School (1)

After lunch, I headed straight out with my sister to get a school uniform fitted. She had somewhere to be.

At the official uniform shop in front of the school we bought one ready-made set they'd already produced and ordered two custom uniforms. The moment we stepped outside, she let out a short laugh.

"You that happy?"

"A proportions cheat like you? You could die and come back and still not get how this feels."

When they measured me, the part-timer had said my arms and legs were long enough that even off-the-rack would look custom-tailored. Customer-service talk with a coat of lip service, obviously — but the last time I got fitted, I hadn't even heard that much. Who knew not having to roll the sleeves or take up the hems on a ready-made uniform could make a person this happy. Hehehe.

The moment we left the shop, kids in uniform going in and out of the school gate caught my eye. Book bags on their shoulders — headed for the library to study, by the look of it. Start of the term, and already cramming for entrance exams...

"See you later, then. I'm eating out before I come home, so tell Mom that."

Saying it, she was dressed in a white blouse, women's black stretch pants, and platform heels, a small black shoulder bag at her side and a muted chestnut women's belt worn loose around her waist like a fashion piece. She'd clearly put thought into it. Even when she doesn't try, she hangs clothes so unfairly well that she throws up a wide-area field turning everyone around her into squid and cuttlefish — but today felt like she'd actually made an effort. I stole a look straight through the fabric. Not the lingerie you wear when you mean to win. Just an ordinary set of white lace bra and panties.

So she's not off to meet a guy.

She must have misread where my eyes had landed, because she smiled, pinched the end of the belt, and gave it a little shake.

"I keep telling you, I'm still preparing for the Phase World. This one's tastier than the belt you ate, with more nutrition and more calories. It costs a good ten times what a student belt does."

"Whoa. With what money?"

"Dad bought it for me as a graduation present. Don't you remember?"

Ah. So that was the one. I let the corners of my eyes go soft at her answer, and she laughed like she was poking fun.

"Hehehe. Feel better now?"

"I'm so ridiculously relieved I could sigh!"

I want to torment her until she's the one whining and crying... but if I tried, I'd be the one whining, so I let her off.

"Watch out for guys once you're at school!"

"If anything, I'm worried because guys won't even come near me thanks to Hwayeon — what are you even saying!"

I shouted it at her retreating back. She turned, waved as if to tell me to stop talking nonsense, flagged a taxi, and was gone.

Fair enough. Tall as she already is, stack platforms on top of that and most guys can't even get close enough to try.

While I'd been talking with my sister, Franc had been watching the kids go by in the same uniform I'd worn in the Phase World. Getting an eyeful of her naked whenever I want is nice and all. Even so, watching her float a little off the ground, buck naked, in broad daylight in the middle of the city left me strangely uncomfortable.

"Let's go. Starting tomorrow, you can look at uniforms like that all you want."

I said it to Franc, who had tipped her head back and was looking the school over as if giving the place a tour, and started toward home.

At last. My debut as an ability user. Kehehe. I'm going to drink in every drop of that popularity.

Franc watched me grin my way down the street with the look of someone who had given up trying to stop me, then laughed along anyway. ...Did she just read that?

On the way home we stopped at a massive electronics mart, and I bought a tablet with a big screen.

"Watching from behind Dad is uncomfortable, and you can't even pick what you want to see, right? Use this. Watch whatever you like."

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She must have felt how glad I was — she pressed a light kiss to my cheek. Is this why people buy gifts for their girlfriends? Seeing her pleased and delighted made me feel good right along with her. The peck was nice. Still, if she was going to do it, she could have aimed for the lips. Tch.

We got home, I changed, and then I sat down with Franc — who said she didn't know how to touch a tablet — and we worked through the manual until she had the hang of it. These days even grandmothers past eighty can manage one, and when I teased her for not knowing that much she got a little sulky. The controls were simple enough, though. Within minutes she was using it like she'd always known how, and soon she was so lost in the thing that I started to worry she might not even follow me to school tomorrow.

I loaded some store credit with my allowance so she could buy and read whatever books she wanted, then sat beside her and started in on the Phase Power control I'd been neglecting for days — the work on the brain.

Ever since the Phase World showed up, humanity's science has shot forward at a ridiculous pace. Just the other day I caught a news bit about the United States starting work on a moon colony that could house dozens of people. See only that, and you'd think science had been sprinting for all 216 years — but the way the world actually sees it, the whole thing is overtechnology, possible only because ability users keep hauling back plants, minerals, and the byproducts of hunting aberrants in the Phase World, harvested, mined, and gathered.

