Evidence (4)
Hwayeon, thrown off and scrambling after getting swept up in my pace, had started sorting the documents again, and Franc had taken up a post at her side. I went down to the sixteenth floor to check on something that had been nagging at me.
A person's character can change for any number of reasons, but as a rule the cause is some enormous psychological shock. The mind is resilient, though. They say it takes more than an ordinary blow to shake someone hard enough to rewrite who they are. Character, above all, is the sum of the habits and behaviors a person has stacked up over a lifetime, so for a character to change is for those habits and behaviors to change.
Suffer a shock severe enough to break what you've sustained for years, and the personality shifts slowly until you seem like someone else entirely—or else it wrenches around a full hundred and eighty degrees in a single instant, as if something in the mind has simply snapped.
Choi Soohan was the first kind.
Over the past month, the training I'd given her in spare moments had remade her completely, from her looks down to her character.
I stopped in front of her door and looked inside with Spatial Perception. Soohan was kneeling in the middle of her room on a broad white sheet, wearing nothing but a small pair of panties. The hair that had once stood out like a lion's unkempt mane was straight and neatly kept now, and the yellow dye was gone, returned to black. She had gathered the not-short length of it, bound the ends with a white cord, and drawn it forward over her chest. She looked like a modest, graceful young lady, the very picture of the word pure.
What she was doing was the exact opposite of how she looked.
Whick—crack.
Through the gap in the door came a sharp whistle of split air and the sound of leather tearing flesh. Soohan was lashing her own back with the cat-o'-nine-tails in her hand, a whip of nine tails. It was no gentle thing, like the polished leather used for SM play. The tips were studded with countless bits of edge—razors or nails, impossible to tell which. A weapon made to kill.
Every swing shrieked through the air and opened wounds on the body of a D-Class physical reinforcement user. She brought it down again and again, carving fresh cuts into her back. Countless crimson lash-marks scored her skin and bared the raw red flesh beneath. Blood beaded on the torn skin, ran down her spine, and dyed the pure white panties red. With every stroke, droplets scattered and dotted the white sheet spread on the floor.
The door wasn't locked. I opened it and stepped inside. Soohan turned her head, saw me come in, set the whip down, crawled to me, and pressed her forehead to the floor.
"Master."
Her back, laid bare as she prostrated herself, was crowded with the traces of wounds torn open and closed again, and fresh cuts had been carved over them. She had been doing this in the near week I hadn't come to see her. Along the path she had crawled, spots of blood and the slick of her arousal dotted the floor.
She was nothing like what I had expected, and my chest went tight.
A few days earlier I had gotten word of her from Hwayeon. Soohan had come to her a completely different person, the lion's mane put in order and the dye washed out.
"You want a salary?"
"Yes."
"Do you understand the situation you're in? There is an enormous debt on your shoulders, one you couldn't repay even if you were reborn as an ability user a thousand times."
"I also know it is a debt I could never repay by ordinary means."
"And even so, you don't think asking for a salary is an excessive demand?"
"Everything I am belongs to Master. I will not go into subjugations with the lukewarm attitude I had before, so I hope to receive even a small wage."
"…And what do you mean to do with a salary, if you get one?"
"To keep myself presentable, at a level that will not tarnish Master's honor."
"This Master you speak of… is Seoha?"
"Yes."
"…All right. I'll see that you can receive a base wage."
"Thank you, Madam. I will do my utmost so that no flaw comes to Master's reputation."
Hwayeon had said nothing after that. And she told me that in the one subjugation since, Soohan had gone in with every trace of her old clumsiness and vacant dithering gone, serious and aggressive, and had piled up enough results to keep the word she had given.
"…Get up."
The moment I finished speaking, Soohan rose quickly and stood waiting, so neat there was nothing to fault. On the surface she was the perfect attendant, enough to call the old butler to mind. If not for the nipples standing out so hard they were flushed with blood, and the fact that she wore nothing but panties soaked in blood and her own slick.
She made no move to cover a body that was all but bare, and I sighed inwardly. Had what I'd done to her been shocking enough to rewrite even her character? I had only meant to use shock treatment, to shake her out of that look of someone who had given up on living. Where had it gone wrong?
