The Gleam of the Eyes
A dark night.
The abandoned building we had hidden in was darker even than the world outside. Thanks to that, they never found us—but the soldiers out there were plain enough to my eyes.
"Corporal Kim! This ruin looks like a fine place to hide. What do you say!"
Tsk. Was I going to have to draw the Backscratcher? Drag the monsters in here with them, and every one of us died.
"Are you insane? Go in there and we're rats in a jar!"
"If we hide fast enough—!"
"Hide, and then what? They track you by smell!"
"A minute ago you said they were following the sound, sir!"
"I said they might be! I'm not a fucking monster—how am I supposed to know all of it?"
So they didn't even know how to tell one kind from another.
Watch a monster's shape and the way it moved, and you could work out what traits it carried. Granted, that was work that took a great deal of experience, and it was only natural that rank-and-file soldiers wouldn't have it. That was why a scouting party went in first, and the army followed on the strength of what they brought back.
An army being run down like this by a monster it couldn't identify meant they had been hit by something that was never in the plan. Monsters, as a rule, weren't as quick on their feet as zombies, so ambush was hardly their method.
A nimble breed, then?
"They're catching up!"
"Corporal Kim! They're catching us!"
"I told you not to shout, you idiot! They come when they hear you!"
"They're about to catch us, and now you want quiet? Fuck!"
"What did you say...?"
"I said fuck!"
By the time they had put some sixty feet between themselves and the ruin—
Krek. Krek.
The monster on their heels made itself known.
"So we had all of it wrong!"
"This isn't working! We fight!"
"You're mad... This is suicide."
"Keep running and we die anyway! Those things don't even get tired!"
If I could only get a read on the thing's traits, I might have stepped in. No chance.
Can't see a thing.
The monster was nothing but black, as if a shadow had gotten to its feet and decided to walk. A breed covered in black fur? Fur like that, in the dead of night, was perfect camouflage. If I couldn't make out the shape, I couldn't read the traits.
Switch on a flashlight for a better look, and it might well come charging this way.
For the moment, there was nothing to be done.
"Screw it! Open fire!"
"We just shoot?"
"Just shoot!"
Damn it. They meant to fire blind, and the monster was right in front of this building.
"Down!"
I called it just loud enough that the sound wouldn't leak outside, and shoved Dr. Myeong's shoulder down, and Elder Heo's with it.
Tat-tat-tat!
Pyung!
Rounds that had come inside the building skipped and sang off the walls.
Pyung!
Thunk!
At this range, catching even a ricochet would be enough to kill you.
"Hhk!"
A stifled sound from Dr. Myeong. Elder Heo, jolted awake, was shaking where he lay. He didn't make a noise, fortunately—and when I looked closer, she had a hand clamped over his mouth. That left her own ears bare, and her face was knotted with it.
Luckily, none of us took a ricochet.
"It's not even flinching!"
"Doesn't it look like it's hesitating a little, sir?"
"I'd have to be able to see the damn thing!"
"Keep shooting!"
Four soldiers with rifles. Seat a round cleanly in a weak point, and a single monster could be put down in a heartbeat.
"Magazine! Somebody give me a magazine!"
"This is my last one too!"
"Don't save them—dump everything!"
A brief lull. The moment for the piece of gear Dr. Myeong always carried in her pocket.
"You've got the mirror?"
"Huh...?"
"The mirror!"
"Ah. Yeah."
I checked the ground outside the window with the little hand mirror. The night sky had brightened a shade since before, just enough to make out silhouettes.
Two of them. A tall breed, clearing thirty-five feet with room to spare. Short through the torso, legs freakishly long. Useless runners—but the stride was so long they covered ground fast all the same.
A tall, long-legged ball of fur.
I had never once seen a monster of this kind that could hear. Even so, you confirmed. Always.
Bang!
Rat-tat-tat!
"Wh-what was that just now?"
"Some bastard fired a noise round!"
"They don't even issue those, sir! What are you talking about!"
Not a flicker of reaction from the monsters. No hearing at all. That was certain. The nose probably wasn't anything special either.
Which means the eyes are developed past all reason.
The only reason they could keep a prey in sight and run it down in the pit of the night was that superior vision.
"What are you going to do!"
Dr. Myeong stared at me, uneasy. Elder Heo was thrashing to get free of her, but her strength, fortunately, had an old man's beat.
"The soldiers are drawing their eyes anyway. It was a chance to confirm the traits."
"You're going to fight...?"
