Living with Others
This delivery was a simple one. The destination was an abandoned logistics warehouse in Yeongdeungpo, and the whole of the job was getting a single piece of mail there—one letter, nothing more. Even so, the Human Meat Factory stood nearby, and that alone had earned the run a classification of A+. The warehouse had been abandoned in the first place because it lay inside the Factory's territory.
What kind of bastard commissions a delivery like this?
The return address on the envelope said only one thing, and the sender's name had been left off entirely.
Return Address: New Government Complex
Name of Sender: —
Addressed like that, and still accepted. That meant it had been arranged with the post office beforehand. Secure mail, from a government agency.
I can more or less guess.
Orders for an operative secretly scouting the Human Meat Factory would make sense of it, and the abandoned warehouse would be the meeting point. I didn't need the details. What mattered more to me was something else.
"Elder Heo?"
"What."
"You remember who I am, don't you?"
Getting him from place to place in one piece, while his mind flickered in and out.
"Of course I do. You're the Postman, aren't you!"
Anyone could tell that from the uniform.
"And my name?"
"Woo Jang-chun!"
Well. The name wasn't the important part.
I was about to ask a few more things when Dr. Myeong tugged lightly at my sleeve.
"Don't stress him. It makes the symptoms worse."
The doctor had spoken. I supposed I ought to listen.
"Nothing we do is going to make his memory suddenly improve, so stop fussing over it."
"Leave it to luck, is that it."
"Close enough, right? You don't have to check him every minute. He'll send the warning himself—suddenly asking where this is, or turning on us. Something like that."
"By the time we notice, it'll already be too late."
"It'll still be the earliest we can know."
Even if yesterday and today vanished on him all at once, there would be no problem so long as he kept following my lead. The problem was that nothing guaranteed he would.
The edge of the safe zone is coming into view.
Clock-out Man's post was empty. He must have taken Min Yeo-jin's commission and left at once. I'd thought I might borrow him if he was still waiting around. Typical. The one time the help would have been useful, the bastard wasn't there.
"While I wasn't looking, has Woo Jungkook turned into a person who lives with others?"
"What are you talking about."
"You used to hate dragging company around. Really hate it."
"I still really hate it."
"Yeah? Then you've fully become a person who lives with others."
"I said it's uncomfortable."
"I couldn't tell until you said so. If you've stopped even letting it show, that's living with others."
Having company around lately had gotten me used to some of it. That didn't mean I intended to live with anyone.
"You're hardly a person who lives with others yourself."
"Me? I fix people for a living."
"That's a job. You don't actually care about anyone."
"Look who's talking."
"And what are the two of you chattering about so cheerfully, hm?"
Anyway, the start wasn't bad. Thankfully, Elder Heo had accepted reality in a hurry. A rational judgment from a rational man, as expected. If only it would stay like this.
Maybe my jab about not caring for other people had stung, because Dr. Myeong suddenly spoke to him.
"That treasure pouch you brought earlier—what is it? Emergency rations, by any chance?"
"Tsk! Do not covet your master's treasure!"
Dr. Myeong leaned to my ear and whispered, "Knew it."
Director Bae was a lucky man. Lucky, at least, in having a subordinate like Hocheol, who knew how to survive an office.
"Is this official notice real?"
"Certain, sir! It'll be delivered to the post office any day now, and that's a fact, sir."
Thanks to that, the Director learned ahead of time that postmen would soon be required to travel with the desk staff. But the information stopped there.
"Hm. The postmen in the field are in for a hard time of it."
"I'm fine, sir, and that's a fact!"
"Well, what can one do, if that's the policy of the state. Everyone will have to put in the work."
What Hocheol had brought told him only his subordinates' futures. It said nothing of his own.
"Sometimes each and every person must sacrifice for the whole. That is the greater good."
"Yes, sir, and that's a fact."
"Hm?"
"Sir?"
"I expected the usual full-throated answer. That was rather tepid."
"Ah—was it, sir! I apologize, sir!"
"Nothing to apologize for. If you disagree with me, you may say so. Thought is free. I'm not so rigid a man as that, am I?"
The Director's view matched what Hocheol had always believed. The greater good. Sacrifice for the whole. The notion that even lives had their ranks. He had said as much to Jungkook once before.
There was the matter of his unit deserting en masse, weapons and all. Hocheol had never thought that choice was right.
