Help Remaining on the Surface (2)
"...Have you come to?"
The first things that met my eyes were a dim candle flame and red skin behind a pair of glasses.
I groped at my head and felt soft cotton padding beneath my fingers.
Surely I hadn't ended up a prisoner like I had with the Zeroth Reich—
"The racket you made tearing through the whole city reached all the way down here. Thanks to you, the surface is quite lively right now."
"..."
My hands and feet weren't bound.
On top of that, the interior layout was nothing like a place meant for interrogations.
Where was this?
"I understand the wariness. You've seen what people with this skin do both above ground and below."
I rustled upright; the clear sound of my shoulder hitting the wall suggested some kind of partition rather than solid construction. There was a ceiling, but it didn't look like concrete.
An extension of a shopping mall building, maybe?
"Well... for example, you can't call every Muslim a jihadi terrorist, can you? Of course... nearly every terrorist was a Muslim. I can understand how you might think."
The man turned toward my bristling wariness and gave a faint smile.
No eyebrows. No lips. Just the shape of a face.
...As expected, a New Skin.
"For that line of talk, right up until I blacked out completely you were going on about God's blessing and lost lambs—"
"Of course. Everyone started from the same people and the same faith."
"So you're with the Rebirth Church?"
"Would you mind calling us a splinter?"
A Rebirth Church splinter?
There had been splinters?
Hans Schulz's case meant it wasn't impossible.
...If this had been a game where every faction was fixed, at least prediction would have been easier. Everything except the creatures was randomized.
"Teacher."
At the careful voice of a man entering the room, I snapped my head around at once.
A man with ordinary skin...
"The crows are still running wild on the surface. Today's patrol would be better skipped..."
"How are the food stores?"
"The children are throwing tantrums about eating the same biscuits every day, but... once they're hungry enough, they'll come around."
"Is none of the harvested wheat left?"
"You want to bake bread? But the flour..."
"The people looking after the children have it hard enough, don't they? Soft, moist bread is something everyone likes."
"Teacher, if we keep going like this we'll lose even the seed for next spring. Spoil the children with nothing but bread and they won't touch the biscuits at all."
Harvested wheat.
These people already had vegetable gardens?
"As I recall we can still make bread two or three more times."
"With that amount we could buy the medicine we're already short on, and increase the harvest as well. We can't keep giving in to children's whims forever..."
"Mr. Aiden."
"...Yes, Teacher."
"The children are our future. Even if they throw tantrums now, once they grow older they'll work hard for the bread they love so much. Ms. Mitchell's two children already practically live in the gardens, don't they?"
"It would be nice if every child were like Ms. Mitchell's."
"Just as we all hope to become better people."
The Teacher smiled warmly, removed his glasses, and nodded.
"Go prepare the flour with the children. In the meantime I need to speak with this man a little longer."
"Yes, Teacher. But... those grains were hard-won. Please stop saying things like 'as a blessed person I should shoulder more of the hardship alone.' Without you, no one can go out on the surface..."
"I understand."
At last the man nodded and left.
Once again only the Teacher and I remained in the room.
"So... in this Rebirth Church of yours, ordinary people outnumber the red-skinned ones."
"No. Ms. Mitchell, the mother of two, has also been reborn, and Mr. Kumar's third son received the blessing just as I did. Mr. George, who handles security, is the same."
"Then why do you go outside alone—"
"Ms. Mitchell is in charge of the farming. Mr. Kumar's third son is far too young. Mr. George is simply too large to move with any agility. More than that, he spent the entire catastrophe hiding inside a school, so he has no knowledge of the outside world whatsoever."
The Teacher sighed and put his glasses back on.
Looking closer, I realized there were no lenses in the frames.
"In a way it's the curse of the one who has endured the most trials. I may die... but I cannot ask others to take on a task I know will kill them for certain."
He stopped whatever he had been doing at the desk, turned fully in his chair, and rolled closer to me.
"Your bag held things rather far removed from survival. The gun and ammunition I understand, but there was no food at all—only purification canisters packed tight. And you hardly looked like a raider; instead of simply fleeing from the crows you were making a racket. Several windows outside were broken as well. Of course... that is assuming your mind hadn't already left you."
