Chapter 134: Hwayeon's Return, and... (4)

We took Madam's car and headed for her house in Bangbae-dong.

On the way I asked her more than once what was going on, but she kept her mouth clamped shut and only shook her head, so I got nothing out of her. She turned it around instead and asked how I was able to use a recovery ability — and when Hwayeon, rare for her, snapped in irritation, Madam shut her mouth and did nothing but watch the two of us.

She sent me a look begging for help. I had no choice. I sighed inwardly, took Hwayeon's hand to settle her, and put the question to Madam myself.

"Don't just shake your head. Tell me the reason. The reason. Otherwise all I can think is that you're cooking up something bad."

"That's just it. It's the sort of thing I can only say somewhere with perfect security in place......"

"And that somewhere is the training hall at your house?"

"Mm. It was built from the same signal-blocking material they use on the survivor-screening floor of the Ability User Alliance, so outside signals can't get in, and they can't get out either. When what you're sharing is classified, there's no place more suitable."

Even as she explained, she watched me holding Hwayeon's hand with open envy. This, after she had been white as a sheet and shaking all over only a moment ago.

The instant we arrived at the house, Hwayeon seized Madam's arm and half dragged her down into the underground training hall.

How stifled must she have been, to give Juhan nothing but the briefest silent bow and sweep straight past him?

Juhan had started after Madam in startlement — she looked thoroughly bedraggled — then stopped at my greeting and turned to me.

"Hello, Grandfather."

"Welcome. Sir Jung Seoha."

"You can call me Seoha, if that's easier. Something's come up — could you see to it that no one comes to the training hall?"

"Of course. Until you send word, I shall permit no one to approach."

Somehow I didn't think he was going to accept being told to use my name alone. Was it pride in his profession — that he could not bring himself to speak carelessly to someone who had come as a guest?

"Seoha!"

Hwayeon was calling me from over that way. I bowed my head to Juhan.

"I'll be going, then."

He gave no answer. He only bent quietly at the waist.

"All right. Let's hear it."

Half shoved by Hwayeon, Madam went down sideways with a splat. She covered her eyes with one hand and began to cry through her mouth alone, sniffling, with no tears in it. Hwayeon bristled at the sight, fist clenched, and made to close in, and I stopped her.

"Hwayeon, don't. Just stay there."

I crouched down in front of Madam and spoke.

"Judging by what you've done, and the way you've been talking, I don't imagine the story you dragged us all this way to tell is anything ordinary. So tell it. Depending on what it is, I may truly not forgive you — so no more games."

She studied my resolute face for a moment, let out a deep sigh, and combed her fingers through hair left a wreck from taking a lightning bolt and tumbling every which way.

That nonchalance had Hwayeon's temper climbing; she could hardly keep still. Dressed up like some pure little maiden and acting the violent girl — I really wished she would ease off on that.

"Hwayeon. Aren't you getting dragged into Madam's mind games right now?"

"......!"

At that, Hwayeon shut her mouth tight, set her face cold, and took up a place behind me to glare at Madam.

Madam let out a small sigh at how quickly Hwayeon had recovered her composure. Then she flipped her skirt up — Hwayeon nearly kicked her — baring a pair of white string panties in full, wiped her hands briskly on the lining of her dress, and stroked my cheek. Hwayeon nearly kicked her then, too.

"When you're like this, how is Auntie supposed to hold out and not fall for our Seoha?"

Smiling kindly in that ruined state, like a princess smeared in dirt, she felt, somehow, as if she had peeled away one layer of a mask.

"......"

"......"

"......"

And at the story that followed, Hwayeon and I — and even Franc — were left with nothing to say.

Not her daughter. A clone? A duplicated human? A clone...... Why? For what?

Madam herself was a C-Class Physical Reinforcement ability user whom modern science could do nothing about, missiles aside, and she possessed Regeneration and Immunity Enhancement on top of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it. Biological poison, mineral poison, disease — almost nothing worked on that body.

