The Dust Settles (4)

Five days after I erased the White Thorn Turtle—the one that had not even resisted—December 30th came, and every last thread of the plot to kidnap Hwayeon was tied off.

Had the warning I threw at the cameras, after wiping that thing out, actually landed? At every stage of the proceedings the U.S. government contacted me with something that amounted to a status report, and it matched, down to the last particular, the information Britain and Russia had been feeding me in their role as inspectors.

Then, at one in the afternoon on December 31st, Vice President Joe Selden of the United States delivered a live address to the nation from the White House.

Korea aired it live as well. They called it an address to the people, but in truth it was an apology aimed at me, spoken with domestic reporters and foreign correspondents from every corner of the world packed into a single room.

He laid the whole affair bare on the testimony of everyone involved. The root of the crisis, he said, was President Trumpet's raid on a Highest-Rank Variant—codename Blade Flyer—staged to postpone his own lame-duck collapse; and for the sake of his personal glory, he had tried to kidnap the lover of Grand Blue's chairman, take her hostage, and use her as leverage.

The public, who could not understand why any of this was being announced at all, exploded the moment the newsroom anchor spelled out what it meant. They had learned that by incurring the wrath of the world's only Special Type—the only person capable of standing against a Highest-Rank Variant—the United States had failed to receive help in time, and the damage had grown all the worse for it.

Vice President Selden closed by begging pardon, on behalf of the United States, for the attempt to kidnap the First Boss of the Republic of Korea's Grand Blue raid team, and by pledging to take the incident as the occasion to shore up the nation's foundations at home and abroad, so that nothing of the kind would ever happen again.

An apology that named things that straight? Apparently gouging a crater twenty kilometers across into the heart of North Carolina had done exactly what it was meant to.

Yeongeun brought me a playback panel and a letter, saying a handwritten apology from Vice President Joe Selden of the United States had arrived separately, along with a video promising it would never happen again. I erased both with the Wall of Space without so much as looking at them. To the lovers watching, wide-eyed, as the apology and the playback panel came apart in the Wall of Space before their eyes, I said, my voice gone low:

"Hmm~."

Yeongeun looked as if she were turning it over for a moment, but once she saw the look on my face she smiled, soft and easy, and came into my arms.

"It isn't as if America is the only country we can trade with. Plenty of nations want trade talks with us now, just to get on your good side, Seoha."

What she meant was that, thanks to me, a trilateral economic cooperation and development body among Korea, Britain, and Russia was going to be stood up, and we no longer had much reason to watch the mood of a country on the far side of the planet. So it didn't matter.

Right after the apology, the U.S. government formally announced that a great many ability users had been killed or wounded across three failed raids—once against Blade Flyer, twice against Muscle Bear. Watching it, Yeongeun added that it was a performance: better to come clean and admit it now, and salvage what remained of a great power's pride, than to keep it buried until the hiding was found out and that pride was ground flat.

"If they kept it hidden and Britain or Russia published the inspection findings first, their pride would be powdered."

In any case, three Highest-Rank Variants appearing out of nowhere left the world in the grip of a severe panic over aberrants. Major stock indices around the world crashed. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Shelf-stable food, emergency rations, first-aid kits, trauma kits, and survival gear flew off the shelves at home and abroad alike, and companies that built personal and family air-raid shelters were buried under inquiries.

People had only vaguely expected a day like this would come. Actually watching two Highest-Rank Variants run wild inside the world's greatest superpower—and watching that superpower fail to stop them, then grovel before a single man—hit hard enough that, for a while, it looked as if a global economic panic might truly be setting in.

A Highest-Rank Variant had always been something humanity could not face, but such things existed only in the Phase World, so people had never really been on their guard. Three kinds in a short span—five, if you counted the ones that had appeared in Korea—was more than enough to justify the shock.

It never quite reached a great depression, the worst case, because the World Phase Ability User Association and the IWO, the International Waterdrop Organization, certified my ability and spread the word with desperate urgency: there existed someone who could put a Highest-Rank Variant down as lightly as twisting a child's wrist.

