The Butcher
First, I told him about the dead postman, Kim-ssi.
Clock-out Man listened in silence.
"So you're chasing those bastards because of a core."
He'd gone straight to what I was after.
"Something like that."
"You really think it's an ability core?"
"We can hope."
Whatever the dead postman Kim-ssi had been carrying, the odds were high it was an ability core. A postman wouldn't have had any trouble getting a core appraised at headquarters, and the Physiognomist had said the failure rate on Kim-ssi's ran as high as ninety-eight percent. If that was a certified appraiser's result, it was worth trusting, and a number that vicious all but confirmed an ability core.
"Still, there's no guarantee they're even holding on to it, is there?"
He had a point. Someone might already have used it, or sold it off. Even so, it was too early to quit. It was the sort of core that would kill you if you tried to use it, and a rare enough piece that selling it for what it was worth wouldn't be easy either. With no proper channel to move it, there was a fair chance they were still just sitting on the thing.
"No guarantee. We try anyway."
If there was even a sliver of hope, jumping in was the right call. An ability core you could pick up easily had never existed in the first place.
"And it isn't only about recovering the core. This whole stretch of ground will settle down again as a bonus."
Geumcheon District was usually famous for being safe. Right now, though, one raider attack after another had left it unsettled, and if the rumors had reached headquarters, the situation was serious.
"Postmen have to keep the peace these days too?"
"If the peace doesn't hold, the mail stops moving. I don't care, but most of the other postmen are soft."
"So this is for the other postmen?"
"I'm in the middle of a project. For it to succeed, postman work in Seoul has to keep running smoothly."
"So it's so you come out ahead."
"Obviously."
"And here I thought you'd grown some humanity you never had. What a relief."
"I'm not about to grow any humanity. Why's that a relief?"
"If a relentless bastard like you grew a thing like that, there'd be no saving you. You'd skip sleep and go poking through the whole country, dead set on sweeping up every last piece of trash."
So he meant my life would get harder. A delicate sort of silver lining.
"So what's this information you need?"
"The leaders, first. I heard that raider band has two of them, but the client was still just one man, wasn't he?"
I remembered the impression those two had left.
"One of you leaves and a fresh one shows up? What's the occasion for you government gentlemen today?"
The one with the vicious face and the short way of talking. His face might as well have had I'm the boss written across it.
"Hello, Postman. Where are you headed? Spare us a little fee and we could even show you the way. Care to make a deal?"
The other had talked at length. A mild-looking face, clear eyes. I'd thought it then, too. Usually the one like that is the real son of a bitch.
"Two leaders?"
Clock-out Man hadn't known. If he'd only ever met the one client, that tracked. The raiders wouldn't have had any reason to volunteer that there were two bosses.
"The one you met had a pleasant face, didn't he?"
"How'd you know?"
"I've seen them myself."
"Yeah? Then this is easier to explain. Thanks to that face, I never even thought they were raiders. We talked for ages before he finally let slip that the point was hitting a settlement. You should've seen how surprised I was."
"You weren't surprised by how good the pay was?"
"What do you take me for."
"Then why'd you take the job?"
"Because it was far too much money to deserve a scolding."
The pay Clock-out Man named came to a considerable stock of magazines. Of course they'd made the offer because looting a settlement would bring in several times that.
"His name?"
"Don't know the real one. All I know is they call him Mother inside the band."
Well. It was a world where anything could happen. A man could be a mother.
The other leader wasn't Father, was he? If he really was, that was a disappointing sense of style.
"You called the client that too?"
"No. He wouldn't tell me a thing, so I just called him the client. I dug the Mother nickname up on my own afterward."
The pleasant-faced client was likely playing the brains of the outfit, which would make the vicious one the fighter. An organization couldn't keep two people in the role of its brain for long. Sooner or later it always got pared down to one.
"By the way, bro, what name are you using these days?"
"Woo Jungkook. Remember that one from here on."
"Hm!"
"What."
"And your real name is still...?"
"Not planning to tell you."
"You glaze that name in ammunition or something?"
"When the ammo market crashes, I'll tell you then."
That day was never coming. In truth, giving someone the two characters of my given name wasn't hard. The problem was the surname. Not a single person on this earth knew I carried the name Son, except the Old Man. Word getting out that I shared a surname with him was something I wanted no part of. I wasn't telling anyone. Ever.
"So how far along was the job?"
