Hit Girl
The uniform was thick enough that no glass shards dug into my back for any additional injuries. Being hit by a bullet head-on was a first for me, and I felt like I might black out on the spot, but somehow I steadied my mind and managed to staunch the wound. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Hong Sa-ik draw his pistol to defend himself.
He couldn't be allowed to step in personally. If we failed to protect the Minister of Military Affairs now, it would truly become a catastrophic blunder. Just as I was trying desperately to push myself up—
The one I'd been waiting for reappeared in the train car. She still had her gun in hand, but she didn't seem to have fired it. Hui-yeong rushed to my side in alarm, examining my wound.
"What happened?"
"The bomb... it was a fake..."
I explained, the words tumbling out without context. That was probably it. The moment I saw a metallic object drop into the room, I'd judged it a bomb and risen to throw it back outside. The enemy had seized on that opening to snipe me — and the fact that they'd taken a close-range shot while I might have hurled the bomb out meant, by definition, that what they'd thrown was a fake to begin with.
There was no sign of an actual explosion outside, after all. So had the whole point been to make us throw out a fake bomb, or was the real one somewhere else...
Just as that thought crossed my mind, I noticed something strange — it was too quiet outside. The gunfire had stopped a while ago. They'd been carrying Thompson submachine guns, which meant that even accounting for magazine changes, they should have resumed firing by now. Were they abandoning their positions to come inside the train directly? Or had they withdrawn?
All sorts of possibilities flashed through my head, but the answer was entirely different.
Once again, a cylindrical object came whipping in through the shattered window. This time I was certain it was a real bomb, and I scrambled to respond somehow — but then I saw Hui-yeong pick up a piece of the window frame, splintered by gunfire, off the floor.
It was a short, thin stick. I couldn't fathom what she intended to do with it. But she was stronger than I had imagined.
Gripping the end of the wooden rod with both hands, she widened her stance in an instant, legs spreading into a smooth step. Then, with a fluid swing, she aimed at the underside of the incoming cylinder.
Astonishing power exploded out of that short little stick. The bomb, which had been arcing down in a parabola, shot out in a straight line and flew clean out the window. Hui-yeong dropped low to the floor the moment her swing finished, and outside came a boom as the explosion went off.
"What if it goes off the instant you hit it, you—ghh!"
I tried to joke, but my body wouldn't cooperate. Hui-yeong wasn't in a joking mood either; she ran to me with a grim face and held onto me.
"Chief Inspector! Are you all right?"
"One gunshot wound. It hit me square, but I don't think it went through — it's still lodged in me, so I'll be fine for now. See to the Minister first."
"There's no one to see him to. The station staff were already overpowered and knocked out. I sent an urgent report to the police station, but it'll be a while yet before armed officers arrive from Daejeon..."
In the modern era, the idea that it would 'take time' to respond to a bomb terror attack at a train station would be unthinkable. But this country didn't yet have even a single properly equipped brigade of troops, and the standard-issue weapon of its police officers was not a pistol but a baton.
It would be no surprise at all if inexperienced police, suddenly handed a report, were struggling with the initial response. Accountability could wait — right now, we had to resolve the situation.
"Um, Deputy Minister..."
The moment I looked into her eyes to speak, I forgot what I'd been about to say and shut my mouth.
Her black eyes were burning. And yet they were still black. I don't know how to describe black that burns bright, but that was exactly what her gaze was doing — blazing black. It was the kind of look that proclaimed with her entire being that nothing I said could possibly matter. Faced with it, only one thing remained for me to say.
"...Be careful."
"I will."
Machine gun rounds were pouring through the window. But Hui-yeong didn't so much as consider ducking; she simply sprinted straight toward it, as if commanding the bullets to get out of her way.
Nothing about her suggested she'd been struck by a single round. With lithe, fluid movements, Choi Hui-yeong didn't even grab the shattered window frame — she just planted her feet and leapt clean out of the train. What happened after that was beyond my sight.
