Entering D-Class (2)
……Huh?
A dull buzz was ringing through my skull. I opened my eyes, and the ground was standing on end—no. I was the one lying flat.
My sense of balance, knocked clean out of joint, snapped back so fast the world swam. I groaned and pushed myself up, and Franc—face rigid, whipping her gaze in every direction as she kept watch—burst into tears and threw herself into my arms.
"Seoha! You fool! Why would you attempt something so dangerous!! What were you going to do if disaster struck!!"
"Ahaha. Sorry, sorry. If I'd shot it into the sky and it went off nearby, who knows what would've happened? That's why I tried to erase it with Spatial Manipulation."
"This is no occasion for laughter! What if it had detonated close at hand!! What would you have done then?!!"
Whoa. Franc furious like that, her face a wreck of tears, left me with nothing to say. My head was still throbbing and my vision swayed, but I patted her back for all I was worth and smoothed her hair, doing everything I could to soothe her.
"I'm really sorry. I just had a feeling it would work, that's all. Don't cry, okay? If you cry, I get sad too. I'll be truly careful from now on, so nothing like this happens again. Okay?"
Once I started comforting her, the hurt seemed to surge up in earnest. Franc sank to the ground, covered her eyes, and sobbed outright. Watching her shoulders heave as she wept at the top of her voice, I felt a cold sweat break through the nervous one already on me.
"Th-the Mana Bullet wasn't on purpose either. I was just thinking through the structure of a finishing move, figuring I'd practice the basics a little, and the moment I looked away, Phase Power suddenly gathered and…."
"I will not hear it! Seoha is a fool!"
Franc flung the words as if she couldn't bear another one, tears flying, and vanished into the Soul Stone.
"F-Franc?"
Ah…. My TP was scraped empty, and Franc was in a full sulk—no answer, however I called. Whatever will I'd had to practice was gone. I just went home.
God. What was I even thinking, living like this? Turning it over on the walk back, I realized I had never pulled a stunt that insane, and that was saying something. After all that singsong—hide your abilities, hide your abilities—I go and practice Mr. Hwa Joong-kang's finishing move right there.
What? No surveillance, no eyes on you, so a minute would be fine? You lunatic. Practice for a minute and drop your entire family into a crisis? This isn't even the Phase World, and you condensed five thousand TP in Mana Mode? Did you take a round to the head?
No wonder Franc was that angry. A Mana Bullet in Mana Mode hits about a hundred times harder than an ordinary elemental user's attribute round. Which meant the Mana Cannon I'd fired on five thousand TP carried roughly two and a half times the force of Mr. Hwa Joong-kang's two-hundred-thousand-TP finishing move.
But you can't look at two and a half times ten and two and a half times two hundred thousand as if they were the same thing. Like Franc had shouted—if it had gone off nearby, I'd have died where I stood, no question. Mr. Hwa Joong-kang's finishing move is simply the idea of burning something away. Mine is closer to pulverizing. To disintegrating. A far nastier breed.
Anyway. I hadn't even known what shape an explosion of my massively condensed Phase Power would take, and I'd let the words finishing move ring in my ears and fallen for them like a moron, inviting the disaster myself. Honestly…. I couldn't face Franc.
The one mercy was that my idea had actually landed. I'd looked over the spot where I thought Spatial Manipulation and the Mana Cannon had collided, and there wasn't a trace—not on the ground, not around it, not on the rooftops. Spatial Perception had swallowed the Mana Cannon and nothing else.
It had been possible, I figured, because long-range Spatial Manipulation can be opened anywhere inside the range of Spatial Perception, and because the collapse Spatial Manipulation produces is a concept that outstrips a Mana Bullet. I was probably right. My gut was saying so. My hunch was saying so. Even so, there was nothing to be done about the self-loathing and the shame of having pulled something that stupid.
"Haa…."
"Why the sigh? Did what I taught you not come out?"
