Episode 148: Return, and Then... (1)

The instant the space finished changing, I drove my focus to its absolute limit, just in case. Through Spatial Perception I took in everything within a kilometer and a half—down to a single strand of hair, a single grain of sand—and folded all of it into the reach of Spatial Manipulation.

...Come to think of it, even after I'd climbed to C-Class, the range of my Spatial Perception hadn't budged at all. Some strange dream had made me forget.

The mounds of earth around me had been cleared clean away, the ground packed hard, and every slate roof removed, so the sky lay wide open overhead. Near the spot where I appeared stood two women, and a man a little behind them.

A hundred meters out, caution tape had been strung in a ring around me, and beyond it men in black suits—government agents, by the look of them—stood along the line, holding back a swarm of reporters. They weren't stopping the broadcast vans and camera rigs from filming this way, though, and all at once a commotion broke out as people who looked like foreign correspondents poured from the vehicles.

Franc must have seen it too; her shoulders gave a small tremor. More important were the two women who flinched the moment I appeared and turned toward me. The instant they confirmed it was me, relief flooded their faces, and they came forward calling my name.

"Seoha."

"Seoha."

I opened my eyes and saw Hwayeon and Yeongeun running toward me. Their faces were far more worn than I'd expected. Yeongeun in particular had covered the shadows under her eyes with makeup, and that alone told me how badly she had worried.

They knew my abilities well, and still they hadn't been able to set the worry down completely. Hwayeon, as if braced for a fight, wore refined blue leather armor with a slender blue longsword at her hip, and beneath a tailored blue suit Yeongeun had on something like ultralight tights. I looked at the two of them—my lovers—and smiled.

"I'm back."

In that instant a baptism of camera flashes poured down, as if a second sun had risen. A press corps of what had to be over a hundred shouted over one another until my ears ached, but Hwayeon didn't seem to hear them. She pressed a hand to her chest and let out a long, deep sigh.

Perhaps because so many eyes were on them, Yeongeun put on a bright smile like a mask, gave me a light embrace, and patted my shoulder.

"I believed you would come back safely, Seoha. You've been through so much."

I met ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the intensity in her eyes and gave a small nod. But who was that man standing behind Hwayeon and Yeongeun?

He had dyed hair as red as flame black, and hadn't kept up with the roots—streaks of red showed through here and there. The impression he made was fierce. And eight rings of Phase Power, patterned like the growth rings of a tree.

The man, late thirties by the look of him and carrying a razor-sharp presence, was nothing less than a B-Class fire-attribute ability user. His Phase Power sat at 12.85 million, higher than Hwayeon's, and yet I didn't feel the tension or the fear I'd felt the first time I saw her. If anything, the Elephant Ouros chieftain had been more oppressive.

He met my eyes, walked over slowly, and spoke in a smooth, pleasant voice.

"First time we've met. I'm Kang Hyunwoo. I oversee the Korean branch of the Ability Users Association."

He offered his hand, and as he did, his eyes flicked sidelong to Franc standing beside me.

So this was the Branch Director. What's his rank? With Phase Power like that, and a directorship on top of it, shouldn't he be Korea's number one? But number one is the boss of Azure Palace.

Yeongeun stepped a little aside to make room for him. I extended my hand as well, and spoke as we shook.

"Jeong Seoha. C-Class."

"......!"

Kang Hyunwoo's eyes sharpened. Hwayeon and Yeongeun stared at me, startled.

"...How are you already C-Class? Weren't you only just stepping into D-Class the day of the incident?"

Watching the director ask while trying ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to hide his shock, I felt a certainty settle in me. Even if I fought him right here, right now, I could win.

His Phase Power itself was dozens of times mine, but my instincts said he was nothing more than an ability user hauling an enormous battery pack. Was the right comparison a child holding an automatic rifle? A gun is frightening, sure, but if you're properly prepared for it, there's no reason to be afraid—say, if you're sitting inside an armored vehicle. Hwayeon and Yeongeun were scarier. Their abilities were my natural counters.

To think the feeling I got from aberrants and the feeling I got from ability users could differ this much... A certain scholar's thesis came home to me: it wasn't that aberrants resembled ability users, but that ability users resembled aberrants.

"I'll tell you later."

What I needed most right now was still volume of Phase Power. Raise my usable maximum, and there wouldn't be an ability user alive who could stand against me. Spatial Perception, sharper than any high-performance radar, would warn me of every ambush before it came, and Spatial Manipulation, triggered the instant I locked on, was something even Hwayeon—with all her terrifying physical ability—surely couldn't dodge. The Spatial Barrier would stop every attack.

