The Divide Between Light and Shadow
Wherever light and darkness exist, I never expected them to be divided so blatantly.
Jincheon clicked his tongue softly at the sight of the city drawing ever closer.
Yet for a man who had started from the very bottom and was climbing toward the top, it was a situation that set his heart racing.
If I want to buy my own robot and head out into space, I'll need to reach a level where I can enter that city.
When advancing toward a goal one step at a time, the greatest turning point would come right around the moment of entering the city.
Even the slums had a central area, and the buildings there were at least somewhat intact. The problem was that the farther out one went, the more wretched the structures became.
"Where's your house?"
"We need to turn further right from here."
Jincheon drove the bike while asking various questions, all for the sake of his promise to the boy.
"How many are in the group that captured you?"
"They're on the larger side among the hunter packs. Including the ones who died, a little over twenty."
"What about their armament?"
"Similar to those guys earlier. Ah, the one who seems to be the leader has a laser pistol, so you need to be careful."
"A laser, huh. That could be dangerous."
Optical weapons fired at their targets at speeds overwhelmingly faster than ordinary guns. Anyone who had watched sci-fi mecha series would have seen the sight without fail: the protagonist's unit firing a laser weapon from tens or hundreds of kilometers away, and the enemy mecha exploding in a series of blasts as the beam struck. That was because the beam arrived in an instant and detonated them—not because the pilots stood around like idiots waiting to get hit. It was only for the sake of showing it to the audience that the projectile speed was slowed down, making the pilots look foolish. In reality, the protagonists and major characters who could see and dodge such attacks at close or medium range were the true monsters.
Even if my body is in perfect condition, moving at the speed of light is impossible. That means I'll have to move as fast as possible to keep them from getting a clean aim.
The standard way to avoid optical weapons was through evasive maneuvers that prevented proper aiming.
"And..."
"Um, mister."
"Yeah?"
"Why did you help me?"
The boy cut off the additional questions Jincheon had been about to ask and turned the inquiry back on him.
"You could have made a false promise right there and abandoned me, but you didn't. Calling it goodwill doesn't fit—I couldn't sense any goodwill in your eyes."
Having grown up roughly, the boy had become sensitive to human goodwill and malice, and he spoke with certainty.
"I can't do something that drops my cool just to scam one little kid."
"Cool?"
"I mean style. Style, dignity, that sort of thing."
"Just for something like that?"
"It might be 'just' to you, but to me it's an important part of what makes me who I am right now. If I'm not true to myself, then I'm not me."
The boy wore an expression of incomprehension. As if anticipating the look on the face of the boy clinging to his back, Jincheon spoke again.
"I'm not saying I never deceive or torment the weak. But if you're low enough to rip off kids who are too immature to take responsibility, that's not cunning—that's filthy enough to sink you to the absolute bottom. Evil and filth might look similar, but their essence is different."
Having said that much, Jincheon wore a leisurely smile.
"Remember this. There are women who fall for evil men, but there are no women who fall for filthy ones."
"Pfft."
"Hah, laughing? When you grow up, you'll feel with your whole body that I'm not wrong, so prepare yourself."
Judging by his way of speaking, he seemed to have some years on him, yet the content of his voice carried a firm set of values that felt both playful and trustworthy. Thanks to Jincheon, the boy could feel the despair he had experienced while being used as bait begin to dilute. The strength in that voice had stabilized his emotions.
"We got cut off earlier—what's your name? I'm Jincheon."
"Belion Kunlo. Surname first. Mister, which side is your surname on?"
"When introducing yourself, do you have to specify which is the surname?"
"Of course. The universe is huge. There are races with the surname first and races with it last—it's split right down the middle. In extreme cases, even on a single planet different ethnic groups use front or back, and some races even have middle names. Where did you come from that you don't even know that?"
Apparently, in this world it was proper etiquette to indicate whether the surname came first or last when introducing oneself.
"I came from a pretty out-of-the-way place. And the front is the surname. It's only two syllables, so just call me Jincheon."
"Please call me Kunlo."
And so they drove the bike some distance to the right, heading toward the place where Kunlo's home was located.
Gwoooooom—
Just then, they witnessed a considerably large ship descending from the sky and heading toward the city.
"...It's huge."
Jincheon let out a gasp of admiration at the massive ship that easily looked to be several hundred meters long. Its body was painted red and engraved with ornate gold patterns; even to Jincheon, a complete outsider to this world, it radiated a splendor different from ordinary ships. The vessel was slowing down, apparently intending to land inside the city.
Squeeze...!
Unlike Jincheon who had voiced his admiration, Kunlo tightly wrapped his arms around the man's waist. It was not from fear of falling, but the natural force of anger.
"That crest... It can only be engraved on the exclusive ships used by the imperial family of the Zabalcan Empire."
He wanted to ask what the Zabalcan Empire was, but the intense hatred and rage in Kunlo's voice made him decide against it—any answer would hardly be objective.
