Going Home (6)

My sister put the call through to Dad with a thoroughly sulky face. She was hoping he'd shut the whole thing down for her — I could see it plain as day.

But I hadn't asked her on a whim. Dad folded the instant she opened her mouth, and his trust in her ran deep. If she said the word, the odds he'd tell her to go ahead were a hundred and twenty percent.

The ringtone went on for a moment, and then Dad's gentle voice came through.

I turned a thread of Phase Power into my ear and listened in. My sister, catching me glance over on a day like this, put on the sweetest voice she could manage and told him I was ready to be discharged.

"Dad? Um, I mean..."

I snickered.

She stared at the dead phone with the look of someone who had not a single person left to rely on. I kept grinning at her, and she flushed and let out a yell.

"What's so funny!"

"Dad's itching to grant whatever you ask, so if you wanted to keep me from getting discharged, you should've steered it toward how I still need to rest. Sweet-talk him like that and of course he's going to say yes, the way a dad who can't refuse his daughter always does."

"I know that! It's because he was busy and didn't hear me out to the end!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll pack. You go get the discharge started."

I opened the drawer by the bed and took out black cotton pants, a navy shirt, and a black sleeveless sweater patterned with waves. The moment I shrugged off the hospital gown, my sister wore a look of pure resignation and started packing the book she'd been halfway through, along with everything that had piled up over nine days, into a paper bag.

I dressed quickly and pulled on black sneakers. Clothes and shoes both fit my grown body perfectly. Mom had bought them the day before yesterday — when had she measured me?

"Sis. You drove, right?"

I asked as I finished changing and looked at her. She nodded, still tucking things neatly into the paper bag.

"Yeah. But there's a lot. We'll have to make two trips to get it all moved."

Living in a hospital room had piled things up, sure, but not to that extent.

I went to the admissions office, came back with two enormous plastic bags, stuffed all the clothes and books into one, and swept the rest into the other until a bag big enough to hold a person was packed tight. I slung it over my shoulder. Before I'd become an ability user, that weight would have had me struggling. Now it only felt a little heavy.

My sister blinked in genuine surprise at the bag on my shoulder, then shook her head.

"Stronger, and your body's changed too... You really did become an ability user."

"What, are there fake ones?"

I finished packing and stepped out of the room. She came out a beat later, hurried to the nurses' station, and handled the discharge. This wasn't a general ward floor, but it seemed they could process it there all the same.

I got the parking spot from her, went to the elevator, pressed the call button, and waited. She caught up quickly. Her slightly furrowed face said the early discharge still sat wrong with her. Today was Friday and tomorrow was the weekend, so I wasn't going to school anyway — two days of rest either way. And I wasn't even hurt. Staying in a hospital more than ten days felt like malingering, didn't it?

Franc had been clinging to my back. At first she'd flown along in the air, but every time someone appeared in the hallway she flinched and tried to cover herself, and in the end she seemed to have chosen to hang onto me. Using me as a screen, more or less. Only I could see her, but it still grated whenever some guy happened to look her way.

I suddenly wondered how my family would react if they knew she existed. Sound her out a little?

"Sis, do you believe in ghosts?"

"What are you talking about all of a sudden?"

She pressed the button for basement level two as we boarded the elevator, and looked at me with puzzled eyes while I started in about ghosts.

"Thinking about the Phase World, it occurred to me we'd be running into supernatural things."

"Hmph... The little kid who used to whimper because he was scared of ghosts — what's gotten into you?"

Ugh. Franc can hear this! I glanced back. She was wearing a cat's smile.

"Not a ghost, a spirit! You don't even know the difference?"

"Yes, yes~ I believe in them, but I'm not scared of spirits or ghosts~."

Tch!

She didn't like being dragged into discharging me, so she'd started teasing. My sister was sharp, and her way with words was stronger than mine. If it turned into an argument, I couldn't win. Better to quit than to force it and nitpick at the tail of every sentence. Still, she sometimes went vacant, and if I struck that gap I won once or twice.

