Everyday Life (1)

Home was a sprawling apartment of about two hundred and thirty square meters — some twenty-five hundred square feet — with five rooms, a living room, a kitchen, and more balconies, bathrooms, and storage closets than any one family reasonably needed.

Off the hall that led to the front door, my room sat flush against my sister's, and right outside my door was a washroom with a shower stall already built in. The two rooms were the same size, but hers had a built-in closet, which she had declared made it a little more spacious before claiming it for herself. The wall between us was blocked by a pair of sliding doors; in summer we threw them wide and lived with the air conditioner running.

Come in from the entrance and you met a broad living room with the kitchen attached. Balconies opened off the back of the kitchen and along the living room side, each with its own storage closet — the kitchen-side one held a commercial refrigerator where Mom kept her secret sauces. Farther in from the living room lay the master bedroom and a room a little smaller than mine. The small one was Dad's study. The master belonged to my parents. Off the master was a space slightly larger than the study, which the family used as a dressing room. The master connected to that dressing room and to yet another bathroom besides, this one with a tub that Mom and my sister often claimed for their baths.

The dressing room had a balcony of its own, with a small closet beside it. Given where it sat, the balcony served as a laundry room, and the closet next to it held whatever consumables had to do with clothes. The balcony off the living room ran the full length of my room, my sister's, the living room, and my parents' room, which was why sunlight came pouring in every morning.

"Uuuaaaagh..."

Today, too, that brutal light dragged my eyes open, and I went straight to the bathroom for a shower.

Now that I'm living with Franc, I can't exactly let her see me looking like a mess.

Saturday morning, aside from meals and the odd break, I sat in the living room with Franc and worked at lip-reading. Detection let me track the movement of my own mouth with perfect accuracy, which helped enormously when it came to learning how lips shaped words.

The lip-reading book itself was nothing special. I'd thought it was thick, but that was only because it was packed with photographs. For some words they'd strung together as few as six shots of a mouth in motion, and for others several dozen, so of course the thing was a brick. I sounded the words out one by one anyway, glancing at the shape of Franc's mouth for reference as I memorized them. Her pronunciation was so refined and so exact that I laughed and told her she seemed as elegant as a princess — and she covered her face, mortified.

Hwayeon had meant to come by early this morning and draw up the contract, but a message had arrived saying her mother had summoned her and the plan was postponed.

Her mother. That would be the President, wouldn't it? Someone I know at one remove has the President in the family. It doesn't feel real.

She'd apologized and promised to get in touch again whenever she had the time, but being stood up still stung my pride a little. The nerve, blowing off an ability user of my caliber. I snickered to myself over that ridiculous bout of self-flattery, then went back to the lip-reading.

Five hard hours of morning practice later, I was starting to make out what Franc was saying, bit by bit, and she had picked up written Korean at a frightening speed — enough to understand me almost at once. At this rate we could probably start holding real conversations. I was afraid, though, that talking on half-learned lip-reading would garble the meaning, so I told her we should stay as we were until I'd memorized every word and could converse properly. She nodded and sent back that she thought that would be better too.

Around lunchtime I was still in the living room working with her when, without any warning, Dad and Mom in the master bedroom decided to enjoy some very heated time together. I killed Search in a panic.

God. My heart's hammering.

Franc startled at the way I'd jumped and looked at me, wondering what was wrong. I flushed and retreated into my room, and only then did she glance once toward where my parents were, turn back, and offer me an awkward smile.

The sudden trauma had wrecked my concentration, so I decided to browse the Certifier community instead. A few searches later I'd settled some of what I'd been curious about. Not all of it. Only some. The reason it was only some—

"There's this much information I can't even access because of class restrictions? What is this?"

From what I could search, there were several posts claiming someone had witnessed a High-Rank Variant during the first summoning, but the comments underneath mostly dragged the writers as liars or attention-seekers. Next I opened the aberrant field guide and dug through the turtle entries. No matter how I looked, there wasn't a single mention of the Supergiant Turtle I'd seen. Turtle aberrants existed, sure, but nothing tens of kilometers long, and a few specimens were locked behind access restrictions entirely.

Is that restriction the Supergiant Turtle?