But soon the rattle of the Thompsons stopped, and a man's scream rang out. Alongside the crack of a pistol rather than a submachine gun came the sound of someone collapsing. Still clutching the wound on my shoulder, I muttered:
"Wait, if you kill them all, we can't interrogate whoever's behind this..."
"Let her be."
Hong Sa-ik spoke up. He'd been keeping quietly to his place below the window.
"It's been a long time since I've seen eyes like that. A look you'd struggle to find even on a battlefield. And speaking from my experience, soldiers with eyes like that were impossible to stop once they began cutting down the enemy without mercy."
"Even so, this isn't something you can treat like a war..."
When the commotion outside died down, Hong Sa-ik slowly rose to his feet. I was still in danger and tried to stop him, but my first-ever gunshot wound was draining my strength in ways I hadn't expected. Honestly, it hurt so much I didn't want to think about anything. I was forcing myself to keep performing my duties, straining my body so hard that cold sweat was running down my forehead.
The Minister of Military Affairs glanced out the window and clicked his tongue.
"The situation's over. Both of them are dead. One looks to have been caught in the explosion, and the one carrying the submachine gun..."
Hong Sa-ik stopped mid-sentence and came over to me. He took one of my arms, hauled me up, and sat me in a chair. Looking at my wound, the general said:
"It's lodged deep. Not immediately life-threatening, but it's not something we can treat here. Since we're right by the station, you should be able to get it handled at a nearby hospital."
"Moving now is dangerous. That was a group carrying bombs and machine guns — there's no telling where any remnants might be lurking. Rather than being supported while we move the Minister, I'd rather wait for the local police to arrive, hand things over to them, and clear the scene. As you said, it doesn't seem to be an injury that's immediately life-threatening..."
"Even so, you ought to have the lead out before it seeps into you. If it goes in too deep and can't be removed surgically, you could end up living your whole life with a bullet inside your body."
Perhaps that was how Kim Gu had lived, carrying a bullet in him until the day he died. But mine wasn't lodged anywhere near as close to the heart. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I said haltingly:
"Thank you for your concern. But whether it's the Minister, or me, or this government, we each have our own... delicate circumstances. I'd rather not leave anything behind that could come back to bite us."
It was a statement I could only make because, as long as I didn't move, the pain stayed manageable at a familiar level. Hearing me out, Hong Sa-ik seemed to decide against pressing further, and he carefully peered out the window, waiting for things to be brought under control.
Soon Hui-yeong leapt back into the train car through the window. Gathering me into her arms, she cried out:
"Unni! Are you okay? Does it hurt a lot?"
"It hurts a little more because of you."
"Thank goodness. You've still got the presence of mind to joke."
It wasn't a joke. It genuinely hurt more because she'd been hugging me so tight. But there was something else — the smell of blood was overwhelming. And it didn't seem to be coming from me alone.
As I refocused my blurred vision, I realized that the Deputy Minister of Military Affairs holding me was soaked in blood, practically head to toe. And in her hand — not a gun, but a knife, blood dripping off it in fat, steady drops. With a voice split evenly between shock and fear, I asked:
"Why does the one with the gun have a knife...?"
"I accidentally dropped my gun partway through the fight. I had no choice but to take them on in close combat..."
"Then you could have just subdued them! Why are you covered head to toe in—"
"Oh. Right. I was supposed to arrest them, wasn't I."
Choi Hui-yeong said it like a person who'd simply forgotten her duties — as if she'd only just realized, hearing my words, that arresting them had been the thing to do.
More than that... she was far too calm, for someone who had just killed with a blade. Yes, I'd shot a man myself minutes ago, but firing a gun and using a knife were entirely different matters. Even people who have killed with a gun feel revulsion toward blades — especially short ones — and that's the way it should be. Humanity's resistance to killing is governed, above all, by distance to the victim.
To end up that drenched in blood with a knife of that length, she would have had to stab at point-blank range, again and again, striking at vessels that produce massive hemorrhaging — the aorta and its like.
And then she'd come back to me acting as if she'd merely done the most obvious thing in the world. An inexplicable dread settled over me.
"Still... you see the other person's face better with a knife."
That was what she said. And I lost consciousness right there.