The Secret
"Help me! This wretched disciple of mine is—"
"Run, you old fool!"
"You brat! Mind that tongue! Honor your master!"
"Easy for you to say! Move your feet—now!"
Dr. Myeong burst out of the abandoned building, hauling Elder Heo along through the bickering. He wasn't running so much as being dragged like a sack of cargo.
Hurry.
A pack of monsters was closing in. They converged on a swarm's energy source by instinct, which meant the one in front of me had a core. On any other day I wouldn't have bothered fighting. I would have run. Kill the thing and you got a core, sure, but this wasn't worth staking a life on—and how many cores turned out to be duds anyway. The problem was Dr. Myeong and Elder Heo. I couldn't expect either of them to have the stamina to shake a monster off. So I had to put it down.
Thud!
It came on with stubborn, heavy blows. Dodging wasn't hard, but one lapse and it was over, and I still had to keep from letting the distance between me and Dr. Myeong stretch too far.
What a miserable job.
They'd said a Postman only had to take a duty like this once. Mandatory, and only once. Thank God it wasn't twice.
"Almost there! Just hold on a little longer!"
Luckily the battery hadn't rolled all that far. Dr. Myeong would have the flashlight on long before the monster could reach her. She had no athletic sense to speak of, but anything she did with her hands, she did cleanly. I knew that surgical skill of hers well enough.
"Disciple! Why do you charge the monster? If you wish to leap into the fire, leap alone!"
"I'm not going toward the monster!"
"You are going toward it this very moment!"
"The direction's the same, fine—just run straight!"
"Unhand me! Help me, Woo Jang-chun!"
The racket went on a little longer.
"I've got it!"
Dr. Myeong finally reached the battery.
"Get some rest already!"
"Agh!"
She brought the flashlight down on the crown of Elder Heo's head. The old man dropped unconscious on the spot. He was the only one who had shut his mouth, and the whole world went quiet.
"Don't worry! It's only a mild concussion."
"I'm not worried. That was perfect."
Thud!
"Swapping the battery right now!"
"The second it's in, aim straight at the monster's head. When I signal, then you turn it on."
"Got it!"
Good. My side needed to be ready too. To end this in one shot, I had to build the steadiest firing position I could: the most even ground, a workable distance from the monster, the best angle on that left leg.
"Only when I signal."
"I know!"
There wasn't a second to spare, but that was exactly when you had to be careful. Try to save one second and you could lose a life.
"Pulling the old battery now!"
"Stay calm."
Thud!
"It's out!"
"You don't have to narrate every step."
"Putting the new one in! Staying calm!"
Dr. Myeong seemed calm enough. She didn't shake so hard she dropped the battery, or anything like that. But—
Click.
"H-huh?"
"I said wait for the signal!"
"I didn't turn it on... Ah!"
Tsk. She'd seated the battery with the switch already on. A common slip, if you weren't used to flashlights. Not even a slip, really. On any ordinary day it wouldn't have mattered at all. But this nothing of a mistake had picked the worst possible moment.
Click.
The light came on at once and, of all directions, pointed straight at the monster.
"Ah...!"
"Don't just stand there—move!"
The monster turned immediately and showed me its back. I snapped my own flashlight on, but I hadn't been set, and I was a beat late. I barely caught the weak point in the beam.
Damn.
Before I could pull the trigger, it lifted its left leg high. The weak point vanished from sight in an instant.
Too late!
The heel came down in a vertical stroke. That was when it happened.
"Hraaah!"
A red gleam flared in her eyes, as if it might reach the sky. In the space of a blink she hoisted Elder Heo and threw herself into a great forward roll.
...What is she doing.
Thud!
By a hair. The two of them lived.
Finish it.
When I turned the flashlight on again, the weak point showed through the haze of dust. A fair distance. Calling it difficult would have been a luxury.
Bang!
This miserable job had precious few problems that skill could actually solve.
Crack...!
The moment I saw the last HP round boring into the weak point, I killed the light. In the midnight dark that closed in again—
Thoom.
It fell like a tree that had long since gone dry.
"Did we... survive? I'm alive right now, aren't I?"
"A doctor who can't even take her own pulse?"
The night was still dark. Faint starlight was just enough to make out each other's faces.
"Mr. Heo Seong-chan? Mr. Heo Seong-chan?"
"You said a mild concussion was nothing to worry about."
"Ah... And the monsters that were coming this way—you handled all of them?"
"Call those a severe concussion. They won't be getting up."
As expected, a core came out of the monster I'd dropped. Just as I'd thought. There was one more thing I'd expected: a swarm of the tall-type always carried only a single core. Sometimes a swarm had two or more monsters with cores, but in my experience the tall-type never did. Always one. Not verified knowledge, exactly. So I'd figured that if I took down the one monster in front of me that had the core, the rest closing in would all drop—and I'd been right.
"Haa... I really thought I was dead."
Same here. Where had she found strength like that?
"You been working out lately?"
"Huh?"
"You picked Elder Heo clean off the ground."
"Oh. That."
