The Indelible Smell

"Bro. Good news."

"Hm?"

"I think the bastard's worn out. It's stopped. Not moving anymore."

Must have hit a dead end. The thing had been heading for the tracks, bolting in a blind panic, and now it was a rat in a jar.

"Good. One last check before we go in. Chief, you stay here with Dr. Myeong. I'll handle the lights."

Dr. Myeong still hadn't come back to himself. Drag him along and one unlucky turn could get him killed.

"Chief. The space over the tracks—is that open above the ceiling too?"

"That section got converted into a storeroom not long ago."

"A storeroom?"

"They piled up all the odds and ends from the old world that used to sit around the station. Antiques you can't use for anything anymore. Hauling every last piece outside was too much work, so they crammed the lot in there."

"Then breaking up through the ceiling won't be easy."

"That thing'll have a hard time punching through. They reinforced the floor thick, since they meant to use it for storage."

Welcome news, at least.

"Clock-out Man."

"Yes?"

"Fill every special-round slot with armor-piercing."

"And the standard slots?"

"Hm? You modded those to take them too?"

"Did it the second I got the gun. Not being a civil servant has its perks, right? Nobody inspects your gear."

"Empty them. Armor-piercing first. What about the emergency slots?"

"Two. Serial."

"Both high-explosive."

"Roger! I've got exactly two left, actually."

Speaking of which.

"When's clock-out?"

"Ah, this is a job Yeo-jin handed me, so it's fine. The overtime pay is fat."

"You? The guy who wouldn't work a minute past his shift even for more money?"

"A freelancer isn't a salaryman. And clients you can actually trust, like Yeo-jin—those are rare."

So he'd learned how to compromise. I'd always figured Clock-out Man was guaranteed to die young. At this rate he might even live to be old.

"But you know, right? Even counting all the overtime, I don't work past eighty-four hours."

"How much have you got left?"

"About three hours?"

"Who lives that hard?"

"Huh?"

Three hours was plenty anyway.

"General."

"If you're about to start giving me orders too, get lost."

"All you have to do is hold that thing."

"Hold it?"

"Literally."

"Hmm. I do carry a lasso, but..."

"Then I'll take it we're all ready to—"

"Hey! Explain it so a person can understand!"

"Weren't you the one who said to get lost if I was giving orders?"

"Hmm. Fair point. So I don't have to hold it?"

"Do as you like. If you're ready, we move."

Back to the Subway tracks. To think this place would become a battlefield.

Kyek...

As expected, the thing was waiting at the dead end. Born underground, and it would die underground. It wouldn't be lonely. I'd bury it right beside Elder Heo.

"First we take off every tentacle. Any smoke grenades left?"

"Okay!"

"Think you can fight inside the smoke?"

"Don't you remember? I've gotten pretty good."

He meant the last time, when he'd come on Mother's commission to break my leg.

"I'm telling you, it's all thanks to this."

Clock-out Man stroked his nose. So that was it. He'd honed the ability to smell. If he could read an opponent's movement by scent, the smoke wouldn't hinder him at all.

"A blade?"

"Something like this?"

He drew a dagger. Far too short.

"General. Lend him one too."

"Hmph."

The General tossed over a sword of decent length.

"You gave me something that was basically trash?"

"That was the only piece of trash I had."

Tsk.

"Clock-out Man goes in with me. General, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠if it tries to run, you cut off the retreat."

"Don't give orders. You're a Postman."

He said it, and still raised a shield in one hand.

"Until every tentacle is cut, absolutely no guns. It'll go berserk again."

"Okay. We starting?"

Clock-out Man read my look at once.

Fwoomp. The smoke grenade flew and burst without a moment's delay.

Kwek!?

"In!"

"Roger!"

Lucky for us, the thing wasn't skilled at fighting. Cutting the tentacles wasn't much harder than last time, and with Clock-out Man along it was over fast.

"It's running! General!"

"Stop ordering me through every little step!"

Thud! The monster burst out of the smoke and ran straight into the General, flailing what tentacles it had left for all it was worth. Nearly all of them were already severed.

Kweeeek!

"Press it!"

"Roger!"

They might not have been on active duty anymore, but all three of them had once been specialists at hunting monsters. Under that pincer, a baby monster's tentacles didn't last a second.

"Yeah!"

The real problem started now.

"General! Stop it from moving!"

"Stop it?"

"Lock its movement down. However you have to!"

"Fuck—what do you even want me to do? Then with the lasso—"

"You love that lasso so much, go grab it yourself!"

"Damn bastard, running his mouth about work that isn't his!"

Even so, the General hauled on a pair of combat gauntlets and charged in, clamping down on the thing with both hands.

Kiik? Kiiiik?

"Ghk... what the hell am I even doing..."

Tentacles or no tentacles, it could still thrash, and a body that solid wasn't easy to pin.

"Stay still, you bald bastard!"

