The Prison
The Head Cook shut the prison door.
His business looked finished, yet he kept hesitating, shifting where he stood and making no move to leave.
"You look like a man trying to decide whether to say something he shouldn't."
"Huh? No! It's not that!"
The Head Cook spun on his heel. He made it three steps before turning back.
"Actually, it is."
He glanced around, came closer, and took hold of the bars. His belly kept him from pressing all the way against them.
"So, uh... like the Gang Leader said, tonight's a fast."
"Starting tomorrow you'll get three proper meals a day. Might not be full rations, but you won't go hungry."
"Okay."
"And, well..."
"Yeah?"
"What you did today—you did great!"
He meant bringing down the boss-class creature. It had been a reckless challenge. Only the outcome had been good enough to let it pass, and the Gang Leader's anger was understandable. The Old Man would have been just as furious. So would Brother Jeong-gu, or Sister Hee-ju.
"I got lucky."
"Whoa, that's the best kind! Luck is skill too, right? No—luck is skill! Ever heard of the fortunes of war? You can't beat a lucky man."
He wasn't wrong. Luck only settles on those with the skill to catch it.
The moment a way to take the boss-class creature had surfaced in his head, the will to try had surged up with it. He'd felt he had to do something. He needed a reversal. He needed to stamp the fact of himself into this crew. He didn't know how long he would be bound here, but he could not become someone they were free to dismiss.
His sister's advice had come from the same place. He had to look like a difficult man. Charging the boss-class creature had been for that reason too. He hadn't wanted to be easy.
"Thanks to you, Jeong-gu, the household's a lot better off! A whole pile of Cores in one go... Kah! Everyone's really grateful!"
The result, though, was not the one he'd intended. He'd wanted them afraid, and instead they all looked thankful. Didn't that only draw them closer? Then they weren't finding him difficult at all. In a sense, hadn't he become easier?
"The Gang Leader's only being hard on you to make you strong, so don't take it too much to heart. Right, then! Hungry or not, just get through today!"
After the Head Cook left, he sat in the empty cell and tried to sort it out.
What does the Gang Leader think of me?
It wouldn't sort. The Old Man came to mind unbidden.
No. It's a little different.
But what did a little different amount to?
A gunshot cracked, close by. A sniper. He'd heard the army kept this whole district safe. Not entirely, it seemed. Of course not. There was no such thing as a safe place. He couldn't trust a thing.
"Gang Leader, is this going to be all right?"
The mercenaries' corpses had been disposed of cleanly in the hideout's incinerator. It had happened inside territory Gwanghwamun held in a tight grip, so there were no witnesses. The problem was that the mercenaries had lines into the Government-General. Those same connections were what had made it possible to link that son with the child from the rumors.
"Once they realize these men are missing, Yeouido might make a move."
"If they follow the trail, it could lead them all the way here—"
"Enough."
Talk like that was useless now.
"We say the mercenaries were caught up in the fight with the boss-class creature. Everyone understand?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
"This does not leave your mouths a second time. Not under any circumstances."
The Gang Leader's final order was not properly kept. Whenever she was absent, word of the incident still changed hands. The gist of it was this: had they truly needed to go that far to protect Son Jeonggu? Had they truly needed to kill the mercenaries? And this from a Gang Leader who hated to stain her hands with blood.
The only thing to do inside a cell was sleep. So he decided to sleep. There was nowhere to hide in there. He was a rat in a jar either way. If the Gang Leader meant to do something to him, he would have no choice but to take it.
Then at least bank some strength.
He was sleeping on that thought when—
"Shh!"
A visitor.
"Shh! Shh! Quiet! We'll catch it if we're found out! Got it?"
Not one. Five of the Gwanghwamun crew. Faces he vaguely knew, though not the names. Just faces glimpsed in passing—during the duel, during the hunt for the boss-class creature.
"If I'm right, this is that painfully obvious situation."
"Huh?"
"You brought food, didn't you?"
"Oh? Yeah. You hungry?"
A familiar picture.
Fasts had been ordinary for him. On nights like that, his brother and sister had always snuck him something to eat. Just like now. The difference was—
"...This is way too much."
"We brought a lot so you'd eat a lot!"
These people had no sense of measure. Still, since they'd brought it, he decided to eat all of it. It wasn't his money going out.
While he ate, the five took turns talking without a pause.
"You know as well as we do, the Gang Leader's only doing this for your—"
Most of it was what the Head Cook had already said, though one of them held a different opinion.
"But I don't really get it."
"There he goes again."
"Somebody shut his mouth."
"I'm curious. What is it? I want to hear."
"Jeong-gu, don't mind him. He—"
"I'm curious. I'll hear it."
And so the guy won the floor. He started pouring the words out without a brake.
"If we're gonna talk, let's talk straight. If we really cared about the kid, we shouldn't be making him our slave. We ought to let him go, shouldn't we?"
"Tsk."
"You call that talking!"
Hmm.
