It's a Secret
One month after the broadcast.
You thought it was autumn during the day? Nope — pure ultraviolet, baby! The sun beat down mercilessly, and autumn was so short it practically yelled “Fall!” on its way out. By mid-November the nights had turned cold enough that the radiator had to be blasting full tilt just to sleep warm.
Earth hadn’t been this bad before I left for another world. The sheer scale of the climate shift left me speechless.
“Ugh… sniff!”
The temperature swings were making my rhinitis worse by the day. Even a hero who’d spent three thousand years mastering magic was helpless against chronic allergic rhinitis.
“Nnngh! That’s enough for today…!”
Lately I’d been pouring myself into one particular project — important enough that I’d deliberately cancelled every state-arranged broadcast and public appearance.
I’d prefer to skip external events for a while.
Pardon?
I’ve got some things I need to think through.
People still dropped by now and then for opinions or advice on founding the Magic Bureau, but otherwise my time was completely free. And I used every scrap of it.
Fully prepared.
I lived like a research-lab slave, focused on two goals: the evil gods, and the transmission of magic.
For dealing with the evil gods I settled on observation, vigilance, and intrusion detection. That produced three new inventions.
First, a palm-sized mini dish antenna — an observation device that could pick up the distinctive mental-contamination wavelengths the evil gods trailed behind them.
Second, a sugar-cube-sized hexahedron that shimmered in every color of the rainbow. A metal effective against evil gods that shrugged off physical blows. Turn it into blades or bullets and it would be damn useful.
And last, an ink that dripped with purple starlight. The material needed to draw magic circles effective not only against evil gods but against every kind of outer god, regardless of affinity.
Making them in tiny batches meant they were useless for actual deployment, but I could hand them to the research team for reverse-engineering, study, and development. Those three had taken about three weeks.
The remaining week or so had been spent on something that was finally nearing completion: a thick sheaf of papers in my hand. Plans for magic education and the cultivation of the foundational industries that would support it.
“Without these, we won’t even have room to start reverse-engineering outer-god countermeasures or magitech.”
It was like showing Paleolithic humans an aircraft engine and telling them to copy it, or asking modern civilization to build a superluminal Giga-Ancestor Rider that dual-wielded monomolecular blades while chasing Mech-Toyotomi in a high-speed pursuit. (For the record, the nuclear-propulsion superluminal Giga-Ancestor Rider is authentic history that even appears in Goguryeo’s Subakdo chronicles.)
Anyway — some things only become understandable, let alone copyable, once you raise a civilization’s technological floor. My inventions would inevitably contain parts modern science couldn’t fully explain, so I hoped people would learn and apply an entirely new theoretical framework.
And while we were at it, if a private magic-education market opened up I could become the top instructor, open my own academy, corner the entrance-exam market, and earn the title of Gangnam Daechi’s greatest magic private tutor, Yuria…
Okay, maybe I was getting a little carried away.
For now the priorities were proofreading and revising the textbooks, selecting the universities and departments that would formally teach magic, and choosing the very first batch of successors who would lead that education.
“Hwaaaah… tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow…”
I decided to sleep on it.
At the same hour, inside a commercial building in Anyang.
“…and therefore, as of this moment, Project 7708 is formally terminated and the task force is hereby disbanded?”
“This means what I think it means, right? We get to go home?”
“Finally!”
Every employee of Chungmu Consulting erupted in cheers and applause. Someone nearly flung a stack of papers off their desk — then carefully set it back. Another person grabbed their neighbor in a hug and started jumping up and down.
“How many months has it been since the task force stood up… good grief.”
“Honey, our daughter, Poppy… Mommy’s coming home…!”
There were even people crying. This was the facility where the external personnel analyzing Magician Yuria’s testimony collection had been confined.
Not confined, of course — merely “stationed with a partner firm.” Mm-hmm. For civilian advisors attached to a civilian advisory group, coming to work was optional; leaving work was not. Perfectly ordinary common sense, right?
While the professors and civilians packed their bags and shouted about going home, the people inside the conference room — its interior invisible thanks to a one-way magic mirror — let out long sighs.
I want to go home too.
Colonel Ryu Seunghon, temporary commander of Project 7708, swept his gaze across the faces seated before him: the Intelligence Information Systems Group commander, the Technical Intelligence Chief of Staff, the 1XX Brigade Chief of Staff, the National Intelligence Service’s External Intelligence Director, and — for no obvious reason — the Prime Minister himself.
Three colonels including Ryu, one colonel-select, one vice-ministerial rank, and the Prime Minister. The rank mix looked unbalanced, but it made perfect sense. Flag officers in military intelligence rarely involved themselves in actual work; their main jobs were personnel, orders, signing things, and getting beaten up when something went wrong. At a working-level meeting like this, the colonels who actually ran the departments were the natural attendees.
