Malware: A Cultivation Academy Series (Bastion Academy Book 2)

by J D Astra

  “You’re being paranoid. He just didn’t want to come,” Mae said as she pulled the last of the ma I created down to the second device.

  Woong-ji’s meditative teachings were instrumental in achieving focus, and I needed all I could muster today. Meditation flew by without the distractions, and in what seemed like no time at all, I was devouring breakfast. I returned for a second and third helping before Hana had even finished her first. She had been sullen since I said I wanted to go alone, and I knew it was my fault.

  She didn’t think she was going to be disgusted by my home, but I knew she would. I’d seen pictures of her palace in the hills. My home was barely a shack by comparison. Even my tiny apartment above the Rabid Rabbit was nicer. She wouldn’t be impressed with what we had built or how we lived.

  I set my bowl aside and turned to Hana. “Will you walk me to the train?”

  She nodded but said nothing. We finished breakfast in peace and bid Cho and Yuri farewell at the gate. Hana didn’t loop her arm through mine as we walked, and I felt the tension growing between us. We got to the station without a single word, and I purchased my ticket at the automated teller with fear knotting in my shoulders.

  As I stood on the platform, looking at her downtrodden posture, I almost changed my mind. I didn’t want her to be sad, and I didn’t want it to be because of me—but what I had said was true. I wanted it to be a nice day when Hana met my family, and today was not likely to be a nice day.

  I reached out for her hand and kissed the back of it, feeling the callused knuckles of too much training. “I’m sorry that this didn’t work out this time. Next time, I promise.”

  Hana’s eyes shimmered with tears. “What if there isn’t a next time, Jiyong?”

  I scowled. “What do you mean?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just mean, what if you don’t... It’s nothing.”

  The conductor sounded the train horn twice to alert its inevitable departure. I didn’t want us to part ways like this. I pulled her hand to draw her in closer, and she stepped up to me. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I hugged her tight.

  I sighed into her long dark hair and planted a kiss on her cheek. “I promise on everything that I am, next time I go home, it’ll be with you. I want them to see you when it’s for you, not when it’s for my mother’s tests.”

  A small smile pushed back her tears. She nodded as we separated, saying, “I understand.”

  I heard the door closing behind me and turned with a burst of zo. I pushed my way through the automatic door with only a centimeter to spare and caught my breath on the other side. Hana was smirking on the platform as she shook her head. She waved and watched me go. I rapped my knuckles on my chest twice and held my fist out to her, earning an even bigger grin that beamed like the sun. Hana knew what it meant.

  It was one gesture I had never thought to offer her before, as it was only something we had adopted in the outer-cities. But Hana was one of my own now, and she deserved the gesture of unwavering trust and friendship.

  When Hana and the platform were out of sight, I took a seat and leaned my head back to begin cycling ma munje.

  “That was well done,” Mae remarked with a hint of surprise.

  ‘If you hadn’t blurted the truth in the glade, it wouldn’t have been necessary,’ I replied. Mae didn’t respond, but I could feel her frustration bubbling on the edges of my mind.

  I sighed and bent forward. ‘Sorry. I just... that was one of the privacy things. It’s my right to keep my feelings to myself, and you took that away from me.’

  “I’m sorry,” Mae whispered, sadness in her voice. “I was trying to help.”

  I pinched my nose bridge with frustration. Now I’d made them both sad.

  “No, you’re right. It’s your life, and I shouldn’t do that. I’ll be better,” Mae affirmed, and I relaxed back into the seat.

  ‘Okay, so we’re good?’

  “We’re good,” she said, sending me a wink behind my closed eyes.

  I worked at converting breakfast into munje as the train jostled along the tracks to Pi-Ki. The hour and a half long train ride came to a screeching stop, and when I opened my eyes, I realized I’d fallen asleep instead of cycled energy. My reservoir was near empty again, and I groaned, rubbing at my eyes.

