The Worst Bad Ending (1)
My mind was going numb, and yet the pool of blood across my retinas only grew sharper.
How had it come to this...? Why...? What had I been so worked up about...?
The radio chatter hammering at my ears was fading. Seo Hana's breathing was fading with it. Her lower body was soaking red. Her sniper rifle was soaking red. Her shoes, too, were turning red....
The worst of it had not yet begun.
I was an orphan. Mother, father — I didn't know their faces. I didn't know a thing about them. A wretched orphan. Nobody's child.
Nobody's child. Some brat had thrown those words straight into my face the day I entered the Elementary Training Academy, and I still remembered it with perfect clarity. How had he even known I was an orphan? I'd been so young that once I got back to the orphanage I buried myself in Grandpa's arms and sobbed my heart out.
Grandpa wasn't my real grandfather. He was the director. To me, though, he had long since become something greater than a real grandfather. I whined against his chest for a long while, and at last he patted my back and answered.
"Do you want to know?"
The look on his face then still felt wrong to me. I remembered it clearly. He had been smiling the way he always did, and yet what I felt was not warmth. It was fear. At that strange smile my crying stopped dead, and frozen where I stood, I had no choice but to answer.
"No."
All Grandpa said was that once I became a librarian, I would come to know on my own. Not only about my birth. About my special power, too.
My special power. All through the academy I had tried every angle to find it, and aside from high marks there had been nothing special about me at all. Looking back now, had he only been telling me to work hard? Even so, the more I turned it over, the stranger it seemed. What kind of answer was that to give a child asking about his parents — that he would naturally find out once he became a librarian? What could my birth, and some special power, possibly have to do with librarians?
Maybe the unease had never been Grandpa's expression. Maybe it had been the words that followed. That dissonant question had led me, as if by nature, down the librarian's path.
The reason that old memory surfaced inside the rocking bus was the conversation drifting from the seats behind me.
"Hey. Hey, you remember? That disappearance last time."
"They say there's another one."
"The Yellow Zone's always like that. Why get worked up now?"
"I mean, yeah... but they say this one's different."
"You think the aberrations took them? I'm starting to get scared...."
The one who had been listening let out a snort.
"Drama queen. Have you ever actually seen an aberration in your life? You a librarian?"
"No...."
"And what do people disappearing have to do with us?"
"...I'm just talking for fun. Every time you open your mouth, you always—"
I got to my feet and left the rising voices behind me. What's it to us? He wasn't wrong. This was Seoul, the safest place in the country. Live an ordinary life here, and aberrations and librarians were nothing more than gossip.
Forty years ago, the world had been overturned in the most literal sense. The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons. Ghost stories, legends, monsters, aberrations — all of them had taken on physical form. The world had entered an age of upheaval, but the civilization humanity had built did not collapse so easily. Beings appeared who could stand against the aberrations, and the world named them librarians. The title, they said, came from setting stories that had become real back in order. Who had been sentimental enough to hang a name like that on them?
I walked a long while before the garrison of the unit I belonged to came into view. A month ago, the moment I graduated from the Intermediate Training Academy, I had gone straight into Special Operations Team White Night. Six years elementary, six years intermediate. I really had spent a long time in those places. When the offer came I liked the name, and more than anything my childhood friend Seo Hana had received one too, so we entered together.
The moment I passed through the drab main gate, an empty parade ground greeted me all by itself. We had rolled through hell in there. The past slipped by like a brush of wind, but today was the last of it. Today, at last, was our first real deployment. Tension and excitement began to tangle strangely through my body. Maybe I would even learn about that specialness Grandpa had spoken of.
Before that, I needed to fill my stomach. I'd skipped breakfast, and I was hungry. I looked at the menu board.
Fried Dried Pollack
Why, of all things. I was desperately trying to wipe away the phantom of that shriveled fried pollack when a familiar voice reached me from across the grounds.
"What are you doing?"
Seo Hana was watching me, one eye squinted, as I flailed my arms at empty air.
"Hold on. I had a nightmare...."
Her silver ponytail swayed, giving off a faint blue sheen. A single bead of sweat ran down her cheek and dropped onto a chest with quite a bit of volume. My childhood friend, Seo Hana. We had first met while I was at the Elementary Training Academy. She wasn't an orphan like me, but she had lost her mother in an accident. Maybe that was why. The meeting had been chance, yet the bond had deepened as if it were inevitable.
