The Approaching Storm
"This is..."
Shin Sua couldn't hide her bewilderment as a passageway revealed itself behind the pushing bookshelf. This villa had stood here for 42 years. And the room where Kim Taeyang and she now stood was where her grandmother had given birth to her mother, and her mother to Shin Sua herself. Naturally, Shin Sua knew all the secrets of the place, including the few panic rooms scattered throughout the villa.
But this passageway that had just appeared before her eyes was something even she, the owner of the place, was seeing for the first time. Neither her father, who had become a son-in-law and taken the Shin family name, nor her mother, who had grown up constantly by her grandmother's side, had ever known of it.
"What're you waiting for? It's your house. You go first."
Kim Taeyang pointed his cane at the passageway, from which a lukewarm breeze carrying dust blew out.
"...Yeah."
Shin Sua slipped her feet back into her fluffy pink slippers and stepped into the passageway.
Thud.
The interior maintained just the right humidity and temperature. She'd expected the air to be stale after being sealed for so long, but fresh air circulated endlessly, as if there were ventilation fans installed.
Clunk.
At the end of the short passageway lay a narrow, cylindrical space. The walls were entirely lined with massive storage compartments, packed full of documents and files.
"......"
And at the center, on an easel, sat two unfinished Eastern paintings.
A woman in her thirties cradling a baby.
Shin Sua's face took on a entranced expression as she gripped the neatly arranged paint set on the side table and approached the paintings. The model in the picture was her mother. The baby in her arms was Shin Sua herself.
She immediately knew who had painted them. The Shangju who had contracted Shin Yun-bok before Shin Sua did. And the owner of that nostalgic voice she'd heard in her dream just moments ago.
"Grandma?"
Sizzle!
As if reacting to Shin Sua's words, hazy smoke flowed from the paintings, taking the form of a person.
A resolute woman who had steadfastly managed Goryeo Group even after her husband's death and one of the initial investors in the academy fleet Argo. Shin Sua's maternal grandmother, Shin Yeon-ja, who had passed away when Shin Sua was seven.
<Sua, you've come.>
Shin Yeon-ja sat elegantly in a chair, welcoming her granddaughter.
Only then did Shin Sua realize why her grandmother's ancestor spirit had never returned to the family. It was simple: she hadn't chosen not to come—she hadn't been able to.
<You've grown so much. You look just like your mother did as a child.>
Her weakened ancestral power barely holding her hazy form together, Shin Yeon-ja spoke.
After her death, every attempt to summon her through the family registry had failed. It wasn't uncommon. Ancestor spirits were often forcibly bound to one place due to strong lingering attachments to relics, preventing them from departing. For that reason, Shin Sua's family—including her paternal grandfather, who had also become an ancestor spirit—had scoured the country for her grandmother's belongings.
But Shin Yeon-ja's ancestor spirit couldn't be found anywhere. Ten years had passed since those fruitless searches began.
Kim Taeyang had found her here, enduring lonely years in this secret space of the villa she herself had designed, without any offerings or rites.
Having lain bedridden in a coma for years before passing, Shin Yeon-ja had made her unfinished portraits of her daughter and granddaughter her home, longing only for her family to find her.
"Grandma..."
She tried to speak, but sobs rose in her throat first.
Sob!
Instead of words, Shin Sua embraced her grandmother's spirit tightly to convey her feelings.
One living person and two spirits watched the warm reunion bridging life and death.
Gemma watched Shin Sua reunite with her grandmother, a complicated mix of emotions stirring within her. Xavier, lacking any talent as a Shangju, had failed to find his wife's ancestor spirit, and soon after, he vanished, leaving Gemma behind. She never saw her parents again after that.
So even as Kim Taeyang and Shin Yun-bok watched the family reunion with proud faces, Gemma couldn't bring herself to congratulate Shin Sua with pure sincerity.
Shin Sua and the old woman returned to the bed, lay down, talked for a while, then fell asleep breathing steadily.
Kim Taeyang, having received the old woman's thanks through Shin Sua's lips, soon sprawled on a nearby sofa and passed out.
Gemma didn't like seeing him grinning like an idiot, pleased at securing a promise of reward.
<Sigh.>
Only then did Gemma sit alone in a chair, recalling what she'd secretly checked earlier inside the secret passageway.
The storage compartments in the round walls were packed with documents. She'd slyly pulled out a few and glanced at them, unable to contain her excitement.
<......>
In that short time, Gemma confirmed two types of documents.
One was an internal map of the facilities hidden beneath Argo's decks. It was only a tiny portion, but it clearly showed intriguing names like research labs and more.
A particularly blacked-out section caught Gemma's eye.
And the second: reports on a mysterious object called Object-X. Attached to the worn pages were photos of various items, including an old, crude chalice, along with results from experiments using Object-X.
Gemma was certain Object-X was what she and her father had been seeking. And that it was hidden somewhere inside this massive ship.
<Haha.>
The phantom thief's instincts, long forgotten, began to revive.
A treasure buried right beneath her feet. Xavier Belmont had abandoned his daughter to find it. If she could claim—even just glimpse—the treasure that even the greatest phantom thief couldn't steal...
No. Even if she failed, if she kept following the clues to the treasure...
She might at least find traces of her vanished father.
<......>
This time, no laughter came.
Gemma swept her hair back, stood, and straddled Kim Taeyang's firm chest as he slept on the sofa. His gentle rising and falling with each breath felt just like sitting in a rocking chair.
<Dumbass.>
Separate from what she'd seen in the hidden room, Gemma had witnessed someone else's secret earlier. When she'd slipped out of the Soul Thread Bracelet at dawn, a pair of gloves had been tormenting Kim Taeyang.
