The Second Awakening (1)

The phenomenon that followed the naming of Mana Sieve kept me out so long that it was past nine in the evening by the time I got home.

Dad lifted his eyes from the book he was reading, flicked a glance at me, and lowered them to the page again.

Mom had been too worried to stay in her seat. My sister had been working a cushion between her hands as if she meant to tear it in half, and the moment I stepped into the living room she charged and swung. Whump. Whump-whump. Whump. Whump-whump.

"You—! If you're going to make us worry like this, then don't bother coming home at all! You idiot!"

She was bawling even as she said it, and the weapon of choice was a cushion, because she was afraid of actually hurting me—and yet the words out of her mouth were telling me to leave. She was my sister, but she was a walking contradiction.

When I'd run off earlier I had given her temper a solid jab, and then I hadn't come home until late at night. All I'd managed, it seemed, was to worry her worse.

Whump, whump.

"Hang on, I'm sorry, Sis! Calm down and listen to me! There was a reason I couldn't get back until this late, ngh—!"

She let out a wretched, drawn-out wail.

The one who wanted to cry was me, who'd just taken the cushion's zipper across the mouth.

Whether she'd worn herself out hitting me or not, my sister dropped the cushion and sank to the living-room floor, sniffling. She was dressed exactly as she'd been when I left, tank top and hot pants, and sitting there like that she looked as if she'd collapsed in the middle of a market. Honestly. Not living up to that face at all. A grown woman, and even in front of family she didn't know the meaning of shame.

I pulled a few tissues and wiped the tears running down her face. She held still while I did it. The moment I finished, both hands snaked out and seized my belt.

I flinched, then let her hold on. Dodging her would only come back to haunt me, and a physical blow was nothing—circulate Phase Power, raise my defense, done. I'd braced for her to pinch me with everything she had. Instead she threw both arms around me and pulled me in.

"What I said before, about going out and not coming back... that was a lie, so... you really won't leave, right?"

Huh? Oh. She was afraid I'd actually walk out, the way she'd told me to in the heat of beating on me. I did have a short runaway on my record.

Sis really was an idiot. Franc sat beside Mom, watching her with a smile.

"I'm not leaving. I'm not, so quit crying. Anyway, I'll tell you why I was late, so let's go sit on the sofa."

I took my sister simply by the waist and stood her up, and her eyes went round with surprise. Because I'd gotten stronger? Mom and Sis alike kept forgetting I was an ability user.

Truth was, until not long ago even I couldn't have managed it without circulating Phase Power. But I'd changed a great deal in that second awakening earlier.

My looks hadn't changed one bit, though.

Damn it.

I sat my parents and my sister down, and standing before them I began, slowly, to unfold what had happened on Iljasan.

Phase Power that had gathered entirely in my heart, then burst outward to every corner of my body, filled my head without a single gap. With it came a sensation so clear and sharp that my chest pounded.

It was like watching a monitor set to a clarity of twenty or thirty, then cranking it all the way to a hundred—and I felt that across a one-kilometer radius centered on me. A feeling that space was me, and I was space. Not that I could manipulate the things inside that space.

It was too vague a feeling to explain, so I closed my eyes and savored it. And then I realized that Detection, Analysis, Clairvoyance, and Telescopic Vision—the abilities I had named Search—had fused into one, and were the thing granting me this sense.

When I was little, I'd once dreamed of seeing the full three hundred and sixty degrees around me from a third-person view. What I felt now was very much like that dream. Remarkably strange.

Focus a little harder on the sensation, and everything between the ground below and the sky above drew close enough to grasp: people, animals, plants, the inorganic and the organic alike. The expressions of people passing along the walking trail, their gestures, the shape of the clothes they wore, the vitality in them, even the sound parts and the failing parts inside their bodies. All of it.

Turn my awareness onto my own body, and I grasped at a stroke the flesh that had grown healthy when I awakened as an ability user, and the form of my Phase Power, no longer what it had been.

