An Ordinary Person
The Waste Disposal Squad. How to put it.
They stirred something crooked in me.
People who had come to save strangers who meant nothing to them. The sight of them breathing toxic gas, straining to keep lives from slipping away. It called the Old Man to mind. Not that he had ever been like that. He had never given off a kindly impression. Even when he held out a hand of salvation to us orphans, it was the same. On that first walk to the cabin, trailing after him, I had worried the man might be planning to cook me and eat me. That was why.
Because that is humanitarianism.
The Old Man said the word meant that people like people. That there existed a logic by which a person could not help but like other people, and that there was even a term to explain it. So was this what I was looking at? Humanitarianism? The method differed from his, but in the end it was the same logic. There had been a time, I gathered, when humanitarianism was the highest value of all. Not now.
Set beside that, Dr. Myeong—
“…….”
She only kept staring down at the triage chart.
The reason the foreman had given her the job was not, in truth, to decide who should be treated first. It was to pick out who to abandon. The wounded who could not be saved had to be given up without hesitation, or the medical supplies would not last.
The problem is that Dr. Myeong is sealed shut, front and back.
Current state policy held that when you chose who to treat first, you were to weigh the wounded person's rank. The sorting itself proceeded from the top down, by rank.
“Is there a field commander among the wounded?”
Dr. Myeong, living down to every expectation.
There were more casualties than I had thought. It was not an open space, so I could not count them exactly, but there were easily more than ten. There had not been this many people inside the subway station. A fair number must have been up on the surface when the air raid caught them. In any case, rank did not matter now. The field commander was probably—
“The field commander is perfectly fine. Where are you looking? Look at me.”
The work foreman.
Not only the Waste Disposal Squad, but the armed sentries who had been standing watch—not one of them raised a word against him. So they were all already under his command. He had not merely been the foreman of the crew cutting the passage. At this level, even Dr. Myeong ought to concede, more or less. Here, at least, the foreman stood as the state's proxy—
“And your proof that you are the commander?”
I had thought that far, and she cleared my expectations by a wide margin. I had underestimated her.
“Here.”
The foreman flashed an identification card so that only she could see it, then put it away. A rank you could grasp even at a glance, then. Dr. Myeong's face said she was satisfied.
“Then let us move. Triage starts with the nearest wounded. The only standard is the severity of the injury. Very romantically, you might say.”
She ran to the casualty nearest at hand without another word. Everyone cocked their heads at the sudden change, but if I knew Dr. Myeong, that was exactly right. The necklace dragged me after her, and I followed at once.
That dodged the clash for now.
A Waste Disposal Squad made of humanitarianism down to every last cell. A Dr. Myeong whose flexibility had run away from home and died. Like a zombie's skull with a gun muzzle pressed to it. It was going to blow. No question.
“No hope here.”
Red meant top-priority treatment. Beneath it, several colors marked the ranks of priority. But the first color Dr. Myeong chose was black. Treatment abandoned.
She was about to mark the chart and leave it with the casualty when the humanitarianism in the two men who had been staunching his bleeding, trying somehow to keep him alive, twitched.
“The fuck is this now?”
“Look closer! You barely glanced and—!”
The wounded man himself said nothing. More precisely, he was groaning something, but none of it could be made out.
“I looked exactly.”
She snapped it and at once asked the foreman for medicine.
“Morphine?”
“Don't have it.”
“Midazolam?”
“We don't have any of it, so you can stop asking.”
All of them drugs that helped a person die without pain. At the word that there was none, Dr. Myeong moved on without a backward glance.
“We were idiots to trust that bitch.”
“We're really doing it like this? You're just going to let that thing call herself a doctor?”
The men left behind started pulling out the supplies each of them had brought. All of it meant for nothing but saving people.
“Doctor bastards who've never helped a soul their whole lives!”
“Give up, my ass. It's not her family, that's what this is.”
The foreman glanced at them and let it pass. Was that humanitarianism again, or conviction?
Triage was triage, and not one member of the Waste Disposal Squad stood idle. They were busy staunching blood, smearing on medicine, wrapping bandages, buying the wounded even a little more time. Left like this, the supplies would keep burning away.
And then—
“No hope.”
Black again.
“She's doing this to fuck with us, isn't she?”
“What did I tell you? Handing it to that bitch was bullshit.”
“Tell her to get lost! We're better off handling it ourselves. Every second counts, and this is a waste of time!”
