The Rumored Kid
A night without a scrap of moonlight.
I had been waiting for exactly this.
Now all they had to do was show.
Why aren't they coming?
The forest was pitch-black. They should have appeared ages ago, and the fact that they hadn't was wrong. From everything I had watched, this was the right stretch of road.
Thin pickings today?
A little farther on sat a raider den with real weight behind it, and this choke point was the road they always took going home. The spot where I lay in wait was the gap in their guard. Finish them fast here, and I could be done before the den even noticed — which meant I could take every last thing they had looted.
They're past due...
I had waited for the darkest night I could get, anything to raise the odds. And of all nights, they failed to show on time. Had the raid fallen through? They fleeced people without a hitch every other day. Why did it have to be tonight?
A month already since I left the cabin.
I was holding up well enough. Nothing to thank the Old Man for. I was managing because my older brothers and sisters had looked after me. The Old Man had never even put a proper meal in front of me, and whatever training stuck, it stuck because Jeong-gu drilled me on the side. The Old Man hadn't done a thing. Nothing. Not one single thing.
"At least it isn't raining. That's something."
"I told you it wouldn't."
"It's coming!"
"How am I supposed to trust you? You just guessed."
"Anyway, it didn't!"
"If it had rained, at least we'd have turned back sooner."
"We burned the time and still didn't make quota."
Voices, small with distance. Them. No question. They were getting closer, the words sharpening, and I set my attention on the footsteps. I needed a count.
"Start working on your excuses."
"Better to just tell the truth."
"Oh, sure. They'll forgive us right away."
"Who said anyone was getting forgiven?"
"So we just take the punishment?"
Six. Same as always. I had been watching them steadily, running the fight over and over in my head. Land the ambush and I could win.
All of it thanks to what my brothers and sisters taught me.
A little closer.
"Whoa — almost ate it."
"Will you watch it? This isn't your first time on this path."
"It's extra dark tonight."
"Can't we turn on a flashlight?"
"You trying to die? Want to give them one more reason to tear into us?"
"Kiiidding."
"Yeah, we could tell that wasn't a joke."
One more step.
"Hey! That you finally coming in?"
Huh?
"What, you come out to meet us?"
"They told me to go find your corpses if I had to."
"Screw off. Who's dying?"
"They mad?"
Only one new one?
"Miss the quota and they're scheduled to be mad."
"Tch."
"Should we go back and fill it?"
If it's only one...
"Quit the crap and get over here."
A chance that wouldn't come again. Fine. One more was still enough.
I win.
Thuk. Thuk.
"Agh!"
"What the—!"
"Monster!"
"Light! Light!"
"What! What's going on!"
I took the gap their carelessness left me. No need to cut a throat. One stab each to the gut. Drop them, and that was enough.
Thuk. Thuk.
"Light! Li—ghk."
"It's a kid!"
"What the hell is this brat!"
"What's happening!"
That made five.
Thuk.
One left.
"Son of a—"
A hand caught my ankle. No reason to panic. There was no strength in the grip at all.
Thuk.
I ignored it and took the last one.
"What in the... ugh..."
Click.
A light came on in the distance.
"A—a kid!?"
It gave me his position exactly. I went in at once.
"Shit!"
Bang!
A sloppy shot. He couldn't have hit me if he tried.
Skrrk.
"Ghk!"
The feel of steel on bone. I'd meant to open his side and missed the spot.
"Tch."
"You little runt!"
Thuk!
The side again.
"Kagh!"
Tch. The edge was ruined.
I went back to where the six had fallen.
Click.
I put the light on them. They were twitching, straining to get their guns out. No need to finish them off. Cleaner that way, maybe, but it would have left a bad taste. Better to grab the loot and go. A gunshot meant someone might come looking.
I snatched up a few bags and ran.
A shelter thrown together deep in the foothills. Nothing to look at, which meant little chance of being found.
I did it.
A successful raid. It had gone as planned.
Food won't be a problem for a while. If I can move the stolen goods...
A month since I left the cabin. A month, and I could pull off a raid — something I had never once in my life imagined doing. All of it because the outside world was not what I had expected.
Yes. Survival was difficult in the places I hadn't seen coming.
· · ·
"You little shit...!"
"Call me a little shit again!"
"Aaagh!"
The first human I ran into outside the cabin demanded food from a total stranger. I understood that as a challenge to fight.
"I—I surrender!"
Later he told me that hadn't been what he meant. Had I misunderstood?
"This isn't over!"
The one who left like that, I never saw again. Because I didn't wait around and left the spot myself? But I was hungry. After that, everyone I met turned into a fight. Either I misunderstood, or they did.
"You little runt...! This isn't over!"
And somewhere in the middle of it, I learned something.
"Ha. Unbelievable."
"What?"
"You look like a pushover, but you fight nasty. Damn it!"
"I do?"
I was better than I looked. My brothers and sisters, no doubt. And, very slightly, the Old Man, supposedly the strongest there had ever been.
"This isn't over!"
"Yeah. This isn't over!"
"?"
But winning a fight got me nothing. They came at me with knives, and if they had won they would have meant to make me hand over whatever I had.
Next time I win, I'll get food out of it.
But—
"Hand it over and go!"
"This isn't over!"
Failure. He ran. Should I have stabbed him? The way they had meant to. Every one of them had swung a knife at my throat and my gut and meant it. Should I have done the same?