He set a disassembled bullet on his palm and regarded me steadily.
"But from the way you've been listening carefully to everything so far, it seems your mind is intact—so I'll ask. Exactly who are you, and why were you causing such a disturbance above the shopping mall where we are hiding?"
I hesitated, yet the talk of wheat grains and the presence of someone who seemed to tend gardens professionally here both weighed on me.
And unlike the ones who indiscriminately treated people as livestock or sacrifices, the red-skinned man in front of me felt different from the very air around him.
Perhaps it would be all right to tell him a little.
"...Huhu. Acting as bait to protect the others. How reckless."
In a situation where I was moving the wounded, what other option had there been?
Pointing at someone and throwing them out to die had never been possible to begin with.
If someone with the Heroic Spirit trait had been present, they would have stepped forward without hesitation... but that was precisely why the trait was so rare.
Even Angela, who had told me to abandon her the moment she became a liability, had frozen solid.
"Better than all of us dying when the ice broke."
"Betting one's life so readily is never easy."
"I knew their habits fairly well, and... I had some confidence, I suppose."
I hadn't expected them to start ramming rebar into the buildings, though.
And the pattern I thought would stop at stabbing had gone as far as walking on legs... maybe because I had drawn too many of them.
If I hadn't bothered checking the river side, things might have been a little safer.
"You introduced yourself as an engineer. Purification filters, guns, ammunition... from the sound of it, a man who can make nearly anything, someone the world needs for reconstruction. For a person that important to take the bait role..."
"You're the one staking your own life as well, aren't you?"
"Hu, hu, hu."
The Teacher let out a hearty laugh and rested his clasped hands on his knee.
Did this man possess the Heroic Spirit trait?
"That is why I never go alone. I only shoulder the weight I can answer for. Whereas you... a decision that shoulders a far greater weight. The soldiers you rescued and the wounded, the man who opposed the expedition, even the doctor who pushed you into it."
"..."
"If you had entered some other building without us, or if you had collapsed while being chased through a building already full of wild dogs—things would have gone very badly indeed."
I had been lucky.
The same luck would not come twice.
...From the start, the easy escape thanks to help from the Zeroth Reich.
No—from the moment I first met the Omen family.
"In any case, I have heard your story well. Mr. George, you may lower the gun now."
"...Yes, Teacher."
From a place where I had sensed nothing at all, presence suddenly bloomed.
A massive frame that filled the entire doorway emerged from the darkness, quietly offered a greeting, and tucked a suppressed pistol into his belt.
"There are two possible conclusions. Either you are a con man among con men who lies with breathtaking skill... or you are a reckless leader trying to set an example."
He adjusted his glasses and returned my bag—but handed the shotgun straight to the man named George.
"There are children, so we prefer to keep firearms somewhere they cannot reach. Retrieve it when you leave."
"...I'll take that to mean you have no intention of sending me off right away."
"Hu, hu, hu. The price for a saved life must be paid, no?"
That was only fair.
I had a list of things I needed to ask the Rangers for once I returned as well.
"Securing water for farming every time is difficult. For now either Ms. Mitchell or I haul water thick with radiation and run it through sand and pebbles... do you follow?"
"A makeshift water purifier."
"Exactly. But when we have to secure drinking water the same way every single time, there is never enough wheat... and the bread has to be rationed... tantrums are not so simple to manage."
"A moment ago you said you could harvest more."
"In a manner of speaking, yes. We could harvest more... but until we obtain a proper water source it remains pie in the sky. And then, as luck would have it... a kindly engineer appeared before us."
He rose from his seat and extended a hand as if offering a handshake.
"We will obtain every item you require, within the bounds of what is possible. Therefore..."
...It was not a bad deal.
My shin was throbbing; I had probably taken a solid bruise as well.
"I'll be in your care, then."
"The pleasure is ours."
A glance at my wrist told me night had fallen while I was unconscious.
The crows would take time to disperse anyway, so I would finish the work quickly and leave.
"...Where's Hyunwoo?"
"..."
"Answer me. Where is Hyunwoo. Where is he? Is he overdoing extra work again?"
Rangers carefully supported the wounded from below and lowered them to the ground.
