A Free Person
The pet fitness test had begun. Sit-ups, a short sprint — that was the whole of it. They were only checking whether anything hurt, and whether you knew how to use a body.
"Take it easy. Don't waste your strength for nothing."
I had told him that, plain as day.
"Pretty fast, aren't you? A ways off this month's record, but still — second place."
Typical.
Huff, huff……!
Idiot.
"Whoa……. That's incredible."
"I'm going to lose my mind."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing."
"What's this one's name? Unbelievable."
"Clock-out— no, I mean—"
"Clock-out?"
"No, Toe—"
Even for a pet, Clock-out Man was a bit much as a name.
"Toegye. Just call him Toegye. Right, our Toegye?"
"Who?"
In the end he became Pet of the Month.
"Shit……."
"I told you to take it easy."
A Pet of the Month medal hung from the leather collar.
"Suits you."
"This kind of humiliation……."
Now that he was officially an elite pet, there shouldn't be any restriction on where he could go.
When we got back to the barn, the girl was there. So she did live here.
"Tofu."
A pet's introduction of herself was two syllables. Her own name.
A kid who looked to be in her late teens. About Jo An-na's age, and her face was unusually pale in the same way — skin so white the dark smears of grease stood out against it. Was that why they'd named her Tofu?
"I came because I heard there's a blueprint. If there's something you want, say so. I'll pay."
Jo Yong-han wouldn't have told me something that wasn't true. A job with no option but to finish it. Get it done fast, by whatever means it took.
"You're the postman the Future Technology Department sent?"
She spoke to me without so much as a glance. Tools in both hands, hard at work on something.
"Something like that. You know the Future Technology Department?"
"You bring up the blueprint, it's obvious."
So there'd been contact before. That would speed things up.
"Then—"
"I'm telling you, those Yeouido bastards are worse than the masters."
"Hm?"
"They left a blueprint with me? I never promised I'd draw one."
"……Draw one?"
So she didn't have a finished blueprint sitting around?
"I'm busy."
"So am I."
"Me too."
"What's wrong with that one?"
The first thing Tofu showed any interest in was Clock-out Man.
"Huh?"
"Don't mind him. He's a pet."
"Ah."
She dropped it at once.
"Is she ignoring me right now?"
"Ignoring? She's just treating you like a pet."
"Um……."
So there was no finished blueprint in the world. It existed in that kid's head. She must be good. Whatever the thing was, she knew how to draw something the Future Technology Department would covet.
"I'm not leaving until I have the blueprint."
"Suit yourself."
So an outsider didn't matter to her. Typical of someone who lived without locking the door.
"Like I said — if there's something you want, just name it. Anything. I'll pay for the blueprint."
"Anything I want?"
"Yeah. Anything."
A snort.
"How about you say it before you blow me off?"
"If I say it, you'll blow me off."
"Try me. I won't."
At that—
"Really? Promise."
For the first time, Tofu met my eyes. A suspicious look.
"Promise."
"You did. Just try blowing me off."
It was going to be complete bullshit. Keep a straight face. Just don't dismiss her.
"Make lightning strike the Clock Tower."
Pfft!
I wasn't the one who laughed.
"Oh, sorry."
Lightning on the Clock Tower. So that was what the scene from earlier had meant.
"I saw you up on the Clock Tower earlier—"
"You can't, can you? I don't need anything but that."
Thinking back to what the neighbor had said the first time I found the barn—
"Look at the sky, it's cloudy, isn't it. Plain as day it's about to pour! Go check the Clock Tower. She'll be at her nonsense again."
That must have been something that happened every time it rained.
"Does praying at the sky make lightning fall?"
Tofu pretended not to hear.
"Someone who works with machines, obsessed with a method that unscientific — why would the sky help you?"
"Oh, what is he even saying."
So this was the soft spot.
"You solve it scientifically. Use your head."
"Like using your head's going to do it?"
"So you're planning to pray at the sky your whole life? If you are, at least show some sincerity. Shouldn't you offer a sacrifice or something? Empty words aren't going to get you anywhere."
"……I tried that too. Didn't work."
A serious case. A peculiar want I couldn't see the reason for. But the other pets had all gathered to pray together, so there must have been something that made sense among them.
"Anyway, there's nothing you can't do if you use your head."
Whether I said anything or not, Tofu went back to her work.
"Don't believe me?"
The ignoring continued.
"That rude pet! You gonna keep ignoring hyung?"
"Didn't you say you're a pet? Get lost. You can't even talk right."
"What?"
"I told you to speak Korean."
"Damn it!"
"What does he keep saying?"
"Don't mind him. It's a dialect."
"A dialect? I can't understand a word of it."
"The region's a bit far."
"Ah."
Tofu answered offhand and went back to work. A drop of sweat ran down her cheek. Whatever she'd been making was slowly taking shape.
"A portable generator?"
"Oh?"
A second meeting of the eyes. This time they were bright.
"How'd you know?"
"The structure's obvious."
"Oh……."
She shot up out of her seat.
"Every single thing in here! All of it! I made it!"