She looked afraid I might charge out. A minute ago it had been I'll handle it, it'll be fine—and the moment it was actually on us, the air had changed.
"Don't worry. It's too much."
Hard luck for the men outside, but stepping into this fight now would only multiply the corpses. Throw a light on them to hunt for a weak point, and things that sensitive to sight would come for it like moths. No question.
"Aaaagh!"
"Corporal Kim!"
Now it was the monsters' turn.
"Ghk..."
"Urk!"
The soldiers' turn never came back around.
A leg lashed out like a whip. The men went flying, boneless, and did not rise again. The groans of the dying thinned away, and the night took its quiet back.
The Jo sisters were of one mind.
"Could we ask Jungkook?"
"I'd feel safer if it were Mr. Jungkook, too."
Jo Yong-han had turned over every stone, and still there was no way to keep them from going out into the world above. The only thing left to try was recruiting company for the trip, to their own taste.
"Are you truly certain?"
"Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's the best option, exactly..."
That wasn't what Jo Shin-hye had meant. Once the worst had already landed—that they had to go outside—nothing on offer really deserved the word best.
"Even so, Mr. Jungkook puts my mind at ease more than anyone."
The sisters had already walked with Jungkook once, and seen what he could do. It hadn't required any remarkable eye. Anyone who had watched the road from the escape out of AAA to the gates of Headquarters would have had to grant it.
It was something that he's skilled couldn't hold, and Jo An-na couldn't quite put her finger on what that something was. Her older sister and brother, with more life behind them, had settled on answers of their own. Only the answers didn't match. Jo Yong-han took it for a gift for calculation. Jo Shin-hye took it for good instinct.
"If that is what everyone thinks."
With Jo An-na's mind made up as well, Jo Yong-han had nothing left to add.
He had meant, originally, to bring in an experienced hunter, or elite soldiers of the Heart Corps' caliber. That would have been the company anyone would have called the surest. He was certain of it. And yet—
"The truth is, I have been thinking the same."
In his own heart, Jo Yong-han had wanted Jungkook to take the sisters on. He simply hadn't been sure they would accept the notion of entrusting themselves to a mere postman.
"I will pull what strings I can, so that you and An-na may go out with Mr. Jungkook."
Inside staff permitted to go along: two, at the outside.
"Then what about you?"
"I will have to find another way."
"Um... hey. What if."
Jo An-na offered it carefully.
"Couldn't we ask Mr. Jungkook twice...?"
A postman was obliged to escort inside staff only once. If Jungkook were willing, of course, he could go out twice, or more. But—
"I believe that would be asking too much."
He thought the mere making of such a request was the problem. From where Jungkook stood, refusing Jo Yong-han would not be easy. Who was it, after all, that had gotten Jungkook onto the Subway reconstruction project? For that same man to ask something of him was, in effect, nearly an order. He would not be able to refuse. And putting Jungkook ill at ease beyond what was necessary was not what Jo Yong-han wanted.
"I know it's too much, just like you said, but if it's Mr. Jungkook, he'd probably—"
"We'll do it Yong-han's way."
Jo Shin-hye cut her younger sister off like a blade.
"It's too much to ask. Once is one thing. Twice would be shameless. It would put him in a bind."
"Mm..."
She didn't care for the thought of Jungkook being made uncomfortable either. Weighing such things when lives hung on it was a luxury, of course—but she was certain that Yong-han, of all people, could find them another good companion.
"Then I will see to the arrangements."
Jo Yong-han lifted the radio at once. In the meantime the sisters went on preparing, in their own way, to step out into the world above. Jo Shin-hye rattled off what they would need, and Jo An-na took it down quick.
What lay ahead was as unsettled as ever, but if they could go with Jungkook, there was hope in it. For a breath it felt as if they had cleared one great mountain, and a little steadiness was finding its way back.
It didn't last.
"...What did you just say?"
Jo Yong-han, who had been working the radio in a level voice, came up out of his chair.
"Woo Jungkook has already departed with the first wave?"
The pen in Jo An-na's hand pitched to the floor.
The two monsters stood planted where they were and did not stir. Thanks to that, the night was quiet to an awkward degree.
There was Elder Heo, who had no intention whatsoever of being quiet. But with two young people in their prime pinning him down with everything they had, there was nothing for it. And in the middle of all that, Dr. Myeong was staring a hole through my eyes, as if she had something she needed to say. Those red eyes looked ready to pull me in.
Was it the monsters keeping her quiet?
"You can talk. Their ears are stopped."