"If it weren't for those bastards..."
One thing was clear: the slums sprawling across the city's outskirts were undoubtedly their handiwork.
"Ah, please go that way."
Since home was drawing near, Kunlo pointed with a finger to a spot. His voice was resigned, as if no amount of cursing or hatred would change a thing.
As they headed toward a place where houses had been roughly patched together from old tents, wood, metal, concrete, and whatever else could be scavenged, Jincheon asked another question.
"Do you have parents?"
"No. They both died in the war."
There was no sense of melancholy in his words about his parents' deaths. It meant he had long since adapted to that sorrow. And this from a boy who looked to be middle-school age, or just entering high school.
"Living alone, getting food must be hard, right?"
"Synthetic food or recycled food made from the city's discarded scraps is cheap, so I've never had a problem with hunger. It tastes like crap, though."
Even for the lower classes, it seemed no one starved to death thanks to cheap synthetic food.
Did I come to a sci-fi world, or a dystopian one? Or is this just the inevitable flow of the era?
With no way of knowing whether this planet alone was like this or if everywhere else was equally dystopian, Jincheon came to realize that surviving in this world would be quite difficult.
Sensing vaguely that Jincheon was not a native of this planet, Kunlo offered additional explanation.
"Among the people outside the city who can afford it, they trade for animals caught in the White Shriek Forest. I heard they taste way better than synthetic food."
The fact that he said "I heard" meant he had never once tasted meat in his entire life.
"By any chance, is the reason those hunter bastards dragged you out the one I'm thinking of?"
"...Yes. The animals in the White Shriek Forest are hard to catch easily, so they need bait."
And that bait would prioritize orphans who could be taken without anyone raising a fuss.
The more they talked, the more Jincheon realized how serious Kunlo's situation was. Even if he dealt with these hunters, in the end the boy would clearly be used as bait by other hunters someday.
An awkward silence settled for a moment, and then the bike arrived at the slums that were little different from a refugee camp.
Scuttle!
The numerous aliens of the slums all began fleeing into their homes the moment the bike arrived. In a place like this, anyone riding a bike was almost always a hunter looking for bait.
"It's over there."
Jincheon drove the bike up to the house Kunlo pointed out and shut off the engine, letting it settle slowly to the ground.
A house... more like a rag pile.
A roughly six-square-meter tent barely held together by patching cheap cloth, clothes, and the like. Inside, one could see a floor made by spreading old fabric, and something that looked like a blanket.
"I'll use your place for a bit."
Having secured a temporary base, Jincheon first laid out everything attached to his suit. It came standard with magazine pouches, a holster, and a knife sheath, so he emptied everything that was inside. It sounded grand when put into words, but all it amounted to was a single knife and two pistol magazines.
First, Jincheon took the knife and swung it a few times, noting that the weight distribution was excellent. A switch of the push-up type was mounted at the end of the handle, so he flicked it with his thumb.
It's vibrating at tremendous speed. Is this a vibro-knife?
A weapon that generated rapid vibrations to lightly pierce or slice through hard objects. He recalled that the concept was already used as a tool even in modern times, but this was the first time he had seen it employed as a knife-like weapon.
Next, Jincheon checked the two magazines. Even after living for centuries in the Murim world, he clearly drew on his military memories to count the bullets. Fortunately, checking the number of rounds in a magazine was the same, so there was no major issue.
Twenty rounds per magazine.
Then, pressing the magazine release near the grip, he removed the magazine and confirmed that the gun's structure was largely identical to those of the twenty-first century.
"Guide me."
"Huh?"
Having put the knife and magazines back, Jincheon spoke to Kunlo.
"Guide me to the hunter bastards who took you as bait."
"A-Already?"
Jincheon was agile and fast, but the opponents were all battle-hardened, armed hunters. On top of that, Kunlo—who had long lived in fear of hunters—found himself terrified now that the moment had arrived.
"If a little time passes, they'll notice. We need to ambush them before that and reduce their numbers as much as possible if we want any chance of winning."
"But..."
If one thought about it even a little rationally, Jincheon was right. But when people feel fear, they become passive. They flee, defend, or hide. Kunlo was too immature to overcome that and fight back, and the pain he had endured while barely surviving had been far too great. It was an adult's duty to embrace and care for such immature ones. But Jincheon was not the sort of person with a personality well-suited to fully carrying out that duty.
"If you don't want to, I'll leave right now. The hunters will come drag you off again to use as bait. Even if you luckily avoid them or they don't find you, with that wound you won't be able to walk properly."
"Th-That, wait, no...!"
As the worst-case scenarios unfolded one after another, a jumble of words crowded into Kunlo's mouth all at once.
"Either tell me where they are, or wait here for death. Choose one of the two."
The voice that somehow possessed the power to put one's heart at ease now spoke of death in all seriousness. Kunlo, whose mind had briefly frozen from fear, found his thoughts spinning again thanks to an even greater terror. After a brief pause, Kunlo chose the only option he could.