The Reason I Saved You
From the moment they are born until the day they die, humans undergo cell division countless times. Old cells die off and are expelled as waste; newly generated cells take their place, and life goes on. Bones and the brain, of course, are more or less permanent organs. However generously the aging cells may step aside for the next generation, the essential things that make a person who they are remain that person.
Five-year-old Lee Da-hyun and thirty-year-old Lee Da-hyun might look nothing alike. Even if most of the cells that compose Lee Da-hyun have been swapped out, they are still Lee Da-hyun. Change the face, and it is still the same person.
Then what, exactly, constitutes a person? Memory? Personality? The web of relationships around them? Or something that can continuously prove they have been themselves all along?
"Senior. Lucky you packed it in when you did. Smoke shot up like that, I thought you were really a goner."
"How did you even go into that smoke and come back out? Your body changed, too. Did you actually Awaken?"
Listening to the lizardman's thick country drawl and the orc's painfully formal concern, Dahyun took what comfort she could from the fact that her body had changed in the middle of a job. At least these two could vouch for who she was. If this had happened while she was alone, all she would have had to prove herself with was circumstantial evidence.
"So you became an Awakened? Don't know what the ability is, but you can just walk through fire now?"
"Do Awakened folks have their bodies change, though? First time I've seen that."
"No idea. I was dead to rights when this happened. Feels like I sold my soul to a demon."
Complicated questions of identity could wait. The phenomenon in front of her was more than enough. She had already loaded the child—collapsed from carbon monoxide poisoning, an oxygen mask strapped on—into the first ambulance and sent it off. She was still on scene, waiting for the next one.
In a world where people regularly arrived from other worlds with their bodies already changed, no one treated Dahyun becoming a woman as something that couldn't happen. Even Dahyun herself was less interested in denying it than in figuring out why.
And it wasn't as if she had no guess.
Right over there, a nun was being thoroughly interrogated by a companion who radiated a thick, poisonous hostility. Even people treated as Villains didn't usually wear restraints like that. Handcuffs, maybe. A rope, at most. This went well past a belt cinched tight around the torso—it wrapped her thighs like a garter belt besides.
And that was the same nun who, before Dahyun had even entered the apartment, had told her exactly where the child was. Had the restraints failed to suppress her power? Even allowing for that, the way the woman in the suit treated her with such elaborate deference suggested she was someone who had crossed over from another world with considerable power. And someone like that, Dahyun figured, could change a person's sex if she wanted to.
She had taken a price, too. Was she a demon, then, or something divine? Dahyun couldn't pin it down. If she were evil, she could have taken Dahyun's life, or worse. If she were good, she wouldn't have turned a stranger into a woman and then stood there giggling with her companion. And she hadn't so much as glanced at Dahyun coming out of the fire—she looked ready to leave.
Walk through flames and feel no heat. Get hit by collapsing building debris and not even scratch the skin. Inhale smoke and come out fine. She had given Dahyun a body like that, made her a woman as the price, and then acted as if none of it concerned her at all?
Or had it already been a profitable trade—the child's life, in exchange for children who might have been born in the future?
Except Dahyun already had a child. The frequent call-outs had left things awkward with her wife, but they were still a family who thought of each other as family, who looked after one another. She couldn't, for the life of her, figure out what the nun wanted. What was the motive?
"We'll talk to your wife for you, of course. But you get a lot weaker when you become a woman, don't you? You gonna be able to keep working?"
"He's right. You were fragile enough as a human, Senior. Take the industrial-accident payout and get out of the dangerous work. Watching you throw your life away on impulse is more than I can stand."
Dahyun didn't have the luxury of thinking about the nun any further. She might be about to lose her job.
That was the truth of it. Humans were weaker than orcs or lizardmen. Novels and movies liked to dress that up—humans are quicker, humans are wiser—but in reality, strength and agility were not separate things. More muscle meant you could also move the way you wanted, faster. Knowledge? Wisdom? That just varied from individual to individual. Being an orc didn't keep you out of the prosecutor general's chair, and being a lizardman didn't keep you off a Nobel Prize in physics.
So Dahyun, relatively speaking, might have been a bit of a burden to them. Ten years as a rescue worker, staying in the field on experience and steady training—that was how she had thought of herself. But the limits of muscular strength that came with sex might be something she simply couldn't overcome.
"Impulse? When has that ever gone wrong, even once? You're the ones who stick to the manual, and that's what lets me take the risk. If you get hurt, the whole operation suffers. I can afford to move. I've got more years on the job than you, so my odds of coming out alive are better too. How many people have we saved because of that?"
She hadn't done anything wrong. That was how Dahyun defended herself.
"It went wrong this time, didn't it? You're the one who told us not to blame ourselves for failing to save one person. Think of the people you'll save later, you said. Treat your own body as important. And then you try to pull every single person you can see out of the fire."