Until a little while ago that Phase Power had flowed steadily outward from the heart in five strands, like Möbius strips. Now it simply filled my whole body, calm as a lake with no waves on it.

What startled me most was that I could sense Franc's spirit body as well.

I took a moment to look at her—standing watch over me while I stood with my eyes closed, her face tight with anxiety—and then I opened my eyes. The detection range didn't shrink. The same information flowed into my head, no different from when my eyes had been shut.

I see. So this was it.

After I'd gained Search, I'd thought about it in the cave in the cliff. A hunch that once I grew skilled enough for there to be no difference between eyes open and eyes closed, something would change.

Was this that change? No. This wasn't a change so much as an awakening. A second awakening. And the trigger was Mana Sieve.

After I'd come back to reality, I had trained like mad whenever I had the time. I was someone who couldn't stick to a single thing for sticky hours on end, and yet I'd forgotten the hours entirely—spreading Search, increasing and decreasing what I detected, widening the range and narrowing it, running phase-power control alongside it all—absorbed enough to lose track of time. Thinking that those results had resonated with the name Franc gave it, and that the synergy of the two had brought about what was happening now, achievement surged up through me as excitement.

"Franc. I think I've awakened again!"

I shouted it with that excitement in my voice, and Franc, whose large, lovely eyes had been full to the brim with worry, opened them wider still.

"What? You have awakened yet again?"

The worry staining her expression eased a little at my words, but it didn't vanish entirely. Wanting to lift what remained, I reached for her cheek without thinking, and my hand passed straight through it.

Wait. Just now, there was something in my hand.

It felt like the sensation of putting a hand into water and stirring, diluted twenty times over. Thirty. For the moment my hand was inside Franc's head, so I yanked it back out and went on.

"Yeah! I'm telling you, it doesn't hurt or anything. I told you, didn't I? That Energy Eater didn't suck up my Phase Power—I let a little leak out on purpose, bit by bit. The Certifier said nothing was wrong at all, too. So don't worry. Okay?"

"Yes. If anything, it was I who gave you cause to worry."

Perhaps from embarrassment, the outer corners of her eyes—fine as something drawn with a detail brush—drooped just a little, and I found a dew so faint I might have imagined it, gathered at their edges.

She'd worried more than I'd thought. Turning that new sensation over, I reached out once more and lightly swept away the tiny dew at the corner of Franc's eye.

"Ah?"

"Huh?"

Oh. I-it worked?! The tears Franc's spirit body had shed—only slightly, but they'd been wiped away!

Franc seemed to have felt my finger as well. She covered the cheek I'd just brushed and stared at me with startled eyes. Tears were still slipping down, little by little, but the sorrow and the pain on her face were being covered over by surprise, and diluted by it.

"H-how?"

"I told you, didn't I? I awakened, and I think my ability evolved."

I checked that no one nearby was listening in, confirmed the Certifier was off, and then said it.

"When I touched you just now, it was different from before. I felt something like putting my hand into water. So I focused, and..."

I gave a small smile to Franc, who was staring at me in shock, and opened my mouth.

"Looks like I can touch you like this now?"

I gathered my nerve, reached out again, and gently cupped her still-damp cheek in my palm. It felt like holding a drop of water in my hand. Franc, as if she couldn't believe it, groped at the hand wrapping her cheek, then cradled it, her gaze bright with feeling.

"It feels just like touching the surface of water. How is it for you, Franc?"

"...I can feel Seoha's warmth. From this soft palm, the warmth of your body, cupping my cheek..."

Franc laid her hand over the back of mine, as if to overlap them, looking as though she might spill tears at any moment.

"This sensation is truly... truly, it has been so long..."

For Franc, who since being swallowed into the Phase World had not so much as shared body heat with another person—who had, against her will, been the cause of people dying—body heat could hardly be a sensation you summed up in a simple phrase.

I didn't know what her spirit body was made of, but touching her like this didn't seem to do her any harm, so from now on I'd have to make a habit of contact like this. I wanted to give everything to Franc, who meant to devote herself to me, but this was probably all I could give her for now.

