Chapter 366: A Temporary Return, and Setting Things in Order (1)
Drop a mere thirty meters underwater and the world around you darkens considerably. At five hundred, it would be no exaggeration to call the place an abyss — a depth where you cannot see an inch ahead.
Look up, and the blue surface shows only as a blur. Look down, and there is nothing at all: a void black as pitch, black as ink.
The darkness was the lesser problem. Without goggles, opening your eyes underwater did little good; the difference in refraction made it nearly impossible to make out anything in front of you, let alone grasp your surroundings.
None of that mattered to me, or to Franc. We had Spatial Perception.
A Return Point is sensitive to the movement of Phase Power. Use Space Leaping right beside it, and the point itself might vanish, so I swam toward it the ordinary way.
Franc clutched the bundle of spoils in one hand and braced the other against the slope, moving with care lest the current she stirred reach the Return Point and disturb it.
"Give me your hand."
I turned to her, held out my hand, and worked my mouth around the words. She glanced about for a moment, shifted her position, and stepped down onto the ridge. Then she dropped to one knee, propped the bundle against one hand and her head, and extended the other hand toward me.
She seemed intent on softening the impact on the building as much as she could. I laid my hand over hers and gazed for a moment at the white shimmer wavering before my eyes.
A fresh tension climbed in my chest. I swallowed, reached out, and poured TP into the light.
The white shimmer brightened at once and began to illuminate everything around us. I focused every scrap of my mind, narrowing the range of Spatial Perception again and again until I had compressed it to five hundred meters, spending every nerve on the resolve not to miss so much as a single mote of dust.
Darky's calm face, hanging at the nape of my neck. Franc's expression hardening with tension, her body crouched low. The bundle, and inside it the bones, the meat, the hide.
The instant everything within five hundred meters resolved in my head like a three-dimensional image, the light of return dyed every direction white, and the scenery around us began to erase itself, piece by piece.
When every landscape of the Phase World had vanished as if evaporated into that white light, the Thought Acceleration skill came to mind.
If I triggered it, wouldn't I have far more time to grasp the situation?
The moment the thought struck, I activated Thought Acceleration without a second's hesitation, and it felt as though I lingered in the white space far longer than before.
Previously, the felt time had been about five seconds — long enough to grumble about the glare as I crossed from the Phase World back to reality. Now, only as those five seconds passed and ten drew near did any change come over the white space.
Around the time objects began to appear one by one, as if a picture were being painted onto a white canvas, I borrowed Thought Acceleration and committed everything forming within five hundred meters to memory.
The Grand Blue Building's residential wing, the office wing, Business Support Building 1, Business Support Building 2 — from the raid team's private parking garage on the third basement level all the way up to the mixed-use shopping mall on the fifth floor above ground.
I ignored every building but the residential wing, and everything in that wing below the thirty-fourth floor. Scanning for living creatures from the thirty-fifth floor through the fortieth, I found the thirty-fifth, thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh, and thirty-eighth empty. Dad and Mom were at the hospital in Business Support Building 1, and Sis was working in her own office.
Only Sophia was home, and even she was in the room she shared with Suhan, doing nothing more than working something on a note panel. Miho and Hiarid were nowhere to be seen.
Relieved, at least, that Sophia was alone, I checked where we would appear — and started when I saw Franc's body beginning to generate outside the building. My own, by contrast, was materializing at the very spot where I had entered the Phase World.
So that was it. Where you appeared depended on who had poured the TP into the Return Point.
I was the one who had done it, so I appeared where I had entered — and Franc, drawn through after me, was being rendered into reality in the exact posture she had held when she crossed.
Grateful that it ended at that much, I kept surveying the surroundings as the scenery gradually completed itself. With a measure of composure now, I watched the landscape assemble without missing a detail, focusing my senses on Sophia alone.
And as the real world neared completion, I formed a box of Blue Space Wall around her body and sealed her inside it.
By the time her already large eyes had gone round as saucers at the sudden change, I had thrown Blue Space Wall across our entire bedroom and the dressing room as well.
The bedroom held things my lovers cherished as dearly as their own lives — the gifts I had given them — and I could not risk so much as one of them breaking.
Right after that I laid a Space Wall across the whole floor, and the blue variant spread as if coexisting with the matter rather than destroying it.
I pushed the Blue Space Wall wider. Wider still. Even if the roof of our home shattered, the building's debris must not be allowed to fall.
The unfolding wall generated beneath Franc's feet as well and stretched farther out. When I had made a flat foothold fifty centimeters thick and hundreds of meters across, my TP dropped by a full twenty million in an instant.
