The Worst Bad Ending (2)

"This is Kim Seoyoung, Grade 4 Observer."

"She shall support your operation."

I followed the team leader's hand and looked at Observer Kim Seoyoung. Short orange hair, and a face so bright it practically sparked — she looked thoroughly alive.

"Hello! I'm Observer Kim Seoyoung! Please look after me!"

Sure enough, she was every bit as lively as she looked.

"Henceforth she shall serve Team White Night as our observer."

"See that you get along."

The team leader finished speaking and boarded the vehicle.

The operation vehicle was the size of a bus. A medical team ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would be aboard, no doubt, and observation equipment for the observer to use. Observer Seoyoung waved as she drew away, and Hana and I didn't linger before climbing in after her.

For a while the cabin held nothing but the rattle of the chassis and the drone of the engine.

Team Leader Baek Hwaran broke the quiet.

"You will have familiarized yourselves with the operation already, of course. Even so, I shall review it once more."

She drew her small frame upright and stood in the center.

"First, Seo Hana. Where is it we are headed?"

Hana raised her head to the team leader.

"The Anyang 7th Flooded Zone. Anyang Art Park."

"Good. Next, Han Jaehee."

My name was called. Her gaze turned on me.

"What is our target for subjugation?"

"The Sentence-class aberration, Ruined Artwork."

"Does this aberration possess a special narrative setting?"

"True to a low-class aberration, it has no threatening narrative setting."

"You have all committed it properly. Rest your eyes."

Aberrations, and Flooded Zones.

An aberration can wield, as its power, the narrative that forms its background, and the danger of that power is measured the way one measures a book — Word, Sentence, Short Story, Novella, and so on. That same power also seizes dominion over the land around it, and the region under its influence came to be called a Flooded Zone. Nothing is truly underwater. The degree of dominion is simply expressed as a water level, and the name followed from there: ankle, knee, waist, and the like.

I lifted my smartphone and opened the Iris app, looking over the operation overview once more. Could I ask now...? In the deployed-personnel field, every grade was displayed as it should be — every grade except the team leader's.

Myself, Han Jaehee, Grade 6 Combat Librarian. My childhood friend, Seo Hana, Grade 7 Combat Librarian. Kim Seoyoung, joined for this operation, Grade 4 Observer. And last of all, our pint-sized big sister, Team Leader Baek Hwaran.

I glanced at the team leader. Arms folded, a sulky look fixed on her face, eyes shut. Not the time. Get this operation done right first.

I gave myself over to the rattling chassis and shut my eyes for a little while, and by the time I opened them we had already reached the operation area.

The moment I stepped down from the vehicle, a cold sensation of death crept in from my ankles. It did not stop. It dragged me downward, into a bottomless abyss. In the end I would lose myself and wander that abyss forever — if I weren't a librarian.

"The entrance is quiet indeed. We may take it as our temporary base at once."

The team leader's voice slipped past me.

Hana and I had been together a long, long time. I had known her from back when she was even smaller than the team leader was now....

"Jaehee."

These days Hana stood a full head taller than the team leader. And I stood a full head taller than Hana.

"Jaehee!"

"Yes!"

It was the team leader, calling me. Her voice dragged me up out of the brief reverie.

"I must hold this base. Do you remember?"

She was watching me through half-lidded eyes.

"Yes. I remember."

I gathered myself again. Then, all at once, she rose onto her toes and thrust her face toward mine. I stepped back on reflex, and she caught me by one ear and hauled me in anyway.

"You seem well enough. Hana, though — she worries me. You take my meaning, do you not?"

"Pardon?"

At her words I looked at Hana. She seemed fine on the surface, but the tips of her fingers were trembling, just barely. Had I been missing something like this?

"I'll look after her."

Some childhood friend I was. I had been far too careless.

"Very well. At your level, you shall manage it without trouble."

That small encouragement put a great deal of strength in us, and we started toward the aberration.

A Flooded Zone — space under an aberration's dominion. With every step my ankles felt as though they were sinking into muck, yet when I looked down, nothing was there to catch them. Sunlight could not get in. Every direction ran darker than pitch.

I held my guard and focused on the transmission coming through.

Our first real battle, at last.

One of them had no head. Another was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠missing an arm. All four resembled human beings, but with no narrative of their own, not one had a feature worth the name. I drew my sword at an even pace and coated the blade in white imagery power. Behind me, a rifle bolt cycled back and slammed forward. Trusting Hana, I ran.

Of the four, one had pushed too far out in front. I carried the sprint straight into an upward cut and sheared it in two.

