A Beautiful Story
"An outsider, and you think you get to call for a show of hands? General, sir, you should ignore him."
Tin Can, dead set against it. As expected.
But—
"Tin Can."
"Yes, sir."
"And who are you, to tell me to ignore him?"
"...Sir?"
"Don't overstep."
If anything, the General seemed to be taking my side. A man too clever for his own good would find no seat in Hyper-Democracy. The sort who soured a mood by being right about every little thing. They kept him around anyway, I supposed, because he was capable.
"I want to hear the Postman's proposal."
"Now that's more like it."
The General's motive wouldn't be anything grand. He just wanted to know whether there was one more scrap of information worth squeezing out of me.
"We'll settle it by a show of hands."
By now, a show of hands was starting to feel like the natural order of things.
"One, two, three, four... More hands for hearing him out."
Only natural, after the General had stepped on Tin Can in front of everyone. Much obliged.
"Then make your proposal."
"Before I propose anything, how about I tell you an interesting story?"
"You mean to plead your own case? I believe I said that wouldn't be necessary."
"I told you. An interesting story."
"And why would we need a thing like that?"
"Does fun need a reason? How about this, then. Listen for a while, and the moment it's a bore, cut me off. Whenever you like."
They say starting is half the work. Once a thing is underway, it finds some way to keep rolling.
"Very well. But mark this. If the story turns out to be some cheap little trick, cutting you off will not be the end of it."
"And if it isn't the end?"
"You may or may not know that the prisoners we have sent back alive can be counted on one hand."
So he meant to lean on me.
"From now on you'll be needing both."
"No. Even if we let all three of you go, you would still fit on one hand. Beginning to understand?"
"I'm weak at math."
The General answered with a snort.
"If you don't get it, there's nothing to be done. It changes nothing either way. Go on, then. Start."
He would give me the opening, but he had no intention of being generous about it. A measure of conciliation had been extended, and now he meant to pick up the whip. The attitude of a man who intended to break me in.
We would see about that.
First, though, I needed to set the stage.
"In this atmosphere? Light a few more candles."
"Atmosphere?"
"You don't know that a story lives or dies on the staging."
"Staging...?"
Where did the not-knowing even begin? Explaining would be a waste. Bait was easier, and faster.
"What I mean is, I can't get a taste for the information— no. For the story. So light them. I'm the type whose head won't turn in the dark."
"Hm. Then there's no helping it."
Transparent. Convenient.
"Why don't the rest of you come in closer and sit comfortably while you listen? I'm the only one who needs to stand here with aching legs."
They looked at one another's faces, and not one of them moved. It hardly mattered. The General took a single step closer and planted himself on the floor, and that ended the question.
With more candles burning, I could finally get a proper look at his face. He looked older than I'd thought. Well past fifty, easily.
Anyway, the preparations are done.
By candlelight the others began to huddle in and sit. While they shuffled into place, Dr. Myeong spoke to me under her breath. I'd expected her to ask whether this was really going well.
"Should Dad and I sit too?"
"That's unexpected."
"Hm? What is?"
"Nothing. Of course you should sit. Elder Heo, you as well."
The makeshift father and daughter took their places without a fuss. Trust, or resignation. Hard to say.
That was when he appeared.
A man walked in with thin cloth fluttering around him.
"What if I listened to that story with you?"
He had what looked like attendants around him, all of them dressed so lightly they seemed a long way from any fight.
"Didn't you say you had no intention of meeting the Postman?"
"I'm not here to meet him, am I? I came to hear a story. Literally that."
He spoke with the General as if it cost him nothing.
So this was the Savior.
From the voice and the silhouette alone I'd guessed late teens, but the face the candles gave me was unmistakably an adult's. Early twenties, maybe.
"Whoever you are, a bigger audience is welcome."
I offered that much of a greeting in my own way, but he didn't so much as look at me. He sat in a corner and stared off at some distant mountain.
Unpleasant bastard.
The General, though, looked uncomfortable having the Savior there.
"If you jump in now, do you even understand what's going on? Stay inside. I'll summarize it for you later."
"What if I said I've been listening from the start?"
"From behind the wall? Then why say you wouldn't meet the Postman?"
"You'd have handled it perfectly well without me. What's the problem?"
Not a temperament that suited the title of Savior. Shameless on the level of Jo Yong-han.
"With the Savior here as well, the three of you have run out of luck."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning your odds of survival just dropped hard. He's a gentleman who likes the sight of blood even more than I do. Well. For the moment he can't help himself when a good story comes along, and he's come all the way out to show an interest. Would you call that a favorable turn?"
"My. I'd rather you didn't go telling just anyone about me. Least of all some rootless outsider like that."
The Savior's voice had gone cold.
"You want me to ask permission every single time I speak?"
"Permission is a bit grand. What would be better... Seeking my consent?"
