RTN 31

He stepped into the measurement room but couldn’t see ahead.

Everywhere was filled with stifling steam. Kim Do-woon knew this in theory — he’d learned that if the space-expansion system laid inside the walls is damaged, steam will erupt like this.

So the measurement room was wrecked.

Kim Do-woon pressed his sleeve over his mouth and nose and followed Jang Seok-ju a few steps inward.

Water splashed at his feet. Several researchers were busily spraying the walls with hoses to put out small fires. The blaze wasn’t large.

Still, the measurement room itself was an expensive facility, so the monetary loss was expected to be significant. Thinking about what he’d have to report to the higher-ups already made him feel sick.

Jang Seok-ju looked just as troubled.

“What a mess.”

He let out a long sigh.

“What do you expect me to do with those idiots… Circuit breaker, you fools. Spraying a little water — when do you expect to put this out? Circuit breaker!”

One of the researchers dropped the hose in a panic, ran across the room and slammed hard on a section of the wall. A few tiles opened and a breaker was revealed. When the researcher pulled all the levers down, the whole place went dark.

Only the faint light from the watches they wore on their wrists remained. Kim Do-woon switched his watch to flashlight mode.

One side of the measurement-room wall was completely shattered. Beneath the broken wall, like a spider web, lay a system that glowed bluish — Kim Do-woon had never seen anything like it in his life.

Of course not. Unless you were a manager, you never saw inside the walls, and no one had ever smashed a wall like this before.

Not only was there no one crazy enough to do that, it would be difficult even to try intentionally. Weapons were banned in this measurement room.

How did they do it?

Kim Do-woon took a step back and looked around. He could see Seol A-yeon sitting a distance away.

She was crouched in a corner of the room, panting from sweat but not visibly badly injured. Her face, however, was awkward as she stared at the broken wall as if startled.

It didn’t look deliberate.

Kim Do-woon looked again at the ruined wall. The researchers had brought patching materials and were hurriedly filling the broken parts.

Beside them, Jang Seok-ju asked sharply.

“How did they break this?”

It must have been done with the body. There were no weapons.

“With fists.”

One of the researchers answered. Jang Seok-ju raised an eyebrow.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“It’s true….”

“You lot weren’t messing around, were you?”

“No. Really, they hit it with their fists and it broke like this.”

The researcher answered and pulled a miserable face. The other researchers stopped smearing patching compound and quickly began to protest in turn.

“We really hit it with our fists and the wall broke.”

“We gave the proper orders. We told them to just avoid obstacles and keep running straight.”

“Suddenly someone said they couldn’t do it and collapsed pretending to be dead. When that happens the system temporarily stops.”

“We thought they were faking so we were about to restart it, and then they suddenly jumped up and tried to shut off the instrument power. Because of the cover they couldn’t, so they hit it with their fists. That’s how the wall—”

“See, we told you it was reckless to put an S-class into a regular measurement room.”

No.

Kim Do-woon thought differently. This wasn’t an S-class manifestation.

An S-class weapon wasn’t simply a physical booster. If a spirit had exerted power here, the measurement room wouldn’t just be smashed — the whole ship would have been pulverized.

More importantly, Seol A-yeon couldn’t already be operating an S-class. It hadn’t even been a week since she swallowed it. Theoretically the spirit should still be sleeping quietly inside her.

If it were awake, Seol A-yeon herself and everyone nearby would know — her body would change outwardly.

So Seol A-yeon had literally hit the wall with her fists and broken it. The problem was…

Kim Do-woon looked at her again. Their eyes met.

…How did she produce such explosive force?

He stepped quickly toward her. Dropping to one knee, he lowered himself and examined her hands. As he suspected, her right hand was wrapped thickly in black cloth.

Kim Do-woon let go of her hand and pulled aside Seol A-yeon’s already-open, disheveled jacket. The protective cloth that should have been covering her chest had been torn and the seam was hanging loose.

Setting aside that an expensive uniform was a wreck within half a day of being put on, he took Seol A-yeon’s hand in his own.

The smooth cloth wrapped meticulously around her slender hand was clearly part of the protective fabric. It was more than simply tearing cloth and wrapping it around — the width had been adjusted from the start, and the wrist and the spaces between fingers were wrapped firmly to prevent injury; it was not the work of someone doing this for the first time.