I'd come home, washed up, and sat in the living room sighing, and my sister—in nothing but a tank top and short shorts, mid-yoga—turned and asked. At the sight of her, completely unguarded, irritation surged up out of nowhere.
"Are you an exhibitionist? Why are you so desperate to show your figure off to strangers?"
"H-huh? Who's looking, besides you?"
"What do you mean, who? You're doing yoga in the living room with the curtains thrown wide open for the whole world!"
"Wh-wh-what are you talking about! I'm doing it because the wool carpet's soft! The rug in my room's too thin—if I just do it there, my knees hurt! And what's wrong with the curtains…."
"You're that smart, and you don't realize that if you dress like that, the pervert bastards in the building across the way can peep at you with telescopes and binoculars?!"
"……?!"
She startled at my snap, darted behind the curtain, and peered at the building opposite. Then she let out a small scream and fled into her room.
Of course she did. There was a bastard on the veranda across the way, peeping this direction through an astronomical telescope. I'd smash him myself, but unless I shocked her like this, she'd keep walking around completely unguarded.
I clenched my jaw and got up off the sofa. That pervert's place… Building 107, Unit 902? Wait right there, you voyeuristic freak. Democracy's out for delivery.
If you're going to peep, at least don't get caught—the way I don't. The son of a bitch was just staring, right out in the open!
I confirmed the bastard's apartment with Spatial Perception and was pulling my shoes on when my sister came out of her room in considerably more modest clothes, face flushed, and asked.
"Haa…. Where are you going?"
"To smash the bastard who was peeping."
"What?!"
I said it through clenched teeth, and her eyes blew wide as saucers. She rushed over and grabbed my arm.
"N-no! If you use your strength on ordinary people, it'll be a disaster!"
"Who said anything about using strength? I'm just going to make him eat a soulfuck so he never peeps into someone else's home again."
"A soul…? What does that mean? Anyway, no!"
"Oh, for—so you want me to just leave him?! Leave him like that and he'll peep again!!"
Faced with my anger, she startled, then pulled me into a hug as if to soothe me, patted my back, and whispered.
"Seoha. Just listen to your sister for a second, okay?"
She took my hand, led me to the living room, drew the curtains, sat beside me, and slowly stroked my hand.
"You hated seeing me doing yoga in such careless clothes, didn't you?"
"……."
"And you're angry at the people peeping at that."
"……."
"I don't know what happened outside that sent you home this angry, but ordinary people might be frightened—scared, even terrified—by a single word you say in anger, a single thing you do. An ability user can become that fearsome, and right now you're one of the most famous ability users in Korea."
"Works for me. With an image like that, sending peeping sex offenders like him to an early grave gets a lot easier."
At the cold tone she gave a small tremble, then drew my head to her chest and started slowly stroking my hair.
"It mustn't be that way. The one who punishes wrongdoing has to be the law. If it isn't—if someone with authority, with force, deals out private punishment—the world will be wrecked by those who hold the power."
"……."
"And I want my Seoha to be someone people respect, not someone they fear."
The moment she finished, light poured from the Soul Stone, and Franc slipped out of it.
"That is my feeling as well……."
Franc, her body fully formed, flew to my side and, just like my sister, started stroking my head. My sister, who could see only the glow, blinked, glanced around, and asked me.
"Was Franc inside the Soul Stone?"
"……Yeah."
My sister's persuasion had thinned it a little, but rage still clung thick and sticky in my chest. Before, there'd been a sense of handing my mind over to anger out of shame at my own idiocy. Now it was pure rage. I could not forgive the man who had peeped at my sister.
I got to my feet and opened my mouth.
"Even so, I still can't forgive him."
"Seoha……."
"So you and Franc want to just leave that man as he is? A criminal who peeps professionally, with an astronomical telescope?"
