"SO!" exclaims Mireuk, hurrying the three of us along a maze of rusted steel and corrugated concrete towards destination unknown, "1 day and 23 hours of time. For three fresh greenhorns without any training to find a guemul with Reza's mirror shard."
"And successfully exorcise it."
"Could be as big as a freaking dragon by now."
"I would've heard about it if it's as big as a dragon," mutters Shinhak, following closely behind. He's not breaking a sweat, even under the raised collar from his dark navy coat, carrying a military-style rucksack that seemed to weigh more than just a few kilograms. It looks too hot to marathon in them.
"Then many guemuls haven't gotten around to those shards yet. But this also means it sucks for you guys," remarks Mireuk, bounding in leaps across the air that seem to take him no effort.
"Exactly why we've given you the Mirrors of Mushim," adds Shinhak, dodging a jumble of jutting metal pipes from the ceiling without looking, his gaze fixed on our faces. "Your bracelet mirrors, for your reference."
I want to ask what this Mirror of Mushim or whatever does other than counting down to the time of our doom, but I'm breathlessly jogging along my two contemporaries who were originally going to be executed like me: on my left, this long-haired and apparently stoic boy named Joyoung who murdered his entire family of four, and on my right, this rather unstable ruby-haired girl named Hwaryeong who killed thirty-one people of North Korea. Their hair are just as messy and unkempt as mine, flying about in tangled tendrils. Their clothes are bloodied like mine too – Joyoung in a dark blue jacket and pants stained with streaks of blood, and Hwaryeong in what appeared to be a sailor's uniform from a school somewhere, though I couldn't tell which. As far as I knew, North Korean schools didn't have such uniforms, so I find it strange that she was convicted of doing something in North Korea.
"...kind of preposterous that the hag wasn't planning on giving the three of you any," Mireuk says, his words barely reaching my ears. "Also a miracle that people in the Goryeo Musha actually survive, given how much the higher-ups love tightening everyone else's belts than theirs."
Shinhak puffs through his nose. "More a miracle why people actually stay in the Goryeo Musha instead of moving somewhere else," he comments monotonously, being the first to slide down a deep ladder. "Like me." I spy a hint of dejection in his tone.
"That's because you have Stockholm Syndrome," remarks Mireuk, chuckling, right above him.
"You and I."
"Nope, only you, Mr. Overtime."
"At least, your Stockholm Syndrome is not exclusive to here, anyway."
"...Right," comments Mireuk, mirth wiping off his face.
The two professionals descend the ladder first with the three of us amateurs following closely in tow, and begin to sprint away into the darkened tunnels.
"Wa – wai – wait!" The ruby-haired girl shouts, clutching her stomach. "Stomach cramps!"
"Almost there," says Shinhak, striding on. "It'll let up on its own."
"Where the hell are we going anyway?" I interject, panting profusely.
"Where we keep some guemuls for target practice."
"And you're not blindfolding us or anything?"
"Why would we?" Mireuk casually remarks.
"The Council's decided to not interfere, since you three automatically dying means the secrets you see will also die along with you," says Shinhak, shooting Mireuk a glance.
"How nice of them," chides Mireuk. "Would do them much good if they used those sly brains of theirs to actually improve the Goryeo Musha rather than sending chicky peeps on a near-guaranteed suicide mission."
They were speaking so casually without heaving their breaths. Even the stoic long-haired boy next to me was trying his hardest to keep up, albeit wordlessly.
"Ah, this way down," says Mireuk, motioning us to the first turn in a narrow concrete junction, dimly lit by orange and green.
"I think it's about range, isn't it?"
"Yup. You three, look at your bracelet mirrors."
"Huh? What are we – "
A sharp ping and a vibration we can feel on our wrist, and we instinctively look to the bracelet dubbed the Mirror of Mushim. There's something other than the signature of time – something else written in Hanja, the Korean renditions of Chinese characters. It reads Nam-suh, meaning southwest. A single red arrow in red ink points towards whichever direction that is.
