Aftermath (1)
The Ability User Association had gathered its people and gone straight back to the Korean branch headquarters, but the Hwarang boss lingered near Yeongeun, as if meaning to attend her.
No sooner had the Association's ability users climbed into their vehicles and cleared the empty lot than two massive trailers rolled in, flanked by six vans and a bus. The trailers bore Time River's emblem: a simplified blue river flowing through a blue circle drawn in one broad stroke of a brush.
Cha Soyoung, and two teams. The trailers were empty—they'd clearly been brought along to haul back the byproducts taken during the verification.
Come to think of it, they'd said something about a contract. Did that mean the byproducts of the aberrants I'd killed belonged to me? And we'd only just returned. How had they shown up in less than ten minutes?
Twenty-two supporters stepped off the bus and, together with the seven who had been with us, began rapidly loading the byproducts onto the trailers.
Twenty ability users in Time River dress uniforms climbed out of the vans and formed a ring around the lot, the very picture of people set on guarding us. Through that ring, Vice-Captain Cha Soyoung and a pair of twin sisters came running toward Hwayeon and Yeongeun.
"Those two are the sisters, Park Chorong and Park Hyeonji."
At Team 2 Leader Kim Ga-min's quiet aside, I turned to look. The two bowing in front of Yeongeun and Hwayeon were both earth-attribute ability users, though their Phase Power differed by quite a margin.
"They're twins?"
"Yes. The one speaking now is Park Hyeonji, thirty-two, an earth ability user. And..."
"Then the one beside her would be Park Chorong. Same earth attribute—twins, so the ability matches too, I suppose."
I cut in, and Kim Ga-min's eyes went perfectly round.
"H-how did you...?"
"I'm the Onion Prince, aren't I?"
I snorted at Kim Ga-min's dumbfounded face and at Yoo Min-hee, who looked as if she'd just eaten rotten meat, then studied the Park sisters.
They were identical from the tips of their hair to the tips of their toes, but Phase Power would make them easy enough to tell apart. A sudden urge to see straight through them welled up; I pressed it down and held.
When I walked over to where Hwayeon and Yeongeun stood, the Park sisters greeted me first.
"Hello. I'm Park Chorong of Team 1. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Hello~. I'm Park Hyeonji of Team 10. Nice to meet you?"
Oh, even their voices were the same? Park Chorong, though, was a little quieter and more serious, while Park Hyeonji was softer.
Both wore layered cuts that fell to the collarbone, a style that suited their faintly girlish faces to perfection. Cute young ladies... aunties? Thirty-two made them aunties, but whether from the ability-user correction or not, the faces looking back at me were girlish all the same.
They bowed slightly at the waist, and I dipped my head in return.
"Jung Seoha. I'll be in your care."
"Did you take down every one of those aberrants in a single day, Mr. Jung?"
Cha Soyoung's eyes twitched at the sheer volume of byproducts, but she asked with a blank face, as if the flicker had never happened. Yeongeun answered for me.
"Of course~? Once the footage is released, it'll be chaos. Soyoung, and the Park sisters too—you're all going to be shocked."
Cha Soyoung looked as if she'd just heard something outrageous, and the Park sisters turned to me with equally round eyes.
Hwayeon swept a glance over the reporters clamoring for even a single word, ignored them, and spoke to Yeongeun.
"Once the byproducts and our things are loaded, we'll head straight back to the building. I'll leave the rest to you."
"Do that. Seoha... you'll find out later, won't you?"
Yeongeun winked at me. I grinned back, and she climbed onto the platform wearing a look of tremendous anticipation.
The thought of holding Franc, Hwayeon, and Yeongeun all at once left me a little expectant myself. During the verification there'd been the problem of noise, and the chance of someone dropping in unannounced, so it had ended at fellatio and a paizuri.
I turned from Yeongeun—she tapped the microphone twice with a fingertip, then opened her mouth—and looked at Hwayeon.
