Nothing Changes
Time to get moving. I needed to be back before the day was out.
"Woo Jungkook, did your wish come true?"
"No."
It wasn't a train that actually ran. Looking around inside had been a worthwhile experience, but what I wanted was to ride one and break through underground tunnels spread out like outer space. And this tin can was such an ancient antique that the interior wasn't even intact, so I could hardly claim I'd seen the place properly.
"Bro, wasn't getting to Geofront your wish?"
"That's a different kind of goal."
"Huh?"
"You don't have to run while staring at only one thing."
"If you're going to do it anyway, focusing on one raises the odds you'll actually get it, doesn't it?"
"Some people manage both."
"Wow……."
Myung Hwa-young was the first off the train. Clock-out Man followed without a moment's hesitation. I was last, and I couldn't manage the same ease. What was it about this tin can. Clock-out Man, at any rate, never noticed me hesitating to step down. Myung Hwa-young glanced back, met my eyes, and turned her head away again without any particular reaction.
"Get a good look?"
The Chief had been waiting outside the whole time. He must have known all along that one of the relics kept in the warehouse was a train. In any case, I had something to return to him.
"You should take this back."
"Oh?"
The three Cores he'd invested in me. I'd taken them so I could open a door with Probability Reversal, but killing the monster had never required the ability. We'd still achieved the intended goal of getting out in one piece, so keeping them as payment wouldn't have been unreasonable—but things hadn't gone quite the way we'd agreed. Then again, a man with a conscience wasn't about to take every last one of them back.
"Well, I'll be. Wasn't expecting that. Pretty righteous of you, huh? I'll gratefully take them back."
Hm. That's not how this goes.
"Still, taking all of them doesn't sit right. I'll just take one back. Think of the other two as your fee. We would've had to invest that much in exterminating the monster anyway."
"The bounty for taking down a boss-class specimen is only two ordinary Cores?"
"Eh? You said you'd give them all back."
"Just asking. Wondered if bounties had dropped that far these days."
"Truth is, I'd like to give you all three, but fixing everything that got wrecked here is going to cost money on my end too."
That pitiful look was a dead ringer for Bae Guk-jang. Was the face a required skill for anyone climbing into a post with director in the title?
I handed one Core back. All three were yellow, and already appraised. They were marked as Purified Cores—cheap stock actually worth less than if they'd never been appraised at all. Even so, when it came time to activate an ability, every Core was equal.
About time I granted one wish for the man who'd gone on ahead.
"Bro? You going into hibernation?"
"Not me. The finger."
I dug a little beside the tracks, into the cool place Elder Heo had wanted. Once the trains started running, no human hand would ever reach it. I buried the finger. As if a long life hadn't been enough, he'd gone and claimed a grave plot in outer space. Elder Heo was a successful man.
Myung Hwa-young had guessed what I was doing, and she watched from beside me the whole time I buried it. What was she thinking.
"Think Elder Heo would be satisfied with this much?"
"Probably? Hard to imagine a place that gets less light than this."
The finger was buried, but Elder Heo's legacy remained: a black Core of unknown origin. I'd think about that later. There was one last thing to do.
"Once we hit the surface, we're bound to run into the Waste Disposal Squad. Have you thought about it?"
"That proposal of yours? From now on, if someone on the Waste Disposal Squad gets hurt, Headquarters is supposed to look after them?"
"Yeah. Time to give an answer."
"You want me to go along with the proposal, don't you."
"I don't particularly care. I just added one more option. The choice is yours. I'm not the one doing the surgery, and it's your business anyway."
"Hm……."
We didn't need the Chief to guide us out. We'd wandered around in here long enough that everyone simply started walking toward the surface on their own. Come to think of it, there was something I'd been meaning to ask Clock-out Man.
"Why'd you come here?"
Finding me was nothing to him. Once he started taking regular commissions from Min Yeo-jin, he would have been loitering around this area all the time, and since the place sat near Headquarters, pinning down my location would have been easy. But why had he come looking?
"I told you not to track me."
I'd been clear about that part. Unless it was a special case, he was not to pull the arrogant stunt of tracking me.