Dr. Myeong scratched the back of her head and pushed herself up.
"It's nothing. Adrenaline. Superhuman output in a crisis—you're more familiar with that than I am, aren't you?"
True enough. I'd seen it countless times on the battlefield. But just now had been a little different.
"That wasn't adrenaline. That was combat-stimulant territory."
"What, jealous of a healthy adrenal response?"
She'd been groaning a moment ago, and already she was recovered. Then again, Dr. Myeong did every supposedly healthy thing there was. She was probably still indulging daily in supplements and the rest of that luxury. Invest like that and a burst of monstrous strength was bound to show up once. Lifting someone as light as Elder Heo wasn't even that impressive.
"Anyway, the core? The monster must have coughed it up."
"Already pocketed."
A yellow core. The color of ordinary odds. That made four cores on me.
"You're going to use all of them yourself?"
"Hm?"
"I did contribute a little to taking that thing down. Worth a few cigarettes, maybe."
"What contribution. Fielding a flashlight with a dead battery, or batting away the battery I tossed you on reflex?"
"Obviously the contribution of figuring out where the monster's weak point was."
Hm. I couldn't argue with that. The accounting could wait, at any rate.
"Well, it's not a bill that has to be settled right now."
"Something else more urgent?"
Elder Heo was still out, and the night was deep. Moving on to Yeongdeungpo could wait until the sun was up.
"Check on Elder Heo, would you. He still hasn't woken, and it's starting to worry me."
"I told you, a mild concussion. A poke on the crown isn't going to do anything."
"A poke on the crown? After that adrenaline blast of yours, I'm more worried, not less. Might not be a concussion. Might be a death-cussion. Check him."
With a put-upon fidget, she drew out that dainty little flashlight again, lifted Elder Heo's eyelid, and shone the light in.
"He's fine. He'll wake soon."
"First time I've seen Elder Heo this well-behaved."
"Unfamiliar?"
"It's wonderful."
"So that's another contribution for me?"
Couldn't argue with that one either.
"We'll call it that."
"So how many cigarettes is this contribution worth?"
"Nothing I can hand you right now. I do know a merchant who sells them cheap, in bulk."
"Oh?"
The black-market Boss. No—the former black-market Boss. That man had told me an odd thing he'd seen.
"You wouldn't happen to, every Monday at lunch..."
"Hm?"
"Never mind."
That wasn't the important part.
"If I get the chance, I'll introduce you. You won't have to run around hunting for them for a while."
"Deals that good close fast, don't they? Think he'd sell to me?"
"The man's in no state to be selling anything right now. Later will be plenty of time."
"Hmph! I'll take your word for it."
Neither of them was especially difficult. An introduction shouldn't cause any real trouble. Probably.
"Ah! Right."
Dr. Myeong's arm slid into Elder Heo's inner pocket. I knew what she was after.
"You're actually going to clean him out?"
Once the monster was dealt with, we'd said we'd go through Elder Heo's emergency-rations pocket.
"Excuse me? I may have been driven out into the outside world, but I'm not that far gone."
She said that, and the pocket in question was already in her hand.
"He might have brought something that could cause trouble, you know? So we should check. You remember that incident?"
"The one where he mistook a grenade for an appraised core and sent it into the Geofront?"
That had been a complete uproar. It was how the severity of Elder Heo's illness became known to the whole world.
"Who's to say it won't happen again. So we ought to check, right?"
A fine excuse. A veteran Hunter had already gone through his things when they left Headquarters. She just wanted to open it because she was curious.
"I'll only peek, then put it back."
I was curious too.
"Fine. Open it."
"That's the spirit!"
Something Elder Heo treasured—I couldn't begin to guess what was inside.
The most deflating possibility is that it's actually emergency rations.
Surely not.
"All right, the reveal? Ta-da!"
Had Dr. Myeong always had this mischievous side? This didn't seem like a moment for high spirits. Was she forcing it? While I turned that over, the treasure Elder Heo had brought revealed itself.
"...Do you eat this?"
"Does it look edible."
Small enough to fit in a mouth, but not something you could digest.
"It looks exactly like a core..."
"It is a core."
"There are cores this small?"
I shone the flashlight on it for a closer look. The texture of the surface would settle it.
"Definitely a core. I've never seen one this small either."
Small enough that both hands could hide it completely. The energy inside scaled with size, so no matter how rare it was, the value would be low. A very uncommon kind of junk. That wasn't the only thing that didn't make sense.
"And the color? I thought only spent cores were black."
"They are."
Not just small. Drained.
"Then what. He brought a core he can't even use? In the crisis of his life?"
"It's Elder Heo. You're the one who brought up the grenade-for-a-core incident again. Don't act surprised now."
"Ha... Emergency rations would've been better."
Dr. Myeong reached to put the pocket back where it belonged.
Grab.
"Huh? Heo Seong— no, no, Master, you're awake?"
Elder Heo had her wrist in a hard grip. And then—
"Master...?"
He said nothing. He only stared at Dr. Myeong, grave and unblinking.