Daily Life (3)

"Aaah?!"

Huh?! Uuugh.

A sharp scream knifed into my ear. My eyes flew open and I shot upright off the bed, then forced apart lids too gummed with sleep to open and looked toward the sound. Noona was there, pointing my way with a startled face.

She was in pearl-colored silk pajamas. Flustered, at a loss, jealous... Jealous? What was that about? More to the point, her finger didn't seem to be aimed at me.

I rubbed my eyes and checked the space beside me. Where the finger pointed, Franc lay asleep, her body glittering with light at steady intervals.

I must have kicked the blanket off in my sleep. It was bunched at the foot of the bed, and thanks to that Franc's naked body was on full display. Noona's finger was pointing at her.

"A ghost— no, that girl is... Franc?"

"Uh... yeah. That's Franc."

I answered in a sleep-rough voice and hauled the blanket up over her, only for a shoulder and part of a leg to phase straight through it. I felt Noona flinch. Still, once the intimate parts were covered I was satisfied enough to yawn — and that was when I noticed her staring fixedly at Franc's face.

"She's pretty..."

My head cleared in a snap, as if someone had upended cold water over me. How did she know Franc was pretty?

"You can see Franc?"

She didn't answer. She just examined the sleeping face from this angle and that, and I frowned, then climbed carefully off the bed so I wouldn't wake her.

They must have heard the scream. Dad, in pajamas and gripping a baseball bat, and Mom, clutching a frying pan in both hands, opened the door and came in — and startled at the sight of us.

"Daughter, what's— hmm."

"Oh my!"

Wow. Good thing I covered Franc's body!

They'd come in with hard faces, ready for trouble, and now they couldn't take their eyes off Franc, who brightened with light every time she drew a breath.

Dad caught sight of the bare skin of the shoulder and the stretch of thigh that had phased through the blanket, seemed to put two and two together, and was gone in a moment. Mom did the opposite. Face full of curiosity, she crept closer on tiptoe and gently lifted the blanket to peek.

"So this is Franc? My, how pretty can a girl be."

No. This wouldn't do. I grabbed Noona's arm and Mom's and dragged them out to the living room by force. Dad was already there, tuning the TV to a news channel, perfectly calm, as if nothing at all had happened.

Hauled out while still clinging to my arms, full of lingering reluctance, the two of them turned around, sat me on the sofa, and asked.

"That girl is Franc, right? Why can we suddenly see her?"

"Yeah. You could see Franc's face?"

"She was incredibly pretty! The prettiest child Mom has ever seen!"

Hmm. So other people could see her while she slept. I'd never even imagined that. If I had to sleep outside the house, I'd need to have her rest inside the Soul Stone.

"But why is Franc naked? Don't tell me, at night you..."

Noona had been wearing a sullen look for a while. At her words I startled and denied it hard.

"What are you talking about?! Franc has looked like that since the first time I met her! I told her I could see her n— her naked body, and she still stayed like that!"

"It's all right, son. Mom understands everything."

Mom's benevolent expression jammed the words in my throat. Every thought I had tangled together, and I started stammering, and she smiled kindly and stroked my back.

"Our boy is all grown up..."

"Mom!!"

Cold sweat soaked my back under Mom's strange interest and Noona's icy stare. If they caught on that I'd toyed with Franc's body through the Soul Stone, I'd be finished, no way out of it...

At that moment, Dad's saving hand came down.

"I let it go yesterday without asking, but how did you come to meet Miss Franc? Did that young lady simply happen to take up residence in a Phase Stone you had on you?"

I seized the opening — a chance to pull Noona's attention off me, too — and explained in detail, calling the whole thing back up.

"...So the night I climbed up from the cliff, I caught a big field-rat aberrant. I was going to use it for food, so I'd gone down to the river to dress it. That's when I met Franc. She didn't seem like an aberrant, so we talked in gestures, and once I heard the whole story I felt sorry for her. She asked me to help her pass on in the real world, so I granted the request, and that's how Franc came to enter the Phase Stone."

I added that thanks to that choice she had stayed by my side the whole time and given me someone to talk to, which was why I'd made it back alive, and Noona's expression eased considerably.

That was because I'd hidden the fact that Franc had originally been a one-eyed giant aberrant.

If I'd told them, I couldn't even begin to guess what would have happened.

Dad and Mom, listening, asked me with somewhat grave faces.

"She's not a ghost or an evil spirit, is she."

"She... doesn't drain your vital energy just by being around, or anything like that. Right, son?"

So that was what Mom's expression in the car yesterday had meant. Fair enough — at first I'd wondered if Franc might be an evil spirit too. I'd dropped it quickly, though.

