Dust

If he meant to break out tomorrow, he needed to sleep deep tonight.

Assuming, of course, that sleep was even possible.

Lying on dried zombie hide would beat this place.

The bed Captain Choi had scraped together for him was a warehouse. He couldn't sleep in the captain's office, and he couldn't sleep at Jo Shin-hye's. He was an outsider as it was; drawing that kind of notice would do him no good.

So. The warehouse.

By the captain's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠telling, it was certainly better than a night on the street. Jeongguk was equally certain the man had never once looked inside it.

One night. Endure it.

He went through the bag one last time. Anything he wouldn't need in a hurry—spare clothes and the like—went to the bottom. Anything he might have to snatch out fast, the first-aid kit among them, he pulled to the top. And then came a glint.

The Core with a 99.99 percent chance of failure caught his eye. He picked it up for no particular reason. He'd meant to bury it somewhere the sun could reach, and somehow it was still in the bag. Maybe, on the way back, he could put it in the ground.

Sorted, the bag held little worth grabbing in an emergency. He left the Core where he could see it, beside the medicine, and shut the bag again.

The floor clung to his boots. Lie down on it and he had the distinct feeling some nameless poison would climb straight into him, so in the end he chose to sleep sitting, his back against the wall.

The breakout is tomorrow.

When he took stock, he found he'd acquired companions again. Four of them, no less. If he wanted to show Jo Yong-han what he could actually do, this was still the best course, and so far it was all going to plan. What remained was to get out safely. Then to reach headquarters alive. And last of all—

No one dies.

He closed his eyes.

And had the nightmare again.

Night had deepened, but Jo Shin-hye was still buried in preparations for the escape. She didn't have much to pack. What she had, instead, was a great deal to destroy. Anything that might give a hunter a lead on the three Jo siblings had to be disposed of, every last scrap.

"Sergeant Jeong, put all of that over there."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Sergeant Jeong was helping with the work. He no longer needed to make a good impression on Jo Shin-hye in order to catch Jo An-na's eye. His first love had already sailed. Even so, he didn't talk down to Shin-hye, and that was only natural. Once you'd resolved to desert, the rank of sergeant might as well not exist. Everyone was equal now.

"So what should I do next!"

"Uh…… You can just stay where you are, actually. No, wait—shouldn't you head back to your quarters?"

Equality was a fine word. Strictly speaking, their circumstances were heaven and earth apart. Shin-hye and An-na had people at headquarters who would take them in. Captain Choi was especially close to An-na. Those three, once they reached headquarters, looked as if some kind of life would open for them.

And him?

"No, ma'am! I ought to help you through to the end!"

Getting along with people was a matter of survival. Sergeant Jeong had learned that in the army.

"Mm…… There really isn't anything more for you to help with."

Just then the single bulb in the house went out, then came back on. Nothing worth startling over. Lately it happened every day. It meant the settlement's central power Core was nearing the end of its life.

"Nothing more to help with. Mind if I just ask you something?"

"Of course!"

"Then wait a moment."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Shin-hye went to the small burner set in a corner of the room and turned the dial. A water bottle sat on top of it. The igniter chattered and threw sparks, but no flame caught. She checked the fuel Core beneath the burner, confirmed it hadn't lost its light entirely, and turned the dial again. Still it refused to light. After a moment's hesitation, Sergeant Jeong came over with a lighter.

Click. Click.

No flame—only a hollow sound. He held the lighter to his ear and shook it. About as much fuel left as a zombie's tears.

Click. Click. The burner answered with another dry stutter.

As if the whole business were familiar, the two of them repeated the same motions in silence, willing a flame into being. They could have taken tinder and flint and gone outside. That would have been more certain, and it would have spared precious stores. But they didn't want to. Not now. For this last night, at least, they wanted the luxury of feeling a little civilized.

"By the way, Miss Shin-hye?"

"Yes?"

"You can speak more comfortably now. I'm a good deal younger than you."

"Mm."

The lighter clicked. The burner ticked.

"What should I call you, then?"

"Hocheol. Jeong Hocheol."

"Then you talk comfortably too, Hocheol. We've thrown away the army and all the rest of it, haven't we?"

"That's true. I will."

Click— and a flame leapt from the lighter and caught on the fuel Core. Heat began to climb into the bottle. Inside was maybe two mouthfuls of water, the clearest liquid Hocheol had seen in recent memory.