"Hm."
"If you don't care for that, you can simply stop talking about me from now on."
"I'll do that."
"You mean you won't, from now on. Isn't that right?"
"I'll seek your consent."
The discord between them had reached the realm of art. The General had said the Savior stood with those who opposed the war. Against a General who had every look of a war fanatic, there was no way the two of them could ever see eye to eye.
Now that both of them are in the same place, there may come a moment when I have to choose one.
If they were at odds, getting into both of their good graces at once would be very hard. Better to commit cleanly to one side than to aim at both and fail at both.
If I have to attach myself to one of them, which do I pick?
Ordinarily you stick with whoever has more power. The problem was that I couldn't feel which of them stood above the other.
One side is a military commander.
A man with real power, the kind that could put force in motion this very moment. But that power was only something the seat of command had made. There would always be others who could become commander. A replaceable resource.
The other side is a Savior of unknown identity.
I didn't have enough on him. I could only guess that he occupied the place of a spiritual pillar, held up by the settlers' support. He didn't look capable of mobilizing force. But unlike the General, the Savior was not a man made by his seat. The man himself was what mattered, and that made him irreplaceable.
At a glance, the Savior, who looked special, seemed the more valuable of the two. But nothing is as reliable as solving a problem with blunt, stupid force.
Which one would profit me?
"Fine... Anyway, begin. If the story is dull, I'll stop it at once."
The General was finished with the overture. For now I had to focus on getting Dr. Myeong and Elder Heo out of here without incident, and getting back before the deadline. Thinking past that was a violation of the basics of survival.
Right. Let's begin.
The General, urging me to start with a face that expected nothing at all. Tin Can, packed full of discontent. The Savior, offering me nothing but his profile. And a crowd of settlers whose hollow eyes seemed to say they wanted to go home.
Perfect.
"The hero of today's story, to begin with—"
The General leaned in to get a better look at what I was holding.
"A finger?"
A severed finger, sealed inside a test tube.
"Yes. The man this finger belonged to is the first hero."
"A man already dead, then."
"And the second hero is yours truly."
A story built on something true is always the right choice. Especially if you lived it yourself. Those are easy to tell so they feel real.
But I couldn't give them the Special Forces Commander's true story as it was.
"...I couldn't tell friend from foe."
Lost in the hallucinations of a Combat Stimulant, the Special Forces Commander had ended up killing every one of his own men who was with him. Anywhere else, maybe. Here, where the families of the people who died that day might well be sitting, it could never be an entertaining story.
It needed adapting. By borrowing a different true story.
"It was last month. The first time we met was on the road through Yeongdeungpo, on the way toward Geumcheon District."
"Where the zombie in the dress is?"
So the General knew a thing or two about the world outside. Then I ought to give him a chance to join the story. By pretending, just enough, not to know.
"You know it well? Truth is, I've only really seen the thing once."
"A Postman, and you don't even know that?"
"I only ever walk the roads I always walk. The ones I'm certain are safe."
"I see. Then allow me to add a little explanation. That zombie—"
And the General launched into this and that about the pink dress. Not only that. He explained the character of the Ceasefire Zone, and its layout, as well. Bit by bit, he started to preen.
Excellent.
Hand him chances to cut in, and share out ownership of the story. Then he won't be able to call it boring.
"Do you follow, now?"
"That was a good explanation. From here on, if something comes up that you know, I'd like you to fill it in."
"I will."
"To pick the story back up: the first time we met, that friend of mine was leading five subordinates. All of them fine warriors."
The first meeting in the Ceasefire Zone I told as a rough blend of the time I'd run into the Jerky-Arm Trio and what I'd picked up in my army days.
"Not much of a fated encounter. That sort of thing happens often in the Ceasefire Zone."
The General had sunk into the story far enough that he kept cutting in.
"Up to there, yes. After that—"
I told the story of that first meeting. How we'd grown close: a petty quarrel that turned into a fistfight and ended with the two of us lying spread-eagled, side by side, staring up at the sky.
"...Feels like a story I've heard somewhere."
"Just a feeling. Anyway, the problem was that night."
From here, I dropped my voice.
"While we were asleep on the roof of a building, we started to hear someone coming up the stairs..."
This time it was something that had happened on the way back to headquarters with Clock-out Man. I folded in, loosely, the encounter with a novice raider who lived and died for a joke.
"But by the time we noticed, it was already too late. Their lead man had already reached the roof. One step. Two steps. Three... The footsteps kept coming closer."
Someone swallowed. It wasn't the General. It seemed to come from the Savior's side.
"There were quite a few of them. Ten, easily, at the least."
"The reason their lead man saw you and didn't attack at once — he meant to wait until every fighting man had taken position on the roof before they moved."
"Probably. At the sound of them drawing near, I cracked an eye open..."
Another swallow.
