Not the Kid's Turn
The story went like this.
The season turned, and spring arrived. The kid's turn had come.
Spring meant we had survived another year — a sign that we were a year older, proof that we had matured. But that single step of maturity was no guarantee we would survive the next.
A problem had come up.
"This father will be going to the Geofront before long."
He had reached the limit of a hunter's score. The Old Man's dream had come true far sooner than anyone expected, and for the kid, that was bad news.
"Tomorrow the kid uses a Core first. You are prepared, I trust?"
"…Yes, Father."
The Old Man had always prepared nothing but green Ability Cores — rare cores that were difficult to buy even when you had the money. Even for a hunter spoken of as the greatest of the age, laying hands on six of them was no easy matter. The green Ability Cores he had spent years gathering came to five in all. A tremendous harvest, and still one short of what six siblings required.
So the spare had been a red Ability Core. It was precious all the same, being an Ability Core, but the chance of success was plainly lower. Now the kid would have to use that one. The last green Core remaining was mine. Whatever his reason, the Old Man had decided it so.
"It will be done come morning. Sleep soundly."
"Yes……."
The order in which we used our Cores was fixed entirely at the Old Man's whim. At first we had put our heads together and tried to reason it out, curious why the order had fallen as it did. Even with all six of us thinking as hard as we could, we never found the answer. As time passed and our numbers thinned, no answer came, however long we turned it over.
The kid went to bed early. On the night before using a Core, we had always stayed up outside the cabin, letting the wind cut through us.
Stepping outside during sleeping hours was forbidden, but on those nights even the Old Man looked the other way. The kid, though, obeyed the Old Man to the very end. I thought he was quietly courting sleep inside the cabin.
I was wrong.
"Brother, you asleep?"
"No."
The kid had no intention of sleeping either. He simply wasn't going outside, the better to pretend he was obeying Father.
"When's yours?"
My turn was next week. We used to leave months between them, but with the Old Man due to leave soon, the schedule had drawn tight.
"I've got a few months left."
I couldn't tell him the truth as it stood. Knowing him, he would worry over me, and then he wouldn't be able to speak of his own affairs with an easy heart.
"I really want to succeed."
"That doesn't sound like you."
"Ah — I mean, I will!"
"You'd better."
The kid had a frail body. Even so, his faith was the strongest of any of us. The trouble was that almost nothing in the world got done on faith alone.
"He said training the body raises the chance of a successful use, didn't he?"
"He did."
For the kid, those words of the Old Man's must have been close to a curse.
"Don't you think it's true, though?"
He meant to believe even the curse?
"Why bring that up all of a sudden?"
"Father knows a lot of hunters. He must have heard plenty of stories from people who succeeded at using a Core."
Experience, as it happens, is not much worth believing.
"Think it through. A strong body makes survival easier. Even if you gained a Core ability in a moment of crisis, breaking through that crisis on the ability alone would be no simple thing."
"Oh. So the ones who trained their bodies had a higher chance of living, and that's why they survived long enough to become hunters?"
"That's the reasonable way to see it."
And it would help the kid, besides.
"So you're at no disadvantage either. You aren't using the Core in the middle of a crisis. You'll use it safely, with me and the Old Man watching—"
"So it won't have anything to do with what the body can do."
Believing that would do him good, psychologically.
"But wouldn't Father know at least that much? He's clever, too."
Tsk. The kid was not easy to set at ease.
"Anyway, don't go thinking of anything else. You've got faith, so there's nothing to worry about."
"It feels like I'm the only one of us who believes……. You still don't, do you? Not in Father, and not in the things he says."
It was a hard thing to say aloud. Still, it was for the kid, so I said it.
"That's why every one of them failed. You'll be different."
"Mm……."
The kid went quiet, his face grave. However much faith he had, he could hardly keep from being shaken on the eve of using a Core. I couldn't leave him sunk alone in his thoughts, either. That was why we had sat up through the night together, every time.
"What are you thinking about?"
I kept talking, so he would have no room for other thoughts.
"This."
The kid drew something out. A toy subway. Since that day, the two of us had not once spoken of Hee-ju. He never brought her up, so I had resolved not to either. Looking back now, I wondered whether he had stayed silent only because I had.
"Sis gave it to me. Said she'd lend it."
"Yeah."
"I never asked to borrow it."
"Yeah."
"Why this, of all things?"
"Hm."
Hee-ju had probably thought nothing much of it. She was not the sort to think as deeply as the kid; she kept to strictly practical thoughts. She would not have loaded a toy with any great meaning.
"Because it's cool?"
"Huh?"
"It's made of metal. How sturdy must it have been? Even with hundreds of people aboard, it would've been safe. I bet bullets couldn't even punch through."
"It has windows, though."
"Bulletproof, obviously."
"Aha."
"Traveling safe and fast — how easy that must have been."
"No raiders to worry about, either."
"None at all."
"It really is cool."
"It is."
Most likely she had given it to him because a toy subway was the only thing she happened to have on her. That day Hee-ju had talked with me the whole night through and then been called straight to the Old Man, and aside from the toy subway she dug out of her pack, she owned nothing. Wring what meaning you liked from it, and the most you would find was something like he's a kid, so comfort him with a toy. That was exactly like Hee-ju.
"But Sis said she didn't believe in the Subway."
