A Reason to Survive
"What's this?"
A train out of the old world. Of all the places to meet one.
I'd heard a whole string of cars had been coupled together, but only a single one sat in front of us now. Had the rest been sheared away?
"Aw, hell... Boot rag, what are we supposed to do now?"
"Hm?"
"We busted our asses killing that thing, and the cores are all buried."
The ceiling had come down on the precious loot, and the train had settled on top of it.
"Take it easy, man."
"What the hell does this bastard keep saying?"
Clock-out Man took a sniff.
"We dodged the worst of it. No need to shift this whole hunk of metal. Clear the debris on this side and we ought to be able to pull the cores out."
A tracker at the top of his game. No question.
"Hey. Beanpole."
"Huh?"
"Not bad. Heard you were a freelancer. You running mercenary work? Which outfit you with?"
"Don't have one. I like it better alone."
"I'll pay you well. Any interest in working together?"
A recruitment pitch out of nowhere. So that was why he had so many of his own people inside the Human Meat Factory.
"Bro, what do we do?"
"What's there to do? Turn him down."
"It's a no, guy."
"The hell? A freelancer living on a Postman's orders?"
"If that eats at you, you should've been born handsome too."
"...?"
The train was an antique, through and through. The squad leader had said the cars were past any hope of use, and a train that couldn't run was meaningless. Still, stepping inside for a look might be interesting.
"What are you spacing out for? Hurry up and help dig the cores out. I want out of this gloomy hole. And the cores get split three ways. Exactly."
"Hey, three equal cuts? It should be graded by contribution."
"Yeah? If you're set on cutting me a bigger share, I won't object."
"Huh? What did you even do?"
The squad leader and Dr. Myung showed themselves then. After a racket like that, they could hardly have stayed away. The squad leader sagged with relief that the monster was finished, while Dr. Myung kept pressing at her head, her face twisted.
"Ugh. My head hurts."
"It's over now, so keep resting."
"Well... nobody hurt?"
"I'm fine—"
The General and Clock-out Man threw their hands up at once, grinning wide to signal they were all right. Dr. Myung didn't take her eyes off either of them.
"You don't look fine."
Not dying, maybe. But there were injuries all over them, plain enough to see.
"I'm fine. This much is just another day."
"Figure in the cores we're walking away with, and this was cheap business."
They weren't forcing a brave face. Injuries like these really were routine for the two of them, and it was also true they'd come into a pile of cores. Out on the surface you took the wounds and still watched the money walk off, more often than not. If the compensation actually came through, that was plenty to be happy about. That wide grin was the proof.
"Routine, hm..."
I'd told Dr. Myung plenty of stories about the world above. Hearing them and seeing them were different things.
"What, is it strange?"
"Hm... a little? Seems like they'd need a lot of doctors."
Clock-out Man, looking at her, remembered something he'd forgotten.
"Miss. You a doctor?"
"And?"
"On my way to find Bro, I saw two people hurt real bad."
Two people, hurt bad.
"The blood smell was so thick I went to check, in case Bro was there. He wasn't, so I turned around."
"You saw them underground."
"Yeah. Over that way."
The Gentleman and the sentry, most likely.
"Looked rough. Not sure they're even still alive."
"...Woo Jungkook. Should we go look?"
Dr. Myung, who had done nothing but sit through the headache, pushed herself up with an effort. She only said they should go look. She was already going.
"If it's bothering you."
"Going alone is a bit..."
Well, the antique train wasn't about to run off.
"Then the rest of you keep digging up the cores. I'll go with Dr. Myung and come back."
"Okay."
With Clock-out Man and the squad leader there, the General probably wouldn't scarf the lot and bolt. The train could wait until we got back. Just a little longer.
"What? Hey, we're short on hands—where the hell are you going? Hey!"
Jungkook left without a backward glance.
"Hey! That bastard only hears what he wants to hear, doesn't he? Hey!"
"Man, let him go. The injured must be people he knows."
"Hmph. He didn't explain a damn thing."
"If Bro heads off without saying much, that's what it means. Don't get suspicious."
"...What the hell are you, anyway? The Postman's boot rag?"
"His close little brother."
"Hmph."
After that the General spent a long while hauling stone, sunk in serious thought. Only around the time the first core finally showed itself did he finish thinking.
"Hey."
"What."
"Not scouting any more big brothers?"
"Excuse me?"
