Words Without Feet
"Teacher, if it were only a matter of asking, I'd have it in your hands this very moment! Mmm... I really can't say how this will turn out."
Figures. They'd turned out a handful of prototypes and then scrapped the whole effort, and with nothing more being made, there was no production line left to skim. Even so, it was early to give up.
"The prototypes are probably sitting in storage somewhere."
Scrapping a plan didn't mean you destroyed whatever was left. The opposite, if anything. Once you had no intention of making more, you did what you could to keep what already existed as safe as possible.
"Su-hyeon. How's it look?"
"It doesn't seem like the sort of thing a merchant could get hold of. I'm afraid that's going to be diffi—"
Min Yeo-jin's face fell on the spot.
"......I'll look into it. I'll try."
If it can't be done, make it so it can.
"But it may take a truly enormous amount of money."
If they quoted some absurd price on purpose, just to avoid finding it, there'd be nothing left to do.
"Don't worry about that! If what you have isn't enough, Teacher, I'll scrape together every last bit I own!"
"......Yes."
Maybe I wouldn't even need to step in and break the kid of his habits. While he stayed under Min Yeo-jin's control, milking the arrangement in moderation might do just as well.
"Teacher?"
"Mm?"
"You have the face of someone plotting something."
"Someone actually plotting something doesn't wear a serious face."
"They don't?"
"In my experience, it's usually the one who smiles all bright and easy."
"Someone who smiles a lot......"
Min Yeo-jin's eyes slid toward Cheon Su-hyeon. The boy who used to spend half his day grinning happened, just then, to have a deep shadow lying across his face.
Once every last bit of paperwork on the Postman's failed mission had been processed, the red uniforms headed for the holding cell to let him out.
"Poor bastard."
"He wouldn't want your pity."
"I didn't say I pitied him."
"And that isn't pity?"
"You think he even knows what pity is?"
"You're sitting there calling that humor?"
"You don't joke about something like that."
Extenuating circumstances had spared the Postman most of the penalties for a failed mission, but it didn't look like much of a comfort. Not when you considered the precious thing this mission had cost him.
Min Yeo-jin stepped out, insisting she'd bring something good to eat.
"I told you, I don't need anything."
"Of course you do! A visit isn't a visit without food!"
"I already ate something warm."
"Then dessert!"
"Should've brought it the first time you came."
"Earlier I couldn't help it! I wanted to see you right away!"
Which was how I ended up alone with this one.
"What should I call you? Teacher Woo? Teacher Postman?"
Whatever Min Yeo-jin came back with, I doubted I could eat it. My appetite had dropped straight through the floor.
"I've never seen the instructor talk that much."
"Looked the same as usual to me."
"If you said that to land a hit on me, it worked."
"Honorifics don't suit you."
"The instructor told me to regard you as my teacher. Of course I have to obey."
"If she told you to die, you'd die."
"Of course."
"Then I'll have to make sure Min Yeo-jin actually says it."
"An impressive strategy. If you want me removed, there really isn't any other way."
He said it without smiling. Normally the bastard would've been smirking, needling, all teeth. He must have been too thoroughly soured to spare the energy.
Not someone I particularly wanted to talk to. Still, this I genuinely wanted to know.
"Min Yeo-jin...... hmm."
No. I'd nearly said something pointless.
"You mean, what do I like so much about her?"
Not a Core ability that read minds, then.
"You get that question every day, so you're used to it?"
"Your deductions are quick and precise."
"And the answer you always gave?"
"I like everything about her. I could talk about it all night."
"So you've never once answered honestly."
"Can you read minds?"
"Quick and precise deductions."
The door banged open.
"I was quick, wasn't I?"
Both hands were full. Every bit of it sweet junk.
"......This much?"
"I didn't know what you'd like, so I brought everything!"
"You had these stockpiled?"
"I bought them just now."
"At this volume you cleared the whole display."
"I did. They said they'd made their sales for the day and closed up."
