I Want to Go Back

I'd barely managed an hour with my eyes shut. When I opened them, the day was already coming on.

All of it was Elder Heo's fault.

The old man had spent the entire night raising hell, chewing out Dr. Myeong—pressed into service as the daughter he hadn't seen in years—and I hadn't slept for the racket. Only after Elder Heo finally wore himself out and collapsed did I get that single hour at all. Even then, I was the only one of us with the strength left to wake. Dr. Myeong and Elder Heo were still dead to the world.

"You... wretched thing..."

"Woo Jungkook... this is all your fault..."

Sleep-talk. It grated.

Anyway. What was that lightless Core of Elder Heo's?

The only thing the old man was obsessed with was his daughter. It might have been some sentimental token—a last gift she left behind—but it was plain enough that Elder Heo had no daughter. Dr. Myeong wouldn't have looked into it halfway. I could trust that much.

And even if a daughter really did exist, how was anyone supposed to confirm it? A human being who hadn't shown so much as the tip of her nose in decades, turning up out of nowhere one day? The first thing you did was suspect a con.

Still. He bothered to bring that Core out in the middle of an emergency. Whatever it is, it matters...

The truth was, that Core wasn't the only riddle. Every Core in the world was the same.

Start with the monsters that showed up carrying a Core inside them. No one knew what they were. They had begun appearing together with the Collapse, and unlike the Giant Rods, there was no telling where they came from. No one had seen them fall out of the sky. No one had seen them rise out of the ground. That was where the conspiracy talk came from—that they simply occurred, on their own, out of the air.

Of course, the thing nobody could account for was the Core itself. Pile up every fact we had and you still couldn't explain the object all the way. How they were made. What principle they ran on. Why anything should be this convenient. And why, no matter how I tried to commune with one, my ability refused to take.

Unknowns, all the way down.

The odds of use were no different. Why were they so jagged? Did the probability mean anything at all?

Among hunters there was a superstition that if you forged the body, an Ability Core's rate of success climbed higher than the number you read off it. Not once had anyone confirmed the figure actually changing, but they swore it felt that way. Was it true?

And then there was this.

What the old man had told me. What was that story, really? More than ten years had passed, and I still didn't have an answer. Where had he picked up a rumor like that?

It couldn't have been empty gossip. The old man, of all people, would never fall for nonsense.

Right. He'd said it outright. He didn't believe it. So why tell me a rumor he didn't believe?

The old man had me use a Core, just to see whether the rumor was empty. That was why he trained me through to the end, unlike the brothers and sisters—because my body was the weak one.

Why me?

"Woo Jangchun... I'm hungry..."

"Woo Jungkook, you little..."

Elder Heo's useless Core was tangling my thoughts for nothing.

Well. None of it has anything to do with me.

It wasn't mine. It was Elder Heo's treasure, and nothing more. Better to let it go.

The radio Boss had given me shivered against my side. Brrrr. Out on the surface, if the thing suddenly made a noise we'd be in trouble, so I'd set it to vibrate. We were safe enough now. I might as well turn the sound up a little.

Boss.

Whatever he wanted, this was a bad time to be granting favors. Maybe the better move was simply not to answer.

Kkamagwi had shown up, too.

They'd been trying to find me for hours, by the sound of it. This was the first time the radio had actually vibrated. The distance must have kept the signal from arriving. A communication core's range had a hard limit, and temperature and humidity shifted that range a little besides. The conditions had lined up, for once.

And there was the Physiognomist. Morning people, the lot of them. Cold didn't seem to touch them.

Someone had killed their radio. Kkamagwi, most likely.

Boss might already be regretting that he'd pulled me in as a colleague. Kkamagwi certainly was.

Mm.

The one regretting this most might have been me.

I wanted to key the radio. Hold. Hold it.

I'd have to find a bottle of whiskey for Boss.

What kind of information? I couldn't be sure, but I doubted the Physiognomist had meant to hand Boss a gift from the start. Reading the way the talk was turning, he just wanted to score a point. He looked slack, but he was a seasoned man.

Boss had no reason to refuse.

Right. The raider band led by two bosses, Mother and Father. It had been a good while since we'd wiped them out in one stroke, using the air raid on Claw Farm. Come to think of it, the Physiognomist wouldn't know that.

Shrunk. Not gone. Tch. So it hadn't been a clean sweep after all. Remnants, then.

They'd gone a long way. If only one boss remained, that would be Mother. Father had been the field commander. The air raid would have swept him off.

The Ability Core Kim-ssi had been carrying? It had passed into the raiders' hands, sure, but it had been in mine for a long time now. Rolling around in the bag.

I didn't think I'd let my face slip. The name Physiognomist fit him to the bone.

So there was another pack like AAA out there.

Busan had been on the list of postman jobs, too. I'd already taken the Yeongdeungpo run, so I probably wouldn't be going—but even for other business, I'd be better off avoiding Busan for a while.

