, when a werewolf ought to have been at their strongest, they could not so much as breathe a sound—prey with its natural enemy before its eyes.
"……So he was no simple guardian."
In the end, Peril spoke for them.
"We'll withdraw. So I'd appreciate it if you cleared away that frightening thing at our backs."
"Fine. And don't come again."
Alexei gathered his energy without protest. The prison of blades came apart.
"Let's go back. The operation is a failure."
"……Yeah."
"……Uh."
Yamaga and Shar turned. They meant to leave the way they had come.
"Wait a moment. Hold on."
Thud!
"………!!!"
Something wholly unlike what had come before descended. An energy pure, and absolute. Familiar, and fearful, it stood directly at their backs.
"I don't know why you've come all this way, but just because the mister said he'd send you back doesn't mean I gave permission to send you back."
Peril's head creaked as it turned. A boy with green hair and green eyes came shuffling over in nothing but slippers. The King's friend. Dan Chuyeon.
A miscalculation.
Peril cursed themself for ruining the job in their haste. Parents might have been another matter, but they had thought kidnapping an ordinary high schooler would be easy. The three of them were warriors who had crossed the line of death since childhood, the future of their people, already beyond the rank of mere prospects. Titles like those were useless now.
We should have investigated more. Been more careful. We should have forced the elders to agree and bought ourselves time.
The caliber was different. No mortal could draw near it. Strong only in the body, they could not grasp what was happening—only that everything lurking on every side felt like an enemy.
"I couldn't understand why Wangrang was struggling, why he was in pain. You're involved, aren't you?"
"………"
"Answer me. I won't kill you."
Dan Chuyeon's fingers curled. A wind came from somewhere and bound their limbs tight.
"………"
"You're not going to talk?"
"Then I suppose it can't be helped."
"Scatter!"
The black gear burst apart. Silver fur blazed with the full moon at its back.