"Am I coming to the building with you?"
"We'll handle the paperwork, so you can rest."
"If I help with the paperwork, I'll probably just make more work. Resting in your room is fine, right?"
"Y-yes."
At my perfectly brazen remark, a flush stole across Hwayeon's face—and in that instant every camera flash went off at once. Had they snapped a photo of the two of us looking friendly?
Whatever the reporters made of it, the two trailers, now fully loaded, pulled out of the lot under escort from the vans full of ability users. Franc and I left Yeongeun behind to announce the verification team's results and headed for the Time River Building with Hwayeon.
The first thing I did when we arrived was call home. Up on the twentieth floor I dialed, and my sister picked up. She already knew I was back.
"It ended without a hitch. So don't worry."
"I saw it on TV. You took down that huge snake all by yourself? You're really not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"I told you I'm not. But TV? I was on TV?"
Her voice was soaked through with worry. I answered lightly, as if nothing at all had happened, and only then did she seem to relax a little, her tone settling into something calmer.
"A caption ran along the bottom of the screen, and then there was a breaking bulletin—the Madam speaking up on the platform, the materials extracted from the aberrants piled all over the lot, and the corpse of an enormously huge snake. Is that big snake a High-Rank Variant?"
"Yeah. That's a High-Rank Variant. Solid Snake."
"I see... So you're in Hwayeon's room right now? When are you coming back?"
"Doesn't look like I'll be able to come home for a while. Reporters are already camped at the entrance of the Time River Building. Won't it be even worse in front of the house?"
At the mention of the news, I got up from the sofa and switched on the television that took up one whole wall—and suddenly my own face filled that enormous screen in close-up!
"Ghk—fuck."
"Whoa! Seoha's face is all over the huge screen!"
That startled me. Seeing my own face crammed onto a screen past a hundred inches was genuinely uncanny.
"...You just swore, didn't you."
Huh?
"N-no? My face suddenly came up in close-up on a huge TV, and I just got startled, that's all!"
I turned the volume up. The special bulletin kept looping the moment the verification team returned, the byproducts they'd brought back—especially Solid Snake—and the shot of me talking with Sophia and the others. Now and then Hwayeon appeared as well, her face faintly flushed. Heh... on a screen that big, it looked different all over again.
"..."
"...Sorry. I was so startled I did it before I knew what I was saying."
"A person's everyday conduct is what builds their character. The act of swearing is..."
"I know, I know. It cheapens my worth, right? This time I really was startled. It was a slip."
I cut her off and recited her usual repertoire before she could, and through the receiver came the sound of my sister's displeased breath.
"As long as you know, that's enough. Anyway, after what you said I looked out at the entrance to the apartment complex, and people—reporters, I think—are gathering like mad. I was going to come to the building too, but I can't even leave the house."
"Figures. If I stay here for a while, the reporters' attention ought to gather on this side."
Another displeased breath from my sister. What now?
Franc kept looking back and forth between my face on the television and me sitting beside her. Then she spoke, lay down on the sofa, and set her head on my thigh.
"As I thought, the real thing is a hundred times better."
"So pass it on to Mom and Dad too."
"...Okay."
"I'll hang up. Call if anything happens."
"All right..."
...? Her voice was strangely weak. It sounded like that rare tone she used when something had disappointed her.
I tried to think why, and came up empty. No point clinging to something I didn't understand. The only one who'd lose was me.
I turned Spatial Perception on Hwayeon's office downstairs. Director Lee Hyeryeong and Department Head Kim Pyochung were standing before her, going over the revenue this verification had produced. Lee Hyeryeong's face in particular was radiant; the profit must have pleased her enormously.
The talk seemed to be over. The two directors stepped out of the office, and right behind them came Hwayeon, an armor case in hand, heading straight up to the twentieth floor.
She'd dumped all the work on the two directors?! Perfect. The moment she got up here, happy time with Franc...!
