Episode 48: An Unexpected Meeting (2)
Time River sat at number two in the national rankings, and the fame that came with it was no small thing.
They had backing so formidable that even the team in first place couldn't lay a finger on them, and every raider on the roster was elite. I'd happened across that much earlier, while I was digging through the Certifier community for a class chart.
People said that if they ever bulked up their numbers, the country's top spot would be Time River's for the taking. They stayed at two only because their boss insisted on a small, handpicked core and refused to expand.
And that boss was Hwayeon. Honestly, nothing since I'd met her had shocked me harder.
A woman in her early twenties, running a raid team? Who was going to believe that? Right — they'd mentioned backing. Was this thanks to that?
But Time River...? I looked at her with a faintly curious face and asked.
"There's something I've been wondering."
She lifted the corner of her mouth as if this were exactly the reaction she'd expected, and nodded in a way that said go on. The look was pure confidence — she was certain I was about to marvel at her class and the Time River raid team and start asking questions.
Not quite.
"Time River. You named it after Siha, didn't you?"
She flinched. Hard.
Hwayeon jerked at my words, and my sister wasn't the sort to miss a thing like that. Sure enough, her face slid, degree by degree, into pure disbelief.
Siha is written with the characters for time and river. Mom had conceived her aboard a luxury cruise ship, and named her for that. I'd been conceived on a summer family trip to Africa, so mine was west and summer — Seoha.
Hwayeon held a poker face so flawless that, had you missed the flinch, you would never have sensed anything wrong. Too late for that.
"Is what he just said actually true?"
"...Yes."
"Really?! Every time I went over, the older members bowed so politely I thought it was strange, and now—!"
"Siha."
"What!"
"It's a pretty name."
Struck speechless by that brazen, utterly innocent delivery, my sister gaped, then covered her face with both hands and let out a long sigh. The blow looked like it had landed deep.
To name an entire team after her — just how far gone on my sister was Hwayeon? And Siha, for not noticing, was impressive in her own right. Usually she bragged about instincts sharp as a ghost's.
Time River was famous the world over, and the name came from my sister. Past absurd, it was almost wondrous, and somehow I started to laugh.
I was grinning when Hwayeon cut her eyes up at me, accusing, as if to ask why I'd exposed her — but she had no time to spare for me. My sister had already started in on her.
I was in an excellent mood. A B-Class ability user, getting dressed down by an ordinary person.
Still, I was glad. If Hwayeon had only gotten close to me by using my sister for her own ends, I wouldn't have stopped at disappointment. I'd have lost faith in people altogether.
I watched her murmur an excuse in a small voice, get scolded again for the excuse, and turned over the offer she had made me.
If it was the second-ranked raid team in a Korea that had hundreds of them, it could blow my worries away in a single stroke. She was one of only about three thousand B-Class ability users in the entire world, and she was this close with my sister. She wouldn't be thinking anything bad.
...No, wait. Wouldn't it be fine to simply join her team? I'd be what people call a parachute, dropped in from above, but if my ability ever came to light, that talk would crawl right back into its hole.
I was still weighing a temporary membership against a refusal when I felt Mom and Dad enter the range of my Search.
In both their hands hung enormous baskets packed with ingredients — enough, once it was all cooked, to feed twenty with room to spare. I swallowed. Not from appetite. From the fear my stomach might actually burst. I'd asked them to make a lot of good food, but buying ingredients for twenty? Mom's caliber, as ever, had not budged an inch.
Partly to rescue Hwayeon, who was still taking the lecture, I spoke so my sister would be sure to hear.
"Oh. Mom and Dad are here."
Only then did the nagging stop. She glanced at me, looked back at Hwayeon, and stood with a sulky face.
"If you're going to pull something like this again, you tell me first. Understood?"
Strangely enough, once Hwayeon — blank-faced, visibly fed up — gave a small nod, my sister went into the kitchen looking satisfied.
The moment she left the living room, Hwayeon turned a furious glare on me. I took the look and grinned wide. She stared at my face as if she couldn't believe me, then snorted a laugh.
From the kitchen, over the sound of rice being washed, my sister's voice drifted out.
"It's late, so you eat before you go, Hwayeon."
"Would that be all right?"
