WETRIED TRANSLATIONS
The Wizard in the Poncho
[Translator – Aren]
Chapter 144 - A Nutritious Snack
People didn’t change easily.
Especially when it came to motion sickness rooted in childhood memories. The moment I got out of the car, I dropped down on the sidewalk and spent several minutes letting out reddish spit. It took quite some time before I finally came back to my senses.
Only then did I realize that the pastor was smacking me on the back.
-Thump, thump, thump…
"I’m fine now.”
"Why does a grown man get carsick like this?”
"Proof that I’m just that sensitive.”
-Spit.
I spat one more time and stood up. Basic manners kept me from going around spitting everywhere normally, but after an especially bad bout of motion sickness, I threw that out the window. The fact that I at least spat into a storm drain was the civilized citizen, Baek Jemin’s last line of decency.
That was when Captain Kim Howoon came over and handed me a water bottle.
"Rinse your mouth.”
"Thank you."
I twisted off the cap and poured some into my mouth.
-Grrrrrgg…Gargle, gargle.
-Spit.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and gave the empty bottle back to Captain Kim Howoon.
"Why are you giving this back to me…?”
"You can’t just throw trash anywhere."
"You just don’t want to deal with it…Never mind. Fine.”
Captain Kim Howoon frowned before crunching up the water bottle.
-Crunch!
Captain Kim Howoon looked unusually drained, which made me wonder what was wrong. Fight then, the backlash from my Ears-branch magic kicked in.
'Stuck driving on my day off without even anyone to relieve me, damnit…'
Man… How should I put this?
It was realistic and horrible but somehow felt kind of removed from the whole South Korea-is-getting-destroyed-in-real-time situation. I licked my lips unnecessarily and turned my attention to the pastor.
He had his Bible open and was muttering something, but since I had no intention of going to church, I let it go in one ear and out the other.
Still, I wasn't going to interfere with a clergyman doing his job.
A little while later, the pastor finished praying, stuffed the Bible back into his bag, and looked up at me.
"Baek Jemin. With this you’ve cultivated your spirituality as well.”
Fucking hell.
I forced down the words that were about to claw their way up my throat.
Instead, I could only look around and shrug.
"So you said we were doing community service. Why are we here?”
Sound barriers, a broad road running beside the aboveground tracks, and apartment buildings rising over both the wall and the road. It looked like a typical urban city. Quiet, but properly maintained.
There was just a lot of stuff painting over that scene.
Chunks of steel serving as anti-tank obstacles blocking roads here and there, spikes laid out to shred tires, positions built from stacked sandbags, sentries bundled in thick gear with rifles in hand, ammo boxes and shells packed together like Tetris pieces on pallets, armoured vehicles deliberately parked sideways across the roads, two tanks positioned in the center, and even searchlights left turned off because it was daytime.
The military force stationed at Hwaseo Station looked utterly menacing.
Apparently the civilians had gotten just as hardened as the military, because before us were preachers waving around crosses that looked like they’d been made from nonwoven fabric, mixed in with believers kneeling on the ground.
"Judgement Day has come! Repent, sinners! Find the wolves hiding among the flock and burn them out! Burn the hordes of Demons with holy fire before the fires of Hell burn us!”
""Amen, Amen. Lord, descend upon us through the Holy Spirit so that we may eradicate the Satanic Demons hiding among us.""
Watching that mess, I quietly crouched down, thinking I’d only draw attention to myself if I stood up.
Pastor Park Yohan seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he didn’t even try to stop them or fly into a rage either.
There had to be at least 50 of them. That was a pretty big crowd, yet even with them carrying on right in front of Hwaseo Station, the soldiers didn’t interfere. They just left them there like some kind of ornamental bonsai display and ignored them.
"Don’t tell me the community service involves those people.”
"No, you idiot. The people we’re going to see are the ones asking us to find missing people.”
"But Pastor. They’re Christians too. Shouldn’t you stop them?”
The pastor gave me a tired little laugh.
"They all believe in Jesus too, so what right do I have? I can criticize them morally, sure. But we’re not like the Antichrist Pope with one pastor calling all the shots. People talk about cutting groups loose by calling them heretics, but fundamentally every church is different, so it’s hard to interfere unless they've gone way off the rails. Only when the established churches agree that some group is seriously out there and basically a cult can you label them in, and even then, there's no way to actually stop them afterward.”