The foreman did not budge. Neither did Dr. Myeong.
And this time—
“Save... me...”
The wounded man spoke.
Dr. Myeong rose as if she had not heard a thing. A hand caught her wrist.
“Huh?”
This was about where the neighborhood punching bag ought to step aside and let a real player in. Otherwise that zombie skull really was going to burst.
“Come here a second.”
Even if I had wanted to go alone, the necklace meant she had to come with me.
“Wh— where?”
“It'll only take a moment.”
I had business with the foreman.
“The job you gave the doctor. I was thinking I'd take it.”
“...What are you talking about?”
“The triage. I'll do it.”
No sound came out, but I saw the shape of his mouth. What the hell is this guy.
I needed covering fire from Dr. Myeong.
“I actually know a fair bit of medicine, you know.”
“Uh... what?”
I glared at her a few times.
“Ah, right... wasn't that a secret? Is it all right to just say it out loud?”
Dr. Myeong, starting to act on cue. Good thing she had at least that much talent. I pushed my lips out—talk it up a little more—and she caught that, too.
“He looks like a Postman, but he's actually incredible. He harassed doctors so much— no, he read a lot of books? Something like that.”
“I taught Dr. Myeong, too.”
“...?”
“Isn't that right.”
Her eyes seemed to catch fire for a moment.
“Right. I learned from him. Ha ha.”
Then they went cold.
“What are the two of you even saying?”
The problem was the foreman. I hoped he would catch on fast.
“I'll handle the triage. It's my specialty. I've rolled through plenty of field hospitals. Dr. Myeong's only ever been at headquarters, so this atmosphere will be new to her. This is probably her first time sorting casualties, too. So let's leave her to focus on treatment.”
As I said it, I lifted my clothes just enough for the foreman to see.
“Hm...”
Backscratcher poked its head out and said hello. I could hear the foreman's thoughts tangling from where I stood. He had seemed fairly quick on the uptake.
Anyway, where did you hear about the Subway Platform?
Is there a law that says a Postman isn't allowed to know?
You're really just a Postman?
That ought to be enough for him to understand, roughly. That I was certainly no ordinary Postman.
“All right.”
He answered, and threw another bit of ventriloquism. He seemed to be mouthing something about still owing me for the key. Not the work of a man who had only tried it once or twice.
“From now on the Postman handles triage. The doctor does nothing but treat.”
“Sir!?”
“What are you saying?”
“What the—”
The foreman stamped twice, and every mouth shut. The cloud of dust was a bonus.
“This is an emergency. If you want to argue, save it for after we get back. Postman. Begin.”
“Gladly.”
“But if you botch it, you'd better be ready.”
“Anytime.”
I snatched the triage chart off Dr. Myeong and went straight for the wounded.
“Hey, what are you doing!”
She was whispering close, but the mouthwash smell was gone now.
“What do you mean, what. I said I'm doing the triage.”
“You were a complete con man out there. How many times are you going to run a con on this one job?”
This was nothing.
“Call it flexible.”
“Conning again!”
When I examined the wounded, the murmuring started around us, as expected. Still, I would be better at it than Dr. Myeong.
“You're leaving it to a Postman?”
“Is this right?”
“He must have a reason, or he wouldn't have handed it over.”
“Is this the gas? Are we all losing our minds?”
“Has everyone actually gone crazy? After the quack doctor, a Postman?”
Sensible reactions. But the foreman was not the only one whose opinion of me ran a little different. Every worker had watched me pull that key.
“That guy doesn't seem like just a Postman.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Huh? Then what is he?”
“Earlier, he...”
While the rumor made its rounds, I sorted the first patient.
“Yellow. Second priority.”
The moment I moved on, Dr. Myeong stuck to me like an assistant.
“What, you actually know how to look at a patient?”
“Would I have said I'd do it if I couldn't?”
“How, exactly?”
“By harassing doctors and reading a lot of books.”
Of course I was seeing it with the ability. I could see the odds that treatment would save them. It had been the same with Gyeongsu. An ability that could only show the odds, and could never actually fix a person, so it hardly meant anything...
No. Is it different now?
Spend six Cores, and I could overturn it. Did that mean I could save even a casualty whose chance of coming back was next to nothing? Even if it worked, the problem would still be there. My ability did not show the result with a magical pop. It dragged the outcome through an entirely ordinary process. Even when I fought blindfolded, I still had to fight. I could see every route of the opponent's attack, and that was why I won, but in the end I did fight. When I sent the plane up, overturning the odds did not make it leap into the air on its own. That sort of thing could not happen. I had to call down lightning and let the aftermath start the engines.
