Carnivore (1)
She came down headfirst, splitting the wind — a slight spin in the air, her heels slipped off and caught in one hand.
KWAANG!!!
She landed with a boom to rival a superhero's. The shock threw a blast of wind outward in a single instant; paving stones shattered under the force of the fall, and dust billowed up. From the center of the crater, the Madam walked out without a mark on her.
Phase Power was churning so violently inside her that sweat threatened to break across my own brow just from watching it. Her hair today was a side tail spilled over her left shoulder. Insane. I had never seen a side tail suit anyone like that. This wasn't a woman failing to act her age. Set beside the bagel girl I'd seen a moment earlier — one of those walking hourglasses — the allure coming off her belonged to another species entirely.
She was wearing a deep blue-black women's suit of obvious quality, and she paid no mind at all to the black stockings the impact had laddered and torn. Heels dangling from one hand, she came toward me with light, dainty steps.
"Oh, honestly. I nearly missed crossing paths with you, Seoha."
She smiled with a child's innocence, and her eyes were glittering, and that was a little... extremely terrifying.
"Hmm? Seoha? It's Auntie~. You haven't forgotten, have you?"
Still smiling, she poked my cheek with a fingertip while I stood frozen from the shock of her entrance. The touch of her finger against my face loosened my locked-up body, and the words came out on their own.
"N-no. Of course I remember. B-but did you jump from up there? Your body... are you all right?"
"Oh my, were you worried about Auntie? How sweet! A C-Class ability user isn't strained by a jump from a height like this~."
So a C-Class Physical Reinforcement user was sturdy enough to fall a hundred meters and walk away fine.
Behind her, stunned citizens murmured and pressed closer. Bodyguards came sprinting out a beat too late and threw their bodies up as a barricade, and the street clogged into a mess — but the Madam was beaming right in front of me, and I had a feeling that running was already a lost cause.
She turned a radiant smile on the people clamoring behind the guards' cordon and waved, then climbed into the presidential car. My arm was caught in her hand. I was hauled in after her.
Franc flitted around me in a panic. I felt just as frantic, but I crushed it down and did my best to look calm. The feeling I'd had the first time I saw the Madam, though — that sense of being about to get eaten alive — refused to settle.
"Goodness, the whole thing's laddered~."
She looked at me and smiled, wicked. One sleek, smooth leg lifted, a toe aimed at my chest, and then her hand went to her thigh and she began, slowly, to peel the black stocking off... The white lace panties visible between her legs, and those milk-white thighs, stole the words right out of my mouth.
To strangle the instinctive answer rising in my cock, I launched into the national anthem in my head, hauled my sinking gaze back up by main force, and locked my eyes on hers alone!
Even so, Spatial Perception sweeping the space between the Madam's thighs was an instinct no man could help. That was what I told myself.
Franc, seated beside me, wore a face on the verge of tears and couldn't sit still. I-I didn't know what to do either.
Why had the Madam come looking for me? No — why was she coming on like this? I had never imagined she would chase me all the way down by leaping off a twentieth-floor roof.
She glanced down at the stocking balled in her hand, then flicked it aside. My eyes chased it before I could stop them, and I snapped my gaze back—
Tsk. She'd been aiming for that...!
She was beaming with a grin like a mischievous brat, and I swallowed hard. Why was she spreading her legs like that?! Between the skirt and her thighs, th-those panties were on full display!
Shut them! Close your eyes— ugh, I have to cut Spatial Perception too!
A stifled giggle tickled my ear.
Huh? Hk—!?
Something heavy and soft settled onto my lap all at once, and a warm, enveloping scent of her body washed over me.
"Goodness, ought we to change the seats? They're so hard that Auntie's bottom hurts. You don't mind if I sit like this for a moment, do you?"
What's hard?! When it's this soft!! I flung my eyes open in a panic, and there she was — the Madam, seated on my lap, grinning from ear to ear!
"M-M-Madam?! Y-you can't do this!"
I shouted in a fluster, but she pretended not to hear. Suddenly her left arm looped around my neck, and she yanked me in!
"Ghk—?!"
Uwaaah. My face was in the Madam's chest...!
