Time River (4)
I rose to follow the Madam, and she slipped her arm through mine with the eyes of a hunter who had done this a thousand times.
Whoa. Her chest was pressed to my arm. Soft enough to feel even through that thick coat—was that actually a breast?
"M-Mother!"
"Oh, for..."
I could feel the two of them floundering behind us at the sight of the Madam on my arm. Half-dragged by her strength, I stepped out of the office, and the secretaries and bodyguards—looking ready to faint clean past mere shock—all drove their stares straight into me.
Surprised? So was I. I'd never once imagined I'd be walking arm in arm with the most famous person in Korea.
...Look, I wasn't the one holding on. She was holding me. Please stop glaring.
"Yuran. I'm going to dinner with the children now, so contact the Redcon Hotel and have them prepare."
"Yes, ma'am."
The one with the most Phase Power of the five buried a look that said she might stab me dead, and murmured an order into the earpiece hooked over her ear.
I wasn't interested enough to eavesdrop—too busy with the feel of the Madam's chest—but a glance was enough. She was calling the Madam's security detail.
"Hwayeon. Didn't you say Auntie had already made a reservation? Did I hear wrong?"
"You didn't hear wrong. Haven't I told you, over and over, that Mother has always been like this?"
"Ahaha... S-still, she wouldn't just demand a table with no notice at all, would she? A seven-star sky lounge ought to have VVIP rooms..."
The two of them, following behind, went on like that.
M-more to the point, shouldn't we deal with this arm first? Judging by the secretaries and the bodyguards, I was terrified of stepping outside.
I'd been trying, little by little, to slip my arm free, but it wouldn't budge, as if a gorilla had hold of me. With no other choice, I carefully tested the water.
"Um, Madam?"
"Hm? What is it?"
"Could you maybe let go of my arm...?"
Not that she had to. Honestly, she could pull a little harder if she liked. It was just that, at this rate, my future was about to get very unclear. That was the trouble. Hahaha.
"Is young Seoha embarrassed to walk arm in arm with this old auntie?"
If she asked like that, wearing that sulky face, what was I supposed to say...
"No. If word gets out that I was linked up with you like this, I don't think I'll be able to show my face at school starting tomorrow. Ahaha."
"Hohoho. Young Seoha does tell the most amusing stories."
"I'm not joking..."
Hey, you two! Quit just sighing and save me already!
In the end I reached the first floor of the Time River Building still caught in the Madam's grip, and the situation I'd feared unfolded at once.
People in the central hall fixed on the Madam the way ordinary folk fix on a celebrity. Then they turned that stare on the boy beside her, the look you give a plate of pork rind, and when they saw our linked arms, their eyes blew wide.
Killing intent and hostility poured in after that. Spatial Perception flared and reported that it had picked up the murderous aura.
And the moment we passed the revolving door and stepped outside—
"Kyaaaaaah!!"
Hah. Look at that reaction.
The crowd packed around the presidential motorcade shrieked loud enough to tear eardrums the instant they laid eyes on the Madam.
Nice car, though. The official vehicle was a limousine out of Cadillac—what was the name... the Cadillac Presidential Limousine? I'd heard the American president rode around in one of those, too.
The security team threw their bodies into a barricade and fought, desperately, to hold back the surging mass.
"Eek! President Yu Youngeun... huh?!"
"What?! President Yu Youngeun has her arm around some little brat!?"
"That's Time River's boss!"
"What is that little runt?!"
"I'm so jealous~! I want to link arms with the President too!"
"Madam Presideeent~! Look over here~!"
"Th-that insolent bastard! His arm, against the President's sacred chest, his aaarm...!"
Smartphone shutters and flashes poured in from every side. Between the cheers shouted fit to split a throat and the chanting of the Madam's name, malice aimed at me came flooding through the gaps.
Ahaha... I was finished. I should stay off the internet starting today.
At the killing intent rolling off a handful of women and the great majority of the men, Spatial Perception set up a frantic, buzzing alarm.
It wasn't even in the same league as the warning threshold I'd learned thanks to that shaggy-haired idiot at school. The sort of atmosphere where, meet them in a deserted alley, and you'd catch a knife.