"It's been forever. Mom's been wanting to see you."
Outside the front door the elevator arrived, and Dad and Mom stepped out. I sprinted to the entryway and opened the door. Mom's eyes went round, startled by a door that had swung open on its own.
I threw it wide and took the bags of ingredients from both her hands.
"Mom, Dad. Welcome home."
"Our boy's so well-behaved, isn't he."
Pleased that I'd taken the load, Mom beamed and patted my backside. Dad could manage his own, I figured.
As I carried the groceries into the kitchen, I heard Hwayeon greeting them.
"Hello, Uncle, Auntie. It's Hwayeon."
"Oh my? Is it really Hwayeon? You've grown up so pretty!"
"Have you been well?"
"Thank you. Yes. Siha's been a great help to me."
"You've come after so long — of course you'll stay for dinner?"
"If you'll allow it."
Mom caught Hwayeon's hands and cried out in delight. Dad returned the greeting briefly, came into the kitchen, and set a bag on the counter. Siha, still washing rice, spoke to him.
"Dad. You're back?"
"Mm."
A single nod for my greeting, and warmth for my sister's. Well. Even I would take a daughter over a creepy son. Maybe once I married I'd declare I only wanted girls.
Then Dad drew a paper sack from a smaller bag — fried snacks, fish-shaped red-bean cakes, cheap little filled buns — and pressed it into my arms.
"Eat all of it."
He led Mom into the dressing room. The tears he'd shed seven days ago might as well have been an illusion; he had his old face back. But I could tell. He'd grown a little softer.
A ticklish warmth in my chest, I sat on the living-room sofa grinning, met the eyes of Franc — who was watching me with a quiet smile — and went over to my sister.
"Want a hand?"
She'd finished the rice and was switching on the cooker. She told me not to bother, to go eat the snacks Dad had bought, and chased me out of the kitchen. I'd only offered for form's sake. She and Mom didn't much like me in there, and I'd known they'd tell me to go sit in the living room.
With their skill, plus Hwayeon's help, a meal for ten was on the table in no time. There were five of us. Why ten servings...?
We sat around a low table so heaped the legs looked ready to give out, and ate dinner in warm, easy talk.
Franc had been sitting alone on the sofa, watching us with a tender face, and I thought I felt loneliness coming off her. Pretending to rub my shoulder, I beckoned her over. She caught the signal, drifted across, wrapped her arms around my back, and set her small head on my shoulder. Only then did the lonely air seem to leave her.
No body, and I was the only one who could see her — of course I had to look after her. Still, should I tell the family she existed? From Siha's reaction when I was discharged, it seemed like it would be all right...
"Eat this too."
"Son. Have some of the meat."
Mom and Siha sat on either side of me and never stopped tearing meat, vegetables, savory pancakes, and steamed dishes into bite-sized pieces for my rice bowl and the plate in front of me. I had no opening to touch anything else. I shoveled in whatever they gave me and, with a certain majesty, put away half the spread on the table. Hwayeon and Franc looked worried enough at the volume disappearing that I knew I'd eaten like a brute.
When the dishes were scraped clean, Mom and Siha cleared the table with pleased faces. I, too full to move, stretched both legs out, sank onto the living-room carpet, and panted.
Ugh... I'm actually going to die. My stomach's going to burst.
Hoping it might speed digestion, I moved Phase Power through my stomach and guts, and my insides eased a little.
Dad, out of habit, took a book from the living-room shelf, sat in the armchair, and started to read, so while I worked the Phase Power hard I explained to him why Hwayeon had come. Around the time the explanation wound down, Mom and the girls finished the dishes and brought in jujube tea.
When they sat on the long sofa, Dad closed the book, took a sip, and spoke.
"I've heard. You mean to shelter my son."
"Yes. Seoha's ability is strong beyond any precedent, even across a history of only two hundred years."
Put like that, it's a little embarrassing!
My stomach had settled enough that I sat cross-legged, and Hwayeon looked at me with soft eyes as she went on.
"A few days ago a notice went up through the ability users' Certifiers. Illegal contact with underage ability users, where it concerns the Phase World, is prohibited by law. That notice might as well have been written about Seoha. For now, between the director-general's statement and his age, everyone is watching from outside a set line. Given time, they will try to approach him by one means or another. Those with fast information are already gathering intel and funds to win him over. Seoha is already the heart of the storm."