"Haaahm... Jangchun. Who you talking to?"

Elder Heo had woken. I switched the radio off.

"I was about to wake you in any case. If we finish the job today, we can be back at Headquarters by tomorrow."

"The... job?"

Had his memory blown away again? At least he wasn't panicking about being out on the surface. He wasn't wary of me, either.

"What... job was it, Jangchun?"

He seemed to have me confused with someone else. Still, he was treating me as a person he knew. That was something.

"The nerves must have made you forget."

"Ah... ahem! Right, right, that must be it! Been so long since I came out to the surface, I'm all tensed up."

With his memory in pieces, Elder Heo wouldn't properly understand the situation he was in—why he was suddenly out on the surface at all. Even so, he was working to hide how flustered he was. I ought to help him ride it out.

"You've been doing well so far. The job of following me around, I mean."

"That so? The whole job was just that?"

If I wanted it to feel real, I'd better dress it up as if he had an actual part to play.

"And if a Core turns up that needs appraising, appraising it is the job. As it happens, there's a piece of work right here."

I held out the yellow Core ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd taken off a monster in the night. An appraisal carried out under orders was a civil servant's duty, so there was no separate fee.

"A job, you say. Hmm..."

This was not, under any circumstances, because a free appraisal had fallen into my lap. I was only trying to make the job feel real.

"You've only just woken. Still half in a dream, I expect."

"Hah! Mind's clear as a bell now!"

"Is the job coming back to you?"

"Course it is, course it is!"

Elder Heo took the Core.

"If it's the job, it's the job. Ahem... I'd like to finish quick and get on home."

He laid a hand on the Core at once, closed his eyes, and set to work. It didn't take long, but the drain on the mind was considerable, or so he said. Appraise a few Cores in a row and he tired out fast and dropped. Appraisers went so far as to say that sleeping counted as part of the work.

While Elder Heo appraised, I could get us ready to move. I'd leave Dr. Myeong to sleep a little longer—

God. Nearly jumped out of my skin.

He'd been lying there, so I'd assumed he was asleep. Looking again, both eyes were wide open, fixed on empty air.

"You awake, or what?"

"I've been awake. The radio was nothing but noise."

"If you're awake, show it."

"Something's wrong with my body. Bad condition, or something like it."

"First time outside in years. If your condition were good, that would be the strange part."

"Haaah."

Dr. Myeong hauled himself upright, the effort all in his back. He'd been lying there with his eyes open; once he sat up, he shut them instead.

"I want to go back..."

"So long as nothing goes wrong, you'll be sleeping at Headquarters again from tomorrow."

"Done! Failure rate, one percent!"

A yellow Core with a one-percent chance of failure. Which meant it wasn't much of an item. At best, a power core. Still, it would be useful. I hadn't even brought money for the road, and this would spend nicely as a little emergency stash.

"You—!"

"Aagh, what now!"

The moment he saw Dr. Myeong on his feet, Elder Heo went straight back to scolding. At that level, even a real daughter would have run and never come back.

"Wretched thing!"

"What is it this time!"

"You're up, so the first thing you do is greet your father! That's what you ought to do!"

"Nngh..."

"Go on!"

Dr. Myeong shot me a glare. I eased two steps back, so the two of them could have their tender moment.

"Urgh..."

"Ah, go on!"

"...Did you sleep well?"

"You—! How could I have slept well! Always out wandering around like that!"

"Aagh!"

"I raise one daughter and this is what I get!"

"What did you ever do for me, Dad!"

Talent. If I'd known he could act like that, I'd have put him to it sooner.

"Where d'you think you're going, boy! Your father isn't finished!"

"Woo Jungkook. Get up front."

"Mm?"

"Hurry! I can't do this, I really can't. Let's finish this miserable job and go back!"

Dr. Myeong picked up his pace and slung his bag hard onto his shoulder. Then he stuck a cigarette between his lips at once, and Elder Heo was not a man to let that pass.

"Boy! Not in front of your elders!"

"Aagh! Not this one—I won't give this up!"

"It'll rot your bones, you brat!"

"Not that much, they don't!"

He was a doctor, after all. Apparently he couldn't quite bring himself to say they didn't rot at all.

The two of them bickered, and before long they went quiet. It was right after we came out of the ruined building. In the face of staying alive, upbringing and rebellion both fell to the rear.

Not that the road ahead of us was going to be a hard one. The way to Yeongdeungpo ran on the safe side. Close to Headquarters. It stood to reason.

But before long, the most dangerous place in Seoul began to take shape ahead of us. A high wall of special alloy. Black smoke lifting from chimney after chimney. And at the center of the settlement, a railgun standing straight up into the sky.

The Human Meat Factory.

The Seoul geography booklet issued to postmen explained the place in the simplest terms.