Office Politics
The Post Office's Post-Processing Team showed up.
Two of them. Complete strangers, both.
"You the Postman who went out with the first wave?"
"Huh. Figured you'd be some veteran. Guess not. Never seen that face."
First failure of my life. Of course they hadn't.
"Let's see... Mail delivery succeeded, but the desk staff who went with you died?"
"The Human Meat Factory, of all places. Luck like that ought to be illegal. And they sent you out as the first wave with no briefing at all? Tsk. A test run? You a rookie?"
"Must be. No connections, so they shoved him out with the first wave."
"Hey, rookie. Tough break, but procedure's procedure. Don't take it personal."
I still hadn't said a single word.
A rookie, just like that.
Which meant these two didn't have clearance to check performance records.
So they weren't sitting anywhere high.
"And the doctor beside you? Myung Hwa-young?"
Not everyone recognized her on sight as Dr. Myung.
She'd already hung her ID around her neck, that was all.
The name, though — that was famous.
"We've heard a great deal about you. You must have had a hard time out there."
"An honor! Please, go on in and get some rest!"
"Hm? She can go in with the Postman."
"This one'll take a while. No need to worry about him."
"That's right. His mission failure won't come back on you, Doctor. Feel free to head in!"
She looked at me like she was asking, what do we do?
They were right. This had nothing to do with Dr. Myung.
"Go in first."
"Uh... you sure you'll be okay?"
"Of course I will. What, you think the punishment gets lighter if you're standing there?"
"It doesn't?"
"It doesn't. Go."
In truth, she wouldn't have been entirely useless.
If Dr. Myung had stood there tossing in the occasional sympathetic remark, some of it would almost certainly have been taken into account.
She was Myung Hwa-young, after all. That famous doctor.
Which, put another way, meant I'd end up owing her.
Or causing her trouble.
Over the Post-Processing Team? For this?
I didn't feel like it.
"Hurry up and go. Wash off and get your nicotine topped up."
"Then, um... if you end up needing me, come find me or something."
"I won't."
"Suit yourself."
The Post-Processing pair watched her leave for a long time.
Like they were waiting to say something that shouldn't reach her ears.
I could see her pass the scanner just inside the main gate, and with her went a few familiar figures in red uniforms.
The ones who locked the bomb collars around our necks.
Not that I was certain they were bombs. Still.
Looked like they took the collars apart the moment you got back.
The gate shut. Dr. Myung vanished from sight, and the Post-Processing Team's attention swung onto me.
"The hell are you, talking down to an A-rank doctor like that?"
"Got some pull after all? Then why'd you go out with the first wave and eat all that dirt?"
"Nah. Other way around. Myung Hwa-young must've taken him with her when she went out."
"Aha. So the doctor watching his back dragged him along."
"Doctors have to go outside once in a while too, right? Tag along with a Postman and it's postal work, and she probably figured that was safer than a combat assignment."
"Heh. A doctor's high-level thinking. Us ordinary folks could never keep up."
I still hadn't said a word to either of them.
"All right. Confirming the details of the mission failure. Name, Woo Jungkook. Delivery successful. Special assignment: accompanied two desk staff, one of whom died during the mission. Time of death was on the return, huh? Shame."
"The dead desk staff... Appraiser Heo Seong-chan. Who's that?"
"Only appraiser I know with the surname Heo is that crazy old man."
"Whatever. Not our business who he was. So the failure report — all of it's true?"
Finally, a chance to say something.
"Yeah."
Shame there wasn't more to add.
They even knew when Elder Heo died. So the data the collar transmitted was being shared.
Which meant a shard of a communications Core had been sitting inside it.
Now I understood why they'd told me to bring the collar back.
"So the collar on the one who died. You recovered it, right?"
"Didn't."
"...? You misspoke, yeah? Not that you didn't. That you couldn't."
"Didn't."
"The hell is this guy?"
Terrible at understanding people.
"Anyway, the collar's gone?"
"Yeah."
"Tough. You'll be investigated for that separately later."
By the red uniforms, he meant.
"Normally a successful delivery means you did everything a Postman has to do. But there was a directive to treat special assignments as each agency's own mission. So this gets processed the same as a failed delivery. No complaints, right?"
"I've got complaints."
