by J D Astra
The taste of hot soup and bile crept up the back of my throat as my stomach knotted with worry. I stopped and took a deep breath. There was nothing to be done for it. Ko-nah was going to do whatever he was going to do. All I could control were my words and actions. Right now, the best course forward was to keep treating him with as much kindness as I could muster and pray to Mun-Jayu that would work.
Chapter 12
THE FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL dragged on with Ko-nah’s unending complaints, but despite his behavior, he hadn’t ratted us out to Tae-do—or at least, Tae-do hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. Il-sung had become distant, speaking less and avoiding us more than seemed normal. I’d questioned him about dinner the first night, and he’d written it off as nothing at all, then scurried away with an excuse.
I couldn’t keep reading into things, though. I had to keep my head clear for the important tasks, like fixing Mae’s secondary device. As it turned out, there was no secret method for ma repair, and Pa-ne was making a grand show about nothing at all. His ma control was excellent, and his techniques were, too, but they were no different from my own.
“Visualize the solutions, draw them on paper if you must,” he had said the second night of class. “Then you can iron out design flaws before you implement them.”
That sentiment was the basic principle of ma repair. Even in outer-cities I’d been taught this. Never blaze forward with a machina change without visualization. A misstep of how that change may interact with other components could lead to injury in the arborum or even death. If one of the saw-machina malfunctioned, it could take out the operator and everyone else nearby.
The only value I gained in his class was interacting with the other machina. Sneaking a peek at the inner workings of the machines that hung above us in class had given me valuable insight into some of the simple technology of the ancients. Simple didn’t mean they weren’t sophisticated, though. They were very good at performing their small roles, and that was just the insight I’d needed.
I was overthinking things! Criss-crossing highways and super interconnectivity... I was trying to do too much to get Mae’s second device working. I’d thought that because she was so complex of course she would need a complex device to work inside. Despite Mae’s sophistication, she hadn’t known any better, either. She had limited space in me and the device burned into my chest, and none of the data about her construction had been included in that piece. She was a wizard with munje, but a dunce with her own technology.
On the morning of the second rest day, I gave everyone a break from training and snatched Mae’s secondary device, pocketing it before Il-sung or Ko-nah could notice. I made my way to the main pagoda, up to Woong-ji’s office, and knocked on her door.
“Come in,” the old master called from the other side.
I opened the door a crack before it was met with resistance from the other side, along with the sound of scrapes and clanks. I peered in to see a pile of spare parts blocking my entry. I gave the door another good shove and opened it wide enough to squeeze through. The parts weren’t any parts, they went to something huge, and they were scattered all throughout her office.
“What’s all this?” I asked as I turned to find my master. The door to her workshop was open at the other end of the room, and I saw white sparks flying as her shadow bounced against the wall. She was welding.
I carefully navigated the space until I made it back to her. I shielded my eyes and felt around for a pair of the blackened goggles hanging above the desk.
Woong-ji’s hair was pulled back and covered with a bonnet, and she didn’t wear her normal robes of purple and golden cogs, but a plain black dobok. She had a brown leather apron tied around her waist that had been burned many times, and she wore a thick leather glove on one hand. Her other hand sported several red burns, and the tip of her index finger was blackened from soot and smoke.
“So, what is all this, anyway?” I asked as I gestured to the parts strewn about her office.
She cut off her stream of en munje after a moment and sighed, then wiped her sweaty brow and pulled up her goggles. “It’s a new project, something big.”
I glanced around at the pieces of metal casing, large gears, and hydraulic pumps. It looked like it might be a battle bot... I smirked and asked, “Going to crush little Tuko this time?”
She raised a brow, a playful smile on her lips. “You’ve missed the mark.”
I made my way to an open—but still cluttered—workbench. “If you need any help, I am your apprentice,” I reminded her.
She hummed and said, “Yes, I was considering it. But I’m having so much fun, I couldn’t bring myself to part with any of the work.”
“I hope I have your passion when I reach your age,” I said as I cleared a space to work.
Woong-ji belly-laughed, then said, “Your passion seems to grow with every passing day. I have no doubt your love of machina will weather every storm of life.”
I set about getting my mind in the right space to work as Woong-ji returned to her welding. I breathed shallowly and consistently as I kept a steady trickle of ma munje directed toward Mae’s device. I disconnected the many highways in a neat fashion, ensuring that only the primary power flow and a single memory node were hooked up.
‘Ready to try this?’ I asked Mae in my head.
“Ready,” she replied with excitement.
I powered the device with ma and watched it spark to life in my mind’s eye. The memory node blinked and then lit up with gold brilliance.
‘Okay, get in there.’
She made a sound like blowing out all the air in her lungs, then said, “Here goes nothing.”
Mae’s consciousness tickled just below the surface of my skin as I felt her using my munje to broadcast herself. The hairs on my arms stood on end, and the air around me pulsed with static.
I saw purple-blue light flood into the device. It roved over the broken connections, then followed the power highway straight to the active node. The gold of the node light bled through with blue, little by little, until my ma munje was pushed out.