All kinds of machinery filled the barn. I'd assumed some of it was hers, of course. But all of it. The machine tools you needed in order to make machines — I'd thought a master had invested in those. Building large equipment like that alone couldn't be explained by simply calling her skilled.
And besides—
"There's a fan, too?"
Even a symbol of luxury. The unhinged notion of burning electricity because you were hot. Cute next to the air conditioner Jo Yong-han ran, but this was the outside world.
"Are there many people who can afford to buy something like that?"
"That one's not for sale. It's mine."
So she was rich?
"It's not even hooked up. More like something to look at."
"……Does it cool you down if you stare at it?"
"How about you stay out of other people's hobbies?"
Tofu sat back down and took up her tools. Her expression had brightened. With skill like this, her master ought to be making good money.
"So that's why the master never says a word even if you don't lock the door."
"Master? I don't have a master."
"Hm?"
"I'm a free pet."
The explanation went like this. The money Tofu brought in was the settlement's public funds. In exchange, she had no master of her own — an animal whose freedom was guaranteed.
"This one's a pet without any freedom, though—"
I was about to introduce Clock-out Man properly. She had no interest at all.
"Introduce yourself."
"Clock... ou— no, what was it."
Memorize your own name, at least.
"Toegye."
"Couldn't you have given him an easier name? I don't even get what it means."
If anything, Tofu knew better.
"Toegye Yi Hwang. A Confucian scholar of Joseon."
"Huh?"
Sharp.
Knock, knock.
"Hm? We expecting company?"
"No one like that. You two must've done something annoying."
As if.
Knock, knock.
Tofu had no intention of checking who it was.
"You're not going to look?"
"I told you, it's your fault."
Tsk.
Knock, knock.
If she kept this up, I wasn't getting any work done. I'd have to handle it myself.
I opened the door, ready to say the pet in here was a lost cause—
"I knew you'd be here! Someone said they saw you come this way!"
It was a staffer from the fitness-test center I'd seen earlier.
"See?"
That Tofu kid and I really didn't seem to get along.
"It's just that the fitness results were so outstanding."
The staffer hadn't come alone. One companion on each side, and every one of them holding paper and a pen.
"You two must've done something annoying."
Annoyingly on the mark.
"Might we ask how you usually train him?"
"We're thinking of putting it out as settlement news!"
Use an Ability Core, survive, enter hunter training, and grind for a few years, and this is what you get. Strip out every secret and every classified detail, and there was almost nothing left I could say.
"If it's a special secret and hard to share, could you leave out the troublesome parts and just tell us what you can, even briefly—"
So leaving all of it out was fine, was it.
"Survive. Then grind."
"Pardon……?"
The three of them, looking troubled, suddenly put their heads together and started talking among themselves.
"Surviving means a fierce will to live—"
"A healthy physical condition, you mean?"
"When people have suffered, they say they've been grinding, right? So—"
"Grit? Effort?"
"So it's the mental side."
"Body and mind in harmony……!"
They understood it however they liked, then got excited and made to leave on their own. Lucky.
"A sound mind in a sound body, after all!"
They didn't forget to flaunt their ignorance one last time on the way out.
"Haaah."
Tofu's sigh.
"Why?"
Clock-out Man didn't seem to have caught it.
Using it the other way around is a method too.
Smart ones can't stand a thing that doesn't add up. You make them unable to hold it, until they open their mouths on their own.
"Yeah. Maybe sighing's just a habit."
"Haaah……."
An even deeper sigh.
"It's not soul. It's mind."
She bit. Now show her.
"I know."
"Pfft. Sure you know."
"Don't believe me, then."
"I won't~"
Backscratcher asked if now was the time. Endure it.
"A sound mind in a sound body……. A pre-collapse adage. Everyone takes it to mean a healthy body makes the heart and the thoughts healthy too, but that's actually a wrong reading."
"……?"
Tofu, who had been needling me the whole time, went still.
"Much older than the pre-collapse world. The Roman era. A man named Juvenal said it. When he first said it, that wasn't the meaning."
"Then?"
There was no sense of real curiosity in Tofu's then. More like a tone checking whether I actually knew it properly.
"It was something he said watching gladiators — those fine bodies, slaughtering without a thought."
Passing time in the cabin had been one long stretch of boredom. The one way to make the hours move was reading the books the Old Man had piled up. For the first few years, no matter how much time I had left over, I never looked at a book. But when a person gets bored past a certain point, they do things they never did. Reading something with no practical use at all, like stories of Rome, was extremely rare. The reason I'd read one was that I'd already finished every practical book in the cabin and had nothing left to look at.
"He said it hoping the gladiators, who had healthy bodies, might have healthy minds as well. These days a lot of people know that. A later misreading of the Latin passed it down with the wrong meaning."
Come to think of it, it was a lot like the Old Man's doctrine of physical training. The logic that a superior body raised the odds of using a Core. Just as Jeong-gu had said, that probably wasn't true. A good body is always right, of course. I wasn't trying to deny that. The body is the foundation of countless other things. But training the body in order to gain a strong will and an unshaken heart is taking the long way around a shortcut. And there's no guarantee that road is even the right one.
