A Fate Turned Upside Down
Elder Heo's black core.
"A spent core? Peculiar taste in collectibles."
"I don't collect trash."
"No? Then you just can't tell trash when you see it. That's all right. A man doesn't fail as a husband just because he's got no eye for appraisal."
"...So looking at this doesn't call anything to mind. That's what you're saying."
"What, was that a psych test? You think I'm crazy too? Guess I'll have to prove I'm not. Again."
With that she yanked out an automatic and shoved the muzzle into her mouth.
"Didn't you say you were going to prove you weren't crazy?"
"I didn't pull the trigger. Means I'm not crazy."
The woman was insane.
Anyway, for a moment I'd wondered if she knew something unusual about cores. This one, it seemed, looked like nothing but trash to her as well. I'd hoped, just in case. Expecting anything from her had made me the fool.
"Hold on."
I was putting the core away when the madwoman suddenly caught my wrist.
"You still owe me the rest of the explanation."
"Hm?"
"I can't stand anything suspicious."
"You mean you can't stand not knowing."
"Isn't that what I just said?"
She was the most suspicious person here.
What to do. She might know something; maybe I ought to loosen a little more information. I wasn't even sure it counted as information. It would be no surprise if everything Elder Heo had told me was nonsense. Clutching it wasn't going to produce an answer, though, and she was a colleague Clock-out Man vouched for. A little talk couldn't hurt.
"Ever heard of an Ability Core that succeeds no matter what?"
"Of course I have."
Why of course?
"Why's that?"
Fine. Say it outright.
"Because this is one."
Park Yoon-ju couldn't use the core anyway.
"The effect is granting core appraisal... but only for someone who's never once used an Ability Core, cough..."
Clock-out Man had acknowledged her skill, so she was obviously a Core Ability User. Even if things twisted into the worst case and she tried to gulp the thing down, there was nothing to worry about.
"This core succeeds no matter what?"
"Yes."
"A gift?"
"Something like that."
"And the one who gave it told you what it was."
"Right."
"That tracks."
Strange. The usual ways to get a core were hunting monsters, and trade. The first thing out of her mouth had been whether it was a gift. Not an ordinary guess, and by sheer coincidence she had hit the answer on the first try.
"Did you thank the one who gave it to you properly?"
"A thank-you? I granted their wish, too."
"So you honored a dying wish."
Truly strange.
"The effect?"
"Core appraisal."
"...A complete reversal of fortune. You could become something as great as a doctor. A core that literally changes fate."
"Every Ability Core changes your fate, this one or not. Not only when you succeed. When you fail, too."
"To escape this fate..."
She shut both eyes tight and showed no intention of opening them again. Dry eyes?
"Can I give it to Linda?"
"Who's— no. Doesn't matter who. Absolutely not."
"Don't cry, Linda."
"An imaginary friend, is it?"
"Who, Linda?"
"Who else would I mean?"
"I don't know what you're talking about. It's just you and me here. The two of us."
Asking would only cost me.
"Mind if I take a look?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She snatched the core.
"Just in case you're thinking of using it on the sly, give it up. A heavy price comes with it."
It wouldn't work on her anyway, but better to kill the idea outright.
"Guaranteed success, and you lose something in return?"
"I was told your remaining life drops to one year."
"Fun."
From the look of her, she believed every word Elder Heo had given me. Watching her didn't shift my trust in those stories by a hair.
Trying to learn anything from this person's reactions was a reach from the start.
Whatever judgment that lunatic reached, I'd have to be able to trust it first. A wasted effort.
"I don't think it's that great a price. One year or ten, living long doesn't matter. How you live does."
"Living long is part of that how, I'd say."
"A survivalist. So you'll never use it. Not in your whole life."
"Obviously."
"And few people would buy something this suspicious."
She had that right.
"Then the one who wants to use it ought to use it."
"There would have to be such a person before you could even—"
Shaa...
It happened in an instant.
"...You crazy woman."
"Oh, that's new. It gives off black light when you use it, too?"
The core, pouring out black light, settled back to its original black.