"...You don't know how to answer like a normal person?"
"Oh. Honest answers aren't allowed?"
"This guy's a lunatic. Of all the exhausting bastards to draw. No wonder I felt like taking leave today."
"Didn't I tell you? Days you get the feeling, you just take them."
Whether I played along with these two or not, the thing was going to run on the rules already written.
No point picking my words.
"First, there's a deduction for the failed delivery. You lose as many points as you were supposed to earn for succeeding."
It had been a maximum-difficulty mission. That one was going to sting.
"Complaints about the deduction too?"
"Obviously."
"Fine. Transmitting it now."
One of them scribbled something on a slip and passed it over. The one who took it broke into a run toward somewhere.
"Gone to file the demerit. If it processes clean, that's the end of the procedure. And—"
The demerit wasn't the end of it.
Headquarters access gets restricted.
"You know you won't be able to enter Headquarters for a while, right?"
"How long?"
"You'll be told when the demerit gets filed. Wait here."
For that stretch I'd have to survive outside on my own.
Then, on the appointed day, come back here and pick up a new mail run.
Succeed, and Headquarters opens again. Fail, and the lockout lasts even longer than before.
"Where the hell is that bastard eating? Why's he so damn slow?"
The one who'd gone to file it came back a long while later.
And then—
"...Hey. We need to talk a second. Postman, wait there."
His color was bad.
Maybe the meal hadn't agreed with him.
"What's with you?"
"Went to file the demerit and found out something insane."
"Here we go. What nonsense now."
"...That guy. He's number one in performance."
At last, the Postman's identity.
"Huh? Who says?"
"The filing desk."
"They messing with you? Since when do they hand out performance rankings?"
"That's what I thought, what the hell are they talking about... Turns out if that guy's ever up for a demerit, it has to go up a reporting line we don't even know about."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm asking you. And this is apparently the first time he's ever getting a demerit. That's why nobody knew a line like that even existed."
"Fuck... What reporting line?"
"How should I know. Anyway, that's why it took forever. They said they had to report it."
That "reporting line" wasn't actually anything grand.
Bae Guk-jang had arranged it himself — nothing more than a separate notice of how a demerit came about, and how many points it cost.
From the director's side, though, it was a serious matter. He took a cut of Jungkook's points.
The Post-Processing Team's worries ran in a different direction.
"Number one — that's the same guy who's been number one for years, right?"
"Think so. Never heard the ranking changed."
"Hah... I really thought a day like this would never come."
Everyone had assumed the top performer simply didn't fail missions.
A gap with second place you could get lost in.
Possible only because he succeeded at every assignment, and because the sheer volume of what he cleared was obscene.
Inside the Post Office, one rumor had been circulating about that Postman's record.
"Wasn't he pulling some trick so even failed missions got logged as successes, no matter what?"
The numbers sat so far outside common sense that thinking so was only reasonable.
Nobody had imagined that a man who'd made Hunter instructor at the youngest age on record would end up a Postman.
That, in its own way, was just as abnormal.
"This confirms it, then."
"Confirms what?"
"What you just said. The rumor that he's been rigging things so every mission comes back a success."
"Then why'd this one fail?"
"This mission was tied to another agency. Those guys in the red uniforms."
"Ah. So his reach stopped at the Post Office door?"
"What else would it be?"
"Makes sense."
"No wonder I wanted leave today..."
There was a reason nobody wanted to meet the number-one performer.
"So we have to step in, right? That's what everyone said."
The talk had been that if the day ever came to file a demerit against the rumored number one, they ought to bury it at their own level.
"Probably... The people who've been blocking his failures couldn't do anything this time, so it made it all the way here. If we let go of it too, he actually gets the demerit."
"And if that happens, whoever's backing him is going to be in a very bad mood—"
"And we become the idiots who dumped cold water on that someone without reading the room..."
"And that someone is definitely a terrifying human being—"
"Might even be human beings. Plural."
The sighs they let out at the same time tangled and spun.
"What happens if we don't?"
"The filing desk didn't say anything else?"
"Just that it had to go up a separate reporting line, so it'd take time. And it did take a long time."
It really had been the sort of thing that takes a long time. But—
"...You don't think that was them hinting?"
Their reasoning had already shorted out.
"Ah...!"
