The Settlement
"He'll have gone back to the dormitory."
It was Yoon Seoa's answer, drifting back from behind her.
Baek Harin started toward the closed door, but before she could take even two steps, Lee Serin's hand clamped down on her shoulder.
The bandage wound around the shallow cut from morning training — she'd been pressing on it with her fingers until just now, but measured against the body in her memories, even calling it painful felt laughable.
"Where are you going?"
"To Hyunwoo."
"And what are you going to say when you get there?"
"I don't know. First I just have to see his face."
Harin tried to pry Serin's fingers away, but no strength came into her hand. The memory of Hyunwoo's wrist in her grasp — and of her own hand shoving his away — still lay overlaid on her vision.
"Let go."
"Just wait a second. Something's wrong with me too right now."
Serin covered her mouth with her free hand. The face that had looked perfectly normal minutes ago was drained of every trace of color.
Seoa didn't try to stop them either. She stood frozen, one step already shifted toward the door.
The moment Harin twisted back toward it, the letters hanging in the air changed.
The settlement continues.
Restoring the sealed record of the next subject.
Harin stopped short of the handle. Where her own settlement had ended, new letters were climbing into view, announcing the next name in line.
"Did you see that?" Harin finally managed.
"Yeah."
"How far did it go?"
"The part where you told him to stop. And when Hyunwoo tore your hand away, too."
"And before that?"
"I don't remember. I only see what I'm seeing right now."
Serin's gaze wasn't on Harin at all; it was nailed to the figure still suspended in the air — fifty-seven years. The hand over her mouth wouldn't come down either.
The fingers gripping Harin's shoulder were trembling. The teacup that had sat on the windowsill lay shattered on the floor at some point, cold tea pooling beside the broken pieces.
Yoon Seoa was standing in front of the wall screen.
The screen was dark. Even so, Seoa couldn't tear her eyes from the black glass. In her hand, the roster she'd been holding only moments ago was crushed into a ball.
"Seoa."
Harin called to her.
"Does that really mean years?"
Seoa pointed at the letters reflected on the screen. Her voice alone sounded as level as ever, but the crumpled roster kept shifting in her grip.
"It could be some other unit. We don't even know what 'life force' actually means, and nothing says the number is the same as a real lifespan."
"I saw it."
Harin rubbed her own cheek. The spot where Hyunwoo's blood had fallen in her memory.
"Hyunwoo coughed up blood. I told him to stop, and he did it anyway."
Seoa bit down on her lip. The corner of the roster crumpled further in her fist.
Just before the paper began to tear, new letters surfaced.
Yoon Seoa
Total Life Force Granted: 31 years, 2 months
This time, all three of them were looking at the same place.
Behind the letters, a scene superimposed itself.
The Awakening Testing Room.
Yoon Seoa lay inside the testing apparatus, mana induction lines clinging to her arms and throat, while beyond the glass the instructors were shouting something.
Warning lights pulsed red.
Inside a body that had failed to awaken, mana was coursing down all the wrong channels. Her vessels blackened, and a dark vein rose in a long ridge across her chest.
The glass door slid open toward Seoa — who couldn't even open her eyes — and a young Hyunwoo dove inside.
Someone caught him from behind, but he shook the arm off. The instant he dropped to his knees beside the apparatus, he seized Seoa's hand.
"I'll do it."
An instructor screamed something at him.
Hyunwoo didn't listen.
Intervening in the fate of Yoon Seoa's Awakening Failure.
The black veins swarming over Seoa's body stopped.
In exchange, the color drained out of Hyunwoo, starting from the back of his hand. Wrist, arm, the nape of his neck, all the way up to his face. Gritting his teeth, he never let go of her fingers.
In the party room, Yoon Seoa staggered and caught herself against the table.
The roster dropped to the floor.
"Awakening Failure……."
Seoa stared down at her own hands. Hands calloused from years around a sword hilt.
"I've never failed at anything."
Harin remembered the day Seoa's Foresight had first manifested, and the day she'd entered the academy as the top student of the swordsman department. She simply hadn't known that a failure lay at the root of it all.
When Seoa opened her eyes at the end of her awakening, the first thing she saw was the afterimage of an unfamiliar ability. Seconds later the testing room door opened, and she watched people load the collapsed Hyunwoo onto a stretcher.
Seoa ripped the mana induction lines off her arms.
The instructors tried to hold her back; she ran down the corridor barefoot anyway. Chasing the stretcher, she fell and scraped her knees raw, then got up and seized Hyunwoo's hand.
"Don't leave me behind."
Hyunwoo, the one who should have answered, was unconscious.
"If you saved me, then stay beside me to the end. Let me pay you back."
It was the same a few days later, in their first live engagement. Seoa, leading from the front, dropped her sword the moment Hyunwoo told her to stop — without asking why. The very next instant, a trap arrow hissed past her ankles.
Seoa looked back at Hyunwoo standing behind her and smiled.
"I told you, didn't I? From now on, whatever you say goes."
She had forgotten she'd ever made that promise.
"What is this."
Serin's voice had cracked.
"Why is it only showing me this now?"
