Hwayeon's Return, and... (3)

Every time Hwayeon licked me the way she might a stick of candy she couldn't get enough of, a sharp, electric pleasure—like being struck by lightning—rolled through me in wave after wave.

"Hnn...!"

When had she practiced this? Her tongue was a little awkward, but there was skill in the way it moved, and every time it wound around my cock I had to grit my teeth to keep a moan from tearing out of me. She licked and sucked without hesitation, taking me deep enough that the head nudged the back of her throat, and all the while her other hand gently fondled my balls. Pleasure flooded my lower body until I could barely hold a thought together.

Damn. My hips are going to shake...!

Hwayeon must have felt the tension locking through my waist. Her face flushed, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠corners of her eyes curving prettily, and she swallowed me even more boldly.

"Hhk—!"

The moment I felt the head shove past her throat and into the tight space beyond, a strangled groan slipped out of me before I could stop it. She didn't care. She kept working me deeper into her throat, and in the end she had taken me to the root—the bridge of her neat little nose pressed flush to my lower belly.

Champ had vanished without a trace into Hwayeon's mouth. And there she was, nose buried against my stomach, looking up at me.

Crouched between my legs as she was, the lush curve of her hips drew a beautiful sweeping line, like a gull's wings turned upside down, and past the taut pull of her pants I could see the triangle between her thighs—narrow, and holding an endless mystery. My heart and my cock both started pounding as if they might burst.

"Nngh—!!"

An unbearable need to come surged up, and just as I was about to signal that I was going to finish, Hwayeon suddenly pulled me out of her throat and swallowed with a wet little sound. Dragged free of that warm, slick, narrow hole, the pleasure cut off so abruptly I thought the frustration would drive me mad.

"Hnn."

She drew a short breath, then took me deep into her throat again. Friction sparked across the head, and lightning flashed in front of my eyes. The moment her chin met my balls she didn't stay still—she began to move her head back and forth in a smooth, steady rhythm.

Glck. Gulrp. Kkuk.

Every strange, wet sound from Hwayeon's throat sent another bolt across my vision.

Any more than this... I can't hold it!

"Hwayeon—ahh!"

Without thinking I reached for her head, meaning to grab it and thrust, and then I caught myself. I couldn't be rough. I mustn't. My hands flailed with nowhere left to go, and the hand that had been gripping my hip caught my arm and guided it up to her head.

Hold on. Move as much as you want?

I read what her eyes were saying and took hold of her head. She gave a small nod, then swallowed what little of me remained, all the way to the base. Her throat worked around me, and it must have hurt her too—a tear squeezed from the corner of her eye.

The instant I saw that tear, my self-control snapped. I tightened my grip and drove my hips as hard as if I were using her face like a toy. Each time I slid in and out of that working throat, a wet, gurgling sound spilled from her, something like a pig squealing. Saliva mixed with precum trailed from the corner of her mouth, and a single tear rolled from the tight corner of Hwayeon's eye.

"Khh—hhhh...!"

Pleasure surged like madness, but it was as if a lock had been thrown—I couldn't start to come. Just as I was about to groan in agony, trapped in some hell of being unable to finish, both her hands seized my hips, and one index finger slowly, deliberately scraped across the place where my tailbone lay.

In that instant a current unlike the pleasure already running through me pierced my lower belly, and a big bang went off behind my eyes. A climax vast enough to deserve its own crashing roar began. The thick, cloudy fluid—made the instant it was spent, thanks to Mana Sieve—poured straight down the inside of Hwayeon's throat like a waterfall.

Forced to pry open the gate of her stomach, the sheer volume made her eyes fly wide. Then she squeezed them shut, her thighs trembling, and sealed her lips around me as if she refused to lose a single drop. The minutes of release that followed brought a satisfaction beyond words, and a fatigue so deep I thought I might pass out. Her tongue and lips caressed every sensitive place inside her mouth while her throat clenched tight around me, and the pleasure that crashed over me rivaled the ridged friction of sex itself.

When she finally drew me out of her throat, her face flushed red all the way to her ears, she gazed at me as if the part of me in her hands were something precious, cleaned the mess of saliva and semen from it with her tongue, and asked,

"D-did it... feel good?"

I nodded, dazed. She rose with a satisfied look, stroked her throat, then pressed gently around the pit of her stomach and let out a bewitching sigh.