No. Before any of that — Hwayeon is Madam's clone?!

I glanced up at Hwayeon, still glaring at Madam with a blank face, and asked again.

"Why did you do it?"

"It wasn't on purpose, you know? It was nothing but an accident. A result."

By the explanation that followed, when Madam resolved twenty-two years ago to have a child, she induced superovulation, harvested a number of eggs, and attempted in vitro fertilization with sperm selected against odds of one in hundreds of billions.

That much was widely known. Twenty-two years ago, criticism had been swelling against an unmarried woman president who held the office without a family of her own, and to quiet that opinion she had resolved to live as a single mother. The sort of thing those who know, know — and those who don't, hardly know at all.

I bent my attention to what came next. Superior sperm had been chosen, the harvested eggs put to in vitro fertilization, and of thirty attempts, twenty-nine had failed.

"But there was one egg. By the attending doctor's meddling, fertilization was attempted on it with no sperm at all."

"......And that was Hwayeon?"

"Yes. I don't even know how an egg with no sperm in it began to divide. But Auntie believes Hwayeon was born so that this situation could come to be. If she had never been born, or if she had truly been conceived from ordinary sperm and born that other way, then neither I, nor that differently born Hwayeon, would ever have approached our Seoha. We would have lived without knowing he existed. We never would have met at all."

Wasn't that far too results-oriented a way to think?

"Don't lie. You would have taken Seoha no matter what it took."

"......Tch."

My head was blank. And yet Hwayeon didn't seem particularly shocked. Was it only me?

From what I knew, a clone — a duplicated human — offered no real gain against the cost of making one. The person involved disliked, in their own way, the existence of someone identical to themselves, and the clone stood a good chance of coming to hate the original as well. The one point in the original's favor was organ transplantation with a zero percent rejection rate, and set against that the bad points were beyond counting. Assassinating the original and putting the clone forward in their place, for one. Which meant there was no way Madam had deliberately made a clone. Deliberately made Hwayeon.

Hwayeon, Madam's clone......? Then had I been in love with Madam? The thought arrived, and with it the realization that the feelings I held toward Madam, the air of her, were why I had so often mistaken the two of them for each other.

In any case, Madam said that for reasons she herself could not name, the sight of Hwayeon in the midst of that inexplicable cell division had struck her, instinctively, as this child. She had implanted Hwayeon in her womb, carried the pregnancy, and given birth ten months later.

"Honestly, I was a little curious, too. A child born not by artificial insemination according to ordinary science, but for some reason no one could name — a human being identical to me. If she grew up in an environment different from mine, what would she become?"

What is this......

I dropped my head in the confusion and covered my face with both hands, and I felt Madam's hand stroking my hair.

"So our Seoha doesn't need to carry anything like a guilty conscience, or a sense of sin. Auntie and Hwayeon aren't mother and daughter."

"So that was it."

Hwayeon, having spoken, nodded, and went on as if the news sat well with her.

"I thought that point strange myself. They say family resembles family, but I resembled you to an abnormal degree. Match the clothes and the hairstyle, and aside from Seoha there would be no one who could tell us apart at a glance."

All at once I remembered the first time I saw Madam. Even then, they had looked so alike that I had wondered if she might be a clone.

So she had jumped me with this fact already in mind?

"I will not call you Mother."

"......!"

I startled at Hwayeon's declaration and looked up at her. She was nodding, with the face of someone who had understood at last.

"I spent a long time agonizing over the reason for my birth. Brooding on it. If I am Madam's clone, then that agony means nothing."

"Even so, Madam is the one who gave birth to you......"

"I was born by borrowing Madam's womb, but I do not think that alone is grounds to call her Mother. One cannot call oneself Mother. And even if I count the bond of having been raised, Madam is absolutely not a person I could call a good mother."

"That's right."

Madam nodded as well, as if she accepted what Hwayeon had said.

