It Ends with the Subway
Heeju only stared down at the green core resting on the stump.
The Old Man did not rush her. Even so, he could not hide his agitation. His fingers fidgeted without rest.
"Hoo..."
Heeju let out a long breath. The moment she slowly reached for the core—
Thud!
A small, ferocious kick came out of nowhere.
"What do you think you're doing!"
The core sailed off into the forest.
"Jeonggu!"
The Old Man called for me, urgent.
"...Yes."
"Son Jeonggu! Quickly!"
He beckoned and broke into a run for the trees. Heeju stared at me, blank. The Kid stood panting, unable to swallow his anger. I hesitated a moment, unsure what to do with any of it—and then Heeju nodded at me, and my mind was made up.
"Heeju, keep the Kid calm."
I plunged into the forest after the Old Man.
The whole time we searched for the core, I thought about the Kid. That sudden outburst. Why? A memory surfaced. This was not the first time he had thrown us off balance. Tracing it back, I arrived at the very beginning. The day everything started. The very day we first met the Old Man.
We all became family the same way.
The Old Man told me he would make me family. It meant I would no longer have to live as an orphan. But there was a condition.
"You will obey my methods of instruction. Without question."
"..."
"Your answer?"
"Methods of instruction... what does that mean?"
"Hm."
I could not have been the only one. The word instruction itself was foreign. The Old Man offered an explanation of his own, but I doubt any child understood it completely.
"Son Jeonggu. That will be your name from now on."
In any case, following the Old Man had to be better than living as a wandering orphan. Hesitation was a luxury.
"From now on, you live here."
"..."
Inside the cabin, two older brothers had arrived before me. Later, two younger sisters came in beneath me, and only long after that did the youngest arrive. That was how we became six siblings.
"Move faster!"
For the first few years, the Old Man seemed to know only a handful of words.
"Faster! Faster!"
Training that drove us to our limits went on day after day.
"Faster! At that speed, you will not survive!"
No amount of training ever made it feel familiar. The moment I began to think I could manage, the Old Man noticed before I did. The standard kept rising. Every day was a new kind of hard. Still, it was better than a wandering orphan's life.
"Run! Faster! Last place gets no supper!"
Only later did I learn that the Old Man was called the greatest hunter who had ever lived. I was fifteen then.
"Jeonggu, first. Heeju, second. And—"
Another change appeared around that time.
"The Kid who came in last fasts tonight."
The youngest's name became the Kid. That was also when all of us began hiding a share of food for him behind the Old Man's back.
The routine held. Train, be tested, hide the food. When winter came we knew time had passed, and when spring came we knew we had grown older. Just as the belief hardened that this unchanging life would go on forever, change arrived.
"From today, Jeonggu will take the Kid in hand and teach him."
I became an instructor. The daily life I had thought eternal changed with absurd ease. One sentence from the Old Man was enough.
"Hyung, am I doing this right?"
Among us, the one who trained hardest was the Kid. Even so, he was always last. It was not simply because he was the youngest. He had been born with a weak body. That was the strange part. The Old Man had not brought just anyone. Except for the Kid, every one of us had a superior physique, and so long as we were five, we had thought his eye for people never wavered. Then the youngest arrived, and the moment we became six, everything changed. A frail boy. For what reason had he brought him?
"No. Swing your arms wider."
"But this is running."
"Running doesn't mean you only use your legs."
"Uuuhm..."
"Don't go limp. You have to keep your balance with your arms."
Stranger still was why the Old Man refused to give up on the Kid—and, on top of that, why he assigned me to him full-time.
"Like this?"
"Yeah. Like that."
It was never that teaching him was a bother, or that I disliked him for being weak. We all felt the same. The Kid was simply good to have around, because he was the Kid. That the Old Man would not abandon him was puzzling, and for that very reason a relief.
Then, one day:
"The Kid?"
"There's a bit of a problem."
The Kid had acted out. He had refused to train. Not one of us had ever refused training. Not once. So I could not begin to predict how the Old Man would react.
In the end the Kid was summoned before him, and as his instructor I went along. I thought something terrible might happen. I was certain of it. And yet—
"You seem to carry a great many worries."
The Old Man's first words were impossibly far from anything I had expected. And that calm voice—I had never heard it before.
"If you can tell me what troubles you, then tell me. If you would rather not, you need not."
On any ordinary day, that trailing if you would rather not, you need not would never have been there. The air around him was so unlike itself that I wondered whether this was the same man.
"No madder how hard I twy... hic... I... no, I mean I— hic!"