The air gave no answer.
Instead, it raised the third name.
Lee Serin
Total Life Force Granted: 44 years, 9 months
"Wait."
Serin backed away.
"I don't want this. Don't look. Make it go away."
Nobody knew how to make it disappear.
The sound of a mana core collapsing was something like glass grinding against glass.
This time it was a hospital room. Serin on the bed, screaming with her spine bent backward. Blue light flashed beneath her skin, and every time the glow gathering at the center of her chest split apart, the medical equipment around her died and flickered back to life.
Hyunwoo was slumped over the side of the bed.
Blood ran from his nose and mouth. One hand held Serin's; the other was locked around the bed rail.
"Let go."
Serin forced the words out between screams.
"You'll die too! I said let go!"
Instead of an answer, his grip only tightened.
"No."
"Kang Hyunwoo!"
"Hold on just a little more. It's almost over."
His arm was shaking. Every time Serin's mana core split, Hyunwoo doubled over like a man breaking apart in the very same place she was.
Intervening in the fate of Lee Serin's Mana Core Collapse.
The blue light flooding the hospital room was sucked into Hyunwoo's hand.
Serin's screams stopped.
Hyunwoo dropped to the floor.
The Serin of the memory tried to climb down from the bed. Her legs buckled and she hit the floor, then crawled the rest of the way to him.
She took his face in both hands.
Crying, she said something.
Her lips were moving, but no sound came through.
The expression Serin had worn then, the words she had said — those were vivid. Only the most important sound of all was distant, drowned, as if sunk deep underwater.
In the party room, Serin clapped both hands over her ears.
"I can't hear it."
"Hear what?"
"What I said. I'm obviously saying it, and I can't hear it."
The lips of the Serin in the memory moved again.
This time, there was sound.
"I like you."
Serin's shoulders locked. The fingertips pressed against her ears went white.
"I said I like you. So open your eyes. When you wake up, I'll say it again. I'll say it every single day."
The Serin who had crawled to Hyunwoo wiped his blood-soaked face over and over. Her palm wasn't enough; the stain spread until even her sleeve had gone red.
Even after Hyunwoo was moved to the treatment room, Serin wouldn't let go. She held his hand until the medical staff pried her fingers away, and after he woke, she really did tell him she liked him every day.
And once they'd entered the academy?
Not anymore.
At some point the words had begun to feel strange in her mouth. When she asked herself why she liked him, no answer came, and she started to find herself bizarre — claiming to love someone when she couldn't say why. So she said it less, and when Hyunwoo never asked, she quit saying it altogether.
Serin sank down next to the shattered teacup.
"I forgot."
"Serin."
"How do you forget something like that? How could I……."
Harin couldn't make herself go to her.
Hyunwoo coughing up blood beneath the stone pillar — and scenes from even further back came surging in, one after another. The day she'd been poisoned. The night a curse kept her fever from ever breaking. The moment her heart stopped in a dungeon.
And every single time, the same words had been there.
Intervening in the fate of Baek Harin.
And every time, Hyunwoo had checked the cost — and pressed anyway.
Harin looked again at the number hanging in the air.
57 years, 4 months.
The shallow wound from this morning would already be fully healed. Blades rarely broke Harin's skin, and poison and curses never lasted long in her body. Even grievously wounded, she was always the first back on her feet.
A body that should have died, before it ever gained that power.
"How long does an E-rank awakened live?"
Seoa asked.
Serin's lips moved. It was an answer everyone knew, and the sound still came late.
"As long as they stay out of combat…… about a hundred and fifty years."
Serin said it with her hands still pressed over her ears.
"It depends on the ability, but even E-ranks live that long."
"Even so, awakened who actually go into combat average thirty to forty years."
At Harin's words, Seoa shook her head.
"That number's only that low because so many die in the field. If Hyunwoo lives without fighting, he has about a hundred and thirty years left."
"And if you subtract the fifty-seven he spent on me……"
As Harin murmured it, Serin lifted her head.
"Don't do that math."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. Just don't. Those numbers are people's lifespans. It feels like they're not supposed to be added up."
Seoa's lips kept moving as though she hadn't heard a word. But no matter how long they waited, she never said the result out loud.
"He spent fifty-seven years on Harin."
Seoa picked the roster up off the floor. She tried to smooth the crumpled paper flat, but her hands were shaking so badly the corner only folded in further.
"Thirty-one on me. Forty-four on Serin."
"How much is that altogether?"
At Harin's question, Seoa's hands went still. Her lips moved, but no answer came out.
Serin slowly lowered her hands from her ears. The tea spreading across the floor soaked into the hem of her skirt, and she didn't move away from it.
"A hundred and thirty-three years……"
"Three months."
Seoa corrected.
"A hundred and thirty-three years and three months."
Harin's lips trembled.
"You said a hundred and thirty a minute ago."
This time, Seoa had no correction to give.
On the roster, Serin's signature was still there.
Harin's line was still blank.
Harin tore her eyes from that empty space and walked to the door.
"Let's go."
"Where?"
"To Hyunwoo."
Harin opened the door.