Chapter 288: Mind, and Manipulation (5)

That afternoon I practiced without a break until Hwayeon and Yeongeun came back, and by the time they did I could blend three emotion-colors — and I had found a way to turn an injected emotion back into what it had been.

The reversal turned up by accident. All it took was drawing all seven emotions at once and casting them. Mix the seven into black and pour that in, and it doesn't drive the target mad; it simply scours clean whatever emotion has been laid over them.

The problem lay somewhere else. Concentration, and repetition.

Pour in too much, and the target's mind locks into a single state. Black emotion will not peel that off easily, and shine too much of the black in turn and the mind itself comes apart. The more often mental manipulation is applied, the heavier the load on the mind grows — until the mind collapses.

The beagle and the chihuahua, the Persian and the Siamese, minds already broken by the aftereffects of too much manipulation, gave no response at all no matter what stimulus I offered or what further manipulation I laid on them. Brain-dead, in the plainest sense of the word.

"Why are they suddenly like this?"

"Kitty? Doggy~?"

Yeongeun, fresh from the bath with Miho, toweled her damp hair and stared, baffled, at the four animals sprawled across the floor without so much as a twitch.

Miho shook the cats and dogs that lay breathing through vacant, unfocused eyes, and just as she cocked her head, Franc seemed to catch on to something. She swallowed, hard, and turned to me.

"Seoha? Did you... succeed?"

"Yeah. I succeeded. Thanks to that, these four had their minds collapse. Brain-dead, from the look of it."

At the word brain-dead, Franc's face and Hwayeon's went stiff. Yeongeun paid it no mind. She shot me a thumbs-up and smiled, bright as anything.

"Our Seoha really is amazing, isn't he~? How did you do it?"

So I explained it — the colors of the seven emotions, how to use them, how to release them — as much to settle the unease sitting on Franc and Hwayeon as for any other reason.

Hwayeon lifted the brain-dead chihuahua with a grave look, felt along its body here and there, and shook her head.

"So it was never emotion manipulation. Mental manipulation — that is the proper name. I cannot help but think this a dangerous ability."

In that instant Yeongeun dove into my arms, as if into water, and clung to me.

"I'm first!"

First? First place? First at what? Franc and Hwayeon turned the same puzzled look on her.

"Hehe. If you want the exact system of mental manipulation pinned down, you have to experiment on human ability users and gather the data, right? So I'll be your guinea pig?"

"Ah."

"Mm."

I glanced at Franc and Hwayeon, both wearing the look of people who hadn't thought of that, and stroked the head of Yeongeun as she gazed up at me with shining eyes.

Every so often Yeongeun showed me a love so blind it sent a chill down my spine. No matter what I did — even acts of love extreme enough that an ordinary person would have recoiled in disgust — she took them with a smile, and there were times that love sat heavy on me. If I asked her to die for me, it felt as if she actually would.

And now she was volunteering herself as the test subject for mental manipulation. Mind control. Keep on like this and she might tip the wrong way entirely, and turn yandere.

A B-Class Physical Reinforcement yandere. The mere thought was enough to scare me.

"No."

Use an ability this dangerous on my beloved lovers? Out of the question. I'd sooner snatch some ability user who meant nothing to me and run the tests on them.

When I wrinkled my face and showed her the refusal, Yeongeun lifted her brows a fraction, sat down in front of me, and looked me in the eye.

"There are things you have to test on people, on ability users, aren't there? I can't speak for the other emotions, but the feedback on the positive ones — love, joy, pleasure — I think we can give you that exactly."

She laid it out soft and coaxing, trying to soothe the refusal off me, but my mind was set. I put on a dead-serious face, looked straight at her, and said it.

"That's true. But experiment on my wives? Do you want to watch me lose my mind?"

"...Sorry. Don't be maaad~. I only said it because I wanted to be helpful to my darling."

I'd let a little anger into it and raised my voice, and Yeongeun, of all things, looked pleased. She pulled me in and crooned through her nose, as if to gentle me down.

"If you understand, don't ever say that again. Next time I really will get angry."

"Okay!"

Franc and Hwayeon, who had been listening at our side, smiled quietly and kissed me — my cheek, and my lips.

"Then who are you going to experiment on?" Yeongeun asked. "Choi Soohan? Sophia? Miho? Hiarid?"

