A Rainy Day (2)

"I figure the Madam won't breathe a word to Hwayeon about yesterday. Not until I bring it up myself."

"You did well. Should she go to Hwayeon first and open the matter, we would have to prepare for the worst. It was a measure that had to be taken, if only to prevent that."

I lay in bed looking up at Franc's gentle face, and she reached out to stroke my hair as she went on.

"Above all, she is no longer a proud lone wolf, but a puppy being kept. I do not believe she will be able to do anything that might threaten you from now on, Seoha."

"……Mm."

It was strange to be so certain after only a few conversations, but Franc seemed to have a sharp instinct for this sort of thing, so I could probably trust her. She had read the relationship between Hwayeon and Choi Soohan from nothing more than a handful of words, after all.

Watching her smile faintly while she stroked my hair, another thought surfaced. Maybe—really, just maybe—Franc was someone even more frightening than the Madam. More frightening, even, than my own sister.

There was no reason for it. The thought simply came.

After the breakfast Mom had prepared with such care, I sat in the living room and looked out at a sky gone gray. My sister came up beside me and flicked me hard on the head.

"...?"

I rubbed the spot and looked up at her. She wore a pout, and she knocked me again with a sharp little flick.

"Why'd you hit me?"

"Drop it! Just wait a second."

She crouched beside me and lifted the thing in her hand—a black, egg-shaped object about the size of a fist.

It was like the egg of my pendant, with a horizontal groove cut across the middle and a blue light blinking from it every few seconds. Curious, I looked inside with Spatial Perception. An incredibly complex mechanism was ticking away in there, and mounted at its center as the power source was a Mid-Low Grade Phase Stone of about ten TP.

My sister set her right hand on the top of the groove and her left on the bottom, then twisted them in opposite directions. With a click it turned, and the blue light that had been flickering in scattered threads along the groove filled in completely and began to shine.

"What is this? It gives off a strange feeling."

"An anti-eavesdropping device. The wavelength it puts out scrambles the sensors and cameras on bugs and wiretaps and shuts them down."

Huh? The kind of thing from spy movies? It was an awfully small, cute little gadget for that.

"It burns raw Phase Stones as they are, so the upkeep is brutal. I'll talk fast, so focus!"

And she began to tell me about a training ground, saying she had spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday looking into it.

About nine kilometers south of our house, she said, there was the site of a military base that had relocated and left an empty lot behind. After the Droplet Incident, aberrants had appeared there with unusual frequency and run wild, and the unit stationed there couldn't endure the pressure and moved. The people living nearby got thoroughly sick of the battles that broke out every time an aberrant showed up and all moved away, until the population hit rock bottom.

Public order, commerce, and the whole urban system had died, and the place had turned to ruins. Restoring it would cost a fortune, and aberrants still appeared from time to time, so it hadn't even managed to become a slum. To make matters worse, the state had begun investing in and expanding the satellite cities around Seoul and abandoned the area entirely.

"It's where the old city of Seongnam used to be. The population shrank, people left, and even Seongnam City Hall relocated and gave up on it. They say it's a headache."

"It's the road from Seoul down toward Chungcheong. They're just leaving it? If a military base was stationed there, doesn't that mean it was important?"

"It is important, but aberrants show up whenever people start to forget about the place and raise hell for no reason. The Ability User Association and the government looked into the cause themselves, apparently. The moment only ability users go in, it goes dead quiet—and the second they pull out, the things pop up as if to say 'There we go!' So there was nothing they could do. And they can hardly station ability users there permanently."

The Association and the government had investigated in person, and still couldn't figure it out?

"Military ability users are posted to more important strongpoints, so there's no spare manpower to pull here. They tried selling or leasing the land to other ability users, just to secure public feeling and some measure of safety, but anyone with money already has more than enough means to make a home in the heart of the capital region. Nobody wants to live somewhere sparsely populated with bad security, so it's been left abandoned."

"Since when?"

"Going on forty years now. More than eighty aberrants have appeared in that time. All of them Mid-Low Grade."

"Whoa. And you found all that out in three days? You're amazing."