"What if you used the law somehow?”
"Baek Jemin. Korea may have gone to shit, but this was originally a country with freedom of religion. Hm? What are you going to make illegal? You gonna kick down their doors without evidence of a crime like it’s the bad old days? Make Christianity the state religion and crack down on heretics? I’m all for that.”
Hmm.
I hadn’t expected the catastrophic choice to be between turning the entire country into fanatic zealots just to crack down on cults or simply living with them.
"Let’s just live with them.”
"Right. You get it now?”
At least it was a relief that our pastor didn’t seem quite that fanatical.
If he’d said those people were genuinely faithful, I probably would’ve put a slight psychological distance between us.
As I let out a small sigh of relief, Pastor Park Yohan gave a hollow laugh and spoke up.
"And Baek Jemin. Those people are also why I brought you all the way to Hwaseo Station.”
"Huh?"
-Rustle.
The pastor stood up, brushed off his clothes, then grabbed the rifle sling he’d set down. He could sling a firearm one-handed like a proper veteran now. At this point, he might have gotten more gunpowder on his hands in the past few months than ink all throughout his entire life.
Without even bothering to push up his glasses that had slipped down to the tip of his nose, Pastor Park Yohan signed.
"Come on. Time for community service."
* * *
A short distance from Hwaseo Station, which was crawling with soldiers, a small commercial district of low-rise buildings came into view between the high-rise apartments.
There were no winding roads characteristic of haphazardly developed areas, just roads running in straight, clean lines, with neatly divided blocks centered around a large building that had apparently once been a shopping center. It looked like the abandoned vehicles and buildings had been requisitioned or salvaged for reuse early on.
The roads were cleaner than I expected.
With no cars around, the pastor and I wandered along the right side of the road like a couple of carefree bums.
Normally, you’d expect at least one driver to pick a fight, but thanks to the guns slung over our shoulders, the kind that taught even rude people some manners, everyone was incredibly humble and polite. Even the occasional truck carrying supplies or people would steer away from us.
The moment we went about 100m farther in, the atmosphere changed a little.
The road for vehicles was clean, but the sidewalks for pedestrians were filthy. It made the situation outside the areas actively managed by the military more than obvious. The sidewalks were filled with people sitting blankly beneath tents given by the army.
At least the sky was dull gray without a single beam of sunlight.
Every time the wind blew, I could feel the humidity weighing down my poncho raincoat. If the sun had been blazing down on us too, more than a few people would’ve boiled to death.
The soldiers were just as on edge.
They occupied the section with the shopping center, while civilians took the section with the low-rise stores. The sentries rigidly stared this way from across a single road and crosswalk, lightly brushing their index fingers around their triggers.
I thought they’d usually do the opposite to accommodate more people, but then I suddenly remembered the measures imposed across the Gyeonggi area some time ago.
—To secure control over all supplies within the Gyeonggi area, the military first occupied supermarkets, factories, and surrounding facilities.
-Click.
The sound of a soldier adjusting his grip on his rifle across the crosswalk sounded particularly intimidating. Even in the humid weather, the soldiers hadn't given up wearing their gas masks or CBRN protective suits.
The scariest part was that they never took their eyes off the people across the road.
Unable to hold back any longer, I asked the pastor.
"Didn’t they finish quarantine and confirm these people are human? What’s with these soldiers?”
"They’re evacuees. More precisely, they’re people who managed to evacuate from north of Hwaseo Station, where they released the gas. And the reason the soldiers are acting like that is…”
Just then, a smell on the level of Deli Manjoo drifted out from an alley in the low-rise shopping district.
The fragrant smell of meat soup filled to the brim with MSG, salt, and pepper pinched straight through my gas mask and hit my nose, making saliva pool in my mouth reflexively. Even I; who ate small portions to avoid the catastrophic possibility of losing control of my sphincter when the pain caused by magical backlash became unbearable, felt myself wavering.
I turned my gaze and found a cobbled, tougher kitchen setup there.
People in shabby clothes were billing huge pots of porridge and stirring them with shovels. They filled slightly dented kettles with water, handed out cups, and even wore gentle smiles.
A long, orderly line had already formed, everyone carrying their own bowls and spoons. Judging by their appearance, they were definitely evacuees. Every time one of them received a ladleful, they bowed repeatedly in gratitude.