More than that, the Madam's popularity was no joke. She seemed to surpass, without even trying, Seon Ara herself—the country's biggest idol, and boss of the Eshban raid team.
I'd held out a hope. I was a full head shorter than the Madam, and she was the one holding my arm, so maybe they'd take me for a nephew, or some acquaintance's son. Hope, as it turned out, was only hope.
In the end the Madam didn't loosen her hold until we arrived at the sky lounge of the Redcon Hotel.
...This wasn't revenge for teasing her earlier, was it?
I'd been to the restaurant of the seven-star Redcon a few times, on rare family dinners, but the sky lounge's private room for distinguished guests was a first. And not VIP. VVIP.
Set on the hotel's outdoor terrace, glass on three sides and across the ceiling, the sky lounge was a beautiful space with Seoul's night laid open and glittering beyond the panes.
Whatever they'd finished the floor in, it gleamed enough to throw back the whole interior. The kind of floor that would make a woman uneasy—and sure enough, walking ahead of me, the inside of my sister's dress showed through plain as day, and I frowned.
Whoever designed this floor was a pervert, right?
We sat at a table laid under soft light, and when the hotel's general manager came over with the head chef to greet the Madam, I felt her stature all over again. A welcome like that, for a famous guest, was something I'd only ever seen on television.
The Madam, of course, and Hwayeon too, were receiving the greetings. My sister and I, by comparison, were fresh kimchi on the side.
Even so, I couldn't get angry. The general manager and the head chef were showing the Madam a deference close to worship, and we were simply guests sharing a table with someone that extraordinary.
"She's really something... Sis, is there anyone in this country, of any age, respected the way she is?"
"I don't think so."
Once the dignified middle-aged man who seemed to be the general manager had finished his greetings, the head chef launched into an account of tonight's course.
The theme was this and that, the order was such and such, the ingredients came from wherever, the grade was something, the method was something else—and the Madam listened to all of it without a flicker in her face, smiling kindly, and then asked them to make it delicious.
Someone else should have seen the head chef's expression just then. Hehe.
The course that followed was so genuinely good I forgot the bodyguards were watching from behind. The portions were a little small, that was the only flaw!
It began with something called a morning roll, and I couldn't have said whether it was bread or cotton candy. Then a clear soup, and a parade of dishes plated with clean, elegant precision—a slice of sashimi, steamed oyster, maybe, pudding, asparagus, and some liver affair decorated with this and that. That, they told us, was the hors d'oeuvre. The appetizer.
Next, in order, came the main: a steak of hanwoo, that premium Korean beef, cooked to medium; something like a vegetable roll; and sashimi, gorgeously arranged. The moment any of it entered my mouth it popped and melted away, and I thought, so this is what they mean when they say it tastes like honey.
When the course closed on dessert—a single slice of cake, sponge and fresh cream in five colors, studded thick with fruit—a sigh of admiration was, I maintain, an unavoidable phenomenon.
A splendid atmosphere, the dazzling night of a great city, and food delicious enough to make a tongue want to weep. How could anyone refuse to be moved?
"Whoa, so this is a course at a seven-star sky lounge. No matter how much money you had, you couldn't just eat this whenever you wanted, right?"
I'd asked my sister. The Madam answered.
"This is a special room only the leading figures of society may use, dear. Date this auntie, and you can eat here whenever you please. What do you say?"
Hack—khak!
The question cut in without a turn signal. I choked and coughed, and Hwayeon, the corner of her mouth twitching with rage, growled.
"Please maintain some dignity, Mother. What do you think you're doing, coming on to a child sixty years your junior?"
"Heh. Am I not even allowed a joke?"
"I'm saying it because it doesn't sound like a joke!"
Leave them like this and they'd fight again. I hurriedly turned to Hwayeon.
"Cough, ahem! Then you can't just walk in either, Hwayeon?"
"If I'm accompanying someone, yes. A visit on my own is impossible, even for family. And I... have to book far in advance, and even then, if anyone important comes in, I get bumped."
Hwayeon's expression soured, as if it displeased her that her standing fell short of the Madam's. The Madam noticed, and with a smile that went round and round, she rubbed salt straight into the wound.