  There weren’t many people on the train to the outer-cities this early in the morning, but there were dozens waiting on the platform to get into the kingdom and inner-cities. The crowd parted around me like I was a razorfin swimming through a school of glowfish. I was wearing the dobok of a Bastion, and I stood quite tall, but still, it was nice not having my shoulders bumped.

  When I came down the steps of the train platform, Se-hun was waiting for me on a motorbike, a huge grin lighting up his face. “Good to see you, brother.”

  “Where’s mine?” I asked with a cocky smirk.

  Se-hun rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t drive two here. Sorry, you’ll have to sit on the back.”

  “Hey, where’s the girl?” Se-hun asked as he pulled a bulky helmet up from the side of the bike and strapped it under his chin.

  “Hana?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Yeah, I... She was busy,” I said with a shrug

  Se-hun’s eyebrow curved up to a sharp point. “Right.”

  “Like you’ve made a move with Naena,” I fired back. I swung my leg over the back wheel and sat down on the tiny cushion, then leaned back and grabbed the edge of the seat.

  “Aw, you’re not gonna wrap your arms around me?” Se-hun asked with sickly sweet sarcasm and made kissing sounds at me over his shoulder.

  I scoffed. “You wish. Just drive.”

  Se-hun took off with a jolt, and I had to reinforce my arms with zo to keep from toppling over backwards. It was a bumpy ride home, and I refused to wrap my arms around him, so I spent half of it furiously recycling a small portion of zo to stay stable.

  He slammed on the brakes, and I slid forward into him, knocking my head against the back of his helmet. I rubbed the spot above my eye as I pulled away.

  “I knew you’d come around,” Se-hun taunted with a sarcastic face that needed to be punched.

  “Thanks. Don’t worry about my ride back,” I said with a groan as I dismounted, still rubbing the bump over my eye.

  “You’re welcome. Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.” Se-hun revved the motor and spun the back wheel, splattering mud across the legs of my dobok.

  “Yeah, you’ve done plenty!” I yelled after him, and he cackled all the way down the street.

  There was no en munje in my reservoir, and I didn’t want to waste energy making any when we needed everything I had for the analysis. I tried to shake the mud from my pants as I made my way down the walk, but not in time to avoid the onslaught. Daegon charged through the front door, followed closely by Minjee. They slammed into me with giggles of joy, and I wrapped my arms around them. I patted Daegon’s back a few times, and he pulled away.

  “It’s good to see you, bro!” he said, his eyes misty.

  I smiled. “It’s good to see you, too.” I picked Minjee up like a sack of rice and made my way toward the house when a sharp, “Nope!” stopped me in my tracks.

  Eun-bi appeared at the door, arms crossed over a nice, pink and white flowered hanbok. “Not in this house, we just mopped. Go around back,” she demanded, and I set Minjee back on the ground in her giggling fit.

  Eun-bi stood on her tiptoes, looking around me for someone else. She scowled and asked, “Where is she?”

  I shrugged, feigning innocence. “Who?”

  Her scowl deepened and her tone was angry when she demanded, “Hana.”

  I pursed my lips and turned for the side gate, my shoulders up to my ears.

  “Yeah, you slink away and think about what you’ve done. I was looking forward to meeting her!” Eun-bi called after me, and shame colored my cheeks. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that Hana and Eun-bi had been in contact for s
everal weeks last year while I was in a coma. How stupid of me to think they weren’t still in contact.

  Oh, Mun-de-Jayu... What were they talking about?

  My messy room? The way my socks smelled when I came home from the arborum? There was a litany of things I wished Hana would never know, but since she and Eun-bi seemed to be friends, she’d have access to all the details.

  I walked past the side of the house, our goat bleating a welcome as she looked up from her meal of leftovers and weeds from the garden. I gave her a gentle pat and a, “Good girl,” as I made my way around back.

  Mother was strolling through the garden, plucking vegetables, and placing them into a wicker basket that rested on her hip. She had a loose bun with streaks of silvery-white hair pinned on top of her head and wore a breezy white dress that was tied at the waist with a gold silk scarf.

