Hwayeon's Return, and... (2)
I growled at Sophia, who was leaking tears and pulling a thoroughly miserable face.
"From here on, I ask the questions. You answer with a nod or a shake. One or the other."
I focused the Mana Sieve in my eyes even harder and, borrowing Hwayeon's expression, stared her down cold. Sophia froze like a frog before a snake.
So concentrating the Mana Sieve in the eyes really did carry an intimidating effect.
"You leaked my business to the Association. Yes or no."
Nod, nod.
I squeezed.
"Kiiing?!"
A little more pressure, and Sophia's miserable face collapsed into pure wretchedness as she started letting out the strangest moans.
"You knew the talk you had with me was a prank meant to tease the boss. Yes or no."
Nod, nod.
Watching her nod with tears clinging to the corners of her eyes and her face all scrunched up, I genuinely... had no words.
"Second question or not, I'm telling the boss about the first one anyway. Brace yourself."
I let go of her cheek. Sophia rubbed the reddened skin for a moment, then grabbed my hand in a panic and cried out, desperate.
"Th-that won't do! If you do that, Sophia's butt is going to burst!"
"Perfect. I'll tell her to lay it on thick enough to cover my share too."
"Ouch!"
Sophia flung tears as she buried her face in Kim Ga-min's chest—the woman cleared five-nine even counting the heels, with what looked like a D-cup—and whimpered into it.
"The boss couple are a villain couple, okaaay!"
"There, there. Sophia's a good girl, isn't she? When you've done something wrong, getting scolded is the proper thing, you know?"
Team 2 Leader Kim Ga-min patted the Sophia nestled in her arms, but contrary to the gentle words, both eyes were radiating a chill. Caught in that look, Sophia stared blankly back, the light gone from her pupils.
Team 3 Leader Yoo Min-hee smacked that same rear with a sharp crack.
"Sophia, you stick your nose in way too far! And leaking the boss's private life to the Association? You'd better know you're getting it from us later too!"
"Eek?! E-enemies on every side! I don't have a single ally here!"
At Sophia playing the tragic heroine and going on about whose side anyone was on, Team Leader Yoo Min-hee and Team Leader Kim Ga-min put on faces of genuine anger, backed her into a corner of the elevator, and started pouring on the scolding.
"What were you thinking, leaking that to the Association?"
"Are you in your right mind?"
"Haven't been punished lately, so life's gotten comfortable, has it?"
I was watching Sophia sweat cold with round rabbit eyes, relishing every second of it, when Team 4 Leader Kim Chung-shik spoke with a hint of envy.
"I heard you were childhood friends with the boss... Is that true?"
"Yes. We first met at daycare, when I was five."
"I'm envious. Lady Siha's own younger brother, the boss's lover, and the bearer of a powerful Detection ability besides."
"Seoha is the Blue Genius, you know! He even got a title from Association Headquarters!"
The moment Team 4 Leader Kim Chung-shik finished, Sophia butted in even while she was being scolded—and with it sent up a help call. I did good, right? So please, somebody save me!
"...Team 2 Leader Kim Ga-min. Vice-Captain Sophia doesn't seem to have been scolded enough yet."
"Yes!"
Sophia's appalled face twisted into pure confusion—Why?! How come?!—but the moment the physical sanctions started, she couldn't spare a thought for this side of the elevator at all.
I covered my face with one hand and let out a long sigh. Franc, floating in the air of the elevator and looking down at me, smiled wryly and offered something along these lines.
"Hahaha. The Association's sense for names is a little cringey, isn't it. And they insist on the English spelling without localizing. I have no idea what those people are thinking."
At Team 4 Leader Kim Chung-shik's words, Team 6 Leader Kim Tae-poong and Team 2 Leader Kim Ga-min let out stifled laughs of their own.
"Still, ordinary talents like us can't even get the first stroke of a title, so I'm a little envious."
Blocking, with her arms, the hand of the Team 2 Leader reaching to pinch her cheek and the hand of the Team 3 Leader jabbing her side, Sophia said:
"Hnk. Well, Seoha's talent is the very best, isn't it? And his ability is the best too, so a ti—ow! A title coming down is only natural, hnnng?!"
She managed to catch one hand from each of them, and still, while their remaining hands pinched her cheek and jabbed her ribs, she stubbornly finished every word she had to say. You had to hand it to her.
Ding.
"Ah, we'll be going now. We look forward to working with you."