"Haaah... Thanks to your semen, Seoha, it feels like my chest is growing warm inside."

Hearing that, I looked through to her stomach. There it was—stretched larger than usual, brimming with semen that shimmered with a blue light. The TP in my semen seemed to be stirring her Phase Power. It wavered a little, though not as badly as before, and the drop in her Physical Reinforcement looked to have narrowed by about as much.

"Is your body all right?" Franc's voice came, soundless.

"I'm fine. Perhaps because I've been through it once, it's milder than last time. I can't bring my ability fully to bear, but at this level I should still manage something around D-Class. More importantly, once I've absorbed all the TP in Seoha's semen, he'll restore me with Healing Wave, so there's no problem."

"That's true."

Her mouth must have felt sticky. She took a piece of candy from the basket on the desk and unwrapped it, and Franc, who had been watching her, seemed to notice something. She pointed between Hwayeon's thighs.

"Hwayeon? Look at your pants. They're wet."

"...!"

Just as Franc said, a stain about the size of a quarter had formed on the inside of her thigh. Hwayeon's face went scarlet. She grabbed me, and we shot up to the twentieth floor.

She washed quickly in the bathroom and came back out, and I tried to settle the matter of how Madam ought to be treated—the talk we'd put on hold—but Hwayeon clearly had no wish to discuss it. She dodged the subject.

"...I'm sorry. I'd like to have that conversation next time. I need... a little time to think."

"Oh. Yeah. All right."

When she said she needed time to think, all I could do was nod. The situation now was such a snarl of feeling against feeling that no single sentence could define it. I was Madam's victim, and to Hwayeon I was also the immoral man who had slept with her mother; and to Hwayeon, Madam was the homewrecker who had seduced her daughter's boyfriend and pounced on him.

In that slightly awkward air, we talked through everything that had happened.

"The site Siha found for your training ground has an excellent location. If ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you can find out why aberrants keep appearing there so often and put a stop to it, you won't regret buying the whole tract. And with your ability, I'm certain you'll find the reason."

"Isn't that faith a little blind?"

"Heh. In any case, you did well to buy all of it, even if it meant putting down a formal deposit. I hear it was your decision, Seoha?"

"Mm."

She smiled again—awkward, and somehow cute—then pressed her thighs together and smoothed her midi skirt down to cover her legs. Every time she moved, the semen filling her stomach seemed to slosh, and her expression twisted into something indecent. I wondered whether she'd be better off just bringing it back up, but she showed no sign of that. If anything she looked pleased, stroking her own belly.

"Ah. Look at this."

"Resumes?"

I took the few sheets she handed me and flipped through them.

"These are the people who will formally handle your security from a distance, in place of the ones guarding you on a temporary basis now. They won't make contact with you, and when you go out they'll follow at a reasonable distance. Three people, three shifts—there to support you against any threat that might arise."

I already knew someone was guarding me. They'd always followed from several hundred yards back, so I hadn't paid them any mind.

"Wouldn't it be better if they protected my family instead of me?"

"...The families of ability users are already being watched by the Ability Users' Association's precognition department. There are government agents as well, and I myself am always mindful of your father's safety, and your mother's, and Siha's. So you need to worry about your own safety more than your family's. Your ability is nothing like an E-Class's, but your real combat experience is woefully lacking, and your close-quarters ability is poor. If a nation with ill feelings toward you came after you out of greed or private motive, even a handful of C-Class users would put you in danger."

"Then all the more reason. These people aren't even ability users, and having them hover around me... it's obvious they won't be any help, isn't it?"

I asked after skimming all nine resumes and setting them down. Hwayeon scratched her cheek lightly.

"No. I think I misspoke. The support I mean is a kind of alarm. If we, or the government, sense something or catch wind of it, they'll notify you at once through these people, so you can prepare."

"An alarm?"

"Mother will have planted her pigeons in every country and be preparing for contingencies, so there's no way she would miss a high-ranking ability user of C-Class or above entering Korea. The moment we obtain word that such a foreign ability user has entered the country, an alert goes up, it's passed to the guards, and the system is either to evacuate you to a nearby safe house or to dispatch a standby ability user at once."

So that was it. They weren't meant to fight in my place. They were an alarm system.

"At first I meant to place an ability user at your side. But if one were circling you, it would weigh on you, and there was also the one-in-a-million chance your ability would be exposed, so we adopted the current system. There will be guards in plain clothes stationed near the training ground as well, so keep that in mind."