Bang—

A gunshot followed at once, and a hole opened in the forehead of the aberration charging in from the right. I turned aside a blow flying at me from the left, then drove the blade in on strength alone and punched it through the thing's neck. The one lagging at the very back had already fled, and been gone a long while.

They had only been Word-class, and still we had moved together as if we shared a single breath. But again, nothing like a special ability had shown itself. A disappointment that had no place in the moment welled up anyway.

"Jaehee...!"

Sunk in that disappointment, I never heard her calling. I pressed on ahead. Hana's hand reached out once, then drew back in.

How long had we been walking? My body adapted with surprising speed, and nothing followed but monotonous combat. Just as even the tension was beginning to loosen, a transmission arrived from Observer Seoyoung.

"Yes. I hear you."

Far off, a massive shape was indeed beginning to resolve through the dark. A foul, viscous mass, ruined artworks plastered over it in thick clumps — unpleasant, and yet the eye kept being pulled back to it. The artworks sank inside, then surfaced again. So this was what modern art felt like, once it had become an aberration.

I was steadying my breath before the fight. Hana was coming toward me from behind. But every nerve I had was caught on the question of what my special power might be, and I left her there alone and broke into a run.

I packed imagery power down into my left hand and ripped it upward in a hard lateral draw. A trail of pure white light carved itself in the wake of the swing. The aberration poured artworks from its body to stop the blow, and a violent rupture filled the plaza.

The echo had not even finished dying when gunfire crashed over it, shot after shot. Bullets laden with frost tore toward the aberration, each trailing blue, and where they struck they left blue points burning in its flesh. Hana's silver ponytail, only faintly blue a moment before, had somewhere along the way been dyed a vivid, luminous blue, and frost of that same pale light was gathering around her. As she began to draw her imagery power in, the frost spun into a vortex and climbed high toward the sky.

The instant she held her breath, the frost rising into the sky held with her.

A report burst out with force enough to split eardrums, and the breath Hana had been holding burst after it, white in the dark. The frost tangled once, then drifted down in a hush, the way petals fall. A single blue point froze everything around it as it drew a blue line outward. That line, begun from Hana—

It bloomed a flower of frost across the aberration's body.

The squelching slime went rigid in a heartbeat, hard as ice cream frozen solid.

"Don't worry. I'll finish it from here. You rest."

I set both hands on the sword again and gathered every shred of imagery power I had for the final blow. Vast power burned brighter and brighter as it converged on my hands, until the ground around me blazed like a single bulb switched on in a lightless room.

Sensing the crisis, the Ruined Artwork lashed out toward Hana in a frantic struggle. Every artwork on its body came pouring off in a savage rush. An instant before the attack could land, sword aura detonated inside an overwhelming blaze of light.

When that aura at last struck a building and stopped in a boom, the radiance and the dust choking the plaza finally cleared. What lay in the open was the corpse of the Ruined Artwork, split in half and dead.

Her voice came through bright with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠excitement. It was over. The tension broke, and I dropped down beside Hana.

"Hana. We really did it, didn't we?"

Still on her knees, hauling in breath, she gave no answer at all. She only whipped her head aside.

The reaction hit me late. Had the two of us spoken even once while we fought? I had been so lost in the special power Grandpa told me about that Hana was shoved entirely to the back. Hunting for some special ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thing I couldn't even name, I had nearly let go of the special thing already in my hands.

Hana's smile. That ought to have been enough. What more had I been trying to take...?

I should apologize....

Observer Seoyoung's transmission and Team Leader Hwaran's tangled into each other, raising a frantic din.

Back to combat readiness...? One at a time — talk one at a time!!

A shadow fell across the ground.

Thuk—

In that instant, a sound that should never have been heard punched through the noise and lodged in my ear.

"Khuk... uh...?"

I was still sitting with my eyes on the ground, and into that view Hana's feet lifted and slowly disappeared. Where they had been, her gear and her shoes dropped, one and then another. A moment later, blood began to patter down on top of them.

I did not have the courage to raise my head. I raised it anyway, and set one useless hope on what I would see — the hope that she was all right. Seo Hana hung there with her body run through, swaying slowly from side to side.

A reality too hard to accept drew away from me, and farther away, trying to become a landscape I had never seen. But the red blood soaking the ground pulled me back into it, and that unbearable dissonance did nothing but drive me deeper into the pit of despair.

Then the small bell at my waist gave a chime.

A resonance, as if it were twisting the very grammar the world was written in.

From one of my hands, a glitch began, slowly, to rise.