To Britain in Search of an Enemy (4)

Dwight was a doctor. His mind was sharp, and he ought to have known plenty he could have thrown back at me, yet he couldn't muster a single rebuttal. He sat there unable to collect himself, and only after a long, stumbling effort did he manage to open his mouth.

"I-If you find Sophi... what do you intend to do?"

Come on, mister. You just changed what you call that bitch. Weren't you the one who said she was nothing to you? So what's with the soft, familiar little pet name?

"She's a spy, so the British government won't be able to protect her either. She isn't an ordinary civilian—she's an ability user—so the Association won't step in just because our side moves to take her out, and Japan won't want to claim responsibility. Legal protection is off the table. Torture her and kill her, and yes, my morals might take a public beating. But after the tens of billions of dollars in damage I handed Japan, quibbling over something like that would be a joke."

The further I went, the more the Edelbergs lost their composure, and I found myself wondering what on earth had happened in this house—what could have made them hand a daughter they so clearly cherished over to Japan as a spy.

"Like I said. Once I find her, I'm taking my anger out on her until I feel better. She wronged us, so the justification sits on our side. Every time the mood strikes, I could beat her half to death and then heal her up nice and clean. A human punching bag for half a lifetime. When I'm bored, I could round up some vagrants, have them gang-rape her, torture her, rip out her tongue, gouge out her eyes, pull her nails one by one. That'd be entertaining too."

I said it with a bright, pleasant smile, the kind meant to make a man look unhinged, and the color died out of Dwight's face—and out of his wife's beside him.

"Oh, and in Japan they call those male masturbation toys onaholes, don't they? Ichika, you're Japanese, so you'd know. Cut off her arms and legs, turn her into a living onahole, and make her Grand Blue's official sex tool. That could be fun as well. Anyway. Once I've vented as much as I need to vent, I'll shove her into Alcatraz by whatever means it takes."

I watched the couple wear matching corpse-black expressions, gave them a thin smile, and turned toward the entrance. Ichika Edelberg rushed over and caught my arm.

"Grand Master! That matter was because of me!"

"My lady!!"

Because of her. Bingo?

Dwight buried his twisted face in both hands. Ichika, looking as if she were about to weep, let go of me under the weight of Franc's furious glare.

I brushed off the place she'd grabbed, turned back, and spoke to the two of them coldly.

"Sounds like there's a story. Tell me all of it. Don't leave a single thing out."

"That is..."

At Dwight's hesitation, I kindled Mana Vision in my eyes again.

At those cold words Dwight squeezed his eyes shut, sighed, and then—looking like a man who hadn't slept in dozens of days—his face creased with agony.

Ichika sat down beside her husband and stroked his hand, her own face full of grief. I watched the two of them a moment, then worked the Certifier and switched on its video recording.

Absolute saints, weren't they? If it had been me, I'd have just... ahem.

Moved by that kindness, Ichika served the head of the house at the time from the heart, and began working as an ability user of House Edelberg. While she was active as a Physical Reinforcement user, that head of the house had his only son. The boy's name was Dwight.

Ichika then was ripe in a way the phrase in full bloom barely covered—an exotic Eastern beauty, her figure at its ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠peak. She understood her own position. She guarded her body from outsiders who eyed her flesh with hungry intent, and she carved out her standing within House Edelberg. Ten years after Dwight was born, she rose to C-Class.

As she aged, little by little, her appearance rolled back to her early twenties. Once she became the only C-Class in a house of scholars, she rose, for all to see, into the core of House Edelberg. Of course, that was also because of how devoted she was to the family.

Young, beautiful, strong, proper in her conduct, and devoted to the house. That Dwight, who had watched such a woman since childhood, would fall for her was inevitable.

From boyhood until he was into his early thirties, Dwight courted Ichika with fierce persistence. Sensing that she held real affection for House Edelberg, he won her at last with a blend of threat and plea: if she would not marry him, he would live a bachelor all his life, and House Edelberg would end with his generation. Dwight was twenty-eight. Ichika was forty-nine.

After more than ten years of that relentless courtship they reached marriage, lived happily under the family's blessing, and the following year had their first child. Thereafter they had a child every other year, four in all. Sophia was the second.

The year Sophia turned seventeen—the year 206, the year the sixty-year contract born of Japan's Ability User Crisis expired—a man from the Japanese Ability User Management Headquarters came to House Edelberg.