I-I shouldn't put my hands on her, should I?! B-but if I don't, this position—! Wh-what do I do?!
Franc's voice broke into my head, soundless and frantic.
"Aaaah...! S-Seoha!! What do I do~! Augh!!"
"Hup."
She rested her upper body against my chest and let out a voice thick with a suggestive nasal lilt, drawing one knee all the way up to her chest as she started peeling off the remaining stocking. That pose looked harder on her than the stocking, if anyone was asking!
"Eek?"
Then she arched backward, drew my head in front of her left breast, pressed the back of my skull down with her knee, and began to smother my face against her chest!
"Aigoo, why is taking off a stocking this difficult~?"
"Mmph—!"
Suffocating was the least of it. The plush give of that full breast against my face was starting to fog my head.
"Aaaah. Hwayeon — I need Hwayeon...!"
The instant I caught Franc's tearful face, Hwayeon rose up in front of my eyes — Hwayeon, pinned beneath me, looking up with that aching expression. Hwayeon, who had looked at me and said I was all she had!
I can't let this happen! This would be betraying Hwayeon!
I had no idea why she was pushing the contact this far, but that nasal croon was the kind of sound that would put a spell on you if you kept listening — so I threw Mana Mode up and shoved her off hard.
"Kyaa~?"
Far from toppling in an undignified heap, she set one foot down as if she had expected it, spun a graceful half-turn on perfect balance, and settled into the seat across from me.
Th-that—! Look at that face. She's enjoying this!
"Stop it! Tease me any more and I won't sit still either!"
"Oh my? Does that mean you intend to pounce on Auntie?"
I had blown up at her, and she only smiled a knowing little smile, pressing a fingertip lightly to her lips.
Don't make a face that lewd with Hwayeon's features! My brain's throwing an error!
I clamped my mouth shut and glared hard enough to start a fire. Only then did she let the come-hither look go, laughed a soft ho-ho, and waved a hand.
"All right, all right. Auntie took the joke too far, didn't she? I won't do it again, so unclench that face. Ho ho ho."
She covered her mouth and laughed, bright and delighted, at the way my face kept flushing and darkening by turns.
Khh. Was this how Hwayeon felt when I teased her?
After that she truly said nothing. She just sat with her legs crossed and her arms folded. The problem was that her chest was frankly cheating — folding her arms alone put it on display — and I had nowhere to put my eyes.
Then she closed her eyes in thought, opened them, held my gaze for a moment, closed them again with a complicated, subtle expression, opened them once more to look at me, and closed them again.
What is she doing? Plotting another way to mess with me?
The anger at being toyed with lasted only a moment before unease flooded my chest. Franc was glaring at the Madam with the same unsettled look.
I stayed on guard against another sudden move, and the car that had left the Time River Building did not head for the Blue House by Gyeongbokgung. It left Yeouido and began to run along the expressway beside the Han River. When I realized we had passed the Seoul National Cemetery and were turning toward Umyeonsan, a chill settled in my chest.
No way. It couldn't be.
"Madam. Where are we going?"
"Hm? We're on our way to Auntie's house."
...!
"Y-your house? Why?"
"Why else~? I wanted to have lunch with you, Seoha. A handler and her charge sharing a meal is perfectly ordinary~."
Ugh... Her face was pure innocence, and there was nothing wrong with the words, but something was starting to frighten me for real.
Going with Hwayeon had been nothing. Going with the Madam, my heart kept thudding, and it felt like walking into an aberrant's den...
Sh-should I run again? If I switch to Physical Reinforcement and drag out every scrap of strength, I can push myself nearly to C-Class. The moment the car stops, if I throw the door open and bolt, the odds of getting away...
But then the Madam would realize I had been hiding even more of my ability. And she was C-Class herself. If I ran, the gap in stamina would have me caught in a heartbeat.
No way forward, and no way back!
While I agonized, the heartless car kept on, and before I knew it we were in front of the Madam's estate.
"Hmph. Our little darling is really too much, isn't he?"
"...Pardon? What did you just say?"
"Auntie fought with everything she had against the Union's old snakes, for our Seoha's sake, and he doesn't even call once to say thank you."