"You're not a special ability user like young Seoha. Do you really think a dime-a-dozen B-Class Physical Reinforcement user can come to a place like this whenever she pleases? The only reason you can even make a reservation is that you're this mother's daughter. Be grateful."
"I am not grateful in the slightest! And I've never actually visited, not once!"
"Oh my. My own daughter, regarding this place as nothing but somewhere to eat—the pitifulness of it. Almost sad, really."
"Grkk."
Ah. So this was where high society's little gatherings happened.
At Hwayeon's sharp reaction the Madam put on a face of considerable pity, which even I could see was a smug, infuriating expression meant to get under the skin. Naturally Hwayeon flew into a rage, and the third war of words began.
Hwayeon snapped like an angry wolf. The Madam let the attacks slide on a stream of ooh-hoo-hoo, ohoho, then fed her a needle-sharp counter that dealt real damage to her composure. The sense that she had done this many times was, unsurprisingly, no illusion.
"Sis. Are Hwayeon and the Madam always like this?"
"I haven't been in the same room as Auntie and Hwayeon very often, so I don't really... but they weren't like this then."
So that meant it was because of me? Still, both of them had standing, and for them to bicker like that in front of us... it seemed the Madam was trying to show me something.
The problem was, I couldn't begin to guess what.
Then Spatial Perception caught the Madam gazing at furious Hwayeon with tender eyes.
Oh. She just loved her. So the attention the Madam had shown me all through dinner had been to provoke Hwayeon. Every time that attention landed, Hwayeon's eyebrow had twitched, and the Madam had surely known.
Of course. Where in the world was a mother who hated a daughter that splendid?
...Still, she might want to tease her in moderation. Getting old and ending up some forgotten elder in a back room, at Hwayeon's mercy... she probably wouldn't, though. The Madam was an ability user too, and she had plenty of money.
"Yes, yes~ Right, right~. I get it, so that's enough now~?"
"Krgh...!"
Hwayeon growled like a beast at the perfunctory reply.
"My, my. Keep this up and I wonder if, once I'm old, you'll shut your mother away in some back room."
"That's entirely because you, Mother...!"
"Yuran. Would you hand me that?"
With impeccable timing she landed the finishing blow—an ignore-plus-talking-over combo—and beckoned to the bodyguard standing behind her. Blatantly dismissed, Hwayeon covered her face with both hands and slumped back against the chair.
She looked so exhausted I felt sorry for her, and I reached out to pat her back. The Madam, having taken something from the bodyguard, held her hand out toward me and told me to take it.
Resting on her palm was a single business card, gleaming gold.
Wait. Not gold-colored... real gold? I hesitated, then politely extended both hands to receive it—
I flinched!
In an instant the Madam snatched my hand the way an octopus snatches prey, and, looking thoroughly pleased, stroked it!
She'd taken off her silk gloves to eat, and the skin against the back of my hand was warm and soft, and it felt ni—
"Mother! Please!!"
"Goodness! You startled me. Can't your mother enjoy a little second youth?"
"What second youth, when you haven't even grown old! That's sexual harassment!"
"Your mother is seventy-five now! Round up next year and I'm a hundred, I tell you. Do you want to watch your mother die an old maid?"
What kind of arithmetic was that? Round seventy-six up and you get a hundred... oh.
"A hundred or a thousand, stop being so shameless! Act your age! Why on earth are you doing this, really!!"
"Oh, is that so? Keep it up and your mother really will go out with just any man."
"...Aaaagh!!"
Hwayeon, looking ready to explode past tears, tore at her ebony hair. Stress piled to the extreme.
The Madam seemed to feel it, and was slowly trying to rein herself in—and even then, she kept stroking my hand.
Honestly, it felt fine. The touch wasn't some lewd groping. She was only gently stroking my palm and the back of my hand with both of hers, so it wasn't unpleasant, and though she was seventy-five, she didn't look a day past twenty-five...
Franc was watching the Madam with a slightly troubled expression. I couldn't guess what she was turning over.
