Starting with the Old Man
At last, it was time to take care of the job Jo Yong-han had left in my hands.
The Subway Reconstruction Project. For all practical purposes, the most important assignment there was.
The objective was to reach the settlement at the far edge of Geumcheon District and bring back the blueprints. That was the whole of the briefing, so I had no idea what kind of blueprints he meant. I could only assume they had something to do with the subway facilities.
Clock-out Man was interested, too.
"The subway, huh... Is something like that even possible?"
"I'm telling you, it already existed back in the old era."
"No, I'm asking if it can actually be rebuilt. Who's even pushing this?"
"The Future Technology Department."
The department that burned through more of headquarters' budget than any other. They never published the exact figure, but that they spent the most was common knowledge.
"Yeah? Then maybe it isn't a completely harebrained plan."
"No guarantee they don't do harebrained things. There's even a rumor they kidnap hunters with rare abilities and dissect them."
"Why's that harebrained? Sounds perfectly plausible."
A few years living out in the world, and he'd seen plenty he was never meant to see.
"Anyway, this is something I can handle alone. You should go look for work."
"I don't have any right now. That monster-sniffing gig Yeo-jin asked me for—yesterday was the last of it."
"No work, and that's the end of it? You go find work. That's Freelance 101."
"I've still got business with you, bro."
Tch. Here I'd hoped he'd forgotten. He hadn't.
There was a story I'd promised to tell him once the raiders were wiped out.
"That story's pretty long."
The story of how I became a hunter. The circumstances of the first time I used a Core.
"Long is fine. I'll tag along while I listen, yeah?"
If I wanted to shake him off quickly, I'd have to boil it down and give him nothing but the bones.
"You tell it exactly the way you told Yeo-jin. I'm gonna check later."
Damn it.
The place with the blueprints wasn't all that far. If I meant to get through my story before we arrived, I'd have to keep my mouth moving. Still, there was one thing I wanted to ask before I started.
"Let me ask you one thing. I asked Min Yeo-jin the same thing before I told her."
"What?"
"Why do you want to know my story?"
You don't ask lightly how someone came to use an Ability Core. Nobody walks away from that with a happy memory. More often than not, it's something horrific they'd sooner never recall.
"The reason's obvious. First off, it sounds fun—"
I couldn't deny it made for an interesting story. Awakening an ability in the worst crisis of your life—hard for that not to be interesting. But fun wasn't the whole of it.
"And I figure we're close enough to talk about that kind of thing? And also—"
What mattered was confirming you were close enough to share a story like that. Among hunters, whether you'd traded that story or not was a fairly serious measure of friendship. Even so, you couldn't easily ask for a tale that stirred up trauma. So, as a rule—
"I told you mine ages ago, didn't I? So now it's my turn to listen."
You offered your own story first, and only then did you hear the other person's. Min Yeo-jin and Clock-out Man had both told me theirs of their own accord. I'd only listened. I'd never given them mine.
"Nothing special about that reason. Here I thought you had some reason you absolutely had to hear it."
"Hmm..."
Was there really no other reason?
"What reason did Yeo-jin give you?"
"That's a secret."
It wasn't actually a secret.
I just didn't want to say it.
"If I had to put it into words, I'm less curious about the situation where you used the Ability Core, and more about how you even came to have a Core in the first place."
"Hm?"
"I figure you got your ability when you were pretty young."
He'd seen it exactly right. I'd thought anyone with a sharp eye would notice.
"I was young, yeah."
Rookie hunters usually struggled to use their abilities. Just grasping every condition of activation took time, and one slip in control could turn into an accident. Even after you'd built up a fair amount of experience, wielding an ability with any real skill was no easy thing. But I had become a hunter only after I'd already mastered mine. That was also why I'd been able to pin on an instructor's badge younger than anyone.
"What I want to know is how you got your hands on an Ability Core that precious at that age, and how you ended up using it."
Right. A curiosity that cut uncomfortably close to the heart of it.
"I'm only telling this once. No use saying you didn't catch it."
"Yep!"
But there was a problem. Sorry as I was, I couldn't tell him all of it honestly. There were parts I had to keep hidden. Even so, while I talked, I would have to call the truth up in my head. Only after the truth had surfaced could I cover the parts I wanted covered. That was the painful part—having to face that time again, exactly as it had been.
A story that starts with the Old Man and ends with the subway.
I was sure it had been a long time since I'd last recalled it. And yet, the moment I decided to remember, it came back in an instant. As if it had been waiting for me.
A cabin, raised deep in the rugged mountains. The Old Man's handiwork. A place this hard for people to live, he always said, was precisely a safe place. The Old Man was always like that. Seek out hardship on purpose. That, he taught, was the secret of survival. I believed the teaching. And yet, somehow, that secret of survival had not protected us. Now only three of us barely remained.
"Oppa?"
"It's cold. Keep the door shut."
"Want me to help?"
"I'm fine, so hurry up and keep it shut."
"Okaaay."
Too much snow had piled up. I should have cleared it long before this. I'd let my guard down. When the Old Man got back, I was going to hear about it.
"Hyung...?"
"It's cold. Keep the door shut."
"...Let me hel—"
"I'm fine, so hurry up and keep it shut."
Three siblings, without a drop of shared blood between them. Once, there had been six. Even then, not one of them had been kin by blood. Six orphans had become six siblings under the Old Man. They had become a family. They'd all borne different surnames, but every one of them came to inherit the Old Man's—Son. Even so, the two syllables of their given names stayed as they were, so it never felt entirely strange. Which is to say, I never felt as if I'd become someone else.
