Voice Guidance

Stay calm. Stay calm.

I set my chair upright and sat, putting on a sloppy act, as if I'd only been muttering in my sleep.

The officer cleared his throat until every eye was on him, then went on.

"I'll continue, then. Before the subway reconstruction can begin in earnest, preparatory work is required. We'll need your help. Our plan is—"

I listened to the explanation as it ran long. It didn't sound like empty boasting.

Which raised a question. Who was this officer, and what office did he belong to?

A face I'd never seen.

"Then everyone except the one person who did not raise a hand, please move to the next room. There we will formally—"

Cold. A Korean is supposed to be asked three times.

There was no way a subway reconstruction would go smoothly. If every attempt like this had succeeded the moment it was tried, we would already have clawed our way back to the civilization of the previous age — the one people only ever heard about in stories.

Still, if I got in at the start of the project, I might have one chance to ride a subway that managed, at the very least, a trial run.

Better to join.

If it turned sour, I could always pull out later through Bae Guk-jang.

The last person out shut the door with a thud.

In the meantime the officer had taken out a radio and was speaking with someone.

"Given how dangerous the job is, we will pay the maximum delivery fee. Yes. It's only a letter, so if it's lost we can simply write another... Yes. I'd be grateful if you handled it that way."

A blue radio.

A rental unit that worked only inside Headquarters. Not something just anyone could check out. His rank had to be decent.

"Then tomorrow I'll bring the letter to the postman myself... Yes."

Was he putting in a mail request?

The call ended, and the officer began getting ready to leave.

I could talk to him now.

"Ahem."

He didn't so much as glance my way.

"Khrm."

Still nothing.

"Hm!"

"If there is something wrong with your bronchial tubes, please get examined. Kindly refrain ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from spreading viruses."

What is this guy.

Sulking because I was the only one who didn't raise a hand?

"On second thought, it sounds like decent work. If I go to the next room, am I in?"

"You are not."

Look at this bastard.

"I was ordered to meet Woo Jungkook privately and deliver the mission. Convenient that you alone did not raise your hand."

He'd come knowing my face and my name.

I didn't like it.

"They also said Woo Jungkook would not play along easily. It is as I expected."

Some arrogant bastard had predicted what I'd do.

"Who said that?"

"I only do my own work."

"Not going to tell me?"

He pushed his glasses up and looked elsewhere. Irritating.

Thirty at the outside — a year or two older than me. His hair lay flat against his scalp, so the perfectly round shape of his skull showed straight through. I wanted to smack him once.

"I will begin the explanation."

"Out of nowhere?"

"Subway Line 5 is as follows—"

"Excuse me?"

Either he couldn't hear me or he didn't care. He launched straight into it. The man might have had a fetish for explanations.

"You, Woo Jungkook, will cover this area—"

Listening, I understood why it had to be delivered one-on-one.

Several operational zones were marked on the map. The one he was walking me through was Geumcheon District — a place locked down by a settlement that cooperated with the government. Whatever the mission, the difficulty dropped two or three grades there. Magic, practically.

People would fight each other for a posting like this. And they're singling me out to hand it over.

I could roughly see how it had happened.

Bae Guk-jang had pulled strings.

From his side of it — the side that skimmed my record — he couldn't shove me into a special mission just because it paid a lot of points. Jobs like that were usually dangerous. If I so much as died, he would have gutted the goose that laid the golden eggs.

"...That is all."

The man still looked thoroughly displeased. He didn't like me slipping off into a safe zone.

His problem, not mine. I only had to do my own work.

"Fine. We start right now, then?"

"No. This assignment will be given to someone else."

What the hell kind of nonsense was that?

"After you explained the whole thing?"

"Because I was ordered to explain it to you directly."

"You were probably also ordered to persuade me to take the mission."

"I was. Personnel assignment, however, is my own authority."

"So you'll explain it, but you won't give the job to me?"

"Correct."

What kind of bastard was this?

"Woo Jungkook, I looked into your record. It was remarkably clean."