When Hwayeon, face furious, trembled through rough breaths with tears welling, the Madam let go of my hand without bothering to hide her regret.
Hwayeon simply radiated an aura of I'm done with all of it and collapsed face-down on the table.
"What is this?"
Whoa. This really was pure gold. Wings had been beautifully worked into it in silver, so that the thing looked like a piece of art. Franc and I turned the card this way and that, marveling, and the Madam smiled brightly and spoke.
"I don't give these to just anyone, so keep it safe, all right? If anything comes up, write to the email at the bottom. Put your name in the subject! Understood?"
"Ah, yes."
I answered while sneaking a glance at Hwayeon. Face-down, no reaction. Not so much no reaction as no strength left to react, probably.
"How quickly a pleasant hour passes. This auntie should be going. Children, shall we see each other again?"
"Ah, take care."
At my farewell the Madam smiled, fresh and bright, the face of someone who had worked off every last bit of stress, and led her bodyguards out of the private room.
I'd felt it from the first moment I saw her. The Madam was a woman whose will burned as hot as fire. I was staring blankly toward the door when my sister carefully took the card from me.
"Give it here. When we get home, I'll set it in a crystal case for you."
"Ah, yeah. Please. If I hold onto it, I'll probably crumple it."
She drew a handkerchief from her handbag, wrapped the card with care, and slipped it into her long wallet. Watching that, I asked Hwayeon, who was lifting her head from the table with a face utterly spent.
"My head's a bit of a mess, but is that everything we came for? Can we go home now?"
"Ah... no. I have something to say. I'd meant to keep it light over dinner, but a certain someone crashed it... sorry."
"It's fine. What did you want to say?"
I'd been about to tell her she'd had a hard time of it because of the Madam, and then I changed my mind. A line I'd read somewhere came back to me. Stick your nose clumsily into someone else's family trouble, and you won't like what you see.
"Haa... It's about your ability. And the matter of the Energy Eater at the Defense Research Institute."
"Oh, right. I have a favor to ask you, too."
"Do you? I've reserved a salon downstairs. Let's talk there."
The salon was sealed tight, the sort of room meant for meetings no one else should hear, and yet so carefully appointed that the seal didn't feel like one. A snug space of about three hundred and fifty square feet.
At the center sat a single tea table and several antique chairs of different kinds, and on the table a reddish-brown tea—just set out and left by a woman beautifully dressed in a ceremonial hanbok, the salon madam? the manager?—sent up lazy curls of steam.
The clean bitterness smelled exactly like the ginseng tea Dad was always drinking.
Just in case, I swept the room with Spatial Perception for any mechanical device. Aside from the chandelier overhead and a few fixtures tied to hidden wiring, there wasn't even a machine, let alone anything that looked like a bug.
Then I sat with my sister on a chair built for two, and Hwayeon, seated across from us, bent deeply at the waist and launched straight into an apology.
"First, I'm sorry."
"Huh?"
"Suspecting you in the middle of talking with Mother. Failing, from the start, to treat you as your ability deserves. The harm you took from the botched response to the Energy Eater. All of it is my fault."
And she stayed bowed, with no intention of straightening until I accepted it. At that sight, what little disappointment in her I had left seemed to vanish entirely.
Right. The reason I'd liked her was that side of her... Mm. The headache was coming up again.
My sister blinked, uncomprehending, looking back and forth between me and Hwayeon, then nodded as if she'd caught on a beat late. A ghost for reading a room, as always.
"I'll accept it. Honestly, I was going to hassle you a bit over the whole thing, but since you apologized first, I'll have to give that up. Watching you get tormented by the Madam was fun enough."
I said it giggling, and Hwayeon hemmed and hawed before laughing awkwardly herself.
Personally, I really disliked people who dug in over pride and face after they'd made a mistake. If you wanted to keep your pride, you had to act perfectly and not slip in the first place. Like Dad. Or my sister.
Seen that way, Hwayeon pinpointing her own faults, admitting them, and apologizing cleanly was very good to look at. A personality like that, I could trust.
No matter how I ran the numbers, I didn't think I'd find an environment as good for me as Hwayeon's Time River.
