Blade Songs
"Ca… Blade Songs! This isn't the time for that! Argh! The Blade Songs are coming!"
Flutter-flutter!
At the boy's cry, the sound of beating wings filled the air. Jincheon looked up and found small birds hanging bat-like from the mushroom-shaped trees.
Their beaks were straight and sharp as blades, and inside those beaks sat rows of tiny, razor-edged shark teeth. Their faces were nothing like ordinary birds — they wore the faces of lizards.
Killing intent.
Those birds, for all their beautiful song-like cries, radiated the murderous aura of predators.
But rather than fire off a clumsy shot or turn and run, Jincheon simply said,
"I came all this way. It'd be a waste to leave without a single drink of water."
He walked to the stream, buried his face in it, and started drinking.
Gulp — gulp — gulp —
"……."
The boy stared at Jincheon — calmly drinking water with Blade Songs overhead — with an expression that had gone past bewildered and straight into pure disbelief.
The Blade Songs themselves seemed unsettled by their prey's nonchalance, watching the situation unfold without moving.
"Pwah. That's better. Kid."
"Y-yes?"
Having finished drinking, Jincheon turned to the boy.
"Which way do I go to get out of here?"
"I… if you save me, I'll tell you……."
Convinced that without Jincheon he would die to the Blade Songs, the boy tried to bargain.
"If I'm going to carry you and run, I need the direction first. Tell me the way out."
"Th… that way……."
Exposed to the Blade Songs' killing intent and drowning in the fear of death, the boy broke and pointed the way he had come.
"You won't abandon me, right……? Please… I don't want to die……."
Tears welled in his eyes as he begged Jincheon not to leave him behind.
"Shut your mouth. You'll bite your tongue."
"What?"
"Hup!"
Moving slowly so as not to provoke the Blade Songs, Jincheon flicked a knife-hand strike and sheared through the cuffs binding the boy.
Grab!
He tucked the boy under one arm and sprinted in the direction the boy had indicated.
"Lurulurulurulu~~~~!"
"Pirurulururu~~~~!"
Whoooosh!
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
The moment Jincheon's movements grew larger, the Blade Songs kicked off their branches and dove straight at him. Astonishingly, their razor beaks punched deep into the earth itself.
A few missed, but others waited in reserve, angling into the path of his dodge and striking again.
A flock of birds that spears prey with their beaks like swords.
Even on Earth, some birds stabbed food with the tips of their beaks — but driving two-thirds of a beak into a target to kill it? That simply did not happen.
If this really is another planet, of course it'd have quirks like this!
The thought only made Jincheon smile wider, the alien world settling more firmly into place around him.
Grab!
Along the way he snatched up a corpse roughly his own size — some alien in a suit — and kept running hard in the direction the boy had pointed.
Thud-thud-thud! Thud! Thud-thud!
Whenever he needed to change direction, Jincheon kicked off trees and rebounded without ever bleeding speed, steadily pulling away from the Blade Songs.
"Luruluru~~~!"
"Lururu~!"
Watching their quarry vanish in an instant, the Blade Songs abandoned the chase. Better to claim easy meat right now than waste strength on prey that hard to catch — they knew that much.
Thud-thud-thud!
Switching targets, the Blade Songs drove their beaks into the remaining corpses, ripping open the suits and tearing into the flesh.
The moment they broke free of the forest, the first things that met their eyes were a vast wasteland and a scatter of oddly designed vehicles and bikes.
"Those theirs?"
Nod-nod.
The rides of the corpses that were, by now, animal feed. Jincheon had half-expected a lookout left to guard them, but thankfully no such presence showed itself.
They must come here often.
No sentry meant they were familiar enough with this zone to feel safe — and that they knew no one else came this way either.
Jincheon set down the corpse and the boy, then started searching the body again.
"Ah, son of a bitch. How the hell do you get this thing off."
Muttering cheap curses, he grunted and strained, trying to peel the integrated suit free intact.
The boy, enduring the pain in his legs, spoke up.
"Th-there's a switch under the cover at the back of the neck. Ah, but the cover is locked, so……."
"This?"
Crunch! Pssshhh—
Jincheon found the cover near the nape, forced it open, and hit the switch. With a hiss of escaping air, the front of the suit split open on its own.
"Ohh."
A small sound of appreciation, and he hauled the corpse out and tossed it aside, then slid himself into the open suit and pressed the nape switch again.
Shhhhk—
This time came the sound of air rushing in, and the suit cinched snug around him — tight enough to fit, loose enough not to hinder movement.
"Smells like hell. Did this bastard never hear of a bath?"
Better than naked, so he kept the suit on — but the sour stench rising from inside made his brow crease on its own.
Suited up, Jincheon walked over to the boy.
"Hey."
"Y-yes?"
"Show me the wound."
