Natural Disaster
Rules are rules.
However the crew chose to treat me, my place remained a slave's. That was how it had been decided from the start.
"Jeong-gu still asleep?"
"Let him sleep. He was training late again last night."
"That kid doesn't even get time to rest."
"So how long is Jeong-gu supposed to stay a slave?"
"Was there a set term?"
"...There wasn't, was there?"
No one had ever thought past that. Leaving the station of a slave was not in the rules at all. Anyone who harmed the organization was taken alive and made to pay in a duel. Win that duel, prove your worth, and you were given a chance to go on living—even if only as a slave. Gwanghwamun's thinking had stopped exactly there. They had never imagined a day would come when they took someone who had harmed the organization and accepted him as family.
The decisive reason they still would not give me back my P210 was the rules as well. A slave could be armed when necessary, but the rules were clear that he was never to be given a gun. Amending them was possible at any time, of course. Whenever someone in the crew brought it up, though, the boss's answer never changed.
I could understand it. The moment a rule turned inconvenient, rewriting it on the spot would look bad. A rule you could change the instant the situation changed might as well not exist.
"So what if he's a slave? Does the name matter? It's all in how you look at it."
"It's not like we're tormenting him."
"The youngest being the one who rests the least is already tormenting him, isn't it?"
"That's different, you idiot."
"Rules are rules."
"So that's why everyone's sneaking him this and that on the side, right?"
"The training the boss puts him through—you've got to see that as something she's doing for Jeong-gu."
"You could also say she's doing it for herself—"
"Bury that."
"That bastard's the one who ought to be a slave."
"The extra training is the boss inventing work she doesn't even have to do. She's working without a spare moment too."
It wasn't an entirely smooth life.
"What about the one who said he was going to get revenge on Jeong-gu?"
"That's the same as ever."
"Some scores have to be settled. Can't be helped."
"Time will take care of all of it."
And so time passed.
"He trained late again last night?"
The Core ability arrived one day, without warning. Just as the boss had said.
Thoughts like why now, of all times were meaningless. All that mattered was what do I do now.
"Wake Jeong-gu. No sleeping in today."
That morning, the hideout was in an uproar from the start.
"Jeong-gu?"
"Just a little longer..."
"A deal came up out of nowhere. Get dressed presentable and be ready to head out."
"Presentable...?"
All I owned were clothes that looked like a slave's. What exactly was I supposed to do to look more presentable than that?
A deal with another organization. When the transaction was large, the buyers came to the sellers' hideout. As a courtesy, the selling side went out to receive them, and it was usual to send as many members as possible.
"It's to show them—this is how much strength our organization has!"
Which was how I, a slave, got dragged along too.
"The boss handles the deal herself anyway. All we have to do is go stand there. Oh, and if you watch how it's done and learn something, even better!"
"Learn?"
"The skill of making a deal!"
"You just said the boss is the one who does the dealing."
"You've got a head on you, Jeong-gu! Who knows—someday the boss might name you her successor!"
"...?"
So she meant to keep me a slave for life.
The appointed time was already thirty minutes gone, and they still had not appeared. The boss held the spot without yielding, posture straight. Those of us who had been standing behind her like a folding screen had only just sprawled onto the ground—because she had ordered us to sit, of course, not because we felt like it.
One by one, people around us started to whisper. The boss was not particularly stopping the chatter. My own mouth had been itching.
"Head Cook, what exactly is going on?"
"Rude bastards, the lot of them. First time doing business with us, and this is how they show?"
Even so, there was a reason we were still holding the spot.
"They might have run into a monster on the way, so we're waiting just in case. Truth is, we could walk off and they wouldn't have a word to say. Call it the boss showing some manners."
It was the first deal, and she was taking the trouble. If it had been the Old Man, he would have called them the sort who break a promise from the very first meeting and left the moment the time was up. Which side would I have been on?
"The boss gives people too much rope, that's the trouble. Me, I wouldn't have waited this long."
The Head Cook was on the Old Man's side.
"What do you think, Jeong-gu?"
Well. It had been about thirty minutes.
"If it were me, I think I'd have waited about fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds."
"Huh? Why so specific?"
Five more minutes passed after that.
"Well, well, you're all out here waiting! Sorry—really, I am sorry!"
A thug appeared along with a booming declaration of apology. The word fit perfectly. In an old-world book I had seen at the cabin, there was an illustration explaining thug, and there was no question this man had been the model.
"Sorry we're late, Big Sis!"
Anyone could see the thug looked a good ten years older.
"...Big Sis?"
The boss's voice sank. She was not the sort to bristle easily over something like age. It was the lateness. She had moved to lay down the law.
"What are you all standing around for! This is Goyo-ran of Gwanghwamun, your Big Sis! Pay your respects!"
"Pleasure to meet you, Big Sis!"
The thug had brought some twenty lackeys with him. When we started to rise for their greeting, the boss stopped us.
"Stay seated."
She had decided not to hide her displeasure.
