The Feeder and the Bracelet
"There's someone feeding it. That's why the zombie stays on her feet."
I'd doubted it. Of course.
Pink Dress never left that spot. And yet, every time, her posture had shifted just a little. She'd been feeding right there. Unless someone had walked over on purpose and let themselves be eaten, there was only one answer.
"Well. It wasn't impossible to see coming."
"Hear the rest. Ever seen who it is?"
I hadn't.
"You haven't, right? Every few days, and only at night. He slips in, tosses the food, and he's gone."
"So you've seen him."
"That's right! That's the fun part!"
If I'd watched it myself, it might have been fun.
"Just hearing about it doesn't do much for me."
"Impatient, aren't you. I'm not finished."
Behind him, Pot-Head and Matchstick Girl listened with the same lack of interest on their faces. They were One-Ear's companions. They'd seen it themselves, surely. So what were they doing out here? Not here for the story, then.
"I even talked to the guy face-to-face!"
"Impressive. A conversation with the feeder of the most famous zombie in Seoul."
"You mocking me?"
"You noticed."
"Anyway, it wasn't pure curiosity. Someone feeding a zombie—say it another way, and he's a man with nothing on his mind but scrounging food. Right?"
So he'd been angling for a sale.
"Buy some zombie jerky and throw it to her as feed?"
"Exactly!"
Zombies don't eat zombies. More precisely, they won't touch raw zombie flesh. Process the meat any way you like, and a zombie can eat it. When the military burns through a horde, you sometimes see a starving zombie charge one that's already roasting. While it eats, it cooks too, and then another comes along and tears into that. A real spectacle.
"I even told him I could handle the feeding on a schedule, if he wanted. I'm through here often enough."
"So you meant to charge for the jerky and for the service of tossing it."
"Dead on! Well, he turned me down."
A diligent peddler.
Still, the part that actually mattered hadn't come up.
"And why is he feeding a zombie?"
"Why? So it doesn't starve, I'd imagine."
"I mean why he cares whether a zombie starves."
"Who knows? Does it matter?"
So much for this being interesting.
"What matters is he'll show up soon. He comes like clockwork. I'm sure of it. A chance to see the zombie's feeder with your own eyes!"
"Thrilling."
"Well? A little fun, wasn't it?"
A little too little.
"Just spread the map."
I marked the positions of five zombies. Information every bit as trivial as his story.
"Closer than I thought! Excellent!"
I woke Clock-out Man, who'd been pretending to sleep. Time we got moving.
"Huh? Where you off to, Mr. Postman?"
"We've rested enough. We're going."
"I told you he's about to show!"
"Not interested."
I was curious, truthfully. Someone feeding a zombie. But waiting around just to watch it would have made me look even more ridiculous.
And then—
"Boss, maybe it's time you brought that up."
Pot-Head spoke for the first time.
"Tsk. I was saving it until the mood ripened."
"He's just gonna leave. Get him in on the bet, hurry. I need to make some money and eat ramen."
Ramen. Hadn't heard that in a long time. A Geofront food.
So that was why Pot-Head and Matchstick Girl had come out. The bet.
"Truth is, the really fun part starts now. We've got a little bet going, just between us."
"Mr. Postman, hear us out, and if you're interested, join in. You'll be through here often enough anyway, right? We can settle up next time we meet. We don't scam people."
Clock-out Man's eyes said he wanted in.
"Let's hear it."
"The stake is one round!"
One-Ear's companions sat down on the ground at once. The moment Pot-Head sat, he took off his lid, and the head underneath shone brighter than the pot. And Matchstick Girl—
"……The one who may do as he pleases with his own fate is a god. Shall we see if you are one?"
She seemed to have something wrong with her, mentally.
"So. I told you the Feeder turned down my offer, right? I asked him if it was because he didn't have the money. He didn't deny it."
Poor bastard. Scraping by, and still feeding a zombie on top of it.
"So I thought I'd set him up with some work. Something he could earn from."
"Because if he had money, you could sell him the jerky?"
"That's not all of it! He'd become a solid, upstanding member of society, and the zombie would live a long life!"
