Chapter 3 - Standing on the Threshold of Magic

Passion comes with rewards.

Thanks to my burning desire to become a wizard, I also picked up an exemption from night watch along the way.

But just before my interview with First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi ended, I asked the question I simply couldn't ignore.

"But is magic really something you can just teach people like this?"

Just to be clear, the Republic of Korea on January 6, 2028, was a perfectly normal, sensible place.

In other words, there were no traditional Western witches riding broomsticks, shamans didn't suddenly get possessed and turn into Shaman Kings, and nobody was grinding people up to drink with magic circles or alchemy.

Nor had aliens or beings from another world suddenly invaded and caused people to awaken as hunters, like in some web novel or anime.

At least, not as far as I knew.

And finally, through First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi, the truth about the world began to emerge.

"Mr. Baek Je-min. What do you think magic is?"

"Sorry? Well, you know..."

"If you were imagining flying through the sky or shooting fire from your hands, you would be better off abandoning those expectations."

With a decidedly serious expression, he handed me another booklet.

I took it without thinking, then immediately frowned at the title.

"Limited Sharing of Linguistic Knowledge Pursuant to the 2028 Reserve Mobilization Proclamation?"

"We call it magic for convenience because that makes it easier to understand, but the military and public agencies refer to it as localized penetrative alteration activity rather than magic. It was hastily shared down from higher command following this mobilization order."

"So there really was some secret society of wizards out there?"

The countless shadowy masterminds of conspiracy theories seemed to flicker before my eyes.

But the lieutenant's face stiffened, and he waved the idea away as he answered.

"What I'm about to tell you is confidential. It isn't classified at a particularly high level, but it is important confidential information. You checked the rules of engagement, correct? Number five: Prioritize securing knowledge obtainable in the field. Turn the page."

I opened the booklet reluctantly. Each page had a single large, crooked symbol drawn on it, with dense writing beside it.

The character looked like someone had overlapped a triangle and a square, mashed them together like dough, then broken them apart, leaving a strangely geometric shape. Since it combined three corners and four corners, I'd call it a seven-corner for convenience.

As I stared at the crude character, which had no symmetry whatsoever and lines of all different lengths, the lieutenant kindly pointed to the facing page.

The one practically black with writing.

"This symbol was discovered within Seoul's Restricted-Access Zones. We believe it is a written character."

"How did you figure out it was writing?"

"Some people discovered this character and were able to read it. The text on the facing page records what they read."

Only then did I look closely enough to make out the dense writing beside the seven-corner.

The fucking tiny font annoyed me—it practically screamed that they were trying to save on paper—but the contents soon annoyed me even more.

"But all of these say different things."

They did. The page listed what people who had read this single character claimed it meant. The problem was that every one of them claimed a different meaning.

[Initial discoverer: Restoration], [Staff Sergeant Kim ○○: Incision], [Shaman: Frustration], [12-year-old child: Growth]...

If the meanings had been similar or overlapped, I could at least have made a guess. But everyone was saying something completely different, leaving me utterly baffled.

"Isn't it just a doodle?"

"No. We've confirmed that it actually has an effect, and we judged that it would play the most important role in the current unrest. That's why we accepted the risk of confusion and alarm and downgraded it to confidential. To find people who can read and write it."

He let out a deep sigh, then worked his dry lips as though his throat were burning before speaking.

"Reservist Baek Je-min, this must stay between us."

A shadow fell across his face.

"The government doesn't even know whether a secret society exists. These characters have only been found within the Restricted-Access Zones, and they were confirmed to have adverse psychological effects on people, so they were classified Top Secret for two months. Then someone raised the possibility of a secret society that might know these characters, and they were downgraded to confidential. We're disclosing them this way to find people who recognize them."

"Uh, so..."

"We also deliberately use the word magic to provoke a response from those people, if they exist. That part isn't confidential, but nothing good would come of making it public, so please keep it to yourself."

* * *

Back in the small auditorium, I idly fiddled with the booklet I'd been given.

The wait was long.

The mobilization order had been declared, but not everyone had arrived, and nobody had fully come to grips with the situation. The atmosphere was dazed.

An ominous silence lasted roughly two hours.

I checked the time on my phone. 3:58 p.m.

Nothing had changed except that, since the mobilization order, ten men in combat uniforms had come into the auditorium, collected weapons and field gear, and slumped into chairs.