"Ahaha, we're late with the introductions. We are—"
A pointless introduction followed. Nobodies with no pedigree, according to the Head Cook. They had come to sell Gwanghwamun weapons and ammunition. The Core taken from the boss-class creature brought down last time was set to pay for this deal. The military had once overproduced its standard-issue service rifles until new stock sat surplus, and dumped them on the market cheap; these men had bought them up, so the story went, and were reselling them to us. If they truly had come off the military production line, they were certainly the finest goods.
The military put brand-new stock straight onto the market?
Doubting that first was the reasonable order of things. It was not entirely without precedent, but it was exceedingly rare—and especially sensitive for Gwanghwamun, which had lines into the army. One misstep, and a soured military might cut the relationship entirely. Even so, the deal had been accepted because the terms those bastards offered were simply that good. It was a transaction that called for caution, which was why they had been made to come all the way to Gwanghwamun themselves. Safer to look the goods over in our own front yard.
"Why so late? Something happen on the way?"
"I'm sorry, Big Sis! I just get lost easily!"
"...That is your entire reason?"
"I think it's ridiculous too, but what can I do when it's the truth, Big Sis...!"
A reason so clean there was nothing left to pick at. He was an idiot, by his own account.
"Fine. Let's see the goods."
She would let it pass, for now.
"Yes, ma'am! Understood, Big Sis!"
At a gesture from the thug, the lackeys dragged the crates over. Meanwhile, the boss settled the form of address, perfectly calm.
"Boss would be better than Big Sis."
"Ah, unpleasant to hear?"
"Everyone calls me that."
But—
"The thing is, I'm more comfortable calling you Big Sis."
"...?"
A thug who could not understand words.
"What did you just say?"
"If it doesn't particularly bother you, why not just leave it as Big Sis?"
"...Do I really have to say out loud that it bothers me before you underst—"
"Ah, let's look at the goods first!"
The thug ignored her and opened a crate.
"Please check them, Big Sis!"
"......"
The boss stood exactly where she was and did not move. The Head Cook, fretting at her side, finally tried to approach her.
"Hold your position. I'll handle it."
She stopped him without so much as turning around. He edged backward to his place, face pale.
"Head Cook, is a deal usually this much of a contest of nerves?"
"No... Something's off about that bastard. This is why I said we shouldn't do business with men who have no pedigree...!"
From where I sat, all I could see was the boss's back. Even so, I could tell. Her breathing was deeper than usual. She was working to steady herself.
"You're not going to look at the goods? Big Sis?"
Little by little, she found her ordinary breath again. Once she had calmed to a point, she walked up to the crate.
"I should check."
Picking a fight she did not need was not her way. She was different from the Old Man.
"Well? Clean even at a glance, right, Big Sis?"
The crates were exactly as they came off the military's regular production line. Twenty rifles in each. One of them came up in the boss's hand.
That one is familiar to me, too.
One of the weapons I had handled until I was sick of it, back at the cabin. Thanks to the Old Man.
"A weapon you are required to master. The reason is simple. It is the firearm most thickly sown across this land. Should you subdue a man with a gun in his hands and take that gun from him, nine times out of ten it will be this one."
Just looking at it brought everything back, vivid—the feel of the gun in my grip, the sight picture when I aimed, the resistance of the trigger under my finger, even where the muzzle jumped when I failed to control the recoil. The one slung over the Head Cook's shoulder, right beside me, was the same weapon.
...Like I'm being pulled in.
Maybe because my head was full of old sensation. An urge welled up to touch the cook's rifle and confirm that the feeling I remembered was right. I could not hold it down.
I'm only going to touch it.
So I reached out for no particular reason, and the instant my fingertips met it—
Huh?
The gun seemed to shine blue.
"Jeong-gu?"
"Ah. Guess I didn't sleep enough this morning."
I was seeing things more and more often.
"Big Sis? What's the matter?"
"Clean as new."
"Well, they are new!"
"Hmm..."
That voice of hers.
Deep in thought.
Hours of talk every night, and I had come to know her state from her voice alone.
And that back.
Sure enough, it was how she looked when she sank into thought. Hard to put into words, but I could feel it.
What is she thinking.
Even from her back, her face rose up before me. I had watched her so often I could have drawn it. The feel of her hand clasped in mine, and the warmth of it, was vivid too.
"Big Sis? Something wrong?"
I saw it again. A hallucination.
"Jeong-gu, doesn't the boss seem a little off?"
Closing my eyes and opening them, again and again, did not make it go away. Had something gone wrong in my head?
"Jeong-gu?"
"A hallucination..."
"That again?"
The blue light had grown far too clear. It wrapped precisely around the boss and the rifle. Now I could see it even with my eyes shut, as if it meant to tell me that closing my eyes did not make the boss and the rifle vanish from the world. The light stayed where it was and kept announcing their presence without end.
"...Even with my eyes closed."
"Huh?"
In that instant—
"Jeong-gu! Where are you going!"
A natural disaster struck me.
"What are you doing! Hold your position!"
Why now, of all times—that did not matter.
"Jeong-gu!"
What mattered was what do I do now.