And So Two Months Passed (3)

I went down to Aunt Hyeryeong's office on the thirty-seventh floor with the report in hand and Hwayeon on my arm, and found her there among a mountain of piled documents, her pen dancing without a moment's rest.

"Aunt. Here's the interim results report."

"Oh? Chairman, when did you get here? If you'd come in, you might have at least made a sound."

Once I'd founded a foundation, built a research institute, and acquired a phase stone refinery, everyone had started calling me Chairman half as a joke — and the further things went, the more sincere it seemed to be getting.

A title like that wasn't anything that mattered, so I held out the folder and spoke.

"I just came down. More to the point, I read the report, and the plan to contract plant hunters of F-Class and below, open the cleared zones to them, and exclusively buy up whatever they gather and mine — that one looked pretty good."

"Doesn't it? Time River's clearance maps are a cut above anywhere else in fine detail. Make those public, and herbalists and collectors will take an interest and come gathering, if only for the convenience."

"Mm. Let's add about one more convenience on top of that."

"A convenience... such as?"

"I hear there's a lot of low-grade gear left over from the merger of Time River and Hwarang, just sitting around. We run a side business renting it cheap to greenhorns who don't have any equipment."

"That's a good idea! I'll take what you've suggested and focus in on convenience as the keyword."

Perhaps finding the new venture sound enough, Aunt Hyeryeong drew out a sheet of pristine white paper and began filling it at a rapid clip. Then she lifted her head, looked at Hwayeon and me, and smiled — bright, the way a much older sister smiles.

"By the way, are the two of you heading out on a date?"

"Hehehe. It's Saturday, and the weather's nice, so I'd love to go out and play, but we've got things to do. More importantly, Aunt Hyeryeong, you ought to go have some fun with your husband too. Instead of just rotting away at the company."

"Pfft. When I have the time."

Aunt Hyeryeong's husband had come back from America last month. He'd gone over for treatment from a famous ability user who specialized in curing disease, and returned after nearly two months.

I recalled what had happened then.

Hearing that her husband had returned, I went to the twelfth floor of the residential wing of the Grand Blue Building, where Aunt Hyeryeong lived, to find out whether my Healing Wave worked on recovering from disease as well.

I rang the bell. The front door opened, and out came Aunt Hyeryeong in a colorful sweater and a brown knee-length skirt, her long hair braided and drawn forward over her shoulder. She saw us, smiled radiantly, and spread both arms.

"Welcome, Chairman! And welcome, Miss Franc!"

"We're here, Aunt."

"Hello."

Expectation and joy showed across her whole face. She looked terribly excited.

She'd had word that we were coming, and had clearly been waiting. I followed her into the living room, and a man came into view, seated before a canvas and painting with great effort.

Kang Gihun, Aunt Hyeryeong's husband, was a handsome man with features more delicate than hers. But true to someone stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, he sat draped over a wheelchair, pallid in the face and wasted in the body, barely managing to work a tiny brush.

The very picture that comes to mind at the words Lou Gehrig's disease. A man with hardly any strength left in him.

I looked over his condition for a moment with Spatial Perception, then turned my eyes to the painting. Across the canvas, something extremely metaphysical and strange was taking shape — so strange that my sense of beauty couldn't begin to tell what he was painting.

Hm. If I painted while high, isn't this exactly what would come out?

"I'm sorry, Chairman. When Gihun paints, he wouldn't notice if lightning struck beside him..."

"It's fine. Don't mind us. Someone who can lose themselves in a single thing is admirable, and I get to watch a working artist at his craft, so I'm glad of it."

"Hehe."

I didn't want to interrupt a man that deep in his work, so I meant to wait a little, and looked around.

Floors six through thirty-four of the residential wing held three households apiece, which was why the place looked smaller than my home or Dad's on the top floor. Even so, it was larger than the apartment we used to live in — over 2,500 square feet — and for two people, very spacious indeed.

I was looking over the modern interior when my eyes hit the living-room wall toward the entry, and I sputtered. Inside a frame more than ten feet wide hung a nude of Aunt Hyeryeong, lying long across the canvas.

