Fine, I'll Try Being King
The long night passed, and a round sun rose. Winter wind, carrying the warmth of the sunlight, washed over the two young men still burning with heat in the backyard.
"Huff. Huff. Been a while since I got a real workout."
Na Wangrang wiped a forehead soaked through with sweat. His forearms were beaded with it, as if he had just climbed out of the water.
"Seriously. I've never in my life beaten people with my head this empty."
Dan Chuyeon flung aside the wooden stick in his hand and dropped where he stood. Wolf fur stuck to the stick rolled across the dirt.
He snapped his fingers and conjured water in the empty air—one cup for himself, one for his friend. Bracing a hand on his hip, he knocked it back in a single shot, the way a man downs banana milk in a sauna, and his biceps, balled tight from the clubbing, basked in the water's mercy.
"Now this is living. Oh—you three had it rough too, so drink. Must have been a hard night."
Dan Chuyeon swept his hand. The three of them, dangling like punching bags, thudded to the ground. A stone cup formed at each of their noses, brimming with cold water.
"Thank you."
Peril, caked in dust and dirt from being beaten clear through the dawn, lifted the cup in both hands with careful courtesy. Moisture filled them again.
"Haa..."
Peril looked down into the water still swaying in the cup. For someone struck all night, the face reflected there was clean, without a single wound.
"Why didn't you punish us properly...?"
Peril asked it without raising their head. Yamaga and Sharl watched the question warily, taking its measure.
"We did hit you properly. You were beaten all day."
What came from Na Wangrang was not casual speech, but formal courtesy. At that shift in tone, Peril clenched their eyes shut.
"Your Majesty. We werewolves are not wounded by a mere clubbing. Can you truly be saying this because you do not know?"
As if he could fail to know. He had hit them with his hands, with his feet, with a stick—every way there was to hit a person—and almost none of it had given him the satisfying feel of a blow landing. The three had not been in human shape. They had taken that endless beating as werewolves, and it was no different from punching stone.
Na Wangrang hid his throbbing hands behind his back.
"Please, punish us cruelly. This is what we beg. Fulfill a king's duty."
"This is how we beg!"
When Peril pleaded, the other two pleaded with them. Na Wangrang did not much like the sight of fully grown adults pressing their heads to the ground.
"You may do that all you like. I've already done as much as I mean to. So raise your heads. It's embarrassing."
"We cannot!"
Peril wailed, keening like a loyal retainer out of a historical drama.
"Your Majesty! Only if you are with us can the clan live! We beg you—do not abandon us!"
"Wangrang, why are they acting like that?"
Na Wangrang sighed.
"They're scared I'll cut them off. Like I said, I'm the king, aren't I? I'm fated to lead them, and I hate it. I want an ordinary life."
"So that's why you only hit hard at the start and eased off toward the end. Didn't want to feel guilty over nothing."
"Yeah. But..."
His face said he wanted no part of it, and that the situation left him no room to refuse.
"My friend almost got hurt. I can't keep running from this forever."
At Na Wangrang's short murmur, three pairs of eyes lit, bright and glittering.
"Y-Your Majesty, those words...?"
Na Wangrang forced his shoulders back, awkward in the effort, and stood as if he had every right to. It was a declaration as well—that he would make his will known to the world.
"Your Majesty!"
"Ack! Get off! That's disgusting!"
Peril flung themself at Na Wangrang, tears scattering, and Yamaga and Sharl charged in after.
Dan Chuyeon shook his head and drew back. He looked up at the sky. The light filling the morning sky was showing itself, cool and clear, and it seemed today, too, would be crowded with things to do.
When Na Wangrang defined himself as king, there were werewolves who heard that cry with their hearts.
"Huh?"
"What?"
The elders who formed the backbone of Werewolf Camp—hulking in the body, yet old men with the years sunk deep into hair and hide—felt lightning strike their skulls.
"Did you not hear a sound just now?"
The elder who bore the name Deulkkot, Blue Wildflower of the Plain, asked the elder with whom he had been playing baduk.
"I heard it, and yet..."
The other, just about to set down a move he had been savoring, pulled a sour face.
"What did you hear?"
"That he would try his hand at being king..."
"Heh heh..."
Deulkkot stroked the beard that had grown down to his chest.
"I heard nearly the same..."
"So it would seem..."
CRASH! The baduk board went over.
"The king has come!!!"
"Is there not a single soul around?!"
Clatter, bang!
"W-what is happening?!"
A werewolf who had been walking about outside rushed in.
"You!"
"Yes?"