Th-though, doing this out in the wide open suddenly made me incredibly embarrassed. When I quietly slipped my hand from her cheek, Franc drew her brows into a sad, drooping curve, plainly disappointed.

"Ahem! A-anyway, Detection, Analysis, Clairvoyance, and Telescopic Vision, which all used to run separately, fused together completely, and the detection range grew to a one-kilometer radius. My Phase Power type changed completely, too."

I scratched my head, awkward, and explained my Phase Power before the change and after it, and Franc's pretty eyes went perfectly round, as if she were astonished.

"One kilometer, you say? It has grown tenfold, from a hundred and five meters?"

"Yeah. It rose to more than 2.2 times the range of Telescopic Vision."

"Heavens!"

Startled, Franc didn't know what to do with herself, her face full of wonder. I watched her with satisfaction and turned the changed Search ability over in my mind once more.

Before, I could use only one kind at a time—Search, or rather Detection, Analysis, Clairvoyance, Telescopic Vision. And I had to think about using an ability before it would activate. Now it felt as if thought and action had become one, the way you move an arm or a leg, the way you close your eyes and open them.

"It feels like I've gained an ability that perceives space itself. ...Right. I shouldn't call it Search anymore. I should call it Spatial Perception."

The ability known as spatial perception had existed even before supernatural powers did. A perceptive faculty that grasps spatial relationships—up and down, left and right, front and back—through the senses. Of the five senses it uses sight, hearing, and touch, and of those, space perceived through sight is said to be the clearest. I'd read that if this spatial perception is lacking, problems arise in reading, writing, and every sort of field that uses numbers.

Unpack the actual meaning and it was nothing like my ability. But take the two words at face value, and nothing fit half so well.

I was testing the former Search ability, now named Spatial Perception, when I got an ambiguous feeling about whether Premonition had changed, or hadn't.

If this were a game, there'd be an ability tooltip and I'd know the difference at once. Reality being what it was, I had to hunt down the changes myself, which was a hassle.

Premonition ought to be a matter of the senses, so once I'd calmed the excited Franc, I asked her, as a test, to throw a bolt of lightning at me.

Of course she didn't want to attack me. I stressed that it was a test of the ability and asked again, and at last, her face thick with worry, she carefully charged a current and sent a bolt thinner than a thread.

Crack!

"Ghk—!"

"Aaah! Seoha!"

Of course I failed to dodge, and got lightly roasted. Spatial Perception had registered the lightning coming. Registering it and dodging it, though, were as far apart as heaven and earth.

Mm. Tingles.

That is, I only understood after I'd been hit. If a hostile act was directed at me, whatever kind it was, I caught it at once. The reason I'd felt Premonition might have changed was that sensing an enemy's attack seemed to be the part under Premonition's influence.

Call it a cutting-edge, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree radar system that reacts to hostility. Being able to read malice before it lands—that was a cheat, wasn't it?

I wanted to run a few more experiments, but Franc, who had fired the lightning and hit me only because I'd insisted, burst into heartbroken wailing, and any further testing was out of the question.

I explained that I hadn't meant to stupidly take it on my bare body, that I'd been protecting myself from the bolt with Mana Sieve. It didn't get through to Franc, crying as if her heart would break.

I had a feeling the reason for a reaction like this wasn't that she loved me too much, but something else. I couldn't tell what.

The day was gradually darkening, so I came down off the mountain and out into the streets, and tried activating Spatial Perception. A vast amount of information did pour into my head... and, astonishingly, expanding the range and reshaping it happened exactly as I willed.

Mm. Did it stretch to 1.5 kilometers at the outside? In exchange, the wider I pushed the range, the fainter the sensation I could feel, and the narrower I drew it, the more Spatial Perception condensed, and the more sensitive it became.

Like Telescopic Vision, I could shift the range to a ninety-degree angle forward. I could make it a cylinder instead of a sphere.