She'd hidden her chest by hugging a cushion, and concealed what mattered by lightly crossing her legs, reclining at a slant in a thoroughly seductive pose. Set against a background like dark gold-gray fog, her naked form in a contrasting color was so realistic you could have believed it a photograph, not a painting.

Is this that hyperrealism thing? It really looks like Aunt Hyeryeong stripped bare and is lying inside the frame.

And that one's got a thick coat of the glaze her husband's eyes put on her. Stands to reason. Look at the painting alone and her figure's no different from my lovers'. But five months ago, when I sneakily scanned Aunt's body, she came up about thirteen points short of them.

Even so, it absolutely does not look like the body of a thirty-six-year-old married woman. Mid-twenties, being generous? The chest hidden behind the cushion looks as springy as a teenage girl's, the waist is so narrow you wonder if it's even twenty inches, and the hips are developed enough to make you question whether she's East Asian at all.

"......"

I was inwardly appraising the nude, thinking the line of those hips — risen like a high peak, thanks to her lying on her side — was plenty seductive, when Franc jabbed my flank. Hard.

"Ugh. What?"

"And just what are you boring a hole into with those eyes~!"

Franc's face, whispering in my ear with a furious look, had flushed a pretty red. The glance she flicked toward Aunt Hyeryeong — red as a traffic light — seemed to be telling me to read the room.

"I'm looking at a painting. It's a really pretty painting."

"But that is..."

"But what. They hung it out in the open like that, so they hung it for the guests to look at— kek! Don't pinch!"

"Seo-haaa...!"

"Ow ow ow!"

"L-look at me, losing my head. With guests standing right here... I'll bring something to drink, so p-please, sit down!"

Whether she was embarrassed that Franc and I were bickering, Aunt Hyeryeong covered her reddened face and fled to the kitchen. The moment the owner of the house vanished, Franc dropped every filter on her anger and set to pinching my side in earnest.

"Aaaah. That hurts, Franc. Don't get worked up. That's a work of art. Or what — you can't even tell art from obscenity?"

"Lady Shinomiya said that even a work of art may become obscenity, depending on who stands as its audience!"

Oh, wise of her. As for me, I'm a man who could pitch a tent over a painting of Venus.

But that's that, and this is this!

"To me, that painting is the finest work of art there is."

"...Your gift with words only keeps growing, truly! Swear on your father's and mother's names — you weren't thinking anything untoward?"

"I wasn't!"

"........."

It's the truth, and she doesn't believe me.

Maybe answering on the spot had been the mistake. I was sticking my lip out under Franc's narrowed glare — she was examining me like a prosecutor before the bench — when Aunt Hyeryeong came back, face still red, with milk and cookies made from set royal jelly.

"Ah, please sit and have some of these. They're nutritional cookies flown in from Bulgaria."

"I'll enjoy them."

"Thank you."

We sat on the sofa, eating cookies where a pleasantly sweet, chewy jelly and a crisp biscuit came together just right, and waited for Kang Gihun to stop painting.

Just how locked in is he, that he doesn't even notice Franc and me raising a racket?

After about twenty minutes of cookies and milk, he finally let out a strained breath — "Huuu" — and lowered the hand holding the brush. As if she'd been waiting for just that, Aunt Hyeryeong went to him, kneaded his shoulders, and spoke.

"Gihun."

"Yes. Hm? Is it already time for the Chairman to arrive?"

"He's already here. Behind you..."

"What? Ah!"

The owner of a voice a little soft, matching his looks, turned the electric wheelchair and was flustered to see Franc and me.

Drawing metaphysical pictures with lines that bold, with a face of lines that fine — are looks unrelated to artistry? No. He painted Aunt Hyeryeong's meticulous nude, so there must be a relation. Look closely at that part and even the marks where the hair was removed are rendered in delicate detail.

Perhaps sorry for making us wait, Kang Gihun smiled as he steered the wheelchair over and gave a small nod. It seemed meant as a greeting, but maybe he could barely move anything above the shoulders.

"I apologize for greeting you in a posture like this. Even my neck hardly moves anymore..."