"You’ll be blessed for this. Thank you so much.”
"It’s nothing. If there’s any left, we’ll give you more, so go eat a bowl first.”
With generous portions of meat and watery rice being ladled out, there was no way they wouldn’t love it.
Even I, who ate well and lived comfortably at the Pyeongtaek US camp, was being tempted by that downright unfairly fragrant smell. How were the evacuees here supposed to resist? Maybe this sight of people serving others was the very Korean warmth we’d forgotten.
The humanist still alive even after the world had gone to shit made my chest tighten.
Just as I stepped forward, thinking maybe I’d get a spoonful as well…
"No."
A voice I had never heard before stopped me and pulled me back to reality.
It wasn’t like Pastor Park Yohan’s voice, which somehow managed to sound kindly and crazily stubborn at the same time. This was a woman’s voice, so tightly packed with contempt and disgust that her tone had actually become more respectful.
Wondering who the hell dared to interfere with Supreme Archmage Baek Jemin’s culinary enjoyment, I turned my head in irritation.
A short-haired woman was waiting there, wearing a white padded jacket, jeans, hiking knee gaiters, and carrying an M16. And that wasn’t all. A mask covered the lower half of her face, and around her neck she wore a purple scarf reinforced with chain links to protect her throat.
In this weather.
She obviously had to be insane, so I immediately stuck close to the pastor’s side.
The short-haired woman in the white padded jacket pointed with her right index finger to the fluorescent blue armband wrapped around her upper arm.
"Sorry for speaking casually when we’ve just met, but you looked like this was your first time somewhere this bad, so I stopped you in a hurry. I'm a civilian Operator too. Kim Yena.”
"Ah, yes.”
It felt like the pastor should’ve been the one to say something here, but he kept his mouth shut, so I answered instead. He’d been looking especially tired today, his face pulled into a frown. He’d been sighing nonstop for a while now.
Kim Yena, the short-haired woman in the white padded jacket, stared at the pastor for a moment, then pulled her scarf up over her nose and adjusted her grip on the rifle.
She had several pouches attached to her belt. She pulled out a magazine and inserted it into the rifle with decent enough proficiency.
-Clack.
There was something strangely magical about that metallic sound, enough to snap even a foggy mind wide awake.
After that, Kim Yena paid us no further attention and quietly crossed the road. Several dozen seconds later, two more people dressed in the same white padded jackets came running out from the shopping-center side.
They were bundled up so thoroughly that I couldn't tell whether they were men or women, and they reeked of sweat, but I did notice one thing. One carried an M16, and the other a K2.
Then more than a dozen fully armed soldiers followed, charging out with genuinely murderous intensity after slamming magazines into their rifles. Their destination was obvious. They were heading straight for the kitchen in the alley that had just been handing out meat soup and bottled water to the evacuees.
Should I stop them?
Damn it. I wanted at least one spoonful.
Licking my lips, feeling pointless regret, I patted the pastor on the back as he stood there looking strangely frustrated.
"Be honest, pastor. You wanted a bowl too, right?”
"Haah..."
Our voices were drowned out.
The pastor’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him. A much louder, more shocking sound swallowed his words. Only faint screams and groans told me that something had happened.
-Piiiieeeeee—.
My ears rang when I turned toward the sound of gunfire.
Soldiers had their rifles aimed everywhere, while the civilian Operators in white padded jackets were overturning the pot and painstakingly inspecting the spilled soup. The civilians had every right to protest the sudden disaster, but people were so terribly weak in front of guns.
At that moment, one soldier roughly tore off his helmet and yanked up his gas mask before roaring at the top of his lungs in a voice filled to the brim with rage.
"The ringleaders and accomplices are to be executed on charges of murdering practitioners of Localized Invasive Structural Alteration phenomena and desecrating their corpses! If you want to prove your innocence, stop resisting, stop running, get down, and submit to detention!”
I blinked at those words.
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
I looked at the pastor with a slightly dumbfounded expression, and he idly fiddled with his rifle sling before speaking in a low voice.
"A rumor got out. Looks like it spread along with some of the information about magic that was made public. Kill a wizard and eat their body, and you can learn magic. That’s considered the light version. There are even rumors now that you can just eat people altogether.”
"Fuck, then that means…”
-Snap!
The pastor loudly snapped his index finger to get my attention.
"So keep your damn head on straight. We’re here to find missing people.”
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