"I had those suspicions at first, too, but watching her eyes and the way she acted, I let them go. If Franc were a ghost or an evil spirit, there wouldn't be a single person in the world you could trust. If anything, the way I see it, she's halfway to becoming a spirit."

Perhaps the word spirit had sounded persuasive. The family nodded, looking oddly convinced.

I checked the clock. It was only six.

Feeling strangely drained, I sank onto the wool carpet. Waking to Noona's scream and opening a perfectly good Sunday morning with a family hearing — this was the worst.

I was a little angry that she'd come into my room uninvited, so I shot back at her with a sullen face.

"What were you trying to do, sneaking into my room?"

Noona, who had been spinning all kinds of dramas about Franc with Mom, flinched, then glared at me steadily and came back shameless as anything.

"I got curious whether my little brother was sleeping all right, so I looked. Why. You got a problem?"

From the flinch on, there was no credibility in it... but if I picked at that, verbal pressure would arrive with a side of physical sanctions, so I gave up.

Up through the fifth day after my return they'd tended me as if I might shatter if they held me and blow away if they breathed, and now she was completely back to her old self. I wouldn't have minded her going back, if only she'd lay off the violence... but having a witch like that for a sister was my own fault, I guess.

While Mom went into the master bathroom to wash, I spoke to Noona, who had squatted down beside me and was fiddling with her phone.

"Noona. I need a new school uniform. Come with me."

"A uniform? ...Right, you've gotten taller and lost weight, so you do need a new one. Let's buy one off the rack and order two more."

"Three sets? I graduate in a year. Do I need three?"

"If any are left over, we can put them in the New Year sharing bazaar and pass them on to kids who are struggling."

"There's something like that?"

"You don't remember? I passed on all my uniforms when I graduated."

Ah. Now I remembered. A mob of girls from Uihan Middle School had descended, all dying to inherit Noona's uniform, and it had been a riot.

I had no idea who my future brother-in-law would turn out to be, but once it hit me that school-uniform roleplay was off the table, I felt oddly sorry for the man.

"...What are you thinking?"

"Huh? Nothing. Aaah~ I should go see if Franc's up!"

Dodging Noona's stabbing stare, I scurried back to my room and looked at Franc lying on my bed.

She hadn't woken through any of that chaos. She was sleeping peaceful as anything, and the sight left me with a strange feeling. I'd thought I had no connection with women...

Long, even lashes lay at the tips of her closed eyes, and the thought that they were pretty filled my head. From lips parted just slightly, like cherries, a faint breath seemed to slip.

I swallowed.

The urge rose to quietly draw the blanket back and look at her naked body, but I had no idea when the sharp-eyed ghost sitting in the living room might pounce, so I settled for admiring the sleeping face.

Ah — should I look into ghosts, and into detecting them?

A magnificent parade of profanity unfurled beneath that. I skimmed it and picked a reply posted underneath.

I skipped ahead.

These people were ability users? Why were they clowning around like this... I'd thought ability users all lived life seriously, with Kang Woohyuk's solemn face.

...Seeing that the blonde, Choi Soohan, existed, I somehow understood. Plenty of people must just be empty above the shoulders and getting by that way anyway.

Taking that last reply as the end of it, I went into the Ability User Association's skill shop and looked up Detect.

There was a sentence in the middle I couldn't follow no matter how I looked at it. The way the dialogue sat was off — machine translation?

Going by the reviews, it seemed better than nothing, and yet it was pretty expensive. Seventeen Phase Power. Seventeen million won.

I searched further on ghosts, but there was no skill that would definitively let you see one in an invisible state. Beyond that, nothing but posts about ghost dungeons and haunting grounds like Kahumil, Alpines, and Marauso, posts that spiritual bodies possessing Phase Power existed, and trivial notes on the aberrants that showed up in those places.

They said liches were out there too, and dullahan death knights — the usual fantasy regulars — but after the fifteen days I'd been through, I couldn't just gawk like a kid.

One slip and my life would be gone.

What caught my eye in particular was another Calamity-rank aberrant, one distinct from the Imoogi: the Abyss Lord. It raised the dead ability users around it as Death Knights — Peak-Rank aberrants.

Terrifying. Raising ability users as Peak-Rank aberrants.

Hm? Hmm... This, too, looked like one case of a human turning into an aberrant. Similar to whatever had turned Franc into a giant?

Wandering the community, I happened to learn about the ability user who had registered Detect.

He was a C-Class Detection user, like me — an Italian Catholic priest from a hundred years ago. His specialty was exorcising ghosts, spirits, and the undead. He called Phase Power spirit-power, and in battle against the undead he had fought at a B-Class level...