I laid it out with a tone like I'd chew him up—how, through Spatial Perception, I'd watched that criminal bastard grin grotesquely while he watched my sister's yoga. Franc and my sister couldn't find a word. They only sighed.
"Report him to the police and he'll just get a warning, and that'll be the end of it. Or they'll turn it around and ask if we even have evidence."
"I'll be careful from now on……."
"No. My blood's running backward. I don't want to just leave it."
But I hated that sad look on her face, too. I wanted her to always be the bright, spirited sister.
"……Fine. I won't make any real threats. I'll just go and quietly talk some sense into him. That work?"
"……Okay."
She said it, but she'd clearly decided she couldn't stop me anymore.
I stood before the peeper's front door and looked inside. The place was damn huge. They said Building 107, of the twelve in the complex, had the largest floor plans and the best views, ran two elevators, and held only two units a floor—the most expensive building of the lot. It was true.
Inside, a guy who looked roughly my age was pacing the veranda, spewing garbage.
"Fuck. She closed the curtains again, I can't see a thing! Why doesn't she just strip naked and spread her legs wide? It's her own house—what's there to hide, that she's wearing clothes and closing the curtains on top of it!"
That son of a bitch….
My teeth ground of their own accord. Good thing I'd told Franc to stay by my sister. I forced my breath steady, smoothed my expression, and pressed the bell.
Ding-dong.
The chime spread through the apartment. He flinched, looked back and forth between my direction and our home, then moved to the living room and picked up the intercom.
A camera sat above the doorbell, a red lamp blinking just over it, so my face would be showing on his intercom. And he opens with rude, casual speech to someone he's never met?
"I came with business for you. The one who was peeping into our home with a telescope. Open the door."
The connection cut along with his flustered voice. He hadn't expected me to show up in person. He set the intercom down, floundered, then bolted for his room, dove into bed, and yanked the blanket over his head.
If you're going to tremble like that, unable to tell up from down, just because someone came looking, then don't do it in the first place.
Annoyed, I leaned on the bell every few seconds for fifteen minutes, and he got annoyed too in the end. He kicked his door open and flung the front door wide.
"Stop ringing it, you son of a bitch!!"
The guy who came flying out, face packed with irritation, was five-foot-seven and skinny as a rail—the opposite of me.
"Wh-what! So what! Why the hell are you making a scene like this?!"
"……I live in Building 105, Unit 803. You kept peeping at my sister through a telescope, didn't you. You know that's a crime?"
I'd deliberately switched Mana Vision off, so to him I'd just look like a peer of about the same height, with a bit more build on me.
"What?! Who peeped! I-I didn't, okay?! You got proof?! Fuck, some pathetic piece of shit…. Get lost!"
He moved to shut the door, so I spun up Mana Mode and held it open by force.
"Apologize."
"L-let go of this, you bastard!"
This son of a bitch…. Like I don't swear because I don't know how.
"I said apologize. If a pathetic loser who got so scared he holed up in his room and trembled just because someone came looking actually knew how to be afraid of people, he wouldn't commit crimes like peeping."
Setting aside how I knew, he seemed to think he'd been insulted. He trembled, then let go of the door and shouted.
"F-fuck! Y-you, you! Do you know who my dad and mom are!? They're people who could crush someone like you underfoot like an ant!"
"Oh my, is that so? Fuck, you're about my age, and the best you can manage is calling for Mommy and Daddy? What can you even do? Peep into other people's homes with a telescope? Jerk off while staring at women?"
I sneered, light as anything, and the loser's face went beet red.
"Building 105, Unit 803, you said?! I'm telling my dad, and he won't let this go!"
"You're not a grade-schooler, and at your age you want to go Daddy, Daddy, please scold that guy, whining like that? Aren't you embarrassed? At least I never pulled a Mommy Call in a fight. Know some shame, you pathetic bastard."
"Y-you fffuck…!"
"Enough. If you don't want this to blow up, get on your knees and apologize nicely. Then I'll let it go."