"I'm looking forward to that day."
I waved at the team leaders pouring out onto the eighteenth floor and closed the elevator doors. Through the narrowing gap, Team 3 Leader Yoo Min-hee's furious gaze stabbed straight into my face.
"Uuuugh. V-villains..."
Leaning on the elevator handrail with trembling legs, barely holding herself up, Sophia muttered with an exhausted look.
"You brought it on yourself. Anyway, the highlight's waiting, so wouldn't it be better to recover a little in advance?"
"...Hiiing."
She looked to be seriously considering a run for it, so I caught the hesitating Sophia by the arm and stepped off on the nineteenth floor. Dragging her by force as she planted her heels, stuck her rear out, and whined that she didn't want to, I walked toward the office—and when I saw the secretary noonas startle and rise, I waved them off.
"Don't mind us. I'm just hauling a criminal into court."
"Yes..."
"Yurii. Help meee."
"Ah, um."
"Don't put the secretary noonas in an awkward spot. Come along already."
I opened the office door and went in. Hwayeon, absorbed in the paperwork, lifted her head.
A smile began to settle on the expressionless face turned toward me... and stopped. She looked at the captured Sophia with a puzzled, crumpling expression, then quickly brought her gaze back to me and offered a faint smile.
"Welcome back."
"I missed you."
I let go of Sophia's arm and pulled Hwayeon in as she came to me. She drew me close as well and whispered at my ear.
"I missed you too, Seoha."
I buried my nose in the nape of her neck and breathed in deep, and the plum fragrance of her skin that I had missed filled me completely. Behind us, Sophia, rubbing her arm, thrust her lips out as far as they would go and muttered.
"Both of you dying of how much you like each other, and still with the fussing."
A pale, slender arm stretched straight toward the ceiling trembled, then began to creep down little by little.
"Sophia. Your arm is dropping."
"Uuung!"
Having heard my whole account, Hwayeon confirmed the facts with Sophia, and when Sophia confessed that every bit of it was true, Hwayeon sentenced her to kneel with both hands raised. And every time those hands crept down, I called it out without even looking, forcing her back into the proper posture for receiving a punishment.
"To think a title would come down this quickly. We should take it that Association Headquarters recognizes your ability as well. Mother has also promised you her full support, and the Association is showing you favor, so now we need only prepare thoroughly against external attacks."
"External attacks?"
I asked it with a face that said I had no idea why attacks had suddenly entered the conversation, and my sister's expression, and Director Lee Hyeryeong's, stiffened slightly.
Hwayeon closed her mouth, swept her hair naturally back over her shoulder, studied my face, and opened her mouth with care.
"In countries where public order is poor, or where owning firearms is legal, a newcomer who appears like a comet is sometimes badly hurt. The reasons vary."
Hearing that, I got the rough shape of it. The sort of seedling-stomping I'd been watching for. And if politics or power got shaken on as seasoning, well.
I trusted Madam, or Hwayeon, would handle that cleanly. Of course I'd keep being careful myself.
With my side of things more or less wrapped up, this time I asked what she had done on the raid.
"What Aberrant did you catch this time?"
"A Blue Lynx. Already fast and cunning, a nasty thing to face, and it had mutated into a special subspecies whose intelligence far surpassed a human's. Evidence began to come in that it was prowling around Team 2's forward base, so progress in the Phase World had come to a complete stop."
"Lynx? You mean an actual lynx?"
"Correct. A Eurasian lynx. So Vice-Captain Cha Soyoung, together with Team 2 and Team 6, raided the Blue Lynx, and in the meantime we cleared the backlog of exploration and subjugation at the same time."
On the chance some wound might have been left on that pretty body of hers, I looked Hwayeon over inch by inch in her black pantsuit. Fortunately, I couldn't see a single injury.
A raid and a subjugation at once—so the byproducts and Phase Stones must have been piled like a mountain underground. But was Cha Soyoung off somewhere else? There wasn't a soul within a kilometer.
Even while Hwayeon and I talked, my sister and Director Lee Hyeryeong kept working through the documents. They finished checking the last of them, rose, and spoke.
"Boss? We'll head down. Please go on with your talk."
"Sophia-unnie? Could you help move these documents?"
"Yes, sir!"
Brightening at my sister's words, Sophia dropped her arms in a flash and took the stack of papers from her. And the way she looked at me and went—
"Ehehe."
