Energy Eater II (2)

A few options lay in front of me.

The first: tell them the thing had been after the Soul Stone. Researchers are a breed who would die for the chance to study anything novel that touched their work, and I was supposed to reveal the Soul Stone's existence to some unknown from the External Operations Team on top of that? It was Franc's Soul Stone. I would sooner die than hand it over. Out of the question.

The second: lie. Mildly tempting, but I am terrible at lying, so that was out too. My sister is a fiend at reading people. After a few clumsy childhood lies earned me a scolding so thorough I bawled, I became constitutionally incapable of an outright falsehood—though burying a lie inside the truth was another matter.

The last option: tell them about Mana Sieve. I had found the thing and was running Search when it was drawn to an ability I had kept hidden and charged straight at me. Then I had drawn out my Phase Power and fed it to the creature. Say only that much, and someone sharp enough to head a research institute might let their imagination run wild and decide the thing had acquired a taste for my Phase Power and would eat no other kind. But if they heard I could freely control the Phase Power inside my body, a clever man—this Chae Hoon, staring a hole through my face—might piece together most of what I could do. He might see straight through me in a single glance.

I kept my mouth shut and stared at the teacup, and the three of them slowly changed expression. Director Lee Hyeryeong looked worried for me. Director Kim Moohul wore a face that all but said he knew it—there was something. Team Leader Chae Hoon showed nothing at all. A poker face.

Franc was watching me with concern. She seemed to have caught what I was wrestling with; her brows curved in worry.

My heart wanted to dig in and insist I could not say. Reason, though, judged it better to tell them about Mana Sieve in a suitably trimmed form. It was the move of a third-rate crook who spills the truth because his own conscience will not sit still, but Chae Hoon did not look like the bumbling, guileless, money-grubbing incompetent boss. He looked like a sharp, capable interrogator.

I had a strong feeling that any ordinary lie would only corner me worse. I was not my sister, but I had my own way of reading people.

The trouble with half-hiding the ability was that I had nothing suitable to offer them. Phase Power control—Mana Sieve, as I called it now—was not a branched ability like Search, split into several functions. It had a single trait: I moved Phase Power as I pleased. There was no room to conceal it or scale it down. Speak, and the whole of it would come out at once.

I felt as if I were being forced to choose.

Fine. I would ask Franc.

People were staring straight at me, so I could not just speak to Franc, who had learned to read lips. I pretended to clutch my head, bent forward, and angled my face down where the three of them could not see it. Head slightly bowed as if in thought, I tapped my skull with a finger where only she could see. Catching the signal, Franc thrust her face in close.

I put on the look of someone who had finished deliberating and lifted my head.

"Before I tell you anything, I'd like a private call with Hwayeon first."

Not only Director Lee Hyeryeong—Director Kim Moohul's and Team Leader Chae Hoon's eyes lit as well. Chae Hoon spoke first.

"Could you tell us what this concerns?"

For a moment I considered what excuse would get the three of them out the door without suspicion.

"......Team Leader. How much do you know about the Korean branch director?"

At the sudden question Chae Hoon looked briefly puzzled, then nodded.

"As a team leader, I know a little more than the others."

"About their ability as well?"

"Yes."

"If I said I wanted to know every last detail of that person's ability, would you tell me?"

"......"

The light in Chae Hoon's eyes went past shining and settled into calm, and Director Kim Moohul and Director Lee Hyeryeong grew cautious as well. Say that much and fail to catch on, and you would have to be an idiot. I had just let them know, indirectly, that I had another ability.

Could not be helped. It was all my head could come up with. If Hwayeon really had used me......

"Understood. I'll wait outside. Please tell us when you're finished."

Chae Hoon said that, rose quietly, and left the principal's office. Director Kim Moohul wore a look of not knowing what to say, then simply bowed and went out.

But Director Lee Hyeryeong did not leave. She just sat there.

"General Affairs Director Lee, aren't you going?"

Even at a tone that might have sounded like picking a fight, she answered with a bright smile.

"The boss said she was worried about you, and told me to stay by your side and help. But you're composed enough, and thoughtful enough, that you hardly seem to need my help."

"......"