Any ordinary ghost would vanish at a single Turning of his, but it said he had died in the Abyss Lord raid.

The incident that got the Abyss Lord registered as a Highest-Rank aberrant.

Anyway, Detect was something the priest had made after coming to understand part of his own ability. He registered it as a public skill, the Ability User Association sold it for money, and with the proceeds he supported orphanages and children from struggling homes.

Below that, a photo had been posted. An incredibly young, handsome blond man with blue eyes, in a priest's robes, smiling with genuine warmth, surrounded by countless children.

Wow. A saint, in the literal sense. Handsome, capable, and kind on top of it — a male version of Franc?

Detection. Detection... But what was this TP consumption? Like MP? If it was that sort of thing, one percent a minute meant I could only hold it for a hundred minutes. No way to tell whether that TP cost was steep or not.

I checked how many kinds of skills were registered on the Certifier. Thirty to a page, twelve pages — so three hundred and sixty?

I tapped a few names that caught my eye, but most of them were nothing but traps. Stealth that left you in plain sight. Levitation that amounted to a little hop. Defense enhancement that couldn't stop a needle. Dynamic vision that let you see a flying arrow — but couldn't you usually catch a glimpse of a flying arrow anyway? There were skills for breathing underwater, skills that made your eyesight extremely sharp, skills that heightened the body's senses (one review said it was great during sex; the reviewer was presumably a woman), skills that ran TP through the legs so you could sprint, skills that floated objects under a hundred grams into the air, skills that chilled a small glass of liquid in your hand, skills that generated a static shock's worth of electricity from your body.

The odds and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ends were truly useless. They might help with ordinary daily life, perhaps, but the Phase Power cost was steep across the board, so none of them looked useful.

Still, a few looked extremely handy. Ones that cut TP consumption. Ones that raised stamina. Ones that raised muscle strength. The reviews on those were good, and millions of people recommended buying them first if you had the money and building proficiency.

The prices were brutal to match. The cheapest was four digits. A billion won, minimum.

...A billion. A billion won wasn't some nobody's name you could toss around.

Turning an ability into a skill, I learned, was extremely difficult work. Most skills had been made by ability users of B-Class and above, after every kind of hardship...

And there were attribute-bolt projection skills, registered by attribute users, that let you fire all kinds of attribute bolts. A ranged option. I really wanted to learn one. But.

Uuugh.

Just from the skill reviews, my javelin throws looked like they hit harder.

The original ability a skill was based on would be incomparably better than the skill itself, surely... but somehow the name skill shop felt like an overstatement.

I was about to leave when the best-selling skill caught my eye. The purchase count was a whopping ninety-eight million.

T-Resist. The skill Hwayeon had shown me, the one that formed a membrane about a centimeter off the skin.

The reviews said that if you had the money, you bought it, no questions. The price was 112 million won — a little steep for a brand-new returnee, but the prevailing opinion was that it was extremely cheap for the effect. A skill any ability user had to learn, no exceptions.

Hmm.

And Phase Power Control, or anything like it, was nowhere to be seen. Just as I'd expected. I'd wondered if I'd simply missed it when I searched yesterday.

Phase Power Control: the ability to move the Phase Power inside the body and explosively raise physical ability and recovery. With that ability alone, you wouldn't need to learn more than half the skills registered in the shop.

If you made a skill and registered it with the Ability User Association, a set amount landed in the registrant's account every time it sold. Thinking about that, turning Phase Power Control into a skill and registering it would bring in an enormous profit.

They said that even if a skill degraded in the conversion, functions it already had didn't disappear, so it would be extremely helpful. And yet if it still wasn't registered, then either no ability user ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had ever gained an ability like this, or turning it into a skill was insanely difficult. One of the two.

So I searched for abilities that moved Phase Power, and there wasn't a single post about any such thing.

Was this really an ability only I had? I'd seen on the internet that a Phase Power operation technique was an essential skill for ability users, though?

Finding it strange, I went to an ability-user blog I sometimes pulled information from, and the blog had been nuked. Spreading false information was the main reason.

As a related article, I found this.

...Hoo. I felt like I'd wasted a piece of my life.

I considered writing a post about my Phase Power Control and watching the reaction, but if I wrote anything, my unique Certifier code would be exposed, and people would figure out it was me in no time.

There wasn't even a function for deleting posts, so I couldn't ask around and then take the post down, either.

Hmm. No need to fasten shackles around my own ankles.

Digging through the community, I suddenly thought of the Phase Power that was supposedly spread through reality. I focused and ran Search.

In the Phase World it had been nearly half air, half Phase Power...