My head rang and ached, as if someone had set a tin washbasin over it and would not stop striking. Was I the abnormal one, or were Hwayeon and Madam?

Madam, who had been chiming in with Hwayeon, told us to wait a moment, went into a small room attached to the training hall, and brought several sheets of paper out of a large safe to show me.

"Look at this."

It was a medical file.

"What do you think, Seoha? Do you believe a situation like this still holds as a mother-and-daughter relationship?"

I set the papers down quietly and spoke to her.

"The two of you are not the same person. You are each a different self. Hwayeon is unmistakably the daughter you bore in pain, and you are Hwayeon's mother. That isn't only what I think. It's a fact most people in this country would acknowledge."

"But what these papers prove is that Hwayeon is my clone. What our Seoha says may be right, ethically. Genetically, it's wrong. Hwayeon and I are not mother and daughter. We are the same person."

She cupped my cheek, lightly, and tipped my face up. Studying my expression, she smiled, soft.

"Our Seoha loves Hwayeon, doesn't he? So Auntie has no thought of getting in the way of that. I only wish to be allowed to stay at our Seoha's side."

"......And yet a moment ago, when you heard the word concubine, you resisted."

"Hohoho. Well, a concubine is better than simply being together, and a wife is better than a concubine. Isn't that obvious? Auntie is only like this because if our Seoha likes Hwayeon, that's the same as liking me!"

Hwayeon looked from my sighing face to Madam's smiling one, and then she spoke, quietly.

"Then the conversation returns to the beginning. Decide. Will you become a concubine and receive even a portion of Seoha's love, or give up all of it?"

They're not even going to ask what I think?!

Madam, Hwayeon, and Franc left the training hall and disappeared together into some room, and I sat blankly in the reception room on the second floor.

I understood why Madam had never revealed that Hwayeon was her clone. Human cloning was governed by a worldwide prohibition. More than that...... what was I supposed to do?

By Confucian reckoning, Hwayeon and Madam were mother and daughter. Scientifically they were no different from twins, so accepting the two of them would not be a problem genetically......

I didn't know.

I was staring blankly up at a ceiling patterned like a Persian carpet when Madam — identical to Hwayeon — came into the reception room.

"So this is where you were."

Madam was imitating Hwayeon. The cold face, the cold voice, the cold manner of speech. Had I not possessed Spatial Perception, I would have been taken in without a hope of escape. It was a perfect match.

"Our business is finished. Let us go back."

"......What are you doing, Madam?"

"Madam? What are you talking about?"

The slight crease of her brow, the words, the expression — truly identical to Hwayeon. Identical enough that I wondered if she had studied for it.

"Don't play games. Who do you think I am?"

"Nngh...... How did you catch me? Even Juhan fell for it completely."

The amount of Phase Power, obviously! How could three million and eleven million ever be the same?

As if she took herself for fully found out, Madam let the expression go and put on a look that said this was not how it was supposed to go. Hwayeon came in behind her and spoke.

"It has been decided. I will not forgive you if you defy my word from here on. You are a concubine, and you will serve me and Franc, the lawful wives."

"Tch."

"......You made a bet? On my reaction?"

"Yes. If you were taken in, Madam would stand level with us. If you were not, the relationship would be a vertical one."

A rigged bet. For all I knew, Madam would be filing a protest later.

Aaah. I was past knowing. Shocking revelations, one after another, and my head was a tangle. With no sense of what I was feeling, Madam launched herself into my arms and started rubbing her cheek against my chest.

"Lord Seohaaa~ Please accept this humble concubine's night service~!"

Hwayeon, who had gone stiff at Madam's antics, came on with a growl and a momentum fit to crush her, and seized her by the shoulder. Franc, behind Hwayeon, looked faintly angry as well.

"Get off him."

"Oh my? Don't you know a concubine's actual work is to idle about, fed and kept, as her lord's plaything?"

"What kind of nonsense is that!"

"A concubine's role has been defined that way since ancient times!"