While I was searching I also found posts on the grades and kinds of aberrants that showed up in broadleaf forest regions, and on forage worth money. I hadn't known this, but ability users with a talent for hiding slipped in and out of the Phase World without ever fighting an aberrant — supplying hobby collectibles to the rich, or harvesting Phase World minerals and plants that companies wanted as drug ingredients or as materials for specific goods, and getting paid for it.

There were buy-orders for rare grasses, flowers, and fruits that existed only in the Phase World, and the expensive ones cost enough to knock the wind out of you.

"And they just hang something like that in an elevator? Is the Ability User Association made of money?"

I thought of the potted plant in the Association building's elevator and figured that, with Search, I could find things like that and sell them. An overwhelming range on Search would be a massive advantage in harvesting high-grade plants. I kept scrolling.

"Whoa — why is Guerta's Longevity Herb three hundred million? Yikes, Collage's Lifebloom is ten million won a gram."

A search told me the Longevity Herb, properly processed and eaten, made skin taut and springy, and the Lifebloom was a flower that extended one's lifespan a little. Flowers tied to rejuvenation and to living longer — of course they cost a fortune. They were also terrifyingly rare.

There was something called the Fruit of the World Tree, too. Eat it and it restored even a fatal wound on the spot; people called it a spare life. The price was so vicious it looked like you'd have to sell your own life to afford one.

Cases of a human turning into an aberrant, the way Franc had, returned no results at all. She'd worn a slightly dark expression from the moment I started that search, and only when she saw the empty results did her face brighten a little. The thought kept coming back: I needed to master lip-reading quickly and hear, from her, how she'd become an aberrant.

Next I looked into how the detection of Phase Power actually worked out in reality. It wasn't anything like mine, where I knew the instant I looked. They'd simply shrunk the examination room's Phase Power discriminator down to something small and simple, like an airport security gate, and all it did was check whether Phase Power was present or not.

Franc still seemed a little low, and it worried me, so I told her I thought I'd found a way to charge the Soul Stone with Phase Power. Her eyes went round. I added that I'd have to get a Phase Stone and test it, but she kept the bright expression anyway, happy enough. Good. She was bright again.

While I was at it I searched what Phase Stones cost, and a price that wouldn't let me close my mouth swam into view.

The Phase Stone of a Peak-Rank / High-Tier Variant. Minimum, three hundred and fifty billion won. A price so divorced from reality that, somehow, it let me stay calm.

What is this? One rock, blowing past the entire GDP of some impoverished southern African nation?

The story I'd heard — that an aberrant's Phase Stone went for several billion won apiece — was that a lie too? I wondered. Then the listing explained that the price varied with the Phase Power inside the stone, but that they usually traded at about one million won per point. So a stone worth several billion wasn't Superior / High-Tier at all. It would be a Mid-Rank Variant's Phase Stone. Mid Grade aberrants, it said, carried Phase Power between 500 and 1,999.

Hmm. A Superior / High-Tier Phase Stone meant you had to take down a Peak-Rank / High-Tier Variant, and even then it didn't drop every time? Scarcity, then, plus uses I couldn't even imagine. That would do it.

Phase Stones were apparently formed inside the body from Mid-Low Grade aberrants upward. So far there were no stories of a Low Grade or a Lowest Grade aberrant ever yielding one. Still only a hypothesis, but the theory was that once a Mid Grade aberrant filled its Phase Power to 1,999, a Phase Stone formed from that point and Phase Power began to accumulate in the stone. The moment the stone itself filled to 1,999, the Mid Grade aberrant would evolve into a Mid-High Grade aberrant — and thinking of what had happened on the island before I returned, that felt considerably credible.

Because aberrant Phase Power grades were classified the same way as an ability user's, some people were saying aberrants must also have type classifications and limits on their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠growth. Research on that point, it said, was ongoing.

Party compositions for hunting aberrants were extremely varied. Class and headcount changed depending on what you were after.

And there were raid conditions on top of that.

Hmm. By these conditions, does that mean the Time River raid team can't hunt Superior / High-Tier?

If Hwayeon became A-Class, they'd meet the challenge conditions and could attempt a Superior / High-Tier raid as well. But could she become A-Class? She'd reached B-Class in her early twenties, so the possibility seemed to exist. I didn't really know.