Her usual lectures didn't land at all. How could that green-skinned muscle-hog, who looked like he had muscle packed all the way into his brain, be this logical?
…The fact that she thought that meant she knew he was right. A sliver of doubt crept in about her own choices. Should she have suppressed the fire by the book, without overreaching, and left the child's life to fate? Would preserving her own life—and staying in the field for every operation after this—have been the way to save more people in the end?
While Dahyun wrestled with it, the lizardman rounded his eyes and repeated what he'd said before.
"For real, though, Senior. Looks like you're gonna have to quit."
"What, so if I leave, you two become captain?"
"Ain't like the pay goes up just 'cause you're the boss. But if you've gone and become a woman and gotten weaker, you can't do the work no more. You got some other ability now, so skip the firehouse and just go be a Hunter."
"He's right. If it's going to be just as dangerous either way, you might as well do Hunter work and get paid more. Saving lives is the same whether you're a Hunter or a firefighter, isn't it?"
"…"
That was fair, too. Treatment of firefighters had improved, but they were still civil servants, still underpaid. There were benefits of one kind or another, but luxury was out of reach. Hunters, on the other hand, risked their lives the same way—except they fought the things that came through from other worlds, sold off the byproducts, and lived a little better for it. Or so people said.
Dahyun shook her head anyway. It wasn't that she would turn down more money. But people had aptitudes.
"I'd rather save people than fight. If I liked combat, I'd have taken this body and gone into something like the UFC."
"A good body, you said? You, Senior? Don't make me laugh."
"Hey. That's cheap, leaning on racial advantages like that."
"Well. Senior did have a decent physique for a human. Of course, now…"
"You little— Did you not see me carry that kid out just now? My strength is fine."
"If it's your career and experience you don't want to waste, wouldn't it be better to move to desk work, or take command on site?"
They really hadn't seen her hoist that child and walk out. The body had gotten a bit slimmer, but the strength was the same. She had even gained that uncanny power that kept her from being hurt in the flames, and she had no intention of letting it rot. They were getting ahead of themselves, considering her retirement out of worry. She was grateful, and also annoyed enough that she snapped her head away.
"We'll talk later. I'm tired."
If she had still been a man, she wouldn't have sulked like that. She didn't even notice she was doing it.
"Yeonmin. I told you I was a special human to you."
"You did."
"But I started to wonder. Among all those children in danger, did I just happen to catch your eye? Did you simply do me a kindness and save me? There must have been countless people like me over all those years."
Ah.
I had thought Helena was jealous. She wasn't scolding me for saving someone else. She was turning over the reason I had saved her.
The truth, if I told it as it had been at the time, was far too simple. I had just wanted to. But if I said that, Helena—right in the middle of her most sensitive years—would be hurt. The revenge play that was about to unfold just looked like so much fun. That's why I saved you. I knew that if I said it that way, even the fondness she held for me would vanish on the spot.
So what reason was I supposed to give? That saving other humans had been a whim, but Helena I had saved in earnest? Except I had been in earnest with the others, too.
"I want every human in the world to live in peace and happiness. That's all it is."
I picked the most inoffensive reason I could. Unfortunately, it was not the answer Helena had wanted. She went thoroughly gloomy the moment she heard it.
Agent Park took up the questioning instead.
"Yeonmin. Weren't you only able to grant a wish once a month? And to use your power while ignoring even a mana restraint…"
Mm. For a scolding, there was a fair amount of fear in her voice. Well. Humans had always been afraid of power they couldn't control.
"I don't really know what you mean. I only told you what I saw. As for granting a wish… the one who saved that child was the firefighter."
Only able to grant a wish once a month? That was news to me. I had never said any such thing. Agent Park had simply decided it was so. And the wish I had answered had only been a request for strength. Using that strength to save the child had been entirely the firefighter's will. Mix those together, and it came out sounding like, I wouldn't know. A way of talking that told no lies and let the other party misunderstand all on their own.
"B-but the firefighter came out as a woman all of a sudden…"
Even after that, Agent Park still seemed to suspect I had granted the firefighter's wish.
"Come now, Agent Park. Just because you wanted to become a woman doesn't mean everyone else does."
I quietly teased her, and that put an end to the fuss. What was I supposed to do? It was the truth. Agent Park I had made into the woman she wanted to be. The firefighter had only said she wanted to save the child, so I had given her a body equal to that.
Agent Park, apparently finding it hard to argue further, let out a sigh.
"Hah. Then I suppose that firefighter Awakened on her own. Rare, but not impossible. When a strong will detonates latent potential, people do Awaken."
And that was the excuse finished, without a single lie.
Ah, I can steer what goes on inside human heads! I am this incredible!
Ah. Not a person, though.
Anyway, I had enjoyed the fire-watching, and the firefighter's future looked deliciously interesting. I was brimming with anticipation, and then—
Hm?
Where did the firefighter go?
They had already put out the fire, wrapped the rescue, and pulled out?
No—my morning drama!