"I understand. They call me the God of Destruction, but I don't have the gutter character to nitpick manners with someone whose body won't cooperate. Don't worry about it."

"Hahaha. A man overflowing with wit. Allow me to introduce myself, Chairman. I am Kang Gihun, Ulli's husband."

"Ulli?"

At the word that popped out of nowhere, I blinked, and Aunt Hyeryeong covered her face with both hands and crouched. The ears poking out past her hands had gone red again.

"Her name, in the Chinese characters, contains the character for a bell. Hyeryeong. Ryeong. A bell. And a bell goes ull, so — Ulli. A pet name from a simple little chain of association. Haha."

"Aunt Hyeryeong is more pretty than cute, and yet somehow a cute nickname suits her. Anyway, I'm Jung Seoha. I receive a great deal of help from Aunt Hyeryeong. And this is my girlfriend, Franc."

"Hahaha. Ulli is of an aunt's standing to you, Chairman, yes."

"Not quite. It turns out Aunt was my mother's old classmate and friend. So in private, I just call her Aunt."

"Ah, I see. Our Ulli..."

Going along with him like that, Kang Gihun's character came through clearly enough in that short meeting: bright and easygoing, nothing like a patient in the grip of a grave illness.

No need to drag the talk out. I raised a hand to stop him and spoke.

"Now, now. If we keep talking here any longer, I think Aunt Hyeryeong's poor heart is going to melt clean away. So first, shall we see whether my ability can treat Mr. Kang's illness?"

In fact Aunt Hyeryeong was standing between Kang Gihun and me with a face past mere tension, as if she might collapse. Noticing her only then, he smiled faintly.

"Haha. To be healed in person by the Chairman, the world's only Special Class. I have a wonderful wife, and so I get to enjoy a luxury like this. And how I ought to thank you..."

"I came myself because this is for Aunt Hyeryeong, who helps me in every way she can. And it may not work, so if it doesn't, please don't be disappointed. If it does, and you make a full recovery, just cherish Aunt like a princess. OK?"

"Okay. Hahaha."

Laughing, Kang Gihun spoke with a brightness that didn't fit a man struck by incurable Lou Gehrig's disease — the brightness of a man who would call himself the most unforgivable bastard under heaven if he ever slighted Aunt Hyeryeong. Strength wouldn't properly enter the muscles of his face, and it seemed he was doing his best to put his feelings into words.

I stood and approached him. Aunt Hyeryeong, who had been standing at his side, pressed her hands together and began to pray with everything she had.

The moment I saw her like that, I fired stage 5 of the eight stages of Healing Wave I had available to me.

I'd considered dumping all eight at once, but you never know. And even stage 5 was enough to regenerate, in an instant, Hiarid's wings and arms after my Wall of Space had crushed them flat — so if this didn't restore him, well, I'd have to give up.

Blue fog, the very color of the open sea, spread like a tide and began to fill the apartment.

The sea-light mist wrapped everyone in the house, but it clung especially thick around Kang Gihun, Aunt's husband.

"Oh—!?"

Aunt Hyeryeong gave a small shiver as Healing Wave swept over her, then whipped her head around at the gasp that burst out beside her and stared at her husband.

Kang Gihun was staring, eyes wide, at his own left arm as it trembled and slowly began to rise.

"My hand— my hand is moving! Th-this is... this iiiis...!"

Hmm? I'm looking over his body with Spatial Perception, but I don't particularly see anything that's changed.

And yet Kang Gihun, eyes shaking, slowly raised that trembling left arm all the way above his head. It was nothing like the arm that, until a moment ago, had hung limp as a stick over the armrest.

He looked up at the hand that had reached above his own head and cried out in a voice thick with feeling.

"Gihun... aaah... God..."

Hmm. From the reaction alone, I can't tell whether it's only his stamina that's come back, or whether the Lou Gehrig's has actually been treated.

Originally I'd meant to take time to experiment first, at Dad's hospital or some famous one, before treating Aunt Hyeryeong's husband. Yeongeun had stopped me, and talked me around.