"You're the one who said it, bro. Stay on top of the jobs Yeo-jin gives you. You've got to keep yourself in peak condition so I can call you whenever I need you."
A commission?
"Min Yeo-jin told you to find me?"
"Find you and pass on the air-raid warning……. What! That's already over and done with. Never mind. Anyway, me showing up helped, right? Say it helped. Otherwise I won't have anything to tell them when I get back."
Hunting a boss-class specimen. If someone asked whether it would have been absolutely impossible without Clock-out Man—well.
"I'd have taken the boss-class down without you."
"Huh? I figured we barely managed it because three ex-hunters happened to be together."
"Even with just the two of us, we would've found a way somehow."
"How? What method have you got?"
That was the sort of thing I would only have thought through once I was actually in it.
"Anyway, there is one."
Still, if it had been a commission, I ought to look after him.
"When you see Min Yeo-jin, tell it like I said you were a help."
"Okay! Long as I can collect the fee, I'm good."
Clean. I liked that.
When I happened to glance up, the ceiling was plainly scored with the traces of a monster coming and going. It had probably been born here, and died without ever leaving the place its whole life. Was that because it had never interacted with anyone? Compared with other boss-class specimens, the thing had been short on knowledge, even though its intelligence had looked more than sufficient.
So even a monster is shaped by the environment it grows up in.
A creature that had soaked up even trivial experience like a sponge. The thought even crossed my mind that you might be able to educate one. Well, to do that, I'd have to understand the thing first. Why did it feel like nonsense, and yet not look impossible?
With the surface right in front of us—
"……I've decided."
Myung Hwa-young gave her answer.
We came up onto the surface. My head felt clearer. I didn't think I could ride the subway all day.
The Waste Disposal Squad had made camp up top. The mood was a good deal calmer than yesterday, but their failure to pull together was exactly the same.
"Hmm. As the old saying goes, hate the sin, but not the per—"
"Spare me the nonsense. I'm going to keep hating her."
"We already finished talking. Why start up again now?"
"So what if I said I hate her? Who's complaining? Reaching an agreement is one thing. Hating her is allowed!"
Was discord their tradition?
"You'd better keep that promise, Myung Hwa-young."
"Don't even think about going back to Headquarters and wiping your mouth clean. If you do, we'll punish you with the feeling that we don't care if we die doing it."
"That's right. Just like the Postman did. I'll put my life on the line and hound you to the very end."
Myung Hwa-young gave a light nod. In any case, not only her arms and legs but every finger and toe had come through intact. My unofficial personal physician would go on holding down the operating room at Headquarters. That alone was a gain for me. It would be a gain for her as well, of course, and if an A-rank doctor took their surgeries from now on, the Waste Disposal Squad would gain too. Looked at only that way, it seemed like the best ending, one in which everyone won. But I wasn't so sure.
If it looks like everyone won, that only means you thought about the things you can see.
If fulfilling the promise burned through too many medical resources, what was supposed to fill that gap? The one who had already gone on to heaven after Myung Hwa-young refused to operate—would he really be satisfied, looking at her with all four limbs intact? And what about the future patients whose turn would be pushed back so she could treat the Waste Disposal Squad? There was no way to know. They were things you couldn't see.
If they ever show up in front of me, I'll take it up again then.
The Waste Disposal Squad all left. The Chief sighed once, then again, muttering that his real work was only just beginning, and headed back underground.
"What am I supposed to do if another monster shows up……. I really ought to just quit. I'm too anxious to keep this up."
My guess was that the next time I came by, he'd still be station master.
"Bro, see you next time!"
"You're not going to report the completed commission to Min Yeo-jin?"
"I've still got plenty of time before the deadline, and there's something I need to look into."
Odd. He wasn't the type to pass up heading back with me.
"Something to look into?"
"Yeah. Thinking of going to see a specialist."
"What kind of business? Talking while neatly leaving out the actual point is suspicious."
"Um……. I was debating whether I should even bring this up."
Clock-out Man, hemming and hawing. That wasn't common.
"Oh, right—there's a doctor here too, isn't there? Maybe this works out? I'm a patient right now. Hwa-young, listen in as a doctor, yeah? Listen."
"Did you just call me Hwa-young……?"
"What's wrong, buddy."