"Her? She didn't believe in anything except you and me."
"Did she give it to me because she thought I might believe in the Subway?"
"Could be."
"What about you?"
Ought I to be honest? Or ought I to match the kid's mood as far as I could?
"Tell me straight. You're the only one left who will. I believe what Father says, but…… I don't think he's honest."
So that was it.
"I do think the Subway really existed. But the rumors are full of nonsense, too—"
The very notion of unarmed people packing in shoulder to shoulder and riding was absurd from the start.
"If it's a question of believing or not, then I'd have to say I don't. It existed, but it wouldn't have been like the rumors. Talk of the old era is nothing but rumor to begin with."
The kid looked puzzled.
"What about the relics that are actually left?"
"That's no different from saying dinosaurs existed because a fossil does. If you didn't see it yourself, you don't know. No — even if you see it, you don't. You remember when the Old Man brought a portable idiot box and showed us a movie from the old era?"
"That was amazing!"
"Right. And the Old Man said it outright, then. All of that is fake."
"But you've read way more books than I have."
"Those are even harder to trust than fossils or movies. It's nothing but a person scratching words onto a page."
The kid fell silent. Perhaps I had been too honest. I ought to meet him partway.
"Well — some things aren't fake. Cars, for instance."
The Old Man had once come all the way to the cabin by car, together with his fellow hunters. A great machine, with a number of wheels and belts like treads wrapped around them. An astonishing thing, able to climb even a rugged mountain.
"So you believe in cars, at least."
"It isn't a matter of believing or not. They're really there. They don't vanish just because I refuse to believe in them."
"Mm!"
The kid nodded, as if he had found an answer.
"Father believes in spaceships, too, doesn't he?"
"That's even more absurd than the Subway."
"You believe as far as cars — no. Cars exist."
"Right."
"Then the Subway is right in the middle."
"Huh?"
The kid's face looked a good deal easier.
"About halfway between Father and you."
"What?"
There was no such thing.
"Since when does belief have a middle? You believe, or you don't."
"Nothing in the world can be cut that cleanly. That's what."
"Hm?"
"Even Sis, who believed in nothing, used a Core."
She hadn't had a choice.
"No matter how hard you train the body, there's no guarantee you'll succeed at using a Core. And there's no guarantee you'll fail, either."
What was he trying to say?
"If I live through tomorrow, that'll only be luck, in the end."
Well. That much was true. A red Core, besides. If he lived through tomorrow, he would be carrying a rare luck.
"If luck is what decides it, then maybe it isn't success or failure at all."
Ah. So that was the talk.
"You mean there's such a thing as neither one nor the other."
"Yeah. Isn't there a middle, where you neither believe nor disbelieve?"
"A little different, too, from believing only halfway."
"Yeah!"
The kid tucked the toy subway back inside his clothes. He had been keeping it against him all along. He left one last question behind.
"They said the Subway runs through a dark tunnel, right? If you rode a spaceship, wouldn't it feel about the same?"
Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep. The first of us to sleep on the night before. The kid was different, somehow.
"……What is this talk?"
"I will use it."
I had assumed, of course, that the Old Man would refuse. Changing the order. Even so, I had braced myself for a reaction of about this size.
"Brother?"
"Stay out of it."
The Old Man's objections went on, and I did not yield by a hair.
"Speak your reason. What, precisely, is the matter?"
"I will use it."
I made no effort to persuade him. I knew this was the surest way to make my will plain.
"Why, in heaven's name……."
"Brother?"
Once he understood that talk was useless, the Old Man held his silence. Hours passed that way.
"……So be it."
The Old Man surrendered. A Core could be used only when its user willed the use without wavering. I had dug in and sworn I would never use a Core at all unless he changed the order, so the Old Man had no choice but to yield.
"Brother……?"
The kid would know there was no taking it back. It was the first time I had shown him a side like this. He was not so dull that he couldn't read the air.
"Kid."
"Yeah?"
"Never mind."
The red Core lay on the stump. So the day had come after all. I set my hand to it.
I will use the Core.
The instant the thought was finished, the Core poured out a red light. Somewhere in the forest, trees were stirring. Fine weather.
A wet cough tore out of me. My throat clenched, and I spat what had filled my mouth. A bowlful of blood. Tears ran from my eyes. I wiped them away with my hand, and it was blood. What came from my nose was not snot. Blood welled from beneath my nails.
Abnormal Massive Hemorrhage
Side effect of a failed Core use.
I went down hard.
I shut my eyes, opened them, and there was the ground. I seemed to hear the kid beside me, shouting something. I remembered what he had said the night before.
With this, the kid had survived the day. He was carrying a rare luck. Frail in body, yes — but he had a fair, handsome face, didn't he? That, too, was a blessing. That, too, was luck.
The kid… he might just succeed.
It would be quite a while before Hee-ju and I saw him again. A good thing, that the weather was fine.
"……Kid. Next week is your turn."
What ought to have been my brother's turn had become mine. He had told me his was months off. A lie, it seemed, so I wouldn't worry over him.
The cabin was a hollow place. Six siblings, whittled down to two brothers, and now not even that.
I hadn't known. Set the toy subway on the floor and push it backward, and the spring coiled inside wound tight. Let go, and it ran — a thin whir — until it struck the wall with a crack.
And so I was alone.