Plausibility
The arrogant little hunter brat tossed it out loud enough for the whole room to hear.
"I'll do the talking, so just do as the postman says."
Then he leaned in and began whispering to the veteran hunter alone.
Whispering right out in the open, with a man standing in front of him.
The whisper I'd expected to die in a moment dragged on and on, and through all of it the veteran did nothing but nod.
A short while later the kid lifted a single corner of his mouth in a smile and was gone. The other corner must have been out of order.
The cleanup, now, belonged to the veteran.
"You heard him. You'll get to go on the operation the way you wanted, so see that you bring those old men back alive."
This man had to outrank him by a long way. And yet the kid looked like the one holding the authority.
"So it was an easy matter, settled with a word from the kid?"
"The way you talk really grates. I don't care to pull rank, but if you don't want to hear something ugly, you'd do well to show a hunter some respect."
Odd. Even this man's eyes, when they rested on the kid, had been a little off.
"Respect, is it."
"Nothing complicated. You call him Hunter. That's all."
"Then Kid Hunter will do?"
"That's right."
So calling him a kid was fine.
"Kid Hunter seems to have the power to make impossible things possible."
"That ki— That one doesn't have the power so much as the people backing him do."
This had to be the one Min Yeo-jin had meant.
"He's a boy they call a genius among the hunters these days, so the people up top summon him often. He's carrying everyone's expectations at once, which means he probably hears more than I do."
There is nothing strange about giving an exceptional person exceptional treatment. And the fine old custom never dies—the one where men sidle up under the banner of that treatment and try, one way or another, to feed on him. So the moment you realize you are being treated as special, you choose one of two roads.
First: unwilling to make anyone else's fortune, you beat back everyone who approaches, until you yourself are beaten out.
Second: let them use you if they must, and suck the sweet of it hard while the special treatment lasts.
When I was a hunter, and when I was a soldier, I had insisted on the first. Now I had stepped onto the second, and I was drawing hard on Bae Guk-jang's authority.
And the kid just now?
By his manner, he was neither. He was walking a third road, one that wasn't on my list.
"Anyway, you can trust what that one says. Once he sets his mind on a thing, he never fails. Failing once in a while would make him more human, but there's no sign of it. Did you see that face just now? The face of a boy who finds the whole world amusing."
Third: get drunk on how splendid you are, and enjoy yourself without limit.
Either way, I can take Elder Heo out with me.
Good. If my read was right, the Yeongdeungpo delivery would not be as dangerous as it looked. Keep Elder Heo alive, and I could go on having cores appraised in comfort; open a channel with the Human Meat Factory while I was at it, and nothing could be better. Exclusive delivery of mail into a high-risk settlement no one else dared approach. That was money, without question. And money was survival.
"Then I'll go and get ready for the operation."
A stop at the cabinet, and a thorough preparation. Yeongdeungpo was right next door, so a heavier load would be no trouble. Take the resources generously. Ammunition and cores, plenty of both—
"No. That won't do."
What was he saying. I was offering to prepare for my own work.
"The condition is that you go out prepared exactly as usual. If you meant to prepare more thoroughly than that, give it up."
So this was what the kid had whispered to the veteran.
"If I'm to go out as usual, I need my bag. Have you ever seen a postman go on a delivery without one?"
"The bag will be here shortly."
"You said the same state of preparation as usual. Then the bag I normally use—"
"Yes. Your bag. The one in your cabinet will be here shortly."
A personal cabinet, inside a restricted zone. They could open it and bring the bag out without me?
"Nothing to be surprised about. We're under martial law."
Ah. Martial law. I had known the authority of the hunters and the military would swell, but not to this extent.
"We won't lay a hand on anything except fetching the bag, so don't worry. And if there's something you failed to pack in it ahead of time, nothing can be done. That only means you didn't prepare properly on an ordinary day."
Every one of those lines had come out of the kid's head. The veteran was only lending him a mouth.
"You aren't about to call it unreasonable, I hope. We have nothing to gain here. You're the one who said you wanted to go on the operation."
Tsk.
"If the operation has become difficult, give it up now."
"And were you also told to accept it, if I said I was giving up?"
"That's right."
The last smile the kid had left behind came back to me. Had he wanted to watch me quit?
But the veteran—something about him.
"Your eyes don't seem like Kid Hunter's."
"Stating the obvious. People's eyes are all made different."