"Sophia, obviously."

Honestly, I think of mental manipulation as an ability that rots a person's character. In all the stories I'd ever seen, a mind-control user who was actually good was almost nowhere to be found, and the ones who showed up as enemies were, without fail, the worst villains of the piece. So mental manipulation — mind control — I would use only on Aberrants, and on humans who had set themselves against me.

Use it carelessly, and it was a power that would ruin me along with everyone else.

The moment Dr. Dwight set foot in Korea, he bought up a sizable tract of land near the house I was building at the Shinchon-dong training ground, got an introduction from Aunt Hyeryeong, contracted a builder, and started raising a mansion there. It was smaller than the Edelberg family house that had stood in Crowley Down, but for the Dwight couple and three children who weren't even married yet, it was nowhere near cramped.

Overhearing him talk with Aunt Hyeryeong, I could feel the ambition in it — a more livable house, built on what he'd learned from the Edelberg mansion. Perhaps because he came of British nobility, there was no hesitation in the way he spent, and nothing restrained in the way he moved. The site made a triangle with my own grand mansion and the research institute the laborers were raising even now, and in sheer value it looked like no small piece of ground, so I figured he wouldn't lose money on it and left him to it.

Anyway, Dr. Dwight, his wife, their three children, and Sophia were renting one empty floor of the residential wing while the mansion went up, so when I called for Sophia she was at the house in under ten minutes.

"Master, did you call for me?"

"Yeah."

The moment she stepped inside she clasped her hands and bowed from the waist, deep, then offered my lovers bow after bobbing bow, making a display of where she now stood.

"......"

Hwayeon, who had once thought of Sophia as an older sister, seemed to find that hard to watch, and simply turned her head. Franc and Yeongeun treated her as neither stranger nor family — merely someone they knew, more or less — and watching that, I remembered what had happened not long ago.

Sophia, the spy the Japanese government had slipped in among us, had been hauled before the IWO Ability User Tribunal on charges of espionage and attempted assassination, and sentenced to 999 years and damages of two quintillion won. Trials between ability users tend to hand down compensation on a scale ordinary courts never see, but this time the sum was monstrous past anything precedent had to offer. And once damages pass a certain line, they look at the defendant's ability to repay; if payment is judged impossible, the defendant is sent to Alcatraz, the worst deep-sea prison in history.

Sophia had been ordered to pay one quintillion won. There was no conceivable way she could pay it. Alcatraz should have been a certainty — but I waived the damages, and through Grand Blue's legal team I submitted a different intent to the tribunal: that I would keep Sophia at my side, and watch her suffer.

I don't know the particulars of how the legal team moved. What I know is the result. The tribunal accepted the offer, and Sophia was bound to me. Once it became known that one private person had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been made subordinate to another, voices of concern rose in certain corners of society. A slave, in the modern day. Literally. And a useful one at that — a slave whose wounds could be healed without a trace whenever she was hurt.

In the middle of all that, a TV commentary program I caught in passing dragged up not only Sophia but the earlier matter of Choi Soohan, and criticized me in terms like these.

It's not night service, it's a maid! No — a butler!

No, no. She isn't even doing night service!

Under the lead of that smug-faced talk show host, the guests who had been running their mouths for a dozen minutes fell in behind him. The chairman of Grand Blue, they agreed, was the sort of man who would forgive a beauty even if she threatened his life, so long as she came apologizing with tears and her body.

Hearing that, I ran the most objective simulation I could manage.

Simulation 1. A total stranger — a beauty who outshines even my lovers — tries to kill me, fails, and swears, stark naked, that if I spare her she will do anything as a slave. What do I do?

...What do I do. I dispose of her by the law. On what, exactly, am I supposed to trust that bitch?

Simulation 2. A total stranger, a man with a truly exceptional ability, tries to kill me and fails. What then?

Maybe it's because I've learned mental manipulation, but rather than kill him, capturing him and working him as a slave seems better. If he's capable I'd have to watch my back — but I have mental manipulation. Wouldn't he be convenient to put to use?

Ah. Someone like Ha Cheolsu is the exception. That kind, you erase from the world. That's the correct answer.

Anyway, watching that program, I nodded. There was a logic to my record earning an assessment like that. So after I saw it, I started putting Sophia and Choi Soohan in front of the public, often.