But I didn't particularly feel the need to shorten the distance or lengthen it. Widen the range and the sense thinned until it was as dull as looking at a body through thick clothing; narrow it and the sense grew sharp, but the information coming in wasn't actually any different.

Mm. And the information was a complete jumble. Like this, picking out exactly the piece I wanted would be difficult.

I scratched my head, looked at Franc walking beside me, and the instant I did, the keyword naked woman surfaced in my mind, and—wait. This was Franc's fault. Franc, because Franc was out here with nothing on.

Anyway. The moment the keyword naked woman was entered into my head, the naked body of every woman inside the range unfurled through my mind in a rush.

This was the ultimate pervert ability in history, wasn't it?! And it was the best?!

But once I'd seen the heavenly realm that was Franc's naked body, and Hwayeon's, looking at other women's bodies was painful. If I were scoring them, Franc was a hundred out of a hundred, and Hwayeon somewhere around ninety-five. Most of the women pouring into my head right now hovered between twenty and thirty.

An ordeal, literally.

I quietly revised the keywords to pretty, woman, nude, and the tens of thousands of naked bodies vanished until only seven remained. Huh? But these faces... I'd seen them a lot on TV... Wait! Singers and celebrities?!

And what was the point of going this far to look? I couldn't even jerk off.

I did look a little longer, for the novelty of famous bodies, but I'd already gotten used to Franc's and Hwayeon's, and it didn't do much for me.

I worried, faintly, that if this went on something strange would happen to my manhood, but thinking about it seriously seemed like it would become a headache, so I shoved the thought into a corner of my mind.

Anyway, maybe because I wasn't used to it yet, even trivial keywords got a reaction, and information came whooshing in until sorting it was terribly noisy in the head. But once I got used to it, it would literally be a cheat.

Ah—an ability this incredible, and it was thanks to the name Franc had given it. Franc really was a treasure.

To get familiar with the new ability quickly, I spread Spatial Perception in earnest and multitasked.

Men. Women. Cats. Dogs. Birds. Cars. Children. The elderly. Middle-aged women. Middle-aged men. Pigeons. Sparrows. Magpies. Crows... No aberrants.

Grass, flowers, trees, water plants, dandelions, forsythia, lilacs, magnolias, cherry blossoms, daffodils, acacia, ginkgo, pines, hawthorns, persimmons, citrus trees, oaks...

In the middle of using Spatial Perception with great enthusiasm, it occurred to me to wonder how much Phase Power the ability consumed, and I gauged what I had left.

What. It had barely gone down?

Oh, right. My Phase Power had doubled, too. From 1,857 to 3,714, so... had I gone from F-Class to E-Class?! But why had my Phase Power jumped all of a sudden?

I tilted my head, and then, quietly, worry raised its own.

Wasn't I growing too fast? Even old Dr. Woo had been shocked to see I was F-Class, and I was already E-Class.

Well. Hwayeon would look after me. If it came to it, I could just plant myself at Time River and stay. She was a B-Class, one of only a handful in Korea, and a raid-team boss people counted among the very best, no less.

I looked inside my own body with Spatial Perception and tried moving my Phase Power through Mana Sieve. It moved as naturally as flexing a finger. When I let it rest, it lay still as water held in a bowl.

Before, I could only sense, through Detection, that the Phase Power inside me existed, and check the number. Now, perhaps thanks to Spatial Perception, I could see that Phase Power as a watery light, spread through every corner of my body, lying calm.

Come to think of it, the two-tailed fox I'd fought at the end, on the island—when it was hiding behind the pile of corpses, a watery outline had been visible to the naked eye. Had that watery light been Phase Power?

I opened and closed my fist, watching the muscle move.

Mm. Seemed like my physical ability had risen, too.

As a test I took a coin from my pocket and put strength into it, and it bent with a grinding creak. I was a psychic-type, wasn't I? Why were my physical abilities going up?

At any rate, if my base physical ability was already at this level, then raising it further by running Mana Sieve would push my body higher still. The barbell I'd been lifting last weekend—I could hoist that easily with one hand now.