—honestly, she was someone I couldn't stay angry at.
I'd been meaning to talk about Madam anyway, and the way they cleared out as if on cue made me swallow hard.
Once my sister and Director Lee Hyeryeong dragged Sophia down with them, Hwayeon tidied the low table, picked up the handheld pad she took work reports on, and rose.
"Shall we head upstairs, then?"
"I really like you, Hwayeon."
"Hm? I-I like you too, Seoha."
It must have come out of nowhere, and still she moved her expression, however clumsily, as if answering me, and formed a smile.
Don't tell me she'd been practicing smiling. Ugh. My conscience...
As Franc asked, I caught Hwayeon on her way out of the office, drew two drops—ten TP in all—onto my fingertip, and showed her.
Seeing the TP glowing blue at my fingertip, Hwayeon nodded.
"I see. I read the mail Franc sent, but hearing it from her directly again would be good as well."
"Huh?"
I blinked and looked at Franc. She smiled faintly and made a V with her fingers.
Right. Last time, Hwayeon had asked Franc to tell her about any vixens trying to get close to me. For a second I thought she'd already passed on Madam's story, and it gave me a shock.
Feeling my heart pound, I spread the TP over Hwayeon's closed eyelids. When I stepped back, she glanced at my lips and looked a little disappointed.
I wanted to kiss her too. But the kiss would come after the talk was over.
"Then I'll step out for a bit. The two of you should talk."
"Hm? Where are you going?"
She wore a look that asked why I was going anywhere instead of staying beside her. While I hemmed and hawed over what to say, Franc stepped in and addressed her.
"...?"
Hwayeon looked back and forth between me and Franc with a face that said she didn't understand, then set her expression firm and spoke.
"If it is a matter for which you would go so far as to ask Seoha to step away on purpose, then it is surely important. All the more reason, I believe, that he should hear it together with me."
"There may be times something goes unsaid simply because it was forgotten. But my honest wish is to cut off, before they can form, any secrets—and the misunderstandings that might grow from them."
Huh? At Hwayeon's firm expression, Franc smiled brightly, looked at me, and nodded. Don't tell me she'd expected Hwayeon to come out like that?
"As a fellow woman, I think she is a remarkable person."
And just like that, she went straight for the heart of it. Did that mean I didn't have to leave? When she'd spoken of it before, she hadn't actually said I wasn't allowed to listen in... She'd only called it a secret.
I sat on the sofa with a quiet sigh, and Hwayeon glanced at me, a little restless.
"...? I promise."
Hwayeon glanced at me again, sat down beside me, and nodded to Franc.
At the bomb dropped with no preamble, I gripped my knees without thinking. I braced, waiting for Hwayeon's anger to erupt—but she didn't get angry, and she didn't explode. She simply held a blank face and looked at Franc.
No. Not her usual chilly expression. Literally expressionless. An expressionlessness meant to show nothing...
Franc, having studied that look with care, smiled bitterly and spoke.
"...If I accumulate a little more experience, and grow skilled at dealing with people, I would become a woman like Mother."
Hearing that, Hwayeon dropped her head. My chest felt ready to burst from the tension.
"...So Mother was a woman no different from me."
Mm. Was she talking about having her first time on Tuesday...? That had been me clinging to her and forcing it, though.
"Haaa..."
The moment I saw Hwayeon bow her head and let out a long breath, I was about to open my mouth—no, it was my fault—when Franc looked at me, raised a finger, and set it to her lips.
A moment later, seeing Hwayeon lift her head, Franc moved her lips again.
"...Hoo."
Instead of answering, Hwayeon turned a slightly weary gaze on me.
"In the gaps between raids, Seoha, I researched your ability and thought on it. The conclusion was that the blue light from your eyes carries a power of fascination."
"Uh... uhhh??"
"My hypothesis is that this fascination appeals intensely to people who possess Phase Power—especially to the opposite sex."
"I-I only thought it gave off intimidation..."
Belatedly, everything that had happened whipped past my eyes like a spinning lantern.
The many students at school who had shown me particular favor. Han Go-eun and her crew, grown close and familiar with me as quickly as if we'd been going out for years. Kang Ju-chan, whose attitude had seemed to flip the moment his excitement settled, rose in my mind and vanished—and then Madam appeared.
That's right... That day, Madam had stared into my eyes again and again.
She vanished too, and only Franc and Hwayeon remained. Th-then Franc and Hwayeon as well...?
