A room giving off a grand, old-fashioned atmosphere reminiscent of the main hall of an ancient temple.
At one seat of the enormous round table placed at its center sat Ryu Do-ha.
It would be no exaggeration to call this enormous round table the symbol and the root of the Formless Special Division.
Though the Division now belonged to a state agency, the table was an object carrying the spirit of its predecessors: that rather than a hierarchy by rank, everyone would cooperate from an equal position to protect the people.
But Ryu Do-ha loathed the round table more than anyone.
Equal position? Cooperation?
All of that was nothing but a facade.
It was true that the Formless Special Division was not an organization with finely divided ranks like a public body.
Fundamentally the Formless Special Division is composed of nine squads, and apart from the head of each squad, no other rank exists.
Only the nine squad leaders may sit at the round table.
They were officially regarded as the core leading the Formless Special Division, but the reality was rather different.
The Formless Special Division, which had existed since before the birth of the present nation, was originally a body founded around practitioners.
Following the Five Phases that symbolize the order of the East, it launched with five squads, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, and over several hundred years those five squads alone blocked countless Anomalies and calamities, carrying on the organization's history.
But as the times changed, so did circumstances.
To respond to the increasing incidents and the more complicated world, the Formless Special Division expanded its organization for the first time.
The five squads became seven, and as more time passed they finally became nine.
The problem began from that point.
The first issue to flare up was that of the squads' names.
The five squads of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water, which had endured long years, kept their existing names for reasons of tradition, while the newly created squads were given simple names with numbers merely attached, like Sixth Squad, Seventh Squad, and Eighth Squad.
Names with several hundred years of history, and number names that had only just come into being.
That subtle difference was the beginning of a far larger fracture than anyone expected.
Everyone sat at the round table, but in truth the hierarchy was stronger than in any other organization, and the great cause that everyone must cooperate had long since vanished into collusion and infighting.
And the squad despised by all of the nine was the ninth squad, of which Ryu Do-ha was squad leader.
By another name, the Special Assignment Squad.
"Do-ha, I do not see why we must waste time like this over something already decided."
An old man with a long white beard grown out like a high monk's.
He was Mok Deok-gi, squad leader of Wood Squad.
A benevolent smile hung on his face, filled with creases so deep it was hard to gauge the years he had lived, but Ryu Do-ha was not fooled by it.
Above that benevolent smile, the look in his eyes as he watched her was sharp.
Ryu Do-ha kept her mouth shut and avoided that gaze.
The number of squad leaders gathered at the round table now is four.
Still short of a majority.
Getting into a needless quarrel with the Wood Squad leader now could cost her the chance she had barely obtained.
"Time is the one thing you have to spare anyway, so isn't it better to look at a human face like this than to shut yourself in your room alone?"
Gil Yu-hyeon, squad leader of Sixth Squad.
Seated opposite Mok Deok-gi, he crossed his legs and jeered.
When he glared at him, a combative energy pouring off his thick brows and heavy features, Deok-gi turned his head away as if refusing to deal with him.
The Wood Squad leader and the Sixth Squad leader were on poor terms ordinarily as well.
After all, Sixth Squad, the representative of the new squads, and Wood Squad, the effective head of the elder squads, clashed as a matter of daily routine.
"Both of you just wait quietly. How awkward must this be for Do-ha there?"
A middle-aged woman seated between the two opposed men.
She looks at Ryu Do-ha with a gentle smile.
"Do-ha. Don't be cowed. You've made appropriate use of a right you hold."
At her words Do-ha nodded as if it were nothing.
"Yes, of course. I'm not cowed at all."
The middle-aged woman smiles more broadly, as if pleased by Do-ha's answer.
She was Ryu Su-hyeon, squad leader of Water Squad.
Ryu Do-ha's paternal aunt, and one of the people she loathed most.
Most people were fooled by her mild smile, but at least most of the squad leaders knew.
How insidious a person she was.
If what Ryu Do-ha had planned went wrong now, the odds were highest that it would be entirely her doing.
But Ryu Do-ha let nothing show.
When she was inexperienced she had burst into tears and screamed and shouted, but she had come to realize that this was precisely what her aunt wanted.
Just as a subtle tension hung between Su-hyeon and Do-ha, the door opened and a woman in clothing woven with gold thread came in.
She looks to be about Ryu Do-ha's age.
She glances at Ryu Do-ha, then passes her by and sits between Deok-gi and Su-hyeon.
"My apologies for being late."
Her identity was Kang Yu-rin, squad leader of Metal Squad.
Deok-gi looks at Yu-rin with displeasure for a moment.
He spoke reluctantly.
"Then, since a majority has gathered, let us begin the meeting."
With Deok-gi's words, the meeting convened at Ryu Do-ha's request began.
The subject of the meeting was the matter of how to handle Kang Do-yul.
In truth, this meeting was a board stacked against her from the start.
After all, compared to the elder squad leaders who were stationed inside the Formless Special Division, the new squad leaders were thoroughly out grinding in the field.
The one saving grace was that the leaders of Fire Squad and Earth Squad happened not to be at headquarters.
In that case the odds were even.
With only five of the nine squad leaders gathered, she had to obtain five votes, a majority of all squad leaders, in order to conclude the meeting.
Her aunt, the Water Squad leader, would absolutely take the opposing position, but the Sixth Squad leader was highly likely to back her unconditionally.
The Wood Squad leader tends to follow the prevailing tide, so set him aside.
What remained was Kang Yu-rin, the Metal Squad leader.
Persuade Kang Yu-rin and she could obtain the agreement of everyone except the Water Squad leader.
That would make it one to four.