She'd been stepping out a lot these past few days. So this was what she had been chasing.

"Ahem. Anyway, a Mid-Low Rank Variant or so isn't a problem for you, is it, Seoha?"

At the praise she thrust her chest out and preened, and honestly…… As her little brother, it was genuinely pitiful that there was nothing up there to stand out. Fix that chest, and she could have been a real goddess.

"Yeah. One Mana Bullet and they're done."

"What are you going to do? Want me to look into that side of it for you?"

"I'd like that, but we don't have the money. The whole deposit is going to the fine."

"Don't worry about that. You can pay in twenty-four monthly installments, and if that doesn't work, you can take a loan from Time River."

"……."

I stared at the area she was showing me on her tablet. By area alone, it was wide enough to build several stadiums and still have land left over.

"Can we buy all of this land?"

"At the current market price, even if you emptied your entire provisional deposit, it wouldn't be enough. Can't you just secure about a kilometer and a half to practice in?"

"Once I reveal my ability later, the land around it is going to shoot up, right? Since it's come to this, I want to buy the whole area."

At that she looked utterly exasperated and raised a fist to knuckle me on the head.

"Look at this little thing, already eyeing land speculation."

Did this even count as speculation?

"But you have a point. Once you're an adult and a B-Class and your ability goes public, the area around where you live is going to see a shift in land prices on the level of an earthquake. And considering how secret your ability needs to stay, buying up the whole vicinity is the right call…… Hmm. The problem is funding. Buying a stretch of land this vast wouldn't take ten billion won. We'd need money in the hundred-billion range."

For a moment Hwayeon and the Madam came to mind, but I turned the thought aside at once. From Hwayeon especially, I had already received a vest worth a hundred billion won…… Ah. Phase Stone charging.

Ugh. Even so…….

"Sis, how do Phase Stone deals work? If I just walk in with a stone worth a few hundred thousand and say I want to sell it, do they pay me in cash?"

"Does that make any sense? Do you have any idea what a Phase Stone from a High-Tier Variant is worth? Release a few high-grade Phase Stones and the world's finances would collapse."

"R-really? Then how do the transactions actually work?"

"Mostly in kind. They divide a set portion of the stone's value among cash, precious metals, and rare metals. Understanding the history of Phase Stone trading, and the impact those deals have on the market, would take a four-hour intensive course. Shall I teach you?"

"No."

Phase Stone trading was complicated enough to need a four-hour lecture? And that was four hours for my sister. For an ordinary person it would be a four-hundred-hour course, no question.

I refused flat as a blade, and when I saw how disappointed she looked, I sighed and asked.

"I get the cash and the precious-metal notes. But Phase Stones evaporate if you just leave them sitting, and they shrink over time, right? You're using those for in-kind trades? A barter where the goods don't hold their value? That doesn't make sense."

"Coat the surface with a special substance and you can stop Phase Power from leaking out."

"Really? There's some strange stuff out there. Anyway, above a certain size, individuals have a hard time trading them. That's what you're saying?"

My sister started watching me with slightly suspicious eyes. I ignored the look and turned the problem over a little further…… There was no separate way to raise the money.

I was groaning and racking my brain when she let out a short laugh and stroked my hair.

"There is one way to buy all that land."

"Then say it faster!"

"Where did a little thing like you learn to raise his voice? Maybe I won't tell you."

"I humbly beseech you, honored sister, to share your wisdom with your dull-witted younger brother."

One step back, the better to advance two. She burst into a bright laugh and said:

"Simple. When you sign the formal contract, you just take part of the deposit as an advance."

……It really was simple. I wasn't sure it would work, but General Affairs Director Lee Hyeryeong was Hwayeon's closest aide, and Hwayeon was my woman, so it ought to go through.

I fetched my bankbook and seal from my room, handed them to my sister, and asked her to buy all of that land. Then I checked the Phase Power in the egg-shaped anti-eavesdropping device and saw it had already dropped by 0.7.

In money, that was no different from seven hundred thousand won vanishing.

"What kind of TP consumption is this? I haven't even used it for thirty minutes and it's down seven percent!"