Strange, that I could still make out what he meant through the sobbing. Of course it was a strain, being the only one whose growth lagged so far behind. That he had endured this long was remarkable in itself. A day like this could have come much sooner, and no one would have found it odd. Was the Old Man thinking the same, and so withholding a scolding? I had thought there was not a grain of humanity in him. So now, surely, would come some word of comfort for the Kid—
"At times like these, call the universe to mind."
This time, impossibly far did not begin to cover it. The remark had genuinely departed for outer space.
"The uni— hic! The universe?"
The Old Man looked up at the sky. Broad daylight was a poor hour for discussing the cosmos. Of course the universe was still up there in the daytime, but talk like that belonged under a night sky.
"Do you know how vast a space the universe is?"
"The universe... hic!"
"Jeonggu."
"Yes."
"Explain to the Kid how vast it is. The more precise, the better."
Why did he assume I would simply know?
"It's a pitch-black space, wide past anything you can imagine. How wide, you ask—"
I did know, as it happened. He had asked for detail, so I mobilized every scrap of knowledge I possessed. It was knowledge I had taken from an encyclopedia of the old era. At first I had not even known it was an encyclopedia. I had picked it up for kindling, but it was soaked through and would not burn, so I turned the pages while it dried and ended up reading it. Afterward the encyclopedia met a glorious end in the fire.
When the explanation was finished, the Kid's face did not say he had understood. Still, it had the effect of stopping his tears. Once the situation had more or less settled, the Old Man spoke again. From here on was what he had truly wanted to say.
"Picture yourself within the universe. Behold yourself from the east of it, and then from the west."
The Kid wore a face that almost understood, and almost did not.
"Will you be visible? You will not. You are smaller than a speck of dust. You are not the only kid. Jeonggu, and this father—all of us. In the universe, every one of us is a kid."
A story that did not stray far from what I had expected.
"Then consider the worries inside that head of yours, smaller even than dust. They are so small one might question whether they exist at all. The word small does not suffice."
It was a notion worthy of the Old Man, and not hard to predict. He lived always looking toward high places. That uncommon standard was surely what had made him the greatest hunter.
"So whenever you are troubled, always call the universe to mind. Imagine what the universe thinks as it looks upon you."
The Old Man, telling us to contemplate the universe while we lived on an Earth the size of a booger. From the universe's point of view, he was the arrogant one. But what followed was not what I expected.
"After that, imagine the day you go to the universe."
Light began to gather in the Kid's eyes.
"The people of the old era tried to pioneer the universe. Whether that was the root of the calamity, ruin began all the same—but the attempt was not meaningless. Even now, people are still knocking upon the door of the universe."
A story I was hearing for the first time. What presumptuous humans were these, reaching for the cosmos? Spaceships were only rumor. They appeared in the encyclopedia, but I had never believed in them.
"That is the Geofront. The world of the future, which this father will enter before long."
"The future?"
"Yes. The future."
"The future..."
The Kid sank deeper and deeper into the Old Man's tale. I was only confused.
"Look around you. Live in the outside world, and the stories of the old era you heard from this father will feel like nothing but legend."
That was certainly true. This was a world that had collapsed.
"The outside world is a world stranded in the past. The air raids stopped the flow of time. So long as you go on living here, you live forever inside the past."
An unpleasant thing to hear.
"Become hunters, and your circumstances will improve somewhat. You will be able to live at Headquarters."
That, too, was the goal the Old Man had set before us. To make us hunters. To let us escape the outside world.
"Go to Headquarters, and you may live in the present. Many technologies of the old era are still in use there, all because the place is safe from the air raids. Time moves slowly, but it does move, and little by little there is something called progress. That is what it means to live in the present. That is why you must go to Headquarters."
In the end I could not hold it in, and I cut in.
"Then would it not also be a way to become a soldier, or a Postman?"
I did not know much, but at the level of training we were already receiving, surely it would be enough to become a soldier. If that proved too difficult, then even a Postman—a civil servant at the very bottom.
I had shoved my way into the talk, but the Old Man showed not the slightest displeasure.
"Well said."
If anything, his manner suggested he had been waiting for me to interrupt. That displeased me.
"As Jeonggu says, become a soldier or a Postman and go to Headquarters, and you could live in the present. But what this father wishes to speak of is the world of the future. The Geofront."
The Geofront, thick with nothing but rumor. A vast city seated beneath Headquarters. Its inner affairs were a state secret, and anyone who went in never came out again. That was why the rumors never ceased. There were merchants who illegally carried Geofront goods up to the surface and sold them, and their stories were the source of the rumors.
"Most of the cores collected by soldiers and hunters go to the Geofront. Only a tiny fraction is used at Headquarters."
I had heard the rumor myself, that they were advancing on their own by means of core energy. Among us, I was the only one who ever came into contact with rumors. Running every sort of errand for the Old Man, I met outsiders often.