Franc, head pillowed on my thigh as she watched the news, caught the wicked smile on my face. She must have confirmed that Hwayeon was on her way up, because a matching wicked smile spread across her own.
On a face like some pure, ethereal princess, that expression was a serious mismatch.
"Are you going to torment Hwayeon?"
"I'm going to torment you too, you know?"
I must have caught her with her guard down. Franc's face went scarlet. She buried it in my thigh with a muffled auuu and kicked both legs.
While she did, the door opened. I went to Hwayeon as she came in, smiled wickedly, and asked.
"Work all finished? Can we play?"
"...What kind of playing did you have in mind?"
She asked it hesitantly, so I grinned and answered in a voice just a little too bright.
"That hole-matching game Hwayeon likes?"
Hwayeon's face went as red as Franc's. She turned her head, embarrassed, so I reached out, caught her cheek, turned her back to me, and stole her lips.
I kidnapped that soft, plum-sweet tongue and toyed with it in a thick, lingering kiss, and Hwayeon's expression slowly melted. When I caught her tongue between my front teeth and nibbled, giving her little shocks of stimulation, she couldn't hold out any longer. She raised a hand and pushed at my chest.
"Aht. G-go on, touch. Haa."
"Huh?"
"I have a little time to rest, but I have to stop by the Blue House soon. ...If I take that of yours in, there's no way I'll make it on time."
She looked profoundly regretful as she said it.
Hmm. So the work wasn't finished after all. She still hadn't taken off the tights armor—had she come up just to change? I was disappointed beyond words myself.
Hwayeon stood, picked up the armor case, and started for the dressing room. I put on a mischievous face and asked if she couldn't just change right here. Her face went scarlet all over again. She hemmed and hawed, and then, with Franc's help, began to peel off the tights armor.
Boots and gauntlets came off in a hurry. She caught the gap at the neck of the armor, spread it, and drew both arms free, and every time she moved those large breasts quivered and swayed. I swallowed hard.
Arms free, she gripped the neck of the tights armor, forced it wider, and started working it down. Through the gap she'd opened, her breasts came into view, then the smooth plane of her stomach, then the smooth, hairless cleft without a single strand, and my chest went tight.
Once the armor was off, standing naked in a wide, bright room in broad daylight seemed to embarrass her. Face completely flushed, she lifted a towel to cover her front.
"Satisfied now?"
This was bad. My dick had just achieved its final evolution.
Hwayeon saw how red my face had gone, let a small smile slip, patted my cheek, and swayed that plump backside on into the shower.
"...Now that I think about it, I haven't washed either. I should wash too."
And, of course, to hand out a little punishment for the way she'd carelessly gobbled my lollipop yesterday. Hehehe.
So long as there was no penetration, it was fine, wasn't it? So long as there was no penetration!
Hwayeon looked faintly startled when I followed her all the way into the shower, but the surprise didn't last. Under the roaming of my hands she flushed a deep, burning red.
Soon my fingers were sliding in and out of that precious place, and her face twisted with pleasure as a thick orgasm took her. Cheek and breasts pressed to the shower wall, hips thrust out, she endured as best she could, and the sight of those snow-white, silken thighs trembling set a fire in my chest.
It burns—my heart!
Franc watched Hwayeon leave the building looking a little refreshed, then glanced down at my hand, smacked it, and scolded me.
"Seoha's hands are wicked hands, too wicked for even Himeros's desire to keep up with!"
...Who's Himeros? More to the point.
"You already got to pour plenty of desire out on me in the third round, so you're fine. Hwayeon and Yeongeun haven't had my love in nearly three weeks. I have to let it out for them somehow, even like this."
"..."
Franc lost whatever she'd meant to say and only blushed.
I changed into the casual clothes Hwayeon had set out and was rolling around on the bed with Franc when a message arrived on the Certifier.