It was only natural, after that, that a great many nations turned an extreme degree of attention on Korea, and on the Grand Blue raid team, where I was—the man who had dealt with a Highest-Rank Variant that even the United States, the world's strongest nation and the holder of its finest raid team, had been unable to handle.

Through several major incidents before this, those same countries had wavered, unsure whether I was ally or enemy. This time they spent five days shipping me every rare and precious gift they could find, trying to buy my favor, and I could not make sense of it. No matter the circumstances, a nation courting a private individual for friendship isn't normal, is it?

When I wondered why, Yeongeun told me the promise had gotten out. In return for Britain and Russia helping me under the form of an inspection, I had pledged to help if a Highest-Rank Variant appeared. The other countries, she said, were probably thinking they had no idea when a Highest-Rank Variant might show up on their own soil, and wanted to get friendly with me in advance.

"Did Britain and Russia leak it?"

"It leaked. The overeager loyalists let it slip on purpose, figuring it might do their countries some good."

Yeongeun, who had been turning two bottles this way and that—a wine of which only ten existed in the world, sent by France—giggled, plastered herself to my side, and rested her head on my shoulder.

"You don't really need to worry about it. You just watch the show and eat the rice cakes, Seoha."

The extreme interest in me soon reversed into a headwind and slammed into the United States, and the GS raid team—once called the finest in the world—took the blast head-on. They were already in bad shape. Two raids they had led had failed, and the high-ranking ability users they held had been cut in half. Now another disaster piled on.

Once the government announced that the raid team had taken part in the kidnapping at Trumpet's instigation, every sponsorship, every aid package, and every cooperative tie fell away, and the money dried up. On top of that, federal prosecutors declared they had uncovered illegal and corrupt dealings in the team's Phase Stone transactions and began turning the place inside out. As a company, they could not have held.

Someone might say they could simply gather the ability users and start over. The problem was that the incident their core members had joined had been aimed at me. The members were the raid team's actual property, and they quit in a long string, saying the same thing.

"Stay like this, and the God of Destruction is coming to destroy us."

Others were swept up in the federal prosecutors' crackdown. Either way, they could no longer exist as a raid team.

If Albert Granado—A-Class, and the pillar of the GS raid team—had been in one piece, it probably would not have come to a worst case like this. Worst case from their point of view, anyway. But Albert Granado had taken a serious wound in the first Muscle Bear raid, joined the second while still suffering the aftereffects of his recovery, and taken near-fatal damage all over again, falling into a coma. I saw an article online saying that had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠accelerated the raid team's coming apart.

Albert Granado, whose face I had never even seen, and Michael and Ariel Granado, both of whom had taken my fists. Somehow all three had survived, but I heard their conditions were grave in the extreme. Albert Granado in particular—boss of GS, and one of only three A-Class ability users in the United States—had suffered wounds amounting to thirty-five percent bodily destruction. He was receiving constant healing from countless recovery-type ability users, and still could not claw his way out of the coma.

A spokesperson for the U.S. government came to ask me what should be done with him, and I gave a simple answer.

"Then keep him alive for now and make him pay for what he did. If he doesn't recover in the meantime and dies, he dies."

According to an unofficial source—Yeongeun—the money the U.S. government was pouring into restoring Albert Granado was enormous. An A-Class is extremely rare. They meant to keep him alive somehow, make him pay, and then recycle him.

Of Michael Granado and Ariel Granado, the two who had faced me, Michael had been badly wounded in the raid, but a healer's work had him physically recovered in no time. For some reason, though, he was suffering severe PTSD. Yeongeun, passing the story along, teased me.

"How terrifying must you have been, Seoha, for him to come down with PTSD~?"

The part where I tormented her until she passed out is a different story.

After an investigation sharp as a blade, the inspection investigators established that Michael Granado had nothing to do with the kidnapping plot, and he was cleared. Ariel Granado was not so lucky. They had caught evidence that the bitch had tried to take an active part in the kidnapping, but she was drifting on the line between life and death, so the trial was being postponed.

