Chapter 14 - Center Core (2)

I thought I'd lost track of time on my phone and was running a little late, but Yun had simply come out early.

So what would we be doing from today onward? Was I going to get beaten up like last time?

Despite my worries, things proceeded along perfectly reasonable lines.

First, we warmed up and went for a run. We set off from the cabin, took a long loop, and returned to it. The streets were neat, with everything arranged just where it needed to be. The city baked in the warm sunshine, and Yun and I stayed silent as we ran.

After we got back, we walked ten minutes to a gym for strength training. It was spacious, with rows of well-maintained, state-of-the-art equipment, but not a single person in sight. That struck me as so strange that I couldn't help asking.

“Why isn't anyone here?”

“Because this gym is mine.”

Holy shit.

“Come work out on your own when I'm busy. I'll register your fingerprints.”

This man really was rich. I'd suspected as much when I saw his car, but I hadn't realized he was this rich.

At any rate, we worked out there. Perhaps to assess my abilities, Yun put me through a full range of exercises: lower body, upper body, flexibility, and so on.

Oddly enough, my body wasn't keeping up.

It had been the same on our run. I felt as though I should be able to run faster and farther, but my body wouldn't cooperate. The same went for the weights and number of sets in strength training. My ankles seemed less flexible, too. When I tried juggling, my ability to track moving objects had definitely declined.

How had I ended up like this...?

Like this?

“Were you a personal trainer?”

I straightened up. “Pardon?”

“Your form says you've been working out for at least a few years.”

Yun was studying me through narrowed eyes. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his black windbreaker and frowned slightly.

“Though it looks like you've taken a few months off. Whatever exercise I give you, you use proper form and target the right muscles.”

“Really? That's a relief. I think you're right about the few months off. I was just thinking my body wasn't keeping up...”

“You don't remember working out?”

Not really. Whenever Yun told me to do an exercise, how to do it simply came to me by reflex. How to deadlift, bench-press, do push-ups or pull-ups, and so on.

When I told him this, he fell silent in thought for a moment. Then he said, “You instinctively used breakfalls when the mushroom knocked you around, too.”

I did?

“How much muscle do you want to build?”

“I don't want to bulk up too much. I'd lose flexibility, which would mean more injuries and a restricted range of motion.”

“See?” Yun said. “If you ask me, you didn't just work out as a hobby. You either made a living at it, were in the military or police, or worked as a stuntman.”

Had I? Once again, I couldn't remember.

But Yun didn't seem particularly concerned with my answer. Instead, after our strength-training session, he dragged my exhausted self to a shooting range.

The shooting range was beneath the gym.

Just how rich was this man?

“I take back what I said about the military or police.”

That was Yun's assessment as soon as I'd finished shooting.

“You're good at exercise. Why are you such a terrible shot?”

Sorry 'bout that.

He made me practice shooting all afternoon. Apparently unconcerned about wasting ammunition, he gave me all the live-fire practice I could ever want, then dragged me, utterly spent, to his house.

More precisely, he dragged me into a spacious laboratory in his basement. It was cool and smelled faintly of disinfectant.

There, he showed me a “miniature core” model. A glass barrier resembling a domed snow globe covered a model city.

“It's made of exactly the same material as the Breath protecting Center Core.”

“The Breath?”

“The barrier's original name is the Breath. Most people call it a core, but strictly speaking, a core means the entire area enclosed by the barrier. The proper name for the barrier itself is the Breath.”

“I see.”

“John Müllen created the Breath. I commercialized it.”

“Pardon?”

I was so startled that the word came out a little funny. Eyes wide, I looked at the man beside me.

“Isn't that an incredible achievement?”

“When you put it that way, yes.”

He wasn't a modest man.

But now I understood why he was so rich. It was probably patented. Given his contribution to commercializing a device indispensable to human life, it would have been stranger if he weren't wealthy.

Yun looked down at the toy-like miniature core and pressed something on its base. A small opening appeared at the bottom of the dome: an arch, as though someone had made a tiny door for tiny people.

He pointed to the little opening. “When we leave a core, we make a door in it like this.”

“You go outside?”

Why go outside? Wasn't the whole point of surrounding the city with the Breath to protect it from bizarre mushroom and spider creatures?

His dry voice supplied the answer. “Ordinary people don't. We do.”

He explained in a low voice, “We have to take back the land we lost.”

A strange feeling swept over me.

I couldn't tell exactly what I was feeling, or why. All I knew for certain was that his flat explanation had left me feeling odd the moment I heard it.

It seemed as though a faint afterimage had flashed before my eyes. As though a forgotten memory had surfaced, then vanished. It had happened too quickly for me to properly register it.

I stared at my training officer. “What's outside?”

His answer came lazily. “Creatures.”

Then I'd be going outside the cores once I had some experience under my belt! It would be dangerous out there, after all.

“You come inside the cores once you've got some experience under your belt.”

Come again?

“The cores are full of civilians.”

That was true.

Yun switched on a screen mounted on the laboratory wall. It quickly split into multiple feeds, like a security-camera monitor, and began showing strange things. Every backdrop was different. Some were blue-green grasslands; others, desolate gray landscapes reminiscent of an apocalypse movie.