Of course it was clean. I'd committed small sins. I hadn't lived by committing large ones. Probably.

"The problem was that it was too clean. Before you became a postman, it was as if you had never existed at all."

A blank record wasn't information just anyone could access. More pull than he looked like he had. But a blank page also meant he had never reached a position where he could see my real history.

"A person whose identity has been buried this thoroughly is one of two things. Either he possesses tremendous ability, or tremendous backing."

...Weren't those the same thing?

"And I utterly despise men who throw their weight around on the strength of their connections."

Look at him.

"Are you saying that to me, right now?"

"Ah. I am not speaking of you in particular. I am merely introducing myself. I dislike that slippery sort. You have been wearing an expression, since earlier, that says you are curious what kind of man I am, so I am telling you."

So that was why he didn't want to give me the mission.

Authority or not, if he refused to assign it to me, this bastard would be in a tight spot too. Bae Guk-jang wouldn't sit still. He was willing to take that hit. A rigid man.

"Block the road in front of me and you'll have a hard time getting your stake back. You'll be lucky if you're even still alive."

"Woo Jungkook, what you just said could be taken as a thr—"

"Ah. I thought I ought to introduce myself as well. You looked into my record and nothing came up, so you seemed curious about me."

"...Thank you for the introduction."

There was a set way to handle men like this. Do it by the book.

"Anyway, you've seen my record from after I became a postman?"

"I have. You have not once lost first place in performance."

"So your eyes do work."

"And you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠have not once failed to land the easy missions."

"Fine powers of observation, too."

"This matter is permitted only to the very best of the best. Even if the posting is a safe area, the principle does not change."

"You've never seen me take a dangerous job, so you don't trust my ability?"

He looked me straight in the eye, parted his lips a little, and closed them again. He thought for a moment. What he finally said was this.

"Then I will take it that you understand."

That wasn't what he'd really wanted to say. He'd probably wanted something along the lines of we don't need cowards.

The explanation fetishist left the room exactly as he was.

Stiff as a board.

Of course, not one thing he'd said was wrong. I had dodged every dangerous job in order to stay alive. That was the truth. Looked at that way, he was doing his own work properly. He wasn't a bad man. The trouble was only that he did it too properly.

Then I'd have to show him properly, too.

He'd definitely been requesting a mail delivery.

I'd show him, clear as day, what an express delivery looked like.

It was rare for my dreams to turn vicious two nights in a row. Maybe that was why the images stayed sharp even after I woke.

"Hah... You're tougher than I thought..."

"Shut your mouth."

A worthless number.

Probability.

Could it be inverted?

If only probability could be inverted.

A dream of an ability that grew easier the harder the work became.

A nightmare.

It had to be the bloodstained letter I'd put away in the cabinet. According to a superstition that circulated among postmen, you didn't keep a dead man's mail if you had no intention of delivering it. You burned it. Otherwise the nightmares kept coming.

The way I saw it, I'd had the nightmare because I knew the superstition. Nothing scares people quite like one.

Bae Guk-jang looked troubled by the request. It was the first time I'd asked him for anything like it.

"A job that's already been assigned? A hard one, at that, and you mean to snatch it? How does that make any sense?"

I'd spent the whole morning asking around until I found which postman had taken the delivery the explanation fetishist had requested. The job he'd put in while holding that blue radio.

I met the postman who'd taken the delivery, and we agreed I would do it instead. I'd arranged it so the man had no choice — a sudden case of the runs. All that remained was Bae Guk-jang's paperwork.

Of course he didn't believe my explanation. A stomachache was a thin story. If he'd been that stupid, he never would have made director. In the end, though, he'd have no choice but to approve it.

"Snatching the mission? There's a prettier way to put it. Covering for a colleague with unavoidable circumstances. Something along those lines."

"No, that's the strange part to begin with. He was perfectly fine until this morning. Why a sudden stomachache? We all eat the same rations."

"Maybe he snuck off and ate a rat. There was one that kept showing up at the end of this corridor, wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠there?"

"...Was there? I never saw it."