"Who told you to use it as you pleased?"
So now it was truly trash. The thing had come so suddenly I couldn't even get angry.
"You never said not to use it."
"You really are insane."
"True."
"You said you weren't."
"I'm crazy for you."
I was going to lose my mind.
"I ought to thank you for this. Thanks to you, I've finally escaped my fate."
"Seems more like thanks to you doing something insane."
"Meaning I don't have to thank you?"
"If you insist, I won't refuse."
"Thanks."
"Just with your mouth?"
"Yep."
Anyway. Maybe I'd been too quick to assume she was a Core Ability User. No—Elder Heo's account might simply have been wrong.
"So."
"Hm?"
"Well..."
"Have you fallen for me too?"
"No."
"Shy? Cute."
Madwoman or not, there was a line I shouldn't cross. Ask outright whether she had a core ability and catch a bullet in the forehead for it, and the fault would still be mine. I'd work it out later, carefully.
"I did warn you, didn't I?"
"What, the bit about my life dropping to a year?"
Not a flicker of unease on her.
"If you took the warning for a joke, I'm sorry to say it was real."
"I believe it's real. You don't seem the type for empty jokes."
"So you really mean to die next year?"
"I wasn't particularly thinking that. I only wanted the appraisal ability. Right, Linda?"
What kind of person was this.
"It was a core you could barely sell anyway, wasn't it? Someone who loves you used it. Could there be a better result?"
"Hm."
"What?"
She wasn't wrong. No one who wasn't this far gone would have used it.
"To make more money at the Human Meat Factory, we did need a core appraiser."
"Only now you recognize my love?"
"You were taking fifteen percent of the total, so it's also a way for you to earn more."
"Pretty thin compensation for shaving down my life, though."
That was also true. In any case, the woman was a formidable opponent, because you could not reason with her. One means of handling her was sealed off at the root.
Focus on what comes next.
Elder Heo's core was gone. What remained was a person who had used a rare core the likes of which I had never seen.
"So. Impressions, after using it?"
"Impressions? I'm thrilled? I need the bathroom? Want to come?"
"Not that. You've used ordinary cores, haven't you. Cheap ones, purification cores and the like. Compared with those, was there anything different about the feeling, or—"
"It felt just like what I'd seen before."
"What you'd seen?"
Was she talking about what she'd said earlier?
"No. I'm only a witness. I saw it with my own two eyes. I told you cores are full of mysteries, didn't I? Someone knows the answers. They've simply gone mad."
She had said she'd once seen someone who knew cores well.
"It really was just as I'd seen. I thought my life had no surprises left. Arrogant of me."
"What did you see?"
"That—"
In the end I never learned what she had seen. Instead:
"I can't say. The moment someone else tells you, you lose the right to it. If I wanted to screw you over, I could tell you. But I love you."
A cryptic answer from Park Yoon-ju. And yet I had heard something like it before.
"Mustn't say it... No, that ain't it. What you mustn't do is hear it through somebody else's mouth... Once you do, there's no turning back."
Elder Heo had said much the same. Unless it was some catchphrase making the rounds among the unhinged, the two of them might have seen the same thing. Whatever it was.
But if it isn't just a feeling...
A third use of an Ability Core. Was the hint there? The question I had put to Elder Heo had been plain enough.
"Teacher, I am truly sorry, but if you use a core three times, what exactly—"
I had never gotten an answer, but Elder Heo had clearly known that something waited after a third use.
Even so, I can't stake my life on satisfying a curiosity.
If I had at least boarded a running Subway, maybe. I had not even reached Geofront, let alone the Subway. I could not gamble my life yet.
In any case, Park Yoon-ju had suddenly become useful. It was uncomfortable that it had to be her. On the other hand, this might have been the best of it. Who else around me could have used the thing? The three Jo siblings? The Physiognomist? Hocheol, or Director Bae, the black-market people, and last of all Dr. Myeong and Min Yeo-jin. Somehow every one of them was someone I had grown close to. If any of them died early, there would be nothing pleasant in it for me. Set beside them, it sat easier that this madwoman was the one fated to die.
