Chapter 4 - The Night Is Cold

A little later.

Naturally, the driver who had abruptly thrown up all over his seat came to complain—with his car still parked in the road, of course.

But I had Magic Crash Course.

"You fucking bastard."

"Have a look at this."

"Fuck that! You think I'll fall for it again?"

As I opened it wide and shoved it at him, the driver squeezed his eyes shut and swung a fist at me.

But why do people have eyes? To see things coming and dodge them.

"You bastard! Put that fucking thing away and fight me!"

"Okay."

Since he'd shut his eyes of his own accord, there was no reason to go easy on him.

I swung my rifle butt and began beating him all over, tenderizing him like meat for a stir-fry.

"You son of a bitch. I'm pissed enough about getting mobilized out of nowhere and having to put on a uniform for this bullshit in my eighth year in the reserves, and now you're pulling this fucking crap?"

"Urgh! Urgh! You're killing me! I'm dying! This crazy soldier's going to kill me!"

"Haven't you heard of the mobilization order? I'm glad I ran into you. Healthy, sturdy, and good at taking a beating—you'd make a perfect soldier. Put on a uniform and come along. Let's give you a taste of forced conscription. First I'll break your legs, put shackles on your ankles, and have you haul sandbags. Today, I'm your Military Manpower Administration."

"Urrgh! Urgh!"

Whenever the bastard seemed about to glare at me, I opened Magic Crash Course and showed it to him. Once he closed his eyes again, I swung my rifle butt and beat the hell out of him, looking ready to leave blood pouring from his head.

Without realizing it, I remembered pounding away on a janggu drum when I was learning to play in elementary school. I was bobbing along and beating him to the rhythm when someone suddenly grabbed my arm.

It was Kang Daniel, desperately trying to restrain me.

"Mr. Baek Je-min! You're a complete fucking lunatic! How can you beat someone like that?"

"Huff... huff..."

But Kang Daniel was right.

Willing or not, now that I was a soldier defending liberal democracy, I couldn't use violence against civilians. There was such a thing as responsibility.

I gently shook Kang Daniel off, then faced the driver with a calmer air.

Having taken the principles of a Republic of Korea soldier deeply to heart, I barely managed to compose myself and bow politely to the driver.

"I'm sorry."

"You... you bastard... I'm pressing charges. Hear me? I'm pressing charges."

The instant I heard that, I understood.

The sincerity of an apology was demonstrated through actions.

I swung my rifle butt down onto the bumper of his car.

BANG!

"Y-you."

"Go press charges. On foot."

"You fucking bastard!"

He opened his eyes wide in a glare, so I opened Magic Crash Course again. Unable to look away in time, the driver fell victim to it and started vomiting all over again.

"Bleeergh..."

With the driver retching, my squad mates staring at me from behind as though I were insane, and people in the street whispering, I could feel their eyes on me as I examined Magic Crash Course again.

This unknown character.

This thing First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi called magic.

I had to learn it. Somehow.

Just showing it to people made life this easy by inducing vomiting. What if I gained real power?

Who cared about getting out of night watch?

"I should ask for Spam."

"What?"

Leaving behind the questions of Kang Daniel, who had learned nothing despite witnessing a fragment of this terrifying power, I was seized by a thirst for learning that burned for the first time in my twenty-eight years.

* * *

Then, unfairly but understandably, military police hooked their arms through mine and dragged me away.

"Reservist Baek Je-min. You're coming with us for vehicle damage and bodily injury."

What a wonderful life.

I could barely remember the last time I'd walked arm in arm with a woman, yet here I was being dragged along between two hulking men.

Contrary to my expectations, however, rather than being locked up or hauled off somewhere, I was sent to the consultation room where First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi was waiting.

Suddenly seated across from him again, the first thing I heard was his sigh.

"Mr. Baek Je-min. That's not what I gave it to you for."

"Are you taking it back, then?"

"..."

I could see the conflict on his face.

Apparently, people unaffected by the characters weren't rare, but they weren't plentiful, either. Perhaps this so-called magic using the characters was enormously useful, because the look he gave me made it painfully clear he wasn't willing to give up on me, even though I had nothing more than potential.

After a long deliberation, he offered a compromise.

"We'll revoke your exemption from night watch, and in return, we'll make this assault case go away. We'll say the other party bears considerable blame for trying to force his way through while a mobilization order was in effect, announce that you'll be disciplined separately within the military, and quietly settle it internally."

Just the sort of judgment you'd expect from an officer who knew the secret to the military's streaks of accident-free days.

Instead, he ordered me confined alone as a troublemaker. He called it confinement, but it was closer to an order to stay quietly out of the way and read Magic Crash Course.

In short, I'd abruptly been taken off the road-guard squad and shut away in the community center's storeroom.

Sitting cooped up there with military police planted firmly outside the door gave me plenty to think about.

One thing was certain: being able to study Magic Crash Course without getting roped into work or duties was more a privilege than a punishment.

Kang Daniel and the rest of the squad might be talking shit about me, saying I'd deliberately acted crazy to get out of duty. Of course, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been aiming for that a little. Just a little. But there was also a difference between me and people who hadn't properly grasped the gravity of the situation.

Localized penetrative alteration activity—magic—was real.