Playing dumb. This one did not seem to want me to give up. Because his own mission grew easier if I took the old men out?
In the meantime the postman's bag arrived. It really was mine, the one I had left in the personal cabinet.
"Will that do?"
The survival gear would. I kept it ready so I could leave at any time. The trouble was that it wasn't ample. Fortunately the pass into the Human Meat Factory was in there as well—the Special Forces Commander's finger, and the electric razor. Good thing I hadn't taken them out.
The problem was cores.
Tsk. I took every one of them out.
Last time I had packed far too many, and the weight had been brutal, so the moment I arrived I had emptied the lot. I had meant to look over the next delivery and put back a sensible amount. The timing was rotten. Not that I had none on me. I was still carrying the cores Elder Heo had returned once the appraisal was done.
Three, all told.
The trouble was that Probability Reversal cost six. And among what I had now were rare cores, too dear to burn on a single use of the ability. Looked at that way, this was going to be an uneasy outing. But—
"No answer. So what you've got in the bag isn't enough? Giving up?"
"Not a chance."
"...You got short with me all of a sudden."
Probability Reversal. I had lived perfectly well without it. No harm in having the thing, but leaning too hard on a single technique was no good. A fight needs technique, absolutely. Survival is not only a question of technique. It is a question of judgment.
"Now then, all of you. Let me say just one thing."
The other elderly appraiser, the one fated to go out on the operation alongside Elder Heo, crept closer.
"I'd just as soon go with the hunters."
So he didn't trust me. Well. Fair enough.
"Hey, postman. Looks like a proper snag just showed itself. If a desk man refuses, I can't have you drag him out by force."
The veteran let it roll out as smoothly as if he had prepared it. So the kid had foreseen even this.
"No confidence you can talk the desk staff around, then give it up."
Give up. What the kid wanted.
"No confidence you can persuade him?"
"That sounds an awful lot like an order to try."
"Quiet."
Elder Heo was a man I knew. The old man beside him was a complete stranger. Persuasion would not be easy. First, Elder Heo's mind. Was he ready to follow me?
"Elder Heo."
"...What."
The hunters had somehow managed to get a full set of armor onto him. Shoved this way and that while they forced it on, he had gone completely limp and sat strengthless on the bare floor. The helmet sitting crooked on his head rolled off.
"Will you come with me? You won't have to fight any monsters, and it isn't far."
"Hmph."
When his mind was clear, Elder Heo was a shrewd man. Invent a story to sway him and it would only rebound. Better to speak plainly.
"Follow the hunters, and you'll feel safe. Follow me, and you won't feel safe in the slightest."
"Eh...? So you're telling me to follow the hunters?"
"What's this, postman. Quitting already?"
I had already said that wasn't happening.
"I'm talking about the feeling. Come with me and it won't seem safe at all. In truth, it will be the safest thing you could do."
"Eh? What do you want from me?"
"I'm telling you only the facts, exactly as they are."
"Only the facts?"
"Isn't it a fact that being with me doesn't feel safe?"
"Well, of course it is."
"There you have it."
"Because the first part was a fact, the later part—that it'll be the safest—is a fact as well?"
"Yes."
"Shameless past all ordinary measure, aren't you."
"Yes."
"And the shamelessness is a fact too, is that it?"
"Correct."
"Hmph. Ridiculous man."
Grumbling, Elder Heo got to his feet, scooped up the helmet that had been rolling loose, and planted it back on his head.
"Why is this so big! It keeps sliding down!"
And he was off again, thrashing. An old man whose only talent was recharging too fast. Still, if the helmet kept falling, the nuisance would be mine. I was the one hauling him around.
"There's a chin strap underneath. If you fasten it like this—"
"It's too tight!"
"If a monster chews on your head, Elder Heo, it'll squeeze a good deal tighter than that. Sure you can do without it?"
"Hmph!"
And so, as Elder Heo set about getting ready to come along—
"Now wait. Appraiser Heo Seong-chan, why are you suddenly going with the postman? That was hardly a persuasion at all."
This time it was the veteran who jumped.
"You told me to persuade him, and I did. What's the complaint?"
"And where, exactly, was the persuasion in that?"
"If it persuaded him, it was persuasion. Isn't that so, Elder Heo?"
"Aye. Aye, it is."
"..."
There had been nothing remarkable about my method. In truth, Elder Heo had not been persuaded by my words at all. He had simply been shrewd.