"Endure it. He says he's a patient."
"Ha……."
"Without him, taking the monster down might have been harder. Count it that way, and you owe him too, more or less."
"Oh! So I did help, right?"
Myung Hwa-young's sigh was deeper and grander than the Chief's.
"Hoo……. One thing's for certain."
"What."
"The outside world is a piece of shit. I've only been out a few days, and it's been shit in every possible color."
The doctor herself was one step from becoming a patient. Clock-out Man hurried through his symptoms.
"So, it was right after I left Headquarters—"
About ten minutes of memory, erased. When he came to, he was bound, with his face covered. He'd lost his sense of smell at the same time, and it had only barely returned hours later. So that was why he'd stalled. He'd been subdued.
The moment she heard the symptoms, Myung Hwa-young delivered her diagnosis.
"Short-term memory loss from a concussion, caused by a blow to the head after he was subdued. And acute sinusitis."
"What the—acute sinusitis?"
"A.K.A. a sinus infection."
"You're on about that too? I keep telling you that's not it."
"If you won't trust a doctor, why get examined?"
Clock-out Man immediately started getting ready to leave.
"Anyway, that's why I'm going to look up a specialist. This is way more urgent. Later, bro! You too, Hwa-young!"
While he receded into the distance, Myung Hwa-young tormented her blameless pockets one after another. Still no cigarette came out.
"Woo Jungkook."
"Yeah."
"What are the odds I'll have the rotten luck of having to see that man again?"
"He can't get inside Headquarters. And once you go back this time, you won't have any reason to come out again."
"Best thing I've heard all day."
The walk back to Headquarters wasn't particularly difficult. We met one pack of monsters and passed beside one newly formed zombie swarm. A comfortable stroll. And like that, we entered the protected zone. Myung Hwa-young's face still hadn't smoothed out.
"You're going to get wrinkles."
"You're messing with me, right? I've already got quite a few, you know?"
"So you weren't scowling. That was just your face."
"I'm like this because I'm worried about what's ahead."
The Waste Disposal Squad, then.
"I thought you'd somehow managed a decision that broke your own principles. Too much after all?"
"Of course it's too much……. But what am I supposed to do? They said they'd kill me otherwise. And I got the feeling they really might, even inside Headquarters."
A few sentries always stood watch in front of her clinic. But that was all. Even that much was the furthest anyone had gone for her, given how often she was threatened. If the Waste Disposal Squad came at her ready to throw their lives away, killing a doctor in the middle of Headquarters would be possible. And yet something felt off.
"I don't take you for someone who'd tuck her tail just because she was threatened."
"Well……. You're not wrong."
If she were that kind of person, things never would have come this far.
"So what wind blew in?"
"Who knows. Hm……."
Eyes that had lost their life. I even had the illusion that the red gleam in them had gone out.
"It was uncomfortable."
"Hm?"
"Saying I was sorry."
Of all people, Myung Hwa-young talking about discomfort. There couldn't be just one or two things that made her uncomfortable.
"Isn't refusing to operate uncomfortable too?"
"That has a justification. National policy."
"And apologizing doesn't?"
"No. Not if you firmly believe you've never done anything to be sorry for."
Was that really true? For someone who claimed nothing made her uncomfortable, her lungs had burned down pretty thoroughly.
"But now I think that belief has cracked a little."
So that was why she had apologized to the Gentleman.
"I thought maybe if I stopped making things to be sorry for, I'd be a little more at ease……."
There is no human without compassion. It is only covered over—covered so that even they themselves cannot see it. That sort of thing is so common there is nothing strange about it. Among the people I knew, Myung Hwa-young had been like that.
Will this change her?
No. If I were placing a bet, I'd put my money on her not changing. The outing ended here. She would go back to living at Headquarters.
"Oh, that man from earlier!"
"Yeah?"
"Clock-out…… anyway, the one with the weird name."
"Clock-out Man."
"Ugh. I really don't want that in my mouth. Anyway, that last thing he said—about being a patient."
"What, the concussion and the sinus infection?"
"Not that. I didn't say anything earlier because he shouldn't have heard it, but I think I know what it is."
The doctor's diagnosis was only just beginning.