Amusement
"A genius has arrived!"
The VVIP ward stirred. This was the place that turned a tiny hunter into a genius.
People who first heard the rumors could never quite grasp what was special enough to earn the name. They only knew the atmosphere: slight the tiny hunter even a little, and harm had a way of following. So everyone hushed everyone else, and left it at that.
Veteran hunters and the rest of them took that astonishing gift for learning as proof of genius. The judgment was premature. Brilliant in the short run, yes—but a laziness rooted deep ruined any hope of lasting. For now, while the promise still held, the talent passed for a hunter's aptitude and nothing more. The day the bare face showed itself was only a matter of time.
"Wonderful to see you! Come in, come in!"
The tiny hunter did not so much as return the greeting. The attitude was plain enough: do the work well, and that was the end of it.
"Shall we start at once? Excellent! Let's begin!"
The tiny hunter laid a hand on the abdomen of the VVIP lying in the bed. The moment focus gathered, something caught in the ability—a sensation like the one that came from touching the nose of a mercenary with an uncommonly keen sense of smell. The power to find something physical or mental hidden inside a human body, and to shut its working down for a fixed span of time.
"Done."
"Hahaha! Thank you, truly!"
The biological clock that had been winding the VVIP toward death stopped. For the time being, the cancer settled in his belly would do no further work.
"Talent sent straight down from heaven! A genius! Literally!"
A thing no recovery-type ability, however strong, could manage, and no exceptional physician either—the kind who appeared once in a decade, if you were lucky. A power that lengthened a human life with ease. A gift a god had lowered out of the sky. A genius, exactly as the word had it.
"Last time—what was it. Ah, right. That postman who wanted an operation assigned to him first! I've covered the matter so it won't come back on anyone, so don't you worry! From here on, I just give that postman whatever he says he wants. Is that it? You must be fond of this one."
"You don't need to look into it any further."
"No? Then I can put it out of my mind?"
"That's right."
"Good, good! Whenever you need something, just get in touch with Secretary Kim!"
The man standing in the corner of the room inclined his head. Only one attendant was permitted to reside in a VVIP room, and the one he had brought was a secretary.
The hunter left without any particular farewell. The day's schedule had barely begun. All the way to the end of the corridor, the rooms were full of people who needed a genius.
"Hoo…"
In truth, the corridor held a secret no one but the genius knew. This hallway was the source of the laziness. Powerful as the ability was, it devoured stamina, and the genius lived with that fact hidden. Because of it, the days were packed solid with overwork and recovery.
"Thank you again today."
The patients' gratitude never stopped.
"No one's been giving you trouble lately?"
The white-haired woman with the kindly face was already past ninety.
"I'm fine."
"Live up here just a little longer. Rules are rules. One of these days I will take you underground myself. I swear it."
When she smiled, bright and open, the white hair flashed a vivid yellow and then returned. A wig.
And so, passing from room to room, the genius never exchanged more than five remarks with anyone.
At last, the final room. A patient never seen before.
"Hello. What do you do?"
The hunter's first greeting of the day. The first time they had spoken first, as well. Nothing special—only the little personal inquiry they always made of a VVIP met for the first time.
"I own a theme park. Feel free to think of me as the caretaker."
A facility Headquarters did not have. So there was no such occupation as theme park caretaker—but in the VVIP rooms, you saw every kind of work there was.
"Good to meet you. Even younger in the face than I'd heard."
"What can you do for me?"
"The manner's just as advertised. Amusing."
"…Amusing?"
The VVIP could not have cared less about the hunter's attitude. The attendant felt differently.
"Hunter. I didn't come here ignorant of your temperament, but I would still like you a little softer."
In place of an answer, the hunter stared, wide-eyed and blank.
"…I'll introduce myself, then. I'm the caretaker's psychological counselor."
"What's that?"
Another occupation Headquarters did not have, of course.
"Healing the mind."
The notion pricked at their interest, but—
"Is it a Core ability?"
"Mm, not exactly—"
"Then never mind."
Not what they had been hoping for.
"What can the caretaker do for me?"
"Me? Anything money can do."
The hunter sank into thought.
"Heh. So there's no end of rich patrons behind you?"
"That's right."
"Hunter, a bit more gently—"
"Enough, enough. I'll handle it."
The caretaker, who had been lying down, sat up and crouched beside the bed. That put even a hunter this short in the position of looking down on him, which was exactly what he had wanted. A way to soften someone without browbeating them. Fifty years of living had taught him the trick: with the sort of person who thrashed the moment you stepped on them, you had to meet them where they were.
"Someone like you will come to the Geofront eventually, won't you?"
The hunter, as ever, gave no reply.
"Why do you think people cling so hard to living? Hm? Because they can't manage to die? Because they don't want to? That's a problem for the world outside. Well—Headquarters isn't entirely free of it either, I suppose. But underground is different. What is it people gain from the progress of civilization?"