"Actually..."

I was just about to speak when her ringtone flooded the narrow elevator. Brr-ring, bororong, birong-birong.

"It's Mom. Hold on. Hello? Mom?"

Eavesdrop a little?

Fatten me up?! She did just say fatten, right?! My sister glanced at me standing beside her, furrowed her brow, then lifted a finger to rub between her eyes.

"Yeah, I wanted that too, but he kept whining about going home, so I tried to stop him, and then Seoha caught me sighing."

Catching her out... Anyone listening would think I was holding her weaknesses over her and throwing my weight around.

"Oh, come on, Mom, you give him whatever he wants when he throws a fit, and then you only pick on me."

I didn't throw a fit! All I'd done was ask politely, calling her Mother!

Though if a son who usually said Mom suddenly called her Mother, it would probably give her goosebumps.

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened onto the basement level two garage. My sister got off first and started walking. I followed, still listening in on the phone.

"I don't know. Even if you'd been there instead of me this time, you couldn't have stopped him."

Oh, for real. I shot a hand out, snatched the phone, dropped my voice low, and said:

"Mother."

Mom went silent.

"This one, having regained his health, has judged it proper that he return home, and the fault of having pressed an unreasonable request upon his elder sister lies entirely with this humble son."

"Pfft."

Like mother, like daughter. Look at that timing.

"Though this one knows full well that Mother worries, this unworthy son, as matters stand..."

That weird archaic register you only ever saw on TV was hard to keep up. Her approval had come through, so I could go back to normal.

"Yeah. Hospital food was cold and not great anyway. Make a lot, Mom."

She must have finally burst out laughing — just before the call cut, a bit of it came through.

"Here."

My sister looked at the phone I held out, then took it. She started to sigh... glanced at me, and swallowed it.

"Shame."

I muttered it, and I thought she gave a little tremble. Not my imagination, was it?

The Suburban Dad had bought for family outings and registered in Mom's name was usually my sister's to drive. Because of that, the first time she took it to school, word got around that a beauty like her was driving a van like that. Afterward — proof, maybe, that whatever a beauty does becomes the trend — more girls started driving vans. Or so I heard.

Anyway, I loaded the bags into the trunk she opened and climbed into the passenger seat. She started the car and spoke.

"What were you going to say in the elevator?"

Hm? Oh, right. I'd been about to float a hint about Franc, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but the mood had shifted, and bringing it up again felt awkward. I'd find a gap later.

"Nothing much."

She drove in silence for a while, taking the curves out of the underground garage. Once the car entered the road, she spoke again.

"Earlier... those two were ability users too, right?"

"Yeah. The older one's the senior, the younger one's the junior."

For a second I raised my guard a notch, wondering if she was interested in the two of them. What followed was outside my expectations.

"What's this about the branch chief taking an interest? Is the ability you awakened impressive enough for the Korean branch chief to care?"

"Well, how it happened is..."

She was smart. Maybe she'd think of a simple way through it.

I summarized what had happened in the appraisal room and the measurement room and told her. She drove toward home, listening quietly, and the moment I finished she answered.

"So you awakened as a Detection ability user, but that ability is on a completely different level from ordinary Detection, which means a lot of raid teams are going to be interested. And you're worried that interest might turn bad."

"Yeah."

"You don't want to join a raid team?"

"It's not that I don't..."

"You're worried that if too much attention gathers, it might end up hurting Mom and Dad."

...Ah. Only after hearing her did I understand what that sticky, unpleasant feeling had been. And all those frustrating, one-sided plots I'd so often seen in novels flashed through my head in a rush.

My mood soured, and my face hardened. She seemed to read the thought. She tapped the wheel with her index finger.

"You don't have to worry about that."

"Huh? Why? My ability's non-combat. It doesn't help in a fight."

"Seoha. You shouldn't try to solve everything with violence."