"Y-you, you!!"
Threats didn't land either. The loser ground his teeth with a face like his rage was about to burst, straining to shut the door, but he couldn't overcome my strength with Mana Mode running. He just grunted and strained like he was taking a shit.
"Then again, if you were the type with the sense to apologize when told, you wouldn't have pulled this pathetic stunt in the first place. What can I expect from a loser like you. Anyway—peep one more time and get caught by my eyes, and I'll sue you with the evidence photos I've collected, so watch yourself. Got it? You're not the only one peeping. I've been waiting to round them all up and feed them a soulfuck."
At the threat, the loser shrieked convulsively.
"I-I'll report you to the security office, so shut the door and get lost already, you fucker!"
I grinned to piss him off and let go of the door. It slammed shut right in front of him.
Bang—and the moment the door closed, the loser startled at the sound of his own making and fell on his ass. So pathetic I couldn't even find words.
Anyway, the bait was in the water. Please, bite. Okay?
The prey took it faster than I'd expected. An hour after I got home, a piggish middle-aged man in his fifties with half his hair gone, and a woman thin as a dried anchovy—cheekbones jutting, eyes narrowed to slits—came looking for our place.
My sister was about to go out to the door, so I darted out first and opened it. The anchovy of a woman slapped me across the face without so much as a hello and screamed.
Smack!
"You?! You're the one who laid a hand on our son, aren't you?!"
I had Mana Vision off and only Mana Mode running, so it didn't hurt, but I felt filthy beyond words. A slap out of absolutely nowhere. This was past anything I'd imagined.
"……!!"
"Seoha?!"
At the sight of me taking the slap, my sister—in modest clothes—and Franc both went rigid with shock. The problem was the pig. Uncle Pig looked at my sister, and whatever was running through his head, the expression that came over him was filthy beyond compare.
She flinched under that look, and my own head went cold along with her. The pig grabbed the anchovy woman's shoulder and stopped her, pathetically pretending at dignity.
"Hey. What are you doing, using violence so carelessly."
"What are you saying! This mangy bastard from some flea-bitten, low-class dump called our son a criminal!"
Listening to that ear-splitting shriek, killing intent boiled up—I wanted to rip her tongue out. My sister seemed to find the woman's screaming and finger-jabbing harder to bear than the pig's repulsive gaze.
"You're going too far!"
"Too far, what's too far! Looking like some whore who goes around selling her body! Do you know who I am?!"
My sister, just about to flare, went white at the anchovy woman's insult and clamped her mouth shut, speechless.
To my sister…. Hoo. I'd switched the phone's recording on before I came out of the room, so every curse aimed at her ought to be on it, right?
I was sorry she'd had to hear something that vicious because of me. I didn't know if it would leave a wound….
"Sis, go back inside."
"B-but."
"Now."
The pig was still busy looking her up and down, so I blocked her with my body and shoved her into the room. She yielded without strength and went in. Only for a moment—she immediately lifted her phone and called someone.
Once she was inside, the anchovy woman stared at me like I was an insect and spoke.
"I am the president of this apartment's women's association…."
"Isn't masturbating while peeping into other people's homes with an astronomical telescope a crime? Voyeurism and illicit filming are crimes too. Apologize."
"……What?"
"I said apologize. If you failed to raise your child, you should know shame. You come to the victim's home, swing your fists, and spew abuse like that? Aren't you afraid of the law?"
She clearly hadn't expected to hear any of it. Her face flushed red and blue by turns, she glared with every ounce of venom she had, and she trembled.
"Y-you…! What is this ill-mannered, lowborn brat saying!! Call your father and mother!! How on earth did they raise their kid for him to turn out like this…!"
I left the anchovy woman to her fit. The pig, smacking his lips while he stared at the room where my sister was—he needed dealing with first.
"Do you think the same way, mister?"
"Huh? What?"