She'd seen it all: the massive pillar, grand as if a chunk of the Parthenon Temple towering in distant Greece had been carved out, spewing passion as white as marble, and Mun Hee-jeong's "gift" retreating into its box afterward.
<Hey, Big-Tits Real Deal.>
Gemma quietly murmured Mun Hee-jeong's nickname. No reaction.
She dismissed the thought that Mun Hee-jeong might be eavesdropping.
<Shin Sua drags the delinquent home right in front of her eyes—no way she'd just take that lying down.>
Gemma muttered while eyeing the gloves on the table. Kim Taeyang had stacked a soul stone and ring on top, as if planning something odd again, leaving her without a way to satisfy her curiosity.
<Tch.>
Deciding to inspect those suspicious gloves tomorrow night, Gemma returned to the Soul Thread Bracelet and closed her eyes.
"Uwaaah... this won't do."
Back in her dorm, not even a minute after removing her hedgehog mask, Mun Hee-jeong was wailing.
Overwhelmed by intense shame from wandering the night streets naked, she frantically yanked open the drawer with her underwear the moment she arrived.
The result?
Crumble!
Before her hand even touched them, all her underwear turned to powder and disintegrated.
It was panic on top of panic, but buoyed by her certainty that nothing had happened between Kim Taeyang and Shin Sua, she'd completely forgotten about the Genealogy Oath penalty.
"What do I do..."
For the next three days, she couldn't wear any clothing made of fiber. School, meals, shopping—everything was impossible.
Sniffle.
"I miss Taeyang..."
Mun Hee-jeong pulled out her smartphone and checked the time. Contacting him now might disturb his sleep.
"......"
Suppressing her selfish longing, she opened an online shopping app. First, she needed clothes to cover herself. Clothes not made of fiber, but some other material.
Gulp.
She typed "latex" into the search bar and tapped the magnifying glass icon that appeared.
"No results, then."
A chill hung over Park Myeong-gwan, where the teachers had gathered.
Separate from the terrorists in the previous attack, they were struggling to track the three black-clad figures who had opened a path into the erosion space.
Their full-face helmets hid their faces, and they'd vanished without a trace. Even activating all detection relics after evacuating the students had been useless.
No one knew if they'd left the academy fleet or were hiding somewhere on the ship. The only clue was that their weapons, which had effortlessly sliced through the erosion space's outer wall, were likely Reverse Ethics Armaments.
Considering witness accounts of them attacking the terrorists, they probably weren't directly hostile to Argo. But the teachers knew only a handful of groups possessed multiple Reverse Ethics Armaments.
"It's the Bastards, right?"
The cautious remark from a female teacher darkened the room.
An international crime syndicate whose scale and elite skills defied imagination. No one had dreamed their tentacles would reach here.
"Even if we don't clash right away, we need ongoing searches and vigilance."
"Stirring the hornet's nest won't end well."
"If word gets out that criminals are hiding on Argo—"
"All we can do is hope they stay quiet during the engagement duel."
"What nonsense is that? The students' and guests' safety—"
"Enough."
Vice-Chairman Kim Eul-nyeo's single word silenced the noisy conference room.
"Raise alert status to Level 2 on event day. Double the guards around the duel arena."
No one objected.
"We'll proceed with the engagement duel. And immediately after the event, request support from the Lower Deck for a full investigation."
"The Lower Deck?!"
A veteran teacher in a baseball cap muttered in shock.
In a room with many new teachers present, the vice-chairman mentioning them showed how gravely the directors viewed this incident.
The Lower Deck, shrouded in secrecy beneath the Upper Deck where school and living facilities sprawled. Argo's core, known only to the chairman, vice-chairman, and a select few long-time guardians.
"Haa."
Feeling the quiet spread of anxiety and bewilderment among the teachers through every inch of his skin, veteran homeroom teacher Heo Gu-jang silently tore his prepared proposal in half.
"Not the time to leisurely ask for a dome stadium, I guess."
He could only pray his premonition that peaceful days wouldn't continue, as always, proved wrong.
March 20th. The day Argo anchored off Busan.
"Your condition's holding steady, I see."
Yukjeom, head of the Bastards' Argo branch, sat across from an old friend from Busan in a café.
"Cough. Flu's like a friend for life, right?"
"Only for you."
The coughing reply came from a Western girl with a blank expression. Petite but curvaceous, her pale face shadowed by illness, gray hair draping over it and dimming even her radiant smile. Yet her voice brimmed with cheer.
"Eaten yet?"
"N-not yet."
"You're in Busan—have some raw fish."
"Heavy metals'll be bad for you?"
"......"
Sensing the need to change the subject from her usual cryptic response, Yukjeom spoke.
"Met Kim Taeyang."
"Really?"
Her eyes widened in surprise. Understandably so—Kim Taeyang was a childhood friend from the same orphanage as Yukjeom and her.
"Guess I should visit before the duel."
"You'll see him next semester anyway—why bother?"
"I'm no good at waiting. Even this took a whole two seconds of thought."
What a headache of a girl. Yukjeom thought, smiling wryly.
"Go alone—escorts would make it too easy to spot you."
"Don't call 'em escorts. Makes me sound weak."
Yukjeom nodded. Gumiri, head of Bastards' Korean Peninsula branch. Her pre-naturalization name: Miley Hewitt Lovecraft.
No one on Argo could stop this woman before the engagement duel began.
"Catch up, but don't do anything stupid."
"Thanks. I'll try."
Watching the Imagination Witch smile brightly, Yukjeom prayed her outing would end quietly.