"Those people are all ordinary civilians too?"

"They're trained professional veterans. Against an ability user of H Class or below who hasn't received combat training, they're more than capable of subduing them. Against anyone who isn't an ability user, each of them does the work of five—veterans of battle. And... no. I'll look into that a little more and tell you later."

"Yeah. Thanks for looking out for me."

"And there's something I didn't get the chance to say..."

Hm? Hwayeon suddenly went a little stiff and looked up at Franc. Franc looked down at her with an expression that had gone a bit stiff as well.

"I'd like you not to use Mana Vision in front of other people, if you can help it."

"Ah, I was thinking the same. I only thought that concentrating Mana Sieve in my eyes gave off simple pressure. I didn't know there was a charm effect too. If I'd known, I wouldn't have walked around with it on..."

I'd been concentrating Mana Sieve in my eyes so I could see Franc in living color, but if the Mana Sieve gathered in my eyes carried that kind of power, I couldn't use it carelessly.

"No. I'm not saying you must never use it. And it's true that using Mana Vision strongly produces the pressure you described, Seoha. If there's someone you need to win over, using it isn't a bad idea..."

"I'll only use Mana Vision in front of the two of you, if I can. Or I'll ask permission first."

At that, said with a smile, Franc and Hwayeon both flushed a little.

The week after Hwayeon returned was ordinary days, repeated. There was one thing that wasn't ordinary: checking on the training ground going up in Shinchon-dong.

My sister told me they'd started putting a roof on the training ground in Shinchon-dong—four smaller districts jumbled together, though everyone just called it Shinchon-dong—so I snuck out in the middle of the night to see it. Sure enough, pillars were rising at the center of that vast stretch of land. The grounds, equal to about a seventh of Sujeong-gu in Seongnam, were as different from the map as heaven from earth.

How vast was it? From the northern end to the southern was a full 3.7 kilometers—over two miles. Walking it in a straight line, with nothing in the way, would take an hour. On the map it had been nothing but a somewhat long stick. In person, the south and the north were far enough apart that, with only a little exaggeration, you could see the horizon. The width could have held five full stadiums side by side.

"So all of this land is mine."

"Oh my. Seoha is a rich man now."

"It doesn't feel real, though."

The moon was hidden behind cloud, and there were no streetlights, nor the artificial lights of anywhere people lived, so to the naked eye it was black as pitch. On top of that, silver grass grew thick as untouched wild country, and from somewhere came the cry of an owl. A wind passed, and the grass rustled and swayed. For an ordinary person it would have been the perfect place to feel afraid.

That I felt no fear was probably because Franc was beside me, and because Spatial Perception let me see everything within a kilometer as clearly as the palm of my hand. Since I'd come all this way, I meant to practice before I left, so I checked once more for onlookers. The people Hwayeon had hired to support me still thought I was at the apartment, so no eyes were on me, and it was so dark the naked eye could see nothing... It would be fine, wouldn't it?

I practiced close-range recovery a few times, and figured out why, back in Hwayeon's room, I had fired a Mana Bullet in the middle of Healing Wave. It was because I had condensed TP. Condensing TP and then resonating it launched a Mana Bullet no differently than if I had flung it; to heal, it was enough just to set the annual rings trembling, lightly.

Resonating the rings in a small way at one specific spot not only cut TP consumption sharply compared to Healing Wave, it let me treat only that spot—the local area. But how on earth ranged recovery was supposed to work, I couldn't tell. My guess was that you sent TP flying the way an elemental ability user fired an elemental shot. If that was the case...

"That means I can't do ranged recovery at all."

To fire a recovery shot I would have to condense TP, and the moment I did, a Mana Bullet would launch.

Time passed with my relationship with Madam still unresolved, and on Monday, May 4th, Kang Ju-chan's suspension was lifted.

He came to school under the eyes of the other kids, and the moment his gaze met mine he gave a small bow. After that he never once looked back. No matter how much the people around him whispered and watched him—like a monk who had attained enlightenment, or been released from the world—his expression didn't change, and he prepared for class.

He'd said he was going to apologize. Had he changed his mind? Well, this wasn't bad either. If he acted as if he weren't even there, it wasn't uncomfortable, and though a little of the grudge from that slap still sat at the bottom of me, a magnanimous man could let that much go.