For a second I thought she was about to feed me some rosy, flowers-and-sunshine line about kindness being answered with kindness. What followed overturned that.

"Why do you think people build connections?"

"C-connections? Well..."

"You know the saying, don't you? Joy grows the more you add to it, and sorrow thins the more you share it. Building a network is just that, extended. You stack up goodwill through small things, make your connections and firm them up, and later, when something bad happens — once, maybe twice — you can call on that network to get through a danger you couldn't handle alone. A kind of low-risk, high-return, if you want to put it that way."

So when a crisis hit that could cost your life, you used the weight of your connections to defuse it?

"What Dad and Mom have always treated as most important is managing that network. Raid teams may hold more raw power than ordinary people, but the weight of their connections isn't small either. You saw the visitors who came to see them while you were in the hospital, didn't you? All of that is network. And you're an ability user yourself, Seoha. The Ability User Alliance stands behind you. It's hard to imagine a raid team casually throwing its weight around in defiance of the Alliance."

Every action has a price. If a raid team tried something illegal to claim me, that team would have to accept a matching risk.

"So if a foreign raid team interferes, the Korean ability-user branch or the state will block them. And organizations a step below that, Dad and Mom's connections can handle well enough. Which means you don't need to worry."

"I see..."

Listening to her, that formless anxiety slowly loosened its grip.

That didn't mean I could waste the time stupidly, the way her reassurance might tempt me to. If I wanted power and influence of my own, then during the year I had left before I came of age I needed to hone my ability and gather everything I could on the Phase World.

Their network was theirs. I'd have to make my own, wouldn't I?

It also occurred to me that revealing every ability I had might be the better play. Rather than draw a bad situation out of moderate interest in a moderate treasure, I'd become a treasure so rare that petty villains and criminals wouldn't even dare approach. If I laid my entire Search ability bare, I figured I could raise a ripple big enough that raid teams across the world would have to take notice of me.

Of course, that would have to be a last resort.

"Thanks, Sis. Thanks to you, my head's sorted."

"Hm? Y-yeah."

She answered a beat late, as if she'd been somewhere else. I looked at her, then unrolled the paper scroll Kang Woohyuk had given me.

The two sheets were a certificate proving I was a Special Type, and a paper bearing the signatures of the Ability User Alliance branch chief and the President of Korea, acknowledging me as an ability user.

My sister seemed to be seeing an ability-user certificate for the first time. I could see her glancing this way while she drove. Dangerous. I wished she'd just watch the road.

I looked over the sparsely lettered paper with Franc, rolled it up, tied it with the cord again, and took out the small box the blonde had handed me. The box had a velvet finish and looked expensive. When I opened the lid, a round black seal about a quarter the size of my palm, set neatly on red cloth, came into view.

I examined the seal, then took out the thin manual and read.

"Hm. So this is the ability-user Certifier?"

I lifted the seal. It was slightly transparent, the far side showing through in a faint wash.

"The Certifier is, literally, an authentication tool. Register as a user and you can access a communication site where ability users talk to each other... Main functions include a system that lets institutions verify my identity, plus calls, tracking, a camera, video, and map-making — things that'll be useful in the Phase World — and all of it rendered as holograms? Whoa. Brand-new world."

The last page listed what it cost.

Whoa!? This tiny thing was a billion won?!

"Expensive! Expensive!"

I turned. We were waiting at a light, and my sister had seen the price — her fine brows were drawn tight.

Then the words came pouring out.

"A little Certifier costs a billion won apiece? If it tears in the middle of ordinary life, more than ten billion won just vanishes and there's nothing you can do! What is the Association thinking? Are they trying to do business off ability users and exploit them? This is ridiculous! If I want to protest, do I contact the IWO?"

"Uh, uh? No — it's an alliance that works for ability users. If they were fleecing people like that, the rumors would've spread in a second."

At that she closed her mouth for a moment. The light turned green, and she stepped on the accelerator.

"What's written on the back? Looks like a lot of text."