She spoke calmly, without a stumble, as if she had thought it through in advance. She glanced at me, then looked back at Dad.
"Seoha has the makings to become the finest Detection ability user in this country — perhaps in the world. My mother has been showing a great deal of interest as well, so that he won't be caught up in the affairs of adults and fall for nothing."
At that, everyone but me and Franc was startled.
Why the surprise? I looked at my sister with a questioning face, and she explained.
"You know who the president is right now, don't you?"
"Yeah. President Yu Youngeun, in the middle of her consecutive term. Huh. Same family name as Hwayeon?"
President Yu Youngeun was a woman who held overwhelming support across the Republic of Korea and had served twenty-seven consecutive years in the office — a heroine among heroines. She was an ability user as well as president. Seventy-five years old, and yet, with a high-tier C-ClassPhysical Reinforcement ability and two lesser abilities beneath it — strengthened regeneration, and strengthened resistance to disease — she was known to keep the beautiful looks of a woman in her mid-twenties. Before she entered politics, she had been an outstanding raider, or so it was said.
Thanks to that, she threw herself into the work with tireless energy every year, building a clean Korea free of corruption, and she had never once lost first place among the figures Koreans respected most. She was also head of the Euihan Foundation. Most of the talent across the current ministries had come out of that foundation, and half the National Assembly supported the sitting president, or so I'd heard. Because of it, the Republic of Korea was passing through the strongest, most prosperous moment in its history. I'd read as much in an online column.
"That's right. Hwayeon's mother is her."
Only then did I turn a startled face on Hwayeon. Born with a titanium-alloy spoon, then. A step past even gold. Why hadn't I known?
Perhaps catching something strange in my eyes, her brow twitched, and Dad asked her in a calm voice.
"You said illegal contact just now. Tell me what the standard for that is."
"It's absurd, but... it covers anything that would be a crime under ordinary law."
"Then there will be no end of things that interfere with daily life."
"Yes. If he doesn't find a proper patron, I expect things will turn difficult as early as Monday. People who look down on the law as something beneath them will go so far as to try to kidnap Seoha."
At the word kidnap, Mom's face and my sister's darkened. Seeing that, Hwayeon turned to me with a serious expression.
"So I'll protect you, so that doesn't happen. For your safety, you'll have to sign a contract saying you can't leave Time River until you come of age, but it won't be something that holds you back. And the moment you join the Time River raid team, I mean to combine the team's security with state protection support. Of course, the state support would apply even if you don't join."
I couldn't begin to picture what support on a national scale even was. Would they guard only me? Or the whole family? It was vague, so I asked her.
"What's the level of protection? Just me, or everyone?"
"Everyone. Think of it as the courtesy given to a former president."
I didn't know what former-presidential courtesy amounted to, but Dad was nodding, so it was probably enough.
"Not bad. Three teams, twenty-five people... If it's Time River security, they'll be fielding ability users as well?"
"Yes. Three F-Class assigned to each team."
"I see. And if it's you, Hwayeon, you can be trusted. Your father approves of you taking her help."
"I think it's better if you're with Hwayeon, too."
So my parents were in favor. Siha had brought her here, so there was no point asking my sister.
Having heard them out, I looked at Hwayeon.
"I'll be in your care from now on, noona."
Once she'd confirmed what I wanted, she looked thoroughly satisfied. It was only a temporary membership — there was nothing for her to gain — so I asked why she was so pleased. The answer made no sense to me.
"There is something to be gained simply from you belonging to Time River."
Something to gain just from me joining for a while? I tilted my head, not understanding, but she only gave a small smile and told me nothing more.
"We'll write the contract tomorrow."
She said she would come tomorrow with the head of personnel, gazed at me for a long moment with an expression I couldn't read, and left. Mom, meanwhile, palpated me this way and that to see whether anything was wrong with my body, and would not let me rest for a second. It was a nuisance, but if I pushed her off she'd cry again, and then Dad would kill me, so there was nothing I could do. Haaah.
