Climax
"Three of our men died, yes. But in that fight we sent eleven raiders to the other side."
I hadn't prepared a word of it in advance.
"I cut every throat, one by one, and checked carefully that they were really dead."
And still a plausible story kept seeping out of my mouth, on and on, as if it had somewhere to be. Was this the freestyle rap Hocheol had been talking about?
"Eleven of them?"
The Savior didn't sound satisfied. At some point he had started slipping himself into the tale.
"Even ambushed, that's hardly a number that should give our Special Forces trouble."
My rap wasn't that sloppy.
"Eleven is how many we killed. More than that got away. I was just getting to it."
"Right. That makes sense."
Only then did he relax. The General nodded along the whole time. Good. Keep going.
"We cut the fingers from our dead. Shhk, shhk. The Commander took the first one. I did the rest. He was too slow, stopping to wipe his eyes."
"Hm? But you only brought back a single finger—"
"General, I'm sure the Postman will explain it when he's ready."
"It all comes out later. Just listen."
"Fair enough."
Impatient.
"Anyway, the problem was the ones who got away alive. For all we knew, they'd kit up and come hunting us."
The General's lips twitched, like there was something he badly wanted to say. This time he held it in.
I know what he wanted to say.
Raiders, taking revenge for their own? You're lucky if they don't kill each other. To a General who had spent years on battlefields where men lived and died by the sword, that would be common sense. Romantic tales of revenge worth dying for belong in books — and they get even less realistic when the other side is stronger. If I wanted to steer this toward a rematch, I needed a sturdier pretext.
"There was a reason we thought they'd come looking again. We went through what we pulled off the bodies, and every last one of them was blood. A real family. One big raiding clan."
"Oh-ho."
The General's eyes flashed, as if they had swallowed the candle flame.
"Revenge is a fool's game, but in a case like that it's different. No cause in the world outweighs family, no matter how strong the enemy!"
I had expected the Savior to shut him down around here. For some reason, he didn't look inclined to.
"You don't only fight the wars you're sure to win. Sometimes the war itself is the point! I hardly need to hear the rest — those raiders came back for another attack, didn't they? What a story!"
The General, spoiling the ending out loud. The Savior didn't stop him. He just kept shaking his head, as if his neck had given out. I thought I might have found the thread of why the two of them had split.
"We must prepare for war! Raise your hands!"
The General, set on making war against Headquarters. He would have some romantic justification worth losing for. The Savior's opposition would be the realistic judgment. These two were never going to compromise.
"So, to go on—"
After that it was a chase: raiders hunting us, and us hunting them. A Postman throwing his work aside to run around with the Special Forces was a little suspicious, but nobody seemed to care. Friendship really is what people used to call a cheat code.
"Then the Commander says, you play billiards? I asked him what the hell he was on about at a time like this, and he tells me that's exactly when you need to loosen up."
The reaction came from the Savior, just as I'd expected.
"He loved billiards. I can picture the look on his face."
He said he often heard battlefield stories from the Special Forces. He would know the Commander well. The game of billiards had actually happened, so I had to lean on it and stamp this whole thing as true.
"Just as you said. He was obsessed. Told me he'd been playing his father for stakes since he was a kid."
"...He told you that, too?"
He couldn't believe it.
"What's strange about it? We were already the kind of comrades who could watch each other's backs."
Doubt still filled the Savior's eyes.
"He wasn't the sort to tell just anyone his story... You're saying this is really true?"
"I am. It's a little awkward to say it myself, but I wasn't just anyone to him."
"Maybe you found out some other way."
"How?"
"Torture, for instance."
"Your imagination's getting away from you."
That was when the settlers, quiet until then, started murmuring in earnest.
If you asked whether we'd truly been that close, even I had my doubts. But it was true the Commander hadn't kept his usual wall up with me. The first time we met, I'd given him antihistamines so he could head off the side effects. The second time, I'd dragged him back from the edge of death with an antidote shot. To him, I was as good as the man who had saved his life. A thick enough bond.
"Postman... If you're using a dead man's name to tell a lie, even death won't pay what you owe. I promise you that."
"I don't need a promise like that. Oh — right."
About time I brought it out.
"This was meant for the climax, but I should do it now."
The electric razor, lying at the very bottom of the Special Forces Commander's bag.
