Novice
Rustle.
I had only just managed to fall asleep, and something had already ruined it.
Rustle.
The sound kept on. At first I thought Clock-out Man was thrashing around more than usual, but when I listened closer, it was coming from the floor below.
Someone's coming up.
What little sleep still clung to my eyelids fled all at once.
Rustle.
Whoever it was didn't know yet that we were on the roof. The sooner we moved, the better.
Click. Click.
I drew the Backscratcher, and in the same instant Clock-out Man had his gun up. Two men were creeping toward the roof. Raiders.
"Don't shoot!"
"We didn't do anything! Ah—not yet, anyway!"
Didn't do anything. They'd woken me up. And the way they went about it was far too clumsy for anyone seasoned.
"Bro, what do we do?"
One look told me they were beggars. Times like this, even shaking them down is a chore.
"Handle it."
I kept the Backscratcher trained on them while Clock-out Man searched both men from collar to boot.
"Damn it. Beggars."
As expected. There wasn't a single round in either gun. Judging by their color and the state of what they carried, it wouldn't have been strange if they dropped dead today. They weren't entirely empty-handed, though. There was a little ancient food that looked as if eating it would send you straight to the grave.
This try might have been the opening of their careers as raiders.
Sloppy skill. Resources so wretched they had to haul spoiled food around with them. Men shoved to the cliff's edge until they had no choice left. One face looked early twenties; the other, three or four years older. Even at the low end, that meant they had survived more than seven thousand nights.
The older of the two had cracked a joke in the middle of all this. A man for whom humor had become a way of living. A sense like that only comes from meeting a great many people and talking to them across a great many days. You can read a history in a single sentence.
What caught the eye was a necklace on the humorous one. The pendant was a little glass vial no bigger than a thumb. A stopper sealed it, but the glass was clear, and whatever sat inside showed through. It looked like a rolled scrap of paper. Probably a message written on it. The one beside him had nothing notable about him except a balsam-flower stain dyed into his little fingernail.
In the end Clock-out Man found nothing worth money, and when he reached for the vial last of all—
"Ah, that one's a little..."
The man flinched and tried to hide it.
"Hands off."
Clock-out Man dropped his voice, heavy and flat, and that was how the contents of the vial ended up in his hand.
"Hm."
Even unrolled, the paper was small. He held it practically against his eye. Something had been written across that tiny scrap in lettering like grains of millet, packed tight.
"Tch."
He read for a moment, then rolled the paper up again and put it back in the vial. He even kindly replaced the stopper.
"Go."
Once he'd confirmed they owned nothing and posed no threat, he let them go.
Not that they looked likely to last long anyway.
I was thinking that, putting the Backscratcher away and shifting my gaze past the edge of the roof, when—
Bang!
A gunshot, out of nowhere. I threw a shield up on reflex, tucked myself in, and rolled aside.
Bang!
A second shot followed. And then—
"Ghk..."
"Kkh—"
The two of them groaned. Smoke curled up from the Glock 26 in Clock-out Man's hand.
"You startled me."
"Huh? You're jumpy over this?"
Of course I was. A mere Glock 26 had no business pouring out that much smoke.
"How far did you modify it?"
"Just little? I only swapped the slide."
"And the ammo?"
"First time using it, and the powder stink is worse than I heard. Did I get ripped off? Shit."
This was a man who used to run nothing but spec consumables. Quite a change. Life on the Surface must not have been gentle.
"A gun the size of your thumbnail, and you're modifying it and feeding it off-spec rounds besides. Don't. Catch a bad break and you'll lose a hand."
"Yes sir!"
Looking at the toes of the two fallen men's shoes, I saw blades sprung out of them. A hidden weapon that Clock-out Man's thorough search had still missed. The gear, at least, had been decent. The skill was as sloppy as ever. The moment the blades popped he had the gun out, and whatever burst of speed they managed, they were never getting past him.
"What do you think of those shoes?"
"Fun little things, but I wouldn't keep them. Too worn out to wear, and as weapons they're toys."