I remembered the Energy Eater raking at Hwayeon's arm, so I set the coin, folded in half, against my forearm and scratched with a little force.

Ordinarily the skin would have split and gouged and bled. It only stung a bit, and ended in a pink line. If I was at this level, how strong must B-Class Hwayeon be?

I checked the time and found it was nearly nine. Caught up in confirming my abilities, I hadn't noticed so much time go by.

Back when I had Search, time had ticked itself out in front of me whether I wanted to know it or not. Now it didn't so much as react until I thought about it. That was a little inconvenient.

I raised my head, and an apartment complex came into view, lights burning bright on every floor.

"And that's how my Search ability evolved, when I awakened."

I laid out what had happened on Iljasan for my family, briefly, from first cause to last result.

I told them that phase-power control, through the name Franc had given it, had become Mana Sieve in the course of my second awakening, and that Search itself had evolved into Spatial Perception, its range changing out to a full kilometer.

I'd originally meant to hide every one of my abilities, even from my family. But after a few days of living with them following my return alive, and watching how my parents and my sister reacted, I'd judged that revealing my abilities and getting advice from Dad and Sis was better than hiding them no matter what.

"Uuuugh. If it was that dangerous, you should have run...!"

Meeting a Low-Rank Variant seemed to worry my sister more than the fact that I'd awakened a second time. The moment the words were out, she bit into the cushion she'd been hitting me with and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠made a face on the verge of tears.

"So I keep telling you, it wasn't that dangerous."

I'd jumped out of my skin and flailed the first time I met it, granted.

Mom was wearing a worried look as well, and it seemed I'd better say it plainly to the two of them now. Otherwise they'd go on seeing me forever as a little kid, a young son.

"Mom, Sis, I know you keep forgetting, but I'm an ability user. Promising enough that Hwayeon—a B-Class who ranks among the very top of the raid teams in this country—actively wants to recruit me. I'm not going to take power like this and live an ordinary life wrapped up in your skirts."

Maybe the sudden declaration caught them off guard. Sis and Mom looked surprised, and hurt. Dad... he gave a small nod, and I got the sense he was backing what I'd said.

"Once I'm running raids with Hwayeon, exploring the Phase World and subjugating it, there'll be plenty of situations far more dangerous than now. I might die."

Franc quietly watched my eyes, focused on every word, but the moment I brought up the possibility of dying, Mom and Sis went ashen and fidgeted as if they were sitting on a cushion of needles.

Mom's eyes brimmed, tears clinging there, and Sis's emotions ran so high her face flushed. This... this was unmistakably the Mom-and-Sis tag-team tantrum pattern.

I looked at Dad, who had been listening quietly with a troubled face, and as if his moment had come, he spoke up in my support.

"The boy's right. So long as he's a man, there'll come a time he has to find his own way, and I believe that time is now. Live with him clutched in your arms forever, and you'll only end up ruining his future."

"Even sooo... our son is still young. He isn't even an adult yet!"

In the end, at the tears sliding down Mom's cheeks, Dad pulled a tissue, wiped them away, and went on.

"Eighteen is old enough to marry, isn't it. If this had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠been two months ago, I would have ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠agreed with you and opposed it myself. But he's been through a forced summoning, and it's matured him. He can look after his own affairs well enough. And with clever Hwayeon at his side, there's no need ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to fear he'll wander off onto some crooked path."

At the mention of Hwayeon, Mom gave a small nod, as if she had no choice. Dad soothed her, drew her into his arms, and spoke to me with a calm face.

"Yeah."

In the calm eyes resting on me, I felt that he believed in me and was rooting for me, and I answered with my jaw set.

"Still such a tiny thing, and already thinking about moving out."

As if her heart ached, Sis kept wiping her reddened eyes with a handkerchief while she scolded me. She could talk like that all she wanted; it was plain as day she was worried about me, and the spot under my nose itched for no good reason.

"I'm not moving out yet. Even if I do, it'll be after I graduate high school."