"Hoo..."
I barely finished clearing the snow heaped in the front yard before the Old Man's return. Not because I'd been quick. Because he was late. The operation had dragged on, no question. Lately, that happened often. The Old Man, soon to turn fifty, was right on the verge of his dream. A little more score, and he would be able to enter the Geofront.
A hunter, gathering points to step into the Geofront.
Everyone had written it off as hope used for torture. Since the point system began, not a single person had succeeded. Gathering points meant going out on operations without rest. It meant brushing death again and again. So hunters without the skill never even attempted it. And hunters with the skill died of a single failure, even after hundreds of successes.
"Oppa, give me your hand."
Until last year, I couldn't even have imagined Heeju growing into a kid this sharp. Twelve this year. It would still have been fine if she were a child.
"They're pure ice. Don't your hands hurt?"
All a child needed in order to grow was one year of time, and the deaths of three of the family. Becoming three siblings out of six was no different. Three deaths, and there was nothing you couldn't become.
"You're five years too early to be worrying about me."
"Five years? Why five?"
"Because you need five years before you're my age."
"But by then you'll be five years older, too."
"Then even then, it'll be five years too early."
"What kind of answer is that."
What kind? That's what family is.
"And you're six years too early."
The youngest.
"Noona's warming Hyung's hands till he gets back—mmph, mmph."
"Shh. Shh."
"Mmph... ptoo, ptoo. Ugh, salty."
No wonder my hands had felt warm.
"Squirt, you give me your hand, too."
"Huh?"
We didn't call the youngest by name. The Old Man had started it. He always called him Squirt. Probably because the boy was unusually small and frail. We called him Squirt only because he was our cute youngest.
"See, like this. If the three of us hold hands, we're all warm together."
"...Oppa, have you been reading fairy tales lately?"
"Was it that bad?"
"Yeah. It tickles. Squirt, give it a scratch."
In truth, on the far side of calling the youngest Squirt, there was probably this as well.
The awareness that we weren't really a family of shared blood.
The same way I called the Old Man the Old Man. Squirt stubbornly called him Father, and among us he was the only one who said it and meant it. Heeju called him Father, too, though she didn't exactly relish it. I didn't call him the Old Man to his face, either. But I absolutely never called him Father. A hey, an over here, a this, a that—that was plenty.
"The Old Man's running late, so you sleep first, Squirt."
"Mmm..."
"Sleep first. Got it?"
"Yeah..."
The youngest lay down without a fuss. On an ordinary night, staying awake until the Old Man returned was my duty. Heeju and Squirt could sleep as if the world didn't exist. But tonight, Heeju wasn't sleeping either. She had never outright said she wouldn't, and still, we all knew. That was why Squirt hadn't asked why Noona wasn't going to bed, and had simply lain down alone. Because for Heeju, tonight might be the last night she spent alive.
Once I was sure Squirt had lain down, I stepped outside the cabin. Snow was beginning to gather again, little by little, across the front yard. A moment later, Heeju came out as well. She went straight to staring at the sky.
"No moon?"
"Just a lot of clouds tonight."
"That's a shame. I don't know when I'll get to see it again."
"You can see it tomorrow night."
Heeju let out a thin little laugh. Wondering if the clouds might break, the two of us watched the sky in silence for a long while. It did no good. The air itself felt ready to freeze. I needed a countermeasure.
"Let's see if there's anything worth salvaging."
A sack sat in the front yard. The Old Man had a habit of picking things up whenever they looked useful. By his account they were useful; to us, most of it was trash. Still, now and then there was something worth keeping. In any case, the sack was his. We weren't supposed to lay a hand on it carelessly, but—
Crash.
I upended it without a moment's hesitation. Tonight, I figured I could get away with it. As the contents spilled out, Heeju stuck her head in. Just as I was concluding it was nothing but trash again—
"What's this? A bus?"
Heeju picked something up. A toy. A relic of the old era.
"It looks similar, but a bus's wheels aren't shaped like that."
"You're right. They're tiny, and tucked in so you can barely see them."
"This is called a subway."
To be precise, it was a railcar—one component of the subway. But if I started explaining it that way, things would only get more complicated.
"Oh, funny name. So?"
"Hm?"
"So what is it?"
She wanted the full explanation. It would be hard to understand. Could she even picture a space made by boring through the ground? And a scale vast enough for hundreds of people to board at once.
"I can explain, but you'll have to scrape together every bit of imagination you've got."
"Ooh... it's already fun."
Bringing it up had been a mistake. I explained until Heeju understood, and by then day had broken. In the end, she did understand. In truth, it probably hadn't been a story important enough, or interesting enough, to listen to all night. A moonless night. To get through a night that long, she must have needed something—anything.
The Old Man returned just after Heeju understood the subway. The time had finally come. Today was Heeju's turn.
The backyard of the cabin. It was also the training ground where we had honed ourselves for years. Most of the time we had spent with the Old Man was steeped in this place. Now and then, the training ground became a testing ground. Confirming the results of training was what the Old Man held most important.
And one thing more. There was something that had to be confirmed here. A task given to every one of us.
"Son Heeju."
The Old Man's voice trembled with excitement, as if he couldn't wait to see the result.
"Yes, Father."
"I won't draw this out."
Heeju nodded, slowly. The Old Man stepped toward the stump of a pine he had felled. At last, from within his coat, it came.
A green Ability Core.