I was picking one out, thinking I ought to eat something for courtesy's sake, when she shoved her head in close and whispered. Cheon Su-hyeon failed at managing his expression again.
"Teacher?"
"I already secured the hunter's pistol for your senior. Would you rather deliver it yourself, or should I wait and hand it over?"
She'd raised a good one.
"Hard to say. I don't even know where Clock-out Man is."
"He didn't come with you? I thought he'd be waiting outside headquarters."
"He took off halfway. Said he had to see a specialist."
"A specialist? What kind?"
"Short-term amnesia and acute sinusitis."
"Acute... si-si-nus?"
What Clock-out Man needed right now was hardly some medical specialist.
A colleague he can count on.
Upgrading the gear might take more money. A few Cores were still left in the cabinet, but they might not cover it. In the end Clock-out Man would have to earn a great deal trading with the Human Meat Factory, and on his own he probably couldn't move that kind of volume in a single deal.
Should I contact Boss after all?
No. A real merchant was something you saved for a last resort. Clock-out Man might have a colleague I didn't know about. Better to confirm that first.
Even one would do. I just hope he's got someone worth using.
Third floor of an abandoned building. Broken doors crowded the corridor, and among them exactly one still stood intact.
"Hm."
The mercenary stopped with his destination under his nose, because a reek of blood was savaging the inside of it. A smell of blood wasn't strange in a place like this, strictly speaking. It wasn't run by any licensed physician, but a clinic was still a clinic, and the special treatment only this doctor could give made the place impossible to replace.
His nose, though, could tell with precision whether that blood came from medicine or from slaughter. Half of him wanted to turn around. The other half was curious.
In the end he knocked. Tap, tap, tap. Nothing answered, so he tried a greeting as well.
"Hello?"
"Who is it?"
A woman's voice leaked through the crack of the door, muffled, as if she had something held in her mouth.
"Came to see the doctor. Surgery going on in there?"
"Surgery's finished."
"Yeah? Doctor's inside?"
"Yeah."
"Mind if I come in?"
"Do you believe in fate?"
"Huh?"
The door opened on a timing he hadn't seen coming. The woman inside showed no caution at all. She'd thrown it wide open, for one thing.
"Wow. Hell of a surgery."
One corpse lay on the operating table. Two more sprawled on the floor beside it.
"You do all of this?"
"No. I only did these two."
The two on the floor.
"Those two operated on that one."
The one on the table had been dressed in a white coat.
"So the doctor got operated on first, and then you operated on the doctors who operated on the doctor."
"That was my fate."
"What?"
"Strange dialect you've got."
"Sounds strange to people who don't understand it, but no problem."
Her voice had been muffled because of the match she'd kept clamped in her mouth the whole time. She'd held it so long the head was already soaked through with spit.
"I get it. For you, that would be fate."
"Fate?"
"Saying what I want to say even when no one understands. That's my fate too."
"Um...... The way I talk is basically a dialect, like you said, so there are people who understand it, you know? But the way you talk—"
"I understand what I say. That's what you call fate."
"Yeah...... So right now I'm supposed to, what, see it from the other side?"
Either way, the trip was wasted.
"I really needed this doctor. Shame."
"There are plenty of doctors elsewhere. Want an introduction?"
She sat down at a modest little bar and cracked a bottle, as if she'd owned the place from the start.
"There's a special treatment only this doctor could do."
"Is there?"
"You made this mess without even knowing that?"
"What does it matter? It's a beautiful night."
It was the middle of the day.
"So...... What'd you get out of killing the doctor?"
"Who knows? Have a drink first. Then I'll toss the place."
"Been a while since I met someone this planless."
"The truly planless ones are already lying down."
Her account went like this. The jerky peddler stretched out on the floor had been the boss, and the one beside him, who liked walking around with a pot lid on his head, had been his right hand. When the jerky trade went sour, they'd turned to looting the way they always did, and this place became the target. They hadn't come knowing the local situation. All their information amounted to was that an unlicensed doctor worked here alone. Still, a doctor was a doctor, so they'd figured there would be money.