The refined warmth the burner and its fuel Core made between them. The two of them stared blankly as the bottle warmed, savoring this brief spell of plenty. Just before the water could boil, the flame hissed and died.

Shin-hye brought two cups no bigger than a baby's fist and divided the hot water between them.

"So this is the last of it."

"From tomorrow on, it's a new life."

They sat across the table and touched the rims. Then, with nothing to say which of them moved first, they set the cups down again without ever bringing them to their lips. After that they matched even in the way they sat, both hands wrapped tight around the cups.

"So. What was it you wanted to ask?"

"That postman. Jeongguk, wasn't it?"

"Yes. He says that's his name for now."

"An alias, then?"

"Something like that. The name I originally knew was the one from when he was a soldier, and I heard that was an alias too."

Shin-hye smiled, as if she found it interesting.

"What kind of man is he?"

"Sorry? Ah—well, for starters, he's an ordinary postman……"

She ran a fingertip along the rim of her cup.

"You can skip the obvious line about him not being an ordinary postman. Anyone could tell he isn't, with a single look."

"He certainly…… isn't, is he?"

"I felt it the moment he showed up with that letter. Do you remember what the postman asked me then?"

"Did he ask something?"

Just one thing.

"He asked me if I knew the name of the masked postman."

"Ah. I think that did happen."

"No reason you'd remember. It wasn't an important conversation."

But that unimportant conversation had caught her interest.

"Still, it's strange…… When I told him I wouldn't take any more mail, he never asked why, did he? For a postman, that ought to have been the more important question."

It was something Hocheol had already taken up with Jeongguk.

"Jeongguk has certainly grown quite indifferent."

"Grown?"

"Well…… I never thought he was the deeply affectionate sort to begin with. But he wasn't like this."

"Indifferent, is he…… I see it a little differently."

"How do you mean?"

She lifted the cup and drank half the hot water, buying a moment to put her thoughts in order. Hocheol followed her lead and tipped his own cup the same way.

"I think he withholds the questions on purpose. So he'll look indifferent. When really, he's a man with a great deal of interest in other people."

"You're thinking that because he saw through your situation, aren't you?"

Hocheol, too, thought it remarkable that Jeongguk had read Shin-hye and the three siblings from so little evidence. He did not think of it as interest.

"Shouldn't we just call that sharp observation? Veterans with a lot of time in the field, they commonly……"

"Right. A veteran can read a monster's nature, or where a sniper is hiding, from the smallest clue."

"Yes. Exactly that."

"But that's a veteran on a battlefield, isn't it? The place where the postman read me—"

Hocheol's head turned of its own accord toward where she was pointing. A shabby wooden door.

"—was the entry of a brick house, with no threat in it at all. And I'm not a monster, or a zombie, or a sniper. I'm just an ordinary person the mail was addressed to."

"That's…… true?"

"This isn't a place where a battlefield veteran's instincts kick in."

Shin-hye drained what was left. This time Hocheol didn't drink with her.

In that moment, the bulb went out for good.

For an instant Hocheol remembered the talk he'd had with Jeongguk a few hours earlier, on the way over to persuade Shin-hye.

Only after hearing the whole long story had he belatedly looked annoyed. And then—

A faint light returned to the bulb. Hocheol emptied his cup.

"That's impossible unless you actually care about people."

"So…… the postman is warmer than he looks? You're saying he isn't an indifferent man?"

Hocheol had never once thought of Jeongguk as a warm person. Shin-hye picked up the two empty cups and rose, and as she set them neatly away in the cupboard she said,

"Someday he might become the indifferent man he wants to be. He's working awfully hard at it. At becoming indifferent."

Hocheol, sunk in thought, got slowly to his feet and made ready to leave at once.

"Well then…… thank you for the warm water!"

"Oh, right. The thing with An-na didn't work out."

"Uh…… pardon?"

"It's An-na you're interested in."

"P-pardon?"

"An-na said so."

"She did!?"

"She said the sergeant with the bad leg keeps staring at her."

"Agh!"

The sergeant with the bad leg began tearing at his hair.

"You should've made your move sooner."

"Ghk…… the rap wasn't ready yet……"

"Rap?"

"It's ready now, though……"

"What's ready?"

Hair a wreck, eyes gone pitiful—Shin-hye thought he looked a little cute like that.

But then—

"Do you happen to know anything about hip-hop……?"

"Hm?"

"Give me a beat."

The day of the break.

Everyone gathered in Captain Choi's office.

"Captain Choi, sir! I brought all of it!"