The shocking pet name knocked the sense clean out of me, and I stared at her. The way she huffed, as if she were sulking, was cute— no, no! What had she just said? For my sake?
Her words brought back what I had heard from Hwayeon on Sunday.
Back then Hwayeon had... hmm. I had wondered whether she had spoken ill of the Madam on purpose, but if it were Hwayeon, she would insult someone to their face before she ever bothered going the long way around. Which meant everything that had come up then was true.
Even so, I had received help, just as the Madam said. Common courtesy should have had me call at least once to thank her.
"I'm sorry. And thank you for helping me."
I put an honest feeling into the greeting, and her eyes went round. A bitter smile? A pleased one? ...Some strange smile — and then a long, deep sigh.
"Will you answer me just one thing?"
The car passed through the open gate and began easing into the parking structure.
"Yes... if it's something I can answer."
"Since Tuesday of last week, have you thought of Auntie at all?"
"A few times..."
Mostly the bad kind, though!
She had no way of knowing what I meant, and she looked faintly pleased. When the car stopped inside the parking structure, she opened the door and stepped out.
Her mood seemed to keep swinging, and I couldn't tell why from her face alone. On top of that she kept catching my eyes in the gaps between, and there was something like a flame rising in her pupils — frightening, and at the same time tired enough to make me tilt my head.
Following her out, I happened to notice the thickness of the car door.
...Incredibly thick. Nearly as wide as my torso? Was it built this tough because it was the presidential car? Seeing that thickness, I was glad I hadn't tried to break out from inside.
She watched me climb out and spoke in a bright, lively voice.
"Lunch ran a little late~. Is our Seoha very hungry?"
"Huh? No, I had a snack on the way, so I'm fine."
Another shocking form of address, out of the Madam's mouth.
Little darling? She had to mean my ability, not how I looked. From what I'd heard, she had been negotiating with the Union over how large a stake — a share? a claim? — she would walk away with in exchange for backing me.
On the surface she seemed fond of me, but I couldn't bring myself to be purely glad about it. Call it a feeling that all of this was nothing but the opening moves of some larger design.
While I hesitated, she came over with a fresh, bright smile, snatched my hand like lightning, and started for the mansion.
I startled and tried to pull free, but her strength was nowhere near a level I could do anything about. Dragged along helplessly, I heard her ask in a quiet voice.
"Auntie's finished with her schedule and needs a wash. You've been sweating too, Seoha — shall we bathe together?"
—?!—
"Whaaat?"
She hugged my arm tight, all smiles. The same face as Hwayeon, a figure ninety-eight percent identical — and this damned heart of mine kept mistaking her for Hwayeon and pounding away!
She's not Hwayeon, you devil! Don't get excited! Don't send blood to my face!
"N-no! I'm fine! I can wash on my own!"
It looked like a joke on the surface, but if I so much as joked back with a real shall we?, I'd be grabbed and dragged off on the spot! Those eyes weren't joking!
"But Auntie needs someone to scrub her back, doesn't she?"
"Th-there are maids in the mansion!"
Huh? Now that I thought about it, aside from the butler and one plump woman, there was no one in the house at all. And the auntie who had heard me — no, not Auntie! The Madam wore a face that asked how I could possibly know that.
"How did you know there were maids?"
"Last Monday I came once with Hwayeon, to the underground training hall!"
"Hm? Hwayeon?"
Hhk.
I had blurted Hwayeon's name, and the Madam's expression turned strange. Strange, and I couldn't tell what she was thinking, which only made it scarier!
I clamped my mouth shut, turned my head toward the garden to escape her eyes, and the back of my skull prickled.
I shuffled along the path between the garden trees toward the mansion. She seemed to have given up on prying — she didn't speak, and she turned her gaze to the house — but she kept leaning into my arm, and that was a real problem. Beside me, Franc darted about in a distracting flutter, watching the Madam with a face every bit as troubled and bewildered as mine.
"F-Franc. What should I do? Should I run while the Madam's bathing?"
"Nnn. B-but that would go against a knight's code — n-no, against the duty of one who has received aid...!"
"If we just walk in like this, that seems dangerous too!"
Our eyes met at just the right moment. I turned my head from the Madam and worked my lips, and Franc had no better plan either — she only made a face like she might cry.
