Daily Life (2)
I had tea, practiced lip-reading with Franc, and at two o'clock set off for Dad's hospital with Mom and my sister.
"Son. Don't you need a new phone?"
Halfway there, Mom caught sight of a phone shop and offered to buy me one.
"I don't need one. The Certifier works as a smartphone, too."
More to the point, when I'd been dragged into phase space, everything on me except my clothes and shoes had dropped to the floor and come through just fine. I'd glanced over my desk yesterday. My smartphone and my wallet were both still sitting there.
The phone I used to carry was small, though. Franc would have a hard time seeing the screen. Maybe I should ask them for a tablet instead.
And then another thought followed, one I hated even turning over. My sister could be pulled into the Phase World as well. I ought to teach her how to stay alive, just in case. Mom had aged out of the forced-summoning range, so she didn't need it.
We changed and reached the training gym attached to the hospital, and the place was packed. A few patients, a few staff, and a couple of the nurse guys whose faces I knew. But what was this? Why nothing but men?
It was only a hospital annex, granted, but I'd heard the place was well kept and clean enough that plenty of women used it too.
The question didn't last. I saw exactly why the gym had turned into a men's bathhouse.
"Oh my. Quite a crowd, isn't there?"
"Hm? It's usually about this busy, isn't it?"
"I was thinking of tearing it out, actually. The patients and the staff hardly seemed to use it."
"What? Whenever I came to work out, it was always packed. There usually aren't many people?"
The moment Mom and my sister pushed the gym doors open, every gaze in the room swung toward them at once.
Tank tops that left stomach and navel bare, and tights that clung close enough to lay every curve out in the open — Mom and my sister, dressed for training, were calmly looking over a room full of men, as peaceful as you please.
So that was it. They'd planted themselves here to get a look at my sister's body.
No wonder it had struck me as strange that the place was nearly all male. Watching them stare at Mom and my sister with those leering eyes, something in my head went cold, and anger heaved up through my chest.
I wasn't leaving it like this. It was fine when I stole looks at other women. I would not stand for anyone stealing looks at my family.
"Mom. I think these clothes run a little small."
"Hm? They're small? Shall I bring you something bigger?"
"Yeah. You and Sis go get me some new ones."
"Honestly... you're supposed to say that when you're putting them on."
Mom turned and went without another word. My sister grumbled, but she didn't refuse, and she followed Mom out.
I got the two of them clear easily enough, then watched through Search as they drew away from the gym. That was when the muttering reached me — beasts, thick with complaint.
"Ah, after all that waiting..."
"Why'd you let them go off and change on their own?"
"Who the hell is that kid?"
"He called the head of general affairs Mom. Must be the director's son."
"Ha. Unreal."
At the males' grumbling, something in my head went snap.
These bastards, seriously...! They'd killed their voices so they wouldn't be heard, and I could still hear every word!
I glared at every human in the gym who had a male's eyes. They glared back, looking thoroughly annoyed. If they'd been caught out, they might at least have had the shame to look away. What were they so proud of, turning it around on me?
Franc must have sensed how furious I was. She hovered at my side with a worried face, and that only stoked me hotter, because those males looked for all the world as if they were staring at Franc's naked body.
The male nurses from the hospital, at least, avoided my eyes and slipped out with awkward looks, but they were a handful. Were the rest salaried doctors?
I waited until the older nurses I was actually on decent terms with had gone, then moved my Phase Power.
I'd meant to growl at them out loud at first. Then I remembered a growl would count as a threat, and a threat from an ability user as a crime, so I only drew my body up.
Right beside me someone had abandoned a barbell of a good hundred-odd kilograms. I caught it by one end, hefted it like a club, and stared down the rutting males as I spoke, low.
At the threat, young and old alike, every male face went white at once.
I drew a long breath and growled as if I meant to chew them down to the bone.
"Ten seconds. Anyone who isn't a patient who actually needs to exercise for their health gets out. Right now. Otherwise."
I smiled and shook the barbell up and down like a stick of wood, and a menacing whoom, whoom of wind rolled through the room.
Even that didn't cool me. I slammed the barbell down with a crash, seized an iron plate, poured Phase Power into my hands, and tore it apart left and right as I spoke.
Gulp.
Only then did they seem to grasp that I was an ability user. The man nearest me, the one who'd taken my killing voice full in the face, swallowed hard, avoided my eyes, and began inching toward the door. And the thought cut through me that if I let them leave like this, they'd gather all over again the next time my sister came to train.
