Gong-ri-bi-sa (2)
Our outing came to a trouble-free end with that chance encounter with Yeo Woo-jung.
The snack hunt was a resounding success too, leaving the dorm stocked with two full weeks' worth of food. Snacks to keep me going until the next leave.
So, Lee Hoe-uk's room is that way, huh.
Of course, I had no intention of eating all of it by myself.
I gathered up a portion of the snacks and headed over to the cadet residence hall. Having only seen it from the outside before, thanks to the whole residential-zone issue, I found the interior surprisingly impressive.
It's like a hotel in here.
I'd been expecting something dreary and claustrophobic.
Instead, the corridors were generously wide, decorated with patterns and ornamentation that stopped just short of gaudy. In some ways it actually looked better than the officers' quarters where I lived. The hallway there was absurdly narrow, and the whole place felt suffocatingly sealed in.
"One, two……"
I turned into the second-floor men's cadet housing and counted the room numbers on the doors. 207. Before long, I spotted the room Lee Hoe-uk had told me about.
"Lee Hoe—"
"You lunatic, get that thing off me!"
"—uk?"
Wait, what's all this commotion?
My hand froze mid-knock. Unfortunately, the cursing I'd just heard had come from inside room 207.
"If you hate bugs so much, then you get out! Why the hell are you bitching at me?"
Should… should I even go in? Is it okay to call out to him right now?
I stood there stiff as a board, listening to Lee Hoe-uk's furious voice. It seemed my paper-thin social skills and people-handling abilities had finally met their crisis.
"Are you insane? Why would I leave my own room? You're the one who should leave!"
"Did you rent this place out? Did you? This is my room too, you know? You bug-scared little coward—"
Thwack!
Then something that sounded like a blow reached my ears.
In that instant, I forgot all about pacing outside and just opened the door. Fortunately, it wasn't locked.
"I said everything I had to say, you—"
The door burst open!
"Lee Hoe-uk!"
Through the open doorway, I saw Lee Hoe-uk being pinned down by what I assumed was his roommate.
A trickle of blood was running steadily from Lee Hoe-uk's nose. So that thud I'd heard had been an actual punch.
"What the— what the hell, you two! Stop it! Are you okay!?"
"Who the hell are yo—"
I dropped the snacks I'd been carrying straight onto the floor and moved toward the pair.
Neither of them had anticipated anyone barging in, and the one throwing punches went rigid, his eyes locking onto me. Thanks to that, Lee Hoe-uk didn't catch any more fists.
"I don't know what this is about, but let's all just calm down and……"
Wow. Honestly, I'd rather be facing a crisis where I get surrounded by a crowd and beaten. At least there the countermeasures are clear. This? I have no idea what to do here.
Thwack!
"Gah!"
"You're not the only one allowed to throw punches, you piece of trash!"
"GYAAAH!!"
In the middle of it all, Lee Hoe-uk reared up and drove his fist into his roommate. Revenge for the bloody nose — a punch aimed dead-on at the bridge of it.
The brawl that my intervention had briefly paused reignited.
"……"
"……"
Fortunately, the fight between the two was brought to an end — by the noise spilling out through the open door, and by the other cadets who came running at the sound of it.
By then roughly ten punches had been thrown, and I'd even stepped in to take a few hits on their behalf, but none of that is really important.
"You've got guts in spades, man. Your roommate looked like he was nearly twice your size."
"Ha. It's all flab. The idiot's all blubber."
Even a Hwasa Shinbo reporter couldn't carry that much fat, surely — but rather than nitpick the details, I tore open an alcohol swab.
"Are you sure you don't want to see the medics?"
"I'm fine. Besides, if I go, it's an automatic disciplinary report for sure. Agh, stings."
"Hold still."
Thank goodness a few kind-hearted souls had shared their first-aid supplies. Otherwise I'd have had to trudge all the way to my own quarters for them.
"Give me your hand too. I'll put a bandage on."
"I'm fine, it's nothing."
"Just hold it out. I've got plenty of bandages."
Lee Hoe-uk and I sat on a bench along the walking trail behind the dormitory, patching up our wounds one by one. For injuries from a fistfight, this much treatment was plenty.
"When I heard you didn't get along with your roommate, I figured it was a lifestyle-clash thing."
"Ha. Honestly, that would've been easier to deal with."
"He hates bugs, I heard?"
"Yeah. Says a guy who can't even earn his keep should shut his mouth."
On a separate note — what on earth am I going to do about those two? The kids had managed to separate them for now, but they'd be face-to-face again come bedtime.
"If that's how it is, wouldn't a room change solve everything? Won't they let you switch?"
"I know, right! They do switch you if you file the request — but instead of filing it himself, he just bitches at me!"