I turned to Hwayeon, standing beside Yeongeun, and spoke.

"Madam. Hwayeon. I've got a lot to say."

"Then let us return to the Time River Building. There are too many eyes and ears here. It is no place for a proper conversation."

Hwayeon nodded silently at Yeongeun's suggestion, and Branch Director Kang Hyunwoo cut in with an awkward smile.

"Might I listen in as well? I may not look it, but I am the director of the Korean branch of the Ability Users Association... and as for the identity of the lady beside you... huh?"

His eyes flashed as they darted between me and Franc, searching—then went wide as Franc slowly lifted herself into the air and clung to my back.

Camera flashes burst all at once again. A murmur rose, and Hwayeon and Yeongeun stared at Franc with blank faces. Franc looked down at the three of them, smiled, and began to drift slowly around me.

"Th-that person...?"

"Let's go, for now."

The three of them glanced between me and Franc for a moment, then nodded and started off, and Franc and I followed. Until we climbed into Madam's private car, reporters rushed us, shouting themselves hoarse for even a scrap of my voice. I ignored every one of them.

"What the hell is going on? Who are all those people?"

The moment I was inside and the door shut, I couldn't hide my disbelief. I'd figured people might be waiting—but I never imagined this many reporters and broadcast vans. And the Korean branch director of the Ability Users Association being there was something I couldn't have dreamed of.

"After you took refuge in the Phase World, we made the incident public, so it would not be buried. We released the fact, and the evidence, that assassins targeting you had infiltrated the country. Your Detection ability as well."

They wouldn't have announced it without thinking. So why reveal my existence all of a sudden? Yeongeun must have read the thought on my face. She smiled softly and went on.

"Anyone who matters was going to learn you'd received an Early Entry Permit anyway. I believed you would return safely, so since things had already come to this, I spread the word to raise your name and your reputation for certain. What you went through on your first cycle, and what unfolded because of the second, is more than enough of a story to draw interest from any number of countries."

So that was why the foreign press had been there.

"So the reporters had been gathered like that the whole time, waiting for me to come back? But they wouldn't have known about me. If a Detection-type went into the Phase World alone, they'd just assume he was dead."

"Just as you say. At first the reporters all expected you were dead. But Hwayeon never left the site of the incident—she stood guard there—and I stopped by once every two days, and once we announced the case, the press smelled a story and gathered."

She shrugged, a faintly pleased look on her face.

"After that, once our Seoha returned, we meant to take the Early Entry Permit we'd secured and push you up to C-Class somehow. And here you've gone and become C-Class all on your own, with no need of our help."

That I'd come back a C-Class in a mere twelve days must have been a joy past anything she'd imagined. The marveling just kept spilling out of her. I nodded, then looked at her and asked what I'd most wanted to know.

"How did the people who attacked me manage to slip into Korea? I can't understand how this country could be so lax about ability-user infiltration. They say even the United States has trouble catching someone determined to hide, but at least America has the land for it."

Any country that called itself developed had devices at its airports and ports to identify ability users. I still couldn't understand how more than seven of them—ability users with their faces smashed beyond recognition, no less—had set foot on Korean soil. The face of the dead bodyguard, the older girl, came back to me, and my expression hardened. Yeongeun lifted both hands, brushed her own somewhat haggard face, and sighed again.

"Those damned bastards... ahem. They came in blatantly, as if they wanted to be recognized—smuggled ashore on a high-speed boat from Kangdao, in Shandong Province, China. We examined the boat they abandoned. The hull was a material that absorbs electromagnetic waves, and the equipment inside was built for wiretapping and signal interception. That's how they slipped past the coastal patrols."

She stared down at her own hands, the strength gone from her face, as if she thought the attack on me was her fault. I felt a little sorry for her. I wanted to at least take her hand, but with the director sitting beside us, I couldn't. Why is this man even tagging along?

Hwayeon, her face a little set and her voice low, looked at me and spoke.

"Professional equipment for an illegal entry. And among them were people judged to be Detection-types, which means this was no simple private assault. Above all, they had the exact location of your training ground. The experts' opinion is that this was a deliberate assassination with at least state-level involvement. Shameful as it is, they infiltrated in two separate waves, and the moment we noticed was only after they had already begun moving in earnest to attack you."

They came in from the Chinese side? Hmm...

When the two of them finished, Director Kang Hyunwoo stared straight at me and spoke.

"This attack had several factors mixed into it, but our judgment is that your coming and going from this out-of-the-way place gave them their opening."