Which is to say that for nearly 220 years after the Phase World appeared, science itself barely advanced at all. Everyday objects got smaller, thinner, lighter, and that was about it. Look at the internet or at games and they aren't much different from two hundred years ago. Back then, I hear, augmented reality and virtual reality were the next-generation tech everyone was researching.

What actually changed were the ways of using energy drawn from Phase Stones. Most fossil-fuel extraction has been shut down, and the world runs, they say, on energy made from Phase Stones plus a little electricity out of wind and hydro plants. Cars and aircraft are the obvious examples, along with the energy converters that feed into houses — cars use a charging system, but fighters and airliners fly with Phase Stones mounted in them, and the energy sent from the power plants gets taken in by a converter and supplied through the home.

They say that in the old days, play a phone game for a little too long and the battery died in a blink. These days a full charge takes ten minutes, and no matter how long you play, it lasts five days. Charging is still a pain even now. I don't know how people back then put up with it. Stuff leaking out of the Phase World has science creeping forward a little, sure, but that's recent. Before that, I remember an article about how progress got neglected while everyone was busy figuring the Phase World out and dealing with the aberrants that kept appearing in reality.

The thing that changed the most — and somehow didn't change at all — is entertainment. Before the Phase World, love stories, romance, and realistic plots were the mainstream, and fantasy was the fringe. After it appeared, most content, major or minor, turned into fantasy locked onto the Phase World and anomalous ability users. Mixed martial arts died off. What's popular now are ability-user battle games played under strict safety rules and protective gear, and dramas about the mess between an ordinary girl and an ability-user guy — or the reverse, an ability-user woman and an ordinary boy. Even the games have mostly become MOBAs and MMORPGs that drop real abilities and real aberrants into the system, five skills a side, ability user versus aberrant.

Around six in the evening, the smell of something good drifted into the room from the kitchen. Mom was making dinner.

"Nnngh."

Four hours stuck in the same posture without moving, and my body felt stiff. Thanks to Phase Power that wasn't actually true — but it felt that way. I got up off the bed, stretched, and dropped my eyes to the floor. There was Franc's back, sunk so deep in her book she had eyes only for the tablet.

"......"

I slipped up behind her so she wouldn't notice and looked down. A masterpiece of a rear view — her firm ass taut and springy as a bun fresh from the steamer, and, through the slight part of her thighs, a glimpse of a pink anus like a chrysanthemum and a vulva shut tight as a clam.

Gulp.

Saliva went down on its own. My heart hammered, my face went hot... and still I couldn't look away. It had been a long time since I'd seen Franc this unguarded down there.

Ah. So this is a rice cake in a painting. Look all you want. You still can't have it.

I scratched my head, moved to sit around the middle of the bed, and spoke to her. The truth was I'd gotten hard. There was no walking out into the living room like this.

"What are you reading?"

At the sound of my voice she turned and looked at me. I hadn't meant to break her concentration, but since I already had, I might as well ask how the story went.

"What's it about?"

"...Uh. That sounds amazing."

An extremely common cliché, if you ask me. She seems to be enjoying it, though, so whatever.

"How'd you find that book?"

She said it wearing a proud face. But that... isn't that a manual for indoctrination? A book that felt like something you'd only see in the army, and she'd been glued to it for hours, calling it fun. Franc seemed a little pitiful. Later I'd ask my sister and find her something softer — a romance that actually made your chest ache.

"Enjoy it, then. I'm gonna go eat."

She smiled wide, flopped back onto her stomach, and locked her eyes on the tablet again, utterly focused. Franc, twenty-seven years old.

I shrugged, opened the door, and stepped out toward the kitchen.

"Mom. Sis said she's eating dinner out."

"Did she? When?"

"Earlier, when we went to buy the uniform."

Mom was in a sky-blue apron printed with a sun and clouds, making thin egg crepes for garnish. I could see fresh noodles, and she was drawing broth from anchovies, so dinner was noodles.

"She called a little while ago. Said she's coming home earlier than she planned."

"What plan?"

"Wasn't it that the book she was looking for wasn't there? What do you feel like having with your noodles, son?"

"Your tteokgalbi!"

"You had that Friday night."

"I still want it again. The way you make it is the best in the world!"

"This child. All right. Mom will make it delicious for you!"

At the flattery she broke into a bright smile and went back to cooking with obvious pleasure. A well-timed compliment is fuel for her, so it's worth offering when the moment's right. Asking for a specific dish beats telling her to make whatever, too.

