Black Zone for Two Weeks
After polishing off free chicken gangjeong, I spent the late afternoon watching the sky begin to darken.
Day one in Sokcho: sprawled out on the living-room carpet, helping Siyeon with her vacation homework.
Maybe it was the thought of hitting the ocean first thing tomorrow—she was being unusually cooperative about the work.
Once I explained something, she almost never asked about the same problem twice. Honestly, Siyeon might be pretty sharp.
The last math problem of the day's quota.
"Done!"
"Good job—"
The second she finished, I clapped for her like a seal, pouring on the praise from the side. Siyeon clapped along, but her hands never quite met, so it never made much of a sound.
Even that clumsiness was adorable. I gathered up the diary and homework scattered every which way and tucked them neatly into the bag that had been sitting properly in place.
Dinner was done. Today's vacation homework was done.
Siyeon still looked wide awake, but back home she would already have been asleep by now. I prodded her between the shoulder blades and steered her toward the second floor, where the beds were.
"Time for bed."
"I'm not sleepy…."
She shook her head, insisting she wasn't tired—but that was just the excitement of a new place and a trip talking.
"If you want to go to the ocean early tomorrow, you have to sleep now. You want to go to the ocean, right?"
"Yeah…."
I took that halfhearted protest, mixed it with an adult's firm tone and the thing she actually wanted, and laid the groundwork for forcing her to sleep. If I left her alone until she genuinely got tired, her whole sleep schedule would collapse and she wouldn't open her eyes until the sun was high. One person suffering that particular misery was plenty for now.
Man, nice room.
Aside from the initial tour, this was my first real look at the second floor. Even up here, the night sea filled the view beyond the windows. Leave it to a place politicians used for getaways—they'd clearly poured serious money into the resort facilities.
Inside the upstairs bedroom was a bed big enough for the two of us easily, and probably three or even four. At that size, our bunk beds put together wouldn't have cost as much as this one mattress.
Once I'd confirmed Siyeon was actually in bed, I stretched up on tiptoe and switched off the light.
"You're not sleeping with me?"
I had the door open and was about to leave when her voice floated up from behind me. Unlike usual, we had to sleep in separate rooms. It might feel a little awkward—but that was an experience too.
"There's only one bed in here."
"It's big, though…."
"It's fine, it's fine."
For Siyeon, who still wasn't used to sleeping far apart, I left the door half-open so light from outside could spill in, then stepped out.
Siyeon might feel lonely on her end—but I had things of my own to take care of.
"Lady Mari. Lady Mari."
"You're up?"
"Yes. And this time the direction is certain."
The moment I left the room, the little bear yanked at my side. What I had to do was tied directly to Sokcho's daily monster appearance rate.
The distribution of average daily monster appearances ran about fifty percent for one appearance, thirty-four percent for two, thirteen percent for three or more. Zero appearances sat at three percent—so even one a day was already a stroke of luck. Two or more visits a day as if it were nothing: a genuine hot spot, in other words.
Gangwon Province already has enough soldiers. Why does it need this many monsters on top of that?
"Where?"
"The opposite direction, ma'am."
This time it looked like the middle of downtown rather than the beach; the little bear pointed past the terrace.
"Sun."
I stepped out onto the empty terrace, where no one was watching, and spoke the single-word transformation phrase.
I'd already told Siyeon's mascot not to report any monsters that showed up. With a short push off the terrace, I threw myself into Sokcho's night sky.
Faint starlight washed the dark. My staff glowed red like a red giant.
"Y-you, you, you-you-you-you, yooou—!"
Following the little bear's directions, I reached downtown. A humanoid monster so ugly it looked like someone had jammed a whole fish over a person's head. It gaped its fish mouth at me, finger pointed my way, and couldn't even finish a sentence.
Online games always had some disgusting fish-man design in the ocean zones.
"Th-this is definitely… Venus's assigned zone…!"
"Yeah, yeah. At least you know who I am. Now put that blasphemous finger down."
"Huk."
I smacked the warm heart ornament of my staff into my palm with a sharp chap-chap and told it to drop the finger. The monster finally registered its own rudeness and snapped back into a proper stance.
Getting paid for the work was one thing, but two or three visits every single day was a problem. I'd apparently gotten famous among the monsters already, so I decided to try a little loophole—just enough to make the next two weeks easier.
With a final smack of the heart ornament against my palm, I spoke.
"Monster friend. You have a very important choice in front of you."
"W-what is it, Lady Sun!"
"Something directly tied to your death—very important…."
