Seven Zeros
The alarm rolled through Headquarters.
An air-raid warning.
I didn't remember it ever being this loud. Had they swapped out the sirens?
Either way, the family reunion ended here. It was time to move.
"We ought to get back to Headquarters. Quickly."
Not because it was dangerous. Thanks to the railgun, this whole stretch stayed safe even if the bombardment came down. The problem was that Headquarters would seal itself. Firing the railgun to intercept the Giant Rods cut the building's power for a long stretch, and without electricity parts of the security system went dead, so entry was banned for the duration. I had to get back inside before that happened.
Which left another question. Could I even walk these people in with me?
"Can Miss Shin-hye and Miss An-na enter Headquarters too?"
"If they're with me, yes."
As expected, Jo Yong-han had a way. In that case, there was one more favor worth asking.
"Then, while we're going in—"
"If you mean you'd like Mr. Jeong Hocheol brought in as well, understood."
Yong-han turned toward Hocheol, and his face was remarkably gentle. It didn't suit him at all.
"Jo Yong-han. I hear you were a great help with the escape. Thank you."
"Jeong Hocheol, sir! A pleasure to meet you, sir!"
Warm and fuzzy. Nothing like my first meeting with Yong-han.
"I'll see to the arrangements, so there's no need to worry."
"Thank you, truly! To think I'd meet yet another benefactor! My life really has been blessed, I tell you, sir!"
Hocheol had clearly decided this man was a decent sort. I'd find a moment later and let him know the guy was a pain in the ass.
The sisters had wiped their tears and pulled themselves together. The three siblings seemed to be carrying some long, tangled story, but it wasn't mine to sort out. My ears were too sharp for their own good, so I'd caught the gist whether I wanted it or not.
On the way to Headquarters, Yong-han launched into an explanation for the first time in a while.
"……That is all. To summarize, they can be processed as specially recruited personnel and granted entry. I will resolve the remaining procedures on my end. Any questions?"
Explaining things, he sounded exactly like the Jo Yong-han I knew. And of course the first question came from Jo Shin-hye.
"So how are we supposed to live once we're in there?"
"Putting you and An-na in the same department will be difficult. You'll be assigned separately. Both posts are indoor duty."
In other words, work. Obvious. Anyone who couldn't pull their own weight had no business in Headquarters, and Shin-hye had medical skill, so she'd be welcomed. An-na was the problem. Well. He'd probably already thought that through.
What I needed looked after was something else.
"Slot Hocheol in somewhere too."
"Hm. I'm sorry, but placing three people into indoor posts at once is beyond even—"
I'd expected that to be impossible. Which was why I'd thought of something else.
"Doesn't have to be indoor. Postman is fine."
"……You came in having planned it that way from the start?"
"Yes or no."
"And if I said no, what were you going to do?"
"Then you'd make it a yes."
Yong-han gazed at me for a moment and pushed his glasses up.
"Don't tell me you haven't considered a single method besides the one where I solve it for you."
"Of course not."
A deep sigh climbed up out of the pit of his stomach.
"……I'll see what I can do."
"So it'll get done."
I'd trusted that it would. A massive project to move mail by the Subway. The man choosing the postmen who would take part in it. The man with the authority to strike even the number-one postman—the very one Director Bae had tried to plant in the project—off the roster. Someone like that could surely scrape together a single postman slot.
It wasn't even a prestigious post. Postman was the worst-treated job in Headquarters. I'd gotten his family out and dragged them all the way here. He owed me at least that much.
Hocheol's going to have plenty of work to do for me from here on.
There had been one problem with serving directly under Director Bae. I never mixed with the other postmen, so my information always lagged behind, and information was survival. I'd put up with it because I had no desire to rub shoulders with the rest of them. Now I had Hocheol. From here on, he was going to have to be my eyes and ears……
"Miss An-na? You wouldn't happen to know what hip-hop is, would you, ma'am?"
"Huh? Hee-pop?"
"Then you don't know rap either, I take it, ma'am?"
"A level?"
Worrying.
Thanks to Yong-han's arrangements, all of us passed the main gate without a hitch. Neither the sisters nor Hocheol showed a deserter's record on the biometric scan.
A first visit to Headquarters always meant complicated procedures and a long wait at the counter. I finished far sooner than they did, but next to Yong-han it was nothing. The Future Technology Department was an elite posting where every last member was treated as a VIP, so he had already cleared processing through the VIP window a full hour ahead of me.
There were far too many rumors about Future Technology, and I didn't believe them unless I had to. The representative one claimed the department could communicate with Geofront. As if a place like that could exist.
For the moment, we agreed to wait in Yong-han's office until the sisters and Hocheol finished their paperwork. He had a private office. The directory plate disguised the department under the name Water Purification Facilities Team.
"I am deeply grateful for the way you resolved this matter."
"You don't have to thank me over and over."
"That was the last thank-you."
He always had to tack on something unnecessary.
"Please make yourself comfortable."
"There is absolutely no way to be comfortable."
The office was a disaster zone.
"There's a chair right there."
A few chairs did sit beside the conference table. Every one of them was piled so high it might as well have been a small desk.
"Clear a spot and sit. Surely you aren't expecting me to tidy every last thing for you."
Why were there so many infuriating people in the world?
"Mind if I hit you just once?"
"Pardon?"
"Ah. Maybe I said that too quietly. I asked if I can really clear this however I like and sit down."
"I don't mind. I can restore all of it."
"Why in the world would you restore this……"
Arguing was too much trouble. I scattered everything on the nearest chair in every direction and moved it somewhere else. Go on, then. Restore that.
Eeeeng—!
One hour until the air raid. Proceed at once to your designated shelter.
