Duty
Memory had run back further than I'd ever meant to tell Clock-out Man. I could have cut it off somewhere reasonable, but one thing sank its teeth into the tail of the next, and there was no stopping it.
I ought to stop around here. Fail to, and I might spend the night in a nightmare. All the same, when I passed the story on to Clock-out Man, I folded a few lies into it.
"I did sort of see it coming, mind you. Very little."
"See what?"
"You already told me you'd guessed I handled a Core when I was young, remember? So I figured the circumstances wouldn't have been ordinary, either. I thought maybe it wasn't even one of those split-second, life-or-death moments."
Sharp, or just lucky with his guesses.
"Nasty piece of work, though. So that so-called father of yours—"
"The Old Man."
"Right. That Old Man—he definitely went to the Geofront, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"What's his name? There can't be more than a Woo or two."
"Don't know."
The Old Man's real surname was Son.
"Getting shy right at the best part. How do you not know his name?"
"And what would you do with it."
I knew the exact name. I simply couldn't give it to him.
That the greatest hunter in history had a son was common knowledge among hunters, because the Old Man had gone around saying so out in the open. No one could say where it started, but a rumor began to circulate that the son had become a hunter too. It got to the point that whenever a rookie named Son turned up, people asked who his father was. That tells you everything.
If it came out that I was the one the rumor meant, I could already see the long trail of inconveniences that would follow. Special treatment, favors slipped to you on the quiet—those might look pleasant at a glance, but nothing in this world is free. There would be no shortage of men licking their chops, ready to use me.
And being the object of attention is irritating in itself.
Every so often there were amusing ones, too. Starved for notice, someone would turn up now and then under an alias like Son XX, playing at being the Old Man's son. When I was an instructor, I had two of them under me. On breaks, whenever they got bored, they'd start in about "their father," and not a single thing they said was true.
Anyway, the biggest reason I don't want to be known as the Old Man's son is something else.
I hated the tag itself—that I had become a hunter because I was raised under the Old Man. I hated looking as though I had followed in that man's footsteps. Having the surname Son didn't prove you were his son, of course. He wasn't even my biological father; compare our biometrics and all you'd get was that he and I were strangers.
Even so, I don't want to leave behind the smallest clue that could tie the Old Man to me.
Wiping away every trace of him still left on me. That was the work of my life.
"Something's off……. Even if he wasn't your real father—come on. He never told you his name? Does that make any sense?"
"Does getting five children killed make sense?"
"Um……. You said he didn't mean to kill them, but yeah. He definitely wasn't ordinary."
"Not 'not ordinary.' Not normal."
"Tsk. I want to find out who he is."
"And if you do?"
"I'd have to tell you first, wouldn't I?"
I wanted to say I didn't want to know, but I swallowed it. He would only ask why.
"How devoted of you. If you happen to learn anything, be sure to tell me."
"Okay!"
Clock-out Man clenched a fist, his face full of confidence. Somehow it felt like a bad omen. The story I'd promised him was finished, in any case. How long did this one mean to keep tagging along?
"The kid's part sits worst with me. Using a red Core all by himself. Discriminated against right out in the open, and he still followed the Old Man to the end. I really don't like that."
Another seam where I'd worked a lie in. I had told him the Cores were used with nothing shifted from the planned order—that the kid used the red Core and died, and that Son Jeonggu, who used a Core last, survived. And that Son Jeonggu was me.
It was the same lie I'd been telling since I first spoke of it to Min Yeo-jin, so I simply told it the same way again. Even I don't really know why I lied like that. Wanting the surname Son kept hidden—there, I have a definite reason. My having been the kid, though, wasn't something that should have mattered.
"Oh, right. After you succeeded, what did the Old Man say? There's got to be an aftermath."
"The strength ran right out of me and I collapsed where I was. I don't remember anything after that. When I came to, the old man was gone."
As if. Of course I remembered everything from the moment right after the success, clear as day.
"Hmm. Not that I need to have seen it—he probably strutted around saying he'd been right all along. From where you stood, maybe it was better you missed the sight."
"The Old Man was right?"
"I'm saying you were the only one who made it, the one with the best body. So it turned out the way the Old Man said. The kid especially—weak body, really no hope at all."
Because I'd said the kid died and Son Jeonggu succeeded, I never breathed a word to Clock-out Man about the other condition the Old Man had spoken of—the one that could punch through even a 99.99 percent chance of failure.
"Well, on that point, I suppose the Old Man had it right. They do say a healthy something-or-other dwells in a healthy body."
"Was it the soul?"
"Something like that."
"Nothing new about that, honestly. A good body makes a Core take better—you, me, the other hunters, everybody knows it. Common sense."
It still passed for common sense, and by the statistics it even seemed to be true. But as Jeonggu-hyung had said, it might have had nothing to do with Cores at all—only that a strong body is an advantage when it comes to staying alive.