I had never actually heard him say the razor was his father's keepsake. But the name written on it shared only a surname with the Commander, and the rest was different. And it had sat at the very bottom of the bag, as if he'd never had cause to take it out. That was enough.
"The Commander left this with me at the end, along with his last words."
"My god."
So the Savior knew what it was.
"He said it was something his father left behind."
"How do you know that..."
"Because the Commander gave it to me himself. That's why."
Lucky. I had built the moment up, and if nobody had known the story behind the thing, it would have been a mess to walk back. The Savior, saving me.
"Now that I think of it, I did hear something like that. If he beat his father in their game, he could push bedtime back half an hour."
"That's not a story he'd tell just anyone..."
"If I'd forced it out of him, it wouldn't have needed to be this detailed. Or is that just me?"
"...I'll grant you this much. It does look like the Commander told you of his own accord."
One big mountain cleared.
"So who won?"
The General cared about the result of the match. No — aside from the Savior, everyone's interest had already moved on to who won.
"Well, obviously—"
I did.
"The Commander won. I never stood a chance. I'm no slouch at billiards myself, but I'd never met an opponent like that."
"Heh. Of course."
The warmonger was deeply invested in a victory that wasn't even his.
Maybe I should have just said I won. No. I had to keep the audience satisfied.
And so the story rolled on until we stood before the final battle. The stage was Claw Farm.
"Claw Farm? I remember a report that an air raid hit there recently."
"Your intel's fast. Not faster than mine. I was the one who delivered the air-raid warning. I got the people out, then dug in and waited for the raiders."
"On a scheduled strike site? There's nothing there you could even call a real defense."
"No defenses. But we had the ultimate suicide tactic."
"Hm?"
"You still don't see it?"
The General had no idea at all. He only caught on after I had jabbed a finger at the sky about four times.
"Oh-ho. You meant to draw them in, then wipe them out with the air raid."
"Correct."
It was a flea market in there. In the noise, Dr. Myeong, silent until now, threw me a question without moving his lips.
"Is everything you're saying actually true?"
"Of course it's true."
A true con.
The story went on anyway. After one thing and another, the operation ran into trouble.
"Who would have thought the raider band had someone with a Core ability. Two of them...! This is bad. At this rate we can't pin them here."
In the end, the Special Forces Commander made his decision.
"I think I have to stay."
"What? What do you mean?"
"They've figured out where home is. If we don't finish it here, Utopia is in danger."
"What are you talking about? We go back to the settlement, set a defense, and raiders like that are nothing—!"
"No. It won't be easy."
Someone in the crowd swallowed. The climax.
I turned my back and set myself so the shadowed line of my profile still showed. The farewell with the Special Forces Commander.
"They're a different breed from government troops. They don't know their lives are precious, and they won't quit until the revenge is done. And they have two Core Ability Users. Against people like that, even a defensive line at Utopia means casualties. So we end it here."
Time to slip in something real. The message the Commander had actually left me.
The Commander had learned that a raider band led by Mother was using Clock-out Man as a mercenary and hitting the nearby settlements. Then he had run into Clock-out Man, and the side effects of the Combat Stimulant had come on. He had opened fire on his own men. In the end, not a single member of the Special Forces died to Clock-out Man on that spot. Clock-out Man must have been just as bewildered.
"Postman. No — friend. Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you. And if something happens to me—"
"Ah. I know what you're trying to say. You want me to carry it to your settlement, don't you?"
"Yes. You must. Of course, my friend."
I reached my right hand into empty air and mimed a handshake. But then—
Maybe it looked too empty. Elder Heo, who had been sitting still, looked up at me and thrust out his right hand, hard, and—
He seized mine. Not playing along would have made an even stranger picture, so in the end I shook Elder Heo's hand. I worried the unplanned bit of business would break the audience's immersion, but luckily not one of them so much as breathed a laugh.
"I'm counting on you, friend. The information you have to deliver is—"
I gave a brief account of the dangerous raider band led by Mother, and of the suspicious mercenary, Clock-out Man. All of it false, of course. They were people I no longer needed to be careful of, so false was fine. The bonus was that the real story would have put Clock-out Man in a difficult spot. The reason I made a point of playing up this part, even while reciting fake information, was the epilogue still to come.
"Utopia probably won't welcome you. As you know, we don't even speak with Postmen."
"Of course I know. Even so, I'll find a way to deliver your message."