If I could save a patient with a high chance of dying...
Would that mean I could perform the surgery myself? The supplies would have to be spent, no question. No one could say what problems might arise along the way. All it would do was keep the patient alive. And if the illness was the kind that ate away at a life over years? The result might be a change in how that person lived. A long influence. Not only the disease healed, but the person changed.
I ought to test it when I get the chance.
I had no Cores now anyway. For the moment, I would only think about it.
“Green. Third priority.”
While I went on sorting, Dr. Myeong treated the patients already classified, never straying farther from my side than she had to. She was so busy she never noticed the dagger I had given her, hidden at her waist, had worked its way out. I thought of tugging her clothes over it, then decided it was fine if people saw, and left it.
In the meantime the rumor completed a full circuit. I could not catch every mutter, but whenever that many people gathered, a few loud voices were always in the mix.
“You ricocheted a shot and popped the key out?”
“Did you breathe too much gas?”
“I'm telling you, it's true! You saw it too. Say something.”
“He breathed the gas too.”
“So he's not an ordinary Postman?”
“And if he isn't, what are you going to do about it?”
“He put him in charge of sorting patients. Isn't it obvious?”
“God, I could scream...”
Over on Dr. Myeong's side, it was a festival of screaming.
“Aaaagh!”
“Fuck... are you sure you're doing this right?”
“If you don't trust me, you do it.”
“Tss.”
“Th-there, aagh...!”
“It isn't my fault there's no anesthetic. Almost done.”
Driving through living flesh dozens of times with nothing to dull it was a catastrophe, but even so, this much was luck. They were getting surgery from Dr. Myeong. Of the doctors I knew, her hands were the fastest and the surest. Softness and caution, she was a little short on. A lot short.
“Black.”
My first ruling of untreatable.
“Hmph. Do as you like.”
“Cut the bullshit and get lost. A Postman bastard, my ass.”
“Look at that one. Not even an answer.”
“Foreman! Is this really right?”
“Shit, we can do it ourselves! Saving them comes first.”
Sure enough, the Waste Disposal Squad ignored me and set about treating on their own. Nothing remained of the casualty below the middle of either thigh. Both legs. Even so, they poured hemostatic and bandages into him without stinting. They could not fail to know how meaningless that was on a wound like this. In the end, whether he could be saved had nothing to do with it. What mattered was whether you made the effort to save him. Was this how their humanitarianism came into flower?
“You can... stop...”
At last the wounded man opened his mouth. The treatment went on for a while after that, but in the end they, too, reluctantly took their hands away. By then the hemostatic was already scattered everywhere.
“Black.”
With that, the last of the wounded was sorted. Dr. Myeong was still lost in treatment. The foreman, who had been watching the whole thing turn, finally reacted.
“Good work.”
“It was work, all right.”
“Definitely wasn't a botch.”
“You can tell, just by looking?”
“I can.”
“Then why didn't you do the sorting?”
“I can't read a patient. Whether a man's sincere or not, that I can see at a glance.”
For a second I wondered if he had some ability to judge truth from lies. That was reading too much into it. He pointed at his own eyes with index and middle finger and grinned, and I understood he was simply showing off.
“Hmph. So we can take it that the Postman's as spineless as the number of blacks he marked?”
The abuse came flying in from somewhere like throwing knives. Dodging it was no trouble at all. The insults kept coming.
“You ought to do your best. There's plenty of medicine here, isn't there? Would you have done the same if it was your life?”
“Anyone who can't put himself in another person's place, you can just call a psychopath.”
“Sy... what's that?”
“Bastard, in English.”
No impact, as expected. Knowing it, the man in question came over again.
“You think we're pathetic, don't you.”
The one who had found Dr. Myeong first. The very one who, in her clinic, had never quite sunk to cursing her. Come to think of it, even now he was the only one without a complaint.
“What should I call you? The gentleman of the Waste Disposal Squad?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“You're quick.”
The Gentleman did not even know how to sneer.
“Helping one another. Saving a stranger if he is dying. They say that holding life that dear was only natural in the old era.”
“I don't care for sermons.”