"Let's see... Free issue is only the first time. After that, if it's damaged in combat and you recover and return as much of it as you can, you get a discount of ten to eighty percent on the next Certifier, depending on the condition."

It also said the thing was sturdy enough that daily life wouldn't even scratch it, so unless an Aberrant hit it directly, the chance of it breaking was almost nil.

"To destroy a Certifier you need an impact on the level of a full-power attack from at least a C-Class Physical Reinforcement or Elemental ability user... So a Detection type like me can't break it, and it won't break on its own. I'm not going to be fighting on the front line anyway."

Only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠after that did she seem to accept it, and the heat went out of her. She looked so innocent and pretty, and inside she was this much of a spitfire.

Franc was turning the seal in my hand this way and that, curious. When our eyes met, she smiled, just a little.

I read the attachment method, wondered where to put it, and pressed it to my left wrist — the spot the manual called unobtrusive for Special Type users. A prick, like a needle, and then the sound of air slipping out from between seal and skin as it sealed flush to my wrist.

Curious, I rubbed it. I couldn't feel any difference between skin and seal. If I didn't look, I couldn't have said which was which. I moved the wrist around. No pulling, no irritating tightness. It was just skin.

"How does it feel?"

"Will you focus on driving?! What are you going to do if we crash, keeping that up!"

"Relax. My attention's on the road."

"Honestly."

I gave her the honest impression, and she let out a hee~ of admiration, then said to let her touch it when we got home. ...She wasn't planning to peel it off my wrist, was she?

I fiddled with the Certifier and read the instructions through carefully, and before I knew it we were in the apartment garage.

Our family lived on the eighth floor of a luxury complex. An Ability User Alliance branch sat nearby, so the security was good, and from elementary school through university, every school around the complex belonged to the Euihan Foundation. We'd moved when my sister entered Euihan Middle School. Eight years ago, was it? Most of the residents were the upper tier of society, the living was comfortable, and whatever you needed was close by, so it was a good place to be.

Our place was about seventy pyeong — roughly 2,500 square feet — and I'd heard some units ran past a hundred, over 3,500. Other apartments discriminated even by the size of the complex, but in eight years here I didn't think I'd seen that. I'd heard the management office and the security guards were treated well, too, which suggested the residents were decent enough. I was turning over a news story from a few days back, residents of an ordinary complex throwing their weight around, when my sister parked with an easy hand. She'd only had her license a few months, and already she seemed to drive better than Mom. Mom always needed someone watching from behind when she parked.

We left the car in the underground garage, carried the bags up, and the moment we stepped inside, a familiar, longed-for scent filled my nose.

Yes. This was the smell I'd wanted.

I stood in the entryway and felt the nerves that had been locked tight gently come loose. Franc, curious about the apartment, started looking around. A young lady like some gray spirit wandering the living room, examining the furniture and the electronics — a rare sight, that.

"Aren't you coming in? What are you doing?"

I'd been standing blankly in the entryway. My sister closed the door, set the lock, gave my head a light tap, and went into her room.

I went to the living room, set the plastic bag down off my shoulder, and was putting drinks, fruit, and the like into the fridge when she came back out and helped with the unpacking. We set her things aside, carried the clothes and thin quilts that needed washing into the laundry room, and with the two of us at it the unpacking was over in no time.

When it was done she went into the dressing room and started changing. Seeing her take out going-out clothes, was she planning to leave?

I was watching that scene through Search, and the moment she started taking her clothes off I snapped my attention away from her side and quietly called Franc, who had been looking at the large family photo framed on the living room cabinet.

"Franc. Come with me. I'll show you my room."

I picked up the book I'd been studying in the hospital room and called her. Her eyes sparkled as she followed.

Hrk—! A naked beauty in my room...!

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

I was briefly struck dumb by the sight of her nosing around the place without a thought of hiding herself, then drank in the room I was seeing for the first time in nearly a month.