As we run, the ping-ping-ping from our bracelets become more frequent, high-pitched, until it becomes a rapid heartbeat. Another number written in bold ink spells itself out in Hanja upon the inky bronze.
"Tell me what you see."
"It says in Hanja that it's... two-hundred and seventy."
"270? Sounds about right."
"Well, what does it mean?" I ask.
"A picture paints a thousand words," says Mireuk, skidding to a halt, nearly tumbling the three of us over like bowling pins while Shinhak effortlessly dodges to the door. He takes off his sunglasses and opens a room, shuffling all of us into a darkened cell. I hear growls coming from the darkened shadows, when a pair of red beady eyes blazes into being.
"EEEEEEeeeeeek! What – what – what is... what is that?" The ruby-haired girl exclaims, stumbling to hide behind my back. She lays her trembling hand on my shoulders.
"Hey, don't touch me," I say, trying to pry her grasp away, my eyes fixed on the guemul in the shadows in front of me.
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I'm a little perplexed. Is she trying to use me as a shield because I'm a more capable fighter? Wait, but didn't this girl kill like, 31 people? Why's she afraid now?
"Fear not," says Shinhak, unlodging the ruby-haired girl from my shoulders. He approaches the creature in the shadows and instantly grabs the thing by the neck with a motion too swift for me to register, and holds the growling animal out onto the thin waning light.
"Just a rat."
Just a rat? I think, as it more befits the size of a dog. It's covered in black-grey fur, snapping its sizable jaw with bucktooth sticking out, saliva dripping onto the floor. Its red, beady eyes flick this way and that to ascertain our numbers and strength, flailing its sharp claw-laden paws, twitching and vibrating.
"Eugh... right, it's a very big rat. So what's wrong with it?" I ask, repulsed.
"Was a regular rat until it nibbled on a tainted corpse of a human being, or nibbled on a guemul. Then it turned into one itself, though right now," Shinhak pauses, examining its teeth and general body, "it's not much of a threat."
"Ranked 'toothless', to be exact," adds Mireuk.
"'Toothless'?! 'Toothless'?!! What do you mean? This – this rat has giant buckteeth!" the ruby-haired girl exclaims, seeming exasperated. "What if it has rabies?!"
"Oho, because it's nothing compared to the real thing. These small fry can be dispatched with a baseball bat or a swing of a folding chair," Mireuk chuckles, ripping away a couple of old pipes off the wall and handing them to us. "These will work too, so have at it right now."
"Right now?"
"Right now. You got this."
The stoic boy – Joyoung – takes a pipe even before Mireuk finishes his sentence, and swings it headfirst into the torso of the rat guemul before I can even reach for mine. The creature makes an ear-piercing screech as it's hurled into the wall and slides down, and stumbles a bit left and right, but reorients itself.
It launches itself towards the ruby-haired girl.
"NOOOOOOOO! Dodododododdododon't nibble on meeeeeeeeeeeee!" she screams as Mireuk and Shinhak stand aside to let the rat-guemul land on her, prompting her to fall backwards. The rat snaps and chomps at her panicked figure, saliva dripping upon the ruby-haired girl's mouth, attempting to overcome the attempts at a wrestle. The rat nicks and scratches her hair and face, and begins tearing her overshirt.
"Idiot! Punch it away!" I sprint and kick the rat away as hard as I can, throwing it towards a wall. It reorients itself and jumps at us again.
I swing my pipe like a bat and strike a glancing blow at its legs, when the stoic boy swings his into its tumbling body, pummeling it to the floor. As it lands, the two of us desperately swing our pipes over and over again into its body on the ground, our strength steadily sapping from our arms, but instead of slowing, the guemul-rat becomes even more twitchy and enraged.
"Aim for the head," Shinhak says, crossing his arms.
"Or its heart," Mireuk adds, leaning with a single-leg into a wall. "The edge of that pipe, it's sharp. Find its heart, pierce it."