"Don't be ridiculous. Go back to the Blue House and devise a way to protect Seoha!"

"Hmph~! I already took care of eeeverything, you know? You're the one who ought to run like a dog and earn some money for Seoha!"

......I don't know.

From that day on, Madam contacted me through the Certifier to say she had heard everything about me from Hwayeon and Franc, and she begged me to accept her.

But I still could not be convinced, and I could not bring myself to accept it, and my head hurt, so I went out of my way to avoid them.

I left their messages on read. I didn't answer the phone. If Spatial Perception picked up a car with Hwayeon or Madam in it, I took the long way around.

My head understood their claim. My heart did not. Could twenty-one years lived as mother and daughter be denied so simply?

If they could deny twenty-one years of bond, then my bond with them, too......

......

Franc had not expected me to be this sensitive. While I spent my days avoiding Hwayeon and Madam, she only watched my mood. I passed the weekdays like a man walking on thin ice, and on Friday afternoon, on the way home from school, Hwayeon kidnapped me.

She didn't pull up in a car, the way she usually did. She came flying in like a storm on B-Class Physical Reinforcement, and there was no dodging it.

The place she dragged me to was Madam's mansion.

Juhan was not there. The bodyguards were not there. The maid sisters were not there. Only Madam and Hwayeon.

"I told your mother and father that you and I would be in a training camp together over the weekend. You don't need to go home until Sunday."

With those words, Hwayeon set about persuading me, Madam and Franc alongside her. They plied me with every sweet nothing, and — as if they had heard it from Mom — laid out only the foods I liked, tempting me through my stomach. They came at me with their bodies, in underwear that barely covered what mattered. And all the while they listed the advantages of accepting Madam as a concubine, and recited, through the entire weekend without once letting me sleep, everything that might happen if I refused. I finally exploded, thrashing in sheer irritation, and Hwayeon subdued me by force, pinned me under her body, and spoke.

Said with that earnest face, it was more than I could hold against. I sank. How was I supposed to endure the sad face of Hwayeon, who had grown up without her family's love?

I accepted their pleading in a spirit of pure resignation. But anger was still anger.

Worked up to the very crown of my head by a persuasion laced with the three of them forcing my hand, I threw myself on Franc and Hwayeon and took them, driving Mana Sieve for all it was worth.

By then my Phase Power had risen by 9,600, to a total of 21,000 ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— a breath from the 25,000 of D-Class. I converted the whole of that Phase Power, recovering as it did by one percent every ten minutes, into semen, and I flung the two of them without pause into a river of pleasure.

They were the ones who had set out to persuade me by tempting me with their bodies in the first place!

I raised a monstrous cock glowing blue and poured semen into their wombs for all I was worth. When those wombs swelled to their limit and would take no more, I took their throats and dumped semen into their stomachs in thick, gushing torrents.

Having filled them all the way to the stomach, I took their assholes as well, packing rectum and colon full of cloudy white fluid that glowed blue with the TP steeped in it.

"Huff. Huff."

I had made Franc's belly and Hwayeon's like those of women ten months pregnant. Then I turned toward Madam, who had been sitting in a corner of the room, still as a dead mouse.

Semen sloshed in them, packed full above and below, and Hwayeon and Franc trembled, unable even to draw a proper breath. Watching that, Madam had gone rigid with fear, and with every step I took toward her she welled with tears like some frail virgin who knew nothing at all.

"S-Seoha. Auntie, Auntie is—!"

"No more talk."

"Eek!?"

I could hardly leave her be. She was the ringleader of this whole affair.

I sat on the sofa to wait for my TP to recover, and looked on without expression at the two women — identical, like twins — sprawled in the pool of semen on the living room floor, smeared in it from end to end.

That pool had formed when the semen filling Franc's spirit body spilled back out. Franc herself had lost consciousness. She floated in the air, flickering slowly in and out.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Then Madam, who had her face buried in the pool, twitched, and lifted her head. Her face was one whose brain had melted under pleasure. Tears and drool ran in strings as she clutched a belly swollen like a mountain and crawled to me on all fours.