"Tsk, tsk."
Onlookers, clicking their tongues. A group that had stopped on the road a while back and sat down to watch.
"So you're the kid from the rumors. I had hopes. Bit of a letdown."
"Rumors?"
They felt different from the start, nothing like the people who had picked fights with me.
"Word is you've been thrashing raiders without number. Never killing them, though. You let them live and send them on their way. Heard there was a brazen little kid like that, so we came to see."
Raiders. I had heard plenty about them even back at the cabin. Don't tell me everyone I'd met was one.
"Then what are you?"
"Us? See that over there? We came from there. Search party."
A high wall. What was inside a thing like that?
"What's inside? Houses, shops, the usual. You don't know a settlement? A settlement."
A settlement. I knew that much.
"Amnesia or something? How does someone fail to recognize a settlement?"
I knew. I had just never gone inside one, so I hadn't been sure.
"I lived in the mountains too long."
"What are you, some mountain sage?"
I had been taught that living in the outside world meant one of two things. You became a settler, or you became a raider. Jeong-gu had said once that with a personality like mine, I could never be a raider.
"What do you have to do to become a settler?"
"Depends on the settlement."
"Yours?"
"Hm? You want to be a settler without even knowing what our settlement is?"
"I didn't say I wanted to be one. I just wondered what it takes."
"Bold little thing, aren't you."
What was bold about it? Was I not allowed to be curious?
"Why do you let the raiders live?"
"Huh?"
"No — it's more than letting them live. You don't seem to have any intention of drawing blood at all. Is there a reason?"
"Why would I have to draw blood?"
"Hm."
The search party gathered their packs and stood.
"You're a lost cause as a settler. Still, you've got skill, so you might be of use. If you need mercenary work, or a trade, come by. We'll leave the gate open."
Kind, and not kind.
"Oh — you got a shield? Body armor, even?"
"No."
"A gun? Ammunition?"
The Old Man had set aside basic gear for us. He had even carved the name of whoever was meant to receive each piece.
"A pistol, and ammo, about this much—"
"Hand over this much ammo and take this."
"A shield...?"
"I paid you fair, so don't worry. I'm not slick enough to skin a child."
I learned later it wasn't quite fair. A little steep. Still, if you counted it as paying for a recommendation of something I truly needed, it wasn't a bad trade.
"Small, which makes it light. Suits someone quick on their feet, like you. If you're not planning to finish people off, mind your armor more than your weapons. Understood, you cocky kid?"
Mercenary work, he had said, and trade. You could do that if you went to a settlement?
"Hey."
"Hm?"
"If I do mercenary work, can I get food? From trading, too?"
"Right? Food's hard to come by, I take it?"
"Yeah..."
That was the biggest problem. Being better at fighting than I had thought did not make food appear. The outside world was vast, and everything strewn across it was something you could not eat. Stones. Spent casings. Bones. The most manageable food was alien seeds. I had been taught the outside world still held this many people at all only because of them. Not everything that fell from the sky was a catastrophe. The problem was that the settlement search party standing in front of me swept up every last seed. Sure, hauling them back to grow plants was a hundred times better than some homeless nobody like me chewing them raw. Not my problem.
"How have you been getting by?"
"Just hunting..."
In the end, the only food I could get was meat. Zombies, or monsters. I could fight a little.
"Alone?"
"Yeah."
"Hm. No matter how good you are."
I knew what he was about to say. Living like that every day was too much. As food, one was enough. The meat off a single carcass could be stored and eaten for a while. But neither zombies nor monsters traveled one at a time. To take that one, I had to face several. It wasn't efficient. Stake your life every time, and one mistake could kill you. And then there was the eating. You couldn't just eat that revolting meat. Every piece had to be roasted, and that was work of its own.
"Ridiculous kid. You really come down from playing the sage up in the mountains? Like you dropped straight out of the sky."
"Out of the sky...?"
"Or what — they throw you out of Yeouido? No. You're too young to have been a Hunter."
That sort of thing.
"I'm not doing anything like being a Hunter!"
"Pfft. You really are something. Who said anyone was offering? You need a Core ability for that."
That was a problem too. I had succeeded in using an Ability Core. Succeeded, and yet—
What ability did I even get...?
I couldn't tell at all. The Old Man had taught me a few tricks for recognizing an ability. They hadn't helped.
"It would seem this is no ability meant for battle."
What had made the Old Man the greatest there had ever been was an ability meant for battle.
"A pity."
A pity how?
"Hate the sight of blood that much, and mercenary work is out."
"Mm..."
"Trading might be possible. You got anything worth having?"
"Ammo—"
"Give all of that away, and then what will you do?"
"Um..."
"Well, fine. Come find us whenever."
"Hey. If I get to where I can draw blood, can I be a settler too?"
The search party let out a short laugh.
"Hard to say. A kid this skilled is suspicious — if anything, it makes you harder to trust. If you want to be someone's neighbor, trust is everything."
"Trust..."
"Well. Let's start with trade. Oh, and if you want to be a settler, you'll need to fix that way of talking. You do know what it means to speak respectfully, don't you?"
The search party left.
Mm.
So you can't live without drawing blood?
"Don't empathize, kid."
Hee-ju.
"You keep having nightmares because you understand other people's pain. I'm the one who's hurting. Why are you the one dreaming it?"
I...