"Honey, even if you only use the very lowest tier — Healing Wave, stage 1 — that's ten percent of your total TP. Seven hundred thousand TP in a single go. In money, that's seven hundred billion won, you know? And that's only if stage 1 is enough to heal them. The moment you go to stage 2 or 3, you're looking at 1.4 trillion, 2.1 trillion."

"Whoa. When you add it up like that, it's insanely expensive."

"When healers take healing side work, they charge for every bit of TP they spend. Anyway — do it once for free, and patients with every incurable and intractable disease there is will come swarming, demanding you restore them too. Do you think they can pay a fee on that scale? And do you have the nerve to refuse them and eat the curses, soaked in desperate resentment and hate?"

The point was that if I started treating people with no plan, and went on handing the benefit only to some unspecified many without ever finding a fundamental solution, those who received nothing would feel a severe relative deprivation — and it would end in slander and condemnation aimed at me.

Certainly, keep offering kindness with no institutional safeguard, and people appear who take that kindness for a right.

At the time I'd just decided to think about it later and let it pass. But seeing Aunt Hyeryeong and her husband holding each other, shedding tears of joy, my thinking shifted a little.

I'll ask Dad to run the tests later, and... adjust my thinking a bit.

Kang Gihun, who had straightened his upper body in the wheelchair and was hugging Aunt Hyeryeong while he trembled all over, soon seemed to tire, and leaned back against the rest. Aunt, her cheeks a mess of tears, ran up to me and dropped into a full bow.

"Thank you, Chairman! Truly, thank you!"

"I thank you as well! Chairman, thank you so much! To bring about a turn for the better in Lou Gehrig's disease... how am I to repay this grace... sob. Really, really, thank... thank you..."

"It's nothing. Fortunately, it seems Healing Wave works on ALS too."

"I never even dreamed I'd be able to move my body again. But, but..."

The muscles he was trying so hard to move, eyes gone red, were so frail that even that brief motion could injure them. I pulled the sobbing Aunt Hyeryeong up to her feet, went to him, and spoke as I laid a Healing Touch over the muscle.

"Force yourself and it looks like you'll tear a muscle, so stay put. Aunt Hyeryeong, you calm down too, and go to Grand Blue Hospital and ask my father for a thorough examination. Save the thanks for after that."

"Yes. Yes. I'll do it at once! Thank you, thank you! Master is the benefactor of the two of us...! sob."

Aunt Hyeryeong held Kang Gihun's hand and shed thick tears without stopping, and he too spilled hot tears, stroking her head with a hand that trembled uncontrollably.

Watching that moving scene, I wiped under my nose and spoke.

"But there's something I'm curious about. That nude of Aunt's hanging on the wall — you hung it there on purpose, right?"

"Hahaha. Ulli is truly beautiful! Truly beautiful, and kind, and virtuous — a woman far too good for me! So I put my heart into it and painted, on the canvas, the most beautiful form of the woman I love! That spot is where the yang energy is strongest, by the principles of geomancy! It's the harmony of yin and yang!"

Kang Gihun smiled, cheeks trembling, his face a wreck of tear-tracks.

"See? I told you he hung it there on purp— ugh!"

"Oh, honestly! Be quiet!"

Franc pinched my side again, saying I'd gone and ruined the whole touching moment.

After that, Aunt Hyeryeong spent her own money to build a rehabilitation center on an upper floor of Dad's hospital — renamed Grand Blue General Hospital — and there Kang Gihun poured himself into rehab, sweat pouring off him.

In the meantime he underwent a proper examination at Dad's hospital, and the results confirmed that the death of nerve cells — the hallmark of ALS, and the reason it cuts a life short — had vanished by more than ninety percent.

Muscle that had already died and disappeared wasn't regenerated, because the body accepted its absence as the natural state. That was why there had been no change on the very day he received Healing Wave.

If Healing Wave could treat ALS, ranked among the uppermost of incurable diseases, then short of bringing the dead back to life, it could probably treat just about anything.

Having finished the recollection, I looked at Aunt Hyeryeong, attacking her paperwork with drive and passion.