Aaah! What do I actually do? If I run, the next time we meet, if something blows up it's going to blow up hard...!
"The garden's lovely, isn't it? It took fifty years to raise it to this. It's the place Auntie treasures most."
"Ah, yes. Even I can tell, knowing nothing about it, that it suits the mansion."
To the Madam's eyes, my lip-reading exchange with Franc must have looked like I was admiring the garden.
"Isn't it? Auntie wanted to live in peace at last, so she worked hard, saved, and built this house, you know?"
—...!—
Ah, so that was Auntie... No! That wasn't it — was this the Madam's plan for her later years? But no matter how I looked, she seemed no older than her mid-to-late twenties. Even scanning her body with Spatial Perception, she was as healthy as Hwayeon or Big Sis Ul.
An ordinary Physical Reinforcement user was said to live nearly a hundred and fifty years, and the higher the class, the longer the life — so she ought to be able to keep this appearance for at least another fifty years. There were photos floating around the internet, shot by foreign paparazzi trash who deliberately used odd angles or dimmed the lighting so she would look a good ten years older. Meeting her in person, she had looked so much younger that I had been genuinely shocked. To the point that I hadn't even realized she was the Presi— the Madam.
"But somehow I couldn't set the work down. Next time! The time after that! The time after that! And before I knew it, here we are today, aren't we? Ho ho ho."
Wait. Hold on. Wanting to live in peace — did that mean quitting as president?
"What? You're not going to run in the election anymore?"
"Mm. Auntie's already served term after term for decades, hasn't she? I've aged as much as there is to age, and I want to rest. Besides, the quiet talk of me being a dictator does slip so neatly into the ear."
"But... I can't even imagine someone else as president now."
At my words she smiled like a crescent moon, plainly pleased.
"That means Auntie's worked hard and done well, doesn't it?"
"I don't know much myself, but whenever I go to the hospital, the older folks all say the same thing. That life got much better after you became president."
"Mm. It makes me happier when you praise me, Seoha. Won't you praise Auntie a little more?"
Somehow, everything she had been saying for a little while now felt entirely sincere.
"You've been president since before I was born. Kids my age basically equate the Blue House with you, and I can't picture anyone else standing in that place. And growing this country over twenty-seven years, until it doesn't even bear comparison with Japan — that's your achievement too. There hasn't been a president as fine as you, and there won't be one after, either."
"Heh. That really does please me, you know?"
It wasn't a hundred percent honest. I had praised her while thinking of what I'd learned in school, and she must have been truly pleased — not an exaggerated smile, not a forced one, just a faint, natural curve of the lips.
Before going in to wash, she caught my hand and tried to drag me along to bathe together, so I braced in the doorway hard enough to break my own wrist and refused. The first-floor bathroom had a tub big enough for two with room to spare, but even so — how was I supposed to bathe with her?!
For a while it went back and forth — "Let's wash together." "No." "The maids all have the day off." "You won't die if you skip a day." — until she finally huffed as if she had been snubbed and disappeared into the bathroom, and the contest of strength was over.
I slipped out in a cold sweat, and the butler gave me a wry smile and guided me to the bath on the second floor. I was too uneasy to soak at my leisure, so I just showered and got out fast.
And in that time, the butler had made off with my school uniform!
"Wh-whaaat?! Mister Butler! Where are my clothes?! What did you do with my vest?"
"The uniform was damp with sweat and had begun to smell, so I had it laundered. It ought to be dry in a few hours. Until then, if you would be so good as to wear what I have prepared."
With that he handed me my Phase Stone vest and left.
In the dressing room attached to the bath I put on the vest, then the shirt the butler had set out — white, with three bold stripes on the diagonal — and a pair of navy cotton trousers. Shirt and trousers both, the cloth was absurdly fine.
Franc saw me dressed, and her eyes sparkled with admiration. The fit was really something, was it? But her color was a little dark. The Madam's behavior must have been worrying her.
"The cloth looks exceedingly soft. Is it entirely natural fiber?"
"Seems so. A material I've never worn before."
"Since the Phase World appeared, I am told, only ability users — or those past thirty-six — wear natural cloth."