"Haa... What do we do now?"
"We watch it a while."
Monsters moved as a colony. A few of them, the ones carrying cores, fed energy out to the whole pack and kept it living and moving. Stray too far and that energy stopped arriving, so they had no choice but to stay clumped together. No need, then, to pick a fight with these two for having briefly fallen out of formation. Give them time, and they ought to drift back toward their friends on their own.
That's how it ought to go. And yet.
Things refused to roll that easily.
"So the plan is we just keep hiding? We're safe if we stay like this, right? Aigh—Master, please hold still!"
Off in the dark, the two monsters stood planted, unmoving. By the look of it, we had walked into the worst of it.
One of the two is carrying a core.
Then they had no reason to return to the pack. These two were the center of it. And if any other living monsters remained out there besides them, those would be the ones on their way here.
"Going to have to make a fight of it."
"Huh?"
"If we don't put those things down fast, more monsters might come pouring in."
"What? Aah!"
"What did you just say!"
"Master, hold still!"
"What did you just—mmph!"
"Holding still is you helping!"
Neither of them could fight. I would have to settle it alone.
Know where the weak point is, and it wouldn't be so hard.
Looked like the flashlight was coming out. Find the weak point and take it before they could get a leg on me. Easy to say.
"Once I've dealt with every one of them, I'll signal. When I do, take Elder Heo and run. We get out of here as fast as we can."
"That's..."
"Wondering what to do if, one time in ten thousand, it goes wrong?"
"...It is one in ten thousand, but."
Right. Better to be honest. If it was for the sake of surviving.
"You run out anyway. And you run as far as you can. Stay here and everybody dies."
Dr. Myeong gave a small nod, then shifted her gaze to the monsters standing stock-still outside. And then—
"If you go for the lower body, couldn't you drop their center of gravity without much trouble? Their proportions are a wreck."
She went into an analysis no one had asked for. No need to force it.
"Don't strain yourself trying to help. Their weak point is somewhere else."
"Where?"
"I'll have to go find it. There ought to be a place where the vessels bunch up and swell, bulging red."
"Then I was right."
"Hm?"
"You mean that thing in the hollow of the knee? Isn't that the weak point you were talking about?"
What in the world did she think she was seeing?
"What are you saying?"
"That thing, on the back of the left knee. Both of them. Isn't that the sort of weak point you meant?"
For an instant, the red of Dr. Myeong's eyes went deeper.
"...Tell me in detail."
"Huh?"
"What do you see?"
Eyes on the dark outside, Dr. Myeong laid the explanation out smooth as anything. It was the kind of account you could not give unless you were seeing it yourself.
So this was what she had meant, the last time.
"I wasn't exactly hiding it. It just isn't much of an ability, so there was never a reason to bring it up."
"A lipstick-telling ability?"
"...Color discrimination. I can just see color a little more sharply than other people. That's all."
An ability that had come with becoming Immune.
Right after a monster got her, Dr. Myeong had gone straight into Headquarters. Not once, after that, had she come outside. Which was to say she had never had cause to look at a monster. So until this moment, she hadn't known at all what those eyes of hers could do.
"You did well."
"Huh?"
"You saw it right."
"You can't see it? Have you got night blindness?"
The weak point was pinned down. I couldn't see it with my own eyes, but knowing roughly where it sat was enough.
"From here, you do as I say."
I gave Dr. Myeong the plan. Nothing in it that ought to be hard.
"Mm."
"You understood it?"
"But is it all right, you fighting alone? The distance..."
That was the trouble, yes. While I fought, the gap between me and the two of them here couldn't open too far. That damned necklace was measuring it.
"Even so, it's better than all of us walking out and dying early."
"That's true, but..."
"Stay glued to the window. Close it even a little. And if the fight goes sour and it looks like I'm getting too far—"
"I'll read it and run out."
It was Dr. Myeong. She would judge it fine on her own.
"Then we start."
No room to hesitate. Even now, a monster colony might be closing in.
"Um..."
She still seemed to have something left to say. Turning over, at the last, what would be a good thing to leave me with?
"Don't need it."
"Huh?"
"Just decide what you'll do once I'm back."
"Mm."
One step out of the ruin—and Dr. Myeong thought of a decent plan herself.
"When you get back, want me to go through Master's emergency rations? I bet there's something good in there."
"Mmph—!"
The hammer clicked back. Tonight, of all nights, the Backscratcher settled into my palm like it had been waiting there.
"That'll do."