Looking around her room, I found a wardrobe, a bookcase, and a desk that hadn't been there before. The shelves were stacked with books on etiquette, on proper bearing, on reflections concerning mannerly conduct and behavior. The wardrobe was full of neat, delicate women's clothes. On the desk sat a small mirror and cosmetics laid out for makeup, and, wherever she had gotten it, an antique-looking standing frame held a photograph of me.
From what I'd heard, she used to be so rough and scatterbrained she was downright slovenly, always insisting on nothing but trousers, going around in suits. Set the past beside the present, and it was hard to believe they were the same person.
I looked the room over, then went to the bed and sat. Soohan came up in front of me, knelt, and looked up. Those rotten dead-fish eyes from a month ago were gone. In their place was a pair of eyes shining clear. Hair neatly ordered and finely combed back, a small and delicately compact face—together with those eyes, she seemed to be insisting that this was what a classic Korean beauty looked like.
"I heard it from Hwayeon. Only once, but you showed a perfect picture of someone who had found the work she was meant to do."
"I am doing my utmost so that no flaw falls upon Master's honor or reputation."
I turned Spatial Perception up to full and examined her from the outside in, but I couldn't find a single thing amiss. In the way she bowed her head, I couldn't feel so much as a speck of a lie. Which of the things I had done had changed her character like this? Was it that time I awakened the masochism in her, or was it the effect of the Mana Sieve I had laid into my voice?
She had been through only a single subjugation since that day, but word had spread and spread, and inside Time River the assessment of Choi Soohan had completely reversed. Before, she had been chained by the shackle of debt, a person who had given up on life, a walking nuisance who was no help at all. Now, they said, she looked like a seeker who had found the road she was meant to walk.
If I went only by that assessment, it would be better to confirm her true heart over a few more subjugations and then release her from the debt. But looking at Soohan gazing up at me, a premonition quietly counseled otherwise. Turn her loose now, and she would lose her reason to live all over again, and this time she would break for good.
I don't know what to do with her.
I was brooding, my feelings a tangle, when Soohan opened her mouth with genuine care, as if she truly knew she was being presumptuous.
"M-Master. I know it is rude of a slave, but if my conduct has satisfied you, a re-reward…"
Her face was faintly flushed as she asked. I nodded, and Soohan's expression brightened all at once. She sprang up, fetched a disciplinary rod in a flash, and offered it to me.
Right. This is it, isn't it? If she wanted a reward, I knew it would be this. Mm. Sigh.
I brought the rod down across her backside a few times.
"Keep on like this, and I won't cast you aside."
I stroked her hair gently as I said it. Soohan's face went blissful. Her eyes rolled back, and she fainted.
She lay collapsed face-down on the bed in nothing but panties dyed red by the blood that had run from her back, and looking at her, my mind seized up. My thoughts wouldn't string together. I let out a deep sigh, reached out, and laid a Healing Touch over the whip-torn mess of her back, erasing even the scars until the skin was clean. Then I drew the blanket over her and left. The backside swelling from raw red toward blue was what she had wanted as her reward, so I left it alone.
When I returned to the office on the nineteenth floor, Franc came up to me with a slightly shadowed look. She must have been watching me and Soohan through a thinned Spatial Perception.
"You don't look pleased. Where have you been?"
"I went to see Soohan. She's changed completely."
Hwayeon studied my face for a moment, gave a small nod, and dropped her eyes to the documents again.
"I was a bit surprised myself. If she keeps acting that way from here on, I'm willing to see to it she doesn't die a pointless death in a subjugation. She's only just into D-Class, so if I give her the Paul Dict chainmail tights I used to wear when I was younger, she won't lack for equipment. She could be a team leader in charge of E-Class."
"Hwayeon. That isn't the part Seoha is worried about. What troubles him is that her character has changed so completely she's started acting as if she truly has become his slave."
"And is that a problem?"
Franc was flustered by the perfectly sincere question. So was I.