"Right? He ate it, so of course you wouldn't."

What the man had actually consumed was coffee I'd gotten in a trade at the settlement. Shove a little coffee into someone and there was very little they wouldn't do. His performance of gastric distress had been impressive, but the diagnosis Teacher Myeong wrote was what sealed it. Not that she'd been bought off with something as cheap as coffee. She'd taken a cigarette between her lips instead.

"Nngh... This mission is dangerous..."

The paperwork wasn't why Bae Guk-jang looked troubled. He was afraid I'd die. There he went again, a man in his fifties pulling that revolting face. How did such a pitiful expression suit him so well?

"I'll take it that you'll handle it properly, then."

"Jungkook! At least have a cup of hot wat—"

I held up my residential-zone access card.

"I'm busy. I'm out of time."

I geared up at once. A high-difficulty mission came with a fat survival pack, but only a fool walked out carrying nothing but that. The harder the job, the more variables.

The postmen's ready room ran a barter twenty-four hours a day. I traded a few rounds for rations and water that had come in fresh that morning, and took one extra hunter-issue pistol magazine, just in case.

By the rules, a postman could not enter Headquarters carrying military or hunter equipment. Get caught, and it was immediate execution. But there were always ways.

"Personal equipment, received."

I put the hunter-issue pistol, the spare magazine, and the officer's folding shield — the kind that mounted on the arm — into the bag and handed it to the checkpoint agent.

"Have a good day today too, Jungkook!"

The woman at the checkpoint called my name and winked, the sign that she'd logged me. The signal that it would be handled as agreed.

Combat gear was under special control, so before any body search it had to be turned over at a special checkpoint. After that my body went through several separate searches on its own, and by the time I reached the Headquarters lobby—

Whatever was inside the equipment bag I'd handed over, it always came back cleared and rode out on the conveyor belt. Coming into Headquarters worked the same way.

I also collected the red Core I'd left in the Core repository. An unappraised Core had to be kept safely in the repository. I'd scrubbed it hard, and it still seemed to smell of Gyeongsu's blood.

At last today's client came into view.

"..."

The moment he spotted me, the explanation fetishist looked away.

"Hello. We meet again today?"

"...Yes. Hello."

He returned the greeting while staring off at some distant mountain.

"That letter in your hand. That's the item for delivery, isn't it?"

"I'm busy at the moment. I would appreciate it if you minded your own business."

"I'm busy too. So hurry up and give me the letter."

"...?"

I showed him the delivery request, stamped with Bae Guk-jang's approval.

"Ah?"

"Hand it over."

He snatched the letter back out of my reach and hid it behind him.

"What are you doing?"

"No, no, no... No. I definitely confirmed the name of the postman who was to deliver this. What is all this?"

"Something unavoidable came up for him, so I'm the substitute."

"What?"

"We don't need a long explanation, do we? The authorization went through properly. Oh — don't tell me you just don't like me taking the job?"

But he wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

"It was changed through official procedure. You might call it principle."

"..."

"Wow. This really is a dangerous mission. Anyone who could finish it about two days ahead of the deadline would have to be seriously skilled. What do you think?"

A stickler for principle, walled in on every side. Which meant that if I proved my ability, he would have no choice but to acknowledge me, even if he didn't like me. He was that rigid.

"...What is the reason. Pride?"

"I'm not sure what you mean. It's just a job."

With a sour look he handed over the letter and adjusted his glasses. The envelope was gaudy with color, the required fields written in a cute hand.

"Mail received."

The job had begun.

I headed out of the building in a hurry. Getting into a full kit for the first time in a while had already cost me too much time. Just before the exit, several unmanned checkpoints scanned me in turn and spilled their set announcements.

The explanation fetishist tossed me a line that wasn't special in the least.

"Let's meet again alive."

Manners, for someone leaving Headquarters.

I heard the click of his shoes as he turned back to his place. Then the automatic door at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the exit opened, and the sun high overhead stabbed my eyes. Behind me, the door shut with a clank.

The last checkpoint's voice guidance followed.