"I'll say this now. I've memorized every one of your faces. Come back with those filthy intentions again, and I really will not let it go."
I crumpled the torn plate in my hands and scowled, and they went ashen as one and stampeded out of the gym.
"Tsk."
A demonstration shouldn't count as a threat. I'd be fine. Probably.
Franc couldn't even smile at the sight of me driving everyone out in a black mood. She looked plainly at a loss. So, as if offering an excuse, I tucked the crumpled, torn plate away in a corner where it wouldn't be seen.
"What else was I supposed to do? They weren't here to work out. They'd gathered to sneak looks at Mom's body and Sis's. How was I supposed to leave them be?"
"Not at all. You did well. People of that sort ought to be taught a lesson at least once."
"...Right?"
With Franc on my side, my chest felt considerably lighter, and the anger loosened its grip. Still a little embarrassed, I rolled my shoulders with more show than I needed and muttered,
"Anyway. Run Phase Power into physical reinforcement and the strength gets absurd."
The drain had been steep. I'd been angry enough to haul it up to full output without noticing.
"Emptying the tank might actually be the better outcome. So where do I start?"
"If gaining weight is what concerns you, a treadmill and a cycle would serve best."
"What's a treadmill?"
"I mean a running machine."
So a running machine was called a treadmill?
"Is two hours on the running machine all right?"
"It is not a method I would recommend to an ordinary person, but you will be quite all right, Seoha."
I ran to the sound of the machine turning over, and the thud of the floor shivering under every stride wasn't bad at all.
A little later Mom and my sister came back with a training outfit one size up. They took in the nearly empty gym, wore a shared look of what happened here?, and came over to where I was running.
"Son. Where did all the guests go?"
"The patients looked like they were heading back to their rooms. The staff, home."
Mom let it pass with a vague acceptance. My sister did not.
"They were running with their faces gone white. I saw them."
Erk. She'd seen them flee? She must have caught the slight twist of my expression, because her eyes went sharp and she pressed.
"Tell me the truth. What did you do?"
"...They weren't working out. They were snickering and leering, so I ran them off."
"You what?"
My sister looked as if she couldn't believe her ears. Beside her, Mom wore the face of someone who had already guessed.
Mom glanced down at the training clothes in her hands, set them on a folding chair, and looked at me.
"So you drove all of them out?"
"Yeah. I told them if they weren't going to exercise, they shouldn't come."
I'd said it like a threat, demonstration and all, but I had said it.
Only then did my sister put it together, and her expression went weary.
"Men. Honestly."
...Ugh. I didn't particularly want to defend those people, but my sister had a part in it too, so I figured I ought to say so.
"You too, Sis. And Mom. You dress that provocatively, and of course those guys show up for an eyeful."
At that Mom gave a startled oh my and covered her narrow waist and her navel. My sister seemed to feel the point land as well. Her face went red, and she flapped her hands in protest.
"Wh-what do you mean, provocative! This is an ordinary training outfit!"
"It sticks to you like compression wear, every curve on display, stomach and navel both out. That's provocative! Men get happy if you so much as put a skirt on!"
She must have decided I wasn't wrong. My sister shut her mouth, thought for a moment, then frowned faintly and nodded.
"From tomorrow I'll just wear a jersey. It'll chafe a little and the sweat won't come off as well, but it can't be helped."
"Wear the training clothes underneath and put the jersey over them. You'll sweat more. The weight'll come off easier."
Watching me run at a hard clip, my sister started to sigh, swallowed it, switched on the machine beside me, and began to walk. Mom followed, starting up the treadmill on my left and easing into a slow run, and the motion looked more practiced than I'd expected. So she'd used the gym a few times herself.
I was here to burn calories, so I kept Phase Power turning and simply ran at sixteen kilometers an hour. Mom and my sister talked back and forth across me, running and walking and running again for thirty minutes.
After half an hour on the machine, my sister moved on to the weight equipment and started working her body. Mom walked and ran for a few minutes more, then sat down soaked through with sweat and watched the two of us with a fond, satisfied face.
While I ran I muttered English words and their meanings, fixing the shapes of my mouth, and Franc, her upper body laid across the console in front of the machine, sounded out the same words and helped me with the lip-reading.
After a long stretch of memorizing, I realized there were more similar words and similar pronunciations than I'd expected.