"Remarkable aptitude. An absurdly powerful Search ability. The resourcefulness to return alive from the Phase World at your age without a serious wound, and a steady heart that doesn't lose its calm even in a situation like this."

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. A chest swelled with it—ngh. Spatial Perception was seeing straight through clothes again, all on its own.

"It sets my heart pounding with excitement, just as it did when I first met the boss."

I was on the verge of finding that sparkling look frankly ridiculous when the word she had led with—aptitude—caught on a nerve.

"Aptitude? You mean the aptitude they checked in the appraisal room? How do you know about that?"

"......Who was the director in charge?"

"Director Oh Soeun."

"Good grief. So absorbed in the appraisal she skimped on the explanation again...... Ahem. To put it simply, what the appraisal room and the measurement room measure is documented and recorded as a matter of course. Not as exact figures, of course. Only three things stay on the record: aptitude grade, class classification, and ability type."

"Huh? I never heard that."

"Dr. Woo Mingu's team is staffed with rather eccentric people. They're indifferent to anything outside their own interests."

She let out a deep sigh.

"Please don't misunderstand. The Ability User Association's basic policy is full disclosure, full protection. With the proper authority, aptitude and ability type can be viewed. I know because I handle personnel, and because Time River holds scouting rights over ability users."

So Director Oh Soeun was supposed to have told me that.

"That...... seems like it goes against privacy."

"If we didn't disclose it, people are easily swept into disputes, and into the scramble among organizations to secure ability users. Long research has shown that if you clumsily protect an ability user's information, then when someone special like you appears, it stirs rivalry between nations and organizations and puts that ability user in danger."

"Wouldn't it be more dangerous for the ability to be known?"

"The opposite. The disclosure policy cuts off the motive to break the law just to dig the information out. Recruitment competition after disclosure is something the Association protects with everything it has, and if contact causes harm, we coordinate with the relevant state agencies and answer with lawful political and physical retaliation. That's how we prevent it."

True enough. That information warfare was the greater danger had been known for a long time.

"The reason greedy adults follow the policy is that they've learned, to the bone, that keeping it may bring them no profit of their own, but it also keeps everyone else from taking any gain. The large-scale ability-user kidnapping in Japan eighty years ago. You know of it, don't you? That affair is what made this policy shine all the brighter."

"I see."

So that was how she knew my aptitude.

"But why are the three of you being so formal with me?"

"Hehe. You're someone who will be an A-Class ability user someday. You're the highest-value rookie at this moment—enough that the President and the Korean ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠branch director are watching you with interest. To put it bluntly, you may end up the one holding the cards, and there's no reason to sour a first impression by speaking down to you at the outset. Mutual respect is essential to a good relationship."

Whoa. Blunt as it gets. I did not know what my face was doing, but Director Lee Hyeryeong smiled as if she found it amusing and went on.

"Which is a good thing. It means you trust our boss enough to consult her on something important."

"I don't. I'm about to demand whether she hid things from me, acted on her own, and put me in a bind."

Somehow nettled, I talked back, and a bead of sweat slid as she smiled.

"Ho, hohoho. I'll take my leave as well. The boss looks cold and composed on the outside, but she's a hopeless ditz underneath, so please go easy on her?"

Queen of the ditzes. Yesterday had certainly been a bit like that.

I watched Director Lee Hyeryeong go out and close the door, then checked the three of them with Spatial Perception. They had gathered a little way from the door and were talking.

"Ah, my head hurts."

My thoughts were a knot. The External Operations team leader, the director of the Defense Research Institute—I could not say for certain, but they surely had abilities to match their posts. That two people of that caliber had come looking for me on purpose, and that I had to speak in front of them while hiding what I felt, left me stifled, as if something sat undigested in my chest.

I had only meant to conceal things to a reasonable degree. Was this what it felt like when a matter too big for me to handle was about to blow up right beside me?

I swept my bangs back and grumbled without strength.

"Should've just caught the Energy Eater and killed it, like Franc said. What a headache."

Franc flew in front of me with a pained look and gently stroked my cheek. Hm? She looked gray. When had the Phase Power drained out of my eyes?

I turned Mana Sieve and gathered Phase Power in my eyes. Color washed back over the ashen Franc, and that dizzying figure revealed itself again. She drew close and softly caressed my face, then kissed my forehead.

