Chapter 37 The Man at the End of the Rope

Rhee let Jin touch the cut ends.

No fraying. The fibers ended together, as clean as sliced noodles.

“Did it pull them away?” Jin asked.

“First one, yes. He was in front. I pulled back, thought he'd caught on something.” Rhee rubbed his thumb over the shortest length. “Then it cut the rope. I fell on my back. That's why I'm here.”

“Tuesday. You're coming back?”

Rhee nodded.

“I know where I left them.”

Jin had half a reassuring sentence ready. He let it go.

“Show me.”

Rhee didn't move immediately.

“One of them hated ropes. Used to say we'd all go over the same cliff.”

Jin waited.

“He let me tie him in anyway. I keep thinking about that.”

A bus passed the gate. Neither watched it.

“What was his name?” Jin asked.

“Jun.”

“Then show me where Jun was.”

Rhee spread a rough tunnel sketch on the low wall. Three branching lines. A ventilation shaft. A sharp turn where the running armor had appeared.

When Jin pointed at the narrowest exit, Rhee's fingers stopped shaking.

“There,” he said. “That one's waist-high. It couldn't get the chest plate through.”

“What happened to the plate?”

“Stayed jammed. I ran.”

They talked until Bae came out to lock the hall. Rhee finally coiled the rope instead of leaving it around his waist.

Jin copied the narrow exit onto the back of his hand, then asked Bae for a lesson before lockup.

Bae knocked him down six times.

On the seventh attempt, Jin got close enough to touch the instructor's sleeve.

Bae threw him anyway.

“Better.”

“I would hate to see worse.”

“You were worse three hours ago.”

The lesson left Jin tired, hungry and newly aware of how much of his strength he wasted between deciding to move and actually getting there.

He ate and slept for an hour. When he woke, Min-jae had sent a picture of the practice dummy with a hand-drawn medal around its neck.

NovelPhoenix is where the author publishes this chapter, though the text displayed here was taken without permission.

First man I carried. Hope the next one complains less.

Jin sent back the picture of his own sandy face from that afternoon.

Choose someone better-looking.

Then I'd have to carry Theo.

Jin laughed, put the phone down and crossed to Calder's backroom. He fastened the pin from the shelf and went into the shop.

Kessa was waiting in the shop with Dessa. A wooden bowl occupied the chair between them.

It had tiny painted boots.

“Jory's new line,” Dessa said. “For people afraid their dinner might leave.”

Jin picked it up. There was a painted face inside, screaming beneath where the soup would go.

“He's married to you, isn't he?”

“He gets ideas.”

Calder came around the counter and inspected Jin's face.

“Your city has bitten you.”

“Training.”

Kessa looked at his reddening ears.

“Not all of it.”

Dessa leaned forward.

Jin put the bowl between himself and her.

“I need hooks.”

“Of course you do,” Dessa said gravely.

He paid one silver for five iron hooks and a hemp cord. Ten silver remained. Calder demonstrated one hook on a ceiling beam; it held her weight long enough for her boot to brush the counter.

Jin described the cut rope.

Kessa took the cord away from him and used it to pull the painted bowl off the chair.

The bowl caught against the chair leg.

She tugged harder. The cord straightened.

“Don't fight the thing at both ends,” she said. “Move one end.”

Dessa put her foot on the chair and sent it skidding. The bowl flew into Jin's hands.

He stared at them.

“I'm going to say this was all your idea if it goes badly.”

“Tell them I'm taller,” Dessa said.

He put the pin, knife and sheath on Calder's shelf, then packed the hooks and cord into her case. Once home, he unpacked them, left his phone on the table while he returned the empty case, then crossed back for dinner.

Tuesday at six, the food in his pack was mild enough for a toddler.

Yu-ra checked it and nodded.

“Teachable.”

“I'm choosing to hear that affectionately.”

“It was.”

He nearly dropped the pack.

Rhee arrived with a different rope and a small pair of shears. He caught Jin looking.

“For if I have to let go.”

He said it to the shears. Then he put them in his pocket and looked Jin in the eye.

Jin showed him the hooks instead.

Rhee ran a finger under one curved tip.

“Those might actually hold.”

The other two hunters joined them at the tunnel entrance: Ko, a broad B-rank with a shield scarred down its middle, and Seo, a C-rank carrying a compact crossbow.

Ko offered Jin a fist.

“You the one hiring instructors?”

“Interviews are ongoing.”

“Good. I want dental.”

Seo stepped past them.

“I want silence. We'll both be disappointed.”

Yu-ra drew her blade.

A narrow seam of sunlight ran along its edge, bright enough to bleach the entrance stones.

The jokes stopped.

Jin had seen the cup match. He had felt her hand close around his.

Neither had prepared him for how the dark ahead seemed to retreat when she stepped toward it.

They went in with Ko beside her, Seo behind them and Rhee showing Jin the route from the rear.

The floor sloped down. Old rails vanished beneath gray growths along the walls. Water ticked somewhere beyond the first junction.

Then metal scraped ahead.

Jin lifted his light.

The chest plate from Rhee's sketch lay sideways in the narrow exit. Empty. Wedged exactly where he'd said.

Beside it, a bare hand reached out of the darkness.

Rhee stopped breathing.

A man's voice called his name.