"You're saying it's my fault?"

"No. The Association's position is that some country, jealous of your ability and of the Korea you belong to, sent the assassins in."

Even at my sharp tone, he corrected himself with a calm face.

"And you don't know who these jealous parties were? They approached openly from the Chinese side, so it can't be China. And what they were shouting was Russian."

"Regrettably, the Association has reserved judgment on that point. They call it a reservation, but the real answer is that they don't know."

Does Yeongeun not know either? I turned to her and found her simply wearing a slightly angry look as she watched the director. I couldn't read it. So I turned to Hwayeon, and she answered in her place.

"Everyone who infiltrated and attacked you this time was East Asian. Seventeen in all, a mixed group of men and women, and among them were a C-Class Physical Reinforcement user and an Analysis-type. We managed to capture five of the seventeen, but the moment they were taken they bit down on the poison in their molars and killed themselves."

"As Hwayeon said, we recovered the bodies of the attackers and of those who took their own lives and sent them to the National Forensic Service. Their faces were ruined as if dissolved in hydrochloric acid, past any recognition, and even their fingerprints had all been erased. All we received in return was that no leads could be found."

"I heard them speaking Russian during the fight as well. Even to my ear it was clumsy. Nothing but simple words—fight, kill, withdraw. And even then, only the one who seemed to be the leader ever opened his mouth."

Disinformation, then...?

"If we'd only caught the C-Class who looked like the leader, we could have dug into what was behind them. The moment I reached the scene after the call, the ones fighting the Association's ability users all fled at once. We couldn't catch them."

"You're B-Class, aren't you, Hwayeon? A C-Class ought to be easy enough to run down."

That part had struck me as strange, so I asked, and Hwayeon's face went cold.

"If all I had to do was leave him breathing, I am confident I could have subdued him within a minute. But that C-Class put his comrades up as shields and fled alone. I told you—we captured five. The other eleven resisted too fiercely and were killed on the spot, and the ones we captured swallowed their poison and died soon after."

...So he threw away sixteen lives just to save his own? Yeongeun shrugged at Hwayeon's words and spoke.

"A C-Class is a valuable ability user, yes, but looking at how they tried to keep him alive even at the cost of sixteen lives, and at the other circumstances together, what's behind this is Ja—"

"Big Sister, let's leave it there. Naming a specific country as the culprit on suspicion alone is problematic. And even if he is the party concerned, disclosing every piece of information to a minor is..."

Big Sister? Director Kang Hyunwoo had cut her off with a troubled face. Yeongeun, cold as ice, went on as if to ask what of it.

"Your Association knows perfectly well that Japan has schemed against this country alone since old times, whenever they had a pretext and an excuse. That lot always drags in a foreign threat to turn their own people's eyes from domestic troubles, and they particularly love meddling in other nations' gains. You can see it plainly enough in the history of a country that has them for a neighbor. This incident is no different. They must have feared that if our Seoha grew great, it would shake ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠their own Phase Stone market, and tried to kill him off."

"Even so, acting on emotion in a matter tangled up with politics will only put us at a disadvantage."

At the director's grave tone, Yeongeun snorted and spoke again.

"They deliberately smashed the faces and put masks on them. Armed them with secondhand phase equipment of unknown origin, and even had them attempt suicide attacks. If it had been only this once, I would not have said a word."

I caught what she was driving at and let out an empty laugh.

"I wasn't the first?"

"That's right. It isn't only this time. Even Seona of Eshban was attacked by mysterious assailants carrying similar equipment, and the boss of Azure Palace was nearly the target of a terror attack overseas. Count the smaller assaults and it goes past ten. You would not believe the headache it has given the Ministry of Ability Affairs."

"Big Sister, that is top-secret class..."

"Every time, we demanded a proper finding of the cause, and every time the Association backed off, claiming it does not intervene in disputes between ability users! And when I tried to investigate the cases myself, they interfered, parroting the same absurd line over and over—that it is problematic to press someone on suspicion rather than physical evidence!!"

The director tried to get a word in, and Yeongeun, furious, thundered down at him.

That's genuine. If she's angry enough to rage like that, I can't begin to guess how bad their villainy has been.

"Big Sister..."

"Don't call me that! You call me sister, and every thing you actually do is tripping us up! This time is no different! We nearly lost an ability user who could become the greatest in the world!! And all you do is spout nonsense in the name of world peace and balance!! Why do you think I went through the press to make this known?!"

Her voice rang through the car, and in it was anger aimed squarely at Japan.