"Mm. If it's bigger than a round, you toss it without a second look, don't you?"
"I haven't tossed you yet."
While we went back and forth, the groans of the two men with holes in their heads stopped. After that they didn't move at all. They probably never would again. Creeping up here, they couldn't have imagined this was the last stop of their lives.
Men driven to the cliff's edge who turn raider die most often on the first attempt. Desperation makes them reckless, and they have no experience. The psychopaths who realize raiding is their nature and throw themselves into it are different. The promising ones prepare so thoroughly for that first try that they almost never fail. Those types die most right after they shed the look of a novice and start getting careless. Either way, once you're a veteran, it all comes out the same.
"What are you staring at so hard? They still not dead? I put the holes in exactly right."
Two people who had survived more than twenty years. At the end of that long history, they had become raiders. And, unluckily, they had gone after former hunters. Across more than seven thousand nights there must have been plenty of things you couldn't watch without tears. But death requires neither a long time nor any great effort. To me, anyway, they were only nameless raiders.
"I asked what you're looking at."
"One round each. Dead center of the forehead. Clean through."
"Point-blank, this is the minimum."
"Did I teach you to shoot like that at point-blank?"
"No sir! You taught us to use a double tap or a Mozambique drill!"
"And?"
"Spending two rounds, three rounds, to drop one man isn't to my taste. I got special ammo so I could finish it in one heavy shot, all right?"
"Close-range shooting has to be drilled into the body until it comes out on reflex, any time. You're supposed to cut away even the seconds you spend weighing the situation. If you stop to judge it every single—"
"Yes! Sorry! Sir!"
Still, there is one thing Clock-out Man is unquestionably good at.
"You drop two men and don't so much as blink."
"Not exactly a pleasant chore, but it was perfect self-defense, wasn't it?"
Of course he'd done well. I'd had the leisure to be careless because he was there. Alone, I never would have taken my eyes off them. Then I would have been the one shooting, and I would have done just as well.
"You did fine. Thanks to you I kept my ammo, so I'm in a pleasant mood besides."
"......I suddenly feel like I took a serious loss."
Death doesn't always invite reflection. Some days are simply like this. Maybe it's the lack of sleep.
Come to think of it, the Old Man had once said something of the sort.
I had thrown a question back at him on the spot.
The answer, unexpectedly, had been perfectly clear.
I hadn't understood, back then, that it was a clear answer. I understand now. The two lying in front of me had ceased to be people from the moment they came for me. Even Clock-out Man, busybody that he is, had learned to think that way, which is why he can pull the trigger without a flinch. Live according to his nature and he would never be able to shoot a person—and in the end, he wouldn't still be alive.
Anyway.
What matters isn't some raider.
What mattered far more was that they had dragged me out of the little sleep I'd managed. Sunrise was still a long way off.
"What do you want to do, bro? Just head out?"
Clock-out Man was the only one who looked refreshed.
"Let's go."
"Don't push yourself."
I wanted to get to headquarters and lie down. Even a room like a chicken coop can be missed.
"I'm not pushing it. We leave now."
"Roger!"
Anyway.
"What was written on that scrap of paper?"
What had been inside the humorist's vial?
"Hm? Oh, that thing from earlier? Crammed in tight, front and back."
"You got through it quick."
"I glanced, figured there was no point reading any more, and rolled it up."
"So what did it say?"
He told me the part he had read, describing it exactly as it had looked on the note.
Overcook the medicine? Ammunition—ah, this doesn't seem right.
For hours Clock-out Man followed behind me without a word. He looked ready to tail me all the way to headquarters.
"Huu."
A sigh, out of nowhere.
"What's your complaint."
"Hm?"
"The ground's about to cave in."
"Oh. Did the voice of my heart leak out and turn to wind?"
Why was he like this.
"I wonder if Tofu's all right. She just keeps coming to mind. Is it only me?"
So he'd been fretting.
"Keep your heart's voice where I can't hear it."
"Try answering the heart, at least."