"A sound came just now. Did you fail to hear it?"
"Uh... I didn't hear it?"
The werewolf's eyes rolled.
The elder spat fire from his mouth.
"You worthless wretch I could chew to shreds and still find no satisfaction! You dare miss the king's words! Where have you left your mind, wandering about like that?!"
"AAAAAAAGH!!!"
The young werewolf, who had only been going about his ordinary work, became a star and flew into the sky.
"Kieeeeeek!!! Convene the council of elders!!!"
"Somebody move, you damned wretches!!! Why are the young ones so slow these days?!"
The werewolf elders. Old men who had eaten their fill of years—and yet, veterans who had honed themselves as warriors of the steppe, they were living weapons even by werewolf measure. With no fewer than two such elders rampaging in a shrieking frenzy, only the blameless werewolves paid for it.
"Gyaaaaaah!"
"Stop the elders, quick! They've clearly gone senile!"
"Backup! Requesting backup!"
"My hoooooouse!!!"
A tent like a Mongolian ger exploded. The two elders, hurled high into the sky, howled in every direction.
It was the moment a storm broke over Werewolf Camp.
The council hall convened by the two elders' screaming fit—no, by their summons.
There, elders scattered across the world gathered.
BANG!
"If your ears are not stopped shut, you will have heard the voice from a few dozen minutes past."
Deulkkot, Blue Wildflower of the Plain, the very one who had called the meeting, could not contain his excitement and smashed the table that had only just been set. At that table, split clean in two, sat three elders present in the flesh and four more joined by video.
An elder with blue fur nodded.
"Mm. I heard it. It was plainly a vow that he would be king."
"And the rest of you the same?"
"The same."
"It is certain."
"Good."
Reassured that he was not the only one gone senile, Deulkkot kicked the shattered table and sent it flying outside. The guards posted at the entrance took the blow.
"I will speak plainly. It has been proven that the labor of our ancestors' ancestors' ancestors was not in vain. The king, passed down only as legend, has at last descended today."
"To say that it must be the king..."
"Cut the bullshit!"
The elder who had tried to offer a rational opinion shut his mouth beneath Deulkkot's dreadful glare.
"Are your heart and your head mere decoration?! Will you ignore the signal of instinct crying from these hearts that race at the king's call, and from these brains?!"
"What Elder Last Day's Sunlight meant was that we should not act in too much haste. Do we not still lack information?"
Thunder's Footsteps, taking Last Day's Sunlight's part, tried to check Deulkkot.
Deulkkot raised his middle finger.
"Tsk, tsk! A wolf ought to be a wolf, and here you sit fretting! Then the rest of you stay right here! I'll go alone if I must."
There was no reasoning with him. A few elders flushed red to the neck at that high-handed tyranny, but the elders who sided with Deulkkot kept them from pressing their view.
The meeting narrowed to a single question—go to the king, or not—and Deulkkot threw himself on the floor and pitched a fit, insisting he would be the one to go. Where the king actually was, even he did not know.
In the end, after every disgraceful scene he could stage, it was decided that Deulkkot would seek the king, while the other elders who had been waiting would put the panicked clan back in order.
The council room was a wreck. In that place where no one remained, Last Day's Sunlight and Thunder's Footsteps went on with a discussion all their own.
"That the king has appeared was outside our plans. What will you do?"
"Ought we not push the work far faster than Deulkkot can search? Fortunately, the chance that the king is wherever Deulkkot has gone is low. We can buy time."
Thunder's Footsteps called to mind a narrow little peninsula. The odds of the king being there did not exist, not if the sky itself collapsed. By everything their study of the legend had shown, that peninsula held none of the conditions for a king to be born. They had sent a few of the clan just in case, but he held no hope that prey would come back in their jaws.
"Isn't Deulkkot's instinct the finest in the clan? He may find a clue sooner than you'd think."
"It doesn't matter. The die is cast now."
Thunder's Footsteps smiled, thin and metallic.
"For the revival of the clan, let us carry out what we prepared in advance."
"And if the king is truly real, what then?"
"What problem would that be?"
If the king truly existed, would he not first take the measure of a loyal subject's will?
"A king who could not manage even that would be no king at all."
"Ha."
Last Day's Sunlight let out a breath of pure disbelief.
"You are a son of a bitch. No question about it."
"Are the two of us not the same?"
"I suppose we are. Well, I'll leave that one to you. Suffer for it."
"Understood."
Last Day's Sunlight crushed the video device under his hand until it broke. As he pushed the tent flap aside and stepped out, a cruel air clung to the corner of his mouth.