  I wanted her to stay healthy like this and keep getting better.

  She straightened up and smiled when she caught sight of me. “Jiyong, I’m so glad you’re here. Have you eaten?”

  “A few hours ago,” I said with a shrug. I was already hungry.

  She pulled her basket up and walked toward the house. It was loaded down with squash, tomatoes, and a few other late season plants. It was getting cold, and the sun was getting shy, meaning there were fewer plants that would grow and bloom.

  Daegon came running out the back with a pair of my workpants in hand. “So you can come in!” he said exuberantly.

  I quirked an eyebrow. “Going through my stuff?”

  His eyes shot open wide, and he dropped the pants, running as he said, “Do-hwan did it!”

  I laughed and shook my head, then I retrieved my clothes.

  Mother touched my shoulder with a cool hand. “Leave the muddy ones over there. I’ll ask Suyi to clean them.”

  Then I was alone on the patio. I looked around as the goat bleated, then quickly stripped off my bottoms and replaced them. The workpants came up to my mid-shin, and the waistband was tighter than I remembered it being.

  When I joined my mother in the house, there was already a feast set out at the table. Eun-bi was standing near the door, arms crossed as she looked down the path to the road. I looked to my mom with a flight of panic.

  She smiled, but it was sour. “Eun-bi said Hana was coming. Se-hun was going to give you that monstrosity machina to ride back with her so we had enough time to eat before the tests,” she said, her face going dark.

  Eun-bi looked over her shoulder at me, eyes red with unshed tears. “What did you do, Jiyong?”

  Wasn’t I the biggest fool? I’d been messaging with my mother all week about coming to run more tests. But this meeting wasn’t about the testing, not for my mother or my family. This would’ve been their chance to meet Hana.

  Suyi came through the back door with a bouquet the size of a small tree. There were multicolored flowers with sprawling green leaves and a little flag at the top that said, Welcome Hana! There was one of Minjee’s little drawings on the side, perhaps a badgermouse, or another one of the rodents she found so fascinating.

  My throat tightened as heat filled my face. The floors were polished to a high shine, and every rug had been dusted. Mother and everyone else were in their finest dress. Today could’ve been a happy day. We could have feasted on the best our garden had to offer and laughed into the afternoon.

  But I had ruined it.

  Chapter 16

  WE ATE THE MEAL IN silence, something I was becoming less accustomed to since attending Bastion. Eun-bi glared daggers at me every few bites, and Daegon shifted uncomfortably beside me when she did. All the food was delicious, but despite my hunger, I couldn’t eat much. Hana’s words on the train platform echoed in my mind. What if I didn’t what?

  I set my chopsticks on the sujeo, a small block to rest the utensils. We hadn’t had them before, but my income from the Rabid Rabbit was providing all sorts of things we hadn’t been able to afford. Eun-bi’s nice dress and shoes, clothes that fit for the twins instead of my hand-me-downs, and even small things like sujeo.

  “You’re not going to have more?” my mother asked when she noticed I was done.

  I shook my head, feeling my stomach twist.

  “Why not? Are you sick?” Suyi asked, her eyes wide.

  “No. I’m fine. The food is great,” I said with a kind smile.

  The meal resumed for everyone, and I turned inward to cycled ma for the coming work. The questions replayed in my head over and over as I squeezed every bit of munje I could from the energy I had left. I’d be able to mobilize the meal I just ate in an hour, so I had to resort to pulling energy from my surroundings when I had exhausted my reserves.

  It was difficult, but not as hard as I remembered before Bastion. Perhaps exercising my cycling had increased my skill in areas I hadn’t expected. I closed my eyes and focused on the angry heat rising off Eun-bi. I visualized her warmth as the white and pink of her new hanbok. Then I saw my mother; her heat output was weak. I left it be and moved on to my other siblings.