He waited once more for an answer. The hunter was unchanged.
"Time. They come into spare time."
The caretaker rose and perched on the edge of the bed. Now their eyes were level. In the instant the hunter was thinking And what am I supposed to do with that?—
"Which means the time left over can be spent having fun."
The caretaker had found the switch.
"Can you play with me?"
Words brought out for the first time in a long while.
"That's why I brought it up. You'll come to the Geofront someday. The theme park is the most amusing place underground, which is why it's always packed. But if I put my weight behind you, you could have a good time whenever you liked."
"So there isn't anything you can do for me right now."
"I told you. Right now, if money can do it, anything is possible."
"Fun isn't something I can have right now."
"Is that the line you wanted to hear? Fine. Not right now. Later—"
"That's enough."
The hunter rolled a sleeve up.
"Where does it hurt?"
"I'm grateful…!"
The caretaker was not, strictly speaking, someone the hunter needed. Even so, clients had to be managed. They might seem difficult, but they had never once sent a patient away.
"Done."
"How often do I have to come? I heard it depends on the condition."
"Once every three days."
"Rather often, then… Still, if it means I go on living, that's enough!"
The caretaker offered a goodbye to the hunter, already making straight for the door. As ever, the hunter did not take it.
And so—
"You know everyone needs you, so you don't have to go out of your way to be kind."
A remark with a bone in it. Not to sour the hunter's mood, but to settle his own heart. Hold too much in, and the mind fell ill; then the counselor would have to suffer for it again.
But some strange wind must have blown, because the hunter responded. The footsteps stopped. The hunter turned, looked the caretaker over slowly from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet where he lay on the bed, and spoke to the counselor.
"Does that person's life look fun to you?"
"Where do you usually cut?"
As I looked over Elder Heo's body with the knife in hand, Dr. Myeong drew closer. Some instinct in a person whose work was setting a blade to human flesh, maybe.
"If the will names a part, that's first. If they wore a ring, that finger is second. Last is a distinctive part of the body."
"A distinctive part?"
"An ear that's unusually large, that sort of thing. If some piece of them stood out in life, people figure it stands for them, and they cut that."
A will that asked to be buried somewhere cool. The whole corpse obviously couldn't be moved and laid in the ground. A piece had to come off.
"Heo Seong-chan doesn't really have anything like that. No ring, either."
"At times like this it's up to the one doing the cutting, and I—"
I set the knife against the little finger of the right hand.
"I prefer here."
Shick. Shick.
"Is there a reason?"
"It's the finger you link when you make a promise."
The Special Forces Commander's finger had been closer to evidence when I cut it. Taking a piece of a body for no reason but to bury it—this was the first time in a long while. I didn't handle every dead person this way. I only granted the wish of those who had left word that they wanted to be buried, and not even that wish every time. Now and then, if there were enough hands and the people left behind truly wanted it, a whole corpse went into the ground on the spot. Captain Choi had been one of those. These days, though, hardly anyone left a will like this. The old ones were a peculiar breed.
"So we just leave the rest and go?"
"That isn't Elder Heo anymore."
I held the severed finger up at Dr. Myeong's eye level.
"This is the only Elder Heo there is."
They say the old world had such a thing as a period for mourning the dead. How soft must those lives have been. If you had time to mourn, you were better off moving fast and not adding one more corpse to the count.
"Let's go."
I packed the gear and left. The road home was safe. From here, there wasn't much to worry about. The worry started after we got back.
"The mission counts as a failure, right? So what happens now?"
A mission was marked a failure if the office worker who had come along didn't make it back alive. Look at it closely and it had nothing to do with a postman's work. Even so, when they said do it, you did it. That was the fate of a civil servant at the bottom of the ladder.
"I'll probably be handed a new mission and have to head out again."
"Ugh."
"Doesn't concern you. Once you're back, you're done. The failure's mine alone. I might have to come out again dragging two more companions who are nothing but baggage."
"Sorry for being baggage."
"As long as you know."
"…Isn't this usually the moment you say you were joking?"
"I wasn't."
"Wow."
On the way back I would have to look carefully for a place that didn't get so much as a speck of sun.
Elder Heo's wish to be laid somewhere cool. I had thought he was rambling, but the words that followed—that Headquarters was too bright—made me understand. Those government buildings, white past all reason. A landscape so alien you doubted it was real. Stare at that blinding shine day after day and you'd think it would burn your corneas. Fortunately his eyes had stayed sound right up to the moment he died. His inner world, it seemed, had already burned away to nothing.
"If you see a cool place, say so."
"I was already thinking about it. You walk this road all the time. I assumed you'd already know a spot."
I knew a few patches of shade. But I knew every one of them for hiding my own body, and I didn't hold the lease on any of them. On an ordinary day, other bastards passed through as they pleased. Better if it was somewhere human feet rarely reached.
"If there's no better spot, I'll bury him somewhere I know. You look too."