Fuck, that felt good.

Taking heart from Franc's kiss, I requested a call to Hwayeon's mail address. On the earlier call she had said she was in talks with a government official. Maybe that was finished.

A few seconds of ringing, and a hologram window opened. Hwayeon's face appeared in it, wearing the same cool expression as always.

"Noona, you idiot."

For a moment she did not seem to know what reaction to show, then her brows shot up. Don't you start.

"What happened, that the institute director and an Association team leader showed up digging into what went on that day?"

Her brows sank a little, as if troubled.

"Did your mother force the Energy Eater off you?"

The brows dropped further.

"Your mother went through a government ministry, took the Energy Eater from you, and turned it over to the Defense Research Institute. Word that the captured Energy Eater had developed an anomaly reached the Association, and that's why the team leader of External Operations came looking. Am I right?"

"So that's why Team Leader Chae Hoon said you dislike them. Did you skip the report to the Association and just hand the Energy Eater over to the Defense Research Institute on your own?"

Somewhere along the way, Hwayeon's face had become the one she wore when my sister scolded her. The brows that had been thoroughly drooping shot up, and she went past troubled into outright fluster.

I had tossed the questions out while watching her, and nearly all of them seemed to have landed. Had I hit the mark?

"Why'd you do it?"

I gave her no opening, and at the question thrown like an ambush her mouth snapped shut.

"Do you hate the Ability User Association? Is it because of Choi Soohan?"

The dead-serious reaction said this was not it. Some other reason, then. I cut her off again as she floundered for words. I was not finished.

"Anyway, the two of them are all but interrogating me, and I don't want to lie. Bluffing my way through isn't looking feasible either."

She winced and put on a genuinely troubled face.

"The Energy Eater I caught changed type, so it shows no interest in ordinary Phase Stones. You knew that too, didn't you?"

And she had not told me. If she had said so on the earlier call, things might have shifted a little.

She lowered her gaze with a drained look and avoided my eyes. Aigoo. The outside had changed enormously, but that part was almost exactly as it had been when she was little. Seeing it, I could not even stay angry.

"You've gotten ridiculously pretty on the outside......"

I sent her a look that meant the inside left something to be desired, and her brows climbed again—then settled back where they had been. For a second I thought she was about to get angry, and my heart jumped.

But...... what was this? Looking at that expression, something in my memory went faint, as if fog had settled over my mind.

"Huh? No. All of a sudden it feels like a memory I'd forgotten is about to come back. Or not."

She flinched. I could not see it through Spatial Perception, but she definitely flinched.

"Why'd you jump?"

Seeing her so flustered she had bitten her own tongue, my head clogged up again—something on the verge of surfacing that refused to surface. Infuriating.

It had been like this every time I talked with her since the day before yesterday. Was it something to do with Hwayeon?

I frowned and rubbed near my temple, and she kept stealing glances, fidgeting, then launched into an excuse that sounded like a defense of herself.

"Yeah?"

Her eyes were serious. Not the eyes of a lie.

Thinking back on Team Leader Chae Hoon, he had only asked why the Energy Eater's nature had changed—not why she had handed it over so carelessly. Director Lee Hyeryeong's rebuttal had been so neatly aimed that......

I had misunderstood, and thought Hwayeon might be trying to use me.

She had landed a team-kill, but this was my mistake. I scratched my head and bowed to her.

"Sorry, noona. I think I had it wrong."

"......Yeah."

Somehow the mood turned awkward. Come to think of it, why was Hwayeon taking such a low posture with me? Someone in her position could have just barked and pressed me.

Was it because I had outstanding aptitude, or because I was Siha's little brother?

She scratched her cheek lightly with a fingertip, then opened her mouth as if to clear the awkward air.

"If you can call it a problem......"

I hesitated over whether to ask, then spoke, trusting she was my sister's closest friend.

"Last thing. Just this. What you said at our house last week—how much of it was sincere?"

What mattered was how Hwayeon thought of me: whether she saw me as nothing but a goose meant to lay golden eggs, or whether she truly meant to protect me. If she saw the goose......