At that, the gaping fish mouth shut. Its gills fluttered. From here on, the monster was going to answer carefully.
"After you die and go back, you can tell the others something, right?"
"Yes! That's why no one wants to go near Lady Sun's Black Zone! Their minds break and they can't return as combatants!"
"Oh-ho."
Faced with the fear of death, my monster friend answered one question with ten. True to being a fish head, it spilled everything without thinking.
So they called the place we lived the Black Zone, huh. And the torture-based deterrence method had been the right call after all.
"I will promise you a comfortable death."
"R-really?!"
The eyes stuck on the sides of that fish head went round, asking if I meant it. Of course, not for free.
"There's a condition, though."
"W-what is it, this Quilpiret! I'll sell everything except information on my comrades!"
"No, no, I don't need that much."
Faced with an upright monster ready to hand over a hundred answers for every ten questions, I waved it off and spoke. I couldn't exactly rough up my information courier for the next two weeks of peace.
Still—either the monsters were slow about pulling intel from Earth, or they'd restocked this fast even after the first victim.
"I plan to stay here for the next two weeks."
"Ah—yes."
Information I absolutely should not have been giving a monster. But if the monsters vanished entirely I'd be out of a job, and I was a selfish human who wanted less work while still collecting a full paycheck. Asking a monster for a reasonable boundary like this might be a first on Earth.
Principles were principles. Money was money. Principles don't buy you fried chicken.
"I get less busy. You get fewer casualties. If we can just agree, life gets a lot easier for everyone, right?"
"Yes—eh?"
I fluttered over and casually patted its shoulder with a heavy dose of metaphor. It didn't get the meaning at all and tilted its entire face-section. Leave it to a fish head not to catch on.
"In other words… for two weeks, treat this place the way you treat the Black Zone. Got it?"
"Ah…! Understood!"
"Good, good. Now stand over there. It'll be rough to watch, so squeeze your eyes shut tight."
As Sun's staff clacked and shifted into incineration form, Quilpiret—the monster that was basically a fish for a face—squeezed its eyes shut exactly as ordered.
In an instant, a burst of flame swallowed it. In that brief moment, the heat that rolled outward softened the asphalt into little ponds. The smell of burning fish mixed with melting asphalt into a stench that should not exist in this world.
Just as Sun had promised—no pain—Quilpiret snapped its eyes open in the recovery unit without a single scrap of mental trauma.
Seeing a combatant walk out of the recovery unit on its own, Medic Tentacle took an interest and spoke first.
"Oh? You all right there?"
"Bl… bl…."
The monster could manage nothing but a single muttered syllable, as if it had lost its mind. Medic Tentacle thought, So only the outside looks fine?, and tilted his head to one side—just as:
"Blaaaaaack—! Blaaaaack—!"
Quilpiret shot upright in the recovery unit, bolted out of the recovery room, and started screaming at the top of its lungs. Medic Tentacle, faced with a behavioral pattern he had never seen before, was thoroughly rattled. One look told him this was someone for the intensive care unit right now, and he shouted so every monster in recovery could hear:
"Somebody grab that bastard!!!"
"Oh, for—he's lost it!"
Before long, the recovery-room monsters had him pinned and hauled Quilpiret back. Right before they forced him into intensive care, he delivered the notice he'd received from Sun.
For two weeks, she would be staying in the region Quilpiret had visited. From a monster's perspective, Sokcho—originally a green zone—was to be treated as a Black Zone. The reason she hadn't given him a painful death was the condition that he deliver that message.
The story reached the monster dispatch room somehow, just before the next sacrifice could be chosen.
"If that's true, we have to treat that region as a Black Zone for the time being."
Gate Keeper, an executive of the dispatch room, heard the report and immediately began revising the colors on the map. One of the management monsters under him cocked its head.
"But in human pronunciation, how long is 'two weeks' in our time? It seems to mean a duration, but…."
"Hmm… well, we do know that the sound 'two' corresponds to a degree of number in our concepts."
That was the problem. There was still a great deal the monsters did not understand about humans. Among those gaps, the concept of time sat especially wide.
"Then shall we set this place as a Black Zone for about two Setre? Since she said she'd be 'staying,' it probably isn't too short."
"Mm. Do that."
Gate Keeper nodded at his subordinate's brilliant suggestion.
Two Setre.
In human time, that came to four months and twelve days.
Two weeks later by actual human time, when a monster was dispatched to the region Sun would have already left, they would, with their own hands, be sealing that combatant's fate.