I asked if there was anything I could help with. She told me she was fine and to go play in my room, so I went to the living room and sat on the sofa instead. Her humming drifted out of the kitchen. She seemed to be in a really good mood today.

It was an awkward hour to train, so I turned on the Certifier and entered the ability-user community.

Huh? What's this — breaking news?

Normally I'd be looking at the categories and the titles of popular posts on the main page. Instead an alert window blanketed the whole screen, and a video began to play. Countless soldiers stood with rifles in hand, ringing a mountain against the setting sun, and the ground around them was packed with equipment I couldn't identify and broadcast vans. A dozen or so vehicles that looked like raid-team trailers sat parked in a cluttered lot off to one side. People were coming and going in numbers that didn't look ordinary...

Just then, subtitles began to scroll along the bottom of the screen.

Dad came out of his study, caught the hologram, and sat down beside me. He read the subtitles with a grave face and muttered.

"Yangpyeong's right next door. They're calling up ability users — an aberrant must have shown up."

An aberrant? Fair enough. Throw a popup over the community main page and keep a video running, and it probably isn't anything small.

"Do I not have to go?"

"You're a minor, aren't you. You've got the certificate and the papers, but your case officer also said anything to do with hunting is forbidden, so you won't have to go. Just in case, check with that Kang Woohyuk."

"Okay."

Better call right now. The Certifier can place a call as long as you know the other person's email... where did that business card go.

And how do you even make a call with this?

I poked around the hologram, found a smartphone icon in the menu, and touched it. A prompt came up asking for an email. I entered Mr. Kang Woohyuk's address. A signal went out, and with a beep a new hologram window opened — his face, bent over something he was writing in a hurry. A small rectangular window appeared in one corner of the call hologram, and my own face was reflected in it. Is that what the person on the other end sees?

"Hello. I'm watching the ability-user community feed right now. The subtitles say officially registered ability users within fifty kilometers are to assemble in Yangpyeong, and anyone who has the time should gather as well. I called because I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to go too."

Through the wall beyond the hologram, I saw Franc come flying. Her eyes went round — she must have seen that I was on a call, and that the other party was Mr. Kang Woohyuk. He put on a dandy middle-aged smile and answered in a gentle voice.

At some point Mom had come over too. She watched the video playing in the other window with a worried face, then drew a light hand across her chest at what he said. She must have been afraid I'd have to go to Yangpyeong as well.

"Um, do emergency summons like this happen often?"

"Ah — yes. Sorry for interrupting your work."

He really was busy — he'd been working something the entire call — and the moment he finished speaking, Mr. Kang Woohyuk hung up. The call window vanished. The alert came forward again and began showing Yongmunsan as it slowly darkened.

At the sound of water boiling over, Mom rushed for the kitchen. Dad, his interest apparently spent, opened the book he'd carried out and started to read.

Mm. Dad, Mom, and Sis all speak English well. Talk normally and they'd hear every word, so I'd have to let Franc read my lips. I looked at her, pointed at my mouth, and opened it.

She said it with a familiar look, eyes on the footage in the alert window.

The way she said it, so calm and so certain, there had to be a manual for situations like this.

As expected. There was a manual.

Perhaps because I'd called her ma'am, Franc flushed.

She seemed thoroughly embarrassed, both hands pressed to her cheeks, unable to meet my eyes. I enjoyed the sight for a moment, then shut off the Certifier and turned on the TV. In that same instant I sensed my sister arriving at the apartment entrance.

"That brat Siha didn't even say when she was coming. When does she mean to show up?"

"Mom. Sis just got here."

"Hm? Oh my — did you see her with Search?"

"Yeah."

"Convenient ability, that."

I watched Sis step out of the elevator and went to get the door. Mom leaned her head out of the kitchen to look at me.

Any second now, the bell.

Ding-dong~

I opened it the moment it rang. Sis stood there with disappointment all over her face and started whining at me.

"Aaaah~. The book I wanted wasn't there. I came up completely empty. What a waste of time~!"

And what do you want me to do about it.

She sighed her way into the living room, dropped onto the sofa, slid sideways, and collapsed, chattering ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠out her complaints. Sunday, so the place had been packed. Of the two books she'd been after, someone had snatched one right out from in front of her. The other was out on long-term loan and simply wasn't there.

Hover at her elbow at a time like this, or start mouthing off, and violence comes flying with a one-hundred-percent chance.

I kept my mouth shut and quietly turned my eyes to the TV.