Tiny blue fireworks burst across my vision, and Mae shouted aloud, “It worked!”
I jumped from my seat with a whooping, “Yes!” as I looked down at the softly glowing metal. The casing had gone from solid silver to translucent with its activation. It thrummed with blue and purple light—like Mae—and gave off a faint buzzing.
My hands trembled and a levity filled my chest. I breathed a deep sigh. Finally, after months of hard work, we’d done it. We had to undo nearly everything we’d already done, but with the new, simple design, we’d make quick work of enabling the whole device.
“Congratulations, Jiyong,” Woong-ji said as she patted my back. “This calls for a celebration drink.”
Woong-ji stepped into her office and a moment later, I heard her rummaging around in one of her desk drawers. “Where did I put it?” she asked herself as the sound of drawers opening and closing continued.
“So, what’s it like to have some extra room?” I asked Mae aloud.
“Quiet,” she said with awe. “It’s not very big, mind you, but it’s a peaceful little corner.”
I smiled and said, “Let’s turn that corner into your own house, shall we?”
“Ah! Found you!” Woong-je shouted with delight. She returned to the workshop with a dusty bottle of amber liquid in one hand and two clean teacups in the other.
She set the ornate cups on the burnt work bench. The bottle thupped as she pulled the cork from the top. With a swirl of blue en munje, she pulled appropriate portions from the bottle with a flourish and dropped them in the cups. I grinned. Woong-ji didn’t often show off her other skills, but I knew she had them—unlike Pa-ne.
Woong-ji scowled at me. “What’s this?”
I shrugged. “My ma repair and design class isn’t what I expected.”
“Well.” She sighed and corked the bottle once more. “Things get better as the classes get small
er. The first two years are to weed out the weak. You won’t be behind in every subject, especially one you’re passionate about.”
She held the amber-filled cup out, and I accepted it.
“I suppose not. His methods for tracing the designs on paper did help us come up with the more simplistic solution that led to success... so perhaps that is something to be happy about.”
Woong-ji grinned and clinked her cup against mine. “Geonbae!”
“Geonbae!” I replied and smiled back. I put the cup to my lips and felt instant regret at the smell of the liquid.
This.
Was.
Foul.
I drank it anyway. The liquid burned my mouth, all the way down my throat, and simmered like bubbling magma in my stomach. The burn swam through my veins until it filled up my entire being with heat. I used my core to cycle the warmth away into ma munje and noticed that the input of heat converted into a far greater output of munje than it should’ve. What was this foul elixir?
Woong-ji whooped and shook her head, losing the bonnet and setting her wild salt and pepper hair free. “More?” she asked as she held the bottle out to me.
“What is it?” I asked with a scowl, accepting a second pour.
“Sung-ki makes it special for me. It amplifies ma creation. Now I can stay up all night working without breaking to eat.” She grinned so wide it wrinkled her nose. We both laughed and sipped the nasty beverage.
“Master?” I asked as I set my empty cup down. She hummed and filled her cup again. “I’m concerned about something. I don’t know who to talk to.”
She raised a brow. “There’s many things I can tell are weighing on you heavily.”
I nodded. “There are far too many. Where do I begin...”
I told Woong-ji everything. My mother, Ko-nah, Tae-do, the prank potions and the druggie I’d seen in Pi-Ki, the signal coming from all of them—everything.
At the end of it, she nodded and said, “It seems like you’ve entangled yourself in quite a lot this semester.”
“What should I do?” I asked.
She blew her lips out in a raspberry, the smell of liquor traveling on the air. “I could tell you all kinds of things I would do, but none of them would be what you need to do.”
“But you’re my mentor, my master. Don’t you have any advice?” I asked, outraged.
She nodded again, deeply. “I do, but I don’t think you need any of it. Mae has the right idea. Your mother is a priority. The sungchal are investigating the drugs, and Min-hwan is already onto the prank scheme in the school. Sung-ki will be making a statement and locking down the alchemy lab tomorrow.”
I sighed in defeat, having wished there was some magical solution she could’ve given me.
She stepped closer and touched my arm. “You will always have someone trying to cheat off you. There will always be someone looking for the fast, cheap, and easy solution. It does not exist. The answer lies in the determination of the human spirit. You have that in spades.
“If Ko-nah knows about Mae, and he is the person you tell me he is, the information will come out no matter what you do to prevent it. You need to shift your thinking now, before it’s too late. Either you’re in this to help shape him into the man he can be, or you’re in this to save your own hide. The latter is a waste of time for a Bastion. You do not learn when you’re protecting your fear. Change your fate, erase the fear, believe in your path forward, and reshape your destiny!”
She was practically glowing, her fist clenched in determination as she looked off into the distance. There was something heroic about her, despite her small stature and wild hair. The fervor in her eyes faded when she looked back to me.
She cleared her throat, then finished her drink and poured us both another. “Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Completely.”
There was a warmth in my chest that verified the truth of her words. She was one hundred percent right. I needed to go all in or cut ties. Bastions didn’t do anything if it wasn’t to their highest capabilities.