What was I trying to show them?

That Sophia was my slave, yes — but not the sex slave they had in mind. And that I was not a man who gave every woman an OK.

Inside Grand Blue, and through the IWO and the Ability User Alliance, I spread the story of the criminal named Sophia across the world, and I locked a neck chain on her with a plate that anyone could see at a glance was a marker of slavery — proof that she was someone's property. The compensation she earned working with the raid team was to be divided, at a fixed ratio, among those harmed by her espionage, and every won left over went into the Evergreen Foundation, which Grandfather Juhan had begun to run, to be spent on the welfare of the socially vulnerable.

The Evergreen Foundation was one I had established out of my own pocket. Its total assets had already stood level with the richest foundation in the world, the one founded by the CEO couple of Microsoft ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in America — and because I kept pouring in what Choi Soohan and Sophia earned, it had by now put its name up as the foundation holding the most assets on earth. Whether that was the weight of my name, or the rumor that my temper was foul, the parasites that supposedly latch on wherever a foundation appears were nowhere to be found, and it was steadily making a name for itself as an exceedingly clean, transparent foundation. Or so Mom, who holds the post of the foundation's chief auditor, told me.

Last of all, I rounded up every bastard who had hurled savage insults at me and my family — parents and all — and hit them with a second wave of lawsuits. A famous Korean actress was among them. Why? What was she short of? So was a member of a popular girl group. These bitches had torn into my women. No exceptions for them — if anything, I steered the court toward heavier sentences.

And still, shitty bastards crawled out of the woodwork.

Guests from another raid team, come because they wanted to collaborate with us, had apparently decided Sophia was a thing they were free to handle. I caught them trying to grope her body.

Naturally, my rage blew.

One B-Class Physical Reinforcement user, two C-Class Physical Reinforcement users. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠erased the ligaments in their elbows and knees with the Wall of Space, dropped them where they stood, crushed their testicles, and stomped them to the edge of death.

"Aaaagh! Agh! Keeeek!"

"Guaaagh! S-sorry...! S-spare me...!"

That didn't feel like enough. I restored every wound with Healing Wave, then stomped them to the edge of death again. Their balls, too — stomped until they burst a second time. Healed them yet again after that, and stomped them yet again, and repeated the whole thing for three hours in the Grand Blue lobby. And then the rumors began to travel in a different shape.

Lay a careless hand on my property, and you don't get to die. You just suffer.

The three of them, stomped by me for three hours, were admitted to the Ability User Alliance mental hospital, and I received a report that their minds were flickering in and out. The Alliance, for its part, declared my actions legitimate self-defense, so nothing came of it that could become a problem.

I could have let the groping go with a warning. There was a separate reason I answered it like that.

Whatever had become of the affinity and the social gift that even the bastards in Japanese intelligence had drooled over, after the trial Sophia grew quiet. Aside from Choi Soohan, our family, and her own, she hardly spoke. A few people moved by pity approached her afterward, and she turned them away — a sinner, she said, had no right to live at ease. Or so I heard. Because of that, the humans who thought Sophia could be treated however one liked had been growing, one by one.

Walk around acknowledging yourself as a slave, and inside a raid team already packed with social elites, being looked down on is inevitable. An atmosphere had been forming, slow and sure, that it was fine to slight Sophia, fine to belittle her. I ground those scum down as a warning against it. After that incident, the sidelong habit of ignoring her and treating her as a slave vanished as if rinsed clean.

Thanks to that, whatever the outside thought, inside Grand Blue Sophia occupied a peculiar position. Choi Soohan had ended up in a strange spot of her own once word got out that she'd been hired as my butler, but Sophia seemed to have taken hers because she wanted it... or maybe that was me, mistaken.

Anyway, Sophia — an untouchable slave by her own admission and everyone else's — showed me and my family a face of perfect courtesy and obedience, whatever the world made of her reputation. Connections and personal affinity far too brilliant to waste, a gift for working angles in the dark, for gathering information and setting it in order. Capabilities too good to leave sitting idle.

And far too dangerous to use on the faith of this obedient face. What she learned in Japan was one thing; her aptitude was good, her mind was good, and there was no promise she wouldn't stick a knife in my back.

So I decided. I would lay mental manipulation on Sophia.

"Right. I called you because there's something I want to test on you."

