Flipped by a Single Bear
A single bear had flipped my entire life upside down.
How many tranquilizer darts had I even taken?
Just the ones I could feel right now—
One in the back.
One in the side.
One in the neck.
……Ugh.
My neck hurt. Strength drained from my legs.
Thuuud——
The ground shook when I went down. My vision blurred. I couldn't make sense of anything anymore.
……My favorite fighter.
Was he still alive? Was he still breathing? Would someone find him in time?
……
If only I could talk. If only I could shout at those people, beg them to save Dominic. Tell them I used to be human. Plead for someone, anyone, to explain what the hell was happening.
But I was a bear. All that came out of my mouth was growling. No matter how hard I roared, it was only the cry of a beast.
If I hadn't been a bear… if I'd still been human… would anything have been different…?
That thought filled my head completely.
You know how it goes in web novels and possession stories… drop into another world and some cliché grants you one wish under those conditions. A cheat ability at minimum, or at least some godlike being who bothers to explain the situation…
But I got none of that. No goddess. No explanation. No wish. I just opened my eyes and I was a bear.
…At the very least they could've told me why.
Consciousness was fading. My field of vision shrank. Darkness pressed in.
The only thought left was—
——I want to be human.
Just once. I want to speak with this mouth. I want to take someone's hand with these hands. Not as a bear. As a person.
……Just that one thing.
Consciousness went out.
Complete darkness. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing to feel.
And in that darkness—
——A sound reached me.
I couldn't tell whose voice it was. Man or woman. Human or not.
Only one thing was certain.
The voice was laughing.
At the same moment, somewhere in Seoul.
News tickers on the TV screen kept changing without pause. The anchor's voice was rigid with tension.
"——According to what has been confirmed so far, the specimen is believed to be a Kodiak bear, with an estimated weight ranging from roughly one ton to as much as two tons. Experts state that a Kodiak bear of this class has never existed in official records——"
The man watching the TV set down the remote.
"……Fuck."
Park Sang-do. Boss of a smuggling ring. Whether it was animals or people, if something needed to cross a border, getting it across was his job. A pro who had rolled through this world for over a decade. A man who had never once let the police catch his trail.
And now that decade of experience was collapsing because of one bear.
"Boss, we did manage to recover it, at least."
A subordinate reported carefully. Park Sang-do stuck a cigarette between his lips. His hand was shaking.
"We recovered it. So what the hell changed?"
"……."
Nothing had changed. No—something had. It had gotten worse.
They had succeeded in catching the bear again. Multiple tranquilizer darts, and they had finally put it under. But in the process five of the crew were in the hospital, three vehicles were wrecked, four hunting dogs were dead, and a few more were still missing.
All from a 1.9-ton bear.
"Where the hell did you even get that bear?"
"……The client side brought it in through the Alaska route."
"You said it was a Kodiak. Since when does a Kodiak weigh 1.9 tons?"
"……I thought the report was an error at first too."
"It wasn't an error."
Park Sang-do laughed. It was closer to a spasm than a laugh.
"It climbed onto the roof of my car. Crushed the ceiling right in. I checked the rearview—I was doing fifty and it was still catching up."
"……."
"I said it was smaller than an elephant so it'd be fine. I said that. Said it was just an animal in the end. But……"
……Hoo.
Park Sang-do let out a long stream of cigarette smoke.
When he'd taken the job, he'd thought it was nothing special. Animal smuggling wasn't something he'd only done once or twice. He'd moved tigers. He'd moved crocodiles. What was so different about a Kodiak bear?
There was. It was fucking different.
It smashed the iron bars twice. Drove its head into the wall of the transport container hard enough to cave it in. Eventually it escaped.
And of all places—
Of all the people it could have run into in those mountains—
"Wait. That foreigner who was down in the mountains. Who was he again?"
"Dominic Carter. Former UFC champion……"
"……What?"
"Former champion. Dominic Carter. He was in Korea for a documentary shoot, apparently……"
"Former or current, does that even matter?!!"
Park Sang-do slammed the table. The ashtray hit the floor.
"A bear over a ton breaks out and the one person it runs into is a UFC champion the whole world knows? In a Korean mountain?"
"……We got unlucky."
"Not unlucky. Cursed."
Park Sang-do stuck another cigarette in his mouth. His hand was still shaking.
"He's a foreigner. A celebrity. Cameras from every country on the planet are going to be pointed this way."