They said a blast of packed-earth buckshot that Muscle Bear had hurled had pierced her entire body and driven her to the very brink of death. I saw a photo of her wounds. Her whole body was riddled with holes the size of grains of sand—a spectacular sight. It was a nude, but far from turning me on, it was dreadful enough to set off trypophobia, and my face twisted hard.

And so, with the boss of GS and the rest of its core members all half-crippled, and most of the membership implicated in the kidnapping, the GS raid team was at last dissolved under the lead of the United States, Russia, and Britain. I heard the rumor from behind the scenes that while the owners were in no state to come to their senses, the assets were carved into pieces and gobbled up by greedy hyenas.

Once the talk of the American address and the appearance of the Highest-Rank Variants had run its course, the proceedings of the IWO Ability User Tribunal began to be broadcast live, with dignitaries from every nation in attendance. I was cautiously asked whether I would attend. I refused. I was not particularly interested, and if I were in that room, I had a feeling I would see something I did not want to see.

Everyone involved in the attempt to kidnap Hwayeon, with two exceptions, had been handed over to the IWO Ability User Tribunal. Of the thirty-six, thirty-two were ability users mobilized at the time, and the remaining four were the actual criminals who had devised the plan. They did not recite charges and pass judgment one by one. The thirty small fry were lined up in a row, and the judge read out the charges they shared, ability user and ordinary person alike. Then the sentences to Alcatraz fell, one after another.

Some despaired. Some could not accept reality, thrashed, and were subdued by the B-Class ability users standing by in the courtroom. Some protested that they had not even attempted the kidnapping—was it truly a crime grave enough to warrant Alcatraz? All thirty raised a commotion, but the Association's special task force put them down at once and dragged them out of the court.

Then Ariel Granado came into the courtroom, half-crippled, seated in a wheelchair. The holes all over her body seemed to have been filled in; at a glance she looked fine. Look closer, though, and you could see the difference in tone between the old flesh and the new. The charges against Ariel Granado, who could not even hold her own body upright, were listed one after another, and among them were charges I had never known about—charges that had nothing to do with me.

Document-related crimes, in particular, were piled on thick.

"Looks like she forged a great many documents trying to bury what she did to you, Seoha. Collusion with political circles in the middle of it. That sort of thing."

"So that woman was something like the lady of the house for the GS raid team?"

"Mm~ Close to combining Yeon's post with Siha's. Except the workload wasn't even a quarter, and the perks ran three or four times as high?"

"How remarkable."

While the lovers traded words in low voices, the sentence of Alcatraz came down on Ariel Granado as well.

"Locked up in that condition? I can already see the ending. The inmates torment her in turns, the wounds get worse, and she dies."

I glanced at Yeongeun, murmuring in that cold voice, and turned my eyes back to the TV.

Honestly, I had thought Alcatraz would hold only President Trumpet and those bureau chiefs from the outfit with the endlessly long, unpronounceable string of words. I had not expected every single person involved—including people whose conditions were so grave they might die today or tomorrow—to be sent there.

The two who received exceptions were President Trumpet and Albert Granado. I heard that after Trumpet collapsed unconscious, he never came to; on December 29th he was declared brain-dead and pronounced a vegetable, so the trial was deferred. The presidential courtesies had ended long ago. He was clinging to life on a ventilator in a military treatment-and-custody facility, or so they said.

He was past eighty, and they said the odds of him waking, given age and infirmity, were slim. Chances were he would stay like that until he died. Even if he did come to, an IWO trial would be waiting, so he would be better off never waking, living like that, and just croaking.

Trumpet, who had met a medical death in the form of a persistent vegetative state, was being ranked the worst president in American history, and I had heard impeachment was proceeding as well... but it was a story I no longer wanted to care about.

As for President Trumpet's fortune, I heard Sophia was eating it away bite by bite through a steady run of hostile takeovers, and that capital too stubborn to swallow she was scattering to the wind through lawsuits, goading his rivals into digging up every crime he had and every crime he didn't. When she asked what to do with the money she had made that way, I told her to put all of it into the Evergreen Foundation and help people in need. Money like that—having it or not made no difference to me.