His face went scarlet, as if he thought he was being ignored, but once I started talking to him, the woman trembled and stayed put.
"I'm asking if you think exactly the same as that woman."
"What?!!!!"
She bellowed at my words. A sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. The man looked at me like I was a minnow, face saying this was ridiculous, and laughed, uh-huh-huh.
"Kid. You know what you're saying right now could get you sued for defamation? You'll be punished, and your parents can be punished right along with you. You can go to prison. Understand?"
"Honey!! What is there to talk about! Bring your detective friend and have him arrest these rootless wretches!"
"Ah, shut up for a second. Ahem. This mister is just a liiittle displeased that you called our son a criminal or whatever. On what evidence, exactly, are you saying that?"
Eyes full of desire, glancing again and again at the closed door of my sister's room, speaking with a greasy smirk. Extremely unpleasant.
"Well, anyone can make a mistake. But this mister's mood is soured, you see. Yes. Your sister, in that room? If your sister comes out herself and apologizes… with her body, I imagine I could let it go."
Haha. Watching greed fill that piggish mug, my heart started hammering with rage.
"Otherwise, this mister has no choice but to respond legally. This mister has a lot of friends on the police and prosecution side, so with a single word from me, your dad and mom could lose their jobs and end up on the street, you know? Apply just a liiittle pressure, and I can make it so your family can't live in Korea. That's what I'm saying."
"Try it."
"……What did you say?"
"Where does this uneducated, mannerless brat get off speaking down to—!"
I kindled Mana Vision in my eyes and stared at the pig, whose face said he couldn't believe what he'd heard, and at the anchovy woman about to seize, and I said it again.
"Shut that rotten mouth and try it. Call the police."
"……Ulk, ah… hik?"
"Wh-whuh?"
At the sight of me, an eerie blue light spilling from my eyes, whatever she thought, the anchovy woman started hiccuping and went the color of death. The pig, still not grasping the situation, only frowned. I ground my teeth and switched on the Certifier on my left arm.
"What? A whore? A stray bastard? A commoner brat with no breeding? And you told my sister to apologize with her body?"
I swayed that mark, plain as day, slowly back and forth in front of the bastards' eyes, took out the phone still recording, showed them the screen, and smiled an angry smile.
"You said you have a detective friend? Call him. I'll call the Association, and the legal counsel of Time River, since that's where I belong. I'll submit this—everything said so far, and everything your son said—as evidence, and we'll see who wins."
"Uh, uhh. W-wait. Student. Just a moment."
"W-w-wait, wait. Wait! K-kid, kid!"
The pig finally seemed to grasp the situation. His face turned a sick blue-green, and the anchovy woman, urgent and flustered, reached for the recorder in my hand.
"Get that filthy hand off."
Displeased at that skewer of a hand trying to touch me, I focused Mana Sieve harder and glared. She flinched to a stop, pulled her hand back, and stamped her feet in panic.
I was genuinely sick of this. Filthy and aggressive toward people with no power, the weak—and the moment the other side has strength, they go ashen and tremble?
I stared coldly at the anchovy, and at the pig starting to pour sweat, and spoke.
"Ma'am. Ever heard of Blue Genius?"
"B-Blue Genius?"
"It's a bit of an embarrassing nickname, but that's me."
"Huk. That Blue Genius?!"
As expected, she seemed to know. The story had been circulating, and the media had been saying the name for days.
"I've been on the media these past few days, and the President, and the Association, have been showing me their favor. Don't you think it'd be interesting to see what happens if this gets out in the middle of all that? For example, if word got around that I'm considering emigrating."
In this era, the standing of ability users—specifically those of E-Class and above, treated as proper raiders—is extremely high. To put it simply, land values and home prices around the houses and apartments where high-rank ability users live run nearly double those of other areas.
So what happens when an ability user like that locks horns with some nouveau riche flashing mediocre influence inside an apartment complex? Let alone when that ability user is one in whom the government and the Association—the very summit of power—are taking an interest?