"Investigation's long finished, and so's the raid plan. They were just waiting on the moment. Explosives are already set on the defenses, and they've bought a few people on the inside. The way things stand, it succeeds no matter what."
"When's the moment they're waiting on?"
"Two days from now. A large search party is set to leave the settlement that day. They're aiming for after as many of the defenders as possible have pulled out."
A settlement sending out a large search party when the mood was this bad? That didn't make sense.
"You work some kind of magic on them?"
"Bingo. We used the people we bought to spread a false report that the rumored raider band had been wiped out. The big search party is going to finish cleaning up a settlement the raiders already hit."
Clock-out Man said he'd spent the entire large advance, paid up front, on buying insiders. A raid finished by the raiders and by Clock-out Man alike pouring resources in without holding back. That had been the secret behind their unbroken string of wins.
But that ends now.
Because His Excellency the Executioner had arrived.
"Listen carefully to what I'm about to say."
I laid out for Clock-out Man the operation that would sweep the raiders away. Two minutes was all the explanation needed.
"Mother..."
"We're nearly there, so hang on!"
The raider search party had set out as seven. Now there were only five. The trouble had been a monster they'd run into during the search. Two lives had vanished in the blink of an eye, and the rest had fled without managing anything like a real fight.
"You're disappointed, aren't you...?"
"Don't say that. What matters is that you survived."
Mother's search had ended in total failure. Someone would have to answer for it.
"I'll take the blame..."
"Stop. Don't talk. Just hold on, and don't waste your strength."
Four of the five survivors were in bad shape, and one of them was critical. A cord was cinched around his right thigh to stop the bleeding, and the leg that should have been below it was gone. The other three had lost fingers, or had arms twisted badly out of true. The only one still whole, without a scratch, was Mother.
"Of all things, my leg... I'm sorry, Mother."
"None of that weak talk. Just think about getting back to the main force. Nothing matters more than your life."
"Mother... Understood. I'll hold on."
"That's it. When we get back, we'll grill some meat together. No—I'll grill it for you. All right?"
"Yes...!"
Mother urged the badly wounded man on and hurried them back toward the main force. For a drifter with no settlement, losing a leg was as good as a death sentence, and from the others' side it was never easy to keep nursing a critical case who was nothing but dead weight. Even so, he was dragging the man along, desperate to keep him alive, because there was hope that a decent settlement would exist before long. Becoming a settler meant you could go on living even with a broken body. They only needed to succeed at looting a settlement one more time. They meant to take the money they'd gathered and settle somewhere the government's hand didn't reach, and that moment was right in front of them.
"Everyone, wait here a moment."
Partway back, Mother went into an abandoned building alone. A short while later, having looked the place over, he came out again.
"This will do. Let's rest a little."
At Mother's declaration of a break, they all went inside the ruin and sank down. Hauling heavy loads on injured bodies had been bad enough. Dragging a critical case on top of it had finished them.
"God, I might actually live..."
"Hah. We're almost there."
"I really thought that was how I was going to die."
"My leg... I can't feel it."
"Get a grip. Your leg's gone. Of course you can't feel it."
"It hurt until a little while ago..."
"If it doesn't hurt, that's good. Just hold on a little longer. We're almost there."
A little farther and they would rejoin the main force. It wasn't a situation that called for a long rest.
"I can't even look Mother in the eye..."
"Same here. It sits heavy."
"He's trying so hard not to scold us that it makes me feel even worse."
Mother, meanwhile, was not with his men.
"Where'd Mother go?"
"He stayed outside. I think he's standing watch."
"Mother ought to rest too."
"This is going to sound wrong, but we carried his load as well. It makes sense for the one who saved the most strength to keep watch."
"That sounds a little disrespectful."
"That's why I started with 'this is going to sound wrong.' I didn't mean anything else."
"Oh, really?"
"Don't pick a pointless fight, you little shit."
"Anyway, I finally feel like I might live. Hoo."
They had lost two comrades, but the relief that they themselves had survived was loosening the tension bit by bit.
"Speaking of which, what was that about a postman?"
"I was wondering too. What happened that made Mother dig into it like that? I've never seen him that way."
"Nothing much. I saw a postman shoot two vagrants dead."
"Vagrants?"
"Looked like a two-man robbery crew. One of them was a sniper. So I gave the usual scouting report, and up to then it was fine. But after he met the mercenary and came back, he started digging again. Mother's mood then was... how do I put it. Like..."