Every terrestrial broadcaster has agreed to announce, at 7 p.m. Friday, what happened yesterday and today.
Hwayeon's message meant that during the regular seven o'clock news on Friday evening, every network would simultaneously broadcast the government's official announcement live.
Today was Wednesday, June 3. So two days from now?
...Wait?! On the live terrestrial news?! Seven in the evening was prime time! The whole country was going to learn that humiliating title of mine!
Just in case, I turned the television back on. The news had brought in an expert and was already trying to estimate, roughly, the profit in the byproducts the verification team had brought back today. They marveled that most of the haul was Mid Grade, and that a High-Rank Variant corpse was among it.
They didn't even bother floating the theory that I might have failed to kill the High-Rank Variant. What they couldn't imagine was that I'd taken all of it myself, and they were debating in earnest whether I could really have done the whole thing alone.
I opened the internet, saw my name, the verification team, and Blue Genius sitting in the upper ranks of the real-time searches, and sank down with my face in my hands.
Jung Seoha
Verification Team
Blue Genius
There goes any chance I'll ever get married...
The anchor and the aberrant-studies expert were steering the conversation toward the idea that I hadn't done it alone, that the verification team who'd gone with me must have helped. Franc, hearing that, flew into a rage.
"What are those people saying?! Of course Seoha caught them all by himself!"
"They didn't see it. Well, they said the announcement's Friday. Once it airs, they'll shut up."
I didn't particularly care, but Franc was so angry I half worried she might fly straight to the broadcast station and start hurling lightning. I clung to her and fondled her chest until she calmed down.
Just then the Certifier signaled an incoming call.
"My adorable Seoha~! The Early Entry Permit came through! There are no restrictions! You'll receive exactly the same treatment as the adults~!"
Yeongeun was beaming, utterly delighted. Then she lowered her gaze, reached out, and lifted something into view: a permit about the size of a sheet of A3 paper.
Although the bearer is a minor, his qualifications and the identity of his guarantor have been judged sufficient. Early entry into the Phase World is hereby permitted.
The permit itself wasn't much. It stated that the World Phase Ability User Association, finding a minor's qualifications and his guarantor's identity sufficient, permitted early entry into the Phase World, and it bore the seal of the acting president of headquarters and the stamp of the Korean branch director.
Behind the brightly smiling Yeongeun, people came and went, sneaking glances at her.
"Oh. So now I can go to a branch or to headquarters whenever I want and enter the Phase World?"
"Of couuurse? A-a-and! I managed to wring one more incredible promise out of them! Want to guess what it is?!"
Whoa... I'd never seen Yeongeun this excessively excited. She looked so happy that my own mood lifted, and I played along.
"Hmm. What could it be... If it's enough to make Madam this happy, I don't think it's something like Association support. Hmm~?"
I made a show of thinking hard, and Yeongeun bounced her shoulders as if urging me to guess already, smiling brightly. Behind her, the older civil servants looked as if their souls were leaving their bodies at the sight.
...Now I was genuinely curious. What could make Yeongeun that happy? Beside me, Franc had started puzzling over it too.
"A hint. I need a hint."
"Hmm~, should I give a hint or not~? If I give one, the answer gets much too easy~."
She spun in a little circle of smiles, then deliberately put on a grave face, propped her chin on her hand, and pretended to agonize. To me she was unbearably cute. Those high-ranking officials looked as if they were taking massive psychological damage.
If a mother who was always serious, strict, and beautiful put on something cute and pretty and started copying idol choreography, would that be the face you'd make?
"Entry. It's about entry!"
Entry? A promise, and one about entry... Could it be?
"Hmm. There's no way, though."
"Mm-hm. It's all right, so go on and say it!"
"That later, I'll be allowed to enter wherever I want, whenever I want... or something?"
"Yes! Ding-dong-ding!! That's correct!"
No way. For real? What about the law? What about all the ability-user regulations? They were just handing me something like that?