"Hmm…… It really is? Good grief, what kind of ability is more precise than a machine? Anyway, enough about abilities! Turning it off?"

"Yeah."

I asked my sister as she clicked her tongue and tucked the egg away.

"You're not going around buying the land yourself, are you?"

"I am, though?"

"You said it's a slum! What's a young woman doing wandering around a place like that!"

No sense of caution at all! Was she trying to give the whole family a heart attack?! At my words she went blank for a second, then broke into a grin and patted my cheek.

"Were you worried about your sister? That makes me happy~. But don't worry. I'm not the one actually going around looking at the land."

She didn't seem to be taking my concern seriously, so I hardened my expression and spoke again.

"If something happens to you, it won't end with one or two people dying. Remember that."

"Okay, okay. I'll be careful."

At the sincerity in my voice she flinched, then stroked my hair with a slightly awkward look. But I kept my face hard, and only then did she seem to realize I wasn't joking. She answered with a serious expression.

"When I go somewhere rough, I'll take bodyguards with me."

But it was too late. Having seen how numb she was to her own safety, the worry wouldn't leave. I ought to tell Dad to install a location-tracking app on her phone.

"Fufu. It seems you mean to overprotect Lady Siha, Seoha."

"I've got the ability now, so I have to look after her. Who knows what unhinged wolf might come running."

"Even so, Hwayeon said she would protect your family, did she not?"

"……Oh. Right. She did."

I'd already forgotten. My sister went to her room to change, apparently meaning to go out, and in that gap I sought out the study where Dad was working. I suggested to him, midway through a paper, that we put a tracking app on my sister's phone. Dad's reply:

"Already put a chip in it. Apps are unstable, and I don't trust them. They don't even work if the phone is off."

Come to think of it, Dad had bought her that smartphone, hadn't he? A true daughter-fool of a father.

Over the weekend, preparing for the exam a few days out, I started memorizing textbooks wholesale on a tablet I had brought from school.

It would have been nice if, like other schools, the split between multiple choice and short answer was simply seven to three. Ours was almost entirely short answer and essay, with hardly any multiple choice at all. Truly…… miserable.

At least a textbook answer earned the base score, so that was something.

I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠found myself hating the Madam all over again for insisting on an exam like this. Should I have smacked her on the backside a little back then?

……I had smacked her breasts instead, though.

Whenever I tired of memorizing I played around with Franc and rested, then went back to the textbooks, and by the time Sunday lunch came around I had every one of them memorized cover to cover.

"Haa. I memorized it all, but will any of this be useful once I'm out in the world?"

I sighed as I closed the traditional ethics textbook, the last of them.

"They say that even useless knowledge has its use, do they not? I am certain there will be one."

"I don't think there will."

"Ahaha."

"Think about it. Ethics is basically just 'don't harm other people, and live kindly.' That's the whole point."

"Fufu."

"Don't just laugh!"

"Kyaa?!"

I climbed onto a completely naked Franc and started tickling her without mercy, and my cock tried to lose its mind. Figures—once you've tasted meat, you go looking for it……. Franc seemed to notice too and flushed, but I only stole a light kiss from her lips and got up.

"After I eat, I should hit the gym."

"You mean to exercise?"

When I stood and turned, Franc looked disappointed, but she smoothed it over at once, clung to my back, and asked. Even through a vest three centimeters thick, I could feel a faint pressure from her breasts!

"Yeah. I lazed around and ate for a week, and I feel like I'm putting on a little weight. I want to sweat it off."

Past the curtain drawn aside, rain kept falling from a sky buried under gray cloud. I was a little reluctant to go out, but if I took a taxi it wouldn't matter.

My sister had left the moment breakfast was over, probably because of the site purchase. It was raining—she could have rested and gone once it stopped…….

I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enjoyed the lunch Mom had set out, then asked if she wanted to come to the hospital gym. She seemed to agonize over it quite a bit.

"It's raining, so I think I'll just rest."

In the end she had decided against going. Dad looked busy with his paper, the academic conference not far off…… I'd just go alone.