Shin-soo flashed in my mind’s eye for the briefest of seconds, and with it came a flood of fear. “You don’t mess with the Wong family,” his voice repeated in my head with uncanny clarity. If I did this and failed, I would be doing exactly that. But if I succeeded, Ko-nah would be a powerful ally.
I was going all in.
Chapter 13
GOING BACK TO CLASS was hard. I wanted to work on Mae’s device and start unlocking its possibilities. I wanted to give Mae more than just a corner of quiet. Yes, I wanted her out of my head so I could have a single private thought for once in the last year, but more importantly, she needed her own space. Something to call her own.
Ko-nah needed extra assistance with his zo calm exercises before bed that first night, and before I knew it, I found myself waking up before dawn for another day of class. I cursed myself, and Mae piped up.
“We have time, we’ll get to it. Don’t worry so much,” she said with kindness that made me hate myself more.
I wiped a hand over my face as I looked around the room of sleeping boys. ‘No, we don’t have time. Every day I waste, my mother is one day closer to death.’
“What do you propose, then?” she asked.
I couldn’t abandon Ko-nah, but perhaps I could divvy up the duties for his progress. Hana could work on zo and ry munje with him, Cho could help with li, and Yuri en. I would still mentor him through ma and be present for meditation sessions. Would he accept this, though?
Mae hummed. “I think your first question should be, would Hana be okay with this?”
I sighed. ‘Good point.’
So, what was left? Let my schoolwork suffer or progress painfully slow on Mae’s second device. What else could I cut out? Sleeping and eating, but that didn’t seem viable. There was nothing else I could sacrifice to get ahead.
“I have something we could try,” Mae said with trepidation.
I nodded as I hopped out of bed and started the early morning routine.
“We’ve become well synced over the last few months, and I know this is an uncomfortable topic, but what if you gave me control to move and manipulate your ma munje?”
I didn’t like that idea, and not because I didn’t trust Mae, but because it was me, my autonomy. The munje was something that was part of me and having her push and pull it around at her will made me and my control obsolete.
Mae crooned with pity. “You’re not obsolete just because I know how to manipulate your munje. I won’t overstep my bounds, I promise. This is a way we can get this device fixed while you still help Ko-nah, do well in school, and get appropriate downtime. Come on, Jiyong... do you really think Hana would help Ko-nah? She despises him.”
‘It wouldn’t be helping him, it would be helping me, and I think she’d do it to the best of her ability,’ I thought with a bit of heat, and I felt Mae shrink back.
“You’re right, I’m sorry.”
I splashed cool water over my face and neck, feeling the cold shock of it down to the bottoms of my feet. I sighed. ‘No, you’re right. Giving you control is the best way. What are you doing in here anyway? Just watching me go about my day. This will give you something productive to put your time toward.’
Mae made an excited high-pitched scream. “Thank you, thank you! You can’t imagine how boring it gets—I mean, not that you are boring—but I have nothing to do!”
‘Calm down. Boundaries; like with everything else. You can use my ma and en, and ask me to generate more, but you cannot command my core. The core is mine.’ I thought carefully as I dressed in my school dobok.
Mae was gleeful as she said, “Yes, I agree. I wouldn’t want to do something wrong with your core anyway. You’ve learned to use it on instinct, a reflex, and I’ve watched you—”
‘No,’ I cut her off flatly before she could go on. I wasn’t going to be made obsolete...
“Yes, of course, right. No core command,” she said, and made a sound like inh
aling sharply. “This is exciting!”
‘Very exciting. Let’s practice.’
I could feel Mae dragging my munje from the reservoir and leading it down my arm into the cool metal in my pocket. I sensed the munje working in the device, but if I didn’t focus on it, I didn’t get sucked into the information. Mae successfully directed my munje like I did, ordering repairs where she saw fit, and I didn’t have to do anything but provide her more.
A great feeling of unease shivered through me as I thought of the consequences once again. If Mae could learn to manipulate my munje, could anyone?
“Very unlikely,” Mae piped up.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the device?’
She chuckled. “I am. I can also talk. Talking is very low-effort. In any case, I’m faking your mental signature to utilize your nanites, and it’s nearly impossible that any other human could figure out how the nanites work, let alone figure out how to fake someone else’s mental signal. Trust me, we’re the only ones who can do this.”
Some thought tickled the back of my mind at that. Faking someone’s signal... ‘Mae, what about that weird signal reburb or something?’
She giggled again. “A signal reverb, as in reverberation. Yes, but that’s not the same as this.”
I sighed. What was the difference between my signal and the signal from the drugs?
“I could teach you about my science—everything I know at least—if you wanted,” Mae offered as she sent cute smiling faces up through my vision.
‘Maybe next year. I think I’ve gotten myself into enough for now.’
“I agree. Ko-nah’s been awake for about two minutes, by the way,” Mae mentioned, and my hands clammed up. I pulled the device off the bed and put it into my pocket. There, Mae could work on it all day without anyone seeing—hopefully.
‘Why didn’t you say something sooner?’ I demanded. I pulled back the covers and made my bed, then moved to Ko-nah’s.