"Huh. That's kind of a low blow. Why wouldn't he?"
"Because he doesn't want his performance reviews to take a hit! Is that not the dumbest thing you've ever heard?"
So a lot of resentment had been piling up all this time.
Lee Hoe-uk, his usual deadpan demeanor completely abandoned, launched into a full-blown tirade. It was the first time I'd ever learned that Lee Hoe-uk was capable of talking this much.
"Haah…… that bastard. No matter how I look at it, he's just waiting for me to put in the request first, so I kept toughing it out. But at this point, I'm thinking I'll just switch. Pisses me off a little, feels like surrendering."
"How is that surrendering? You avoid dung not because you're scared of it, but because it's dirty."
So this is that thing they call pride? I can't say I understand it. Staking a life that should be too short to even enjoy on pure agony, all for some petty pride.
"Ah, arguing makes me hungry."
"Oh yeah? Then the snacks I brought…… ah, I left them on your floor."
"Snacks? Ohhh. So that's why you came by. You brought me snacks?"
"Yep. I bought a bunch during our leave this time. Sa Seo-yeon said the girls would deliver hers for her."
With Pyo Do-hyeok, I hadn't gone so far as to offer to deliver his snacks too. From his perspective, having someone accompany him on his first-ever outing was already a great deal of effort on his part.
"……Thanks."
"Don't mention it. They're just snacks."
Either way, Lee Hoe-uk had been through a lot. Who'd have thought he'd be so isolated just for handling a bug-type Phantasm.
"Hurry up and request that room change."
"Yeah."
"Ah, if it weren't for evening roll call, I'd have told you to just come sleep at my quarters tonight."
"Your room's big?"
"Completely. It's two rooms — a bedroom and a study. Both of them are bigger than your entire room."
"What? God, that's insanely nice. They not taking roommates?"
"Maybe I should sound out an instructor or two?"
But even so, right now he wasn't alone. I hoped that fact alone was some comfort to him.
At the very least, it was to me, in that moment.
"Oh! Hey, look, a shooting star!"
"Where? Where??"
And so the Saturday night slipped away.
Pyo Do-hyeok stood on the veranda, watching the two of them chattering away on the bench down the walking trail. The soundproofing barrier kept the words from reaching him, but their gestures alone conveyed the liveliness of the exchange.
"Hey, Pyo Do-hyeok."
Then someone called out to him.
"Went out on leave with that bastard, did you?"
Pyo Do-seok. His twin brother.
"Getting friendly, I see?"
"……"
Pyo Do-hyeok knew his brother disliked Yahui. Naturally, he'd anticipated Pyo Do-seok would also resent him spending time with the man.
"That is none of your concern."
But so what?
"……You."
"Stay out of my business. That's how it works between us, no?"
Pyo Do-seok's surveillance meant nothing. There was no reason on earth he owed him an accounting — no more than Pyo Do-seok had ever respected his feelings.
Screech. Click.
Pyo Do-hyeok ended the conversation by sliding the veranda door shut. That was all.
The two of them went back to pretending the other didn't exist. As always — the most ordinary thing in the world.
Week three had begun. Which meant we were now officially cleared for club activities.
"Chicks. Everybody here?"
From now on, no free time followed the afternoon academic classes. In its place came club activity hours.
That was why I was at the Training Zone outside of practical combat class.
"The Martial Arts Club has, by tradition, held its introductions very, very late. Plenty of cadets come swarming in — and plenty come swarming right back out."
Instructor Shim Jae-gyeong wasn't wrong. The cadets who'd been lured in by the instructor's sales pitch had vanished over the past three days like Valentine's chocolates. Just as I'd polished off half my friendship chocolate within two days of receiving it, word was that the fresh members of the Martial Arts Club had bolted en masse.
We were only four days in, and the first-years who remained numbered a mere seventeen, myself included.
"I'll make a prediction: by the end of the first semester, more than a quarter of the ones standing here won't be. Ah, but I'm different, Instructor? Don't bet on it. You haven't even dipped a toe in yet."
For all the effort she'd put into recruiting, the instructor's expectations were astonishingly low.
She wasn't even attempting the usual sleight of hand — buttering the kids up, flattering them into staying. What she was saying, she genuinely believed.
"I said it the first day and I'll say it now: I don't stop anyone who wants to walk away. Facing down otherworldly creatures head-on with nothing but a blade in your hand isn't something a sane person does in the first place. Force someone into that, how well do you think they'll perform?"
Instructor Shim Jae-gyeong lightly tapped the ground with the sledgehammer she'd been holding like a walking stick. Thud. The earth gave a low rumble.
"The moment your life starts feeling precious, quit. It's precisely because of that that Hwadam teaches fighting skills only as a general education — and never built a formal curriculum devoted solely to close-quarters combat."