I put on the walker-style rain boots I had bought before, took an umbrella, and left the house. Franc followed, floating through the rain in a long white dress.

"……A maiden in a long white shroud of a dress, standing in the rain. You look like a Western drowned ghost."

"?!"

I snickered at Franc's shocked face and walked toward the taxi waiting in front of the apartment complex. She came to her senses and hurried after me. Then she glanced around, studied a clothing shop in the complex's shopping row, and began to change her form.

A sky-blue frilled dress, black stockings, and rain boots identical to mine—she made them, then looked at me with sparkling eyes as if to ask how this was.

The outfit and the expression made me want to pounce. Shining all by herself in a gray world soaked through with rain. That was cheating.

I looked around. Maybe because of the rain, no one was passing, and no one was looking this way.

I pulled Franc in by the waist, tipped the umbrella down to hide our faces, felt her heart hammering, and stole a deep kiss from her lips.

I changed into workout clothes in the hospital locker room and stepped into the gym, and the situation was the reverse of last time.

"There are a great many women……."

The place was packed, and of them only six were men. Even those were cowed by the women's momentum, working out timidly in the corners, while the rest were mostly women in their mid-to-late twenties, in skin-tight training wear that laid their exposure and their figures bare.

Their purpose didn't look like exercise. The moment I arrived they pretended not to look while sneaking glances, and when I passed they openly examined my back. It was a creepy gaze—the gaze of people who had decided I was the objective.

That look…… Right. It was similar to the Madam's gaze that day.

A chill ran through me, and I thought about simply turning around. But I had come all this way in the rain, and the time and effort would be wasted if I left, so I decided to work out.

"……."

"……."

Still, the stares bothered me, so I met them with eyes spilling blue light. Far from startling and looking away, they answered with subtly seductive, coquettish glances…….

Deeply awkward. And every one of them had cleavage on display, in highly provocative clothes plastered to their bodies, so I had nowhere to put my eyes…… Huh? Was that woman not even wearing a bra?

Thanks to the training wear they had on, I realized that something which half-concealed and stirred the imagination could be lewder than outright nudity.

Muttering that this was not a welcome realization, I walked over to an empty treadmill.

"The rumors were true!"

"Look at that blue light. It's amazing."

"His parents run the hospital, and he's a detection-type ability user. Jackpot. A real jackpot!"

"Think he has a girlfriend?"

"Aigoo, he's so fresh I bet I could eat him in one bite and there wouldn't be a hint of fishiness."

"Good grief, trust a pervert to say it. Hohoho!"

The whispering at my ear made me swallow. Eating meant that kind of eating, didn't it? I glanced at Franc. She was glaring at the women stealing looks at me, her face deeply furrowed.

"……."

I climbed onto the treadmill in silence and started running at maximum speed, and the women's eyes went wide as they stared at my backside hard enough to bore holes in it.

……I was starting to think women might be frightening.

Still, like the saying that a dog barking loud isn't the one to fear, the women spouting dirty talk while they looked at me, and the ones scanning my body, only whispered and sent looks as if they meant to devour me. They didn't approach, so that was a relief.

But the level of the dirty talk was no joke.

On the game community sites I used to visit, an adult post would go up now and then, and if you caught it before it was deleted it was only things like so-and-so had hooked up, or they had called a call girl at night and had their vitality sucked out, with comments giggling about getting a look at the body or the guy being a quick shot…….

Set beside the talk flowing here without end—so blatant and so lewd it reduced those men's stories to children playing house—!

Franc, listening to the women, went past anger until her face was bright red and she was trembling. They were ordinary people. She wouldn't explode and throw lightning, would she?

"That's enough. Aren't you ashamed?"

Just then a woman who had been sweating buckets on the weight floor stood up, and I heard her give the women trading dirty talk a sharp piece of her mind.

It was an exceptionally clear, refreshing voice, and Spatial Perception turned to examine her on its own.

A woman in her mid-twenties with neat features, hair long enough to reach her shoulders tied in a ponytail, wearing a long-sleeved workout top with almost no skin showing and a pair of running pants. Muscle stood out on her thighs, the only part exposed. She looked like someone whose hobby was training her body.