“This is not a sermon. I mean to ask a question. In the end, does everyone not wish to restore the civilization of that time? I doubt there is a person alive who would say he does not.”
“Living as primitives isn't exactly pleasant.”
“So we do what we can. What we can do today, starting now. A matter of mindset.”
There was no point arguing with a man like this. He would only go on saying what he had come to say. I had heard that in the old era they called a fight that never ended a flame war. Push back here, and that was exactly what it would become.
Dr. Myeong, though, did not think as I did.
“This kind of triage existed in the old era, too. I learned it from old-era medical texts.”
The critical patients had all been seen to. With a little room to breathe, she joined the flame war at her usual speed and in her usual tone, never once stopping her hands.
“Do I sound as if I am speaking in ignorance of that? I know why such a classification exists. You may not remember, but even in that cramped little clinic of yours, I never cursed you.”
That much, at least, made him a gentleman.
“Oh? If you think I'm not guilty, then what's the problem?”
“I did not say you were not guilty. I said I understood.”
“What kind of word game is that?”
The corner of the Gentleman's mouth twitched, very slightly. The most sneer the man could show.
“Using resources efficiently to save people? In the end, it is sacrificing the weak so that someone else may live. Much the same filth as that Hyper-Democracy they say exists in some neighborhood over that way.”
“But in the end, the result—”
“Which is why I said I understood. But it is still a sin. Yes. We sin in order to survive. All of us.”
It had the ring of one of the Old Man's stories about spaceships. The Gentleman finally said what he had truly wanted to say to Dr. Myeong.
“So spare me the bullshit about how it cannot be helped. You are a sinner. What I want is for you to know that you yourself are a sinner. That is all. You have never once apologized. Not only to us. To everyone, I expect.”
Behind him, the Waste Disposal Squad started raising hell. The rest of them did not seem to think an apology would end it. Either way, this was a flame war. Dr. Myeong was not going to back down.
“I only did as I was taught.”
“If someone taught you to kill people, you would kill them.”
“It depends on who does the teaching, doesn't it? The state's teaching is a promise with everyone.”
“Are you boasting that you are a slave of the state?”
“You're a civil servant too.”
“I do not live doing only what I am told, the way you do.”
“Oh? That's what they call being bad at your job.”
“Is a doctor's job not to save people? When it comes to being bad at the job, you are a cut above.”
“I suppose so. I must have climbed to A-rank because I'm bad at the job.”
“You were driven out first and nearly died here because you are bad at the job.”
“I volunteered to come out this time...!”
Fortunately, the foreman also recognized a flame war when he saw one. He stepped straight in between them.
“You've eaten well enough. Don't burn your strength on nothing.”
He said exactly what I had wanted to say.
“And what do you think, Foreman?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think as the doctor does? It appears that you do.”
“Hm.”
“Put it in a single phrase, if you would. What kind of man are you?”
Was this about to become a flame war, too? How would the foreman answer? He seemed good with his hands. I was looking forward to it.
“Postman. Over there. Why don't you answer in my place?”
Excuse me.
“Why me?”
“The Subway Platform.”
“Huh?”
“The Subway Platform.”
“So if I answer?”
“Yes. The Subway Platform.”
Good with his hands, all right.
“I asked the foreman, not the Postman.”
“The Postman's thoughts are my thoughts.”
“...Pardon?”
“Just trust me and listen.”
That bastard was running a con of his own. Fine. I'd do it.
“Well. You people have humanitarianism in every last cell...”
“What is he saying?”
“Anyway, that's it. People like people. In a word, humanitarianism.”
“The summary is rough, but it is not wrong. People liking people. Not a bad way to put it.”
He seemed to like it. The same sort of man as the Old Man.
“And Dr. Myeong's side does as it was taught.”
“What I learned is the most universal rule there is.”
“Right. If I had to put you in one word, it'd be rules.”
“Would you call it a rule everyone acknowledges?”
“Sure. We'll say that.”
“What's with that reaction?”
For as long as I had been alive, the world had always been the same. As many laws as there were settlements. And as many justices as there were people. What did that mean? That it was various, and that it was complicated.
“Me, in a single word? You can't explain it that way. I'm complicated. Sometimes I change. Sometimes what I think and what I do aren't the same. So I can't easily line up on one side of a thing like this. It isn't evasion. I won't do what I can't take responsibility for. That's—”
I did not know what the foreman would make of it.
“what it means to be an ordinary person.”
I had always thought of myself that way.