And Angela, crushed against the wall, could only hiccup.
"..."
"The wounded—"
"I don't give a damn about the wounded. Answer me. Where is Hyunwoo."
Arms folded, Sara stood guard beyond the plastic sheeting and blocked the special forces men holding the wounded by both arms.
Her gaze never left the crumpled Angela.
"Mr. Hyunwoo is—"
"I told you. If anyone dies because of your whining, I won't let it slide."
"..."
"You fucking—"
Sara yanked the zipper of the plastic wall open and shoved her body through the gap; two Ranger squad members immediately barred her way.
James only watched from a slight distance.
His enraged daughter.
Angela, clutching her head, barely able to breathe.
"I—I don't know your name, but calm down. Wait, damn it, what kind of strength—Col!"
"Dad, you must know. Where is Hyunwoo. Where is he."
What could a man say when all he had seen was the last retreating back of someone who had neither come nor gone across the frozen river, only drawing the crows with gunfire?
He had something he had to protect.
The man his daughter liked had probably thought the same.
"...A crow the size of a two-story building was watching us as we crossed the frozen river."
"What?"
"The ice couldn't break. That crow couldn't be allowed to call its fellows."
"Speak so I can understand, Dad. I don't care about the crows. Hyunwoo—"
"He ran in the opposite direction from us. Straight toward the crows."
In the end he had been swept up by the doctor's insistence.
He had scolded the doctor's actions.
And still he had recklessly thrown himself into certain death.
Yet the doctor had broken before that certain death.
Before the divorce and after it, he himself had never moved, always using duty as the excuse.
Even the Rangers, unable to abandon their wounded comrades, had forced their steps toward the bunker as quickly as they could.
Even while they watched the hunting crows gathering thicker and thicker in the sky.
"..."
"There were a few gunshots, and the noise the crows made was so loud... he might still be alive."
"...He might still be... alive?"
A wrinkled hand closed over Sara's clenched fist.
"Not this time, Sara."
"..."
The feet that kept trying to push forward were blocked by the old soldier's hand.
She tried, belatedly, to follow the example of her enemy, but the dagger was snatched away in an instant.
Her furious hands, not knowing what to do, finally clenched into white-knuckled fists.
"...You people go. Go and bring him back."
She resealed the plastic she had torn open and barred the people trying to enter.
The tears streaming down her face would not stop.
"He's the one who went because you sent a rescue request. The one who had no choice because that bitch over there cut her own hair to the scalp and threatened him."
Knowing full well she was being unreasonable, Sara stood frozen for a moment and sobbed.
And that resentment soon turned toward one person.
"Yeah, you. You said you'd throw your life away yourself. Why did you come back alive."
Someone who could not fight back.
Someone who was the original cause.
The Omen family had known that man far too long to simply feel relief that a life had been saved.
That daughter had traded lives with him more than once.
"Why didn't you just die out there like you said so confidently you would?"
"...I—I'm sorr—"
"I've never liked you. The way you flap that tongue of yours like it can solve every single fucking thing!!!"
"Sara! Stop—the radiation!"
When she tried once more to tear at the plastic, the old man hurriedly pulled her into his arms and held her back.
James carefully picked up the shower head and opened the faucet.
—Shhhhhhhhh.
"Decontamination first. After that... the Blue? Russian Blue? We'll distribute that, and once everything is sorted we'll talk. Everyone's... exhausted."
Black contamination washed away under the water.
To keep her far from it, the old soldier gripped his granddaughter's back firmly and pulled her away.
As people slowly disappeared, Carlos quietly approached the fallen doctor.
The one who had treated a comrade's wounds.
The one whose insistence on forcing the rescue had let them keep their lives.
And yet, because of that, the most important person in the community was now missing.
In that ambiguous position, he offered what comfort he could.
"...I know it's not my place to say this when I've been saved, but every choice is each person's responsibility. He put our safety first. So..."
"I know."
At the quiet reply, Carlos nodded and took the shower head.
The tension he had forced himself to maintain was gone.
The excited chatter.
The jokes they had been trading.
All of it washed away with the water.
"...It's all my responsibility, isn't it."
And so the last scrap of one woman's pride disappeared as well.