"Excuse me? And what exactly did we do wrong?"

"That boy is still a minor. Aren't you ashamed, talking that way about a child?"

At the words dirty talk, a woman with a vicious look jabbed a finger at the ponytail and snapped back.

"This is ridiculous! Who do you think you are, saying something like that?!"

"I'm Park Hyo-eun, Head Nurse at this hospital. I'm telling you so you'll understand. If the director's wife heard everything you've been saying, it would be enough to file criminal charges."

When criminal charges came out of her mouth as she calmly wiped her sweat and spoke, the group that had been spewing the talk flinched and shifted uneasily. The face of the woman who had been arguing went pale in an instant.

"And this gym isn't open to the public. How did all of you get in? You don't look uncomfortable, so you aren't patients, and I don't recognize your faces, so you aren't staff either. How did you come to be here?"

Now that she mentioned it, that was true.

"Hmph! This is seriously ridiculous. You! Don't live like that!"

"What rotten luck."

"Ugly and fat, and a nasty personality on top of it—think you'll ever get married? Hmph!"

At Park Hyo-eun's words the lewd women suddenly started spouting nonsense, bumping and shoving her shoulder as they poured out in a rush.

Once the seven women who had been driving the filthy atmosphere stormed off, the ones who remained eyed one another and slipped away one or two at a time.

With the space opened up, the men brightened, claimed other machines, and started working out. The few women left also stopped stealing glances at me and put their attention on their exercise.

"That's Hyo-eun for you. No joke, huh?"

Among them, a man who looked a little older, with a solid bronze musculature, gave Park Hyo-eun a thumbs-up.

"If I'd stepped in myself, they would've seen me in a whole different light."

"Hey, don't say that. These days a guy like us can get a suspended sentence just for talking to a woman he doesn't know."

"Right, right. She walks right past you on purpose, then glares and calls it sexual harassment because you looked at her body. Unbelievable."

The men poured their grievances out to Park Hyo-eun as if they were the wounded party, and she wore a what-can-you-do expression, glanced once at me as I ran in silence, and spoke.

"The General Affairs Director is already debating whether to shut the gym down and turn it into a rest area. If something like this reaches her ears, the doors will be closed the very next day, no question. There's nowhere else with equipment this good. That can't happen."

"Puhaha. That's true. The facilities are clean, the space is clean, and there's a state-of-the-art shower room. Anywhere else, a gym with facilities like this would run you two hundred thousand won a month."

Even so she seemed worried, letting out one heavy sigh after another, and I spoke to her.

"I'll put in a good word with Mom so they don't close the gym. I was in a tight spot too, so thank you for driving them off. Noona."

"……!"

At my words, the people still there—staff, I figured—all looked my way at once.

"Ah…… Yes. Thank you."

Franc stared hard at Park Hyo-eun, then, her anger eased, settled onto the console of the treadmill I was running on. I looked at the heavy volume of her breasts and muttered quietly.

"I was wondering how to chase the women out. I'm glad that noona stepped in."

"Yes."

"You were about to tell me to turn back partway, weren't you?"

"……Those women are a disgrace, even as a fellow woman!"

She grumbled as she said it, and even this side of her looked wonderfully fresh, and cute.

I had been running for about three straight hours when Phase Power began to circulate through my body on its own, clearing the fatigue substances forming inside me and stirring my vitality. The feeling was like…… it resembled having sex, and it felt incredibly good. Was this what they called a runner's high?

Anyway, I was in an extremely high state of mind, so I sorted through the effects of the Mana Sieve and of Phase Power, ranked what I would practice first once I had a training ground, and kept running without a stop—when I noticed my sister's car coming toward the hospital.

A little later she arrived at the gym in loose workout clothes, and the men finished as if they had been waiting for the chance and left. The women followed them out, and before long only my sister, Park Hyo-eun, and I remained.

"Hyo-eun unni. It's been a while."

"Yes, miss. Your figure is as good as ever. You must be working out hard."

"If I don't want to gain weight, I have to."