In every hunter mission I'd ever seen, nobody had failed because they couldn't cut the tentacles. Send a Trash-Tier hunter team and they could still manage that much. Every failed mission came down to the torso. Fail to destroy it in time and the tentacles regenerated completely, and then it was an endless war of attrition.

"Man, we starting?"

"You remember which spot on the torso is which number?"

"Of course!"

"Start."

"Hey! I'm supposed to just keep holding this?"

A monster stripped of every last tentacle showed something you never saw in the ordinary course of things. Like now.

Glug. Clock-out Man poured lighter fluid over its torso.

Trigger.

Kuuk. Kuek... Specks appeared across the metal body.

No turning back now.

From here, simply smashing it wouldn't solve anything. This was a special state: strike anywhere but the exact point and the blow only sped the regeneration.

"You're seriously going for the textbook clear? You said there was no document!"

"Hold it tight! Tight enough that Clock-out Man can read it for certain."

In this state the tentacle monster's regeneration strengthened, but a weakness appeared along with it. Glowing braille surfaced on the torso in a fixed sequence, and if you read it in the proper order by position, it became a four-digit number.

"One, four, one, five—confirmed!"

1415. An easy start.

"Nine."

"Nine, roger!"

Tang! The armor-piercing round Clock-out Man fired punched into the spot on the torso that corresponded to nine, and that point blew apart completely.

Boom!

Weak point. Direct hit.

Kkeuk! Keuk!

Do it this way and a handful of strikes could shatter the torso outright, and delay the tentacle regeneration at the same time.

"Are you insane?! You're just going to shoot like that? You tell me to hold the target, and then—miss by a hair and you hit me!"

"So hold it properly. If it shakes, how are we supposed to hit it?"

The General catching a round was less of a problem than a shot in the wrong place. Strike anywhere but the correct point and the whole force of the impact went straight into feeding the thing's regeneration. A method that allowed no mistakes.

"Next!"

"Four, eight, one, one—confirmed!"

4811. And after that...

"One."

"One, roger!"

Tang! Boom!

Kkuweek...!

"Hey! It's thrashing—hold it steady!"

"You crazy bastards!"

"Next!"

"Two, three, four, six—confirmed!"

2346... Next was zero.

"Zero."

"Guy! Turn it a little to the side! You're covering the zero!"

"Oh, will you cut the fucking shit!"

"Zero, roger!"

Tang! Boom!

"That crazy doormat... How many digits of pi did you memorize?"

"To the thousandth place past the decimal."

"You maniac!"

I was doing it right, and he was still losing his mind.

"Memorizing all of that already makes you a lunatic, but even if you did, five hundred places would've been enough—what kind of insane stunt is this! Did you have nothing better to do?"

That was what I'd had to do. Back in the cabin, anyway. It was one of the countless hunter tactics the Old Man had drilled into us. I'd wondered what memorizing it was even for. Turned out there had been a use for every bit of it.

Why a monster's weak point had to be pi, of all things—what that was even supposed to mean—I still couldn't say. In truth, as the General said, you only needed through the five-hundredth digit. That was as far as the Old Man had demanded, too.

I'd forced myself to twice what he asked and never heard a word of praise. Even so, everything I had been trained in had soaked clean through into my body, and it had become a smell that could not be erased, endlessly breathing out of me. Without fail, the moment it was needed.

"Next!"

"Six, six, zero, six—confirmed!"

"Three."

"Three, roger!"

Even at Headquarters, machines with functions like calculate or search were precious, and they almost never lent them out. What they handed you instead was a document with pi written on it. Finding one four-digit number in that sea of digits was no small job, so an intelligence analyst usually came along on the mission. Those types had Core abilities specialized for finding numbers. Or, well, you could just memorize the whole thing and train yourself to call it back up.

"Next!"

Kkuek... kuk... The monster was already in tatters. Rainbow light poured out of it. This was probably the last.

"Nine, one, seven, one—confirmed!"

"Five."

"Five—hey, guy! Lay that one down!"

"What?"

"Lay it down! I have to hit the crown of its head!"

"Ugh... go down!"

He wrestled with it for all he was worth. Useless.

"This bastard's too heavy! Can't you just try to hit it from there? Its crown is round!"

"From the side? No! It's hard enough to hit when it's holding still, and it won't stop thrashing!"

Absolutely not. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Hit the wrong spot and everything we'd broken so far would be wasted. It might be better if the General stepped in himself. The hammer slung across his back had been nagging at me the whole time.

"Handle it with the hammer!"

"A second ago you told me to hold it!"

"I'm coming! I'll hold it, so pick up the hammer!"

"Bare-handed? That's insane. I'll take the gauntlets off and—"

"Don't start showing a kindness you never had. Just grab the hammer!"

And then—

Kweeeek!Cores, blazing with a light fierce enough to sting the eyes.

"Ack!"

The General's eyelids failed, by a hair, to shield his eyes.

"Agh—I can't see!"

"Man! What are you doing!"

