Chapter 5
If he had to hear that chi-chi-chi and cha-cha-cha one more time, Yoon Monan was going to rip out every hair on his head. He sat with his face buried in his hands, drowning in despair, until a strange silence settled over him. Slowly, he looked up. The sniffling had stopped.
Sure enough, the dorm room door was wide open. A chill shot up his spine. He bolted outside and took in the whole disaster at a glance. The three members of Division 2 Team 7—the people Team Leader Yoon Monan would apparently be leading from here on out—had all gathered there. Cozy as could be.
First, Gyeong Haeguk—Mr. Anger Issues himself—was sprawled facedown in the hallway, bleeding and flailing. Flames sputtered on and off at his fingertips with a faint WHOOSH, WHOOSH. Beside him stood Mu Guwon, the man Monan had seen earlier on the train, wearing a sullen expression and a massive bruise on his cheek.
Judging by the scene alone, the reasonable explanation would have been that teammate-killer Mu Guwon had subdued Haeguk. Except, no. Tense, Monan crept up behind small, fragile-looking An Beom and slowly pried the object out of his right hand.
“Where’d you get the knife?”
“Hng… It was my father’s… keepsake.”
Apparently, An Beom had a reason for being assigned to the Combat Corps. He’d taken down that monster Gyeong Haeguk with nothing but a sashimi knife. He’d even landed a near-fatal wound right in his side. Then again, maybe Beom’s father hadn’t been an ordinary fisherman. Or maybe the kid’s memory had simply been polished into something bigger over time.
“What are you staring at? Get him up.”
Monan snapped the order at Guwon while trying to calm Beom down. Guwon had been standing there like a tin robot, but maybe the beating he’d taken earlier had worked as a miracle cure, because he moved at once. He flicked his fingers, and Haeguk’s body lifted against gravity.
Then the wound from Beom’s sashimi knife attack gradually shrank until it vanished. Esper Mu Guwon’s ability appeared to be time reversal.
Haeguk had been patched up, his life saved thanks to Guwon, and Monan’s fist immediately flew into his face again. Maybe fury was the real miracle cure. With even brief contact, Monan could temporarily seal away Haeguk’s flame ability.
“We’re having a team meeting. Everyone inside.”
“Ack.”
Haeguk pressed his face flat to the hallway floor and coughed up blood with a groan. Monan turned to Beom, who stood beside him with his head bowed, and asked,
“What about Chichi?”
“It all burned up.”
Only then did Monan notice the charred, blackened scrap of cloth clutched in Beom’s other hand. He turned his head and gave Guwon another order.
“Restore Chichi too.”
“I can’t reverse anything past three minutes. By the time I got here, it was already over.”
What was he, instant three-minute curry? If he could only reverse three minutes’ worth of time, then why had he just stood there earlier watching Haeguk sprawled out on the floor? Did he enjoy the sight of his teammates trying to kill each other?
Monan didn’t even have the energy to push the issue, so he left the three of them behind and went into Room 307 first. In the center, flanked on both sides by four bedrooms, was a large living room. He roughly kicked aside the luggage and the team members’ résumés he’d thrown out earlier, clearing a space.
He flipped on the light and sat on the living room floor. The three team members shuffled reluctantly into the dorm and sat in a row. Every last one of them was a bumbling idiot. Monan pressed his fingers hard into the bridge of his nose and muttered,
“First, introduce yourselves to each other. However this started, we’re one team from now on, and we’re going to have to work like it.”
The civil servants over at the Agency were stuffy, pigheaded mules. Just because there had been a little unpleasantness within a team, they wouldn’t swap out the members. A member only got replaced if they quit, got badly injured, or died in action. Which made sense, in its own annoying way. Since compatibility between members was the single most important factor in combat success, every Post ability-user had been assigned to a team only after their powers were carefully weighed against everyone else’s.
But now that Monan saw them all gathered in one place, he thought he understood why the Agency had slotted him in as this team’s leader. In short, this was a team full of men perfectly primed to overload and turn into Trances. Without a guide, there’d be no leading them at all.
“As of today, I’m Yoon Monan, the guide taking over as leader of Combat Corps Division 2 Team 7. An Beom, you start. Introduce yourself.”
“I’m… hng, I’m from Namdo… hnngk!”
“Haa… This is An Beom, our rookie from Namdo. Twenty years old. Ability is status quo preservation. Eldest of four—the eldest son. Doesn’t suit him, does it? I couldn’t believe it at first either. Says his father was a fisherman, but somehow I don’t think that’s the whole story. His father died in a Trance attack when he was five, and he’s been the man of the house ever since. Oh, right. You said your mother has cancer?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. Beom’s mother is apparently very ill. So you burned up poor little Chichi, the only friend this pitiful boy breadwinner had. Now do you understand how badly you screwed up, Haeguk?”
Monan recited every last piece of Beom’s sad little life story that he’d heard earlier. For some reason, Haeguk had gone docile ever since the guiding attack, and he only listened in silence. Then, when his turn came, he picked up the thread, his words badly slurred. The places he’d been beaten earlier must have swollen, making his speech come out thick and garbled.