"Mr. Jungkook, you may remain here. This office also functions as a shelter. Unofficially."
VIPs really were born lucky. Trekking to a shelter every time the alarm went off had been a job in itself.
"They must have replaced the sirens. Loud enough to carry all the way out to the edge of the protected zone."
"The sirens are the same. They merely widened the broadcast range."
"You already knew?"
"This office receives air-raid information on a direct line. Unofficially."
"Anyone actually living by the official rules must be doing it out of pure misery."
"One lives because one must. What else is there?"
"Mind if I hit you just once?"
"What was that? Speak up. I can't hear you."
"It was an unofficial remark."
Even so, Yong-han wasn't an unpleasant man, as these things went. There was no elite's pride coming off him. He was, of course, insufferable in other ways.
"Incidentally, why haven't you asked for the body armor back?"
Because it was heavy.
"Well. I figured you'd give it back when the time came."
"I'll return it now. The craftsmanship is excellent."
Time to ease into the next demand.
"The tragedy of having to keep hauling such a fine piece around because there's nowhere to put it."
"……What is it this time."
"I'm short on locker space."
"And?"
"Expand it a little."
A postman was issued exactly one locker, standard size. No amount of seniority changed that.
"……I am very grateful that you got my sister and An-na out."
"I know."
"How many more requests are you planning to make?"
"Hm. I haven't counted."
"……."
I had no intention of milking him until he started thinking of me as something vile. We were going to keep seeing each other through the project. Even a man who kept public and private strictly separate would become a problem if I clung to him like a parasite.
"I'll stop at the locker. Larger than the one I'm using now, and with tighter security, if you can manage it."
"Hmm……"
Yong-han folded his arms and thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Very well. As for a large storage space—"
He glanced around and pointed to one side of the office.
"Use the cabinets over there."
He wanted me to keep my things in this office?
"Even I have no official means of expanding a postman's storage. There are eyes watching. This is the best I can do."
It was true. Lockers used by other postmen stood in a row on either side of mine. Enlarge mine in place and it would definitely cause trouble. I'd only wondered whether he could add space somewhere else, and here he was offering his own office outright.
"So I only come by and use the cabinets when you're in?"
"I'll register your fingerprint on the door, so you may enter even when I am out."
A kindness that didn't suit him?
"Even if I am absent, there are always eyes on this office, so you won't be able to get up to anything else."
Cameras in a private office, then. Not the sort of machine you saw every day. Handling classified work came with a lot of tiresome corners. Having to live somewhere a machine was watching—didn't that feel unpleasant?
"Those eyes are going to see me coming and going all the time. That won't be a problem?"
"I'll report upstairs that you are a postman I have recruited as an asset."
So no problem, then. The cabinets came in every size imaginable, though. If I was going to use one, I wanted the biggest.
"You may use all of them. You should have storage to spare now."
All of them. I'd have room to spare, all right. I could stock the bulky goods I'd never bothered handling before—liquor and the like. It wasn't only a matter of piling up more property. The wider the range of goods I could move, the easier deals became on the black market.
But why was he being this generous?
"And since you have become a recruited postman anyway, I would like you to take my mail deliveries from time to time."
There it was. Not free after all.
"When you come to use the cabinets, I will occasionally entrust you with some mail."
Private deliveries, handed off in a space no one else's eyes would catch. Was that it?
"You want me running errands?"
"I will compensate you properly. It is a personal request, so you will not earn merit points, but the pay will be more than enough to make the points irrelevant."
I accumulated property for one reason only: to survive delivery work. Money bought gear and consumables, and those raised the odds of staying alive. What I actually needed were the points earned by making those deliveries. To reach Geofront.
"I'm not idle enough to be summoned here and there. If it's money, I already earn a fair amount."
"I will pay in advance. For the next several deliveries, I will give you the fee right now."
Yong-han opened a safe at once and brought out a slip of paper. A gift certificate, at a glance. Usable only inside Headquarters, and traceable wherever it was spent.
"Living as a VIP must have dulled your instincts. If a postman like me starts throwing gift certificates around, people get suspicious."
"It came out of a special activities fund, so it is not an ordinary certificate. This one cannot be traced."
He forced it into my hand. If the spending couldn't be traced, then yes, that particular problem disappeared. But this wasn't an offer I could accept for a few coins. Once in a while might have been one thing. Doing it over and over would waste far too much time.
No matter how many zeros were printed on the thing. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
"I will serve you with love, dear customer! Any parcel, fast and accurate! A postman of the Republic of Korea, delivered within a week! I. Love. You."
"……."
Yong-han, who had been scowling hard, opened his mouth a beat late.
"Someone who actually uses that greeting…… This is the first time I have seen one."
Eeeeng—!
Twenty minutes until the air raid.
In five minutes, all power inside the complex will be cut.
While Jungkook crammed the body armor into a cabinet, Yong-han moved to the next room and shut the door.
It looked like a room used for storage. In truth, it was a secret communications space. The radio kept there was unit forty-two.
"Yes. A civilian specially recruited today. Jeong Hocheol. Please assign him as a postman."
Everything he had promised Jungkook could be settled with a single transmission.
"That's correct. Woo Jungkook. The postman with the number-one record. Please authorize his access to my office, and—"
But for Yong-han, none of this was easy. The higher-ups were not granting these demands for free. In exchange, he would have to swallow a murderous overtime schedule for the time being. He simply was not the sort to let that show.
"Then I'll—"
He was on the verge of cutting the line.
"About Woo Jungkook, you mean?"
His superior had asked what kind of man the rumored number-one postman was, and—
"Woo Jungkook is……"
He began to sort through everything he had come to feel about Jungkook so far.