My chest went tight. Not because they liked me. Because of my eyes... Because I'd been walking around with the Mana Sieve gathered in my eyes, they had come to like me?
Was that... what it was?
"My feelings for you began more than ten years ago."
"...R-really?"
"From my childhood, you were the place my heart went to rest. This feeling is not weak enough to lose to a fascination like that."
Hearing my badly shaking voice, the two of them said that and embraced me from either side.
Their warmth wrapped the heart that had been about to cool, and made it warm again.
"No. Team 3 Leader Yoo Min-hee only looked angry on the surface. Through Spatial Perception, I didn't feel any hostility or enmity at all."
...The two of them looked at me and heaved a deep sigh.
"T-to understand an ability precisely, you have to grasp the situation precisely, right?"
I piled on the excuses, but the feeling of my conscience being stabbed with a darning needle didn't go away. Franc and Hwayeon faced each other and went on.
"So in the end, Mother too was brought down by that power of fascination and fell to Seoha. That would have been from two weeks ago, so considering Mother's personality, I find myself thinking she endured remarkably well."
"Wait! Wait a minute! Aren't you talking way too conclusively? Madam seems incredibly sharp—there's no way she wouldn't notice she'd fallen under a fascination like that. And besides...!"
I opened my mouth because their calm reactions flustered me, but Hwayeon cut me off, still deadpan.
"Or she may truly have fallen for your charm."
"...!"
What?! You knew that and didn't tell me?!
"Mm."
The two of them looked at me, standing there in a fluster, then faced each other and exchanged a look I couldn't read!
"Wait, wait!"
I hastily cut Franc off and looked back and forth between her and Hwayeon, seated on either side of me.
"What are you two talking about? Of course I was in the wrong, and I'm nothing but sorry to both of you... but I don't understand Hwayeon's reaction."
I turned to Hwayeon beside me, but she only stared straight at me, still without any particular reaction.
"It's good that you aren't angry, Hwayeon... but your reaction isn't normal! I mean, of course something that isn't normal happened between Madam and you, with me at the center... but in the worst case, I was even thinking of breaking up with you and cursing Madam..."
At the word breaking up, Hwayeon's eyebrow twitched. Then, with a slightly angry look, she reached out—
"Ugyak?!"
"Breaking up? Don't say things like that. Not even as a joke."
"I knooow, I knooow!"
Kgh! This hurt dozens of times worse than when my sister pinched me!
I pulled a miserable face and rubbed my cheek, and Hwayeon quietly turned her head and sighed.
Somehow I got the feeling she was trying to steer the talk elsewhere. And the mood had sunk strangely, the conversation breaking off...
Sh-should I change the mood for now? Change the subject.
"...About my TP. If I inject it directly into Franc's body, I think some kind of change will happen."
"D-directly?"
Uh. This seemed to be turning in a weird direction.
"Not sex! I mean drawing TP straight from my hand and injecting it into Franc's body!"
"Hah. F-fisting? Isn't that too intense? Ah, but that place of Franc's is remarkably elastic, so it ought to take even Seoha's fist..."
"Nooooo!!"
I hastily clamped a hand over Hwayeon's mouth as she made that terrifying statement.
Looking at Franc and Hwayeon, both faces flushing red, I was so dumbfounded I couldn't speak! What on earth were these girls thinking, with those perfectly straight faces?!
"Don't get the wrong idea! I only meant injecting it by touching her body! What are you even saying, Hwayeon?! Is that kind of thing your hobby?!"
"!? No! I only stumbled across it while I was st-studying...!"
Hwayeon recoiled at my words, pulled my hand away, and shouted in a rush.
"...!!"
Having succeeded far too well at changing the subject, I spent a good while covering my face, drinking cold water, and looking pointedly elsewhere, struggling with everything I had to cool the heat in my face.
Of course, the same went for Franc and Hwayeon.
"So if TP spreads excessively through Franc's spirit body, she might become visible to other people under its influence?"
"Yeah. Through Spatial Perception, TP spreads through all of Franc's body and then just disappears."
"Hmm..."
When Hwayeon stared at Franc's body as if to bore through it, Franc flushed a little and covered herself with both hands. Watching her, Hwayeon murmured.
"The reason research into Phase Power is moving forward at all is that the Grokis Institute recently succeeded, through measuring devices and discriminators, in revealing its structure. Even that structure only goes so far as distinguishing TP from Phase Power. As such, showing them Franc's case would not lead to any research anyway..."