The ones Clock-out Man had meant were the Gentleman and the sentry. The sentry was already a corpse. The Gentleman forced his eyes open and confirmed that we had come. His mouth twitched, but no sound came out. Impossible to tell whether there were words he lacked the strength to shape, or whether it was only a muscle spasm.
I checked the odds of saving him. Even with aggressive treatment, they came in just shy of fifty percent, teetering.
What would Dr. Myung's judgment be?
"How is it."
"Fifty-fifty."
A tentacle had caught the Gentleman and smashed his thigh. The flesh was torn open far enough to show bone. The bleeding must have gone on for quite a while.
"And that fifty-fifty is if I'd seen him in my operating room. Here, there's no chance. We don't have the resources. Not short on them. None at all."
She stopped the bleeding anyway.
"...Ah..."
The Gentleman wrung out a single sound. Not words, only noise, but several meanings were packed inside it. I'm alive. I see you. I haven't given up yet.
"Stay still."
That one sentence was the whole of what Dr. Myung could do for him. What I could do was even less. Truth was, I was more used to a situation like this than she was. A person dying in front of you, and nothing you can do about it. All that's left is to stay beside them until the breath stops.
"Hmm..."
Judging there was nothing more to be done, Dr. Myung finally looked around.
"What's wrong?"
"It's nothing."
Nothing. Sure it was.
The Gentleman and the sentry weren't simply lying there. Hemostatic agents, bandages, a scatter of odds and ends from a medical kit lay strewn around them, and from the way they'd been tossed aside, every bit of it had been used on the Gentleman. Even though the sentry, at a glance, had been in worse shape.
"He didn't take the supplies and use them himself, did he."
The Gentleman's mouth twitched as if in answer, but nothing came out.
"Didn't seem like the type."
"I don't think so either."
The dying sentry must have handed over every last supply of his own will, pouring the resources onto the Gentleman, the one with even a sliver of a chance. Had he kept fighting right up to the moment his consciousness broke? Unlike the Gentleman, laid out in a comfortable posture, the sentry's corpse held a shape that looked unnatural. And the Gentleman's hand, still with breath in the body it belonged to, was closed tight around the dead sentry's hand.
"...The headache's still there."
"It's a concussion."
"But it doesn't hurt like before. Doesn't feel like it's getting better, either."
"There's a light over there?"
"Someone's there!"
Voices. A group was coming this way, and I didn't need to look to know what they were.
"Found her! Myung Hwa-young's here!"
"Ha! Knew they'd be here."
The Waste Disposal Squad. Back from moving the patients, then. Enough time had passed for that. They'd come all this way looking for us.
"What the hell is that... That gear. Isn't that the sentry?"
"Shit. Look who's next to him."
"These bastards...!"
"Wait, wait! Only the sentry's dead. That one still looks alive, doesn't he?"
"Myung Hwa-young, again!"
Dr. Myung shot to her feet and charged them. And she'd said she couldn't run.
"Wh-what!"
"You want to go?"
"Been waiting for this, you son of a—huh?"
What she snatched was a bag slung on one of them.
A medical-supply mark?
She came hurrying back, opened the bag at once, and pulled out the surgical gloves inside. What the bag held was fairly serious medical gear.
"So you didn't only stop at the Human Meat Factory? Where did all this come from?"
"The Human Meat Factory gave it to us. Said it was stuff you sent, and handed it out. There was so much they said they had extra."
I'd contacted Boss and asked him to send medical supplies and a doctor to the Human Meat Factory. A little would have been enough. Boss had overdone it.
"Oh, and... they said to keep it in mind."
"Keep what in mind?"
He plainly hated having to say it. Even so, he seemed to decide it had to be said, and he passed the words on while avoiding my eyes.
"That they're taking the patients as a favor to the Postman. And not to get on your nerves. I mean, that's what they said over there. Not what we think, so don't get the wrong idea."
Sounded like they'd met Tata. That bastard, running his mouth when nobody had asked him to.
Once Dr. Myung started preparing for surgery, the noisy lot went quiet. She was the one who broke the silence.
"Any of you ever been inside an operating room? Not as a patient. As staff."
The Waste Disposal Squad only stared at one another, blank.
"Woo Jungkook. Help me."
In the end, the only hands she could trust were mine. Which meant there was no answer.
"Hold tight. Don't let go."
I moved my hands exactly as she told me.
"Bring that. No—the right. Farther right!"