...So, Franc? Please don't glare at him like that. It's scary. You look like you're about to call down lightning!

After third period, during the break, Kang Ju-chan approached. The class fell silent as one and stared our way, and since he said he had something he wanted to say, the two of us went up to the school roof.

"In first and second year, I hated you."

"..."

Up close, the skin under his eyes and along his cheeks had sunk in a little. He'd grown gaunt. Had the week been that hard on him? Having opened with that, he looked down over the schoolyard and went on, as if confessing.

"When I saw you still alone in third year, I tried to stop caring. I'd watched you fail to fit in with the others plenty of times in second year, too. Cursing you in my head for being socially maladjusted, and sneering at you, came free with the rest."

He muttered it with a face overflowing with self-loathing.

"Looking back now, that was truly ugly. If I'd sincerely wanted to be your friend, I should have acted like Han Go-eun or Kim Chang-hyun, the people around you now. But I didn't. I was just desperate to shift the blame—to say the reason my school life was ruined was you."

Then I had been forcibly summoned to the Phase World, and when I came back alive as if to show them all, Kang Ju-chan confessed, he had been filled with envy. He had lived a wretched school life, and I had become an ability user and taken a beautiful girlfriend and all the school's popularity, and he had hated it so much it drove him mad. Even if the museum incident that Friday hadn't happened, that envy would have overflowed someday and he would have picked a fight with me.

If he had, the result would have been more horrific. I wouldn't have hesitated. I would have brought every bit of power I could to bear and smashed him. Him, and his whole house with him. Rationally, I knew that was excessive. Emotionally, I felt no reluctance at all. Was this that Rogue Imugi bastard's fault too? When it came to revenge, all I could think was that you had to be thorough and leave nothing behind.

"I used my sister as an excuse, but the truth is my envy exploded and I swung at you. You were the same as you'd been in first year, unchanged—but I, who had turned unbearably ugly, couldn't stand you becoming a hero. So I spewed abuse at you and threw a punch."

He bowed his head as he said it. The face I saw through Spatial Perception was full of regret. There wasn't a speck of pretense or performance in it.

"I realized that ugliness right after I heard from my parents that you'd spoken up for me and stopped them from expelling me. I'm sorry. I could say it a hundred times and it still wouldn't be enough..."

I scratched the back of my head, watching Kang Ju-chan apologize with his head bowed—not fourth period, an apology—then caught his shoulder and straightened him up.

"Clench your teeth."

"Huh?"

"Your teeth might go flying, so grit them."

Only then did Kang Ju-chan catch on. He shut his eyes and clenched his jaw. I put a measured amount of strength into my fist and drove it up into his abdomen.

Gotcha.

"Khhuk?!"

It was the first time I'd hit a person, but it wasn't like the comics. No thwack! No bang! There was only the unpleasant sensation of striking something soft that gave with a wet jolt. I looked down at that shaggy head, on his knees, clutching his stomach and coughing, and let out a short laugh.

"This makes us even?"

Kang Ju-chan, his coughing stopped, stared up at me blankly.

"It may sound like an excuse, but I don't remember a thing from first year. Back then it was one stretch after another of being compared to my sister, crushed under her reputation, unable to get my head on straight. So at first I couldn't understand why you were so desperate to pick a fight with me."

I told him what I'd heard from Choi Hak-ju, and what my situation had been at the time, and Kang Ju-chan wore a thoughtful look, rubbing the place I'd hit.

"The truth is, I heard all of it. You glaring at me. You muttering. I figured someday you'd start something, and I was lying in wait to completely wreck you the moment you did. I'm not good-natured enough to quietly leave alone some guy who sends me hostility and picks a fight for no reason. If it had gone that way, the result would have been worse."

"Ha. Haha."

I held out my hand to Kang Ju-chan where he knelt, and after a brief hesitation he took it.

"Like you said, I'm not a hero. I'm just an ordinary student, no different from you, with my hands full keeping my own hide intact. During the field trip I really was... I was busy running, taking only the few people who happened to be near me. By the time I noticed, disaster was about to break. There was no time to warn anyone else. That most of the students followed me and the others out of there—I think that was genuinely luck. ...And I think it's a shame your sister wasn't among them. I do."

"No. I've got eyes, and I've got ears. You stayed to the end, sensed where the students were, and once the ability users arrived you told them the location and then got out. Whatever the process, you at least did something worthy of being called a hero at our school. But I..."