Since starting rehabilitation, Kang Gihun had become able to walk slowly, and I would often see the two of them strolling amicably arm in arm in the Sky Garden. Smiles bloomed not only on Aunt Hyeryeong's face, but all across his as well.

Well, of course they'd be happy, having gotten their health back from a fatal illness.

"Then we'll call it a day. You should wrap up and head out too, Aunt. You've got a husband you love to go see, don't you?"

"Hehehe. I'll finish what I'm in the middle of, and then I'll leave."

I nodded to Aunt Hyeryeong, who smiled softly, pulled Hwayeon's slender waist into my arm, and unfolded Space Leaping toward home.

The instant I did, something white and furry shot into my chest like lightning, and before I knew it I'd reflexively caught it in both arms.

"Mastew~!"

"Ah! Miho, you—!"

And what was it but Miho, white fox ears perked.

I patted the bottom of the one nuzzling her face into my chest, and asked Franc, who was glaring at Miho with a look that said there was no curing her.

"How's the studying going?"

"Haah. Her head is good, so she doesn't forget what she's learned, but she won't focus on her studies, and the moment there's an opening she schemes of nothing but escape, so the progress just won't come."

"Don't wanna study~."

Flapping her snow-white fox ears and making a tearful face, Miho didn't so much as glance at Franc. She only clung to my chest and hung on.

After I'd returned from England, I'd called in tutors to teach Miho how to conduct herself as a person, but she simply would not listen to anyone outside the family.

At first she'd obeyed at once not only Mom, Dad, and my sister, but even people of a department-head's standing, like Aunt Hyeryeong, so I'd thought she was a good kid who listened well.

That, it seemed, had been a misconception. The words of humans with no connection to me whatsoever, she treated as less than the barking of a dog passing in the street.

At first I'd thought it was the tutor's fault, but only after replacing the tutor for the twenty-seventh time did I realize the problem was Miho. In my view, she'd once said offhand to a member of the team that my TP tasted better than butter cookies, and I'd called her on it — I suspected that was where this had started.

And so, since last week, Franc had taken Miho in hand and begun her education...

"Is it too much for you as well, Franc?"

"She listens better than the tutors you invited, but even seated at the desk her mind is elsewhere. Turn your attention for even a moment and she tries to bolt, so I cannot create the conditions to teach her."

"What if I tried teaching her?"

"She listens to Hwayeon a little better than to me, so it might be possible — but Hwayeon is busy with work, isn't she?"

Listening to Franc and Hwayeon with one ear, I approached the low floor desk in the living room. As I drew near, Miho whipped her six tails in irritable swishes, as if she wanted none of it.

I lowered a hand and stroked the excited girl's tails, then looked over the books on the desk. Two months into them, she seemed to have made almost no progress at all through the textbooks on social life, ethics, and morals.

At this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rate, evolving Miho into a high-rank subspecies keeps getting pushed back, and that's a problem. I need her to become one soon, so she can research the correlation between aberrant evolution and phase stones in the Phase World together with Hiarid.

First, find out why she doesn't want to study.

"Miho."

"Mm."

"Does Miho hate studying because she wants to play?"

"Nooo. It's juuust..."

Hit it dead on.

"Does our Miho hate Master?"

I went to the sofa and sat with her in my arms, asking with a deliberately sad face, and Miho shook her little face furiously, then burst out.

"Like Mastew! Really, really like!!"

"Yeah? Then why is Miho doing something that makes Master sad. Does Miho hate studying?"

"Eeeeng..."

Laying her fox ears back and making a tearful face, Miho looked at the book on the desk, then scrunched her little face without mercy and fell into tremendous deliberation.

Hmm. Looking at this, she really, really doesn't want to study. Maybe I should try some other means. Force something she hates until she grows crooked, and that'll be more than I can handle.

Beside me, the two young ladies whispered.

"If Seoha taught her himself..."

"...Hard to see Seoha as a good example..."

"If he only taught what was in the books, it might not..."

"And then bad ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠habits would..."

"If we used him as a cautionary tale..."

