0. The Entrance Exam
...Auntie didn't answer.
She simply kept walking ahead.
So I kept walking ahead too.
I had no intention of pressing her for answers. That simply wasn't who Ailee was. Even if I pressed, she wasn't the kind of person who would talk. All I could do was wait until she felt ready to speak.
As we continued down the walking path like that, Auntie pulled a portable inhaler from her coat. Then she took out her bronchial medication and loaded it into the device.
Having watched that much, I stopped her.
"Auntie, do you really have to use that here?"
"Forgot to do it at home."
"...It looks exactly like a half-translucent opium pipe, that's the problem. Someone's bound to give us trouble over it."
"You're here, aren't you? Besides, this is... actually quite a popular design."
"...If you say so."
What could I possibly say, when she insisted that far? Auntie could be remarkably stubborn about these things. And honestly, if anything did happen, it would be enough for me to handle it.
So Auntie spent a while inhaling the vapor that billowed from the inhaler. Her bronchi had been in terrible shape ever since that time, and she'd had to carry the thing around everywhere, every single day.
While she breathed her medicine in through the device, I rolled my eyes this way and that. I had the strange sensation that my pupils were narrowing into vertical slits. Right beside me, I even saw a hallucination of a small version of myself walking along.
So I turned to look at Auntie instead. At the very least, she was no hallucination.
Auntie, on the other hand, seemed to have read my gaze in an entirely different sense. After taking a few more drags of her medicine, she exhaled and started a conversation.
"The classes you'll take at the Academy... they're about high school level, you know."
"Are you sure? Nothing else at all?"
"No arts or physical education classes. Everything outside the core subjects is combat training."
"The kind meant for facing villains and monsters?"
"Broadly speaking, I suppose you'd call it classes for becoming a Hero or a Hunter."
"...I can't really picture it."
"Hunter or Hero, Auntie believes you'd excel at either. You're my daughter, and—"
"—Auntie's masterpiece."
I said it with a smile.
For a moment, Auntie's face froze stiff. Like a piece of prey caught before a predator. She tried not to show it, but I could see how afraid she was.
But I had no intention of hurting her. She was one of the precious few people I could call family. So truly dear to me that I wanted to keep her in my sight forever. Family who shared the same past, the same wounds.
So I deliberately looped my arm through hers and spoke gently.
"So, Auntie. Was that really the drug that makes you smarter?"
"...Wouldn't know. Ask Choi Tae-soo. He always handled the compounding."
I smiled faintly and took both of Auntie's arms in my hands. And by that point, the childhood version of me who had been walking at my side... slowly faded away.
Watching it go, I drifted into old memories. I knew perfectly well who Uncle Choi Tae-soo was, after all.
That man was extraordinarily gifted with drugs. They said he was so versed in biology and chemistry that in any normal life he would have become a brilliant pharmacist. But instead of a pharmacist, he chose the path of a researcher.
For me, that hadn't been such a bad thing. Uncle—or rather, Tae-soo Oppa... had been so very kind.
For an audience of one, with the sanction of our superiors, he would perform the little magic trick of compounding a drug on the spot. He demonstrated experiments for me too, precipitation reactions like something out of a textbook, right before my eyes.
And the drugs Oppa made were remarkably effective. They hurt so little when they were administered that he became my favorite of them all.
...But he was also the one with the most fervent spirit of experimentation. The most unhinged.
Why he'd abandoned pharmacology for research. Why he'd shut himself away in the shadows when he could have worked in broad daylight in the world above. He said it was all because he wanted to experiment on human bodies.
I could still hear him, even now. The auditory ghost of Oppa saying, Yeji, you're the best thing in the world to me—tapping the syringe with his fingertip, checking whether the compound had mixed properly.
I could still see him, too. materializing with that warm, amiable smile to stroke my terrified head. And when I trembled and held out my arm, the phantom who injected the drug there.
But that was all in the past. Yes, the past. Things that ended years ago. So there was no need for me to suffer over it anymore.
I was seventeen now, and I had grown very strong. I was no longer the helpless seven-year-old I had been. Not the girl who had squirmed and thrashed, desperate to coax any conversation out of her captors.
So I took a deep breath and tried my best to wave the illusions away. Fortunately, they didn't torment me for long. They simply blurred, faded, and vanished.
Watching them go, I found myself thinking: thank goodness it was only hallucinations.
This wasn't a dream, after all. If it had been a dream, things would surely have been far more terrible. And it wouldn't have ended with mere hallucinations—something deep inside me, something buried in the very marrow of my body, would have slowly risen to the surface. That lingering pain would have climbed back up.
So, telling myself how lucky I was, I breathed deeply. And then, looking slowly at Auntie, I spoke.