The wall facing the door was entirely window, and the flesh-toned pastel curtains Mom had bought and hung were drawn neat and even. Below them sat a double bed. Mom must have made it up — a spring quilt, different from a month ago, was spread across it. Along the left wall, reflecting my sister's taste, stood a solid-wood desk, a bookshelf, and a wardrobe, in colors that matched the wallpaper and the floor, in that order. On the desk, a 42-inch monitor and the latest laptop Mom had given me when I started third year sat on a stand. The shelf beside it held textbooks, workbooks, and every sort of miscellaneous book — the miscellaneous ones were books my sister had brought over, saying they'd be food for the mind. The right wall had a wooden sliding door taking up a third of it. Open it and you were in her room. Two small drawer units sat to either side so the door wouldn't be blocked.

Hm. All in order.

I didn't collect figures or tapestries, so there was nothing here that would embarrass me in front of Franc.

The racy magazines I'd been secretly hoarding from Mom and my sister were all hidden in a box in the corner of the wardrobe, and the porn was in a hidden folder on the computer. Unless I lost my mind and pulled them out or played them in front of Franc, I wouldn't get caught!

...I should throw out the magazines and delete the porn, too. I had a living... nngh... right in front of me that I could look at forever without getting tired. Why would I need any of that?

People would say 2D has its own kind of charm. But if that person saw Franc, they'd nod in silence and throw the whole collection away.

I gave one sweep of the eyes to the room I might never have seen again, stepped across the gray microfiber carpet, moved to the desk, roughly set the books in order, and closed the door.

She was quiet now, but until a moment ago Franc had been floating through the air with a flushed face, unable to stay still for a second.

Of course coming back to reality made her happy, too.

"Sis looks like she's heading out, so once she leaves let's go to the bookstore together. A little ways down the road there's a huge one. We should be able to buy a book on lip-reading there."

She nodded, nodded!

Franc nodded, glanced at my bed, and casually perched herself on the edge of it. A-a naked beauty on my bed... ugh, I think my nose is going to bleed.

"Th-then, shall we look at the Certifier until Sis leaves?"

I sat down beside her as if it were nothing, and, as the manual had said, brought my thumb to the Certifier stuck fast to my wrist. My skin buzzed faintly, and a square hologram rose around my left arm.

The information screens floating around the Certifier looked a little like my Analysis. But if Analysis was an ultra-high-definition giant LED monitor, the Certifier's hologram was an ancient, fat CRT.

I'd been looking at something greater than that hologram all along, so I wasn't surprised — but Franc wasn't surprised at all either, was she? Had she seen a Certifier when she was alive?

"So, to operate it, I touch the hologram with the arm the Certifier's on, right?"

I went first to the community said to be a database of countless materials, to look into what I'd been curious about all along.

What I most wanted to know was whether anyone had met a High-Tier Aberrant on their first forced summon, whether a human had ever mutated into an Aberrant, and how the sensing of Phase Power was understood in reality. There were also sightings of the Supergiant Turtle, and the Phase Power numbers that divided the classes.

I gave a small smile to Franc, who was watching the search with a curious face, touched the tool icon in the corner of the screen, and pressed the keyboard shape. A hologram keyboard appeared in the air.

I entered the terms quickly and started looking.

Let's see. Aberrants of High Grade or above in the first Phase World... Ah, before that I should look at the class chart and the Aberrant grade chart.

What I'd seen and judged in the Phase World had been measured by my own standards, with no knowledge at all. Better to look at a proper chart and set it straight.

I found both quickly.

Pretty simple... But there were two more stages even above Highest Tier? And Phase-grade didn't even list a number.

Aberrant Phase Power values were registered in there, too, so I had to drop the idea that I was the only one who could sense those numbers with any precision. I didn't know who, or what kind of machine, but there had to be a way to measure Phase Power.

Looking at Phase-grade, the Supergiant Turtle came to mind. That turtle was definitely Phase-grade.

Next I pulled up the class chart.