"Sure. Let's say that."
"And then, get this—he says he's got a terminal illness. Doesn't know when he'll die, so working's out of the question."
"Convenient excuse."
If the excuse was true, Pink Dress didn't have long left either.
"He made this pitiful face. Said he felt sorry for the zombie who'd be left all alone once he was dead."
"And the bet?"
"The bet starts right here!"
Pot-Head and Matchstick Girl grinned as one.
What came next was, admittedly, interesting.
"The guy goes and says that when his time comes, he'll throw himself in as the last meal!"
Offering himself up as food, for a zombie. Round up a hundred lunatics and you might—might—find one like that. The kind of madman even other madmen would call mad.
It is kind of funny.
Anyway, I could guess what they wanted to bet on.
"So the bet is whether the Feeder will actually offer himself up."
"Dead on! It started when somebody said even a lunatic knows his life is worth something."
He makes himself the meal, or he can't go that far. Both had a point. The latter was plain common sense. The former was abnormal thinking—but the Feeder was abnormality itself.
"Well? You studied for the Postman exam, didn't you? Which side is our clever little civil servant on?"
Before I could answer—
"Nonsense."
Clock-out Man jumped in first, staking it on that will never happen.
"What's the black-haired foreigner saying?"
"He's betting there's no way the man becomes food."
"Oho, you're in? Registered!"
Clock-out Man immediately produced two rounds. One was top-grade, headquarters issue. The other was homemade. The stake was clearly a single round, but no one had said what quality of round.
"This'll do."
Without a moment's hesitation, One-Ear picked the homemade round and pocketed it.
Trust +0.01
"And you, Mr. Postman?"
It was a bet for fun, but I didn't want to lose. I also didn't want to throw a stake down with nothing to go on.
"I'll bet after I've had a look at the Feeder."
Seeing the man's face might give me a read.
"Is that so? Suit yourself."
With that excuse, I could watch the Feeder in comfort. Still, how did they mean to tell who'd won?
"How would you even know he made himself the meal? No one's watching the whole time."
"Obviously I thought of that! He wears this eye-catching bracelet. A zombie isn't going to eat that too, is it?"
So if he became food, the evidence would be left behind.
"Then the other way around. How do you know he gave up? If he goes off and dies somewhere else, there's no way to tell from here."
"He comes on a schedule, so if he stops showing, we count him dead. If he turns up late anyway, the bet's void and we start watching again. Everyone agreed to the rules."
"You didn't ask me."
"You agree, though?"
"Hmm."
"We'll say you agreed! It's more fun that way."
And again, the answer came first—
"I agree."
Clock-out Man, ahead of me.
"What's he saying now?"
One-Ear hadn't caught it this time either, but I didn't need to translate. Pot-Head had.
"He said 'yeah, sure.'"
"That was Korean? The pronunciation seemed a little off."
"Boss, you can't talk like that to someone who's shaky with the language. We ought to be considerate. Ramen's the greatest food there is, but a person shouldn't twist themselves up like noodles."
"Ah. I was being shortsighted."
Matchstick Girl tossed in an interjection of her own.
"……Seoul's night is truly beautiful. Come, a toast, everyone."
"Ignore her."
I'd rather have ignored all three.
My agreement sealed the bet, and One-Ear led us up to the second floor.
"In honor of our new friendship, I hereby grant you leave to enter the Sanctuary!"
In truth, this was a better spot than the bare ground at the intersection. I'd known that. There had always been someone on the second floor, so I'd never been able to go up.
"We've held this Sanctuary for over half a year. Being allowed in means you've become a friend. That's what I'm telling you."
Last time, Thumb Man had been the one occupying the second floor.
"Half a year?"
"Over half a year! We're not always the ones standing watch, mind you. When we're away, a friend comes and keeps the Sanctuary."
A friend.
"Your friends get in on the bet?"
"Sadly, they said they weren't interested."
"So which side did the rest of you bet?"
"Honestly, everyone but one person is on 'he won't be able to make himself the food.' Takes some of the steam out of it."