Creatures prowled through scenery that switched rapidly, like changing stages in a game.

One thing they all had in common: there was no sign of people. So that was the world outside the cores.

“The areas near the cores are relatively safe. Badgers clear them out. The farther you get from a core, the more dangerous it is. There are places where drones disappear for unknown reasons, too. We classify areas by danger level. But you can't really get a feel for it just watching footage, can you?”

I had a bad feeling. I immediately offered a very respectful answer.

“The video quality is superb. It's as vivid as seeing it in person.”

“Verbal explanations just don't stick.”

Yun had no intention of listening to me. He tapped keys to change the footage, and I grew increasingly horrified as the images flicked past.

What were all those unidentifiable things that kept appearing on-screen...?

My training officer continued his explanation, utterly unconcerned by my expression.

“Creatures are rated from one to ten, while areas outside the cores are rated from A to F. A is the furthest a Badger is allowed to go, and F is where recruits start.”

“I see. Then is that place crawling with creatures in the top-right feed an A zone?”

“That's an S zone. Off-limits.”

“Huh?”

Hadn't he just said the scale only went up to A?

Yun explained without taking his eyes off the screen. “There are places even experienced Badgers aren't allowed to enter. We lump them all together as S zones.”

“Then how was that footage taken?”

“With a drone.”

Aha.

“I'm glad it's an S zone, then. I'll hardly ever have to encounter it.”

“Eventually, we'll have to turn the S zones into F zones and bring them inside the cores, too. That's why we go out there.”

“Then let me amend that: I'm glad that's in the very distant future for me.”

“Let's go outside in a week.”

I knew it!

I knew he'd pull this! I'd had a bad feeling ever since he'd said verbal explanations didn't stick.

This man... I'd suspected it since the mushroom creature, but he clearly believed in learning through hands-on experience.

Yun glanced at me—I must have been opening and closing my mouth—and cocked an eyebrow.

“What's with that look?”

“Are you asking because you genuinely don't know?”

“No.”

This bastard.

Yun turned off the screen. There was an efficiency to every movement my training officer made, a sense that not a single motion was wasted.

He took what looked like a tablet out from under the desk. “Let's build up your fitness over the week before we leave.”

“Is that possible in just a week?”

“You're not in such bad shape even now.”

Really?

I spoke up, unable to hide the delight in my voice. “That's a relief. I was really worried...”

“Though you're nowhere near ready for the field.”

So he built me up just to knock me down.

Once again, my training officer ignored my reaction. Swiping through the tablet, he explained the week's training schedule.

Breakfast, then exercise starting at nine. Lunch. A break, then more exercise from two. Finish at six, then study the world online on my own. If I had questions, I could message him whenever I felt like it.

It was more manageable than I'd expected. Finishing at six and having officially sanctioned internet time was nice, too.

Thinking about introducing myself in a week made my stomach twist, but the week itself looked better than I'd expected, which cheered me up.

“They're paying you a month's salary in advance, given your circumstances. Use that to cover your living expenses.”

After we left his house, before I headed back to the cabin, Yun handed me a card as he spoke.

My face brightened as I took it. “Thank you.”

Having money to spend put me much more at ease. I'd have to find an ATM and check the balance. Now that I had a place to sleep and a job, I just needed to buy essentials like clothes and groceries.

Ah. I'd been so worried, but everything seemed to be working out. I was so hap—

BOOM!

“What the hell!”

“What do you think? It's a creature.”

Yun spoke after batting away a creature the size of a feral dog that had leaped at my face—with his phone.

The creature hit the ground with a wet thud, along with the phone screen.

A phone wasn't a table-tennis paddle. Had he really hit that thing with one? As I stared blankly at the life-form twitching on the ground, Yun strolled over to it.

He bent down to inspect the creature that had sprung out of the ground.

“Strange. I was trying to lure it toward me. Why did it jump at you?”

The creature resembled a whale. In fact, you could practically call it a whale.

CRUNCH!

Yun crushed it to death underfoot.

What a waste. The thought flashed through my mind.

... Huh?

“Why is that a waste?”

“What?”

Unable to understand my own regret, I'd muttered to myself. Yun straightened up and questioned me.

I hurriedly shook my head. “Nothing. But you can lure these things?”

“Yeah. They make calls at a frequency humans can't hear. The creature alert had been going off for a while, and it kept getting closer, so I decided to play a sound on my phone to lure it over and kill it.”

An eyebrow arched as he spoke. He narrowed his eyes at me.

“Why did it go for you?”

“Probably because I'm obviously the easier target.”

If I'd been that thing, I wouldn't have wanted to attack Yun either.

I hadn't known him long, but he remained an inscrutable man, one who moved uncannily little and exuded an intimidating air.

“It's not as though we were standing very far apart.”

Oddly, Yun didn't seem convinced by my answer, though he said nothing.

He scrutinized me in silence, then sent me back to the cabin, saying that if he reported the carcass, a disposal team would come and take it away.

I nodded and headed back to the cabin.

On the way, I kept feeling that it was a shame, though even I couldn't understand why.

A thought that made no sense even to the person thinking it. Yet a shame all the same.

It had been an unusually fine specimen.