"If I can be of help, please test me as much as you wish!"

Around her neck sat a steel plate, stamped with the letters of the name Sophia Inis Edelberg — a dog collar I had hardened by painting Phase Power over it through Mana Sieve. Winter was coming on, and still she wore clothes that left her neck and shoulders bare. She used to go about with that blonde hair let down long and straight; once she became a slave of the modern day, she obtained a jade hairpin and thereafter always wore it twisted up.

As if inviting the eye to the plate-chain at her throat. As if to announce, to anyone looking, that she was my slave.

Even now her long blonde hair was pinned up with two jade-green pins, her slender neck entirely bare, and against the white of her skin the blue plate stood out so sharply that the gaze went to her throat of its own accord.

"Come here. Sit."

With my lovers and the two pets looking on, Sophia came without a moment's hesitation to where I sat on the living-room carpet, knelt, and looked up at me with bright, shining eyes.

Choi Soohan, who had taken over the running of my household while the mansion was still going up, brought drinks out in their cups, butler's uniform and all. She passed me a glass first, politely — and in the same instant flicked a glance at Sophia. In that fleeting span, Sophia looked back.

And I saw it. The eyes of the two, meeting, caught fire.

What. Do they need a bout to settle rank?

Come to think of it, the order in this house ran me >> Franc > Hwayeon > Yeongeun >>>>> Miho > Choi Soohan > Hiarid = Sophia. Something like that? I hadn't arranged it on purpose. At some point it had simply become this.

For a span of not even a tenth of a second their eyes had met, and then both looked away as if it had never happened. Choi Soohan began handing drinks to the ladies of the house. Sophia looked at me with eyes that said order me, anything, please.

An explanation first, I supposed.

"Sophia. You know about the Ha Cheolsu terror incident on November 7th, don't you?"

"I do! A textbook case of what happens when an incompetent, wicked human gets his hands on real power!"

"Yeah. I obtained that ability of Ha Cheolsu's, too."

Sophia flinched, the shock plain on her face. Choi Soohan, in the middle of passing Miho a cup of milk warmed with sugar, went still for an instant — a flicker of emotion strong enough to stop her hand.

"So I'm going to experiment with that ability on you."

"Ah... Yes! If it would set Master's mind at ease... please experiment as much as you wish!"

"It's only so I can get feedback. I'll put the mental manipulation on you and then turn you back, so don't worry."

"Please don't concern yourself with me. Do as you wish!"

Yeongeun wore a look of of course, that's how it should be. Hwayeon looked faintly troubled, then turned her head away.

Franc came closer, her face showing little of what she felt, and asked Sophia a question.

"Sophia, are you not afraid? Your mind will be manipulated at another's whim. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Does it not frighten you, to have your will fall into someone else's hands rather than your own?"

"I... committed a grave sin against Master and the madams. If Master's ability had not surpassed what Japan projected, the result would have been... so please, take this too as atonement for the sin I committed."

No lie in it that I could feel, and that brought a small satisfaction — enough that I thought, if she kept on like this, I ought to treat her well. Not on Choi Soohan's level. But well. Even so, this could be a pose she put on. I am not about to let my guard down.

"All right. Then I'll begin. I'm going to carve one emotion toward me into you. Remember exactly how you feel right now."

"Yes!"

Sophia set her clenched fists on her knees and gazed into my eyes, a little tense. I reached out, caught her by the cheek — she had filled back out from skin and bones into the slender lines she'd had before — and held her head still. Choi Soohan stood behind Franc with the tray hugged to her chest, watching the moment of mental manipulation with a tense face, and something envious in it. I looked at that for a moment. Then I set my Phase Power moving, gave it form, and began to draw out the emotion-color of the manipulation.

Purple, then green, then blue. At a ratio of love two, joy three, pleasure five, additive mixing took, and what came of it was a gray so pale it was nearly white. The cat I'd injected with this had only stared at me. What would Sophia show?

I sheathed the gray emotion that spilled out in Mana Sieve, drew it up through my eyes, and cast.

Sophia's jasper-green eyes, locked on mine, flooded pure white for an instant — then cleared. At the same time TP drained away in one long pull, and Sophia jolted, planted both arms on the floor, and began to spill rough, broken breaths.

"Hah—?! Hah. Haa. Haah...."