"...You didn't say you won't."

Sis yanked out a tissue, blew her nose with a honk, and grumbled.

"Honestly. Before you went into the Phase World you were such a good little brother who did as he was told, and ever since you came back you just get more shameless and slick."

No, that wasn't it. Before, I'd crept around reading her every mood because I was afraid she'd hit me. Say that out loud and she'd light up with rage and kick me across the room, so I kept my mouth shut.

"Son, you haven't had dinner, have you? Shall Mom fix you something?"

"I'll help."

Mom seemed to have settled, too. She wiped her tears and went into the kitchen with Sis. The look she'd shown in between was something like pride—a wistful expression, moved by the fact that I had grown up.

Dad spoke in my direction, as if he meant to be heard.

"This ability you've newly gained... you called it Mana Sieve. An ability evolved from phase-power control."

"Yeah. Useful enough that I got through dangerous moments a few times because of it."

"I see... I've read through quite a number of medical papers, and come across a great many ability users' techniques and powers, but this Mana Sieve you've gained seems to be an ability that has left the ordinary path entirely."

"Right? After hearing about phase-power operation techniques from Hwayeon, I felt it myself. It isn't ordinary."

"Which is why it would be best not to let anyone know of that ability. At least until you can protect yourself. Siha as well, and you, dear—what you heard today ought to be buried in your hearts."

Sis had been listening from the kitchen. Her eyes went round, and she asked Dad.

"Dad. Is Mana Sieve really that incredible an ability?"

"You study business, so you'll know. It's what they call a difference of scale. Comparing a sole proprietor to the owner of a major corporation would be about right."

Did that analogy even hold? I was still dubious, and yet Franc nodded, and so did Sis, and even Mom. Was I the only one who hadn't understood?!

"Other people do no more than slightly strengthen their own ability type. I believe the reason is that they cannot freely designate the form in which their Phase Power flows. But... that boy is not like them."

"Oh! Then the Mana Sieve he got means he can copy other types of abilities, too?"

"Yes. What's more, from the fact that his Search ability evolved into Spatial Perception the instant he obtained Mana Sieve, we can see that the two abilities are organically bound together."

Huh. Was that it? Mm. Listening to him, it did seem so.

The first thing I'd understood after gaining phase-power control was that the faster I spun my Phase Power, the higher my physical ability climbed. And the Phase Power patterns I'd later confirmed in Mr. Kang Woohyuk, in Choi Soohan, and in Hwayeon had all been something like a whirlwind.

Which meant that depending on how I moved my Phase Power, I could become a Physical Reinforcement user, or an Elemental user, or a Healing user.

Dad watched me for a moment, then quietly brought the talk to a close.

"Whatever it may be, an ability develops through nothing but steady practice. Don't grow complacent just because you've gained a good one. Study Spatial Perception and Mana Sieve, practice them again and again, and keep tempering yourself."

"I will."

I'd already meant to keep training without being satisfied at this level, but with Dad's encouragement laid over it, what reached my chest felt different. And then there was Sis's advice.

"I'll get in touch with Hwayeon soon and ask her to let you observe the raid team. When you go, try analyzing the other ability users' Phase Power patterns with Spatial Perception. It ought to help your training a great deal."

"Yeah. Thanks."

There was something realistic in my sister's advice.

I'd thought I could just loiter near the headquarters of some famous raid team in Yeouido and sneak a look, but a moment's thought told me that would be a problem after all. If there was a demon of intuition like my sister around, they might catch on to what I was after and even probe my ability in return. Even if not, there was a chance I'd get marked as some arrogant brat snooping around, comparing the scale of raid teams and the like.

I didn't feel it myself, but either way, I seemed to be drawing a fair amount of attention these days.

No need to deliberately turn the road ahead of me into a mud pit and go buy myself extra suffering, was there?

I looked at my sister, cooking alongside Mom, with eyes that saw her anew. As expected, she thought more deeply than I did, and saw further.

She was my big sister for a reason.