A Confucian Nation
"Core Appraiser Heo Seong-chan, your name is on the first wave. You will deploy with us at once. Do you understand?"
"Understand what? I don't understand a damn thing!"
"Count yourself lucky you're going out with us. You'll come back alive."
"I said I don't! I'm not going!"
Elder Heo was ringed in by hunters.
"Hold on!"
Dr. Myung wedged herself into the gap, and I slipped in after her along the path she'd opened.
"Myung Hwa-young?"
The hunter who looked to be in charge recognized her. Hard not to, when A-rank doctors handled most of the treatment hunters ever received.
"This man will die if you take him out. You know that."
Of course they knew Elder Heo's condition. Appraising the cores the hunters brought in was his work, and more than that, he was a known face—decades at Headquarters.
"We do what we're ordered. That's it."
He spoke down to Dr. Myung the whole time, the flat familiar tone of a senior. A veteran, then, with real years behind him. Field hunters carried no separate ranks. On paper they were all equals. Paper was paper. Time served got its due everywhere.
"Did you at least file a recommendation?"
"About what?"
"Taking out a core appraiser who can barely manage daily life—what kind of waste of personnel is that? Shouldn't someone take it upstairs?"
At that the hunter let out a long sigh and shook his head.
"...You already tried."
"No. I didn't."
"Then what's that look for?"
He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the government buildings packed shoulder to shoulder behind him.
"You think a complaint like that is rare right now? Not one of them has been accepted. They won't even take them in. You following?"
"But the patient—"
"A little hurtful, that. Going out with us, and you swear he'll die. He'll come back alive, so don't worry. We don't want to watch the old man die either."
Meanwhile the other hunters were forcing armor onto Elder Heo. All he could do was bellow. An old man who had lived his days in a chair had no strength left for a resistance that meant anything.
Beside him, another aged appraiser was being fitted out, bound for the same fate by the look of it.
"You're taking two appraisers?"
"Yeah. We're clearing one small monster colony."
Around them the other appraisers had begun pulling on armor, one after another. Every last one of them, then. No exceptions. Fair, in a sense. Elder Heo's team would still be the worst of the lot. There were plenty of appraisers with their legs under them, and this side had nothing but two old men.
"Clearing a monster colony, even a small one—that's a real combat mission."
"It is."
"...And that's something those old men can come back alive from?"
"They won't be fighting themselves. They just have to stick close to us."
"Couldn't you hide them somewhere safe and fight without them? In the middle of a battle, just standing next to you is dangerous."
"Tsk. Thing is..."
The hunter produced a pair of small devices, identical except for the color. One blue, one red.
"Every member wears one for the whole operation. We get blue. Desk staff get red."
"What is it?"
"A shackle. It keeps the unit inside a set radius. Pull the desk staff too far from us and the machine logs it. We have to turn them in when we get back to Headquarters, and if there's a record that someone drifted off, they go straight back out on another operation."
"Ha."
Dr. Myung snatched up the red device, none too gently. Turned over, it bore the Geofront's mark stamped into the casing.
"Crazy bastards."
The hunter took it back out of her hand.
"You understand the situation?"
"How many hunters are going?"
"Small operation. Three, counting me."
"Three people, expected to fight while dragging two frail old men, one of them not even in his right mind. Hunter or not..."
Dr. Myung's face twisted, and the hunter looked faintly puzzled.
"Doesn't sound like you, Myung Hwa-young."
"What doesn't?"
"Since when did you start treating people's lives like they were precious?"
"I don't care for that. I've always valued the people who are needed."
"Yeah? And who decides who's needed?"
"Well, obviously..."
When she couldn't finish, he pointed over his shoulder again. Twice this time, jabbing the empty air.
"The people who ordered this operation. Their standard. Isn't it?"
He wasn't wrong. Dr. Myung did as the state had taught her to do. Even the high-grade personnel she spoke of were only a category the state had drawn.
"And now those same people are telling us to drive this lot outside. Means they aren't needed anymore. Doesn't it?"
"..."
He brushed past her, shoulder against shoulder.
Elder Heo was already in full armor. No weapon had been issued. He was still protesting something, but the earlier fire was gone. All that bellowing had burned him out. Could a man like that even keep up with hunters once they were outside? No one was going to match an old man's stride in the middle of a fight.
"...Something's gone badly wrong."
Dr. Myung muttered it, barely loud enough to catch.
"Hey. Ex-hunter. You got any bright ideas?"
"They blew off an A-rank doctor. You think they'll listen to a postman going on about how he used to be a hunter?"
"You pull off things other people can't. All the time."
"Do I."
"Don't give me 'do I'!"
The other side of this was the Geofront. One postman wasn't going to stand against that. Not right now, anyway.
But one old man...
If that was the whole of it, there might be a way. The nightmare of Elder Heo turning up just to scream in my face was a little too awful to live with.
"Weapons?"
The appraiser who had been silent beside Elder Heo spoke for the first time.
"Weapons will not be issued."