The rat wriggles free of our strikes and then bounds up a wall, and pounces on my head and hair from the top. I fall backwards, but I grab the rat by the throat and twist it hard, closing my eyes against its sharp claws. But whatever I'm doing to it is not hard enough, because it still wriggles in my tight grasp like a fresh catch.
"Throw it to me!" The boy shouts. I chuck the rat at him like a baseball.
The boy swings his pipe at it, and his hit connects, crushing the rat's skull, but it still keeps moving. Shinhak glances at his watch.
"You have 1 minute to dispatch it. We don't want to waste your time."
We hit it, pummel it, go for the head, try to stab its heart, but it's so twitchy and fast and energetic that we simply can't find a way to do any of those to satisfaction. The ruby-haired girl trembles, half-heartedly joining in to help us as we are out of strength, but half of her blows end up clanking off the cold floor.
"That's enough," Shinhak says, glancing at Mireuk worriedly. Mireuk sighs, and instantly pries the rat off of the floor by the torso, holding it outstretched on the side with a single hand.
Shinhak flicks his index finger at the rat guemul's head. One blink and the next, pieces of the rat guemul's skull and brain is splattered on the wall, smoke arising from both its beheaded neck and the wall, which has been cracked by impact.
He takes off his black gloves and wraps them in a zip-lock bag, folding it neatly away into his coat.
"Hwaryeong," says Mireuk, turning to the frightened ruby-haired girl. "Not fought a guemul before?"
"No – no..."
"Eh, not terrible for a first try."
We wipe the sweat off our foreheads, collapsing to the concrete floor.
"How do you feel?"
The boy doesn't reply, and neither does the girl. I just shake my head.
Mireuk takes out a bottle of water for us to drink. A full five minutes pass until we feel clearheaded enough to look up.
"Case in point – you need to purify a guemul out there in Seoul if you want to survive. You must do it by either destroying or decapitating its head from the main body, or by destroying its heart."
"OK, got it, but you could have just told us that way back then," I retort.
"Being told a thing and actually experiencing it are two different things. Remember that you fought hard just now. You will need to fight harder out there, because stuff out there's going to be bigger than this. A lot bigger."
"Real reassuring," I sigh.
"No, you actually should be," Shinhak interjects, pointing to the Mirror of Mushim on my right wrist. "This tells you in advance how powerful the guemuls nearby you are. If it's too strong, you can avoid it in advance. If it's something you can handle, you can chase after it right away. Gives you information. Saves you time. Critical for your survival."
"That guemul rat was rated 270 just now," the long-haired boy interrupts. "What's that mean? How does that compare to what's outside?" First time he's asked a question. It's sharp. The other girl asks too many questions.
"A number of 270 corresponds to the rank of 'toothless' in our classification system," answers Shinhak. "It's the second lowest rank. There are eleven ranks in total."
"The second lowest?" The ruby-haired girl asks, her disbelief apparent. "Does that mean it's the second strongest or second weakest?"
Of course it's gotta be second weakest, I want to blurt out, thinking back to the giant vulture guemul I fought, but Mireuk answers right away.
"Weakest."
"That was the second weakest?"
"Correct," adds Shinhak, crossing his arms. "If your Mirrors of Mushim write out any number between 100 to 500, it means it's classified as Toothless. Not much bite to them. You can dispatch them with a baseball bat like Mireuk said, or a pipe, or a tire-iron. They're usually not life-threatening, if you have a weapon on you."
"Uh-huh," I nod warily.
"What power level should we be looking for to find her shard?" The long-haired boy asks, nudging his head at me. His questions are incisive, like a murderer's.
"Wide variability. Depends on the power level of the guemul that ate the shard. It should bump it up a few magnitudes, so anything above 1,000 is an equivalent bet."
"Got it," nods the boy.
"A thousand!? How are we supposed to fight anything above a 1,000? Surely our baseball bats and stuff won't work!" inquires the ruby-haired girl, her voice shaking.
"Aren't y'all forgetting something?"
"What?"
Mireuk chuckles. "Your mirrors."