  I breathed deeply, taking in the heat from the steam of the food and the tea, smelling the energy from the flowers across the room and the garden out back. The different colors twisted through the air and flowed into my body with my breath. I pulled it down to the bands of my core, then locked the ma block over the crystal. I moved the zo block from the second band over top of it to create the munje required for analyzing my mother’s core and her body at the same time.

  “Is it getting cold in here?” Daegon asked.

  I ruffled his hair as I said, “Sorry, little brother. I was using your heat to make munje for Mother’s evaluation.”

  His teeth chattered gently. “That’s okay, she needs it more than me.”

  With a little energy, I locked the zo and en blocks over the crystal and created a muscle warming munje. I rubbed my hands against his arms vigorously and transferred the munje into him. Within seconds, his tense pose melted, and his chattering stopped. He grinned up at me. I’d have to be more careful about how much heat energy I took from others in the future.

  “It’s getting late,” Mother said as she looked to the light on the wall. Do-hwan had painted an interesting geometric mural that was for telling the time depending on the season. We had clocks, of course, but they required ma munje to operate, and Mother needed to be able to tell the time, even if no one was home.

  We cleaned up the table and stored the leftovers. Mother made me a bento to take back to Bastion since I’d surely be hungry once I got back, and it would be well past dinner. When everything was settled, we moved back to the family room. Mae materialized on the table in a flare of blue light and bowed to my mother. It was unnecessary, but I felt it earned her points in the respect column for my mother.

  Mae’s voice came through the speaker on my chest as she said, “I know this will be painful, and I’m sorry to ask, but I need you to try to use your core.”

  My mother scowled. “How will that help?”

  Mae paced back and forth as she explained. “The disease is attacking your munje, and your core is made up of that munje. If you try to use it, just moving it or cycling a single breath of energy, I’m hoping it will reveal the movement of the disease inside your body to me. From there, I can isolate the offenders and analyze them in more detail.”

  “You hope?” my mother asked with an air of annoyance. “You want me to advance my disease so you can test a theory?”

  “She’s trying to help,” Eun-bi said with confidence.

  Mother pursed her lips as her gaze moved from Eun-bi—the only other child she would allow in the room for her analysis—to me. She heaved a sigh, then said in a resigned tone, “Fine. Are you ready?”

  “Jiyong, do I have permission to use the ma-zo munje you created?” Mae asked as her projection looked up to me.

  I nodded approval and felt my reservoir open to let out a small but steady flow. The stored munje traveled up to my chest, then down to my hands, and finally a bi
t into the secondary device. She was creating a data link between them.

  Mae stepped closer to my mother and said, “Jiyong, place one hand on her collar bone, left side, then another on her right hand.”

  I did as she ordered and felt the munje travel through the hand that gripped hers. A second later, I felt the same munje flow back into my right hand on her collar bone.

  ‘Any risk my munje might pull her disease back into me?’ I asked internally, as not to frighten my mother or Eun-bi.

  Mae replied only in my head. “The risk is near zero. I believe the disease is a parasitic nanite infestation that has attuned to her mental signal. If it enters your body through the munje flow, it will die out without anything to attach itself to, much like the junkie’s munje died out in you before I could get a good reading.”

  ‘Good enough for me,’ I thought back. The whole conversation took a second in my head, but it was long enough for my mother to notice.

  “Something wrong?” she asked, worry in her tone.

  “No. We’re set. Please try to activate your core,” Mae said as her display disappeared from the table.

  My mother nodded with fear etched into the lines in her face. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes as she began the breathing to cycle energy. After a few breaths, the munje flowing back into my arm returned colder than before, tingling against my palm. Her posture stiffened, and her hand tightened on mine while her other balled the fabric of her dress.

  Mother inhaled sharply and bared her teeth when Mae finally announced, “That’s enough.”

  Mother exhaled hard and fell forward into my grasp. My heart hammered, and my head raced with thoughts of concern. What if she’d done too much? I helped Mother lean back into the cushion behind her, and she opened her eyes.

  She looked up at me and mumbled weakly, “That wasn’t so bad. Not as bad as before your father helped me, at least.”