So that was it. I hadn't quite understood why they'd made it public. If things went on like this, the case would be swept under the rug again. She put my ability, my movements, and this attack out in the open, then drew every eye to them, meaning to keep the incident from being swallowed by the dark.

The director let his irritation show and sighed. He glanced once at me and Franc, then met Yeongeun's eyes.

"Do you think I welcome this situation? They grow more meticulous and more cunning with every job. Every time ability users of this country suffer a mysterious attack, I too have tried to investigate on my own, and every time headquarters has restrained me, ordering that we keep to the middle path. It has not been once or twice. I am frustrated as well."

"And that middle path of yours—its reach stretches like a rubber band according to the size of the country, does it?! Try to step forward and they hold you back! Try to investigate and they block you! The victims say they will investigate themselves, so why block even that?! Has the Association already forgotten what a senior executive of Japan's IWO did?! Since Jeral Packard vanished, have they gathered nothing but blockheads, or nothing but children who cannot even tell right from wrong?! Suspicion, once it gathers, becomes certainty—and yet they do nothing but stand in the way. I could die of the rage!"

"Nngh..."

Under her scolding, the director let out a pained groan, looking thoroughly wronged.

Hm. So the leading suspect is Japan. I raised a hand and cut the exchange short.

"Director. May I ask just one thing?"

"...What."

"Next time I'm attacked like this, if I capture the perpetrators and pull the information out of them myself, is it all right if I take revenge?"

For a moment Director Kang Hyunwoo looked utterly incredulous. Then his face turned to one of a headache, and he pressed his thumbs hard into his temples. I was watching the two lovers seated in front of me and beside me, their eyes gone wide, when he growled.

"Do you take ability users lightly?"

Seeing the irritation on his face, I wondered whether he was ill-tempered by nature or whether the stress had simply piled that high. He wasn't taking it out on me because Yeongeun had chewed him out, was he? Either way, that expression irritated me too. Was that a face to wear in front of the actual victim? I soothed Franc, whose eyes had flared with anger, and spoke.

"How much do you even know about me, to say something like that? And I'm the one who was attacked and nearly killed. Am I not allowed to be angry?"

"If a world justified private revenge over personal grudges, this world would already be a wreck and then some. I understand the anger of nearly dying. That does not mean such retaliation is accepted as just. And you..."

Only then did he look at Hwayeon and Yeongeun. His expression turned puzzled, then startled.

"R-right. You said you're C-Class? In a little over ten days, alone—how?"

Thinking that his first impression was the worst I'd had in a long while, I worked the Certifier, started a Phase Power measurement, and while it ran spoke to him in a cold voice.

"Answer me. If I kill the ones who come to attack me, am I punished, or am I not?"

"...If the situation is a clear assault, you are not punished."

What a joke. A clear assault? So I'm not even to use self-defense until I'm already being attacked? Stand there blank until the close fighting starts?

Hearing that, Yeongeun was on the verge of erupting all over again.

A crisp beep.

At the sound of the measurement ending, she shot the director a glare, then turned to me. Something unreadable crossed her face, and the corners of her eyes eased.

"C-Class..."

I ignored the director's stifled voice. Hwayeon and Yeongeun were looking at the characters burning in the hologram, sending me silent looks of wonder, and at the sight of them I let the irritation drain away and asked.

"Madam. Does the car have a way to charge a smartphone?"

"Do you see the little button on the armrest beside you, our Seoha? Press that."

As she said, I pressed the round button rather than the window controls. The compartment in the armrest between me and Hwayeon opened, revealing an ashtray, several charging pins, and a phone cable. I took the cable out, connected it to my smartphone, then drew a Mid-High Grade Elephant Ouros Phase Stone from the pocket of my school uniform and held it out to the three of them.

"A Mid-High Grade Phase Stone I got on my third cycle. Phase Power 8,700."

The director went blank, as if struck in the head with a hammer, and the instant he took the stone from me, Yeongeun snatched it out of his hand. She began to examine it with shining eyes. He gave her a brief look, then turned back to me.

"H-how did you get it? To go from D-Class to C-Class, the only ways are to take a High-Rank Variant or a Crystal Eater. Weren't you a Detection-type? So how...?"

I ignored him as he answered himself—that even a Crystal Eater couldn't be taken by a Detection-type alone—and checked the phone's charge. It had only reached ten percent, but that was enough. I turned it on, opened the gallery, and spoke.

"Hwayeon, Madam—you know Franc, right? Franc has a body now."

Hwayeon and Yeongeun looked at Franc sitting silently beside me, let out breaths they might not have meant to, then smiled and offered her their congratulations.