"And met the eyes of the man beside me. The one I'd thought was dead to the world."
"Ooh."
"I can see it."
"Shh. Pay attention and listen."
The gravest face in the room belonged to the General.
"You said they were fine warriors, so I'd expect the other five subordinates were all awake as well."
He was properly sunk in it.
"That's exactly it. Everyone had heard. Eyes barely open, we traded looks and built the plan."
The General nodded, and a smile slipped out of him.
"Warriors who've been through every kind of fight can pass a plan with nothing but their eyes."
"Truth is, I didn't really understand it. I'm only a Postman, after all. But they were on another level."
"So what happened?"
I let the pause hang.
"And all the while the footsteps kept circling at my ear. Another step. Two..."
Had the Savior been sitting this close the whole time?
"And then..."
A swallow.
"Operation commence! Tat-tat-tat!"
Someone yelped.
An absurdly exaggerated rifle stance.
"Tat-tat-tat-tat!"
The reenactment was violent enough to cramp my arm, and they flinched. One of them even threw an arm up over his head. Looking closer, it was Tin Can.
"By the time he drew his pistol, the raider's muzzle was already aimed at his forehead...! But with a snap of the waist—"
One lifelike reenactment after another, close enough to the real thing to fool you. All of it action from the movies The Old Man had shown me when I was young. After long nights without a roof, the special forces had looked like beggars, and that had called up the movie hero with his filthy hair and his thick beard. I gave them, just as it had been on the screen, the scene of one man alone beating down dozens.
"Astonishing combat power...!"
The General wasn't the only one gasping. Settlers who had worn clock-out faces were murmuring now, and a few of them were even cheering.
After that gaudy battle came to its end—
"Only then did I get to my feet. I patted myself down at once, looking for a place a bullet had found, but luckily there wasn't one."
"...Ill fortune for the warriors. Heaven's own luck for you."
At this point I didn't have to worry about the story being cut off.
"Not everyone was lucky. We had three dead of our own. His subordinates went from five down to two."
A choked sob. Someone who had fallen in too deep wiped at their eyes. I'd thought it was one unusually sensitive soul. Looking around, it wasn't just one or two.
...It was that bad?
"C-Commander... Please, you have to live, Commander..."
"What kind of talk is that! You can live too!"
"Commander... It was an honor, being with you..."
"Don't talk. Breathe!"
"What are you all doing! Stop the bleeding, now!"
"Commander, I think it's already too late."
"I'll be sure to carry word of your honorable last battle back to your home..."
"You can live! Breathe, damn it!"
And so the battle ended, blood and sweat and tears flung up together.
"Postman... Thank you for the help. It's all right. I only fought so that I could survive."
A low, rough sound caught in someone's throat.
And somewhere along the way the Savior had started looking me straight in the face. The man who had definitely been sitting in that corner had come a good way forward. When our eyes met, he seemed to grow embarrassed.
"Like the General said, I've always liked listening to stories."
An answer to a question nobody had asked.
"Battlefields especially, where life and death come tearing through. I like those stories very much."
Then the General raised a hand and looked at the Savior.
"...Are you, by any chance, seeking my consent?"
The General nodded.
"I think I know what you want to say, so it would be better if I simply explained it myself."
He never got the chance. The man who barged straight in without so much as seeking my consent.
"You could say that listening to stories of the battlefield is the joy of my life... The truth is, I had friends who used to tell me stories like that all the time. Stories that reeked of blood. The way you're telling one now. Ah. Your acting is much better."
The more I heard, the further he seemed from anything that deserved to be called a Savior.
"But those friends all went missing. Same day. Same hour."
"Missing?"
"They went out on an operation and never came back. The drought won't end, and every crop but the alien plants is drying up and dying, so things inside are not good. They left to find a way to secure water in bulk, and in the end they didn't return. It happened last month, just like your story. Quite a coincidence."
The Savior was the one explaining, and yet every one of them was sniffling and looking at me.
So that's why the audience was wiping their eyes.
They had figured it out from the start.
"At this point there's no need to hide it any longer. You all know whose finger this was, don't you?"
The Savior strode up and held out his palm. I handed him the test tube, and he recognized the ring at a glance.
One by one, they bowed their heads. Even the General, who had been holding his neck stiff, clicked his tongue and lowered his head with obvious reluctance.
But—
"I... I don't think we should take this at face value."
Tin Can's cleverness had no sense of timing. A bastard for the ages.
"Of course the story and the acting were excellent — that is, quite plausible — but there is no evidence at all. Frankly, even if the Postman had actually been the enemy of the special forces—"
"Enough."
"Enough!"
The General and the Savior cut him off at the same time.
"The Postman's performance is not finished. Do not interfere."
"Go on. It won't be too late to judge once we've heard all of it."
Tin Can took the hint, crammed himself into a corner, and deflated.