Clock-out Man closed in a moment too late.

Shwook!

"Huh? How?"

Whud! A single tentacle, regenerated in the blink of an eye, sent him flying.

I didn't see this coming.

A monster carrying multiple Cores, the kind that appeared at an extremely low ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠probability. I'd only ever heard of them. Never seen one, so I'd let it slip past me.

The light of the Cores strengthened it.

A body torn to shreds. Because of that, the light of the Cores it carried inside had leaked out, and that light had driven the regeneration. Was that it?

Kwaaak! Kuhyul!

"General!"

"Fuck, where is it!"

"Roll! To your right!"

Whoom! A tentacle swung with everything it had. If he hadn't rolled, the General's head would have come off.

"Clock-out Man!"

"I can... bear it..."

Kuweek...! The thing stood perfectly still, pouring all its strength into regenerating tentacles. We couldn't delay any longer. Was there a way to smash the crown of its head without striking it directly?

...There is.

They'd said the ceiling was solid. If something like that came down, it would hurt. Ideally the weak part would be directly over the thing's head right now.

The odds the ceiling comes down with two high-explosive rounds...

Every station I walked, I'd attuned myself to what was inside it. The walls, especially, I'd gone over completely. If the attunement I'd laid into those walls overflowed with room to spare, it would reach the ceiling.

I can see it.

Good news, up to there. Then the bad news followed.

The ceiling over where that thing is standing is never coming down.

We had to move it.

"Damn it... Doormat, you got a way or not?"

"Bro...?"

I looked around. There was exactly one spot, and the problem was that it lay a good way behind where I stood. I'd have to drag the thing all the way there.

"Clock-out Man! Toss me your pistol!"

"I got it!"

He threw it at once, without even asking why.

Keuhwehhwe... Once a few of the core tentacles finished regenerating, it would start repairing the torso. No time to spare.

"Bro! Where are you going!"

"You crazy Postman bastard—don't tell me you're running!"

Here.

The spot where two high-explosive rounds had the best chance of bringing the ceiling down. Luring it was simple.

Chk. The Backscratcher, loaded full of standard rounds. And the lesson had stuck.

Bang! Ting!

Krrk?

Hit it with a standard round, and?

Kweek!

It charged.

Now, with Clock-out Man's Backscratcher—one high-explosive into the ceiling.

Fwoomp!

Two.

Fwoomp!

Come down.

Kweek! Kwek!

"..."

A great crack opened. The ceiling didn't fall.

Then—

"Doormat! I'm saving your life this once!"

Kuek! The charging monster stopped dead. The lasso the General had thrown caught its torso dead-on. Its legs were bound.

"I don't know how long I can hold! Do something!"

"Bro! Keep shooting!"

I'd been about to anyway.

Chk. Chk. I'd always wanted to try this at least once. A Backscratcher in each hand.

"Come down!"

Bang-bang! Ba-ba-bang! Bang! Two Backscratchers spitting fire. Not rounds suited to breaking a structure, but there's no beating sheer volume. There had better not be. It had to be that way.

"Ugh... I can't hold any longer! Finish it! At this rate I'm going to lose it...!"

The ceiling, webbed with cracks, showed no intention of falling.

"Bro! I'm here!"

"Weren't you on your way out?"

"What does that matter! Pull!"

"Pull!"

While the two of them hauled on the lasso together—

Tik. The hollow click of a trigger. Clock-out Man's Backscratcher was empty. I still had a few rounds on my side, but—

Bang! Bang-bang!

"I think I'm losing it—!"

"Man, this is really the limit! This bastard's strength...!"

If the ammunition ran out like this, there was no answer.

...Do I have to use a Core?

I could overturn a probability. I could spend one more Ability Core. But I had no feel for which probability to overturn, or how. And was this truly a crisis desperate enough to justify another Ability Core?

It's a gray area.

Think. A way.

"Man, let's just give up! Run!"

"I'm really going to lose it! If you don't want to die, get clear, Doormat!"

The ammo would be gone any second. What if it still hadn't fallen by then?

When every round is gone...

I remembered.

The ammunition ran out.

Tik.

If the target was still in front of you, you threw it. The emptied magazine. Or—

Fwip!

The gun itself, whole.

Tok.

Hit.

Thoom...

Everything I had been trained in had soaked clean through into my body.

Kwek?

And it kept breathing out of me as a smell that would not be erased.

Thoom! The ceiling poured down in a rush. One great chunk of stone stamped the crown of the thing's head, and in that instant every thread of light reaching out from inside its body went dark.

The collapse didn't end there. A wide stretch began to fall in a chain, and then something enormous dropped in front of my eyes and delivered the coup de grâce to a monster that was already dead.

Kwaaaang!

"Man, you okay!?"

They'd said the level above the tracks held a storeroom for relics of the old world. Only after the dust settled could I make out the enormous thing that had crushed the monster flat. Across its face, the lettering read:

It was a train.