"Does that make any sense? Didn't you say this was a combat mission?"
The hunter didn't answer. He'd decided old men with weapons would only make things more dangerous. Or he'd pictured a senile Elder Heo putting a round in someone's back. Either way, the hunters weren't comfortable going out with them.
So this is the gap.
Worth a try.
"I understand they can't be pulled off the operation. But changing the roster—if we talk it through properly, that might be possible, don't you think?"
"Hm?"
The hunter turned only his head. He looked me up and down, and then—
"All right. Everyone prep for deployment."
A light dismissal. An ordinary day in a postman's life.
"What if desk staff volunteered for a harder mission on purpose? An A-plus risk operation alongside a postman, for instance."
The hunter hesitated.
"Hm..."
Then he turned his whole body toward me.
"What are you?"
"As you see."
"Just a postman?"
"Probably."
"Odd way of answering. Feel like I've seen you somewhere..."
If he'd already been a hunter back when I was one, he might have passed my face in a corridor. People tended to remember it, unless that was only my imagination. Would he place me?
"Hm. Must be someone who looks like you."
He didn't, after all. The years had changed the face, but more than that it was the postman's uniform. No one could quite believe a man who had been a hunter would end up as a postman.
"Let's see what kind of postman you are."
He pulled out a handheld scanner.
"Ranked first in performance..."
They displayed that, too? A field hunter shouldn't have had clearance that deep. Martial Law must have widened it.
"Just a postman after all."
To a hunter's eye, whatever else you were, you were just a postman.
"An A-plus risk operation. What are you talking about?"
Clearing a small monster colony was dangerous enough, of course. If soldiers were doing it, the rating would be A-plus all the same. Hunters were different.
"Yours is rated A-minus, isn't it?"
"You know your ratings."
"I understand I'm due to deploy soon myself. With desk staff in tow. I'm planning to volunteer for an A-plus operation."
The hunter's eyes went uneven, one wider than the other.
"...That briefing shouldn't have reached the postmen yet."
"Moving a step ahead is the secret to ranking first."
"You've got a talent for strange answers."
"It's minor."
"Hm."
A veteran on the other side of this was almost convenient. A weasel—no. A man who knew how to bend his thinking.
"I doubt anyone has volunteered for the harder job. I take these old men, and your hunter team takes the desk staff assigned to me. How's that?"
"Swap the desk staff we've each been assigned?"
"That's right."
"Hm..."
If it really were the harder job, it wouldn't be worth trying. The Human Meat Factory, though—that was worth a try. I had a way in. There would be a way. And it was close enough to trip and land on your face. The operation wouldn't take long.
"Where's this operation of yours?"
"Yeongdeungpo Logistics Warehouse 3."
"Next to the Human Meat Factory? That's a postman's sector?"
"You can check, can't you?"
The hunter stepped off to a corner and raised his radio. A short exchange, and he was back.
"Looks like you saw the official notice early."
"The early bird gets cold catching the worm."
"...What are you saying?"
"I'm saying it's minor."
"Hm."
The same hunter who had cut Dr. Myung off without blinking sank into thought. Pulling desk staff off an operation entirely would be impossible. Changing who went with whom might leave a little room—especially when the volunteer was asking for the harder one. Hunters would want desk staff who were easier to drag around. That was why he was weighing it. Over the radio, he would already have checked who had been assigned to me. Whoever they were, the odds were good they'd beat two old men.
The hunter took the radio and moved off again, and another uninvited guest appeared.
"Brother, have you lost your mind?"
The Physiognomist. What was he doing all the way out here?
"Why are you—"
"You up and vanished on me, so I went looking!"
A bigger nuisance than Min Yeo-jin. The moment he latched onto me, Dr. Myung closed in as if she'd been waiting.
"Was that for real just now?"
"Hm?"
"You having to take desk staff out, too."
"I wasn't placed on the first wave, but I do have to go. Works out, if anything."
No answer from Dr. Myung. She only bit her lower lip, wearing the same troubled face as the hunter across the way.
By then he had finished his call.
"Interesting proposal, I'll give you that—"
So it was a no.
"It's going to be difficult. Not impossible. Just a lot of effort."
"Then we can put in a lot of effort, starting now."
"Meaning it isn't worth that much effort. We're done talking."
If anyone died, it would be Elder Heo. Not him. What now. I could push a little harder.
"Shall I put in the effort, then?"
Someone short cut through the hunters. Did he know them?
"Hm? I said I'd call you right before we left. Why are you here already?"
"I got bored just sitting around. Came to see if anything interesting was going on—"
Another hunter, then. His eyes found me at once. A boy who looked younger even than Gyeongsu. Fifteen, at the outside. A hunter trainee.
"Good thing I came. What a funny postman."
A scrap of a boy, calling me a funny postman. It grated. So I was a son of this country after all.
"Funny hunter."
You give back what you're given.
"Would you pass along that I don't talk to postmen?"
"Postman. You heard him."
The two of them, putting on a show.