She was right about that. Thin, soft clothes were as good as being naked when it came to defense, so the only people walking around in them would be those over thirty-six, with no fear of being sucked into the Phase World — or ability users.
Anyway. No matter how hard the Madam charged me in the flesh, I swore I would die before I joined Hwarang, and I stepped out of the dressing room.
The butler had laid out the clothes and underthings she was to wear outside the bath where she was, then checked the meal in the dining room and was setting the table. And the Madam... after coaxing me to bathe with her as if we were going to scrub each other down, she was simply sitting still in the tub, body sunk in hot water, for dozens of minutes.
No — she kept lifting one arm just a little, as if she were looking at her Certifier.
...Ugh. Without meaning to, I had looked at the Madam's naked body again. I had meant to stop scanning women's naked bodies...
Since I had already seen it, I looked the body over, and in all sorts of ways it was the same as Hwayeon's and yet different. I had seen this body once, the first time I visited the Time River Building, but having held Hwayeon in my arms since then, the differences showed when I looked again.
Her thighs were a little slimmer than Hwayeon's, and because of that the triangle between her legs and the cleft stood out all the more. The huge breasts visible as she lay back were big and taut, as if a soccer ball had been sliced in half and the halves set on her chest. Taken as outward beauty, the difference in age meant nothing — a body lovely enough to stand beside Hwayeon's.
Hwayeon's pink nipples were small, about half the length of a single joint of a little finger, but the Madam's were a little larger, and her breasts ran about half a size bigger than Hwayeon's too.
...I should stop looking.
When the Madam finally emerged from the bath, the clock stood at exactly noon.
I had been sitting in the parlor, killing time, when she came looking for me there — the underwear and clothes the butler had prepared nowhere in evidence, nothing on her naked body but a bathrobe — and my face went red.
She looked me up and down, nodded with a satisfied expression, and spoke to the butler.
"Juhan. I'll dress myself."
"As you wish."
"Seoha, why don't you look around the house?"
"Yes."
A Madam who looked to be in her twenties speaking down to a butler past seventy seemed strange, but by actual age she was the elder, so there was nothing odd about it. Still, watching common sense get ignored like that felt a little strange.
She had told me to look around the house, but I had already scanned the whole place with Spatial Perception the last time I came, so there wasn't much to see.
The house was L-shaped overall, with a staircase at the bend where you could go up or down into the basement. At the end of the walls on each floor there were one or two rooms, six in all, and in front of the rooms — you could almost call it a rule — sat living rooms large and small, bathrooms, and toilets. Dressing rooms were attached in front of the two large baths, and the waste of space felt severe... but this was a rich person's house, wasn't it.
Each floor had a study, and every study was full of books — Dad would have loved it. Beyond that there was a theater room, a room where a bar for drinking had been installed alongside a luxurious billiard table, and a training room stocked with equipment for keeping one's figure.
No matter how I looked at it, the place was far too large for one person to live in. And the colors ran cold throughout, so the mood felt sunken.
"...Has the Madam lived alone in a place like this for half a century?"
"But there are the butler, and the young ladies who serve as maids, are there not?"
"Hm? Ah. Right."
Come to think of it, Franc had come from a British noble house too.
"Those people aren't family. Well, the butler is maybe half family, I suppose. From what Hwayeon told me, she moved out and lived on her own after she turned fourteen, too. I just feel sorry for the Madam, if she's lived alone all that time."
"The part about it being lonely, I do not quite understand. Ah — but when I look at your family, Seoha, I do. Had one lived alongside such people, then to dwell alone would surely feel lonely."
I said it to Franc, who nodded as we walked the empty corridor, our steps loud in the quiet.
"She said the nation was her family, and the people a precious thing she was bound to protect. But if she truly weren't lonely, if she truly weren't desolate, she wouldn't have worn that face or used that voice while we walked the garden path. There was no pretense in them then, was there?"
From Franc, nothing. Only silence.
"The deep bond of shared blood isn't something money can buy. I was thinking... maybe she had Hwayeon because she was lonely. Maybe that was why."
It struck me then that Hwayeon, looking at my family, had called them the ideal family she wanted to have. I ventured a careful guess. Might that not have been a feeling projected onto the Madam?