But in the end Hocheol had lived without making the sacrifice. Whether he had pitied the sight of Hocheol loathing himself for it, Jungkook had offered a few words of comfort.
Hocheol, who had clung to life until he was a postman, found himself wondering.
"Sir. If I may, sir."
"Go on, speak freely. Values can differ. I'm not such a small-minded man."
"What if..."
He thought of what the Director had said not long ago, laughing heartily.
How far would the Director go, if it was for the greater good?
"What if the people close to you, Director, also had to go outside..."
"Hm? People close to me?"
Director Bae didn't catch it at once.
"Isn't that already the case? Every postman is a subordinate I treasure. They're the people close to me."
Hocheol could have asked more directly. He was not so bad at office life as that.
"Yes, sir, and that's a fact! I was thinking nonsense, sir!"
"Hm."
And Director Bae was not a man who failed at office life either. Which is to say, he could tell when something was being left unsaid.
"Subordinates are precious, of course, but family is closer still. Even so, nothing changes. For the greater good, whether someone is close to me or not is not the point."
"Truly a magnanimous man, sir."
"Oh, over something like this!"
The Director's answer was sincere, and Hocheol's response to it was flawless. The Director believed himself magnanimous. At least, in his own mind, he did.
That little hunter brat refusing to give me time to pack had, in the end, caused a minor problem.
Tsk. There was one thing I didn't bring.
Everything I needed right away had already been in the postman bag. The Human Meat Factory pass and the essential consumables were all there, so I'd thought I was fine—except for the single thing I hadn't packed ahead of time.
Gyeong-su's letter.
Mail I'd meant to hand over if I ever had business at the Factory. No reason to keep it in the bag on an ordinary day, so it had been sitting in the top compartment of the cabinet.
Nothing for it. Think of it kindly.
At least the finger that served as a pass, and the electric razor, had never left the bag, so I'd managed to bring those. That alone was something. Once I could deal with the Human Meat Factory through them, I could always come back and deliver the letter. Not that delivering it would get me anything.
"Master, stay a little closer."
"Good heavens, how indecent!"
Dr. Myeong had realized the easiest path was to humor Elder Heo. For the time being, she would treat him as her master.
"What's indecent between a master and a disciple?"
"Tsk!"
Less a decision than giving up entirely, if you wanted to be precise. Without a sound, shaping the words with her mouth alone, Dr. Myeong grumbled that she really couldn't do this.
"We're staying here tonight."
We'd reached an abandoned building I used often, rigged with a few devices so I'd know at once if anyone else came in.
"Step only where I step. And duck—don't touch that."
Inside, fallen debris made the space cramped. A room meant for one person sleeping alone. That was why I'd chosen it. Elder Heo would have no choice but to huddle in with the rest of us.
"Listening to one another's breathing in a sealed little box! Could anything be more indecent!"
The complaint was the indecent part. What was even in that head.
"Hmph... So just how long is this meant to go on? When do we get to go back?"
"It's close. We move at sunrise and arrive before afternoon. We sleep here again on the way back. Two days, and we're at Headquarters."
Elder Heo worked his mouth, smacking his lips. Two whole days of this misery—and yet he seemed to understand that whining wouldn't fix it. So far, so good. The question was whether this calm would hold for both of those days. There was no telling when his memory might snap clean away.
Once everyone went quiet, Elder Heo fell asleep at once. Probably from bellowing all day and being worn down by the hunters.
"Hey."
Dr. Myeong kept her voice as small as she could without waking him.
"If you've got information, spill it."
"Information?"
"You barged in and came all this way on intel that hasn't even reached the postmen yet. There's more, isn't there?"
That was all of it.
"I used everything I know."
Dr. Myeong let out a shallow sigh, as if disappointed. She smelled of mouthwash.
"You talk. You jumped in knowing something that still hasn't reached the doctors."
"Mm."
"Is it true they're driving out director rank and above, too?"
"That part's certain. This about the post office director who looks out for you?"
"He's the only director I know."
"The post office means everyone, up through the head of the agency. Not a single exception."
Director Bae ending up in trouble did me no good. He'd been making things easy for me the whole time I'd worked as a postman. Still, looking ahead, it wouldn't be what it was. Now that rebuilding the Subway was the first priority, the life of picking only the easy jobs through Director Bae was as good as over.
"You're worried? I didn't think you liked the Director all that much."