Done the straightforward way, even at one word every ten seconds, a hundred thousand words would take two hundred and forty-four hours without a break. Fold the similar ones together and set aside the ones that were nothing but a simple pronunciation, and that number looked as if it would drop hard.
Confidence started to stir. By tomorrow, I might actually be able to talk with Franc.
"Son, are you just going to keep running?"
I'd held the same speed for a full hour. Mom came up beside me, leaned on the treadmill's armrest, and sounded frankly incredulous.
"Yeah. I ate a lot. I have to burn the calories."
Phase Power was propping me up, lifting my body's natural recovery and shielding my knees, but an hour of sprinting still had the sweat pouring off me. Even so, between the calories Phase Power itself consumed and the calories the running burned, two hours ought to spend roughly everything I'd overeaten yesterday and today.
"Still, if a beginner just runs and runs, it's hard on the kneecap..."
"Mom. Hwayeon said ability users recover so fast that splitting things into cardio and strength training doesn't matter. You almost never get hurt, so you just repeat whatever part you're trying to train."
Oh? Was that why Franc had said I'd be fine? Then maybe I ought to build some muscle on the bench press and the weight machines too.
My sister seemed to be finished. She came over drenched from head to toe, toweling the sweat off as she walked.
Ugh, honestly. This was exactly why those guys showed up red-eyed for a look.
The tank top had scraped together every last scrap of her and produced a meager line of cleavage, glossy now with sweat, and the training clothes, soaked through, clung to a pretty face and a pretty figure until the whole effect turned frankly indecent.
"Is that so? Are you like that too, son?"
"Yeah. I'm running on Phase Power right now, raising my natural recovery. Use more of it and I could run three times this fast."
At that, Mom's eyes and my sister's went round. They touched my shoulder and my arm in open wonder, and then a hand wandered down to my waist, and — hey! Where are you touching!
"Mom!"
"Oh, you startled me! Hehehe. My boy's backside has gotten nice and firm, hasn't it?"
Mom laughed, bright and unbothered, stuck a straw into a sports drink, and held it out. I stopped the treadmill with a sullen face and took the drink.
And why was Franc looking at Mom with an envious expression?
The hospital Mom and Dad had built by working themselves raw was a modest seven-story building.
The seventh floor held the director's office and the director's examination room, with a small side room and an adjoining bathroom. The sixth was general affairs, patient affairs, the supply room, and the rest of what a hospital needed to run. The fifth and fourth were wards, and the fifth also had the gym and the showers. They didn't call the fourth floor the fourth floor. They called it Floor F. Mom had told me they'd changed the name because four sounded like the word for death, and people found it unlucky. The third, second, and first floors held surgery, internal medicine, and the reception desk with pediatrics, respectively.
When the workout ended, Mom and my sister went up to wash in the bathroom off the director's office, and I headed for the showers beside the gym.
Search told me there wasn't a single person using them. It was Saturday afternoon, ordinary clinic hours were over, and the only people left were patients, staff closing out the day's work, and the doctors and nurses on duty.
I stripped and stepped into the shower — and Franc came padding in after me, her face a little brighter than before.
"Uh... Franc? I'm going to wash."
"Yes? Yes. Please do. I only regret that I am a spirit, and cannot help you wash."
A cough caught in my throat. Help me wash. Right — she could see from inside the Soul Stone, so she'd already seen everything when I washed in the examination room. Even so... it was embarrassing.
Whether I hesitated or not, Franc glanced around the shower with no apparent intention of leaving.
Fair enough. I'd looked at her naked body whenever I pleased, so letting her look at mine was only even. And yet, faced with actually washing, I was painfully self-conscious. Had Franc felt this shy under my eyes?
I gave up on thinking and just washed. Now and then it seemed as if Franc were watching, and now and then as if she weren't.
If I let it get to me, I lost.
Washed and dressed, I went up to the director's office, sat on the sofa meant for receiving guests, and set my face close to Franc's to memorize words. Mom and my sister came out of the side room with their faces flushed pink.
"It's been so long since I exercised. My body feels wonderfully light."
"See? So how about you work out with me whenever you've got the time?"
"Shall I?"
"Of course! You're at the age when the years start sticking to your stomach. Skip the exercise and the flab you don't want will pile on like anything."
At the word flab, Mom's face went serious. She felt at her stomach, then turned to me.
"You'll do it every day too, won't you, son?"
"Ev-every day? Every day is a bit much... I'll think about it."
Two hours, every single day, without fail? Couldn't I just exercise enough that my stomach didn't stick out?
