10. Daily Life
Discharge took about a week, give or take.
The doctor recommended I stay another week, but when I heard that the approval paperwork waiting for me had stacked higher than my height while I lay in that hospital bed, I changed my mind. My body dying was fine. My team's budget and workload dying was unforgivable.
I got out of bed with little cotton pads still taped over my ears. Maybe it was the concussion, but my head throbbed in flashes, and whenever I went from sitting to standing, the world tilted lazily sideways for a moment.
Other than that… I was fine.
Yukel had been discharged a day before me, which really drove home the difference between mutants. Her eyes and ears were gone, and she was out in just six days!
My first day back. The moment I opened the door, the familiar smell of antiseptic mixed with the smell of paper washed over me.
My desk was nowhere to be seen. In its place stood a mountain of file folders and sealed envelopes. Seven new specimens had come in while I was gone, and thirteen separate cooperation requests had arrived from other teams.
"…Maybe I should check back into the hospital."
"Team Leader!"
A flash of gold hair popped up from behind the document mountain. Sirin was sitting in my chair, a ballpoint pen in one hand and the chocolate I'd hidden away in the other.
"…You."
"Good morning!"
"Why are you sitting at my desk?"
"I was just sort of pre-sorting your paperwork for you, Team Leader!"
"…Where did you find that chocolate."
"Oh! This? I found it while I was tidying your desk…!"
I snatched the chocolate out of her hand immediately. An empty wrapper greeted me. A hollow, grieving weight.
I shoved Sirin out of the chair and sat down in my own seat.
"Anyway. Report on the backlog."
"Seven new specimens, two reclassifications, one disposal request. The urgent ones are on top."
"Hmm… I see."
"And my praise?"
"If you sorted them well, I'll give it to you at the end of the day."
Sirin beamed at me. My ear stung.
I opened the first document.
Specimen Name: The Rain-Falling Umbrella
Discovery Site: Chibdo region, Colombia
Properties: When opened, it rains. Haha.
…Low risk. Store it in a containment room with drainage. Movement testing required.
"Ooh! That'd be so handy for walks. I love rainy days, you know."
"……."
"That was a joke."
Haa… Next page.
Specimen Name: The Payphone That Loves the Number Three
Discovery Site: The home of a man in Seoul who failed to qualify for the 4th-class Civil Defense Exam.
Properties: Rings three times, every morning, at exactly 3:33:33 AM. You can hear accidents that will happen in the future!
Moderate risk. Soundproof isolation. Total power cutoff from 3 AM to 4 AM. Removing the handset is forbidden.
"Hmm… it's a phone that tells the future, right? Why is it only moderate risk?"
"Because the world is full of malice."
"Sorry? I'm not sure I follow…."
"Every object, mutant, anomaly, and space the Black Gate makes is steeped in malice. Ones with a properly installed sense of reason are rare."
"……."
"Accidents that will happen in the future — why accidents, of all things? It could tell you about good things instead. Why accidents?"
"Maybe… it's nudging people into trying to prevent them?"
"Good instincts."
Right. That was the Black Gate's malice in a nutshell. It was why humanity classified the transfer incident as a disaster rather than a blessing. The anomaly nudges you toward preventing an accident, and the moment you act to prevent it, a bigger accident happens.
The Monkey's Paw with a fresh coat of paint, more or less.
Next.
Specimen Name: The Pillow
Discovery Site: Staff lounge, Research Facility 3
Properties: Sleeps you like a dream. Deep enough to lose your memories.
My hand stopped.
…Who submitted this one?
—Hint. I don't like people who crumble too easily.
"Team Leader? Are you all right?"
"…I'm fine."
"You just stopped all of a sudden, like someone in pain…"
"I said I'm fine."
Whew… My breathing had gone ragged.
Memories. Crumbling too easily. Who submitted it? Were we even assigned playful little anomalies like this in the first place? Could an anomaly even be discovered inside a research facility to begin with?
Anomalies only ever turned up near the Black Gate. Outdoors, never indoors. So why had one appeared inside the facility and nobody flagged it as a problem? Why on earth?
The desk in the lab. The Small Fairy. The Auto-Surgical Machine.
Something was off….
I touched my ear. My fingertips met cotton and froze there.
"…Senior? The doctor said not to touch your ear, remember?"
"My hands are clean."
"……."
A pink smear. Something strange crawling up from below my field of vision, slow and sinuous….
I dragged my eyes back to the report. The Pillow: high risk. Transfer to a distant containment room with no human foot traffic, and remove every piece of furniture near it that a person could lie down on.
"Team Leader."
"…Yeah."