“Division 2 Team 7, third-year… esper Gyeong Haeguk. Ability ish flame creashion…”
“Enough. Stop. Mu Guwon, go ahead.”
“Division 2 Team 7, third-year esper Mu Guwon. My ability is time reversal. At the largest scale, dimensions. At the smallest, I can reverse the time of objects or living things within a narrow range.”
“Got it.”
“My introduction is done. May I get up now?”
“Go where? I said we’re having a team meeting.”
“It’s time to pray. I have to pray for one hour, starting at 8:20 p.m.”
Guwon checked the watch on his wrist as he spoke.
This guy’s going to drive me up the fucking wall.
Was he seriously saying he planned to walk out of the very first meeting his team leader had called, all for the sake of prayer? Monan’s fist was practically vibrating with purpose. But he also knew that, with Guwon, religion was the one point that could never be negotiated. This was the man who’d beaten up his own team leader for cutting into his prayer time.
“Then do it in the living room. You can listen to the meeting while you’re at it.”
Guwon stood there blank-faced for a long while. Then he emerged from his room with a scripture and a mat. He actually laid the mat down in a corner of the living room, knelt, and opened the scripture before him. Soon, the prayer began. Guwon murmured the words from memory, occasionally knocking his forehead against the floor.
THUD, THUD, THUD.
A hulking dark figure the size of a mountain doing that in the corner was enough to destroy anyone’s concentration, but Monan dragged the meeting onward anyway.
“I’ll get a handle on everyone’s profiles bit by bit. But there’s one thing that’s bugging me.”
“O Mother Goddess, suffering makes the spirit grow, and new strength…”
“When I got assigned to this team today and checked the team score, I was floored. One of you, the flamethrower or the religious nut, explain how this happened.”
“…And with that strength, from the ruins the Creator…”
“What kind of batshit crazy do you have to pull to drag a team score down to negative five thousand points?”
In that instant, Guwon’s recited prayer cut off.
“Across all five Combat Corps Divisions, the average team score is in the thousand-point range, and our team is six thousand points below that?”
The mood of Combat Corps Division 2 Team 7’s first meeting went frigid fast. A while after the shocking negative-five-thousand record had been exposed, Guwon’s interrupted prayer resumed. With no other choice, Monan pressed his hand to the forehead of a sulking Haeguk and released the energy he’d been suppressing. With his ability freed, Haeguk’s wounds would hurt less and heal faster.
“Explain.”
“Fuck, it’s those civil servant pricks. That’s how they are. A guy has one little fistfight, and they dock points for every damn thing.”
“This is all points docked over fistfights between teammates?”
“…Plus a few counts of arson, ahem. A few counts of civilian casualties… and… what was it, hck… right, that thing… in the female agents’ quarters…”
“Don’t tell me it was a sex crime.”
“In the female agents’ quarters… I accidentally… set a fire…”
It always circled back to arson. What the hell was this guy’s problem?
“The Dongsan Gyeong Clan has a reputation to keep. Who do you take me for? A sex crime? Out of the question. I’ve got pride. I’d never do something that shameless. And that Mu over there’s basically a monk.”
“For now, the brass says they absolutely won’t deploy us to the field while the team score is negative. Since this is a brand-new team anyway, it looks like we’ll be doing joint training for the next few months. And Haeguk, if you keep refusing psych counseling, you really could get fired.”
“That mind-type esper bastard keeps spouting nonsense about how my heart’s full of fire or whatever, and it’s driving me insane. You try sitting through that crap.”
“If you hate counseling, then take your meds regularly. Of course, psychotropics will dull your abilities compared to now.”
“Ugh, fuck. If anyone found out I was taking that stuff, who the hell would go into battle with me?!”
Monan thought of the pill bottle in his own pocket and sneered to himself. If Haeguk knew he was already in the position of having to go into the field with a psychiatric case, he’d probably hit the ceiling. Well, Guwon had likely caught on from their conversation earlier, and Beom had actually seen him take the pills.
“I don’t feel like nagging, so manage yourself and don’t give them anything to talk about. Overload again like earlier, and I’ll strip your ability away entirely.”
Haeguk remained silent.
“Why no answer? Oh, the spot where you got hit earlier must be itching. Want me to scratch it for you?”
“Got it, sir.”
Haeguk answered, swallowing his temper with visible effort. Watching him, Beom looked down at Chichi’s blackened remains and squeezed his big round eyes shut. He seemed to be fighting back tears.
“Beom, you start with adaptation training. When you deploy to the field is entirely up to me, the team leader.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
“Stabbing or filleting a teammate with a knife, like today? I’d like that to never happen again. Within the team, only bare-handed, weaponless combat is allowed.”
“Yes… hck… hng…”
“As for Chichi…”
“It’s… fine. I’m not… hng, a little kid. Chi…chi was… hnngk…”
“Oof… Forget it. Both of you, go to your rooms.”