I'd thought a raid team meant dozens or hundreds swarming in to beat an aberrant down. It wasn't like that. They formed teams of about ten to fifteen and entered the Phase World. So that was why it was a raid "team"? Given the choice, ganging up on them looked better to me, but if they operated in small numbers there had to be some kind of restriction.

Turning those thoughts over while I pulled information through the Certifier, I suddenly got curious about Hwayeon.

"Let's see. Time River... oh, here it is."

Franc must have been curious about her too. She leaned her head in close to mine and gazed at the hologram.

The Time River raid team was ranked twenty-first in the world?! And her personal world rank was 1,218!

Hwayeon was seriously strong. Physical Reinforcement, just as I'd thought, and her sub-abilities were the same as the President's — Regeneration Enhancement and Immunity Enhancement. But looking at her yesterday, she'd seemed to have other abilities besides those. Had she learned them separately?

Survival class hadn't bothered to teach the difference between an ability and a technique, so I ran a quick search.

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

So a technique was something you learned from someone else and triggered on its own? Couldn't they just call all of it an ability? It all used Phase Power. Yesterday, when Hwayeon coated her skin in a centimeter of Phase Power, the Phase Power inside her body had dipped a little. Same thing.

A click came from the next room — my sister opening her door. After breakfast she'd seemed to be catching up on the studying she hadn't been able to do for the past week because of me. Done, apparently. I put that aside and went into the place the rumors wouldn't shut up about: the Ability User Association's technique shop.

Let's see if they've got something like Phase Power Control.

I searched. And searched. No matter how long I looked, there was nothing related. The results that did come up were nothing but posts about technique fees being obscenely expensive, about wanting to learn the public techniques but not qualifying, about being told to go work for the Association.

"What? There's no Phase Power Control technique? Did I really obtain this ability first?"

Looking into the techniques registered in the shop in more detail, I learned that a technique was an ability user's ability, simplified and degraded so that other people could learn it too. Did that mean if I degraded Phase Power Control, someone else could learn it? I asked Franc. She shook her head — she didn't know either.

"I'll have to ask Hwayeon later."

I'd rested enough. Time to practice lip-reading again. I closed out the Certifier's search mode, and as Franc and I worked, the smell of good food began to drift from the kitchen. Lunch already, it seemed. I almost turned Search on, then thought better of it — I was afraid of witnessing my parents' deeply traumatic private life — and just walked to the kitchen.

A shocking scene was underway in there, too.

"...Whoa. Mom and Sis are making an insane amount of food again."

They were preparing three times the usual spread. I considered telling them to ease up, then gave up. If I just exercised a lot, it'd be fine.

The shocking interlude in Mom's room seemed to have passed, so I turned Search on and found Dad in the study, reading a medical text. Not planning to come out until Mom called him? I bit into a fritter made from a big prawn and went back to my room. Franc looked up from a Korean dictionary and smiled, bright as anything.

"Franc. How far along are you with Korean?"

I sat down in front of her and asked without much thought. She smiled, pointed at her own lips, and slowly began to shape them.

"The conversations I shared with you in the Phase World were a great help, Seoha. Watching from within the Soul Stone while the words were being memorized at the hospital helped a great deal as well."

I could see what she was saying. I could understand her!

The two syllables of my name leaving her small mouth set every organ in my body fluttering. I thought I might die of it. She was speaking slowly, with gaps between the words, but I could actually talk to Franc. If she'd had a body I would have charged her and crushed her in a hug.

Wait. Had Franc just spoken Korean? When had she gotten that good? Then all those English words I'd memorized weren't a waste after all. English was useful anywhere in the world.

More than that — a ghost who could learn, and who was affected by gravity. Watching her, Franc didn't feel like a ghost at all. She felt like a true spirit. An elemental of electricity, maybe. I let out a sound of pure admiration and said so.

"You must be incredibly smart, Franc. My memory and retention got better when I gained my ability, but yours seems even better than mine. That's amazing."

"I do not know the difficult words."

She smiled faintly as she said it. Ghk — I couldn't hold it in. I wanted to hug her, pet her, nuzzle all over her.

But why the formal speech? The day we met, Franc had said she was older and told me to call her noona. Hmm. I'd read that foreigners found Korean honorifics difficult, so they either spoke casually to everyone or formally to everyone. Was that it? I'd wanted her to be comfortable with me, but I soon decided I liked being spoken to this way, too. Formal speech from a noona older than me — that situation was exciting.