"Don't push yourself, friend. I'll give you something that should help. Think of it as your ticket in."
That was how I had come by the electric razor. I also bluffed the part about it being his father's keepsake, as if I had heard it then.
"That's when one of the Special Forces men who had been fighting outside came in. Commander! Commander! We can't hold any longer! We'd better abandon this place and pull back!"
Back into the pose, back and profile both showing.
"I'm staying. The rest of you, withdraw."
"Sir...?"
"Didn't you hear me? All of you, leave. Now!"
"Commander? Wasn't an air raid supposed to hit here?"
"Yes. If all of you leave, they won't stay pinned here either, and the operation fails."
"Commander! No — Brother! What are you saying, Brother!"
"Brother! We'll stay too!"
"What?"
"It's useless if you stay alone, Brother. We have to put our strength together to pin them down!"
"You bastards..."
Honestly, this part didn't need so much care. The thick bond between them, the sacrifice — none of it had anything to do with me. And still I was putting my weight behind it, because this was a little extra service for the Special Forces Commander.
His true wish. I had already been handed my ticket in. I ought to let him have it.
"The men's resolve—"
The true story — a commander who had raged out of his mind, and the men who had become ghosts because of him — was remade, inside my telling, into the history of hope he had wanted.
"In the end, even the Commander accepted what his men—"
Someone might call it a false history. Well. If you treasure the worth of a truthful history, they would be right. But what mattered to me now was granting the Commander's wish.
"And so the entire Special Forces stayed at Claw Farm and pinned the raiders where they stood—"
I played their last moments — choosing to remain even knowing the air raid was coming — as vividly as I could, built on something real. Ragheap, the settlement where I had met Gyeongsu. The last sight of the ones who had chosen to stay there was still sharp. It wasn't hard.
"Then leave this place to us, and go well, friend! It was short, but it burned! Travel safe, Postman!"
"Hey, Postman. You are not allowed to die."
After that, the air raid, and a glorious end in fire. I had seen that sight more times than I could count, so I could deliver it more vividly than anyone. The reaction that came up most was some version of so this is a veteran Postman. Most of them, though, were too busy crying and blowing their noses to actually hear me.
On the list of people sniveling — a wet sob, a sniff, another sniff, another sob — Tin Can was there. And Elder Heo. Dr. Myeong was unmoved. The General didn't stir either. As expected. Surprisingly, the Savior was calm as well. Unlike the General, who looked awkward for having missed the mood, the Savior seemed sunk in some deep thought. That was the difference.
Time to wrap it up.
"All right, everyone, settle down. It only came back to me after the raid was over. The fingers we'd cut from the men who died first — the Commander had those. In the chaos, nobody remembered that I was supposed to take them."
That accounted for why no trace of the other men remained.
"So all at once I felt the lack of them. A Postman has to go back into a strike site anyway, to recover the Damage Measuring Device. While I was in there, I looked for some trace of the Special Forces."
A small miracle, slipped in around here.
"And this one finger is what I salvaged. By some miracle, I could still make out the Commander's body. I just cut off the finger with the ring and brought it back. The raiders? Not one of them got out. Wiped out to the last, Core Ability Users included. They did it. Your Special Forces."
The history of the Special Forces was complete.
"This is the sort of thing you put in a book and leave for the generations to come... Next time, I'll formally propose we raise our hands."
Come to think of it, the General was well disposed toward the Special Forces too, even though they seemed closer to the Savior. A will to stick together, and a difference of opinion that could not be closed, living side by side. Family, in a word.
"Hm. It was a good story."
The Savior, quiet for a long while, finally reacted. Too calm. That made it suspicious instead. Should I poke him outright and see if a gap opened?
"You're awfully calm."
"There's just... a little."
"A little?"
"A part I don't quite understand."
I had a bad feeling. The Savior was close to the Special Forces. He would know the Commander far better than I did. Had he caught the scent of something off? Then I needed one last dash of seasoning.
"A part you don't understand? Questions are always welcome. But let's hear them after the story's finished."
"There's still more?"
"There's still the epilogue."
The reason I had bothered telling them about Mother, and about the mercenary Clock-out Man.
"The Special Forces went out like that, and I thought I ought to do something too."
"Hm?"
"The raider the Commander mentioned. Mother. And the mercenary. What do you suppose became of them?"
The last firework.