Compared to what I knew, it wasn't a lie — but it wasn't the whole truth either.
In the original story, it had been laid out far more bluntly: they forced them into it, and the kids died — their spirits broken, they gave up. Same idea of offering a chance to quit before it kills you. Just a different flavor of it.
"Now, on that note — this crop of first-years is lucky and unlucky at the same time."
At that moment, every cadet from second year and above began moving at once.
Whether this part had been prearranged or not, Instructor Shim Jae-gyeong didn't look flustered in the least. She simply grinned.
"I believe I mentioned this during my little recruitment pitch — when a suitable Dimension Gate appears, our Martial Arts Club is always first in line for assignment."
The second-years and above shed their coats and checked the combat gear underneath. No wonder their uniforms looked so much bulkier than ours — they hadn't been in civilian clothes at all.
"But these Dimension Gates are a willful bunch, you see. They don't open on demand. You can't enter whenever it suits you, whenever you're ready."
Finished with their checks, the upperclassmen boarded vehicles waiting in readiness. I'd never noticed them before, but they were apparently stationed there whenever not in use.
"So get in, chicks! Today, we're heading to a Grade 1.1.2 Dimension Gate!"
Fourth session of club activities — and we were about to be dragged into a Dimension Gate. What a blazing club this was.
"I-Instruc— Instructor, isn't this… isn't this a bit too soon……?"
One of the first-years stammered out an objection, practically convulsing. Instructor Shim Jae-gyeong's response was simplicity itself.
"Too soon? Of course it's too soon. You lot can barely hold a weapon yet — how could it not be?"
For the record, our activities so far had gone as follows.
Day one: endure ten minutes with the corpse of a dead otherworldly creature draped over your body.
Day two: face a Grade 4 otherworldly creature borrowed by the instructor from a distance of fifty centimeters, with nothing between you but a slender iron cage.
Day three: watch attacks poured out one-sidedly by the instructor or an upperclassman — 'without flinching or counterattacking.'
Naturally, the strikes on day three only looked like blows meant to land — they were actually swipes that grazed past. So long as you held still, there was no chance of getting hit. The problem was that the holding still was the hard part.
Anyway, all we'd done were nerve tests of this kind. We hadn't so much as held a real weapon. That was why the instructor put it the way she did.
"Th-then……"
"Let me clear up a misconception. I have no intention of telling you lot to clear the Gate. Wouldn't do it even if you begged. What kind of first-year tries to crack a Dimension Gate with otherworldly creatures inside?"
At Instructor Shim Jae-gyeong's jerk of the chin, a truck pulled up in front of us. One of those two-and-a-half-ton transport vehicles, the kind everyone called the "two-and-a-half."
The assistant instructor in the driver's seat grinned.
"There's exactly one thing you're going in there to do: watch your seniors work. Just get a taste of the field. That's all."
Once the instructor had said that much, no first-year offered further resistance. We piled into the two-and-a-half. Since the vehicle could hold twenty, all of us fit with room to spare.
The truck pulled out of the academy.
"Run the briefing."
"Yes, ma'am."
The remaining seats were taken by Instructor Shim Jae-gyeong and one fifth-year cadet. The fifth-year cleared his throat and launched into a briefing of fairly respectable form.
"The Dimension Gate we're entering is a Grade 1 cavern-type. Terrain analysis is one hundred percent complete and a full map has been produced. The otherworldly creatures encountered are……"
Inside the transport were a whiteboard and a projector.
Using the two of them, the fifth-year displayed the map and images of every creature we might encounter.
The cavern was a single straight tunnel with no branching paths, and the only otherworldly creature inside was a mere Grade 1. A foolproof layout — a genuinely safe structure, with no room for variables to erupt.
The instructor hadn't brought the first-years along for nothing. Its low risk made it perfect for acclimating us to the feel of the field.
"Operation objective: annihilate the creatures and secure the cavern."
"We're not breaking the Dimension Core?"
"The internal environment of the Gate is well suited to building cadet field experience, and since it didn't form in a populated area, the decision has been made to preserve it for training purposes."
"Good. Everyone heard that? Even if you see the Dimension Core, you do not break it. Anyone who does had better be prepared for me to shatter the marrow in their bones."
That was a remarkably effective threat. Faced with those knotted biceps, not a single first-year voiced a complaint.
"Continue."
"Yes. The formation during the operation is……"
After that, we heard it all — how the upperclassmen would breach the Gate and respond to threats, and where we first-years were to stand and what we were to do while they did it.
Summed up in one line, the instruction amounted to: first-years stay the hell back. Which meant that following it, at least, promised to be anything but difficult.
"Prepare for Gate entry!"
Beyond the parked transport, a Dimension Gate came into view.