"Nothing to worry about. He'll find his own way to survive. A man who climbed to director with nothing outstanding about him except politics—he'll have a method."
"That much is outstanding."
It depended how you looked at it. My view was a little different.
"Everyone has one thing they're best at. For the Director, that's politics."
"Which is what makes it outstanding."
"If everything else is an F and politics is the only D? People don't look at a D and call it outstanding."
"Ah. In that sense."
Dr. Myeong conceded, a little.
Not that I refused the man any credit at all.
"Well. For a man whose best is a D, that ability does become more than a D. It's a skill other people would throw away, so he ends up honing it. In the end he becomes the finest D there is."
"Is that good or bad?"
"What's good or bad about it. The ability was given. Polishing the one thing you have is fate."
"You mean it's only natural? The finest D sounds outstanding enough to me."
Which was why it depended on how you looked at it. Maybe natural and outstanding were only different words. Most remarkable people passed through a process that left them no choice but to become what they were—relentless effort, unsparing investment, or talent they were born with. Be certain of even two of those, and you became a remarkable person.
I had watched the whole labored course of Director Bae's politicking. A man who never rested, not for a moment. The Director as he was now could exist because of that. A result drawn from adequate grounds. I thought of it as natural.
"From a distance, maybe it looks outstanding, the way you say. From where I stand, up close, it's natural."
Dr. Myeong didn't answer. As if she meant neither to agree nor to disagree. For a moment I thought she was looking back at herself. She wasn't.
"By your logic, your situation isn't natural at all. I'm not saying a postman is a useless job. But it isn't a place where someone as outstanding as you would naturally be, is it?"
She was thinking about me.
"I'm a doctor, Heo Seong-chan is an appraiser, Director Bae is an administrator. Each of us is doing the work that lets us use what we have to the fullest. And you?"
It had been a while since Dr. Myeong's nagging started up. Always the same talk.
Do work that fits your ability.
She could never stand to leave me be.
"So go back to being a hunter."
"That would be the natural thing, wouldn't it? They'd take you back, no question."
"No question. I've been past the age limit for ages."
"Who said join as a rookie? Go back as an instructor. That's what suits your ability—"
"My records were wiped completely. Return to what."
"How did you even erase every record in the first place? Quitting the hunters doesn't get your file deleted."
"You're loud."
"You pull off things other people can't, every single time. If you wanted to go back as a hunter, you could go back whenever—"
"You are actually loud. You'll wake Elder Heo."
This time Dr. Myeong sighed deep. A cool, sharp scent filled the space. A moment later, her eyes closed.
I meant to let her sleep like that.
"I'm not asleep."
"Didn't ask."
The air of someone who still had more to say.
"I'm only keeping them shut because I thought they'd stand out too much. The stars are going, and the moon with them. It's getting darker."
Red eyes, light cracking through them. Come to think of it, this was her first time out in the world since a monster tore into her calf.
"Being outside seems to be going better than I thought."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't look scared."
And we might run into monsters.
"We just walk there and walk back, don't we? For that much, I should be grateful."
Fair enough. A delivery was finished once you'd walked it. Even if you met a monster, you went around it. Was this why Dr. Myeong had brushed off the hand a veteran hunter offered and followed me?
If she had gone with the hunters, she would have ended up on a combat assignment.
She wouldn't have had to fight herself, and with several hunters protecting her it would have been safe enough. But simply being near a monster would weigh on Dr. Myeong. She already carried the memory of an attack that had nearly killed her.
"Even if a monster shows up, you'll handle it. So what."
"Shameless faith."
"You take down three or four monsters with a single knife, don't you?"
"That was when I was young."
"And now you're old?"
"A little."
"Want me to say the exact same thing again once Heo Seong-chan wakes up?"
"Shh."
"There you go. The second you're losing—"
"I mean it. Shh."
Something's coming.
People, running. Four of them, maybe.
"Corporal Kim, sir!"
"Moron, don't shout! Those bastards are chasing the noise!"
"Corporal Kim, sir! What are we supposed to do now...!"
"I said shut up!"
Soldiers, screaming. Too few of them. Stragglers from a broken unit.
Dr. Myeong's red eyes flickered in the dark. A gaze shivering with fear.
"Please, don't leave us behind!"
"Shut up! Before I shoot you!"
"Please...!"
"I will actually shoot!"
They appeared in front of us with a pack of monsters dragging in their wake.