"I sorted everything really well, didn't I? There were so many new anomalies coming in, it was honestly exhausting?"
"So?"
"Pet me!"
—Petting your junior researcher is a perfectly natural, commonsense act, and happens all the time in this facility.
It throbbed. Those star-shaped pupils.
We had lunch at the facility cafeteria. I picked seaweed soup and grilled fish; Sirin brought back a tray stacked with a pork cutlet, tteokbokki, and malatang.
"…You think your stomach can handle that?"
"I'm plenty sturdy, so yes!"
"Just try complaining your stomach hurts this afternoon and stealing my antacids."
"Ugh, I only ate those because I was curious!"
Who on earth eats antacids out of curiosity, you lunatic — the words shot all the way up my throat before the profanity filter in my head caught them and ran one pass of screening.
"Who on earth eats antacids out of curiosity, you lunatic."
"…Hnn."
"……."
"Senior! You're heartless, truly! Why do you scold me every single day?"
"Because you're so satisfying to hit…?"
"Ah, Senior, seriously! So if I got sick and cried my eyes out, you wouldn't take care of me at all, would you?"
"Nope."
Sirin made a big show of bawling while slicing her pork cutlet one-handed. A high-level technique. Cutting an unanchored cutlet that straight, that cleanly, with a single stroke of one knife — she must have spent some time in Western-style dineries.
Even while she ate, Sirin kept staring at me. She sent her gaze after my every movement, every gesture. In a deeply burdensome way.
"…Why do you keep staring?"
"Just because. There's nothing else to look at while eating, is there? If I look at my phone while I eat, you scold me…."
"Because that's not table manners."
"Senior! Is your head okay?"
"Fine, except for the occasional throb. Is this a normal concussion aftereffect?"
"Beats me. Medicine isn't my field."
Her eyes licked my right ear. I say licked because there was simply no other way to convey the clingy, viscous quality of her gaze.
A leering, damp sort of stare, you could call it. A slimy, wrong feeling I hadn't even gotten from facing down anomalies — strong enough that I felt the urge to scream at her to stop looking.
And time flowed on, and it was suddenly afternoon.
I worked through the remaining new specimens. A cup that made you scream when you drank water from it. A refrigerator you could put an elephant inside. A box that always produced firewood. Shoes that doubled the number of footprints you left….
Utterly useless specimens, every one. Anomalies that didn't deserve the name — the kind you normally bury in a warehouse and never, ever take back out.
…Hm?
It changed?
The box that always produced firewood. I definitely checked it earlier, yet now the specimen name, the appearance, the discovery site, the properties — all of it was different. Had the report suffered information contamination? What on earth was going on? All of a sudden?
—That happens sometimes. It's an error in the linked paperwork.
Ah, I see. It happens sometimes.
Specimen Name: Jenga?
Appearance: Fifty-four small rectangular wooden blocks, each marked with a number.
Discovery Site: Materialized in the living room of a house near the Black Gate.
Properties: Unconfirmed.
An unconfirmed specimen with no verified properties, and its name is Jenga…? Why is there a question mark on it?
I studied the attached photo more closely, but it showed nothing but an ordinary Jenga tower and its Jenga box.
"…Send this one back to the investigation team. Have them confirm its properties first."
"Sorry? But the specimen is already here?"
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
Ordinarily, a specimen with unconfirmed properties goes into an isolation room, even if it's just an Object. That is the correct procedure. Sending it straight to a research team without isolating it doesn't happen — and shouldn't happen.
—But it happens sometimes. Could be an untrained rookie's mistake?
Ah, it happens sometimes, does it. Lately my thoughts kept drifting in strange directions. Maybe I should bump up my medication.
"Shall we take it out and have a look, then?"
"…Sure."
The writing on the box. It was my handwriting….
[Temporary custody — Research Team 1.]
The signature, too… When did I ever verify this specimen?
Sirin opened the outer box and lifted out the wooden case inside. Maybe it was because I hadn't seen a Jenga set in so long, but an odd wave of nostalgia washed over me. Sentimentality, you might call it — that sensation also known as nostalgia. The memory of playing Jenga with my school friends as a kid, back when I was a boy.
I figured everyone had a set, once. Starting with that faintly musty wooden smell that comes out of the box, down to the slightly blurred ink on the blocks….
—I want to play. Just a little.
Lee Sirin made her suggestion with flawless timing. It was a stupid suggestion that I would have refused under normal circumstances.
"Senior! Want to play Jenga with me? I read about it in a novel recently and it looked so fun! Penalty Jenga!"
"…Why not."
Without my noticing, my lips were already moving.
There was writing on the blocks. Pull one block, pay one penalty.