"It is only a rumor."
"Rumor! Another name for the truth."
Bullshit. Even the Kid would not fall for bullshit like that.
"Rumors... you aren't supposed to believe something like that just as it is, are you?"
Well said, our youngest.
"Of course you must not believe it just as it is. Falsehood seeps into every affair of the world."
"So what you mean to say is that if one strips the lies from a rumor, what remains is the truth?"
"Excellent."
The Old Man, who believed the world turned upon ideals. Was that a thought available to him only because he himself was an ideal hunter?
"The Geofront has achieved a progress so astonishing that the legends of the old era cannot begin to compare. That is why you must become hunters."
If the place was that fine, he could have lived there perfectly well on his own. Why drag the rest of us along?
"I take it a great many seats remain aboard the spaceship?"
I meant it as a jab.
"Six seats I shall leave empty."
The Old Man parried at his ease. How long could he go on so sure of himself? The greatest hunter in history. The first hunter to enter the Geofront. If he could achieve it, the feat would be tremendous—but was it possible? If the rumors held, the Geofront was full of remarkable people beyond counting. Would they, too, look upon the Old Man and see a great man? Even granting that a spaceship truly existed, would his turn ever come? His dreams were nothing if not large.
Still, his strategy worked.
"The universe..."
From then on, the Kid never refused training again. It was from then, too, that warmth began to seep into the voice with which he called the Old Man Father.
"Heeju, keep the Kid calm."
While Son Jeonggu and his father went into the forest after the core, Son Heeju took the youngest's hands firmly in her own.
"Kid."
He could not even meet her eyes. He only kept huffing, breath after furious breath.
"Noona's fine."
"I know you're not fine!"
Behind him, three gravestones carved with care from branches huddled close together. Each time the family grew smaller by one, the siblings had made them themselves.
"Like you said, Noona... we might all die."
"Mm. We might."
Heeju did not particularly argue. She could not tell him otherwise now. We might all die had always been her line. She had said it since the days when all six of them were still alive, and it was far too late to take the words back.
"Can't you just run away, Noona?"
It was the youngest's suggestion. Not let's run away together.
"When you don't even mean to run yourself?"
"You don't believe Father... so you don't have to force yourself to stake your life."
Heeju smiled, bitter. Train the body, and the chance of succeeding with a core goes up. That was what Father had always claimed, because he believed the rumor.
"Do you believe Father?"
"It's not exactly that I believe him... no, no, it's not that I don't believe him..."
"But?"
"I want what Father said to be true."
"Which part?"
"All of it. Every story Father told us."
She was not ignorant of what lived in the youngest's heart. Among the things Father had told them, there was more than one she herself wished were truly real.
"But you, Noona... you don't believe. Because you doubt a lot. Ah, sorry. I don't mean it in a bad way—"
A realist. She was someone who could not take Father's words as they stood.
"It's the truth. What's there to be sorry for?"
"Mm."
"Right. I don't believe. Like our Kid says, Noona's full of doubts, isn't she?"
But this was not a moment when belief mattered. It was a matter of survival.
"Use a core, and the odds of dying are high. But leave this cabin, and it's the same."
A realist's thought. Entirely like her.
"If you don't believe... maybe you can't succeed?"
"Hm?"
"I mean, if you don't have a feeling like I'm going to succeed, no matter what, maybe that's why you fail..."
"Pfft."
A thought entirely like the Kid.
"See, Noona really should just run—"
"Here. I'll lend you this."
She pressed a toy into his hand.
"It's the Subway."
"Oh? How'd you know?"
"I heard you and Hyung talking outside yesterday."
The youngest had not slept either.
"Noona, you don't even..."
"Believe in the Subway either. Is that what you were going to say?"
"...Am I that obvious?"
"Pffft."
Heeju stroked his head.
"I don't. How should I know whether it was ever really there? Noona's pretty obvious too, isn't she?"
"When you were listening to Hyung, you looked so amazed. I thought that was weird."
"Oppa likes explaining things only he knows. Act amazed, and he likes it too."
"Is that how it is?"
"You remember that."
The youngest tested the weight of the toy subway. Made of metal, it was heavy in the hand.
"You're giving it to me because you don't believe in it?"
"I said I'm lending it. You give it back tonight."
"Mm."
A rustle from the forest. Father and Jeonggu were coming closer.
"Does it even matter, believing or not."
The truth slipped out of Heeju.
"When it's nothing but things we can't help..."
In the hand of the father who stepped out of the trees was the core the Kid had kicked away.
That night, Jeonggu and the Kid carved branches.
The moon, as ever, was nowhere to be seen.