"Jeong-gu, the... 'slave' is only a matter of wording. We started like this, but we could end up family, you know? Family. You know what that is?"
"Truth is, real family has to be bound by blood. A bond that becomes family later needs a kind of force behind it. You're still young, so it might be hard to understand—"
"I know."
He knew it very well.
"You will follow my methods without question."
"From now on, this is your name."
"You will live here."
He had already had a family gained by that kind of force.
"If you know, then... well, that's a relief, I suppose."
"We're thinking of taking you in as family, that's what I'm saying. It's true."
"I mean it!"
"The Gang Leader feels the same."
"Hmm... As for me—"
"Shut his mouth!"
"N-no, I mean me too! I'm for becoming family! I just don't know what the Gang Leader thinks—"
"Shh!"
A presence, from the far end of the warren.
"Who is it, at this hour?"
"Somebody bringing food, like us?"
"Who cares! Clear it out!"
"Then we're gone! We were never here, got it?"
They swept up what little food remained, and every trace of it, and slipped away.
A short while later, from the passage opposite the one the five had taken, two men appeared. Both faces were deeply familiar.
Clock-out Man's expression curdled by the second.
"Bro, everywhere you go, people stick to you. Family, even. Holy..."
Tell me about it. Few people liked being alone as much as he did.
"At this point it's a curse."
"Shit. Just listening hurts."
Clock-out Man's fierce agreement came from the same place. Organization life didn't suit him either.
"Anyway, the Gwanghwamun family didn't last long, huh? Completely news to me."
"Yeah."
"Figures. Family is—"
"Unnecessary."
Two familiar faces. One was the man he'd dueled—the one who had come out swearing to avenge his brother. The familiar face beside him was that very brother. The one who had shot at him. The wound didn't seem fully healed; he moved with difficulty.
"Not a trace of fear on you."
The younger one spoke first. He'd thought the younger had the edge when it came to drive, but later he learned the older brother had simply been too badly hurt to waste words.
"Doesn't look like you came to kill me."
"Hmph. True enough."
The two of them had come unarmed. Why, then?
"I'll pay you back exactly what my brother suffered. But not like this. I'll repay it in a fair fight."
So he had his pride. That was the right of it. Both brothers had lost to him once, each in a one-on-one. If they meant to repay the humiliation, it had to be a fair fight.
"Eat."
The younger brother drew a loaf of bread from his coat.
"Huh?"
"I can't live owing a debt to the likes of you. Today every one of us benefited off you. And then a cell? The Gang Leader went too far this time."
He forced the bread through the gap in the bars.
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not looking after you because I like you. When the time comes, I'll put a knife in your side."
"..."
"What are you waiting for? Eat. If we're caught, neither you nor we are walking away clean."
He was already full.
"That's—"
"Ah, someone's coming!"
Another presence.
"We're going, so eat fast and don't leave a trace!"
"No, that's—"
The two of them vanished in a hurry.
"..."
The cell was empty. There was nowhere, anywhere, to hide the bread.
Inside my clothes?
The thought sat wrong. Tch. There wasn't much of it. Better to eat it fast and be done.
"Urk..."
He had barely forced it down his throat when the last visitor showed herself.
"It's late. You're still awake? Too unsettled to sleep?"
The Gang Leader. A large basket hung from one hand. Ominous.
Clank.
Her visit was on another level from the others'. She unlocked the cell outright and stepped inside the bars.
Clank.
Then she shut them behind her. The lock wasn't fastened on the outside, but at a glance it looked as if the two of them were shut in together.
She drew away the cloth covering the basket.
"There's a lot, so eat slowly."
Hideous foodstuffs reared their heads.
"...Didn't you say it was a fast?"
"Got a bit of temper, don't you? Right, I did say fast. So you skipped dinner, didn't you? This is a late-night snack."
His throat was packed solid. Nothing else was going down.
"Eating after mealtime is punishment enough on its own. So quit the chatter and eat."
"I'm good."
"That temper."
"It's not that. Actually—"
No.
He couldn't run his mouth that lightly.
"Actually what?"
"...I've lost my appetite."
"Oh? Because you suddenly went without? That's exactly when you need to eat and wake your stomach up. Come on. Say ah."
Now he was certain.
"This really is a prison."
No torture he knew of compared to this.
He barely survived the food torture.
"A constitution that can't eat except at mealtimes? What an incredible young lord you turned out to be."
Whatever she called him, so long as he didn't have to eat.
"Anyway, don't ever show that side in front of the crew again. Do you understand me?"
He understood what she meant.
"I acknowledge your skill, but an organization has rules. I won't tolerate you running wild where every subordinate can see, without an order from me."
"Yeah."
The crew hadn't seemed to care much, but that didn't make her point meaningless. The Gwanghwamun of now was something she had made.
Quietly, the Gang Leader took his hand.
"...?"
"Time we kept that promise, isn't it?"
"Huh?"
He had forgotten.
"I said I'd help you find your Core ability."
That was why the Gang Leader had come to the prison.