The hunters, inwardly, found the old men a burden. I had volunteered to take them out. That a hunter's fighting power looks superior to a postman's is obvious enough. It does not, by itself, guarantee survival.
Survival is a matter of judgment, not technique.
However fine a hunter's technique, if he has no real will to look after Elder Heo, it is worthless. Set beside that, my side—the one who had stepped forward of his own will—could be trusted a great deal more. And Elder Heo must already have noticed. When I had gone to collect the cores after the appraisal—
"Where'd you get this?"
"Why do you ask?"
"And why are you asking why?"
"I was first—"
"Elders first!"
He had clearly caught the scent.
"This core, now—if your eye is any good, you can tell it's a precious one without a lick of appraisal ability. That's what this is. Meaning there's no way you came by a thing like this easily. You follow?"
That I was no ordinary man. So he had pretended to fall for the shameless pitch, and chosen, quite naturally, to attach himself to this side.
Elder Heo was settled, then. Which left the other appraiser, the one who meant to go with the hunters—
"Hey. Woo Jungkook."
Myeong Hwa-young, silent until now, came up beside me.
"...Take me too."
"What?"
"That appraiser wants to go with the hunters, doesn't he? Then there's a seat free to take me."
What was she on about.
"I think you've got the wrong idea. You think this is a picnic? Nobody's going because they want to. They have no choice but to go, so they're scrambling for the least terrible way to—"
"I have to go too."
Surely not.
"I got deployment orders as well. Not the first wave. But sooner or later, I have to go out."
"You? An A-rank doctor?"
"Not only me. Almost..."
She leaned in close and dropped her voice.
"Almost everyone is being sent out."
"Almost everyone—"
"Almost everyone. Literally. A good number of director-grade and higher, included."
Bae Guk-jang too, then?
"That's why they're sending people in sequence. Too many to put out all at once. The senior posts especially—if they sent them from the start they're afraid of a revolt, so they haven't even announced it yet. They mean to send them later. I'll be well back in the order."
"How do you know already?"
"Is that the important part right now?"
Lower ranks out first, then the administrative ranks, one after another. It made sense. An order like that could stop a revolt, if one came. By the time the administrators' turn arrived, their subordinates would already have been through the business of living and dying. They would hardly lift a finger for the brass, thrashing to avoid going out when their own turn came.
"I'm coming with you. Understood?"
Before I could answer either way, she put it to the veteran at once. The two of them had seemed acquainted to begin with.
"I'll be going out with this postman. If one appraiser drops out, a seat opens. That shouldn't be a problem, should it?"
"Hm. You sure about that?"
"Are you joking? You think going outside is something to be sure about? It's a little better, at least, if I go with this postman."
So the veteran had known all along that Myeong Hwa-young would have to go out someday. The hunters had already been told everything.
"It's a shame that even a doctor as capable as you has to go."
"Enough of that. Just let me go out with them."
"If you wanted, you could come with me—"
"I will be going with the postman."
"...Why?"
The veteran flicked a glance my way and went on.
"From the look of it, this is a postman you already knew."
"Yes."
"Close enough, even, to make a demand like this."
"That's right."
"An A-rank doctor, on friendly terms with a postman. Friendly enough to put her life in his hands. What reason could there be for that?"
"Do I have to explain even that?"
"Anyone listening would find it strange."
"You find the oddest things strange."
"If you don't mean to answer, I'll look into it on my own."
"..."
This was becoming a nuisance.
"Hah. Fine. I hesitated because it isn't any great reason."
"What is it. Let's hear it."
Myeong Hwa-young. She had better answer this carefully. One strange word, one whiff that I was no ordinary postman, and we would be in trouble.
"Well, um..."
"Um?"
"As for how we got close..."
Awkward to step in and help. What excuse would the veteran actually swallow? Nothing came to mind.
"The truth is—"
Myeong Hwa-young found the answer first.
And the answer was this.
"He's— he's— he's—"
"He's? What are you saying?"
"He's handsome! Because he's so handsome!"
"...?"
An absurd reason.
"The first time I saw him he was a patient, and he was so handsome I asked if we could be friends...! That was how it started, and then one thing led to another..."
That was the best she could invent. We were finished.
"Hm."
The veteran stole another look at me. He ran his eyes up and down a few times.
"I see."
He bought it.