“You boxed?”

Seol A-yeon looked up at him with wide eyes. Her lips parted slightly and then she answered in a voice oddly devoid of strength.

“I guess so.”

“What kind of answer is that?”

“My memory’s fuzzy….”

“Then what is this? Isn’t this how you wrap hand wraps for boxing?”

Seol A-yeon dropped her eyes to her own hand. She looked uncertain.

“Is it? I just wrapped it because I was afraid I’d hurt my hand.”

“This is not a ‘just wrapped’ job. It’s totally professional.”

“I wrapped it without thinking….”

What was going on?

Kim Do-woon narrowed his brow.

Temporary memory loss? Stress-induced amnesia?

Her hand-wrapping technique looked like second nature, but she couldn’t even remember whether she’d boxed or not — that was strange.

“A traditional method.”

Kim Do-woon, still holding her hand, turned to look back.

Jang Seok-ju stood with his arms crossed, looking down at them. He muttered.

“Haven’t seen this used in a long time.”

“Indeed.”

Kim Do-woon agreed. The substance applied to that cloth Seol A-yeon had ripped off and wrapped wasn’t originally meant for protection.

It had been developed early in the war to coat weapons or bodies to drastically increase destructive power, but as weapon technology advanced it fell out of use. After stabilization work it had been repurposed for protective use.

“That chemical on the cloth… it was originally used to enhance the body.”

Jang Seok-ju narrowed his eyes and stared at Seol A-yeon.

“Did you know what you were doing?”

“No! No, I didn’t!”

Seol A-yeon shook her head violently and tried to stand but let out a breath and sat back down. As she braced herself to rise again, Kim Do-woon pressed her shoulder so she stayed seated.

She winced but obediently kept her butt on the floor. Her face as she looked up at Jang Seok-ju was full of frustration.

“No one told me to stop when I couldn’t run anymore, so I was just trying to shut the power off. But there was a transparent cover over the button and it wouldn’t open, so I had no choice but to hit and break it. And this….”

She lifted the hand wrapped in the protective cloth and continued.

“I wrapped this just so I wouldn’t hurt my hand. I really didn’t expect the wall to shatter like that. Really. I’m so sorry—”

“Worth raising, huh.”

Jang Seok-ju muttered. Seol A-yeon blinked. Kim Do-woon, still holding her shoulder, looked up at Jang Seok-ju without speaking.

“Worth raising, huh. There’s a reason I kept doing the selection process.”

When Jang Seok-ju spoke of selection, he meant the process of choosing the person most suitable to host an S-class. Ever since the S-class weapon had arrived here, selection under Jang Seok-ju’s supervision had been repeated many times.

But someone who fit every criterion didn’t come easily, and even when they narrowed it down by compromise, Jang Seok-ju would shake his head and call it off.

Each time he said the candidate didn’t meet his standards. The problem was, no one except Jang Seok-ju knew what the hell those damned standards were.

No one had the nerve to challenge him. Baek I-hyun respected Jang Seok-ju’s decisions, and that ended it.

Now the picky Jang Seok-ju had the word “selection” on his lips in front of Seol A-yeon.

He lowered himself to sit. His stained lab coat, splattered with pen ink in places, dragged on the floor.

He rested his arm on his knee and stared intently at Seol A-yeon.

He looked as if he had forgotten everything — including having his hand bitten by her and earlier suggesting whether they should kill her soul — and suddenly reached out and touched the back of her neck. Seol A-yeon swallowed and flinched.

“Let me ask you one thing.”

Holding the chip he’d removed from the back of her neck, Jang Seok-ju spoke slowly.

“You can hold out for thirty minutes, right?”

Seol A-yeon nodded. She seemed full of things to say but restrained herself.

Jang Seok-ju blinked not at all and stared through her, then asked again.

“So why did you do that?”

“Because I was told to act like it was real combat….”

Seol A-yeon looked utterly wronged. She spoke again.

“In the end we’ll be thrown into war anyway. If you assume this place is a battlefield, you won’t just dodge attacks for thirty minutes. Shouldn’t you be taking the enemy out?”

“You heard the rules before you came in. Run while avoiding attacks for thirty minutes.”

“Where are there rules in war?”

Seol A-yeon retorted, eyes full of incomprehension.

“As long as you win, isn’t that enough?”