Hidden Piece Drop (1)
With the chase brought to a close, the Disciplinary Committee's four-person team returned to its regular patrol of the train.
Partway through, Geum Johan abruptly tossed out a question.
"Was there truly any need to let him off?"
Song Cheon-hye asked back, her brow creasing. "Whatever do you mean?"
"That meddler who barged in, wittering on about cookies. He took your Hummingbird square on and looked none the worse for it. Didn't you hold back your output at the end?"
"...!"
The words brought Song Cheon-hye to an abrupt, frozen halt.
Geum Johan asked, "What is it?"
"...It's nothing. Even if he did interfere, we were the ones who gave him cause. I simply judged that punishing him would be unwarranted."
She deflected it smoothly and started walking again, but her thoughts ran on a different track.
Output control...?
She had done no such thing.
That man's intervention had been entirely unforeseen. It had all happened so quickly that her focus wavered for an instant, and — shamefully — her control of the Hummingbird lagged a single beat behind. When she saw the lightning burst, her heart had plunged. Have I just hurt someone with nothing to do with any of this?
And yet somehow the man had absorbed the Hummingbird head-on without so much as a stagger. No — "unscathed" was an understatement. He seemed untouched, full stop. Anyone would stiffen, if only for a split second; he had simply brushed off his hand and been done with it.
What in the world is going on?
The vague, nameless itch of unease was sharpening into something more concrete. Song Cheon-hye retraced the recent events one careful step at a time — and the further she went, the stronger grew the sense that she was missing something.
Did I commit some rookie mistake? Might the Hummingbird itself have gone out half-baked — undercharged with mana, its formula assembled sloppily?
But her speculation got no further. A voice was crackling from her compact radio — another committee member.
"Disturbance between students in cabin 4-C. Requesting backup."
"On our way."
Song Cheon-hye exchanged a look with her companions and nodded, then handed a hefty zip-lock bag to Han So-mi, who was grinning ear to ear — the very bag holding the wig confiscated from Shin Byung-cheol.
"Deliver that to the station attendant. She should be in the second-year section. And on your way back, make sure the slot machine's in working order."
"Okie-dokie! Be right back!"
Han So-mi waved sunnily and skipped off.
Walking the corridor, Song Cheon-hye let out a small sigh. Set it aside for now. Handling what lay before her came first. That strangely grating man was one of this year's new students, after all; his mystery would keep until later.
The Academy Train had originally been designed as a luxury sightseeing liner for the wealthy. The project collapsed midway through, thanks to the complicated affairs of grown-ups, but Dragon Slayer Academy — which rated the train's sturdiness very highly indeed — purchased it outright, refitted it to purpose, and here it was, running without a hitch to this day.
All the same, relics of its tourist days lingered in corners throughout the cars — a species of hidden piece, one might say. And that was exactly where we were headed.
Go Hyeon-woo and I kept working our way toward the rear of the train, halting just before the second-year section. There were no cabins here; instead, rows of aging arcade machines stood lined along both walls. More leftovers from the sightseeing era — a small arcade-casino laid on for the guests.
The trouble was that nearly every machine sat draped in cloth or wore a large, emphatic "OUT OF ORDER" sign, and whether a single one still functioned was anybody's guess. Go Hyeon-woo evidently harbored the same doubt. "Not one of them looks operational. Are you certain we've come to the right place?"
"This is it."
I strode unhesitatingly to one corner and stripped the cloth off the machine beneath it. Revealed was an old slot machine — the classic sort: insert a coin, pull the lever, match three symbols. But just as Go Hyeon-woo had said, it looked to be in sorry shape. The screen was cracked and blanketed in dust, and the bulbs that should have glittered in a dozen colors sat utterly dark. Slip it a coin carelessly, I judged, and it would swallow the thing whole without offering so much as an apology.
That's how it looks, anyway. I fished a single silver from my inventory and — before Go Hyeon-woo could raise so much as a word of protest — fed it into the slot.
"..."