Nobody was really making calls anymore. Even Kang Daniel, the horn-rimmed romantic, was just frantically tapping at his phone, anxious about something.

I wasn't doing so great myself.

The lieutenant's words were still circling in my head.

I'd listened in a state of spluttering confusion, but it boiled down to this:

1. Localized penetrative alteration activity, commonly called 'magic,' exists.

2. Nobody knows when magic first appeared or where it originated.

3. The government of the Republic of Korea is currently sharing its knowledge of this language with the United States and using multiple data centers and AI language models to decipher the characters. However, decoding attempts cause sudden loads of unknown origin on the language models and various hardware, making interpretation difficult.

But the most important part was something else.

["I'm asking on the off chance that you genuinely recognize these characters, Mr. Baek. The situation is bad. Approximately forty percent of the military units deployed in Seoul are isolated or out of contact, and the units stationed on the outskirts have been unable to properly contain the chaos among civilians inside Seoul, leaving the blockade incomplete. If you have even a little altruism or love for your country, please cooperate with us."]

I understood how much weight those words carried, enough that I actually felt guilty.

Baek Je-min. Twenty-eight years old. A young man taking a break from employment.

All I knew amounted to a few scraps of shallow knowledge and the fact that my employer had gone under two months ago. I had no interest in politics or current affairs, and no particular expertise. Hearing a respectable-looking soldier say that to someone who'd wasted his life like me was unbearably embarrassing.

And now all these weighty facts and truths had been dumped on me.

The first thing I thought when I heard that forty percent of the military units deployed in Seoul were isolated or out of contact was: There must be people besides me who aren't affected by these characters, right?

Sure enough.

One stubbly-faced man, who had been hunched tensely over his phone with his face practically buried in it and his fingers tapping away, let out something close to a scream.

"What the hell? Thirty percent of the military units in Seoul already wiped out?"

Screaming or chiming in here was an amateur move.

Everyone in the auditorium turned toward the stubbly man, from the reservists with their faces buried in their phones to the local reserve unit commander, who had been making calls.

Feeling all those eyes on him, the man caught the mood, bobbed his head apologetically, and went quiet again.

But that one remark had clearly shaken us deeply.

Although it differed from what I'd been told, whatever he'd read contained the crucial information.

I just couldn't make it feel real.

Fog had started covering Seoul around late November 2027, and then a mobilization order was declared right after the New Year? And magic existed? And forty percent of the military units deployed in Seoul—half of them, with a little exaggeration—were already in danger?

Anyone who could cram all that information into their head at once was the crazy bastard.

Besides, I hadn't seen any of it for myself.

So this was why conspiracy theorists refused to believe anything they hadn't personally seen. I couldn't believe it either, fuck.

But the ominous silence couldn't last forever.

The commander with the downturned eyes began organizing squads, apparently deciding that nobody else would come—or that avoiding reality was no longer an option.

"Forty-three on the roster, twenty-five answering the mobilization order. Country's running beautifully, isn't it?"

With a sigh, he called over the active-duty soldiers under his command and began distributing armbands and identification bands.

The twenty-five of us suddenly left carrying the whole burden could only wait with dark expressions.

That was when the commander's surprise New Year's gift was unveiled.

"We'll divide the twenty-five of you into four squads of about six. Two will guard the community center and the roads, and the other two will go round up our comrades who still haven't arrived despite the mobilization order. We'll issue live ammunition, so take two magazines each, but don't load your weapons."

At that, Kim Myeong-sin—the narrow-eyed man who had volunteered to put on an armband—flashed the whites of his eyes.

"Commander, I'm good at that sort of thing. Can I drag them in?"

"Well, 'drag them in' isn't quite the expression... Persuade them to come. Tell them that if they report today, we won't prosecute them, and I'll speak up for them so they don't get a criminal record. They need to come before the military police go looking for them."

"Tch. Yes, yes."

"All right, I'll explain each squad's duties, so get yourselves ready. With the mobilization order in effect, we're operating on a wartime footing from now on. I'll stop with the polite language here, so don't take it too personally. Now... break off and assemble by squad!"

Fortunately or unfortunately, I ended up in the road-guard squad rather than a runaway-hunting squad.

The fortunate part was that I wouldn't have to wear out my feet hunting down runaways. The unfortunate part was that I had to put the roadblocks in place myself.

The odd part was that our squad leader was Kang Daniel, the horn-rimmed romantic.