"Mmm. Isn't the pace of science related to the Phase World way too slow?"
Looking at how far human civilization had come since electricity was invented, the two hundred years of science since the Phase World appeared might as well be called stagnation.
"Do you know there are places where mathematics and science stand at odds? Phase studies did not exist before. It is an unfamiliar field in which one cannot even find a point of contact between science and mathematics, so there is nothing to be done. And the research is carried out by scientists, not ability users. What governs those scientists are men of power and men of capital. The knowledge that comes out the other end of the research is not being shared, caught as it is in their greed and their self-serving glosses. Work is underway in many places, but because the knowledge is not shared, there are any number of cases in which people waste time researching the identical subject in the identical way... In any case, that is why progress drags."
As she spoke, Hwayeon's expression turned thoroughly fed up, and she went on with a frown.
"Ability users provide the research materials, and the citizens might as well be providing the funds, yet the powerful and the capitalists wage a war of greed with those things. Ordinary people and ability users end up shedding blameless blood for it."
I felt as if I'd caught a glimpse of Hwayeon's ideology. That part somehow resembled Madam...
...It wasn't even at the level of similar. A video rose in my mind of Madam lecturing in the great hall of Euihan University—on the rare occasion she spoke of something like this, she had let go of her mild expression and worn an angry one. That look was identical to Hwayeon right now.
Hwayeon went on.
"Anyway, if we take your hypothesis as the standard, Seoha, condensing TP in Franc's body seems an action with more to lose than to gain. What do you think, Franc."
"Things would happen that 'chaos' would not even begin to cover. Against the world, Time River and Korea are no different from children."
Hmm...
"Got it."
Kneading Franc like dough would have to wait for another day. I looked at her with regret, and as if she'd read the thought, she dyed her face bright red and smiled awkwardly.
Hm? Ah, she must be about to tell her about charging TP. It was about time I let her know anyway. I nodded while looking at Franc, and Franc nodded back at me once.
"An application?"
"..."
At Franc's serious, grave tone, Hwayeon's expression hardened in turn.
"Please wait a moment."
Having said to wait, Hwayeon picked up the intercom.
"We'll be discussing something important. Don't let anyone in until I give the word."
Then, from the solid-wood desk she used for work, she brought over a black anti-eavesdropping egg identical to the one my sister carried.
"I obtained it for her. AFE. An Anti-Field Egg."
With that, she activated the AFE and nodded as if to say go ahead and speak.
Hwayeon broke into a cold sweat.
"A terrifying thing to hear."
She drew out a handkerchief and wiped it away.
Mm. She was that shocked because she'd realized that if you used the concept of charging, a perpetual motion machine would, in theory, be complete.
Charge a Phase Stone, and by using the charged stone its Phase Power flows out into the surroundings. I absorb what flows out and recover TP, then charge a Phase Stone with the recovered TP... Of course some TP would be lost along the way, so it would be hard to call it a true perpetual motion machine. Still. Half of one.
"Later I'll charge the Phase Stones in this vest too, somewhere between a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand TP, and give them to you, so sell them again. If you can get me High-Tier Phase Stones slated for disposal, get them. I'll try charging them."
"Ah. Understood."
The cold sweat lasted only a moment. Whatever she was thinking, Hwayeon's face began to redden little by little with excitement. She ran a company... an enterprise? Since she was the one operating a business, she must have recognized the usefulness of this ability all over again.
Watching her run all sorts of calculations in her head, I thought it a relief she didn't seem to be thinking of going to smash Madam.
The two of them fighting because of me... Nngh. Just the thought of it was awful.
But it was also true that we'd let the talk fizzle out. There was no guarantee she wouldn't later decide to go smash Madam after all.
I leaned back against the sofa, sighed, and was worrying over what came after when Hwayeon suddenly started staring at me with heat in her eyes.
"W-what?"
"..."
Without a word she rose, took off her suit jacket, loosened her necktie, and undid a few of the upper buttons of her shirt.
Then she gathered her hair with a scrunchie, tied it into a ponytail, moved into the space between my legs, and crouched.
Don't tell me...?
"Ah, don't say anything. This isn't— this isn't because of Mother, all right?"
Hwayeon swallowed, undid my belt buckle, and drew down the zipper. Then, as if she'd been waiting for it, she took the cock that sprang free into her mouth.