"..."
No reaction was forthcoming, and we stared at the screen in silence for a good long while. Then, at the very moment Go Hyeon-woo finally opened his mouth—
"It does appear to be brok—"
— Ding-ding! Ding-ding! An arcade fanfare blared without warning, and every bulb on the slot machine erupted in a riot of flashing light.
"Ohh... it has truly come to pass, just as you foretold, Brother Kim."
Where Go Hyeon-woo marveled, I found the scene familiar to the point of tedium. The Slot Machine That Looks Broken. A hidden piece that plenty of players knew about, yet remarkably few ever bothered to claim. A curious enough player might drop coins into every decrepit arcade machine one by one and stumble onto it eventually — or else hear of it from other users.
So why did so few claim it? Because it wasn't worth five silver. Slot machines pay out at random, and kissing all five silver goodbye was the customary outcome. The jackpot and mid-tier rewards were hardly spectacular either. All things considered, five silver spent anywhere else was simply the better deal.
Of course, value is a relative thing. An item that struck one player as middling could be worth tens of times five silver to another. And to me, this hidden piece was — naturally — the latter.
I hauled back the lever, and the three reels spun into a dizzying whirl. — Whirrrr! A parade of symbols flickered past. Ice. Spider. Apple. Diamond. Flame. Elephant. Mana...
A dull clunk, and the prize rolled out of the dispenser slot: a 500-milliliter bottle of water. A dud, obviously. Not that I'd expected anything. Calm as you please, I fed in the next coin and pulled the lever again; the three reels flipped and spun afresh.
Go Hyeon-woo, who had been watching with frank fascination, spoke up. "So, Brother Kim — what was your true reason for bringing me along?"
"Because what we're doing right now is, strictly speaking, a violation of the school rules."
"I confess I don't follow. Granting that it's a machine once used for gambling, how does that rise to a breach of the rules?"
"Using it isn't the problem. The items it dispenses are."
Its jackpot rewards: [Dark Ice Crystal], [Adorable Deadly Poison], [Purgatory Lava]. The grown-ups who'd frequented the casino in its heyday were one matter, but these fell under Banned Items that no student was permitted to carry. From the instant you won one, you'd be dodging the Student Disciplinary Committee's gaze for the rest of your days — which, as much as anything, was why most players simply walked past the slot machine.
"I see. Then your part is to stand watch, Brother Kim?"
"Right. And if we do get caught, buying us some time on top of that would be even better."
"Hmm... then I may well end up facing those people from earlier."
"Good odds of that. Think you can manage?"
I asked it lightly, in passing — but inwardly I was studying his reaction. The truth was that this arrangement was pure loss for him: nothing to gain, with a rules violation and friction with the Student Disciplinary Committee dangling overhead. Even so, Go Hyeon-woo nodded without a heartbeat's hesitation.
"Then I shall try. Victory I cannot promise, but holding them off for a time should be well within my power."
"Huh. And here I thought you'd at least mull it over."
"Haha... they say a man of the martial world sees any road he sets foot on through to the end. And I wager there's a hidden reason in this as well — just as there was when you stepped between Miss Song and Brother Shin. You will explain everything to me later, yes?"
"Right. Thanks."
His words were valiant enough, but perhaps his nerves were not quite so steady, for he was discreetly stroking the hilt of his iron sword.
I fed in the next coin as I spoke. "Anyway, nothing's going to happen. The Committee hardly ever comes back this far, and by now they'll have moved up toward the front of the train. There's nothing to worry abo—"
"Hi hi! Whatcha doing over there?"
?
?
We whipped our heads around in perfect unison. A girl was strolling in from the second-year section — a face we'd seen not long ago. A sweet, sunnily beaming face, and on her arm, a Disciplinary Committee armband. Han So-mi.
"Well, would you look at that... seems we do have something to worry about."
"...You said she was the Sword Empress's disciple?"
"So I'm told."
They do say even a tiger comes when you speak its name.
[6] The Support Eats It All