"They said it had to be reported separately because he's number one, and they made you wait, right?"
"Th-that's it! Fuck, I had no sense at all. They meant 'he's number one, so get lost'...!"
"You stood there in front of them to the very end, not catching it?"
"I thought she was just especially ugly today. Thinking back, that was the face of someone chewing shit. Damn it..."
The clerk would have found that deeply unfair.
"Now it makes sense. Remember what the doctor said before she left?"
"Then, um... if you need me, come find me or something."
"Talking down to an A-rank doctor didn't even make sense, and we still didn't catch it then..."
"That wasn't all."
"So the collar on the one who died. You recovered it, right?"
"Didn't."
"He had a reason to be that brazen."
"Yeah..."
"No complaints, right?"
"I've got complaints."
"Once he saw we didn't recognize him, he started dropping bigger and bigger hints."
"Fuck... How are we supposed to recognize number one? It's not like they circulated a composite sketch."
"Complaints about the deduction too?"
"Obviously."
"By the end he was practically spelling it out."
"Ha. We really had no sense at all. What do we do now?"
"We make it like it never happened. Call in every connection we've got. First we go tell the Postman, then we hit the filing desk again."
"Fuck, why didn't I take leave today..."
Even so, it wasn't entirely a bad day for them.
"But listen. If we actually manage to block the demerit? Doesn't that mean we get to stamp our faces properly into his memory while we're at it?"
"Oh...?"
They were taking a disgusting amount of time.
How hard could it be to hand out one lousy demerit.
Bae Guk-jang would hear about this right away, too.
Demerits, at least, I don't split with him.
Points I earn, we divide. Points I lose, I lose alone.
A dog's arrangement. What can you do.
From the director's side, a failed mission still meant points he could have had flying off, so he wasn't going to be pleased.
I'd brought him plenty until now. If he made a fuss over this one job, he'd be the bastard — but still.
"Oh, been waiting long?"
"Haha, we really are busy, aren't we?"
"All because we work so hard without taking leave, you could say."
"Why are you talking about leave here?"
"Ha. Should I not have?"
The Post-Processing Team, returned.
Their faces were noticeably brighter than before.
I'd wondered what they vanished for. Clearly they'd gone off and had themselves a good time.
The place was being run like a complete mess.
"So, uh, Postman?"
"The demerit never happened!"
What were these idiots saying.
I'd wondered where they'd been. Turns out they'd gone to prepare a prank.
"I don't have time. Just process it."
"Ah? Ah, ah! Right, you're busy, and we've taken way too much of your time!"
A beep. A clunk.
He worked the scanner, and—
Postman Woo Jungkook. Mission-failure entry canceled. Report the corrected result.
Even the scanner had started in on some joke I couldn't follow.
"We'll handle the rest somehow!"
"Hey, we still have a few more things to explain—"
"Fucking read the room!"
"Ah... ah, you said you don't have time. No — you said you don't. Please, go on in!"
What were they scheming.
I had no intention of playing along.
"Come on, hurry!"
"There are people waiting for you desperately, you know!"
"Who's waiting for me desperately?"
"We know everything too, all right? Go on, leave the rest to us."
They were genuinely shoving me in the back.
They really meant for me to go in.
"Travel safe, Postman! No complaints now, right?"
"Great meeting you! Let's never see each other again!"
"Hey, why would you say it like that?"
"Ah, I mean there'll never be another mission failure! You know what we mean, right?"
Had they slipped off and had a drink in that short a time?
Discipline was gone.
"We did good, right? Right?"
Best not to poke a man who's already out of his head.
No telling what kind of madness he'd try.
"Yeah. You did good."
"Whoaa...!"
They started bouncing in place.
They'd definitely been drinking.
When I got back, I'd report them for neglect of duty.
A heavy clank.
The main gate opened.
The red uniforms were there again.
Ah. So that's it.
The people waiting for me desperately had been over there.
The mission-failure processing was something those guys handled all at once.
Well. It had been a special assignment that didn't exist before. An unusual procedure wasn't strange.
Each of the red uniforms held something like a whip.
Getting hit with one hurt, sure. Worse was the feeling of being treated as less than human. That mood was filthy.
Pretty sure these are the ones from Geofront.
Let's see what makes the ones who came up from underground any different.