As if their own futures were unfolding in front of them, the pig's face and the anchovy's went a dead dark gray, and their legs started to shake.
"S-student. A moment, a moment, calm down, and let's talk this through rationally…."
"You can go home and look for your reason with that son of yours. Earlier you said you could make it so we couldn't live in Korea. It'd be interesting to have a match over this and see whether my family leaves Korea, or yours does."
I started calling Hwayeon on the Certifier, and the anchovy woman reached for my hand again.
"S-student! I'm sorry! We made a mistake, we were wrong, so j-just a moment, let's talk…!"
"I told you not to touch me!"
I roared, and the terrified woman backed away in little stumbles and collapsed under her own momentum.
In that instant, with a chime, Hwayeon's face rose in the hologram window.
Whether they recognized her, I could see the pig's eyes and the anchovy woman's going wide even past the screen. How could they not. She was one of the most famous raid-team bosses in Korea.
"I need a legal expert's help. I want to sue—hard—a boy around my age who was illicitly filming my sister, and the people who poured verbal abuse, violence, and curses on my sister, on me, and on my parents."
"W-wait, wait! Student—no, Ability User! Just a moment, just a moment!!"
"Ah, ahhh…."
I turned the screen, showed them the pig and the anchovy once, and turned it back. Hwayeon, having read the situation, went frighteningly rigid.
"Yeah. It's all recorded. Them calling my sister a whore, cursing my parents, that woman slapping my cheek, and their son swearing at me."
At the part about my sister being cursed and me being hit, sparks flew from Hwayeon's eyes.
The moment Hwayeon spoke of the Madam—Yeongeun—the pig went white as if he'd stared into the void and collapsed in the entryway.
"Do it. And their address is Zenith Apartments, Cheonho-dong, Building 107, Unit 902."
I ended the call and looked down at the two of them, sitting blank and despairing in the entryway.
"You said you had a detective and connections? Aren't you going to call?"
The pig, the color of death, grabbed the hem of my pants and started begging.
"A-Ability User! I, I didn't know, I misspoke! I was a fool! Please, show mercy just this once, and I'll honor you as my benefactor for the rest of my life! Please!"
"Misspoke, what misspoke. I absolutely cannot forgive you, mister. What were you going to do to my sister? What, with her body?"
I knocked away the hand on my pants and glared like I'd kill him. He poured cold sweat, dropped to his knees, and hastily bowed his head.
"I-it w-was a m-mistake! The words, the words came out wrong—an apology of the heart, not the body…!"
"What did we do wrong that my sister should apologize to you? And do you know, or not know, that peeping is a crime?"
"I-I know! When I go back I'll beat that son of mine until he apologizes, so please, just once…!"
I looked down, expressionless, at the pig clinging for his life, like a man who'd spotted the only rope where every side was a cliff.
"That's enough. You said you had some connections in the police. Grab them and scheme away. Whatever comes of it, I'll keep making moves of my own, and I intend to find that detective you call a friend and shake him down, see if any dirt falls off."
The anchovy woman crawled over too, ashen, grabbed my pant leg, and started begging forgiveness with a face like she was about to cry.
"I-I didn't know, th-that's why I did it. Our son did wrong by you and that young lady, so I'll make him beg and say he was wrong. So please, please forgive us just this once!"
To think revealing I was an ability user would make them this servile. I felt like I understood, anew, just how high an ability user's position sat. Or had my connections done this?
"S-Seoha."
Unable to ignore the commotion outside, my sister came out of the room and called me in a trembling voice.
"Aigo, miss! I've committed a sin worthy of death!! Please, forgive me just this once. Huuung, huuung!"
The pig tried to crawl toward her, so I stamped the floor with my leg, bang, and shouted.
"Don't come near my sister!"
"Hik?!"
And into this, Mom and Dad—having gotten my sister's call—arrived home.