"Huh? Well… I don't like the mistake Soohan made, but I don't think Soohan herself is a bad person. Still, for her to change this far—isn't that a serious problem?"
"I don't believe it is a serious problem."
"…You think it's a good thing that Soohan changed that much?"
Startled by a reaction I never would have imagined, I asked, and Hwayeon shook her head.
"If Soohan had been left as she was, nine times out of ten she would have died in the Phase World. The remaining one, she would have been crippled and gone on living an unhappy life. You saved her, Seoha. And if the part about being a slave bothers you, then give her an order. Tell her to serve you as a butler, not a slave."
"…Huh?"
I asked it back with a dazed face, and Hwayeon laced her fingers as if she genuinely could not understand.
"I don't see what you're worried about. Giving a reason to live to someone who has given up on life and lost all will is an exceedingly difficult thing. You did it in a short time. You changed Soohan without her losing her life, turned her character in a positive direction, and remade not only her appearance but her behavior, successfully enough that other people acknowledge her. Anyone who knew the old Soohan would say, ten out of ten, that her present state is better."
I couldn't find anything to say, so I just listened. Hwayeon went on, watching me with those beautiful eyes like obsidian.
"That is the situation. If, in the midst of it, you feel a refusal at Soohan serving you as a slave and calling you master, then issue an instruction and have her position set in order again. And pay her a fitting price for that role. Think about it. What do you think of that old man who attends the Madam?"
"A-a cool butler grandpa?"
"Then what do you suppose other people will think when they see Soohan attending you?"
I couldn't say a word. Hwayeon, finished with the papers, gathered them up, slipped them into a file, and rose from her seat.
"A young woman putting herself forward and calling herself a butler—there will be people who spin lewd fantasies about that and tear you down. But people who slander and tear others down exist everywhere you go. That will not change no matter how splendid your achievements, no matter how great a being you become. Look at the Madam herself, the one people endlessly say belongs in the biographies of the great. Even of her, there are those in Korea who curse her for a whore who spreads her legs for the great powers and fawns on them."
"Who said that?"
The question burst out of me, heat surging up from my gut.
"Small-minded, vile people who like to pick at others' flaws. Trash who take pleasure in looking down on others from behind anonymity. Morons who don't even try to learn the real circumstances, and twist rumors drifting around the internet into garbage articles as if they were fact."
"Those bastards, I'll—!"
"So there is no need to pay people like that any mind. The world holds countless people, and countless ways of living. If you become B-Class and reach the top of the ability-user world, there will instead be many who envy Soohan for having become your butler. If she has declared that she will live looking only at you and serving only you, then you raise your own worth until you feel no shame in your heart, and lift the life she lives to a level others would not find pitiful."
Hwayeon laughed, a soft little breath of it, and came toward me with the file in hand. She brushed my cheek, light as anything.
Honestly, the thought that I had ruined the life of a person named Choi Soohan had never left me. Listening to Hwayeon, I felt the shape of what I ought to do coming into some kind of focus.
"But what if Soohan's parents see her like this? If their precious daughter ended up that way, I don't think they'd leave it alone."
"Soohan is an orphan. When she was young, an Aberrant attack took both her parents and every relative she had. After that she grew up in an orphanage sponsored by the Ability User Association, awakened as an ability user, and joined the Association."
"…Is that so."
So she lived alone, without a single relative, in that quiet emptiness.
Hwayeon's account steadied me. Soohan had changed like this, so I would have to take responsibility. I would look for a way to turn her back to normal, too. And so there was one more person I had to answer for.
…Should I send Soohan to Grandpa Butler and have her trained?
I went back to the mansion, took a beating from Hwayeon under the name of a spar, took a teasing from Franc under the name of a spar, washed, ate, and was resting when I realized Yeongeun still hadn't come home. She had been sad that she would be busy starting today and that her time with me would shrink. It seemed she had meant it. Ten at night was nearly on us, and she still hadn't clocked out.
Since coming back from the verification team, she had returned to the mansion at six p.m. sharp, washed, played with me, eaten, played some more, and slept. I had meant to put necklaces on all three of them today. At this rate, only Yeongeun would miss the day. I should have told her ahead of time and had her come early, just for today.