The moment he put on the armband, Kang Daniel clasped his hands, bowed his head, and began murmuring with utmost reverence and desperation.

"Unto Almighty God belong the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever... Let us not fall into the temptations of Satan the devil... Deliver us from the devil's grasp, that we may only follow..."

At the sight, I turned slightly to look at the other squad members.

Our road-guard squad had a balanced mix of Army, Navy, and Air Force veterans. Apparently we were all thinking the same thing: everyone was either frowning or looking unimpressed.

Since I was closest, it seemed best for me to speak up.

"Excuse me, squad leader."

"May Your dominion remain upon this earth..."

"Mr. Kang Daniel, we need to block the road. Okay?"

"Yes, yes. Let's just pray before we go. Pray."

"No. Let's block the road first and then pray. Okay? We need to go now."

If he'd been a genuinely deranged bastard, this was where he would have shouted, "Impudence! How dare a servant of Satan the devil interrupt this sacred testimony offered to the Lord!"

Fortunately, Kang Daniel was a normal person with very deep faith.

Confronted with the unimpressed faces watching him, he adjusted his glasses, hurriedly checked his weapon and field gear, and began leading the way.

* * *

"Let's go set up the sandbags and vehicle barriers. One person will direct traffic on the road, one will rest while keeping watch on the people nearby, and the other four will move the equipment. Whoever's on watch and traffic duty will switch with someone else after fifteen minutes. Once we're done setting up, we'll work out new positions."

Kang Daniel was better at taking charge once he had an armband on than I'd expected.

"God the Father, grant that I may fulfill my role completely in this tribulation..."

He would have been a great squad leader if he hadn't kept clasping his hands and making contact with God.

Our road-guard squad was assigned to an intersection in town. Our objective was to strengthen security along the approach to the community center.

The truck the center normally used to collect trash for elderly residents or carry out volunteer work brought sandbags and vehicle barriers. We kept unloading them and setting them on the road.

The mobilization order still hadn't sunk in for the locals, but as they watched soldiers in combat uniforms putting things across the road, the mood gradually began to change.

Of course, there was also a driver who obliviously kept his foot on the gas, then poked his head out of the window when he saw us blocking the road.

"What's this? Why are you blocking it?"

A friendly-looking squad member, who happened to be setting down a barrier that looked like a bundle of iron bars, answered.

"We've been ordered to block this approach because of the mobilization order. Please turn around."

"You little... Are you going to pay for my gas? Huh? Move. I'll just drive straight through. What do you think I'm going to do that you need to block me?"

"Sir, we're not doing this because we want to."

"Then don't do it if you don't want to! What kind of excuse is that..."

It was a maddening moment: the squad member sighed, and the driver fumed.

I could see people by the roadside focusing their attention on us, after previously stealing glances at the soldiers while pretending not to.

That was when a squad member with his combat-uniform collar pulled up over his neck knitted his brows at Kang Daniel.

"Squad leader, what do we do?"

"Persuading him would be best... One moment. I'll contact the commander for instructions."

That was when I stepped in.

"Hold on. I've got a good idea."

"Yes? You're... Mr. Baek Je-min?"

Baek Je-min, twenty-eight, currently taking a break from employment.

As someone who dreamed of coasting through life and believed avoiding pain was the rational thing to do, I'd found a golden path to solving this problem perfectly.

Kang Daniel was visibly flustered and trying to say something, but he didn't actually stop me. He seemed to be hoping he could simply let me handle it.

Then I ought to live up to his expectations.

"Mister."

"Hey, with a face like that, who are you calling mister? I'd pick up more women than you at a club, you little shit."

"Just look at this."

"What the fuck..."

I opened the booklet I'd tucked inside my jacket—the real title was too long, so I'd decided to call it the Magic Crash Course—and thrust the crooked character right in his face.

At first, the driver didn't seem to react.

For about one second.

"Urk... Wait, hurrk."

"Mister, take a proper look."

"You little...! Ugh. Urk!"

In the end, the driver couldn't hold back the nausea as he looked at the character. He buried his face in the steering wheel.

"Blaaaargh..."

Then he began spewing up a whole bowlful.

Judging by all the lumps he was bringing up along with that sour smell, he must have had indigestion.

Triumphantly, I tucked the Magic Crash Course back into my inner pocket and returned to my squadmates.

"He says he's parking."

"..."