Nothing hard about it. She only gave me the easy jobs.
"Good. Now this way... yes, here—"
But the probability kept falling. At first it sank slowly. Then, from one moment to the next, it began to plunge by the second. Not because Dr. Myung or I was doing anything wrong.
There's no hope.
He'd stop breathing soon.
"Dr. Myung."
"Don't make me talk."
"If you've got something to say, say it now. This is the last chance."
It wouldn't cost any resources.
"..."
She set the tools down at once. The whisper she put to the Gentleman's ear was so small that even I, right beside her, couldn't hear it.
Had he heard?
Somewhere in the gap, his breathing had already stopped.
Only the squad leader had come, which meant the cores still weren't finished.
"Tch. So it ended like this after all."
The first thing he saw, coming in, was Dr. Myung whispering something at the Gentleman's ear. He looked at the two corpses and shook his head. Then he launched into a speech for the Waste Disposal Squad.
"Doc here was a real help, you know, dealing with the boss that was in there. And, well... I got a little treatment, too."
A bandage was wrapped around his arm, no telling when. The wrapping was sloppy from the start. Not Dr. Myung's work.
"There are more patients farther in, and they're raising hell to get a doctor here fast. That's why I came. Doc ran off insisting she had to see these two critical cases first. Tch. Couldn't save them in the end. Doc."
"...What."
"Come on. Let's go see the other patients."
He was doing his best, in his own way. I ought to back him up.
"Squad Leader, how can you leave out the part that actually matters?"
"Huh?"
"You know. What we agreed. From now on, if anyone from the Waste Disposal Squad shows up injured at headquarters, Dr. Myung will do everything she reasonably can for them."
"Ah... ah, that! Slipped my mind."
While he clapped with great enthusiasm, Dr. Myung shot a laser straight between my eyebrows.
"Everything she reasonably can. Not treating them no matter what, not breaking protocol on principle, nothing like that. But you promised Dr. Myung would handle it properly, didn't you?"
"Right, right. Doc was too embarrassed to say it herself, so I was supposed to tell them, and I forgot!"
The look of someone chewing shit wasn't only on Dr. Myung. The Waste Disposal Squad wore it too.
"What's the squad leader saying?"
"Is he taking Myung Hwa-young's side?"
"I don't get what the hell this even is."
"Right? Is this how it's supposed to go?"
But before they could press the point, I got her out of there.
"Then, Dr. Myung, let's hurry and treat the patients who are left."
"Huh? Ah. Uh-huh."
"R-right! There are patients who need Doc. Waste Disposal Squad, you all wait here and think it over a bit...! Hey, you lot, come with us!"
"I get that you're looking out for me, but not everything at headquarters is up to my discretion, you know? Why would you go and say something like that..."
I'd expected her to tear into me. It came out weaker than I thought. The headache, maybe.
"From what I saw earlier, you were treating him with everything you had."
"That was just... because I had something to say. Better if he heard it with a clear head, so I tried to get him clear-headed. Didn't really work."
"You still got the words to him."
"I'm not sure he actually heard them."
If that was all it took at headquarters, too, fine. It isn't that easy.
I had no intention of telling Dr. Myung to bend her principles. I wasn't planning to defend them, either. The choice was hers. I just needed her. She was useful, in more ways than one. For someone as ordinary as me, that alone was reason enough for her to survive.
"Anyway, you went and said something weird... Going back to headquarters is going to be exhausting. For all I know they'll all come straight to me."
"I saw you burning through supplies earlier. You could do the same at headquarters."
"Those were the supplies you brought in, weren't they? That's why I used them freely."
She might want to wet her lips before a line like that.
"I don't know. Did I remember wrong? As I recall, you snatched the bag before anyone even mentioned where the supplies came from."
"That..."
The squad leader, walking ahead, glanced back at Dr. Myung and let out a snort, then caught the laser and his neck snapped forward again.
"It was obvious at a glance they were supplies that showed up thanks to you. You get a feeling. A feeling."
"Ah. Sure."
"My instincts are good."
"Ah. I didn't know."
"Of course you wouldn't. You don't have any."
"Right."
"Squad Leader, you don't have a cigarette? My mouth's so bored I could die..."
By the time we made it back to the tracks, the cores had all been dug out.
Clock-out Man and the General had gone inside the antique train...
No. Boarded it, was that the word?
They'd become passengers.