"That much, sure."
I had expected the load to lighten a little on the way back. The parcels would be delivered, the food and water used up. Somehow it felt heavier.
Tata's radio, and Elder Heo's Core.
Elder Heo had tried, desperately, to make me understand this Core. On the last road he walked there must have been more than one thing he wanted to say. He seemed to have wanted, somehow, for the Core to be of use.
A Core that makes you a Core appraiser, no matter what…
Fine. Assume everything he said was true. A Core that guaranteed the use would succeed. But appraise it, he had said, and it would come back with a ninety-nine percent chance of failure. Black, as if its power were spent, and yet still usable. Put those claims together and one piece of logic fell out.
A disguise?
A Core that displayed numbers nothing like the truth, and stayed black in ordinary times even though the power was there. If it had been disguised on purpose to look like trash, the logic held. The effect had been certain, too. Just before the mission, a veteran hunter had inspected Elder Heo's treasure and cleared it to be taken out, without any particular reaction. Dr. Myeong and I had looked it over ourselves while he slept, then lost interest, unable to see why anyone would carry junk like that around. And that was with him calling it his treasure right out in the open.
"But doesn't it strike you as strange? The Core Heo Seong-chan left—"
I had thought exhaustion had shut her up. She had been thinking about Elder Heo too.
"The part where your lifespan drops to a year after you use it. That's genuinely strange."
"Nothing anyone says about Cores makes sense in the first place. A little late to act surprised."
"That isn't what I mean. He carried it around to give to his daughter, didn't he? Isn't that just shortening the life of the person who mattered most to him?"
Easy enough to see it that way. But look at Elder Heo's life, and it wasn't beyond understanding.
"Why do you think he was allowed to stay at Headquarters even after the dementia took him?"
"The Core appraisal ability, obviously. But no matter how important that ability was—"
"If he hadn't had it, a year wouldn't have entered into it. The day his mind went, they'd have thrown him out, and he'd have died."
"Mmm…"
It had been the same when the Human Meat Factory took us. Dr. Myeong's medical skill and Elder Heo's Core appraisal had been more than enough to win the settlers over.
"If you're about to die and you can make them hear that you actually possess a Core-appraisal ability—if that gets you past the death in front of you—it's better than dying on the spot."
"Mm. A last resort, then."
In some respects the terms were far better than an ordinary Ability Core. Most Ability Cores were things that hurried death closer, not farther off. Elder Heo's treasure was a different grade, at least in that it offered a definite chance. Depending on your values, you might choose one year of being treated decently over a whole life with no ability at all.
"Well. That's if everything he said was true."
"Fair enough."
At the end, Elder Heo had known clearly that he had no daughter. Seeing that, it seemed his mind had come all the way back.
He had reported it after succeeding three times at using an Ability Core, and then it had turned out like this. What was that like this supposed to mean? That he had become a demented old man? Or that the Department of Future Technology had done something in an attempt to cure the dementia? What was certain was that Elder Heo believed they had planted the existence of his daughter.
"As a doctor, what do you think?"
"Hm?"
"The rumor that the Department of Future Technology kidnaps people and dissects them."
"Dissection is a ghost story."
"You're certain."
"But the surgery—they're doing that."
"Hm?"
"I know the scale of the medical supplies that come up from the Geofront. By the time they actually reach us, there's less of them. Word is, some of it goes to a secret ward for VVIPs, and some—"
"To the Department of Future Technology's operating rooms?"
"…Yes. All I know is that they test new technology there."
Hocheol had probably been one of those cases. When we got Min Yeo-jin out, the wound to his leg was severe—an attack by a venomous monster, and by then enough time had passed for the poison to spread through his whole body. He had been a breathing corpse. That was when the Department of Future Technology took him under compulsory execution. To be precise, they called it collecting him. He was dead either way, and no one pushed back. Pushing back wouldn't have worked in any case. The result was that he came back alive, along with the cheap aftereffect of a limp.
"So what are you going to do with the Core?"
"Report it to the Department of Future Technology."
"…?"
"That's what a joke looks like."
"Do you have any idea how awful you are right now?"
If Elder Heo was right, this was worth more than anything I had ever gotten my hands on. But no one would believe it. Explain it the way he had told it and you'd be called a fraud before you finished, and there was no way to test the effect. Which meant selling it was finished.
And only someone who has never once used an Ability Core can use it…
So in the end, I couldn't use it. The only person in the world who might be willing to try believing Elder Heo was me, and I was the one the Core wouldn't take.
What is this. It really is trash.
"Woo Jungkook. Look over there."
That was when Dr. Myeong found a cool place. The hole gave off an overwhelming chill at a glance, cut on a slant down under the ground like a burrow.
"We are going back the way we came, aren't we? Was there always a hole like that?"
No. There hadn't been.
"Wait here."
If it came to it, the place would do for Elder Heo's grave.