Hana was a kid like a bright sun, and she got along with everyone. Always overflowing with energy, always looking after other people. She'd received plenty of confessions, too, and turned every last one of them down. In the end, the only one left beside her was me. A strange sense of victory came over me. Looking back, I didn't think the reason I hadn't grown crooked was only Grandpa and the people at the orphanage. Hana's influence had been just as large.
I was lost in the sentiment when she suddenly shoved her face in close.
"You okay?"
Whoa. Her face had come right up to my nose.
"Huh...? I'm fine."
The smell of sweat. She must have run hard again today.
"You went running again?"
I hadn't seen her on the parade ground. Had she looped outside?
"Yeah."
She wiped the sweat from her forehead, and as she lifted her hand her top rode up with it, baring her stomach completely. For no good reason I got embarrassed and turned my head.
We headed for the mess hall together, and the smell was definitely not fried dried pollack. That savory scent... spicy stir-fried pork? I must have misread the board. I was lost in the meat when Hana quietly set three pieces of pork onto my tray. I stopped mid-bite and looked at her.
She wasn't eating. Chin propped on her hand, she was simply watching me, steady and unblinking. That expression. It wasn't one I got to see on an ordinary day. The only time Hana wore a face like that was when—
"Is it good?"
I didn't answer. I started making a wrap: two pieces of meat, a dab of thick savory ssamjang, one clove of garlic. Hana never put rice in hers, so I left the rice out.
"Say ah."
"Huh...?"
The wrap arrived at her mouth in an instant, and she flinched.
"I said, say ah."
"Ah...."
She stuffed it in until her cheeks were full and chewed with fierce concentration. Like a squirrel.
"You that nervous?"
Her mouth was too full for her to answer.
"Hana, honestly, I'm a little nervous too. Still, we worked hard. It'll be fine."
Who wouldn't shake with their first operation right in front of them? She was nervous, and she was worried about me. It had to be a tangle. I was nervous too, but I was the one who had to steady her.
"You've gotten reliable. You used to be shorter than me...."
"Huh?"
Once she'd swallowed, Hana muttered something small, but I didn't quite catch it.
"It's nothing. And I'm not scared, for the record."
Cheeks faintly flushed, she glared at me.
"I didn't ask if you were scared."
Might as well loosen the tension. Time to tease her a little.
"Th— that's the same thing!"
"Says you, Jaehee. You're still scared of dogs."
"Am not. I'm not scared anymore."
She rolled up her sleeve and showed me the scar where a dog had bitten her.
"How old were we.... Jaehee, was that back when you were still shorter than me?"
"That story again? Back then—!"
Her expression had loosened another degree. I'd meant to tease her and gotten hit right back, but the goal was accomplished, so it was fine. She glanced up at the ceiling once, then opened her mouth.
"Is it obvious I'm nervous?"
"Super obvious."
"You don't look nervous at all, Jaehee."
"I am nervous."
The truth was, I wasn't all that nervous. I'd always been this type.
"Why? Food not going down?"
I reached out and ruffled her hair, good and rough.
"What... why all of a sudden."
The moment she finished speaking, she whipped her head aside.
"No reason."
I pretended not to notice her cheeks going red.
Three hours remained until the operation began. Far off, a small silhouette was approaching us with someone else beside her. As the figure drew nearer, the outline grew clear: a height of 140 centimeters, straight black hair falling to the knees. By appearance alone, she looked like an elementary-school kid. It was Baek Hwaran, leader of Team White Night.
We had known one another only a month, but the three of us had grown close quickly. At first I'd thought she was putting on airs, and that had collapsed in no time. When there was no training, in ordinary moments, we often teased her by calling her our pint-sized big sister. Every time, I caught a flick to the forehead or a kick to the shin. Of course, once it was training or actual work, she showed a team leader's face properly, and neither Hana nor I joked around even then.
"You rascals. Already out and waiting, I see."
Was that manner of speech something she put on deliberately? I was used to it now.
"It's our first operation."
A strange mix of tension and anticipation ran down my back. The specialness Grandpa had spoken of... I hadn't been able to find it in training. Would the real thing be different? The team leader looked at me through narrowed eyes.
"Good. The operation briefing shall wait until we are aboard the vehicle. First, there is someone I would have you meet."
Her small hand moved toward the figure beside her. I had never seen them before. Who is that?