So in reality, Phase Power went up by 0.012 an hour? Only 0.264 after a full day? Ah — the standard had changed, so about 1.01 a day.

Then in a year it would go up 365, literally, so I could reach G Class just by breathing. Ten years and I'd hit E-Class...? Past that, no chance. Becoming D-Class took 25,000 Phase Power, and at 365 a year that would be sixty-eight years.

Anything else I was curious about...? I laced my fingers behind my neck, wiggled my toes, and my thoughts reached the claw knife and the horn awl I'd brought out.

The claw knife was a Mid-Low Grade, in name at least. Wouldn't it be worth something if I sold it? Come to think of it, they'd only said they'd give it back later, and never said when later was.

I should message the blonde. They'd said to get in touch if I had questions!

This wasn't someone I particularly wanted to get friendly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠with, so I stuck to the point. The address was as I'd seen it on the business card the blonde had given me.

Ding-ding-ding-ding...

Done.

Send!

Right. Then I'd browse the community a little more and gather some infor—

That was fast! Was that guy off too, it being Sunday?

The reply had been instant, but exchanging messages with someone I disliked didn't sit right, so I opened it with a complicated look.

The subject...

...

This person. Seriously...

Irritation welled up with nowhere to go. It was a normal sentence, not even plastered with emoticons, and yet somehow it was insanely irritating! Writing the baby-talk out in letters at the end was the worst of it!

Still, sending a reply would be the courteous thing.

Fast!

Huuuu... My chest grew hopelessly tight. A man acting cute like that — and how many times was he going to say too? And why was he so hyper... huh? Noona?

What kind of nonsense was that?

I stared with a reluctant eye at the single word stuck on the very end of the sentence, then tried to call the blonde's body up... and there was nothing in my memory. Nothing but a man's shape past the suit...

Oh, right. Just looking, it was a man, so I hadn't even run a body scan. Right.

Wow... That face was a woman? Way too boyish, wasn't it? The lines had been thin for a man, granted, but the thought that she was a woman hadn't crossed my mind even a speck...

Send. And an instant reply from the blonde.

I was shocked too, damn it. The face had been androgynous, the name was a man's, the voice a little husky, so she'd seemed like a man — and she was a woman?

Well, whether Choi Soohan was shocked or not, I turned my eyes to Franc, who was brightening into a radiance. Maybe the chime of the messages going back and forth was waking her.

Eyelids pretty enough that I wanted to lick them lifted in a soft slide, and Franc's eyes showed themselves — transparent, clear, beautiful.

"Sleep well? Good morning."

"Yes... Did you sleep peacefully as well, Seoha?"

Franc smiled at once at the morning greeting and sat up. Sunlight poured through the window. As if it dazzled her, she raised both hands and lightly rubbed her eyes, then stretched both arms high overhead.

Thanks to that, Franc's breasts swayed fully into view, and my heart swayed with them.

"Ahem. While you were sleeping, I looked through the Certifier community and the skill shop. There's good news."

"Good news?"

"Yeah. Doesn't seem like there's anyone in reality — ordinary person or ability user — who can detect you."

When I passed on what I'd gotten from the Certifier, Franc smiled demurely, as if relieved.

"Then, aside from a small number of ability users, there will be no one who can see me."

"Yeah!"

"I was anxious that someone might see my body, but I can rest easy now."

"Right? I didn't want other men seeing your body, eith—"

I'd slipped.

At my true feelings, bared because I'd let my guard down, Franc happily covered her chest with both hands and smiled, shy.

Four hours since Mom had come out of the wash, set out breakfast, and the whole family had sat around eating in warm harmony.

In those four hours I'd wrapped up the last of lip-reading with Franc and gotten it down, and by eleven I could finish even the words that started with Z.

"I memorized all of it! Glad it didn't take as long as I thought. I was sure it'd take ten days."

"Congratulations. It is entirely the result of your effort, Seoha — you memorized every bit of it!"

Franc had her hands clasped tight, eyes sparkling, and my chest swelled. Nineteen days since I'd met her. At last, we could actually talk...

I might actually cry!

Th-then, the questions I'd prepared for Franc...

"Seoha~!"

...I was about to ask them, when Noona called me from the living room.

"Aw. I've got so much to ask Franc."

"I will tell you whenever you wish. There is plenty of time, so please do not rush."

She looked at my sullen face as if it were cute, then came close and pressed a light kiss to my forehead.

Hehe.

"All right. I've got a fair number of things I'm curious about. Let's talk it through slowly after lunch. After that, we'll go buy a hundred-thousand-word English dictionary, too."

"Yes!"