While I suffered in her grip, Dad turned his eyes back to his book, and my sister switched on the television to watch a drama. A lurid twist unfolded on the screen, and I felt Mom's attention drifting toward the set. I slipped out from under her hands, scratched my head, and turned the problem over.
Whether it was better to tell them about my ability and about Franc, or to keep both hidden.
Beside me, Franc had noticed the jujube tea and was looking at it with open curiosity.
Only after thinking for a long while did I conclude that Franc, at least, I should tell them about. They were all quick to notice things as it was. If I didn't explain her, sooner or later they'd catch me talking to empty air and decide I'd lost my mind.
As for the ability... I decided to hide that for now. A secret was safer the fewer people knew it. And I had a feeling that if the whole of it came out, even Hwayeon would instinctively find it more than she could bear. If that moment came, I didn't think I could endure it.
Having made up my mind, I focused to the extreme and swept the inside of the house with Search, looking for any strange device.
Mm. Clean.
When I opened my eyes, they met Franc's, watching me from right in front of my nose. Her mouth moved, but I could only catch a single word.
Awesome?
"Wait a second."
"Hm?"
"Son? What did you say?"
Siha and Mom thought I'd been speaking to them, and turned toward me.
"Nothing. Just a second."
This time I swept the full three hundred and sixty degrees with Telescopic Vision, checking for anyone suspicious nearby. Something about me suddenly looking this way and that must have struck them as odd; the family quietly watched what I was doing.
Concrete walls blocked a fair amount of Phase Power, it seemed, and my range had shrunk to three hundred meters, but surveying the whole apartment complex wasn't difficult. The countless objects with no pattern to them left my head throbbing a little, but I managed to finish the sweep. Nothing suspicious. In novels they always planted bugs or radio receivers to dig information out — had I been overreacting?
Deciding there was nothing that would be a problem, I stood, drew the thick winter curtains, turned on every light until the room was bright, and looked at my parents and my sister.
"I've been hiding this until now. But I don't want to hide it from the three of you, so I'm going to tell you a secret."
I wondered if I was only handing them a useless worry, but they were all strong-minded. They could take it.
"Honestly, over those fifteen days, there were times I nearly went insane."
Mom and my sister drew in sharp breaths. Dad's brow twitched — a face that had taken the blow. Franc's expression clouded too, as if that time had come back to her.
Looking at them, I slowly laid out the hard things I had been through in the Phase World.
"...When I was swimming like that, braced on a log, in a downpour so thick I couldn't see what was right in front of me, it was truly more than I could bear."
As I spoke, the memory rose again, and it hurt. My face creased on its own and my heart began to pound. Mom and my sister, as if the scene were forming in their heads, covered their mouths with both hands, gone pale. Dad's color hardened, and he only listened.
"What saved me in that situation was the ability I have now, and..."
Carefully, I untied the pouch at my neck and held Franc's Soul Stone out before the family. She blinked, looking back and forth between the stone in my hand and my face, then seemed to understand. Her eyes went wide and she covered her mouth.
"This is Franc."
"F-Franc? That jewel is Franc?"
"No. Her soul is inside it. I met her on the seventh night, and we've been together since. Well — there was an accident in the middle and we were apart for a while — but anyway, she's the precious person who helped me come back alive from the Phase World, sane, without losing my mind."
I paused and looked at Franc, sitting beside me. She looked back.
"Franc is bright, and kind, and gentle, and diligent. Because she was beside me, I was able not to go mad."
Hearing that, my sister lifted her teacup with a trembling hand and took a sip of the cooled jujube tea.
"The ghost you mentioned at the hospital... that was this?"
"Yeah."
Only then did her face say she understood why I had suddenly brought up ghosts. At the word, Mom looked a little frightened, but she gathered her courage and asked me.
"Is she... beside you right now?"
She carefully looked toward the place I had glanced, then wore a bewildered expression, as if she saw nothing at all.
"Yeah. She's sitting right next to me."
Dad closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and looked at me.
"Since you were little, you've often startled your mother and your sister with remarks out of nowhere. Your father is worried."
"I thought if I just came out with a story like this, you'd doubt my state of mind. Or send me off to a psychiatric hospital."
When I snickered, Mom glared at him, and he cleared his throat and avoided her eyes.