Send a text through the Certifier? Or go to the Blue House and see her myself?
I was weighing it when I saw Yeongeun's car coming.
She made it before the day was gone.
I went out to the entrance to match the moment she came in. Yeongeun opened the door, saw me, and broke into a wide smile as she came into my arms.
"Seoha welcoming me the second I get off work! I'm so happy!"
"Welcome back. Have you eaten?"
"Uh-huh. I can hardly work without eating, can I?"
I patted her backside and told her to wash up quick and come to the third floor. She let out a cute little scream, covered her butt, and vanished into the bathroom.
I went into the south-facing room on the third floor that had become mine, picked up the wrapped necklace box, and came out. Franc and Hwayeon, who had been reading or drinking tea on the parlor sofa, smiled.
Yeongeun came out around eleven, washed, in a loose short-sleeved tee and shorts that fell to mid-thigh. She sat down beside me. The old butler, who had followed her up, refilled the tea and the coffee and went back down, and I was watching him go with some care when Yeongeun poked my cheeks and gave me a suggestive little smile.
"Did you wait a long time for your big sis?"
Heat was gathering thick in her eyes. She might as well have been asking whether I meant to make tonight hot, too. I let out a small sigh and flicked her nose. She blinked and looked at me, startled.
"Here I was, worried you might not show before the day turned, and the first thing out of your mouth is asking me to pounce on you?"
"I did not ask you to pounce!"
"Saying that with your eyes full of lust isn't very convincing!"
"Mmm, but still…? What's this?"
Afraid the bickering would push us past midnight, I said only what I needed to say and lifted the necklace case I had been hiding behind my back, prettily wrapped in red paper.
"What could it be?"
The face full of mischief went still. She looked down at the box, and her expression turned strangely unsteady. Then she seemed to notice something she had never seen before on Franc's neck and on Hwayeon's, and the rims of her eyes began to redden.
"Y-you're giving me one too…?"
"Of course. Want me to do it?"
"Huh?! No!"
I smiled and made as if to pull my hand away. She startled and caught it. The look of her was so cute that I grinned as I opened my mouth.
"Say 'please.'"
"Please!"
"Good girl."
Giggling, I set the necklace case in her hands. Eyes still reddened, she quickly undid the ribbon and peeled away the wrapping. She stroked the translucent red case, opened it, and let out a gasp.
"A ruby…? You had the necklace made from my birthstone?"
"Yeah. Do you like it?"
"Mm."
She drew a slightly rough breath, closed her eyes for a moment and opened them, and turned the case back toward me.
"Put it on me yourself!"
"All right, all right."
She sat with her back to me and gathered her hair up to one side. Thinking how pretty it was, black as silk, I took the necklace out, fastened it around her neck, and pressed a light kiss to the white nape. She flinched, then broke into giggles.
But her eyes were reddening more and more, as if the tears might spill at any moment.
"You okay? Your eyes are a little red."
"Mm… My heart's racing, that's why. Can I have a kiss?"
Thinking she was somehow different from usual, I set a hand to one of her cheeks, and we shared a kiss that wasn't long. Yeongeun closed her hand gently around the necklace, looked at it and at her neck in the mirror Franc had brought, and let out a long sigh.
"Haaa… I'm so happy I could die."
"Then Franc and Hwayeon would have me all to themselves. You'd be all right with that?"
"That is not all right!"
She giggled as she said it, but in the end a single tear slipped from the corner of her eye. What was this, really?
"Why are you crying?"
I wiped the tear with a handkerchief as I asked, but she only gave a small shake of her head. She clearly loved the necklace. Still, the sight of her crying made me think something painful must have happened to her in the past. I grew curious about that past… but someday there would come a day when I heard it from her own mouth.
"Come here."
Franc and Hwayeon couldn't take their eyes off this Yeongeun, so unlike her usual self, and my own heart ached. I opened both arms. She leapt into them and trembled, just a little. I held her like that for a while, soothing the faintly trembling back, until she found her calm.