She was my sister's closest friend, and the families knew each other. Behind her stood the Madam, the highest power in the country. And Hwayeon herself was boss of the nation's second-ranked team, and a B-Class ability user besides.
I should move with the intention of joining Time River for real. And... I should tell her about Spatial Perception, too.
"Sis. It'd be better to tell Hwayeon the details of my ability as well, right?"
"Tell her? Good thinking. Even at Time River, you'll need at least one person who knows your ability in detail, or operating will be a pain. Hwayeon can fill that role just fine."
I met the eyes of Franc, hovering lightly at my side, and she nodded yes.
Hwayeon didn't seem to follow the conversation between us. Seated now with a noticeably lighter face, she reached for her teacup and asked.
"What are you talking about? Don't tell me the ability has grown again?"
"Mmm, not that... You'll get the accurate version if you hear it from him."
At my sister's words, Hwayeon turned her gaze to me.
"I'd been planning to keep hiding it."
Opening with that, I explained to the two of them what I'd heard from Director Lee Hyeryeong—the policy on disclosing an ability user's information, and the protection of an ability user's family—and what I'd felt about it.
"It started back when I heard you'd been spending your own money to protect our family, Hwayeon. That was when I started thinking I could trust you."
"Ah! Th-that!!"
Hwayeon hadn't expected me to have heard even that. She flushed and flustered, and my sister turned a startled look on her as well.
"We can hear the details later. Let me keep going first."
"Ah, okay."
Watching Hwayeon sit back down, I began to explain, slowly.
"You've heard about Mana Sieve, right? After you took the Energy Eater away, the ability evolved when I gave it a name, and under that influence, Search evolved along with it."
"......"
Hwayeon wore the face of someone wondering whether she was allowed to believe me.
"For now, the form is still a sensory type. I can still detect Phase Power. Before, sensing a large number of objects gave me a miserable headache, but that's gone. I can sense everything that exists inside the range."
"R-right. That's incredible. So how far does the detection go?"
"A radius of one kilometer around me. A little over half a mile. And there's still no limit on how long I can use it."
"...One kilometer?"
"Yeah. One kilometer."
"......... Ha. This is really... insane."
Half out of her mind, Hwayeon let out a sigh that seemed to rise from deep in her chest, then leaned weakly back in the chair.
"You see why I deliberately didn't reveal it?"
"...Yes."
"Originally I was going to keep it secret from everyone, build my strength, and only then make it public. Mom and Dad recommended that, and so did my sister. The reason I'm telling you, Hwayeon, is that I've judged I can trust you completely."
"Aside from your father and mother, who else knows exactly what your ability is?"
"No one. Just you."
"Hoo. The right choice. If this had been announced... calling it an uproar wouldn't begin to cover what would have happened."
"There'd have been a brawl over who got to claim me, right?"
"A brawl? You're underestimating a sensory range of one kilometer. If this got out, it might even start a war between nations. Because of you."
...A war? She was really exaggerating... or maybe she wasn't.
"Is this room secure?"
Siha, suddenly anxious, muttered as she looked around. Hwayeon gave her shoulder a light pat, telling her to relax.
"There's no bug. The first thing I learned after becoming an ability user was how to tell apart the faint operating hum and the radio tone of a wiretap or a listening device. I still study it, steadily."
Telling that apart by sound—impossible, unless you were a Physical Reinforcement user.
"Pft. Hehehe. Ahahahaha."
Hwayeon suddenly clutched her stomach with both hands, curled in on herself, and started to cackle. I blinked at her slapping her knees as she laughed, then asked.
"Hwayeon? You okay?"
"Heh heh. Ah, mm. I'm fine. I'm just looking forward to Mother's face when she finds this out later. If she'd known, she would have used any means at all to win you over."
So she'd laughed because she was delighted at the thought of sticking it to the Madam, hard... Just how bad was their relationship? Or was it good? My sister, as if she'd already guessed as much, sipped her tea with a troubled expression.
Hwayeon leaned back against the sofa, steadied her breathing, and at last composed herself and quietly spoke.
"Thank you for trusting me. I'll protect you with everything I have, so that trust is never betrayed."