"This is actually a Phase Stone I got by chance."
I left out the part about it being high-grade. Phase Stones were worth an astronomical sum. It wasn't that I didn't trust them. There was just no need to hand out information they didn't need.
Dad stared at the Soul Stone for a while, then spoke.
"The color is a little different from a Phase Stone. The shape, too."
"It changed because Franc's soul went inside. If you look closely, can you see a gray light at the center?"
He shut his mouth again. His face still said he wasn't sure, so I asked her for proof that would settle it.
"Franc. Can you make electricity? You don't have to go hard. Just a little."
She nodded, rose a little in the living room, and slowly generated electricity inside her body.
"Hah—"
"Oh my!"
"Eek...?!"
So a spirit body generating electricity was visible even to ordinary people. I glanced at the mirror. In the empty air, bluish electricity had taken the shape of a woman.
"It looks like a person floating in the air..."
"Franc. That's enough."
While she generated it, I had been checking how much was leaving the Phase Stone. Calculating from what she had consumed while emitting electricity for over thirty seconds, I could tell the stone had held three million four hundred fifty thousand in Phase Power. And what we had used so far was a little over one hundred seventy thousand.
So the giant Franc really had been a High-Tier Variant. One just short of the absolute peak.
"I call this Phase Stone Franc's Soul Stone. When she uses electricity, like just now — or simply to exist — she draws a little of the Phase Power stored inside it."
Still holding the electricity in her body, she moved in small motions, bowing to Mom, to Dad, to my sister. The family seemed to recognize it. Their stiff faces loosened. Mom especially rose with a deeply grateful face and bowed her upper body, politely, toward where Franc was.
"Miss Franc? Thank you so much for watching over our son."
Startled by the greeting, Franc waved both hands hard, as if to say it was nothing, and Mom — able to see the motion — even smiled a little. At the sight of them, Franc teared up and covered her face. People looking at her, speaking to her, seemed to choke her past what she could bear.
"Franc says she's British. She's been in the Phase World ever since the year 145..."
Best to hide the parts that wouldn't do anyone any good to know.
"Things happened, and we met by chance. She said she wants to come back to reality and pass on. And this is only my own hope, but I want to show her her homeland."
Then I looked at my sister.
"I can see her clearly, but she can't make sound, so until now we've only been able to talk through simple gestures. That's why I was memorizing English words and learning conversation. The reason I went to the bookstore today was to see if they had a book on lip-reading. If I can actually talk with her, I'll be able to find out where her home is."
Only then, as if the earlier business had come back to her, my sister made a face that said oh.
"But there wasn't a book, so you just came back?"
"Yeah."
"Wait just a moment!"
Mom, who had been listening, suddenly went into the study and came back with several books. Those — those were the lip-reading books I'd ordered online!
"I bought them while I was looking into whether there was a way to expand the hospital. I never thought they'd help like this."
"Thanks, Mom!"
I took the books from her and opened one, and Franc bowed politely to Mom. Mom was delighted, and my sister lowered her head to Franc as well, thanking her for protecting me.
Dad looked at her with warm eyes, cleared his throat — ahem — and spoke toward me as I read.
"The reason you introduced Miss Franc is to send her back to her homeland... to, ah, help her pass on? And you want our help in order to do that?"
"She'll pass on when she wants to. I'll find her homeland with her, on my own. I introduced her just because I wanted you — Mom, Dad, and Siha — to know she exists, and to know how much she helped me."
To me, Franc was as precious as Mom, as Dad, as my sister. And, while I was at it, so I wouldn't be treated like a lunatic.
"So please keep the Soul Stone a secret. All of you."
They nodded without protest. I'd stressed that she was the benefactor of my life, so they wouldn't be thinking of anything else. Selling Franc's Soul Stone, for instance.
A little time passed. I had Franc — her electricity entirely gone — try going into the Soul Stone and coming back out. The family cried out at the gray light gathering and vanishing as she entered and left. So they could see this light too. Then it would glimmer while I slept, and I'd have to be careful.
And so, with the family's acceptance, the ghost young lady was taken in as one of the household. When I returned to my room, I received a deep, fervent kiss from a moved Franc.
Hehehe.