Thanks to that, the Space Wall had opened as wide as it could, catching Franc's fall — and even if she lost her grip on the cargo, it would not plummet and smash the building.
Then I cut Thought Acceleration, and in a flash the surrounding scenery finished forming as I returned to reality.
"Ngh."
The instant we hit reality, water sheeted off me and off Franc. She had been kneeling on one knee; the bundle, now heavy with water, dragged her backward, and she staggered, about to topple. I hastily raised a Blue Space Wall and braced her back.
Crack. A long, grinding shatter.
Franc's hand tore free of mine. The roof of Miho's room — where our arms had overlapped — broke apart and was shoved aside, kicking up a dense cloud of dust.
Franc, who had nearly fallen backward, let out a sigh of relief against the brace and seized the bundle in both hands, packed full of Baekcheong's byproducts.
I dismissed the Space Wall around Sophia and the rooms, leaving only what I had spread across the floor, then bolted out through the collapsed ceiling to check on Franc.
"Whew."
Seeing her seated safely atop the Blue Space Wall, knees neatly together, the tension broke all at once.
We had come back with far less damage than I had feared. Thank goodness. Or so I was thinking, when I noticed employees plastered to the windows of the office wing and Business Support Buildings 1 and 2, murmuring as they gawked at her.
She isn't wearing a thing underneath!
I scrambled up onto Franc's shoulder, and she smiled faintly as she opened her mouth.
"I am glad we were able to return with almost no damage."
"Never mind that — your legs! Watch the space between your legs!"
"Pardon? My legs... ah!"
When I warned her about her posture, Franc looked down, saw the employees stuck all over the windows, and hastily pressed her thighs together.
Between the angle and the solid fall of the dress, they probably couldn't see anything. It still nagged at me.
We needed to set the bundle down as well, so I caught her — flustered, thighs clamped shut — and unfolded Space Leaping toward the mansion site in Shinchon-dong.
"Aaaah, a m-monsterrr!!!"
"Somebody save meee~!!"
I leaped to the Shinchon-dong grounds, where a massive mansion was nearing completion and workers were landscaping the broad estate — and the laborers took one look at Franc, screamed, and fled, some of them tripping over their own feet.
Thanks to that, Franc, who had been swallowed up by embarrassment from one thing and another, set the bundle down, drew her legs together, and sat neatly on the lawn.
Right. Her sitting put me more at ease than her standing.
I had only a moment to sigh in relief at being back in reality before I moved to dismiss the Blue Space Wall — and remembered the wreckage of shattered concrete poured through the house, and the water that had streamed off our bodies.
Clear it as it was, and the rooms would be a disaster. I left only the Blue Space Wall laid across the floor and withdrew the rest.
Hm. We were a full fourteen days past schedule. I needed to contact my lovers quickly; they would be worried sick.
"I'm going to the Grand Blue Building to fetch Hwayeon and bring her back. Wait here. If anybody comes at you, I'll take the heat, so just flatten them."
"Everyone in the vicinity already knows this is your home, Seoha, so even if they discover me, they will assume I am an aberrant connected to you."
An aberrant... ugh.
Just then I noticed the construction site supervisor approaching from a distance, terrified, picking his way forward with care.
The man in a suit and a yellow hard hat looked timid at a glance, and the sight of him was striking — unable to tear his eyes from Franc's back, cold sweat beading, creeping closer step by hesitant step.
If he was that scared, why not just run like the others? Why come closer?
Curious, I watched him. The moment his frightened face confirmed it was me, it slackened all at once into relief; he sighed and pressed a hand to his chest. Then he came scurrying over, bent at the waist, and bowed.
"Good day, Chairman!"
"Yes, hello. Is something the matter?"
"W-well, a giant appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the work, and the laborers were frightened out of their wits. But from a distance it looked like you, Chairman, so I came to confirm. If it is you, I'll need to bring the workers who ran off back and restart the job."
"Ah."
Even as he spoke, the supervisor's legs trembled faintly, and he stole unconscious glances at Franc. When she shifted slightly to adjust her posture, he flinched hard and sat straight down on the ground.
"Eek!!"
His face had gone white as a sheet; I could guess how badly he had been startled. Gasping, swallowing air, he clutched his shaking legs and got to his feet, but fear still filled his expression.
If he was that scared, he should just run...
Only once he was out of Franc's line of sight did he truly settle. He wiped the cold sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and forced a laugh.
"Hahaha. After that uproar in America not long ago, I wondered if something... similar might be happening in this country, so..."
"It's fine. It's safe, so don't worry about it, and please continue the work."
"Yes, sir!"
As the supervisor staggered off at a run all the same, I looked up at Franc.