He was right. If it had just been some hiker, they could have handled it quietly. But this was a UFC champion. A man every combat-sports fan on earth knew. That man had been smashed by a bear and carried to a hospital. There was even footage from the camera operator. Social media was already a disaster.
He looked back at the TV.
A grainy clip was playing on the screen. Thick dark-brown fur. A body that looked big enough to fill a mountain. Right before the camera shook and cut out, a foreleg swinging through the frame was captured.
"——The footage is currently spreading worldwide, and zoologists note that the specimen's size significantly exceeds all previous records——"
"Boss. CNM just started covering it."
"……What?"
"Monster Bear in Korea. That's the number-one trend in the U.S. right now."
Park Sang-do clutched his head.
CNM. CNM, of all things. In ten years of smuggling he had never expected CNM to show up.
"Police?"
"They sealed off the entire mountain. Military deployment is under review too."
"Helicopters?"
"Three in the air. One police, two from broadcasters."
"……The dogs?"
"One of the hunting dogs that got away was found near a private house. It was still wearing a collar with our organization's marking on it."
"……."
The color drained from Park Sang-do's face.
Collar. Marking. The marking had gone through double laundering, and the collar supplier was buried behind a paper company. But if it wasn't the regular police—if the National Intelligence Service started digging its teeth in?
This was already on the news, on CNM, with the military moving. Normally no one would pour investigative resources into one dog collar. This was not a normal case. One layer peeled back and it could lead straight to the organization.
"Boss, what do we do?"
What do we do. What the hell was there to do.
"Kill the bear."
"……What?"
"Kill it. We have to get rid of the body at least. Erase the evidence."
"Boss, that bear is 1.9 tons. How are we supposed to kill it?"
"Shoot it."
"It took more than five tranquilizer rounds and still held on. I don't even know if live rounds will—"
"Then what the fuck do you want me to do?!!"
Park Sang-do shouted again. The room went quiet.
In that moment something flashed through his mind. Those eyes looking down at him in the rain. Lightning behind them, a foreleg rising, the instant he had been certain it was over.
……Hoo.
Park Sang-do's hands started trembling again. Ash fell from between the fingers holding the cigarette.
Can we even kill that thing…?
Kill the bear and you had the problem of how. Leave it alive and it was evidence itself. Run, and the bear wasn't the only thing left in the hideout. The animals brought in on the smuggling routes. And the people locked up in the next room… all of it was evidence.
"……We clean everything and we pull out."
Park Sang-do made the call.
"Kill the animals, and the people—"
At that exact moment.
BOOM——!!
The building shook. Park Sang-do and his subordinate both looked up at the ceiling. The fluorescent lights were swaying.
"……Earthquake?"
An earthquake in Korea. Rare, but not impossible. Park Sang-do frowned. Of all the timing.
BOOM——!!
A second impact. Stronger than the first.
"Boss, that felt pretty heavy, didn't it?"
"……."
BOOM——!! BOOM——!! BOOM——!!
Getting stronger. And regular. Earthquakes weren't regular. This was——vibration coming up from below. Something was hitting something.
Park Sang-do's eyes met his subordinate's. The same thought was written across both their faces.
No way.
Then the phone rang.
Brrrrrring!!!
Park Sang-do answered. It was the guy in charge of the underground holding cells.
"Boss!! The bear's awake!! It's ramming the steel walls!!"
"……What?"
"The tranquilizers wore off!! The thing that took six rounds is already——we tried to dose it again but we can't get close!!"
BOOM——!! BOOM——!!
Through the receiver came the clang of metal, then the sound of steel buckling. At the same time the vibration climbed up through the floor.
Park Sang-do set the phone down. The cigarette had gone out. He didn't know when.
……This bastard.
Killing it was a problem, but even keeping it locked up was impossible?
The moment that thought landed, a faint siren drifted in from outside. Getting closer. Not one. Several.
"Boss!! It's the police!! Looks like they tracked the hunting-dog collar!!"
"……."
It was over. Because of one bear.
"……Everyone pull out!! No time to destroy evidence!! Get out!!"
The second Park Sang-do shouted, the subordinates scattered like they'd been waiting for the order. Back doors, emergency exits, windows—they fled like a swarm of rats.
Before long the only things left inside the building were the police sirens and the bear's roar rolling up from the basement.
KRAAAAAAAAA——!!
Park Sang-do, slipping away with all the calm he could manage, muttered under his breath as he listened to that roar.
"……Next life, no bears."
Ten years of smuggling. A man who had never once let anyone catch his trail, Park Sang-do.
A single bear had flipped his entire life upside down.