On the drive home I told Mom I was going to buy a tablet. I'd saved my allowance little by little. Enough for one that wasn't meant for games.
My sister had been fiddling with her phone in the passenger seat. She turned toward me.
"Why a tablet?"
"Franc can't use a laptop. I thought she might get bored while I'm at school, so I wanted to get her one."
Franc, seated beside me with my arm gathered against her, heard that and went round-eyed, shaking her head hard.
"I wish to go with you to the school you attend, Seoha. Would that not be possible?"
She met my eyes and pleaded, and refusing her was... genuinely difficult.
"Uh, but wouldn't it still be better to have one? There might be times you have to stay home on your own. You never know."
"No! Wherever you go, Seoha, I wish to be there with you!"
Heh. Both eyes shining, she appealed to me so earnestly that it sounded like a wish to stay together the way a married couple would, and my heart gave a hard thump. Let my guard down and my face was going to go red.
Mom and my sister watched me through the rearview mirror with round eyes while Franc and I talked. Mom, especially, looked a little uneasy.
Why the uneasy face?
"All right. Then we'll do it the way you want, Franc."
"Yes! Thank you!"
Seeing her smile wide and bright, a whole scatter of questions rose in me and settled again. Soon enough I'd be able to ask her all of them.
We got home to find Dad in the study, still reading in the exact same posture as before.
Mom made him a cup of coffee, then, a little worn out from the exercise, went into the master bedroom and fell asleep. My sister was in her own room, doing yoga while she read a textbook for her major.
Wow. So that was what it took to end up with a figure like hers.
She folded herself into astonishing shapes, twisted her whole body, balanced on her hands, and moved her legs with slow control, and it occurred to me that a body that perfect did not simply happen.
I kept at the lip-reading with Franc, and before I knew it evening had come. The moment it did, Mom and my sister started cooking an outrageous amount of food all over again. I bolted out of my room in a panic to stop them.
"How much are you planning to make! I like having lots of good food, I do, but this is too much. Way too much!"
"Son, you promised you'd eat everything Mom makes for you!"
"O-of course I'll eat it all... but this is still too much. What I ate across three meals since last night was enough for you and Dad and Sis to live on for a week."
When I protested that they were making far too much, Mom pushed her lips out in a pout, but I had no interest in dying of a burst stomach, so I didn't give ground.
Even so, the decision came down that tonight's dinner would be the last lavish one. With my sister and Dad both siding with Mom, I couldn't win. At least from tomorrow we'd agreed I'd eat only about twice a normal amount. That was something.
Twice... I really might have to exercise every day.
I ate dinner, no exaggeration, right up to the edge of bursting, then shut myself in my room, found whatever exercise a person could do in an ordinary room, and worked my body hard.
Before the Phase World, I'd hated the sweat and the tiredness and the drained feeling, and I hadn't exercised at all. Now that I could handle Phase Power, the tiredness and the drain vanished quickly enough that exercise was bearable, so long as I put up with the nuisance of a shower.
I practiced lip-reading while I moved. Once I understood the trick of it and the points that actually had to be memorized, the time collapsed, and by eleven, when my sister went to bed, I had finished every word that started with W.
Memorize the words starting with X, Y, and Z in the morning, and the lip-reading would be done.
I washed off the sweat, changed into pajamas, and lay down, and Franc, who had been watching me shower, flew over to my side, rested her head on my arm, and lay down with me.
I looked at her beside me. She turned toward me too, and our eyes met. In the dark room she glimmered a faint gray, and watching her left me with a strange feeling.
Moonlight fell across the naked upper half of her, half-hidden by the blanket, and the sight was dizzying.
I looked for a moment at the cute nipples risen at the tips of her breasts, then spoke.
"I'm looking forward to it."
"Looking forward to what?"
"Being able to talk with you like a normal person."
"...I am looking forward to it as well."
"There's so much I want to ask you."
I gazed at her eyes, beautiful where they shone in the dark, and she drew a smile across her face and opened her mouth.
"If you wish to know, Seoha, I shall tell you everything I know. So please, sleep now. The night has grown late."
And she brushed a kiss, light as anything, against my forehead.
I felt her lips and deactivated Search. The information seething through my head cut off, and stillness came in.
Sleep poured over me. In a vision already going dim and hazy, I was faintly aware of her lips moving, and then I sank.
"...Sleep well. ...I love you... Seo...ha."