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

Whoa. Only six A-Class in the world? Well, hundreds had swarmed in the name of hunting an Imugi, and three A-Class ability users had been annihilated. Originally it would have been nine.

What surprised me was that there was only one S-Class, and they were missing. Did that mean S-Class was that rare?

...In the appraisal room they'd said I had the potential to grow all the way to S-Class, and that A-Class was nearly certain... Seeing it laid out like this, what old Dr. Woo had said sank straight into my skin.

If I became A-Class, six would become seven.

I stared at S-Class and A-Class, then dropped my gaze straight down the chart. How many people were there from I-Class to F-Class, that it said unestimable?

Hm. The numbers dropped hard from C-Class on. From B-Class, you could really call them nobility. A-Class would be royalty.

And looking at the Phase Power bands, they were identical to the Aberrants'. Were ability users no different from Aberrants?

The Rogue Imugi had been Highest Tier, so its Phase Power was 3.5 million at the least and 39.99 million at the most... Old Dr. Woo had said I was F-Class, so somewhere between 500 and 1,999...

I'd taken that thug of an Imugi's baptism of lightning and lived. How's that for impressive!

I recalled that moment, gave one hard shudder, and fixed on the Phase Power band for F-Class.

The Phase Power I'd been checking since I awakened was exactly 480 right now, and sure enough, it didn't match the numbers the Ability User Alliance measured and classified at all.

The Certifier could measure personal Phase Power too, right?

I tried the method in the manual. The hologram windows all closed at once, and only one rose. The number 30 appeared on the screen, then ticked down by one each second.

When this ended, my Phase Power would be measured?

Which meant the chance of my personal Phase Power getting out through a hacked Certifier was as good as none. Even during the Alliance's precision measurement, the personal number wasn't displayed — only my class. So as long as I was careful, that number would never be known.

Not bad.

But I, with my chronic suspicion — no, my prudence — didn't believe it. Where was there an eternal secret in anything people did?

Still, my thinking was: what harm was there if the number got out?

Anyway, thirty seconds passed in no time, and amid Franc's anticipation the measured value rose on the hologram.

Whoa, my Phase Power was actually 1,857?

That was nearly 3.86 times what I'd measured with Search. No — well, I'd used the value from the moment I awakened as the baseline, so maybe it was only natural.

Hm. Come to think of it, the curly-haired woman and the bob-haired woman guarding the entrance of the skybridge between the Alliance building and the hospital had been 1,200 and 900, hadn't they? Run the numbers and the curly-haired one came out to 4,632, the bob to 3,474.

Both of them just inside E-Class.

"Huh? Wait. The first Long-snouted Lean Wolf I met had a Phase Power of 22, and the big field-rat female and male were about the same, so..."

I converted the values. The Long-snouted Lean Wolf came out to 84, the female field rat to 73, the male to 65. All three of them low-rank Aberrants.

"W-what is this. Wait, then the two No-Head Mantises on the island..."

...Crazy! The tall one was 262, and the small one 216?! Th-that wasn't even Low Grade. That was Mid-Low Grade, and mid-tier even among those!

Fuck. They said a forced-summon site only had Lowest-Rank Aberrants! What part of that damned textbook was even true!

It was widely known, even among ordinary people, that taking an Aberrant of a given grade generally took five ability users of the same grade. If your class was higher than the Aberrant, that number dropped a great deal — but I was a non-combat Special Type.

I'd been able to take the snouted wolf and the field rats from up on the cliff only because I'd happened to make a weapon from a giant mole's claw. I'd been able to take Low Grade and Mid-Low Grade Aberrants on the island only because I'd figured out how to move Phase Power, and because of the guideline display from Analysis.

If I'd used a shoddy wooden spear, or fought them up close on the island...

The moment I understood that a wrong choice would have had me halfway across the river to the underworld, a tremor ran through my chest.

I explained what I'd found to Franc, who was still blinking, not yet grasping the situation. She must have been just as aghast. She covered her mouth with both hands, and her eyes went wide.