"Like what."
"Like he was tense? No. Afraid? Something like that?"
"What the hell is he saying?"
"This guy still doesn't know Mother. Hey, you idiot. That man has nothing in the world to fear. I'd believe you if you said he was born with something wrong in his brain and can't even understand what fear is."
"I'm just saying that's how it felt."
"From now on, don't listen when that bastard talks about his feelings."
"I said what I felt. Quit bitching."
"Yeah, sure. I said what I felt too."
They had sat down to rest with the tension gone, and before they knew it they were all lying flat. As their bodies went slack, their mouths slowed with them. The talk thinned, and one by one their eyes began to close.
"Getting sleepy..."
"We walked a lot."
"And the loads were heavy."
"Weird. I'm sleepy too..."
"What's weird about it. We went through hell, so... suddenly I'm... tired..."
"Sleep..."
They dropped, one after another, as if they had promised it to each other, and fell asleep at the same moment. Once all of them were under, the talk vanished, and the inside of the ruin went quiet in an instant.
Mother, sensing the change, showed himself. A gas mask covered his face, and a makeshift apron cut from a spare shirt hung from his neck. The mask was to keep the colorless, odorless sleep gas filling the building off him. The apron was gear he always wore when he handled meat. He hated getting blood on his clothes that much.
Steel whispered free. Mother drew a butcher's knife. It was time to settle who would answer for the failed search, and he started with the one closest to him.
The knife worked back and forth, slow and steady, opening the throat the way a man slices meat on a cutting board. The moment the blade met neck bone, Mother drew it back at once. Blood ran down through the split hide. Unhurried, as if there were no need to rush, he cut every throat in turn.
And so each of them bore the responsibility they had been meant to bear. In truth, it should have been done hours ago. Their lives had only been extended a little while because Mother still needed porters.
Inside the gas mask, his breath came tight and cramped. He took the apron from around his neck and wiped the blood from the butcher's knife. The cleaned blade went back into the bag, and the apron, now a rag, was left beside the corpses.
Then he began, one pack at a time, to shoulder the bags strewn across the floor. It was too much for one person, but the main force was close enough that he had decided to haul it somehow. With every pack gathered, just before he stepped out of the ruin, he looked the inside over one last time, carefully. It wasn't that he had any interest in the subordinates who had died. He was only checking whether he had missed anything. After a close look, Mother reached his conclusion. He had taken everything worth taking, and left everything worth leaving.
Inside the mask, the breath came tight again.
The operation to sweep the raiders away. After a full two minutes of explanation, Clock-out Man slapped his knee.
"Simple enough to be moving."
"You can do it?"
What he had to do was simple. Move the settlement raid, set for two days out, up by a day. In other words, make them hit tomorrow.
"Just tell them to move the settlement raid up a day... Doesn't look hard."
Right. The hard part was already over. Getting Clock-out Man to break the contract was far more difficult than wiping out the raiders.
"Then get some sleep."
I lay back and looked up at the night sky. Still bright.
"No. I'll start right now."
On top of the overtime, Clock-out Man chose an all-nighter.
"Why work that hard."
"A schedule change ought to go out fast. Even more if you're moving it up. Learn how the working world operates, bro."
"Hm. And where do they teach that?"
"It's me! I'll teach you for one round an hour."
"A proper member of society doesn't fall for a hustle like that."
"Fast learner."
He got up at once and started packing. Clock-out Man was right. Telling them as fast as possible that the plan had changed was the smart move—not out of any consideration for the raiders, but so they would move exactly the way my plan needed. They would need time to prepare too. I had only held off because I wanted to protect his sleep.
A considerate employer, and a laborer who doesn't blink at working through the night.
This company was going to make it.
"You get some sleep, bro. See you at noon tomorrow at Toenail Farm."
Toenail Farm. That was the name of the settlement the raiders were after. There was a tower in the plaza raised from collected nail clippings, and they called the place a farm because, literally, an enormous farm stood there. A new crop was growing on it, one that had not existed in the old era.
"Oh, and don't forget. When this job's done, you promised you'd tell me."
The story of how I had first come to use an ability core. The Old Man, and the Subway.
"I haven't forgotten."
"Okay. Then see you alive."
"Yeah. See you alive."
Not long after Clock-out Man left, dawn broke. The day of the reckoning had come.