If that situation came, her aunt too would surely have no choice but to bend in the end.
Ryu Do-ha rose from her seat.
"Thank you all for attending in the midst of your busy schedules."
The disposition the Formless Special Division had handed down on Kang Do-yul, son of the witch Kim Chae-ryeong, was primarily Restoration (還元), and if that proved unfeasible, Erasure (消去).
Restoration itself had been impossible from the start, and in the end they intended to erase him.
Ryu Do-ha's fight to overturn that decision had begun.
***
A swaying rope.
Beneath it, hair drenched through.
What's visible from here goes only that far.
Se-min was leaning against the sink, quietly looking at the top of the partition.
Outside, the second train was passing through just now.
Only three more passes to go.
In one sense, an extremely simple assignment.
But.
Se-min in fact wasn't much pleased with the present situation.
How long has it been since I've known Sister?
Counting only the time we've spent together since I joined the Formless Special Division at eighteen, three years.
Counting from our first meeting, well over five years.
The place I first met her was, as chance would have it, an abandoned station too.
After my grandfather, my only family, died, I happened to hear rumors about abandoned stations.
Clinging to those rumors, I went around the abandoned stations that exist across the country from a young age.
It wasn't for some embarrassing reason like wanting to see my grandfather one more time.
I wanted to ask him something.
Who on earth it was that killed him.
But rumors are nothing more than rumors.
What I met at abandoned stations, again and again, was only punks who needed a hideout or wild animals driven down from the mountains.
Around the time I was starting to wear down mentally, I met Sister.
The first time I met her I only watched her secretly from a distance.
Because among humans who came to abandoned stations of their own accord, there weren't many of good quality.
But a few months later, the moment I ran into her at a different abandoned station, this thought came to me.
Maybe that person is chasing the rumors like I am?
Maybe that person is in a similar situation to me?
A kind of kinship came over me.
And a few months later, the moment I ran into her yet again, this time I approached her first.
I'd thought I was left alone in the world, I'd thought someone like me was the only one of his kind in the world, but the expectation arose that maybe that wasn't so.
And so we became people who went around abandoned stations together on a regular basis.
Gradually we came to lay out our circumstances to each other, and after that I came to look forward to the act of going to abandoned stations itself, rather than to revenge.
And somewhere along the way I found myself inside the Formless Special Division.
I wasn't a formal agent yet, of course, but it didn't matter.
It was the body she belonged to, but it was also a place where I could put to use a talent I'd once thought of as a curse.
Contrary to my vague expectation that working in the same place as her would bring us closer, once I entered the Formless Special Division I actually grew steadily further from her.
Going around abandoned stations together stopped happening too.
Time passed that way, and on a day roughly a year after I'd started working at the Formless Special Division.
She called me for the first time in a while and brought me here, to 'Manggok Station.'
At the thought of going to an abandoned station with her for the first time in ages I felt glad, but once I actually got here that anticipation died away in an instant.
Because this place was real.
A place where real vengeful spirits pass through.
Not the journeys full of disappointment and consolation I'd shared with her as a child.
A space of reality, where I had to return to the original purpose of revenge.
The problem being that even in that space of reality, no sign of my grandfather appeared.
On the day I left Manggok Station.
I decided to forget the rumors about abandoned stations, and the revenge I'd held in my heart.
I resolved to live just going with the flow.
I made up my mind not to seek her out anymore, not to lean on her.
I'd been living, having forgotten all of it.
And then she asked me a favor.
To hide this guy I'd never seen before at Manggok Station.
I felt a little hurt by it, but I couldn't refuse.
Considering whose request it was.
But.
I have a bad feeling.
I'd been sure I'd grown more seasoned than before and would be fine, I'd been sure that having experienced many incidents of this sort I could handle just about anything.
There's a smell.
A vicious burnt smell.
That rope, swaying right now.
That man suspended beneath it.
Why is it swaying now?
I haven't done anything.
Then a voice rings inside my head.
[Se-min.]
"Grandfather?"
It's my grandfather.
My grandfather was here.
***
Two days have passed.
No, it probably isn't exactly two days.
The receding rear of the train.
After all, the train that comes once a day has only just passed for the second time.
Contrary to my worries, life here has been surprisingly bearable.
There's been no 'staff member' here chasing me with eyes wide open, and no Cops coming after me to tear a person apart.
And that iron door, visible if I just turn my head a little.
Knowing I can leave whenever I set my mind to it is a quiet psychological comfort.
And one achievement of sorts from being here is, that Yellow Head, no, Se-min.
That Se-min and I have gotten fairly friendly.
He's a bit of a punk and our grain doesn't quite match, but he's a decent kid all the same.
GURGLE.
But I'm hungry.
More than hungry.
It feels like my stomach lining has turned itself inside out.
I can't, I absolutely can't hold out.
Not wanting to create variables, I didn't go to the kiosk at this train either, but.......
When was the last time I ate?
Right, the day of the business at the officetel, the send-off for the classmate going into the army.
So I haven't eaten anything since then.......
Wow.......
So a human can hold out this long without eating.
Even so, this is the limit now.
At the next train time I should go to the kiosk once.
After all, he said you only have to keep the rules properly.
So that's food handled.......
As for relieving myself, it's embarrassing, but I've just been using the women's restroom.
There are only the two of us, Se-min and me, anyway, and none of the passengers who appear when the train comes ever use the restroom.
Roughly three more days of holding out and the five days Ryu Do-ha mentioned will have passed.
Just a little more strength.
.......
But.
'Why isn't he coming out?'
It's been a while since the train passed, but Se-min isn't coming out of the restroom.
He always used to come straight out the moment the train passed.......
'Should I go check?'