Seeing the dark look on his face, I could tell he'd been buried in guilt, thinking he'd abandoned his own sister and run alone. And that was still going on. But that was a mental ordeal he had to overcome himself. It wasn't my place to say anything about it.

"There. This time I offered my hand first, see? What happened in first year—this makes us even on that, too."

"What? ...Haha. Hahaha. Ow, ow."

"I spent two years eating myself alive. Doesn't that mean I came out behind?"

"In return, you slapped the man who's going to be the greatest ability user in Korea. Add it up and I'm the one who lost, aren't I? Even my dad never slapped me."

"Hm. When you put it that way, I think I came out ahead."

"Right?"

We were grinning at each other when I noticed Franc, up on the water tower, looking down at us with a bright smile.

After that, Kang Ju-chan was added to the five the class had taken to calling the Seoha Family—haah. The Genius Family. Han Go-eun, Su Yu-ri, Kang So-ra, Kim Chang-hyun, and Cho Min-ho.

Whoever came up with that nickname, if I ever met them I wasn't letting it go.

Time passed, and it was the morning of Saturday, May 8th.

A text arrived from Hwayeon, saying she wanted to meet. If she had something to say, she could have said it yesterday, couldn't she? I was rolling around on the bed with Franc in my arms, and I tilted my head, finding it strange that it was a text and not a video call.

Since Hwayeon had returned, my life had been leaving school and heading straight for the Time River Building, then going home late at night. My sister didn't like it. Every time she saw me she puffed her cheeks. Mom, every time she saw me, beamed with a look that said she approved.

She had the face of a woman expecting to see a grandchild before long. If drinking the kimchi broth before the rice was even on the table counted as a skill, Mom was competition-grade. She was only thirty-six. Did she already want to be a grandmother?

...The truth was, last weekend I had given in to Hwayeon and Franc's temptation and spent a truly happy time with Franc in Hwayeon's room. I'd held down the sadism and the excitement, so I hadn't gone wild; I'd put what I'd learned from books into practice and made both Franc and Hwayeon happy. I'd been looking forward to this weekend a little, too, so the suggestion that we meet outside left me somewhat disappointed.

Anyway, if it was a promise to meet, she could have made it last night.

"I believe I can guess why."

"Huh? Really? Why does she want to see me outside?"

"...Because of something Seoha has forgotten."

...? Something I'd forgotten? What had I forgotten? Now that I thought about it, Franc seemed to chat with Hwayeon on the tablet fairly often. Something forgotten... I thought for a moment.

Ah!

"The training ground's finished? ...Hey. Say it. Out loud! Don't make that weird face!"

"Kyaa?!"

I delivered a thorough punishment to the side of that insolent-looking Franc, then went out to Nodeul Island on the Han River at the appointed time. Hwayeon was already there, waiting.

She looked like a pure, demure young lady. A white dress falling past her knees, white flats, her long straight hair left down, a white wide-brimmed hat hiding half her face. She was a painting. I was standing there with my mouth hanging open, admiring the sight, when I suddenly noticed there was one more person beside her in the exact same clothes.

...Madam.

An adult, tall, with a figure that could only be called explosive—but the air about her was as pure and beautiful as a girl's. Twin sisters, the pair of them. That goddess-like charm had every man and woman around them, young and old alike, staring in a daze. It was the weekend, and a great many people had come out. If Cha Soyoung, dressed in a pitch-black suit, hadn't been standing off to the side with a hologram raised and a chilly aura pouring off her, they would have approached long ago.

Hwayeon and Madam had been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sitting demurely on a bench. Seeing that I'd arrived, they stood and came toward me... and Madam's gait was a little unnatural. Limping, if that was the word for it. She wore long silk gloves that covered her to the upper arm, and something felt off, so I scanned her body—and found bruises and contusions carved into her all over.

W-what happened...?

"You kept me waiting. Shall we talk while we walk a little?"

"Ow, ow. Our Seoha's here? Ah, Auntie's a little sore—couldn't we talk while I rest a moment?"

"Shall I let you rest forever?"

"Hic... and they say there's no point in raising a child."

"That isn't something a woman who tried to steal her daughter's man ought to say."

S-she'd said it. Only then did I remember what Franc had meant by the thing I'd forgotten. Since that day, Hwayeon hadn't brought Madam up, and I hadn't wanted to remember, so I'd let it go... This wasn't going to turn into something that had never happened. We'd have to see it resolved.