I glared at my two lovers with a sharp crackle, and they quietly avoided my eyes. Seeing their soft rice-cake cheeks tremble as they held in laughter, I swallowed a sigh.

Come night they whimper that it's too much, they're dying, save them — and by day they can't rest until they've teased me. Unbelievable.

Then my gaze went to the TV, and I happened to remember something I'd overheard the kids saying at school not long ago.

Good-kid education, huh. I looked at Miho, hugging my chest and folding and unfolding her ears as she stared at the textbook.

"Miho. Does Miho like cartoons?"

"Huh? Like cartoons!"

Good. Rather than forcing boring study on her, show her a cartoon and lead her into learning on her own — an educational cartoon.

I covered Miho's ears with my hands so she couldn't hear, and spoke to Franc.

"Franc. Look up that one — Little Buddy Porong, or was it Pyorong."

"What is that?"

"They say it's an educational cartoon for little kids. I think it'd work better than teaching from a book that's nothing but text."

"Ah! Her head is clever, but her mental age is only at a kindergartener's level now, so of course a book of nothing but words is boring."

Franc immediately picked up the TV remote and started a search, and beside her Hwayeon began to watch as well.

Feeling a gaze from below, I looked down. Miho, still held in my arms, was looking up at me with sparkling eyes.

"Our Miho doesn't like books that are nothing but letters, right?"

"Don't like!"

"So I'll tell them to show you a cartoon before you study. Once you've watched it, you look at even one page of the book. You can do that much, right?"

"Mm... I can!"

"Good. Promise."

"Promise!"

At the news that I'd show her a cartoon, Miho got excited and squirmed, then stepped up on my thigh to stand, grabbed my cheeks, and started planting kisses all over my forehead and nose.

I was tickling and playing with her warm, fluffy-soft fox ears and tails when — they must have finished buying the VOD — a weird animation made in 3D began to play on the TV.

Right after, the screen showed a scene set against snowy mountains: a penguin in a bizarre yellow hat and orange goggles, laughing hee-hee, hi-hi as it played with a polar bear in overalls and a pink, bizarre creature of completely unknown identity.

"......!"

But as the scene changed to everyone going swimming together, there was a crocodile...

A crocodile's a reptile, isn't it? How is it perfectly fine in a snowfield? Is that an aberrant?

And as the screen changed, a female penguin appeared, and something that looked like an ordinary fox... No, hold on. How is that thing swimming along perfectly fine in ice water when it's a crocodile?

"......"

Miho was so absorbed she'd lost her mind entirely, mouth hanging open, as if she might climb straight into the TV. And that thing — looking closer, it wasn't a crocodile. It was a dinosaur.

When the fox leapt into the sea and started swimming, Miho, having seen it, perked her fox ears and sprang up, floated her body in the air, and got ready to swim. But the fox that had dived in got planted upside down in the sandy bottom and flailed both legs.

And didn't Miho flip herself upside down too, flailing her legs the exact same way and squealing with laughter.

Miho, starting to copy whatever the fox did... Right. You're a fox too, so of course you empathize with a fellow fox.

Anyway, I turned her around and sat her comfortably, and watched the children's program with her. As I watched, the children's ethics and moral lessons mixed in seemed plenty sufficient for instilling common sense.

I spoke to Franc and Hwayeon, who had carefully come up beside me so as not to disturb Miho while she focused on the TV.

"With a program like this, it'll help put a toddler's sense of ethics in place."

"Packing in everything children love, educational content and all, just to aim at the adults' wallets — commerce really is something," I added.

"I've never seen Miho concentrate like this. Shall I purchase all the remaining episodes of Little Buddy Porong as well? There are a hundred and twenty-six of them."

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

About twenty minutes apiece. Show her that, then break the morals and ethics book into small pieces and teach her after...

"Check the episode that comes up next, show her the morals and ethics book first, and then follow it with Porong. I think the effect will come out stronger ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that way. Let's use Porong as bait, and try a short lesson before we show the animation."

"That's a good idea!"

Franc's eyes sparkled, as if she'd glimpsed the possibility.

I hope this plan works, and Miho absorbs the basic common sense of the human world quickly.