A Physical Reinforcement ability user, still alive, and now C-Class. Rich in real combat experience, and, as the lady of a powerful British noble house, possessed of information and connections gathered over a long span of years. From Japan's point of view, Ichika Edelberg was nothing short of a living treasure. Her upright character had drawn a great many connections to her. That, in the end, became the disaster.

Dwight sensed at once that if Ichika returned to Japan, he would never see her again. He threw every connection and every resource he had built into a desperate attempt to stop her going, and Ichika herself tried naturalization, asylum, every means she could find in order to remain in Britain. There was no way to stop a lawfully concluded contract, now expired, from sending her back.

Told that she would have to return to Japan first, and only then come back to Britain through proper procedure, the couple despaired. Japan was never going to let her go.

In the midst of that, a high-ranking official of the Patriotic Subjects Society came to Dwight and Ichika.

"...You are telling us to hand Sophia over?"

"You have two sons, and another daughter besides. If the price of keeping your wife, your three children, and your household is the sacrifice of one child, would you not call that a fair cost?"

"A fair cost?! What do you take a life for—what do you take a child for?!"

They weren't asking for much. A few pieces of information, and Sophia, their second daughter—hand those over, and they would not touch the family again. At that proposal from the Japanese bastard, the couple went days without sleep, agonizing like madmen, until by accident Sophia overheard their torment.

"I'll go."

"Sophi!"

"No! Better that this mother go. Even if I return, it doesn't mean we'll be parted forever! There is no need for a child like you to sacrifice herself!"

"That is the one thing you must not say. If Mother goes to Japan, looking at Japan's pool of ability users as it stands, the chance she ever leaves the country again converges on zero."

"You'll be dragged into something foul. I don't need to look to know it. Absolutely not. You are my precious daughter!"

"And the two of you are precious parents to me. Father. There is no other way. Our house still needs Mother. If I don't go, the house will fall as it stands. And if I go, at least we'll still be able to stay in contact, won't we?"

"Sophi..."

"No matter how I turn it over, this is the only way."

That high official must have seen Sophia's gift for people, and her talent. In truth, since debuting in society at ten she had woven a wide web of relationships and risen as a princess of the social world—or so the account went.

Dwight thought they meant to take Sophia as a hostage and reach their claws into the house. But sending Ichika would have been the same. No. Sending Ichika would have been more dangerous still.

"Count me as a child you've cast off. If you don't, someday Japan will stretch a dark hand into our house. Then everyone will be in danger."

"Sophia..."

And so, at an upper-class party in British high society, Sophia rejected the older fiancé her father had arranged for her—in truth, a match Japan had designated—struck Dwight across the face, declared the family tie severed, and fled Britain.

By then the contract for Sophia to naturalize to Japan in Ichika's place was already concluded. The Japanese government, furious that Sophia and the Edelbergs had stabbed the planned scheme in the back and rendered it useless, drove Sophia without mercy.

...Worn down by retaliatory training, allowed less than an hour of sleep a day, Sophia was forcibly summoned to the Phase World and awakened a long-range Recovery ability. After she returned alive, her standing reversed. She was treated as a treasure.

Naturally she received elite spy training and was made into a single hidden blade, all so she could kill the child of a woman who had held the presidency of the neighboring country for a long time and enjoyed the support of an entire nation...

"She used the World Phase Ability User Association's buddy system to approach that woman's child."

That woman's child. Hwayeon.

When Dwight's story ended, I felt as if someone had driven a fist hard into my solar plexus.

She'd been digging information out from beside Hwayeon, meaning to kill her when the moment turned decisive?

And when Hwayeon left Hwarang to found Time River, the way Sophia had trotted out after her all bright and willing—that was the reason? If Hwayeon learns this, it'll cut her even deeper. I'm going to lose my mind...

I folded my arms, flicked a finger, and turned back to the Edelbergs.

"How do the two of you know that?"

"That child sent us letters from time to time, written in a cipher she devised herself. On the surface they were ordinary letters asking after our health, but once one consults the decryption key, the hidden contents come out."

"Haha. Unbelievable. So for twelve years you took no action at all, and just watched her—that bitch... Sophia—play at being a spy?"

"How could we! Until only a few days ago, a Japanese stooge was right beside us, watching our every move. We found the man and dealt with him not long ago. Had you not overturned Japan and swept away the Patriotic Subjects Society and its subordinate organizations, we never would have found him."

Am I the only one who doesn't understand this?