She seized my left foot, slowly lifted it, and spoke in a voice that slurred and spilled.

"I... I'm... L-Lord Seoha's... s-sex... slaaave..."

She put out her tongue and began to lick between my toes. Hwayeon crawled over after her, laboring, dropped to her belly, and started on my right foot, while Franc slipped in between my legs and pressed a kiss to the tip of my cock.

So this is a triple crown.

Without ever meaning to, I received from the three of them a vow to live the rest of their lives looking only at me, and I bestowed on them yet another baptism of pleasure.

Some three days after I had brought all three of them to submission at once, the Phase Stone vest carried me over the line, and in the middle of class at school I rose to D-Class.

The moment my Phase Power reached 25,000 and I became D-Class was — how to put it — a feeling of the domain of my mind heaving, and opening wide.

Just as when enlightenment had granted me Spatial Perception, a sense of omnipotence filled me from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes, and on top of that a strange sensation pricked my fingertips, as if I might be able to take space in my hand.

"Jung Seoha. Are you all right?"

The elderly math teacher, standing behind the lectern, called my name, and the students in class turned to look at me.

"I'm sorry. I'll step out for a moment."

At my answer the math teacher said, "Go on," and resumed the lesson. I took Franc, who had been sitting through class with me, and moved quickly up to the roof.

"Seoha?"

At her call I looked at her and grinned.

"I'm D-Class."

"Ah! Congratulations!"

At the news that I had made D-Class, Franc was so delighted she looked ready to leap, and she came into my arms.

"Thanks. I didn't think I'd make D-Class this easily. This is all because Hwayeon got me that Phase Stone vest, isn't it?"

In a pleased mood I turned on the Certifier, sent Hwayeon a short message that I had just risen to D-Class, and sent one to Yeongeun as well.

Franc flew about me with a look of pure delight, then clasped my hand tight, eyes shining, and asked.

"What does it feel like, now that you have risen to D-Class?"

"This...... I don't know how to put it. Mana Sieve doesn't feel any different. Spatial Perception seems to have changed a little."

"In what way has it changed?"

"Mm. First, the range grew a bit. It's 1.5 kilometers now. And...... I guess I'd have to say it feels like I could move space with my hand."

I opened my right hand and looked down at the palm, then closed my eyes and called back the sensation I had felt when I crossed over.

Was this what it would feel like to touch a gas, moderately condensed? A resistance unlike touching water, and unlike, again, the feeling of touching Franc's spirit body with a hand that was not concentrating Mana Sieve, circled in my palm.

Mm. Somehow it felt dangerous. I called the sensation up and wiggled my fingers, and Franc covered her chest with both hands, flushed, and inched away.

No, no. Not that kind of dangerous game.

That was why I had left the classroom. It wasn't quite a premonition, but if the feeling was a dangerous one, then a classroom full of ordinary kids was dangerous. I had decided, too, not to ignore a sense of crisis like this.

A strange sensation ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠seemed to bead at the tips of my fingers. I clenched my fist and opened it, then laid my hand upon the railing—

Franc and I stared, mouths hanging open, at the railing emptied in that semicircle from the point my hand had touched.

My training ground, spread across Shinchon-dong, Oya-dong, and Dunjeon-dong, was built so it could not be seen from outside: concrete blocks stacked three layers deep to a height of three meters, barbed wire run along the top, the whole of the grounds enclosed.

Was the wall alone ten kilometers? Something like that. The land inside had all been turned over, and triangular slate roofs had been raised here and there against photography from the sky.

While the ground was being turned, the soil had been gathered into hundreds of mounds, three to four meters high, scattered all over the place. When I asked what they were for, my sister told me to use them for concealment and cover, or as targets if I needed them.