He had saved the boy's life, sure — but there was no kindness in those eyes. The boy wondered if he should run for it right then, but Jincheon didn't wait for an answer. He simply covered the wound with his palm.
Then he closed his eyes, focused on something, and a warm, indescribable sensation began to bloom around the injury.
As expected, the pressure points and the internals are different. But for emergency first aid — just stopping the bleeding — this should be enough.
Jincheon poured his energy into the boy's body, mapping the meridians and the positions of the blood vessels, then used only his Tushinryeok to stabilize the wound.
"Done. Don't push yourself and the bleeding won't start again. Get a doctor to look at it properly."
"Uh……?"
When the palm lifted, the mangled wound that had been pouring blood had stopped completely. Even the throbbing pain had eased a great deal.
The boy looked back and forth between Jincheon and the wound, utterly at a loss for how any of this was possible.
"Um……."
"Hey, kid."
"Yes?"
"You know how to drive this thing?"
Cutting the boy off before he could speak, Jincheon pointed at a bike. It was clearly a bike in shape — except it had no wheels, only a flat underside. Looking underneath revealed nothing but three holes in that flat base.
At first he wondered if the wheels were stowed inside. They weren't. There was nothing in there at all.
"Tell me how, and I'll take you back where you came from."
"……."
At the offer to take him home, the boy's face darkened at once. From that look alone, Jincheon roughly understood the situation.
"Those bastards — they belong to some kind of organization?"
"Yes……."
If he went back alone, the people in that organization would question why only the boy had returned, and they would come for him. After that, he would end up as bait all over again.
"Anyone who can help you?"
"There's a civilian defense force, but… they don't come out this far to the outskirts……."
Apparently the place the boy lived was the worst corner even among the slums.
"So you're completely alone, then?"
"…Yes……."
At the word alone, the boy sank into sadness, his voice dull and heavy.
"Can't be helped."
As a first-time gesture toward a human of this world — something his younger self would never have done — Jincheon decided to offer a little goodwill.
"I'll take care of those bastards for you."
"What?"
"I'll kill them all. The same kind of scum will fill the gap, sure — but at least they won't have anything to do with you."
"……."
The boy could not quite grasp what Jincheon was saying. He was going to deal with the "hunters" who had used him as bait? If it were that easy…….
But he did take down five hunters alone in an instant. He overpowered a Kelkata hunter with raw strength, too…….
As things stood, there was no way out. Nowhere to return to. Drift as a vagrant and he would simply starve. He had to do something — and the method was standing right in front of him.
"In exchange, you answer what I ask. Nothing hard — just basic common knowledge. Don't worry about it. What do you say?"
"I-I'll do it!"
A boy who had scraped by in the slums on scraps of other people's moods knew exactly what refusal would mean. Jincheon would simply leave him behind.
"First things first — teach me how to ride this thing."
"To start the engine, you have to insert a control chip."
"Control chip?"
There was a slot on the front of the bike's body. Jincheon dug through the suit's pockets and pulled out something that looked like a USB drive.
"This it?"
"Yes, that's the one."
"Like a key, huh. Then I need to find the one that fits."
He checked every vehicle and bike until, thankfully, one of the bikes took the chip cleanly.
"Next?"
"I've never ridden one myself, but this is the ignition, and……."
The boy had watched others ride often enough to walk Jincheon through starting the bike from memory.
Vmmmmmm——
"Ohh. A hover bike?"
The engine kicked on, blasting a hard wash of air as the bike lifted off the ground. Jincheon watched it rise with open admiration and a satisfied smile. The simple thrill of touching future tech in a sci-fi world was a pleasure all its own.
Just who is this guy, and what has he been doing?
The boy wondered. Someone who didn't even know something this basic — naked, unable to strip a suit — had almost seemed like a joke. But the way he handled a gun said he was no uncivilized savage.
"Get on the back."
"Ah, yes!"
The boy dragged his legs up into the rear seat and wrapped his arms around Jincheon's waist.
"And to go forward, with your right hand……."
"I know that much."
Aside from the lack of an ignition key, the layout was identical to a twenty-first-century Earth bike, so Jincheon naturally twisted the throttle. He started slow, weaving left and right, and within moments he had the feel of it.
Wooooom—
He opened the throttle in the direction the boy indicated and the bike surged forward, its sound nothing like a normal motorcycle's.
Only after they had covered a considerable distance did the future landscape he had been hoping for finally come into view.
"Whoa……."
Skyscrapers that looked hundreds of stories tall. Countless magnetic-levitation vehicles weaving between them. And around the city's outer edge, a high wall… wait.
"A wall?"
In a future world of fighting robots and flying cars, why a wall?
He almost asked the boy what it was for — then, as they drew closer, the reason became obvious.
At the foot of the wall sprawled a chaotic sprawl of houses cobbled from scrap metal and sheet plate, and ragged tent-homes strung out without order.
The wall's purpose was a curtain — dividing the city's residents from the poor.