"Yeah. Pretty enough to make a person jealous."

"Congratulations, Franc."

"Thank you. Yeongeun, Hwayeon."

Franc answered them with a bright smile, and the director looked as if his soul had left him at her beauty and her voice. Hwayeon and Yeongeun blinked as well, as if they hadn't known Franc could speak.

"In all my life, I have never heard a voice so lovely..."

"A voice as pretty as Siha's."

I shoved a photograph of the Elephant Ouros chieftain's corpse into the face of the director, who looked desperately curious about how any of this had come to be.

"A photo of the High-Rank Variant Franc and I took down together."

"......!!"

It wasn't only the director. Hwayeon and Yeongeun too looked back and forth between me and the enormous Elephant Ouros, burned black and dead, shock naked on their faces.

"We took others besides this one, but I forgot to take pictures, so this is the only photo."

It was frustrating, not being able to tell the story straight because of that director. I slid through the images. The chieftain's corpse drew nearer and larger, until at last the screen held only a portion of the elephant's lower body, burst open.

"I-it is enormous. And I have never heard of a form like this. Judging by the framing, would the size be past thirteen meters?"

Yeongeun, having taken the phone from me, muttered as she flicked through the screen. Beside her the director, who had been staring down at it in shock, lifted his head and fixed me with a hard, almost glaring look.

"Fifteen meters. You don't know that one either, Hwayeon?"

"Hm. There are roughly thirty-eight thousand kinds of High-Rank Variant registered in the Association database. Some three hundred and seventy are classified as humanoid-adjacent. Not one of them is an aberrant with an elephant's lower body. Was this an individual that roamed alone?"

I shook my head at her question and gave them a rough account of what I'd seen and been through on Elephant Ouros Mountain during my third cycle. The director, who had listened in silence beside us, was staring blankly at me when the story ended, eyes like a dead fish's.

"S-so you use Detection, and an elemental ability... too? And Physical Reinforcement on top of that? An ability that can take a High-Rank Variant alone?"

"Do you understand now why I was angry? Seoha is a child who will become a treasure of our Korea. Those who attempted a covert attack on such a child—I can never forgive them."

"...I... see. Haaah... With power like that, of course he would show that kind of confidence."

I'd expected him to fly off and tell me not to lie. Instead he rubbed his face with an expression that seemed to have aged a year, then bowed his head and apologized.

"I'm sorry for snapping. This incident has had my nerves on edge, and I ended up losing my temper. Haaah, but... an ability that absurd... haaah."

The irritation from before had probably been a momentary flare. I liked that he admitted it honestly and apologized, but the first impression had been bad enough that I still didn't care for him.

He took the phone from Madam and sighed again and again as he stared at the Elephant Ouros chieftain's corpse. The evidence was too clear not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to believe. There was the Phase Stone, too. Perhaps his feelings had grown complicated; still looking down at the phone, he suddenly twisted his face.

"So Big Sister, and the boss of Time River, already knew."

"Yes."

"What a foolish thing to say. How could we not have known?"

Having scolded him so, Yeongeun rose, sat down between me and Franc, and stroked my head.

"To think you and Franc, just the two of you, even took a High-Rank Variant. Our Seoha can now bring to bear, alone, the strength of a solid mid-tier raid team."

"Big Sister. That isn't right. The total combat power may be similar, but he cannot divide his forces. How can you treat them as the same?"

When he picked at it like that, Yeongeun spoke with her contempt plain on her face.

"You really... I cannot tell whether you are a fool or a genius. Kindly confine the idiocy of butchering a chicken with a blade meant for cattle to your imagination."

"..."

She gave the director—struck mute, as if honey had sealed his mouth—a look of weary disdain, then turned to me.

"You brought it up even with Director Kang here. Does that mean you no longer mean to hide your abilities?"

"Yes. After I was attacked and went into the Phase World, I thought it over. I decided it happened because I was weak. So I meant not to come out until I was C-Class, but I was lucky enough to reach it quickly, and that's why I came out today."

Hwayeon and Yeongeun, having heard the resolve and its result, softened, and kept stroking my hand.

"And there's something I want to know... What happened to the bodyguards who were beside me that day? The older ones."

At the question, Yeongeun's face grew a little sad. She drew my head in and held it to her chest.

"They died in the line of duty."

"..."

I'd guessed as much. Confirming it was true felt like being doused in ice water. I called up their faces, one by one, and made a vow.

This may take a little while. I don't know when it will be. But I swear I'll pay back what was done to you, with interest. So rest easy in heaven, and watch.