The one remaining was Albert Granado. In the end the U.S. government seemed to have given up as well; he was following in President Trumpet's wake without even receiving treatment from a recovery-type ability user. The Granado family had been implicated in the crimes and shattered completely. I heard the government cited every criminal fact it could, confiscated that vast fortune, recovered it into the U.S. treasury, and turned a portion over to me in the name of damages.

When I asked Hyeryeong's aunt why the assets had been recovered into the national treasury, Hyeryeong's aunt said:

"Once they were held legally responsible for the collapsed cities, an order came down to pay an enormous sum in damages. A normal compensation would be impossible even if you sold the Granado family a hundred times over."

...or so she said.

Right after the trial ended, Branch Director hyung came by... well, he wasn't a branch director anymore. Hyunwoo offered New Year's greetings in advance, handed me a modest gift of wild ginseng from the Phase World, and then said something loaded.

"You haven't noticed at all that the Association keeps sending you friendly messages."

"...Huh?"

"If they were ordinary ability-user criminals, they'd have gotten decades of compulsory labor. Why do you think they shoved every last one of them into Alcatraz? They're worried a reasonable labor sentence would put you in a bad mood."

Yeongeun, who had been listening beside us, added:

"It means they're greasing the wheels in advance, since Highest-Rank Variants are going to keep appearing, just like now. And the reason Hyunwoo came all this way to say that is probably because the Association's leadership ordered him to come and make the case. Something like, 'Go and show him we're working very hard right now.'"

"N-Noonim."

At the sight of Yeongeun smiling not like a cat, but like a tiger, Hyunwoo flustered and floundered. So he really had received an order like that.

The Twin Top Place incident—the TTP incident—ended with two Peak-Rank subspecies running rampant. The public still believes they were Highest-Rank Variants. Three major cities, seven mid-sized cities, and ten towns were destroyed. Property losses reached 12.7 trillion dollars. The official death toll was seven. The injured, about four thousand. The displaced, hundreds of thousands.

Twelve ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trillion dollars in property damage. Roughly on the scale of three years of the United States budget. Given that more than seventy percent of the damage the United States suffered was done in Las Vegas, you could tell just how determined the White Thorn Turtle had been when it set out to smash things. Four cities, Las Vegas among them, had their major facilities completely ruined, and for the time being they were no place for people to live.

The world press was churning out every kind of article on the Highest-Rank Variants appearing one after another, and on the trouble between me and the United States, and they were still crapping out garbage takes about the pride of the greatest superpower kneeling to a private individual. People all over the world were ranking the American TTP incident as the number-one shocking incident in U.S. history. The buzz was no joke.

But after I received the inspection results from Korea, Britain, and Russia, I switched my attention off. A report running to thirty pages... Summarized, the ringleader, Trumpet, had become a vegetable and was as good as gone; Sophia was in the middle of absorbing or wrecking his entire fortune; and everyone else involved was locked in Alcatraz.

The very last sheet was a secret document about me.

This is tabletop RPG terminology, isn't it? Chaotic Good means you'll ignore social order for the sake of your own values, and Neutral Evil means you're selfish, but you keep just enough goodness that it doesn't come back to hurt you. So I'm a bad guy, but sometimes I become a really bad guy?! Who the hell wrote this?

...It was too accurate.

Of course I would be selfish for the people precious to me, and ignore social order. Better to smash the situation itself and protect the people I love than to lose them, weep, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠scrape at the floor.

Hearing my honest thoughts, Hyunwoo swept a hand once through his hair—the dyed black leaching away, the red beginning to show through—and said:

"That's normal. It's a world where everyone turns selfish to protect what's precious to them. You aren't doing it to protect money and honor. You're doing it to protect your family, your lovers. If those people touch your family, smash them as much as you like. Anyone who does a thing like that is a criminal, no question."

"I was going to anyway. But why did you come today, hyung? You even took a helicopter."

"I'm leaving the country today. Came to say goodbye, and to wish you a happy New Year while I was at it."

"Oh, you're finally going to America?"

"Yeah. America, where the headquarters of the World Phase Ability User Association is."

"Eat properly over there, and stay healthy."