"For a healthy mind, you have to train the mind itself. Ask yourself questions. Agonize. Look into the world. That sort of thing."
A brief silence.
When Tofu spoke again—
"You're no ordinary postman."
Her voice had changed.
Only now was something like a real conversation with Tofu possible.
"Tata?"
"Yeah. A kid who got out."
A pet who had escaped, and was no longer here. A familiar name. The name written on every piece of body armor taken off the Human Meat Factory commandos. I'd thought it was the maker's name, and hearing Tofu tell it, that seemed right.
"If he carved his name into every suit of armor…… I wonder if he was trying to make his name known on purpose. Did he want people to know he was at the Human Meat Factory?"
Tofu's guess at the intent. Anyway, they said he'd been the most skilled pet at Animal Farm. Escaping this place, they said, had also been thanks to what he could build. He'd made astonishing equipment. When he got out, the top spot became Tofu's. A policy of appeasement came attached.
"Guess they were worried I'd escape too. Idiots."
The privilege Animal Farm handed down while winning her over.
"A free pet, you could call it."
A pet without a master. The reason Tofu was alone.
Even so, she still had to make this and that on Animal Farm's orders, so in the end you had to see her as a pet owned in common by everyone here. Still, not having a master who gave orders face to face was a large thing. That, and being the only one receiving special treatment. Everyone must have believed she was satisfied enough. Whatever the case, she hadn't tried to escape.
But—
"Idi~ots."
That was something people said because they didn't know Tofu. Escape was a hard thing not just anyone could dream of, but her staying quietly here had a reason of its own.
Humor her, and the talk just pours out.
Tofu, living with little contact with anyone else. The urge to let it out must have built up.
"Bro, aren't you babying her too much? She's getting way too full of herself."
"I'll bear it in mind."
"Good."
"The babying stops now, Clock-out Man."
"……That was about me?"
Before I knew it, Clock-out Man had passed out cold. And now, on the strength of all that babying, I could put a deeper question to Tofu.
"Is escape flat-out impossible?"
"Well, for now you have to figure it is. Not zero percent, but about as close to zero as it gets."
"Everyone says your skill is the best here. Still too much?"
"There's not much I can do on my own. The world's full of things you just can't help."
Somehow she called up someone I used to know. The most realistic of the six.
"Does believing or not even matter. The world's full of things you can't help……."
Of course, she and Hee-ju had more that set them apart than they shared. Set against Tofu, the brainy type, Hee-ju was the kind whose fist went first.
Shall I show her the height of the babying, right about here.
Getting even one blueprint was hard.
"Come with me."
"Huh?"
Clock-out Man, stretched out asleep — I'd leave him, and take only Tofu.
"……We're going out?"
No matter how urgent it was, you still took what needed taking. It was fully night outside. But there was no proper coat anywhere in the workshop. For a moment I wondered if that rag in the corner was a coat, then decided to think of it as a rag. Nothing for it.
"It's cold out."
I took out a postman's raincoat and put it on her.
"It's been forever since I came out at this hour!"
Animal Farm in the deep of night. Lights-out had passed, and the whole settlement lay sunk in thick dark. Thanks to that, the torches of the guards wandering here and there couldn't have been brighter.
"Keep your voice down. You'll wake everyone."
"Wake them and tell them to come out! It's a festival!"
Maybe bringing her had been a mistake.
Every time the guards spotted us from a distance, they flinched. After lights-out it was curfew. But once my face showed in the torchlight, everything was settled. Guards who traded a light joke or two and passed on. Nothing special about it, except that they found it curious to see Tofu, beside me, wearing a postman's raincoat.
"Can we really go outside the settlement?"
"Only right up to the front, though. If we stay inside the watch of the sentries on the wall, it's possible."
The people you get friendly with fastest, working as a postman, are the sentries who keep the wall. And the trustworthy status of postman makes impossible things possible. Add a suitable bribe and it becomes perfect. I shut their mouths with one cheap round apiece. Taken off the sniper who had partnered with Thumb Man.
"Whoa……. We're really outside."
Even beyond the wall, at this distance there wasn't much difference. You'd have to go straight for about thirty minutes before it changed. Then you could look at raiders, monsters, and zombies. Around the wall, it was only a spot where you could barely get the feeling of having left the settlement. For Tofu, of course, that was enough.
"So. How is it, now that you've actually felt like a free person?"
At the question, Tofu drew a long breath. As if checking what the air smelled like outside the settlement.
"Lean liberty is better than fat slavery."
"John Ray."
"Oh!"
Might as well answer in kind.
"Give me liberty, or give me death."
"Patrick Henry!"
"Correct."
"Hah!"
The first saying in the collection of famous quotes, and the second. She'd read the same book.
For a long while Tofu only looked at the moon in the night sky. The moon that always rose outside the settlement — she must always have watched it from inside the wall. Even with nothing being done, the time went quickly.
When about half of the promised hour had passed, Tofu whispered.
"Did you think if you brought me outside, we could get close?"
The answer here would matter.
"Yeah."