"And who's the one?"
"The one you can't talk to."
Matchstick Girl.
The human whose inner world probably lined up closest with the Feeder's. A fitting choice.
"So if she wins, she takes the whole pot herself?"
"Jealous? You could bet her side."
He was openly shoving me toward Matchstick Girl.
If it was about odds, One-Ear's side was obviously the better one. Giving yourself up as food—that sort of thing doesn't happen easily. Anyone could guess Pink Dress had some tie to the Feeder when she was alive. Family, even, if you went deep enough. But becoming a zombie means she is already dead, and it is a hard thing for the living to decide they will be a sacrifice for the dead. Even if you're already terminal, already not really living, that doesn't change much. Being eaten by a zombie would be a painful end. Even when they die, people choose the place they'll lie down.
"……Mmh."
About the time Clock-out Man, fake sleep and all, actually dropped off—
"Mr. Postman. You see that?"
The Feeder had appeared.
"You've seen him, so that's enough, right? Which side?"
Pushy.
Even from a distance, his condition was obviously grave. He walked hunched, so unsteady he looked ready to collapse on the spot. The bet would be settled soon enough, I figured. Just when I thought he was closing on Pink Dress, he sank down about fifty meters short. Didn't even have the strength left to walk.
"Postman, if you don't bet now, I'm counting you out. Look at him. This might be decided any minute."
"What if he dies like that, without getting back up?"
"What do you mean, what if? He didn't become food of his own will. He just croaked."
"What if he came meaning to?"
"And how would anyone know? If he didn't become food, that's the end of it."
Fair enough. In the end, betting that he wouldn't become food was the advantageous side in every way.
"Think carefully, Mr. Postman. Bet with me and the odds are better, sure, but win that way and you've got almost nothing to show for it. The old saying has a word for that. No fun."
"Why don't you just come out and tell me to bet the other side."
"Bet the other side."
Well, the real flavor of a bet is the chance at a windfall. The problem was that betting on the Feeder's spirit of sacrifice looked, any way you cut it, like a losing road.
Either way, my conclusion was simple.
"I'm out."
"Eh?"
"Exactly what I said."
Betting with One-Ear would only mean five of us splitting the single homemade round Matchstick Girl had put up. Betting the side that was obviously going to lose wasn't fun either.
"Hey, Postman, where you going? You're really not doing it?"
"I'm not."
"Then where are you going?"
"I'm going to try talking to that man."
I don't often speak first. But if not now, I might never get to ask, so there was no helping it.
"If I joined the bet and then went and talked to him, that could count as cheating, couldn't it?"
"Well…… yeah? You might shove him into becoming zombie food."
"That's why I'm out. Talking to him seems like more fun than the bet."
One-Ear only scratched his head. He had nothing more to say.
The Feeder didn't notice me coming. Up close, he was a man in his early twenties, cheeks sunk so far the shape of the skull showed through. He'd been sitting there catching his breath, and only belatedly found me, turning a bleary gaze my way.
"I won't hurt you."
Instead of answering, the Feeder nodded, slow. It wasn't that he lacked wariness. He lacked the strength for it.
"What's that in your hand?"
A single sack. If that was food, then at least he wasn't about to make himself the meal today.
"……Food."
"Food for who?"
"The one…… over there."
Too weak to lift an arm or turn his head, the Feeder only rolled his eyes toward Pink Dress.
"That zombie's pretty famous around here. Thanks to you."
"……I know."
"I also heard you said you'd make yourself the food."
"……A lot of people must know."
Trembling hands. A complexion gone black. Lips dried to cracking. Eyes that had lost their focus. And blood that had seeped from wounds all over his body and dried where it ran.
The Feeder was dying. I didn't know whether it was truly a terminal illness, but the fact that he'd said so meant he knew he was already a dead man. He didn't even look like he wanted to live. Death was certain. With a body like this, there was only one thing left he could still do.
A lie, at a time like this, could pass for kindness.
"……."
At first I thought he was ignoring me.
But in the next moment, I saw it plain. The corner of his mouth, hauled upward by what little strength he had left.