Why are these people so stupid? If Japan pulled a stunt like that, they could have gone to the Association or the British government with their hands out and asked for help, couldn't they?

I looked at them as if they were idiots, and Dwight, stung, bellowed.

"You think that spy was posted only at our side?! Of course there was one beside Sophia as well! If some rash move of ours were exposed, Sophia's life would have been in danger that very instant—how could we have acted carelessly! If a reckless act of yours were to cost your fiancée her life, do you imagine there is anything you could do?!"

Watching him huff and seethe, face flushed, pouring out his indignation, I had to grant him the point in his own way.

Plant a watcher on both sides, then threaten that if either one pulls something stupid, the other dies. Those Japanese bastards really are scum.

"So the conclusion is this. Sophia went to ground without a word because she predicted what I was going to do to smash Japan, assumed Japan wouldn't be able to do a thing afterward, and moved on that assumption. Thanks to that, the contact network of the Japanese intelligence section watching you fell apart, the spy left a trail, and you found him and crushed him."

Which meant they'd decided their daughter's safety was more or less secured, felt the worry lift, and were enjoying a good thick morning fuck as a couple. That was the picture.

"You know where Sophia is hiding right now, don't you?"

"..."

Ichika, still holding her husband's hand, looked at me with eyes that begged.

"Talk."

"If we... tell you, do you intend to forgive that child?"

"First I'm dragging her in front of my lover, and leaving the disposal to her."

The couple went silent. I frowned.

They don't seem to grasp that whether they speak or not, the result is the same. If I set my mind to it, I can be crueler than those Japanese bastards. They'll have to see it with their own eyes and weep blood before they come to their senses.

If they'd just cooperate and appeal to my sympathy, that might actually help save their child. Why can't they see that?

Perhaps she caught the shift in me. Ichika seemed to realize that staying silent was the worst choice there was. She cried out in a rush.

"I'll tell you!"

"My lady!"

"I'll tell you. So please... I will take the punishment. In place of this foolish mother, that child who sacrificed herself—only her life..."

Ichika covered her face with both hands and couldn't go on. A single tear fell between her fingers.

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

Having heard where Sophia was hiding, I left the mansion and looked up at a sky packed with gray cloud. Thick with storm cloud, it looked exactly like the way I felt.

"Ah, fuck."

"Seoha..."

I knew it would turn out like this. Something had felt off the moment I stepped into the Edelberg mansion.

What I'd heard from the five bosses of the Patriotic Subjects Society—locked in Alcatraz, impossible now to say whether they were dead or alive—fit this couple's story so cleanly that I took every word of it for the truth.

I dismissed the Wall of Space wrapped around the Edelberg mansion, leapt high into the sky, and flopped onto my back atop the Wall of Space. The tightness in my chest didn't ease.

"Franc. That woman, Ichika. How did she look to you?"

"The very model of a wise wife and good mother. Nothing she said could have seemed anything but sincere."

"Right? That's how she looked to me, too."

At the far edge of my Spatial Perception, over the Edelberg mansion, I watched how Dwight and Ichika were reacting. Ichika was still sobbing, taking what comfort her husband could give her.

If all of that was an act, it was genuinely skin-crawling. A person you absolutely could not leave alive—in a different sense from that bastard Ha Cheolsu.

Franc was sighing without quite meaning to, gazing up at the sky, when I turned on the Certifier and called Aunt Hyeryeong. She must have just washed. She was in a bathrobe, toweling hair still damp from the bath.

So the NIS report had been packed with the investigator's private opinions.

Hearing Aunt Hyeryeong, I felt the point that had gone blurry snap back into place. There was a story, yes. But Sophia and the Edelbergs were the perpetrators, and Hwayeon and I were the victims.

She must have seen my expression brighten. Aunt Hyeryeong smiled and asked.

I ended the call and looked at Franc. She seemed to have steadied herself; she was watching me with quiet eyes.

"Have you thought of a good way to handle this?"

"Yeah. If this goes well, I can add a researcher for life to the institute I'm going to build. And pick up a C-Class Recovery slave on the side, while I'm at it."

What I was about to do wasn't all that different from Japan. I'd split the Edelbergs and Sophia apart and work them by holding each as the other's hostage. The difference being that I wouldn't be ordering espionage, or killings?

On the list of research grunts to grind down in the institute, I wrote Dwight Edelberg in under Altina Meldios. Considering that a deputy director is usually the real power among the working research staff—the most capable of them—it was a fairly profitable arrangement.