"I already explained everything. I hid her properly at that Mr. Gwak's place."
"You don't know how she is right now, though. Let's take a little time and worry together."
Doing that wouldn't change a thing.
"Worry all you like on your own. I'm not thinking about it for a while."
"So you will later?"
"Don't grab the tail of my words."
Worries waste strength of mind. Better to erase them from my head. For the time being, Tofu does not exist.
"You're worrying, though. I know, man."
"Would you take that heartfelt bullshit and shove it back inside."
The next waypoint was coming into view.
"This route really is safe."
"Don't go around advertising it."
A route made by linking points that had been confirmed safe. It hadn't been safe from the start. I had opened it myself, piece by piece.
"Postman work is walking the same road around and around, right? Doesn't it get boring?"
"Spoken like a man with a full stomach."
"Fair."
Walking this road, it feels as if the same ordinary day is repeating again—but it isn't, really. The scenery always looks identical, and if you look closely, pieces of it have shifted. It goes without saying that whoever you meet on the road is different every time. A corpse that wasn't there yesterday is there today, and come back tomorrow and it may be gone. Walk the same road, and the number of steps is never the same. From far away, always the same. From up close, never.
This time I wasn't talking about daily life. The end of the world is like that too.
"Noisy here. This settlement's name... the Tomb? It is the Tomb, right? What do they call it inside?"
"The Cradle."
"Right, that was it. I get the Tomb. Why the Cradle?"
"Name of the man who built the settlement. Kim Cradle."
"......That was it?"
As if.
A settlement where Madangbal quietly exercises power. Uncle Mun had become master of the clinic in place of his dead son. That man probably doesn't have any medical knowledge either. I wondered if he was managing. Strange, though, that Clock-out Man knew this place.
"You've been here before?"
"Never been inside. Just passed by a few times. Every time, the sound of people carried out, loud enough that it stuck."
They hold assemblies often, so that would do it. Or Madangbal never shuts up.
"Come with me and they'll let you in too. Hand over some ammo and you'll have food in no time."
"You out of food too, bro?"
"Not me. You."
"I'm good. Not hungry."
"You're going to starve?"
"Just give me one bite when you eat."
"......"
"Hm? Why are you opening your eyes like th—"
Smack.
"Agh!"
Getting into the settlement was no harder than ever. Since we were visiting anyway, I had Clock-out Man show his face to each of the guards, and I put in a word that they should clear him through the next time they saw him. If he could come and go freely through a number of settlements, he would be easier to use as a mercenary later.
"Well. Looks like a peaceful settlement."
On the outside, yes. At a glance, the Cradle looked no different from any other day. Madangbal was the same.
"Well now? Another delivery? Hard at it, aren't you?"
"Not even a little. I'm on my way back to headquarters."
"Only now? Slacking, then?"
A few minutes was all Clock-out Man needed to secure food. It was a short visit, so we didn't talk with Madangbal for long, but I did hear one piece of recent news.
"Sad to say, he passed."
Word that Uncle Mun had followed the son who went ahead of him. How many days had he even been master of the clinic?
"We don't know the cause. There isn't a doctor left in the settlement."
Madangbal had found the body, he said.
"Gave me a real fright, I tell you. Has the clinic picked up a curse? Become the owner and you die, so nobody wants the job. In the end we couldn't find a successor."
Even so, the clinic has to keep running.
"Well, for the time being I've agreed to be temporary master."
Figures. One way or another, things keep stumbling along.
"Well. All of this is God's will, wouldn't you say?"
"From outside, I thought this time it might actually be a cradle. Up close, it's a tomb after all."
"Hm?"
An ordinary day, in a world already ended.
About the time I grew used to Clock-out Man trailing after me, we finally reached the last gate on the way to headquarters. A gloomy district, abandoned buildings packed tight. A place that looked, from the outside, as if you should never step into it. And the place where we had met Thumb Man and the sniper.
"......We get to headquarters through here?"
Right here, where a zombie dressed in a pink one-piece stands ready to greet you. The Truce Zone.