A chime. The Certifier finished measuring my Phase Power, letters rose in the hologram window, and a mark of D was stamped in one corner of the screen.

Hwayeon, Yeongeun, and Franc had been waiting on the Certifier. The instant the three of them saw the D-Class certification, fond smiles rose on their faces.

"To gain a new ability even in becoming D-Class — as expected, Seoha, you are remarkable. It's almost a shame that remarkable is the only word I have."

"Of course he's remarkable. He's the man who brought even me to my knees. Hehehe."

Hwayeon creased her brow, faintly, at Yeongeun's self-praise. Left alone, she looked ready to scold her, so I slipped quickly between the two of them and asked Hwayeon.

"Is there a set time when you gain an ability?"

"Mm...... Ordinarily you gain one ability when you awaken, and an additional ability when you become E-Class. And when you become C-Class, you gain one more. In my case, I gained Regeneration at E-Class, and Immunity Enhancement Plus at C-Class."

"I gained Immunity Enhancement at E-Class, but at C-Class I gained Regeneration Plus."

I listened to Hwayeon and Yeongeun, and tilted my head.

"What's a plus?"

"Think of it as the standard that divides the strength of a secondary ability. There is Plus, +, and Double Plus, ++, and Triple Plus, +++. The more pluses attached, the stronger the effect."

"I see."

Yeongeun — Madam, that is — had begged so earnestly after that day to be called affectionately by her name that in the end I called her by it. Not in front of other people, of course.

In any case, Yeongeun, who now knew every one of my abilities except the matter of the Soul Stone, looked at Franc with open curiosity, but her attitude did not change.

I had privately wondered whether she meant to research Franc. That attitude let me set the worry down.

In its place, her eyes had flashed with an open hunger for my child, and she had taken a hit from Hwayeon for it, and gotten lightly cooked by Franc's electricity besides.

"But in our Seoha's case there is no precedent, and that frightens me a little. From the very first awakening he had a Search ability at nearly F-Class level, and every ability gained on class-up has been at base capability. Could our Seoha be a child of the gods?"

At the nonsense tacked on after Yeongeun's analysis, Franc nodded with a grave face.

No. Don't believe that. I'm human.

Hwayeon folded her arms, the motion lifting the full breasts beneath her blouse, and asked in a serious tone.

"You said that the moment you became D-Class, you had the feeling you could take space in your hand."

"Yeah."

"And that during the break, on the roof, you called that feeling back, and the moment you set your hand on the railing, space trembled slightly and the railing crumbled away."

"Right. Until I set my hand on the railing, there was nothing wrong with the hand. Not a sign of anything."

Yeongeun set her hands on her hips, listened to the two of us, then tilted her head and spoke.

"If we take the simple view, one could say Spatial Perception has changed into an ability of Spatial Manipulation. Our Seoha...... Seoha?"

......Space. Manipulation?

The instant I heard Yeongeun's words — the instant I heard that phrase — the passage where Hwayeon had gained her enlightenment began to replay in my ears, endlessly.

As if the light had gone out, the world around me went black, and high in the sky above my head I saw a vision — a vast vortex of Phase Power, turning.

I close my eyes.

At the same moment, everything within range of Spatial Perception engraves itself in my mind, as if I could reach out and take it. Hwayeon and Yeongeun's bodies pour in as though coming apart, their physical structures streaming through my head, and Franc's soul inside the Soul Stone — and the spirit body extending from that soul, bearing Phase Power — feels as if I could close my hand around it.

A soft rustling fills my ears without end, the sound of Phase Power in motion. I take in the information flooding my mind in a blank daze, and the Phase Power spread through my entire body gathers, all at once, into my head.

Ah. So this is it.

I understood, by instinct, how the ability was used. Slowly I raised a hand and pointed at the nearest of the mounds heaped here and there.

At that sight, the three women swallowed hard.

"This is Spatial Manipulation."

I gave them a crooked grin, felt my TP scrape empty, and blacked out.