Yeongeun took my blank stare for genuine shock. Excited, face flushed pink, she opened her mouth, and her voice was every bit as heated as her expression.
"Our Seoha will be the first exception since phase law was codified! Of course it can't apply right this moment, but the moment Seoha rises to B-Class, the exception takes effect. The High Committee at Association headquarters has decided!"
Honestly, I couldn't bring myself to be glad. Maybe it was because I'm a conspiracy enthusiast, but when a vast supranational body like the Association handed out a privilege that enormous, I couldn't help feeling there was some other intention behind it.
What could an organization like that possibly lack, that it would want something from me? It didn't even make sense. And yet the moment I heard Yeongeun say it, that premonition hit hard.
I looked at her face again. Flushed, eyes sparkling. In the gaze she turned on me there was a joy she couldn't contain, and somehow it made me feel as if my own face might redden.
It wasn't even her own affair. How could she be that happy? The thought that she loved me enough to rejoice like that slowly lifted my mood as well.
"Thank you. I'm so grateful it's honestly a shame that a handful of words is all I have to say it with."
I really had no proper way to convey what I felt, so I put my honest heart into it, met Yeongeun's eyes, smiled, and said it.
"...Mm. Oh, honestly. Even this old lady is being shameless. It was unsightly, wasn't it? I'm sorry?"
Catching my look, Yeongeun flushed even deeper all at once. She couldn't meet my eyes. Embarrassed, she covered her face with one hand and murmured.
"No. It was wonderful to see."
I smiled at her again, and Yeongeun's face went so red I could practically hear the pop. A complete crimson flush. The muscles of her face tried to smile, then to crumple as if she might cry, then to frown and smooth out again, over and over, and then—
"Nnh."
She spread one hand over her face and cut the Certifier.
"What was that?"
"Her expression fell apart completely. I suppose even seventy years of political mastery is helpless before the sincere heart of the man she loves. Fufu."
Franc, who had been watching my conversation with Yeongeun, wore an exceedingly gentle face as she wrapped her arms around my back and rubbed her cheek against my shoulder.
"You think so? If I have time over the weekend, I really ought to pour out a dozen days' worth of love."
"I'm looking forward to seeing how Yeongeun reacts then."
Franc's expression was nothing but warm, but when I interpreted the woman-speak tucked inside it, it translated cleanly to please hold me too.
...Ignore woman-speak like that and the fallout is enormous. I'd learned that lesson to the bone from my sister.
Well. Nothing for it, then. Having taken the measure of the lust gauge Franc had quietly built up, I looked at her with a greasy smile, laid her down, and climbed on top. A flush spread softly over her cheeks and she looked away. And, as if to signal that entry was approved, she parted her legs just a little.
See? Ignore woman-speak and you're in real trouble.
After the intense lovemaking, Franc had slipped into a sweet sleep. Lying beside her, I used the Certifier to search for reactions to me. Broadly, they came in two kinds.
Stabbed in the back? Curious what kind of backstabbing they meant, I was tracing the history of the boards when, around the time the TP I'd poured into Franc's womb had fully recovered, Hwayeon returned.
Coming back late at night, she looked terribly tired, but when I went to her and held her tight, the stiffness in her expression loosened, and a faint, natural smile appeared.
"You practiced how to smile so you could show it to me, didn't you?"
"Th-that's right."
Franc, Hwayeon, Yeongeun—every one of them a woman I couldn't help but love. I looked into Hwayeon's eyes the way I had looked into Franc's, greasy and unashamed, and opened my mouth.
"Thank you."
"Nnh."
Hwayeon's pupils trembled as if an earthquake had struck them. In the end she shut her eyes and buried her face in my shoulder.
"Th-that face is... not fair."
"I don't know what's unfair about it. This is how I really feel."
"..."
Face ripe and red, Hwayeon kept it hidden against my shoulder, and with a look of pure happiness she tightened her arms, just a little, and drew me in.