I laughed, a little embarrassed by words that full of sincerity, and Hwayeon gave me a small smile and went on.
"You're involved in the Energy Eater matter too, so you should know how it went. When I first returned to Yongmunsan with the Energy Eater, there was an uproar. Everyone had been certain it was still hiding somewhere on the mountain, and then it slipped the encirclement and turned up at Iljasan."
"So the talk turned to assigning blame—whether a hole opened in the net, or whether it was never on Yongmunsan to begin with?"
At my sister's question, Hwayeon nodded, a bitter smile on her mouth.
"If the problem was the encirclement, the responsibility falls on me and the regional joint forces. Otherwise it falls on the Ability User Association. Because of that, I've been extremely busy since last night, going back and forth between the Association's Korea branch and the government complex without a rest. Even the civil servants who treat quitting time as sacred couldn't leave."
"The word civil servants hate most is responsibility. And the other party is an Ability User Association the government can't lean on, so of course they'd work late just to dodge the blame..."
"Yes... It was the first time I'd seen the Aberrant Countermeasures and Safety Bureau stand up an emergency task force that quickly."
The two of them looked at each other and smiled bitterly. A smile of fellow feeling.
"Since I'd captured the Energy Eater in another region... I papered over it without giving Seoha's name. In any case, the authority to dispose of it came to me. And the government wanted a specimen in good condition handed over at once, so in exchange for a high-price sale and a few benefits, I turned the Energy Eater over to the Defense Research Institute."
"So its anomaly wasn't known yet, then?"
"The anomaly only became known after it went to the Defense Research Institute. Otherwise the Association would have stepped into the order of the handover. And they wouldn't have come looking for Seoha, either."
Mm. So that was why the Association had sent a team leader.
"Everything after that is exactly what you lived through, Seoha. It's as good as decided that the Energy Eater will be moved from the Defense Research Institute to a lab under the Association's Korea headquarters branch. On facilities alone, the Association is far ahead."
"What about the capture bounty?"
"The standard rate is a million won per point of Phase Power—about seven hundred and fifty dollars. The Energy Eater sat at ninety-eight, so that comes to roughly seventy-five thousand. There's an extra allowance for capturing a special aberrant, and since we took it alive without a single scratch, a live-capture bonus on top of that. That alone would land around a hundred and fifty thousand. But with the anomaly in the mix, and Director Lee Hyeryeong's negotiating besides, I'm guessing the final figure settles near four hundred thousand dollars."
"Four hundred thousand!"
"And the benefits we agreed to take from the government—they'll calculate a set share of whatever profit comes later and deposit it into an account. Only... it's the sort of thing where profit is hard to calculate, so please understand it won't be immediate."
"So the benefit's on the intangible-asset side?"
"More precisely, talent."
"They're going to grease the wheels on priority recruitment of ability users, then."
Hwayeon nodded, as if my sister's guess had landed.
Well, Hwayeon would see it handled. Still, a capture bounty of four hundred thousand dollars... it wasn't a small amount. It wasn't. But after hearing talk of a signing bonus near four hundred million, a salary of nine million a year, and tens of millions in personal take off a single raid, a hundred and fifty thousand and four hundred thousand felt absurdly small.
And on top of that, my sense of money was off. It felt less like money and more like paper.
Hwayeon let out another shallow laugh.
"Hehe."
"...Do you like being able to land a blow on Auntie that much?"
My sister asked it with a hopeless look. Hwayeon blinked, then gently shook her head.
"No. That's secondary. What I like most right now is that Seoha trusts me. Which means... you're staying with Time River, aren't you?"
For a moment I had the impulse to say no, just to see the disappointment on her face. But as she'd said, my heart was leaning toward staying.
If it was Hwayeon, she'd click her tongue like a tsundere and still bend over backward for my convenience. Something like that.
"Aaah. A sensory ability, and the range is a one-kilometer radius. Needless to say, even as he stands now, Seoha is the world's greatest Special-type detection ability user. And that ability user is Seoha. How could I possibly dislike it?"
And as I watched her tremble with that strangely sensual expression I'd seen in a dream a few days back, Junior tried to stir.