I waited for her answer and watched her face carefully. From the Hwayeon I had seen so far, her feelings would show honestly. I could not miss it.

"That?"

It was not the face of a lie. I felt relieved. She had deceived me, but it was so small it was almost funny to call it deception.

Only natural for the head of a group to hunger for talent.

At her honest answer, a grand sigh poured out of me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠before I knew it.

Hwayeon fidgeted like someone guilty and would not meet my eyes. A small doubt stirred. How to put it...... naive enough that I wondered if she was really all right as a raid-team boss, or pure.

Even so, she led a raid team. Inside that wilted, girlish look there had to be the ability to do it, and the charisma to lead people.

Curiosity rose over whether she was really leading the team properly, and at the same time I thought my sister—who scattered goodwill freely but chose her friends with exacting care—had found someone worth calling a closest friend.

I was feeling something strange about having this kind of conversation with a person like that when Franc, who had been watching Hwayeon closely, nodded and smiled.

I hastily covered my mouth so only Franc could see, and asked.

Hard to believe. Hwayeon, liking me......? I was sliding past strange into restless, and I forced it down and yanked my attention back. This was not the time to think about that.

"......If you'd been hiding something from me to look after your own interests, I really would have been disappointed."

"Yeah. I'll trust you."

I soothed Hwayeon—badly flustered, as if she had not known I was thinking this—and thought.

Then how much should I tell her? How far could I trust her? I worried until my brain threatened to overload in a short span, and still reached no conclusion.

Should I ask my sister for advice......?

I calmed Hwayeon, who was pouring out excuses in genuine panic, and sent Siha a short text on how things stood. With it, a question: how much of my ability would it be good to tell Hwayeon?

The reply came before ten seconds had passed.

Hmm...... I had never seen my sister praise anyone this highly.

Her message ended there. A close partner...... I looked at Franc, and she was nodding as if she agreed with my sister.

All right. I would trust her. Not Hwayeon—my sister, who trusted Hwayeon.

"First, here's how things stand......"

I slowly explained to the calmed Hwayeon what had come out among the three of them. She thought for a moment, then boiled the point down and asked again, as if to confirm.

"Yeah."

Before I answered, I swept the surroundings again with Spatial Perception, checking that no one was listening in or peeking.

"Before that—keep in mind that if this ability comes to light, more people will try anything to make contact with me."

"Dad and noona went so far as to advise me not to tell anyone else until I have the strength to protect myself."

Hwayeon murmured, serious and cool. But somehow she looked pleased.

"I was a little disappointed in you just now. Even so, I think I can trust you, so I want to talk it over. Will you hear me out?"

I saw her flinch at the part about my disappointment, but I did the manly thing and pretended not to notice.

Perhaps from embarrassment, her tone jumped, and her face flushed like a peach. A beauty nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand passersby would turn to stare at, looking like that—genuinely hazardous to the eyes.

"Phase Power control. An ability I named Mana Sieve."

"Dad called the two a sole proprietor and the owner of a major corporation. I'm the owner, of course."

For an instant her face went grave. Do not tell me this was a metaphor everyone understood but me.

Ah. So she had not fully understood either. Still, she seemed to understand more than I did. Becoming an ability user had not changed the fact that I was an idiot. Argh.

"You'll keep it secret?"

Tucked into a chest that generous, even a high-capacity secret ought to fit.

"I can move Phase Power directly. With Search I can see the other person's Phase Power pattern, and if I mimic it, I can show a similar ability."

For an instant she went blank. The shock must have been considerable; she stared at me a long while, mouth slightly open, eyes unfocused.

"You all right?"

"I think I could, if I saw them. I became sure of it watching Choi Soohan and you."

She lost her words again, stared at me, then forced her mouth open.

"I awakened it after you took the Energy Eater, when I gave it a name."

"No. I only said I had something to discuss with you. Even so, I think they caught on that it had to do with an ability. Team Leader Chae Hoon wants to know the moment I captured the Energy Eater yesterday. That's why I called. I thought I should talk with you about what to do."

I kept the Soul Stone from her while she was lost in thought, laid out the other two ways I might respond, and asked what she thought. She frowned.

And then, as if she had already decided the moment she heard me, she told me at once how to respond, and we agreed to move in step.