The doctor hadn't been living alone out of sheer nerve, of course. He'd posted sentries over the abandoned building and laid traps all through it. They had neutralized every one of them and broken through this far, and all of that was the woman's work.
"Not bad."
"All I can do is hide in fate's shadow. Right, Linda?"
"Who's Linda...... Anyway, the doctor's one thing. Why operate on your two colleagues?"
"They kept saying stupid things. It was noisy."
"Um?"
In a short while she had emptied half the bottle.
"I didn't know the target was a doctor when I came. They lied to me."
"Some principle about not robbing doctors?"
"They're heaven-sent. They have the power to change fate."
The mercenary wanted to say there were plenty of people with that kind of power who weren't doctors, but he didn't think the words would get through. She gave off a wall that thick and that solid. It had been a long time since he'd met a human like her.
"Come to think of it, I'm curious. This doctor could give a special kind of treatment?"
"Right. When something goes wrong in the body, he could tell whether a Core ability did it."
"Yeah? That's something. How's that even possible?"
"What do you think. That's a Core ability too."
"Ah. Fate."
"Yeah, fate."
The mercenary sat down beside her.
"Thanks to you I came up empty, so mind if I bum a drink?"
She took a full bottle and set it down in front of him with a thud.
"Drink."
"Thank you."
The two of them emptied a bottle each without another word. Aside from the habit of saying only what they felt like saying, even their taste in vices lined up.
"You say you did it yourself, but you've lost every colleague. What are you going to do now?"
"Tomorrow won't be any different from yesterday."
"An explanation I can actually understand?"
"No matter what I do, I can't escape fate. Nothing changes."
He wanted to ask why, but he didn't think asking would get him an answer worth having.
"You're tall. Hard build for living in hiding. What do you do?"
"Mercenary."
"Suits you."
"How?"
"In that it's a hard way to stay alive."
Another thud. She set a fresh bottle down in front of him.
Min Yeo-jin and Cheon Su-hyeon left before the red uniforms arrived.
All extenuating circumstances have been accepted.
Every penalty is waived, except redeployment to duty.
They delivered it with the air of men granting me a kindness.
Waiving the demerits is the big one.
The day I reached the Geofront had nearly been pushed back even further, and this was right when the finish line was starting to show. The merit points I'd stacked so far were considerable. Add the enormous score waiting at the end of the Subway project, and I could walk right up to a Geofront ticket. No room to be stepping backward.
"And Postman... hang in there."
"Hey. I told you not to show it."
"Ah."
For some reason their eyes kept drifting toward the floor. The sort of thing people did when they couldn't meet your eye. Had they done something to me?
I didn't know what the wrong was, but this kind of thing was better said straight. Hide it, and once it came out later it would be that much harder to clean up.
"Fellas, it's fine. You can just tell me all of it."
"Ah, you're fine?"
"Ghk......"
"Hang in there, you bastard."
What the hell had they done, telling me to hang in there.
Forget it. Don't dwell.
They were from the Geofront. Their measure of a life wasn't mine. A relationship where neither side could understand the other, you might call it.
"If you don't want to talk, then don't."
"Your story's already been reported all the way to the Geofront, so don't worry."
"Story? What story?"
"The terrible things you went through out there......"
Ah. The air raid.
"I thought it was something else. That's a solid extenuating circumstance. I figured you'd report it."
"Right......"
They said the underground crowd feared air raids even more than the surface did. They shuddered at the toxic gas that spread afterward, too. It seemed absurd that men who would never have to face it were afraid, but it wasn't really beyond understanding. The fear came precisely because they had never lived through it.
"We made sure it was all reported. All the way to the Geofront......"
"Got it. So I can go now?"
"Yeah......"
Ridiculous bastards.