Th-this was bad. Really bad!
"Spatial Perception, Mana Sieve—both of them top-tier abilities, and I can't even begin to guess where their growth ends. If a Seoha like that comes into Time River, it isn't a dream for us to become a raid team at the very top of the world! Thanks to Seoha!!"
Overcome with joy, she couldn't contain it mid-sentence, and pulled me into a hug as if pouncing.
Ooh?! Her chest... eheheheheh.
Buried in Hwayeon's full, soft, warm chest, my mind went hazy. The sweet scent of skin I caught with every breath was nothing like my sister's embrace, or Mom's. How was it different? Let's just say Johnson lifted his head.
I felt Hwayeon's hand stroking the back of my head, then sensed a gaze and glanced sideways. My sister was looking this way, glad and a little rueful at once, and beside her Franc was clapping for all she was worth, wrist to wrist, wearing a smile that was lonely somewhere and bright all the same.
The moment I saw Franc's face, Johnson—who had been about to shout olé—shriveled in an instant. And the words she had once said began to circle in my head.
"So please. Find someone who will hold you warmly, Seoha, and give them your love."
"I shall be happy simply to watch over that."
Hwayeon, hugging me in her happiness, only let go after my sister's pouty rebuke. A little embarrassed, perhaps, that the feeling had run away with her and made her grab me, she flushed all the way to her earlobes and couldn't meet my eyes.
The awkward look on my face, as Siha and Franc would see it, was probably just embarrassment at being hugged out of nowhere. And in fact I was a little flushed, heat up in my face from a moment of excitement.
But the truth was, I was wearing that expression because Franc's face—lonely, and glad—had left me with a complicated feeling.
Now that I could touch her, and she could touch me, I'd thought her thinking might have changed a little...
Nnnngh.
First, sort out the situation in front of me.
"Ahem. Anything else you wanted to say?"
"That's all. Then shall I hear this favor of yours?"
"I only have one. I want a Phase Stone—a cheap one's fine. Can you get me one? I'll pay for it out of the signing money."
"A Phase Stone? What do you need one for? To expand your Phase Power?"
Mm. That would be the ordinary assumption.
"I'm thinking about that. And there's something else I want to try."
The reason I needed a Phase Stone was to experiment with filling Franc's Soul Stone with Phase Power. I couldn't tell my sister that, or Hwayeon, so I had to hide it.
"Hmm... That's not a method I'd particularly recommend."
What did she mean? A Phase Stone, before it became a Soul Stone, had been a huge help in raising Phase Power.
"Why? There were posts on the Certifier community board from people who said it worked."
"You know the Phase Power you gain from killing an aberrant only comes when you kill one of a grade close to your own, or higher, right?"
"Yeah. I know."
"Phase Stones are a little different. To absorb Phase Power from one, you have to be holding a Phase Stone a full grade above your own."
At her explanation, I belatedly understood why, during the forced summoning, I hadn't absorbed anything from the big field rats or the long-snouted wolves.
My Phase Power back then had been Mid-Low Grade. That was why. And when I killed the No-Head Mantis, I'd been at Mid Grade, so I couldn't take Phase Power from a Mid-Low Grade No-Head Mantis either.
So should I have held out a long time beside giant Franc's corpse? At the current measure, that was an increase of 3.86 an hour, so if I'd lasted until the Phase Stone was gone, at least a hundred hours. An increase of 386...
Ah, but the rains came right after that, so in the end it had been the right call.
"Oh, right. Two skills evolved and my Phase Power doubled, so it's past 3,700 now. I've become E-Class."
"F-Class when you came back alive, and already E-Class..."
Hwayeon's expression was a little dumbfounded, but she wasn't particularly surprised. My sister, who had been listening, spoke with an incredulous face.
"What are you, an onion? Peel and peel and there's still more? You're not hiding anything else?"
"There's exactly one thing left, and that one really stays with me alone. It doesn't have anything to do with my ability, either."
"Mm... Is that so?"
"Still, thank you for telling me."
Hwayeon smiled, a face that said it was all right even to hear there was one more secret. It was the first truly beautiful smile I had seen from her since we met again.