“Would it be acceptable to release the magical, technical, historical, and social information — after light redaction — as open material to the relevant agencies? The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in particular have been extremely insistent.”
At Prime Minister Kim Jaewoo’s request, the External Intelligence Director nodded.
“That much is certainly permissible. However… regarding this particular passage.”
“Where… hmm?”
The External Intelligence Director pointed to a section heavily underlined in red highlighter. Everyone in the room leaned in to read.
…Regarding the above, based on the linguists’ consultation report (Att. 3: pp. 56–59) and the psychologists’ psychological analysis findings (Att. 6: pp. 17–41, 96–100), the possibility has been raised that Hero Yuria’s past sex was male, and it is reasonable to entertain this suspicion on rational grounds.
“Eh.”
“Is this real?”
A man well past forty let out a high-school-girl’s gasp of pure shock. Terror rippled through the conference room.
The medical examination conducted immediately after Yuria was taken into protective custody had confirmed she was fully female. No one had even considered the possibility of gender transition.
“The two psychologists, one linguist, and two officers involved in drafting this section have been placed under a gag order and are currently under management… but what the hell are we supposed to do with this?”
If the public learned that Yuria had changed from male to female…
Social chaos would follow. Looking like that and she used to be a man? Why did she change her sex? Does she have some peculiar taste or set of values?
Even though the 2030s Earth was more open than before, open-mindedness was hardly universal. South Korea, still relatively conservative on homosexuality and political correctness, would be especially harsh.
“Still… I wonder if it would really be that big a deal…”
The Intelligence Information Systems Group commander tilted his head thoughtfully. The Prime Minister was about to rebuke the casual remark when the man continued.
“What do you mean—!”
“No, think about it, everyone. It’s pure speculation. Provisional suspicion at best. Who’s going to walk up to Yuria herself and ask?”
“…”
Still only conjecture. Exactly as the report stated — everything had been indirectly inferred from her behavior, speech patterns, and conversations with people around her.
“And what real disaster would it cause? At worst her private life gets exposed, she feels embarrassed, it becomes a social issue. Anything beyond that?”
Probably an enraged Yuria would flip the entire table. But even that would never happen if the information never got out.
Destroy only that section. The six people in this room who had read the document, plus the five who had written or been involved with it — eleven people total. If they simply kept their mouths shut, the suspicion would vanish.
“Mmm… I suppose that’s the only way…”
That day, one very small secret disappeared from the world. A secret meant to protect a single human being’s dignity…
The moment I woke up my ears were itching, so I dug at them vigorously.
“Ahh, that hits the spot.”
Among the many passive magics I kept permanently active was a cleanliness spell, so why did my ears itch like this? Someone must be talking about me. Such is the life of a celebrity…
—Whooosh
Thanks to my ridiculously overpowered constant cleanliness magic I didn’t strictly need to shower, brush my teeth, or wash my face, but skipping even one day of washing felt like forfeiting my status as a civilized person, so I still washed every day.
“Phew. God, that feels good.”
A cold-water rinse over the crown of the head after a shower was basic common sense; skipping it was the same as not showering at all. I checked my polished, scrubbed body in the bathroom mirror.
Mountain-like… wait, that word makes me think of the President and gets me depressed, so never mind. Looking at the pair of enormous hill-like things that were definitely not pectoral muscles but pure fat only doubled the depression.
“Haaack. Ptoo.”
After a half-hearted tooth-brushing I wrapped my entire body in mana.
“Heat generation, particle circulation, transfer, acceleration.”
Warm air swept over me at the speed of a natural breeze, drying every last drop of moisture. Another miracle morning complete.
—Knock knock
I was still buttoning my top when a knock came at the door. It felt early, so I checked the clock on the bedside table: 7:12 a.m.
A bit early for visitors, but it had to be something important.
“Come in.”
—Creeeak
The door opened to reveal the tall female agent I always saw, wearing a distinctly awkward expression.
“I’m sorry to disturb you so early. There’s a phone call for you, Miss Yuria, but… well…”
“Who is it that you’re hemming and hawing like that?”
“It’s the Prime Minister.”
Huh?
What could he want at this hour? I took the early-morning call from a very busy high-ranking official.
“Miss Yuria, this is Prime Minister Kim Jaewoo. I apologize for calling at such an early hour, but…”
“Ah, yes. What is it…?”
“China has come forward claiming they have independently succeeded in developing magic. That’s why I’m calling — I’d like you to examine the authenticity of their claim.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
The absolute garbage I had to hear first thing in the morning made me drop a serious curse on the Prime Minister.