Oh, they knew each other? My sister was smiling and talking with Park Hyo-eun, and they seemed to get along well.

Park Hyo-eun, apparently deeply knowledgeable about exercise, briefly corrected my sister's form, then gave the two of us a small bow and left the gym.

Once it was just us, my sister came up beside me, started running on the treadmill, and spoke.

"How long have you been at it?"

"A little over three hours now. You said you were going to Time River. Is the work all done?"

"Yeah. The formal contract deposit will be advanced without any real problem. The purchase procedures are finished, so the rest just needs to be handled during office hours tomorrow, and that's it! Congratulations. Starting tomorrow, you're a debtor to the tune of hundreds of billions of won."

"Ghk?!"

I choked at hundreds of billions and turned to look at her, and she laughed like a little devil!

"Oh my? It's close to four square kilometers of land. How much did you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠think buying all of it would cost?"

"You said five hundred billion in contract money was coming in January! Even after subtracting that, I'm hundreds of billions in debt?!"

"Subtract that and there's no debt."

"……You scared me! Say that part first!"

At my protest she stuck her tongue out a little—bleh—then turned her gaze forward and looked down at the rainy city as she spoke.

"Luckily the price had crashed. If it hadn't, even including the contract deposit, you really would have ended up hundreds of billions in debt. And we got lucky in another way. If it had been ordinary forest land, it would have been split into parcels everywhere, and while we were buying from this person and that, word would have spread that a big buyer was acquiring land, the price would have climbed further, and the spending would have ballooned. Fortunately it was a military base site with no value, so the city owned all of it, and we could sign a formal contract in one go."

"Did they demand kickbacks or anything?"

"This kid. Do something like that and the moment Auntie catches you, you're stripped of your post, your entire fortune is confiscated, and you go to prison as an economic criminal. Still, I did buy them a meal at a nice traditional Korean restaurant."

"Good thing they didn't try anything."

"When I said you were buying it for detection training, the person in charge and the mayor both went wide-eyed and actually tried to accommodate you. Your fame seems to be spreading in a slightly abnormal way."

So my sister still didn't know what had happened between me and the Madam. Even a ghost for reading people wasn't omnipotent.

I swept the surroundings ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with Spatial Perception, slowed the treadmill, and pointed at my mouth.

"This is a secret, but the Madam agreed to back me fully from behind the scenes. The news about me might be her influence at work, too."

"What? When? Where did a deal like that happen?!"

My sister read my lips, eyes going wide, and slowed her own treadmill.

"Last Friday. After we wrapped up the museum incident, the Madam came to see me. We had lunch, and it came up while we were talking."

"I see……. When your name came up, the mayor of Seongnam and the person in charge changed their attitude completely, so I knew something was going on. Influence enough to move the mayor—I wondered if it was Auntie's orders. And sure enough."

As she said it, she side-eyed me, her lips curving.

"Is that all? I feel like there might be a few more factors."

……Damn. A true ghost of intuition, reputation and all. I shook my head while watching Franc fret, worried my sister might catch on.

"Anyway, don't bring that up in front of Hwayeon. I'll tell Hwayeon myself."

"Why?"

"Why do you think…… I don't know about them personally, but business-wise Hwayeon and the Madam are on bad terms. She's obviously going to be uncomfortable just knowing I was with the Madam. Hearing it from someone other than me would only take the wind out of her."

"Hwayeon isn't narrow-minded enough to get that upset, is she?"

For an instant, a different jab—about someone else being the narrow-minded one—nearly slipped out.

"Me telling her myself and her hearing it through you aren't the same, are they?"

"Hmm…… All right."

So. This coming Wednesday would be the day of the showdown.

I talked with my sister and ran until four, and my body grew strangely languid, hot and aching all over. According to her, it was the body's own defense hormones, secreted to keep stress in check.

She said if I rested well at home and repeated the exercise, testosterone would build the muscle, so I went home, took a nap, turned on the computer, played Legend of League for the first time in a while, fought a few keyboard battles with trolls, and spent Sunday afternoon that way.

Until Hwayeon came back on Wednesday, I would pass the time building my body.