"Ahem. Anyway, the lip-reading's going great too. I'll study a little harder so we can talk about more things."

At that she broke into a wide smile, came in close, and looped her arms around my neck from behind, a quiet show of affection.

"Let's keep going this afternoon!"

"Yes!"

An irresistible smell pulled me out to the living room. The whole apartment shook with the scent of good food. I looked into the kitchen and found piles of fritters and savory pancakes stacked in front of my sister, every kind of them, and around Mom a heap of the stir-fried meat, the grilled meat, and the meat pancakes I loved. The table was already full of finished dishes, and every single one was something I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠liked.

"Whoa. If I eat all of this, I'm going to have to work out."

I muttered it because if I didn't burn the calories I'd turn into a pig again, and my sister laughed as she carried food to the table.

"You've even thought about exercising on your own? How admirable. Then shall we go work out together at two, after lunch?"

"Then Mom had better come too. I've put on weight lately from not exercising, haven't I?"

I nodded along with the two of them and helped carry the dishes, and my sister turned to Mom with a face that said this was ridiculous.

"Where exactly have you put on weight?"

"Where? I think my stomach's even starting to stick out... This girl! I'm getting older, so I'm gaining weight and my skin's losing its spring, that's why I said it!"

"You can't say that in front of the ladies in General Affairs. If they hear it, they might fall into despair and start handing in resignations."

At my sister's perfectly serious comment, I nodded too.

"Sis is right. If you and Mom went out side by side, people would think you were sisters. Nobody would take you for mother and daughter."

"This boy, honestly~! Hohoho."

One dose of flattery sent Mom's mood shooting through the roof — and as a side effect, an ominous pressure began to roll off my sister.

"What. So you're saying I look old?"

"Huh? Ah, no! I mean Mom looks that young! Look at her face and her figure. Who'd take her for a middle-aged lady with two kids?!"

"Well, that's true, but."

Whew. I nearly got thrashed again.

I helped set the table, called Dad, and shoveled down a lunch as lavish as last night's dinner like my life depended on it. The conviction that I needed to exercise grew firmer by the minute.

"I can go back to school starting Monday, right?"

I asked Mom, who was loading the emptied dishes into the dishwasher now that lunch had been cleaned away.

"You're going back already? Without resting a little more..."

"It's already been ten days. Add the time I was in the Phase World and it's twenty-five. If I put it off any longer, I won't be able to keep up with class."

"Then go with Mom on Monday."

...What?! Oh, no. That can't happen.

Mom was thirty-six, but if you went by looks alone she could pass for her late twenties — youthful to an almost unfair degree. On top of that, she'd had my sister and me in her mid-to-late teens, which is rare these days, so the actual age gap wasn't even that large. And because she was so young and so pretty, all hell broke loose whenever she showed up at school. Middle school had been especially bad. Bastards who saw her and assumed she was my sister had lined up asking me to introduce them.

"No. The hospital must be busy. You don't need to come. I'll just go a little early and stop by the faculty office."

"You went through something terrible. Shouldn't Mom come along and tell your homeroom teacher about the time you were resting?"

"I said it's fine. I don't need you there."

"...Is it that you're embarrassed to be seen with Mom?"

I flinched.

"Huh?! No! Absolutely not! I'm worried you'll be tired! You didn't even get to rest properly while we were at the hospital! I can see how tired you are right now!"

I cut the brief recollection short and appealed, fiercely, to Mom, who was working up a face like she was about to cry.

"What's embarrassing about a mom this young and pretty?! If the other kids saw you, they'd die of envy! It's really not that — I'm purely worried about you! Look at this! There's even a faint shadow under your eyes!"

Mom, who'd been on the verge of tears, finally beamed at my desperate flattery. Then let's go to school together Monday morning, she said, and she started humming as she put the tea on.

I stole a glance toward the living room. Dad was watching me with a long, steady look. Then he turned his head away.

Hoo...

My sister, helping with the dishes at my side and taking in the whole performance, shook her head as if there were no saving me. Franc, apparently finding me entertaining, let out a soft laugh and fluttered in circles around me.