Japan was already in that state, so Sophia didn't look likely to bolt anywhere now. But the couple's hearts might turn, and they might send her running, so I needed to lock this down immediately.

The place Sophia was hiding, Ichika had said, was Netheravon, in Wiltshire, west of West Sussex. A hundred and twenty-two kilometers as the crow flies. About Seoul to Daejeon, more or less.

"That's near Stonehenge, isn't it?"

"Stonehenge is there?"

"Yes. Just to the south."

Stonehenge... Since I was in Britain, a look wouldn't hurt, would it? Grab Sophia, stop by for a moment, and go.

I pulled up navigation on Franc's phone and moved fast toward Netheravon. And I confirmed that Ichika hadn't lied. After running for dozens of minutes I arrived, and at once I sensed Sophia's familiar Phase Power.

"Found her."

I set the pleasure of finding her aside for a moment and, from the air above the house where she was, took in the surroundings with care.

The house she was hiding in was a slightly old two-story red-brick place, with a small garden and a vegetable plot. Ivy grew over the gray-brick wall, and a few trees had been planted at each corner of the fence, screening the inside so it couldn't easily be seen from without. There was a vegetable plot, but it didn't look used; weeds grew thick, and an old compact car sat parked in the garage.

To a casual eye, it was an ordinary country house with not a single thing wrong with it. The only difference from any other house was that Sophia was in there alone.

Nothing special around the place. No one who looked as if they could help her escape, and not an ability user in the little village. Looking inside, she couldn't have arrived long ago—hardly any furniture, the rooms bare and hollow.

Sophia sat in an old rocking chair in the narrow living room, where the sunlight came in, a lap blanket over her knees, eyes closed. The pleasantly plump flesh she'd had was largely gone, and she looked haggard. I looked her body over with Spatial Perception. Ten kilograms gone, at least.

She was the slender type to begin with, and with ten kilos off her she looked like nothing but bone and hide. Franc must have looked her over too. She grimaced and muttered.

"It has only been twenty days, and she has grown terribly thin."

"Yeah. Stab someone in the back and run, you ought to eat well and pack the weight right back on. What's this supposed to be? She's not a skeleton."

A sympathy play, staged for the day she gets caught?

Grumbling, I looked through the house again for anything Sophia might use as a weapon. Not because I thought she'd pick one up and come at me. Even if I was no good at close combat, I wasn't about to lose to a single Recovery-type whose physical ability was about the same as an ordinary person's. No—I was looking in case she tried to kill herself.

I searched the house, the basement, even inside the walls, and confirmed anything that could serve as a tool for self-harm. Then I erased them with the Wall of Space.

"All right. Let's go down."

"Yes."

I landed at the red-brick house where Sophia was hiding, looked at the lion-head knocker on the wooden door, raised a hand, and knocked. I knocked a few times and waited, but Sophia kept her eyes closed and showed no sign of getting up. From the quiet rise and fall of her chest, she seemed to be asleep.

"She appears to be sleeping."

"Works for me."

I tried the handle. Locked. That wasn't a reason I couldn't get in. I erased every last lock bolt with the Wall of Space, opened the door, and the smell of old wood came rolling out. I tilted my head once at the smell of a house no one seemed to live in, passed the entrance, and stepped into the living room—and there was Sophia, asleep in the rocking chair.

I crossed the creaking wooden floor and drew close, but Sophia, breathing quietly in her sleep, showed no sign of waking. On her gaunt face the honey-colored hair had lost its luster and gone brittle, and the body I'd examined with Spatial Perception was so wasted her ribs stood out. Even though it was high summer, she couldn't seem to bear the slightly chilly air inside; she wore a faded brown cardigan and had spread a rather thick lap blanket over her legs.

Feeling somehow stifled, I sat in the empty chair opposite hers, crossed my legs, and sighed. Franc seemed to feel the same. She couldn't smooth the frown from her face, and she stared at Sophia as if she meant to bore a hole through her.

I looked at the sleeping face, switched the Certifier to silent, and sent messages to Hwayeon and Yeongeun.

I quietly relayed, to a startled Yeongeun and Hwayeon, what I had discussed with the Edelbergs. The chat sank into silence.

At the mention of torture already prepared, Franc let out a long sigh.

If she'd been an ordinary spy, I'd have watched the live torture myself... For now, I'll see how this plays out.

Then Sophia stirred, as if about to wake, letting a faint groan slip as her face tightened.