Madam, dressed to look exactly like a twin, tried to hang herself on my left arm as she limped along, but Hwayeon glared, sharp as a spark, and with a tch Madam backed off.

We walked slowly toward the side of Nodeul Island opposite the farm, and once the presence of other people had faded, Hwayeon spoke. The words were an enormous shock. For a moment my mind went blank.

"W-wait. A concubine? What does that mean?"

"It's the conclusion I reached with Franc, after thinking it through in every way I could for ten days."

As she said it, Madam—still hurting—clung to my back, and Hwayeon glared. Under that cold gaze Madam flinched, but she didn't let go of my arm, and she raised her voice as if she meant to be heard.

"Even so, to say only what you want to say and then tell me to decide whether I'll accept it! Isn't that too much?! Even an animal wouldn't do this! I ask to talk and you refuse, and if I speak you just hit me—honestly!"

On the verge of tears, she pulled off the silk glove wrapping her left arm and showed me the deep blue bruises marked here and there.

"Look at this! Auntie has a regeneration ability too, and she hit me so viciously the bruises won't fade! If we were home, I'd want to take my clothes off and show you the wounds carved all over my body!"

"That's because you try to wriggle out of the situation with wordplay, and nothing else. If this isn't enough, I'll carve more."

Flinch.

...Hwayeon's form of address for her had changed. Sh-she wasn't even calling her Mother anymore? My head rang, and my thoughts spun. At Hwayeon's cold tone Madam flinched again, but she was grumbling again in no time.

"I wasn't refusing to accept it, I was trying to talk it through slowly! And that girl Hwayeon just lunged at me out of nowhere! Settling it with fists because words won't do—Mother didn't raise you that way!"

"Your conduct disqualifies you as a mother. And given what lies between you and me, isn't it strange to address you as Mother at all?"

She answered like that and strode closer, and at the frost coming off her Madam startled and hid behind my back, trembling. How badly had she been beaten, for Madam to be this afraid?

"S-Seoha! Auntie might die! S-save me!"

"Hold on a second. You really threw a punch at Madam?"

I spoke while stopping Hwayeon, who was about to grab her. And Hwayeon nodded, as if it were true.

"Madam's way with words is cunning beyond belief. Enough that even I would have trouble withstanding it—Siha as well. Once she gets started, the odds of being led exactly where she wishes become very high. So I subdued her by force."

"...She's still your mom. I can't forgive using violence on a parent."

When I said it with a hard expression, Hwayeon stepped back a little, as if yielding, and Madam let out a sigh of relief.

"I didn't intend to raise a hand to Madam from the start, either. I meant to resolve it by talking. But Madam was the one who spoke first. She said, 'I suppose I have to be honest now. The time has come to end the relationship of mother and daughter.'"

"What? Really?"

I turned to look at Madam as I asked, and she hemmed and hawed, pinching the edge of her wide-brimmed hat, and gave a small nod.

...My head hurt at a turn of events beyond anything I'd imagined. And anger surged up. She would cut a family tie that easily?

"That's..."

I set a hand on the shoulder of Madam, who had been about to say something, shaped my Phase Power into the pattern of annual rings, and gave only the portion at my hand a light flick—Healing Touch.

Where my hand touched, and all around it, the blackened bruises vanished as if an eraser had been drawn across them, returning to smooth white skin. On her arms and legs it had stopped at bruises, but along her side, her lower belly, her back, and across her chest there were many places where the flesh had split or torn. Places where bone had cracked, too. As I treated the wounds carved here and there over Madam's body, her eyes grew as wide as saucers.

"Hhk?"

Practicing at home to bring down TP consumption had reduced Healing Touch's cost to one percent per use, but with no test subject I hadn't been able to learn how much it actually healed. Apparently contusions over the whole body were nothing to it. Seeing a cracked bone knit in an instant, I thought that even a broken arm or leg could probably be treated in short order.

Ignoring Madam, who was staring at me as if she'd seen a ghost, I looked at Hwayeon.

"I will never acknowledge unfilial conduct between a parent and a child."

"W-w-w-wait a moment? Just now—that was recovery, an abil—you used an ability? Seoha did? How??"