"Dedicated to the job, I'll give him that. But do people not recognize you because you don't have your hair? I thought everyone would know you at a glance, but they don't."
"Uuugh... It is my size, to begin with. They cannot even assume I am a person. The impression of a monster strikes them so strongly that they see me only as an aberrant..."
Franc stroked a head where the hair was only just beginning to grow back, made a tearful face, and pouted.
"Word's already gotten around that this is my house, so even if there's a giant here, the locals probably won't be too shocked. Still, it'd be better to cover you so they can't see you, wouldn't it?"
"Yes. In truth, I have felt eyes upon me for some time, and it has been rather uncomfortable. A satellite is watching from the sky as well."
A satellite was watching? I looked up at her words and saw only a cloudless blue sky — nothing like a satellite — but apparently Franc's eyes could see it.
I didn't like the idea of anyone peeping at my Franc either, so with a simple gesture I layered an amber Space Wall in overlapping sheets above her head and dropped its transparency to zero.
I told her I'd be back soon, tossed Darky to her, and leaped home. I was about to head straight into the dressing room when Sophia caught my eye — standing in the doorway of Miho's room with a dumb look on her face, staring at the collapsed ceiling.
"Sophia."
"..."
"...Sophia?"
"Hhk?!"
I came up behind her where she stood in a daze and lightly tapped the back of her head with the edge of my hand. She jumped and plastered herself flat against the wall.
"What? Why so startled?"
"Master! The house! The blue wall!"
I calmed her — both arms flapping, face crumpling — and asked.
"It's fine. That came down because of me, and I put up the blue wall too. Call the management office and have them clear the room and fix it. Where did Miho and Hiarid go?"
At the news that I had spread the blue wall, a flicker of surprise crossed her face. Then she sighed in relief, looked up at the half-collapsed ceiling, and answered.
"Miho took Hiarid out, saying she wanted to play. They left not long after lunch, so they won't be back for a while. Should I call and tell them to come home?"
"No need, if that's all it is. They'll come back once they're done playing."
"Yes~. Oh, Master!"
"Hm?"
"I'm so glad you've returned safely. You didn't come back even after the day you were due, so I was a little worried."
She said it with her hands clasped and a bright little smile, then trotted off to fetch cleaning supplies.
"...Hah."
Show me a face like that, and I start feeling a little guilty for having made her a bound maid.
I threw off the deerskin clothes, pulled on the first black cotton trousers and white shirt that came to hand, and stepped out to find Sophia — long blonde hair tied in a ponytail, a dust mask on her face — hauling over a large trash bag and a vacuum to clean a room strewn with cement dust and grit.
I caught the flicker of pale Western skin beneath her jet-black skirt, then leaped to Hwayeon's office on the thirty-ninth floor of the office wing.
"You're back. Good to see you safe."
"Yeah. I'm back."
...She doesn't seem half as worried as I expected.
Hwayeon had been working through a stack of documents with a serious face, signing them off one after another. At the sight of me her expression brightened a little; she nodded twice, then dropped her gaze and went right back to the paperwork.
I hadn't expected her to come running and throw her arms around me, but I had at least hoped she would take my hand. She was still pouring her attention into the documents, and I pouted. We had even cut back on sleep to get back here, afraid everyone would be worried.
Feeling a little hard done by, I went up to her, took the pen from her hand, and set it down. Her eyes, like a night sky, turned to me, a question gathering in them.
Before she could ask, I spoke first.
"First, contact Yeongeun and tell her I'm back. And tell her there's something important, so she should come to the Shinchon-dong mansion."
"Something important? More to the point... what is the meaning of those clothes? Where is your suit? And I don't see Franc."
Hm. Tell her first, and she still asks everything.
"There's a lot to say, so I'll explain once everyone's gathered. I'll bring Sis and Aunt Hyeryeong, so contact Yeongeun in the meantime."
"If it is a matter of contacting her, Yeongeun would be happier if you did it yourself, Seoha."
"My Certifier's smashed. I can't."
"...!"
I raised my left hand and gave it a lazy little wave. Leaving Hwayeon, whose face had finally gone shocked, I leaped to Aunt Hyeryeong.
Wanting to avoid being alone with Sis if I could help it, I all but kidnapped Aunt Hyeryeong — hard at work in her own office — and leaped with her straight to Sis's.
Dragged along by force, Aunt Hyeryeong still held a fountain pen in one hand and looked thoroughly flustered. Sis's eyes went round at the sight of her aunt and me.
I took Sis, moved us straight to Hwayeon's office, and then — bringing Hwayeon, who had already contacted Yeongeun — unfolded Space Leaping directly to Shinchon-dong.