And these characters associated with magic had only been found in fog-covered Restricted-Access Zones. In other words, neither the fog over Seoul nor the unrest there was normal.

First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi, in particular.

He'd only discussed magic, never mentioning what sort of threat was in Seoul. That made the thought flash through my mind that the threat there must be anything but ordinary.

Under these circumstances, it was essential to test more thoroughly what reactions the characters elicited in other people.

How much exposure caused the psychological backlash the lieutenant had mentioned? How much exposure made them effective? Did they only work when perceived visually?

My experiment on the aggressive driver had yielded quite substantial results.

It had helped me fully understand things the military hadn't told me, or hadn't explained adequately.

1. The characters worked through physical sight, taking effect when the other person fully perceived their shape. If someone closed their eyes or was too far away to make them out properly, they didn't seem to cause dizziness, headaches, or vomiting.

At least, the passersby hadn't all thrown up together.

2. Before disclosing this confidential information, First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi had asked personal questions about religion and faith, as well as questions about spiritual matters. That meant government or military officials considered these characters something spiritual. But such metaphysical matters could easily be distorted by individual interpretation, so I couldn't attempt to interpret them rashly.

Just look at the Bible.

Look at the countless Christian denominations in the world. History was full of people arguing over how to interpret a single passage and fighting over who was a heretic. If I interpreted these strange characters however I liked, there was a strong chance I'd miss their original meaning.

3. Even so, First Lieutenant Shin Han-gi hadn't doubted the usefulness of magic.

My assessment was that, at the very least, the military had verified magic using these characters, established that it was immensely useful, and was now working to increase the number of users or contact people who already knew how to use it.

Otherwise, the entire military had gone insane. Honestly, that was plausible too, but the problem was that the world was also going mad. In a mad world, going mad would be the right answer.

That raised a question.

Could the effect change according to your interpretation, even if that wasn't the character's original meaning? If so, what determined its power and limits? Might the side effects be even more horrific?

I turned past the page with the first character, the one I'd named seven-corner, and examined a few others.

At that moment, dizziness unlike anything I'd experienced so far surged through me. Everything spun before my eyes.

"Urgh."

I forcibly swallowed the rising urge to vomit, then turned back to seven-corner. The urge vanished in an instant.

Both the nausea and the dizziness disappeared without a trace.

I'd been so focused on seven-corner that I hadn't examined the other characters...

Forcing down gulp after gulp of sour saliva, I tapped Magic Crash Course aimlessly with my index finger.

This was...

"Some kind of level of mastery? Or aptitude?"

For now, it seemed characters other than seven-corner didn't agree with me. Maybe they never would.

Deciphering seven-corner came first.

The problem was that the interpretations packed onto the facing page were so wildly inconsistent that I couldn't make heads or tails of them.

Restoration, Incision, Frustration, Growth, Woodland, Scream, Spearpoint...

I was frowning, racking my brains.

After staring myself half blind comparing the character with its interpretations and agonizing over them, I suddenly realized something.

Maybe the character didn't contain a meaning at all, but...

"Reservist Baek Je-min. The road-guard squad has requested personnel."

CLATTER!

A military policeman opened the door and looked at me coldly.

But I was just as furious.

"No, for fuck's... No. Ah... no!"

"Come out."

"Ha..."

Now I understood why people in martial arts novels posted guards during secluded training or while attaining enlightenment.

I put Magic Crash Course into my inner pocket and followed the military policeman out of the storeroom.

Looking out the window, I saw it was already dark. The only lights were the streetlamps and cars that seemed to be hurrying home.

Apparently, I wasn't getting either the first watch or the last.

Had I really been that absorbed? After all that concentration, something had been about to come to me, and these ignorant military policemen had blocked it.

"You're making a big mistake right now."

The military policeman didn't even bother answering.

* * *

My partner on night watch at the town intersection was the friendly-looking squad member who'd dealt with the driver first.

His name was Han Myeong-un. With his amiable features and smooth skin, he frowned slightly the moment he saw me, then put his social skills to work and burst out laughing.

"Well, it was satisfying."

"What?"

"You did what everyone else was only thinking, so it felt good. It's not easy to do that when you think about the consequences."

"Yeah, well..."

"Still, it's a relief we won't have anything like that this time."

Han Myeong-un and I stood watch, yawning languidly.

It was just past midnight, an absolutely miserable hour. But perhaps because I'd just missed my moment of insight, I was too worked up to feel sleepy. Despite my enormous yawns, my mind was perfectly clear.

Meanwhile, Han Myeong-un had already sat down against the sandbags and was fiddling with his phone.

As we passed the time, overlapping footsteps sounded through the town, already tense under the mobilization order.

Both bored, Han Myeong-un and I turned toward them, only to find a positively obscene scene awaiting us.

"Mmm... mmph..."

A man in a slightly loose suit who looked worn down by life had his arms around a toned, athletic woman, sharing a deep kiss. They were leaning against a wall in an alley, their faces hidden from view.

Han Myeong-un chuckled at the sight.

"Wow. Things are getting steamy. Looks like there's quite an age gap, too."

"Haha..."

But my lips were trembling without my realizing it.

12:24 a.m.

"It's a little cold."

"True. It's still that time of year."

As Han Myeong-un replied with an easy grin, my eyes weren't on the couple. They were on the road.

On the very faint layer of fog hanging over it.