"But injuries taken in a spar are unavoidable, even between parent and child. Madam is Physical Reinforcement, C-Class, so she isn't going to get hurt over nothing, and her body ought to be sturdy. Why not spar one more time? If you get hurt, I'll treat you with Healing Touch. While we're at it, I can check how much my recovery actually heals."

"Acknowledged."

"Eek?!"

She had pounced on me and brought all of this about, and now she was squirming and playing games. I was too angry to stand it. This wasn't a daughter beating her mother. It was a spar between a daughter and a mother who were both Physical Reinforcement ability users.

Hwayeon seemed to read exactly how I felt. She cracked her fingers and slowly approached Madam. Madam had lost even the shield that was me. Frightened, she looked back and forth between us and waved her hands in a panic.

"K-kids, wait a moment! Seoha?! Ah, Auntie has something to say, just lis—"

"Close your mouth. You'll be hurt."

"Kyaa~!"

I didn't think the difference in their bodies was so great that she couldn't have resisted at all, but perhaps because the gap in Phase Power was so overwhelming, Madam couldn't put up much of a fight. Caught by Hwayeon's kicks, she was struck, thrown, and sent tumbling again and again. For an hour she was beaten by those white, pretty legs and sent rolling, then healed, then sent rolling again, then healed, over and over, until she was a mess of dirt—and at some point she gave up resisting, sat down on the bare ground, and started crying and throwing a tantrum.

"Uuuu. A-Auntie can't live without Seoha, I said! Just kill me! I'd rather die! I'll write in my will that I died because of Seoha and my wicked little daughter, and I'll kill myself! Waaaaah!"

Madam sat sprawled in the posture of a daughter scolded by her mother, genuinely crying as she looked at me, and today—truly—I sighed more than once.

"Sniff. M-me too..."

"If you don't want to, then don't. Seoha's ability is as far from what you currently know as heaven is from earth. Even without your support, before long Seoha will be able to protect his own body by himself. When that time comes, your worth will be no different from trash in a gutter. It won't matter in the slightest whether you're there or not."

"Whaaat?! H-how can there be such a thing!"

Perhaps because she had been hit and rolled for an hour, every bit of pretense and cunning had been stripped from her. She shouted at Hwayeon with the look of someone who believed every word of it was the truth.

"So accept it."

"Th-then who is that other primary wife? If you let me meet her...!"

"She is someone you can never see without Seoha's help. But if it's proof you want, I can show you that."

Hwayeon indicated Madam, whose face was full of disbelief that such a thing could exist, and called Franc in a small voice.

"Franc."

With that, Franc—who had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been floating in the sky—drew on two thousand TP and hurled lightning down at Madam.

Crack!

"Kkghk!?"

Struck by a bolt from a clear sky, Madam twitched and trembled, scorched and charred here and there. Whether they had arranged it beforehand and portioned out the TP before the shot, she let out a pained groan as the lightning swept her body, then collapsed onto the ground and looked at me with eyes that asked what in the world was happening.

Franc moved to stand before her and brought two index fingers together in front of her eyes, raising electricity. When an arc leapt up in empty air, where there was nothing, Madam startled and used a skill. A detection technique... T-Resist, was it. But she seemed to have sensed nothing at all, and she began to look around with a lost face.

"H-how...?"

I stepped up to her, laid a recovery over her, and put on a look of genuine disappointment.

"I'm disappointed in you, Madam. I didn't think you'd go that far... Adding in that you forced yourself on me, I think I'm going to end up hating you quite a lot."

"Uu. It isn't like that... Nngh."

She seemed to feel that if things kept on this way she really would be in trouble. She staggered to her feet, took my hand, and opened her mouth as if begging me to listen.

"That's why I've been saying since earlier to listen to Auntie for a moment... Haah, this really is an important story. It isn't something to tell carelessly outside. So let's go home for now. All right?"

"..."

"I won't do anything strange. Just listen. This is something I mean for Seoha to hear as well. ...Please."

"All right. But if you get any strange ideas, Franc and Hwayeon won't sit still. And this time, neither will I."

"Yes. Yes!"

Perhaps thinking she had barely won my agreement, Madam looked down at her ruined outfit, sighed, brushed the dirt from her soil-stained dress, and walked toward the car parked in the lot. I watched her go and asked Hwayeon,

"Is there something she's been hiding?"

"I don't know. I thought it might be a ploy to buy time, but looking at her now, it doesn't seem so. For now, we should hear her out."