What actually nagged at me was that other condition. In the end the Old Man never told me what it was. Whether I had succeeded because I truly met it, or purely by luck, there was no way to know. And using another Ability Core with my life on the line, just to check, would be madness.
Until not long ago I had lived believing I'd simply been lucky.
And then I really did meet a Core with a 99.99 percent chance of failure.
Gyeongsu's Core, reeking of blood. The moment I first heard the figure from Elder Heo, the Old Man's words came straight back. I ignored them. Gambling your life on a 0.01 percent chance is a fool's errand. But the moment came when I had no choice but to use it, and the result was success.
Had the Old Man been telling the truth?
There was still no way to confirm it. And so long as I didn't know exactly what that other condition was, I could hardly count on another miracle with nothing to go on. Even if I granted that I'd succeeded because I met it, nothing promised the condition would hold forever. The me of now might no longer fit. That was the trouble with not knowing what the thing actually was. Maybe it stopped applying from the third Core on. Maybe it failed once you entered your thirties. Maybe it didn't work on a yellow Core. Any condition under the sun was possible.
An eye blinded by a Core ability can be cured by swallowing digestive medicine, for one.
Where Cores were concerned, it wouldn't be strange at all for every kind of outlandish condition to get involved.
"Anyway, so you've had a good body since you were little. Is that the one thing we have to give the old man? He trained you properly, at least."
"I'll give him that."
I meant it. I myself had stayed weak to the very end under the Old Man, but he had at least tempered my older brothers and sisters with success. And once I gained a Core ability, the training I'd taken from him began to help me, too.
After the ability came, the most important thing was survival, because the moment I gained it, the Old Man—my guardian—left. While he was around, survival hadn't been a worry. He provided enough money to live on, and Jeonggu-hyung kept the household going with it. For the life of a drifting orphan, I'll admit that was comfortable enough.
Then the Old Man left, and survival became the task in front of me.
I knew how to survive, of course. I'd learned a great deal from him. Above all, I knew far too well that staying alive required a superior body.
So even without the Old Man, the training went on.
If anything, I drove myself far harder than I had under him. Having to live alone was powerful motivation. At night I sought out the best ruined buildings for sleeping rough in safety; by day I cut the best routes for moving while keeping myself hidden. All of it I'd learned from my family. In the gaps between, I turned over the things Jeonggu-hyung used to tell me, and I dealt with people, and I traded. I got swindled. I scraped past death more than once. Sometimes I paid back exactly what had been done to me, the way the world had taught me to. And behind all of it lay the ability to see probability.
"So how did you get by after the Old Man left?"
"I think I've given you everything I promised."
"You can't just cut it off here. Author."
"Says the man who doesn't read anything but English textbooks."
"These days I don't even read those."
"Sworn off books entirely?"
"Using them as intended. Kindling."
"Good for you. Anyway, we're almost—"
The destination was right in front of us.
"Damn."
Our feet were stuck. A monster colony in full migration had sealed the road ahead.
"Nice!"
"What's nice about it."
"We'll have to camp the night around here, won't we?"
"That ruin over there should do. Take the second floor and—"
"Then I get to hear what comes after, Author?"
What came after was an obvious story.
"You've done plenty of surviving yourself."
"Well. I'm a professional."
"So what's there to be curious about."
"The clumsy days are always the best part, I'm telling you. Once you're good at it, it's boring! Especially when it's a guy like you, who looks like he can do anything, back when he was a total greenhorn!"
So he wanted to hear about me screwing up.
"Asking after someone's shame right to their face."
"Ahh—shame? More like your most precious memories. I told you mine."
"You did. Those stories about losing hands and feet. I never asked. You just went and told me."
"Anyway!"
"Quiet. Watch every side."
Settling into the ruined building went smoothly, as expected. I couldn't deny that Clock-out Man was an excellent partner. But a comrade always carries a risk, the way family does. In the end, another person can never be of one mind with you.
"This monster colony won't be all the way past until morning, will it? Ha! Now what."
"What do you think. We sleep until then."
I sat down, leaning into the place by the window. The night was dark. Cloud packed the sky, and with no visibility it was hard to notice an enemy coming on. A night like this, you kept your ears open.
Or—
"Keep your nostrils open."
"Of course!"
Or, if you had a comrade, you used him well.
"Then how about you grant a little of my request, too?"
A bothersome one.
"That day was a cloud-choked night, just like this. I'd been waiting for a night like that."
"Be honest. Talking over the old days for the first time in a while—you're enjoying it too, aren't you?"
"Should I stop?"
"I will listen quietly!"
The memory that had made me who I am.
"It was the first day I went out to plunder."
"Plunder? You?"
It was by no means a pleasant memory. But there was no harm in turning it over again.
Not forgetting.
That is the duty.