Hocheol set down a bundle of pistols disguised as miscellaneous scrap.

"I locked the armory door from the inside, just as ordered, so it'll take them a while to get it open!"

Originally Captain Choi was supposed to fetch them himself. But the captain's color was far worse than it had been yesterday, and Jeongguk had no wish to put him to any labor that cost strength.

Shin-hye suggested that Hocheol and the captain drop the ranks between them as well. The two of them still found it more comfortable to address each other by rank. Jeongguk felt the same about a form of address that kept a proper distance. In the end, everyone agreed to keep the old titles and the old chain of command.

Which left Shin-hye and Hocheol—who had already agreed to speak casually—in an awkward spot if they suddenly went back to honorifics.

"Um…… Miss Shin-hye, you can keep speaking as you are."

"R-right. Hocheol."

Everyone assumed the stiffness was about titles. In truth, the problem was the killer rap Hocheol had unveiled the night before.

"Postman. How does one go about inspecting these pistols?"

"I can handle it alone."

Every last pistol was a wreck. However long they'd been stuffed away, all of them wore a coat of dust. Even so, he had to find the ones that were halfway intact.

The odds this one holds to spec for as long as it takes to burn through a single magazine……

Not this one.

God, this dust……

Breathe in warehouse dust that had sat this long and you were asking to get sick. Better to be done with it.

He would have to split them in two. Outright trash-tier to the left. Anything still usable to the right.

While he worked, Sergeant Jeong drifted over and began, very casually, to handle the trash-tier pistols.

"Uh…… Postman, sir? What standard are you sorting these by?"

"The ones you're holding are the ones that won't work."

"You can tell that just from touching them for a second?"

Handle the same kind of object over and over, and the ability's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠activation sped up for a while. From the fifth pistol on, the probability showed itself the moment his hand made contact.

"It gets faster as you go."

"Even so, without pulling the trigger even once……"

"Then you pull it."

The trigger Sergeant Jeong drew caught on something and refused to come all the way back.

"It really is broken."

"Whoa…… Mind if I check one too?"

Jo An-na, who had been watching in a daze, came over and picked up one of the pistols sorted as trash-tier. The trigger snapped cleanly.

"Huh. This one works?"

She pulled it again, and again. A dull grind crept into the action, and on the eighth pull the mechanism seized completely.

"Whoa……!"

An-na picked up another. This time the trigger kept coming back with a light, cheerful snap.

"Oh, this one really seems to work?"

"My turn!"

Sergeant Jeong took the pistol from her and worked the trigger several times himself.

"This one really does work, I tell you?"

"Give it here."

A trash-tier piece whose trigger pulled cleanly. The usual fault, in a case like that, was—

Failure to feed.

That'd be it.

"Failure to feed."

"What? You'd have to actually load a round and fire it to know th—"

"Here."

He tossed Sergeant Jeong a single cartridge.

"If you don't believe me, shoot it."

And he went back to appraising the pistols.

"Uh…… isn't that a bit dangerous? And the ammunition's a waste, I tell you."

"I said it's a failure to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠feed."

"Even so, if it actually fires and makes a loud noise, then outside—"

"What, you scared?"

The man loaded the round as if he'd been dared.

"Not at all."

Watching, Captain Choi folded his arms.

"Hey…… shouldn't you be stopping him?" An-na whispered.

Had she shared even the slightest acquaintance with Sergeant Jeong, she would have stopped him herself. But the two of them had never exchanged a single word. A few awkward nods were the whole of it.

"Don't put a hole in the ceiling. Out the window, and fire at the sky."

"No, no, what I'm saying is you should stop—"

"Yes, sir! Understood."

Sergeant Jeong thrust his arm out the window at once. An-na covered her ears before she knew she was doing it.

Captain Choi and Jo Shin-hye, though, looked oddly at ease.

And then the gun failed to fire. A dead click, and nothing more.

"Huhh?"

Sergeant Jeong was flustered. Shin-hye was not.

"So it really is."

The reaction of someone who had expected exactly that.

"Give it here."

Captain Choi checked the inside of the slide on the pistol he'd been handed.

"……The round hung up. Failure to feed."

Everyone stared blankly at Jeongguk. Heedless of them, he kept sorting pistols at speed, his face grave. Look closely and he didn't seem to be breathing at all. The concentration was so absolute he might have forgotten how, and the rest of them could only watch, spellbound.

Jeongguk, meanwhile—

Agh! The dust is everywhere.

—wanted, very badly, to breathe.