"...I should go see Uncle sometime. It's been a while."
"Why don't you?"
"Come to think of it, I wonder if he's doing all right. I barely ever saw his face."
"Back then... he probably had a few holes punched through him. But he was hale and hearty all the same."
"...Really?"
"Mm. He's probably living well somewhere with a daughter and a son."
"That's good to hear."
"He works at a respectable pharmaceutical company now, and he still makes your drugs for you. A useful connection, that one."
"..."
"And he was terribly fond of you, so even if you showed up out of nowhere, he'd welcome you with open arms."
I laughed, a little reluctantly, and conceded the point. Auntie wasn't wrong. That uncle was, indeed, a useful connection.
There were so many drugs only he could make. The narcotic analgesic I'd taken today was one of them, and the majority of the drugs I'd swallowed or been injected with over years of training had come from his hands.
And Uncle, I suspected, was still terribly fond of me even now. To him, I was the magnum opus of a lifetime. Perhaps not quite the way he'd feel about his own children, but something close.
...Not that it would matter if he didn't. Still, I found myself hoping he did. Because everything he'd said back then couldn't possibly have been a lie. Everything he showed me couldn't have been false.
If it had been—if any of it had—I don't think I could have borne the grief.
Having thought that far, I forced a smile and spoke.
"Someday, I really should go see him."
"You should. I ought to drop by myself one of these days."
"Why would you?"
"I need to hand over your data and improve the formula."
"I suppose so."
"The last time I saw his face was at the memorial... it might be time to confirm he's still breathing, no?"
"Now that you mention it, is everyone even still alive?"
"Oh, they'll be alive. At least up until that memorial."
With that, Auntie removed the inhaler from her mouth.
I watched her fold it up, vaguely entranced. There was something oddly satisfying about the way she folded that little device, so neat and rhythmic.
Then she tucked the inhaler away and said to me,
"I'll need to get more medicine. And make more of it, too."
"I suppose."
"While you're attending the Academy—do you have the confidence to go without any drugs at all?"
"No, I don't. It feels like things might... mysteriously catch fire, like with Invisible Man."
"How curious. I always thought you were the type to let reason lead over emotion."
"Even I have moments where emotion gets ahead of me."
"Fair enough, I suppose. Then..."
"Yes?"
"Do you have the confidence to go without a single injection?"
I didn't answer.
This time, it was my turn to keep silent. Auntie knew my nature well enough not to force a reply out of me.
So the two of us walked on in silence for a while. And then, all at once, we smiled at each other.
My own smile spread full across my face, but it wasn't a real one. No—it would be more accurate to say I couldn't smile. Auntie still believed I was a lab specimen. I wished she'd let go of a few of her old researcher's habits.
"Auntie, I'm a snake beastkin. I was before, and I will be after."
"If that is what you wish."
I said nothing more. Neither did she. I had no intention of listening to anything she said on the matter, anyway.
My identity was settled. Whether I was a woman or a man wasn't the point. What mattered, far more than that, was my identity as a species.
I am a snake beastkin. A snake beastkin whose serpent nature surges to the fore the moment I Manifest.
I can slenderize my tongue and split it at the tip. I can reshape my pupils into a snake's, and unhinge my jaw wide enough to swallow something whole in a single bite. Warmth pleases me, and cold makes me drowsy. There was any number of serpent truths I could have listed beyond those.
So I am a snake beastkin. I could be nothing else.
The silence stretched on for some time after that. Though, of course, it didn't last forever—neither of us could afford to let it, Auntie no more than I.
Before long, I glanced over at Auntie and smiled. She smiled back and made an offer.
"Shall we get something to drink? We've walked quite a while—your throat must be dry."
"Are you offering to buy, Auntie?"
"Of course I am. I can't very well ask my own daughter, who doesn't even get an allowance, to treat me."
"Hmm... then, as always, I want an iced Americano."
"I'll have the same. Though... shall I ask them to pump it three rounds full of syrup?"
Hearing that, I laughed to myself. Only a few years ago, Auntie wouldn't have spared an iced Americano so much as a glance. As far as I could tell, she drank nothing but espresso. The palate of a quintessential American elite.
Amused, I asked her about it.
"Auntie, do you still drink espresso?"
"Hm? Well, I don't exactly need to pull all-nighters over research anymore, do I."
"So instant coffee mix is... still off the table?"
"...Lately I find it rather tasty. Auntie's getting old, it seems."
"Haha..."
"Don't you dare tease me. Your auntie turns fifty the day after tomorrow. Fifty."
My smile turned tender. We shared no drop of blood, but in moments like this, it truly felt as though I had become her daughter after all.
Neither of us let it show, though. And so Auntie and I began walking together toward the café near the walking path.