"So now I live one year short and hard, then go? Exactly the fate I wanted. Suddenly time feels precious. It's really fun."
"Optimistic of you."
"Well? Starting to feel like losing me would be a waste?"
"A professional appraiser dying is always a waste."
"I can take that as a confession, right?"
"You're not a professional."
"Your prisoner, then?"
"...Go to the Human Meat Factory and practice core appraisal to your heart's content. If getting competent takes more than a year, you're useless."
"So you'll think it over again until I get back?"
Park Yoon-ju smiled, bright as anything. People like her were one of two things: truly insane, or carrying something like the Subway in their chest. If she was holding something there, what was it really? It would not be me. That much I knew.
"Why no answer. You do have to think it over, right? Got it?"
All of it was camouflage. A ploy, so she would not look like someone moving without a cause.
I hope Clock-out Man doesn't get dragged in.
It took Clock-out Man longer to come back than I'd expected. He'd sprinted off in a tearing hurry, so I'd wondered what was keeping him—and he was sprinting on the way back, too.
"Bro! I'm back!"
"You only act urgent when someone's watching?"
"Huh? Ah, was I that late?"
"You have to ask."
Thanks to him, I'd nearly gone mad just from being stuck with the madwoman.
"Something weird happened."
"Weirder than what happened here while you were gone?"
"What?"
"That cra— your colleague will explain, in time. Finish your story."
"Ah, I met Min Yeo-jin's errand kid. Definitely a kid I'd never seen. But the scent was way too familiar."
Strange, all right. The scent Clock-out Man took off a person was nearly a fingerprint. I had never seen him mix one person up with another.
Cheon Su-hyeon?
That was the first thought, but no. The kid Clock-out Man described looked nothing like that brat. Still, the errand runner had seemed young, around Cheon Su-hyeon's age.
"Maybe a hunter trainee."
"Oh! That's what I was about to say. Bet you're right. You know it, yeah? That gunpowder smell you only get at a hunter training ground."
"Range powder?"
"Right!"
All gunpowder smells the same if you ask me, but the propellant in hunter special rounds is mixed differently from ordinary ammunition, so the smell changes too. To my nose it's all identical. Not to Clock-out Man.
"Looked young, so they were definitely a trainee. Problem was the scent. I'm sure I smelled it recently, but I cannot remember when or where."
"Didn't you lose your sense of smell to sinusitis not long ago? Aftereffects?"
"I keep telling you it wasn't sinusitis."
"Then you're getting old."
"Huh?"
"Give me notice before you retire."
For now I had a description, from Clock-out Man, of the trainee who smelled of gunpowder. Another mysterious trainee, separate from Cheon Su-hyeon.
"I've seen a pack of five hunter trainees who go around together."
Maybe the kid had been one of the five Dr. Myeong mentioned. If I was right, though, they would not be traveling together for a while. To avoid suspicion.
Hm. There is a way to check something that's already passed.
The CCTV control room. I didn't know if they'd listen, but I could bring it up later.
"And the errand kid passed along a message from Yeo-jin. Said if I got in touch with you, I had to deliver it, no matter what."
"What's it about?"
"That new weapon we talked about? The new tech? It's ready, so come by for a bit. Said there's more good news, too."
"There was one thing that never got out. They had something called a Frenzy Round."
That one. Charming little name and all.
"Then, bro, we can head out right now?"
Clock-out Man set a hand on the madwoman's shoulder.
"Stick to the safe roads. For a merchant, speed is life, but this is an exclusive deal, so slow is fine."
"Okay! I'll make a killing!"
The two of them set off for the Human Meat Factory. In the language of a bygone age, this was what they called setting it on autopilot. Park Yoon-ju tossed out a few last scraps of nonsense. I ignored them lightly. Beside her, Clock-out Man poured cold sweat.
Whether the pair would be all right, I couldn't say. Still, it was a relief Min Yeo-jin had prepared so quickly. I'd be able to take the new weapon on the run to Busan.
It had better work. I'd see for myself.