Maybe he had not expected a normal farewell from me. Hyunwoo stared at me for a moment, then let out a short laugh, gave a light wave, and flew off in the helicopter that had been waiting on the roof.

Before he left, he had said he had already spoken with the new branch director, so if I needed a go-between I could use her the way I had before. The new branch director would be that Madam Yoon Haehwa I had seen in Busan, wouldn't she? I was not sure we would understand each other. Going by the image alone, I could not begin to guess. More than that, it had seemed we were just starting to get a little closer, and now he was gone. A bit of a shame.

After seeing Hyunwoo off, I came home, lay half-sprawled on the sofa, and was staring blankly at the TV, where a girl group shook their hips and danced in a way that openly bared the space between their thighs, when Yeongeun, stretched out beside me, muttered:

"After Japan, America got a brutal lesson too. There shouldn't be a country left that will touch you now, Seoha."

"You think so?"

"Franc, you haven't noticed? New Year's gifts from every country are pouring into the Grand Blue Building."

"I did see. Lady Siha and Miss Hyeryeong were accepting only the letters, and sending all the rest back."

In a few hours it would be January 1st. A new year. Suhan and Sophia were making by hand the long rice cakes for tteokguk—the rice-cake soup eaten to greet the New Year—which they would have while watching the midnight bell-ringing, and as I listened to the lovers talking, my ears pricked up.

They sent all the gifts back? If people went to the trouble of sending them, we ought to keep the lot. Why give them back?

"Of course they did. There is no such thing as kindness without a price, or a gift that is truly free. Gifts pile up as a weight on the heart, so that when they ask for help later, it is hard to refuse. It is a sophisticated strategy."

"That is so bleak... Yeongeun, your heart is far too bleak..."

Franc frowned and muttered it after hearing her, but once I heard it, I found I agreed. What she meant was that a gift carrying a pure heart, with no intention behind it, only passes between family.

...But couldn't we just swallow the gifts and be done? They're from people we don't even know, given on their own whim. Eat them, wipe our mouths, and...

Yeongeun watched Franc grumbling as she prepared to work the rice-cake dough, the way one watches a cute animal, then let out a slow breath and picked up what she had been saying.

"Anyway, touch Seoha now and you're completely fucked. Japan was already a shabby wreck after pissing away its national strength on a few blunders, but America isn't like that, is it? They poked Seoha wrong just once. Former President Trumpet fell into brain death, major cities and mid-sized cities were smashed, the financial damage ran into the hundreds of billions, even the trillions of dollars, two states were scorched to nothing, and on top of that the lawmakers and generals who had joined the kidnapping plot got dragged off to the IWO Ability User Tribunal."

"Why were the criminals taken to the Ability User Tribunal? Is something strange about that?"

Franc asked it while brushing sesame oil over a flat, wide tray that had to be two meters across.

"It's the pride of the U.S. federal courts that a country's own criminals are judged in that country, you know? And their reputation as the policeman of the world got cut in half over this TTP incident, so their face is thoroughly crumpled. Hehe."

Even so, was there really no country that would touch me? The world is wide, and there are so many lunatics in it.

I was muttering it inwardly as I watched Yeongeun slide sideways and rest her head on my thigh, when Franc glanced at me and said the very thing I had been thinking.

"Is there truly no country left that will pick a fight? The world is so wide, and so large..."

"There isn't, there isn't. At least until someone comes up with a way to catch a Highest-Rank Variant, there ab-so-lutely won't be."

The incident had started with the bastards who slighted Yeongeun—the U.S. Secretary of Defense; that bastard of a secretary was locked in Alcatraz too, and when they shook him down he was rotten with crimes, apparently—but the thing swelled terrifyingly, like a snowball rolling down a slope, and in the end it was America that the snowball struck and sent flying.

If there was a bonus, it was that I had come into the power to dominate and the power to compel without ever meaning to. Either way, I had branded my strength onto the whole world, so from next year I could start moving in the Phase World with an easy mind.

I reached out and took the springy weight of Yeongeun's breast in my hand, and let my eyes hold the peaceful scene. Suhan and Sophia making the rice cakes. Miho and Darky watching from up close. Hiarid running errands.

My heart grew easy.