"Hah?"
"Wha—!? F-Franc?"
"...!!?"
I leaped to a spot in front of Franc where she sat on the lawn, and Hwayeon, Sis, and Aunt Hyeryeong stared at her with their mouths hanging open in perfect unison, faces blank with shock.
Franc, too, forced a smile under those three pairs of eyes, lifted a hand in a small wave, and greeted them.
"I have returned."
At a voice as loud and booming as if it were pouring from a massive 5.1-channel speaker, the three women startled — and still spoke as if they could not believe it.
"Franc. What in the world has happened?"
"Is that really Franc?"
Hwayeon and Sis hurried closer, looking up from near Franc's knee, and examined her body here and there with faces that said this could not be real. Aunt Hyeryeong followed, studied Franc's face from every angle with lingering doubt, and nodded.
"I think... it is her? They do say a beauty is still a beauty even if she's bald..."
At Aunt Hyeryeong's words, Franc looked abashed and stroked her own head. Meanwhile Sis, who had stepped back to size up her height, muttered in dismay — the look of a woman who, had she only heard the story and not seen it with her own eyes, would have told us not to be ridiculous.
"How could something like this happen...?"
"You've gotten enormously tall. How many meters is that?"
"About eighty meters."
"You cannot return to how you were? You used to be able to change the form of your body as you wished, did you not?"
Hwayeon recovered her composure quickly and looked up at Franc as she asked, but the answer that followed left her stricken.
"It is impossible. I can no longer fly, and I can no longer change the form of my body."
Seeing Franc smile faintly, Sis flared up and rounded on me.
"What were you doing while Franc ended up like this?!"
"I wasn't exactly goofing off either!"
I had let my guard down, though.
Perhaps she had caught something from the story of Franc's growth and my shattered Certifier. Hwayeon's expression hardened as she spoke.
"First things first. You said the Certifier was destroyed, so we will need to report it to the Korean headquarters of the Ability User Association."
"The Certifier was destroyed? What are you talking about?"
"Seoha said his own Certifier was destroyed."
"..."
Ah. I was too afraid of Sis's face to meet her eyes. My temple prickled. Aunt Hyeryeong, hearing that the Certifier had been destroyed, startled as well, took my left hand, pushed up the sleeve, and ran her fingers over the skin of my forearm.
Once she had confirmed the Certifier truly was not there, she looked at me in panic and worry and asked what on earth had happened.
"Th-that's... a Certifier doesn't break from any ordinary impact. What in the world happened?!"
There was no way in hell I could tell them my arms and legs had carbonized black and crumbled apart. I didn't even want to imagine the face Sis would make if I did.
Doing my best to avoid that face — I was afraid even to put any of it into words — I said:
"I'll tell you the whole story once Yeongeun gets here, so please hold your questions until then."
I was still soothing Sis and Aunt Hyeryeong, both of whom wanted to hear what had happened right away, when Franc set Darky on my shoulder.
As that enormous hand approached, all three of them flinched, and I had the feeling this was not going to be something we could brush past lightly.
In the middle of that, a jet-black sports car drifted in through the main gate, came on like a shot, and stopped near us with the shriek of tires tearing apart.
Yeongeun leaped from the car, the smell of burning rubber rising off it, and came running, staring at Franc with bewildered eyes.
"Oh my goodness?! How did this happen? Why has Franc changed like this? What happened?"
They had gathered faster than I expected. Anyway, the important people were all here, so I clapped my hands, settled the scattered mood, and drew their attention to me.
"Hm. I'm not sure where to start. First off — Franc has definitely come back to life."
At my words, Hwayeon, Sis, and Aunt Hyeryeong touched around Franc's knee and calf, then wore dazed expressions.
"I can truly feel a warm body temperature. Before, there was something artificial about it."
"Come back to life... is that even possible?"
"I was quite surprised myself, but yes. A small matter occurred before we fought Baekcheong."
"Baekcheong?"
"Who's Baekcheong?"
"It is the name of the Rogue Imugi."
"Ah! Then you caught that thing?"
"We did not capture it, but we succeeded in dealing it a fatal wound. Thanks to that, we were able to bring back a portion of the byproducts."
"Don't tell me that mountain of a bundle with the scale pattern...?"
At Franc's words, my lovers and Aunt Hyeryeong turned their eyes to the bundle of scales set behind her, half dark blue and half ivory. But at the news that we had not caught it, they all turned to me with faces that said they could hardly believe it.
"I'll just tell you everything from the beginning. That'll be easier to follow. So — after I entered the Phase World, what happened was..."