Episode 76: Hwayeon's Story (2)

……So that was it. Only now did the whole of it make sense.

It explained why, the first time Noona met me, she had said she couldn't bring herself to call me a little kid. It explained the headaches that kept coming over me around her, and that strange feeling in the way she looked at me.

Well, scratch the back of my head and there was a scar that wasn't small, and I had thought it odd, but I couldn't remember how I'd gotten it, so I'd decided it was nothing and put it out of mind. So that was when it had happened.

The truth was, the instant I heard that I had asked her to marry me, everything came rushing back. Even so, I made a point of listening carefully to every word Hwayeon said. Franc listened just as hard beside me.

I showered in a hurry, pulled on the compression shorts I'd been given, threw a bathrobe over them, and stepped out to find the two of them on the sofa, murmuring back and forth.

I took the empty seat. Hwayeon's eyes flicked to my bare legs; she cleared her throat once, and then she began—about what had happened back then, and about her own past.

Hmm. I had always thought her quiet and withdrawn from the time she was small, but she had been thoughtful, and mature far beyond her years.

And her memory was nothing to scoff at. Gifted education from the age of two, and speaking her own mind freely from five…… What had I even been doing at five? I could barely remember being ten.

Worse, her past was harsh enough that a gasp rose in my throat on its own. I hadn't taken the Madam for that sort of woman, but she was cruel. No wonder Hwayeon hated her.

No—wasn't it a miracle they could even sit down to a meal together now? If it had been me, I would have fled the house. How wide did a heart have to be?

My sister was hearing that past for the first time today as well, and she cried so hard the sleeve of her bathrobe soaked through. At this rate she really was going to dehydrate.

"Noona, keep crying like that and you'll collapse from dehydration."

"Mmn. Sob.Sniff."

A fridge that size had to have water in it. I went over, opened the door, got one shock from the beer stacked along one side, and a second from the calorie bars crammed in to bursting. I took out three small bottles, passed one to each of them, and twisted the cap off my own.

Cold water slid down my throat, and the chill spread through my chest until my head cleared with a snap.

"Hwayeon."

She must have gone dry from all the talking. She drained the bottle I had given her in one go, and was wiping Siha's tears with the sleeve of her bathrobe when she turned to me.

"Hm?"

"I remember all of it now."

"……I see. I'm glad."

It might have been my imagination, but now that the story was finished, Hwayeon's face was far softer than before.

"And I'm sorry. For putting you through all that."

"No. It was a good experience for me, too."

"I'm glad, then, but…… aren't you curious why I said what I said back then?"

At the question she fell silent for a moment and closed her eyes. Then she opened them, looked into mine, and spoke.

"I am curious. Why did you say it? The way you acted then—it wasn't because you had come to hate me."

"It's just…… there was a parent-teacher conference in third grade. Mom came instead of Dad, and the kids saw her and started ripping into me. Asking if she was really my birth mother, if I was some kid she'd picked up under a bridge. I was fighting them when some bastard behind me started mocking me and you, and I got so embarrassed that I……"

"That's right. That day, after Mom got off work and came home, he told her he was ashamed she'd come to the school, and he made her cry. And two days later she was hospitalized…… so……"

"……"

"……"

Both of my noonas, and Franc with them, turned to stare at me as if they could not believe their ears!

"N-no! That's not it! Back then I really liked you, Noona! I was just a little kid, and I was embarrassed……! When you hugged me you were soft and pillowy, and being with you smelled sweet, and I liked that so much! I'm telling you, it's true!"

Hwayeon let out a sigh, her face flushed. The reason I had given must have struck her as a little absurd. Even so, there was relief mixed into that sigh, so I didn't think she was actually upset.

"Haa. Even so, pushing you and leaving you with that wound was entirely my fault. No excuse makes the wrong disappear. I'm sorry. I'll apologize again."

As she bowed her head, the valley of her chest showed through the opening of her robe, and for a split second I nearly let the bullshit slip: Let me touch your breasts and I'll forgive you.

"It's fine. I started it, so…… yeah. Let's call it even. Like it never happened, okay?"

"But……"

"Hwayeon. If the two of you start tallying up who's at fault, it will never end. Seoha was in the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wrong, yes, but you were truly heartbroken then too, weren't you? So I think it's better to do as Seoha says."

"……If even you say so, Siha…… all right."

"And I had no idea your mother was that kind of person!"

Siha burst out all at once, face red with anger. Hwayeon looked thrown by the fury there.

I had been a little disappointed myself, listening. They called it a duty without pleasure, but this was a child she had chosen to bear, a child she had labored in pain to bring into the world, and she had treated her that coldly.

"It can't be helped. That kind of discipline is how Mother shows affection. Outside of politics, she's simply clumsy with people."

"Even so, you have no idea how much a mother's arms matter to a small child! That's nothing but an adult's selfishness!"

Siha was huffing as if she might call the Madam that very second, and Hwayeon, flustered, tried to calm her. Siha caught Hwayeon's hand, her eyes flashing, and said:

"I'm joining Time River, too."

"Really?"

Hwayeon brightened at once.

"Your mother asked me so earnestly that I've been studying business and politics, but I'm dropping all of it. I want to help you and Seoha at Time River!"

"If it's you, Siha, you're welcome, no questions asked! Wait just a moment!"

……Why did she seem happier about this than when I had said I was joining the team? And was it really all right to decide her whole future in a fit of anger?

Franc answered with a slightly troubled smile, her head tipped to one side. True enough. There was no way Siha would do something that thoughtless just because her feelings ran hot.

Hwayeon raised a hand and set it over her left breast. A hologram window burst from her chest and unfolded before her. Had she had the Certifier implanted in her left…… breast? I slipped a quiet scan through Spatial Perception, and there it was—the Certifier, seated in the subcutaneous fat of her left breast.

Somehow, that was impressive.

"I mean it, so bring the paperwork up to my room right this instant."

Director Lee Hyeryeong, on the other end of the call, sounded every bit as worked up.

"You're not actually happier to have Noona than you were to have me, are you?"

"Hm? Ah, no. You're precious too."

"Ah. So I'm precious too."

I let a sulky look slip onto my face, flopped back across the sofa, and muttered.

"Well, yeah. Even I'd pick Noona over a guy like me, if I were hiring. I'm nothing but the extra beside her……"

Just then Hwayeon startled, squeezed her eyes shut, and jerked her head aside. My sister's cheeks pinked as well, and she was on the verge of scolding me for having no shame when Franc flailed both hands and cried out.

"……What. They're compression shorts. People wear these to work out, so what!"

I shot upright and flung the robe wide.

"They're not underwear, so there's nothing to be embarrassed about!"

Hwayeon, who had been stealing a look through slitted eyes, hunched her shoulders so plainly she might as well have been a fifteen-year-old girl. ……I was beginning to understand why flashers went around exposing themselves.

Wham!

"Boss, Miss Siha! I've brought the employment papers—!"

Ah.

"Hohoho! And here I thought the boss and young Seoha were in the middle of that sort of…… oh, goodness!"

Director Lee Hyeryeong fanned her reddened face with her hand, laughing as if she didn't know where to put herself. Hwayeon's expression was displeased in some way I couldn't name, and my sister was blushing as if she wanted to die of secondhand shame.

Having walked in and gotten an eyeful of me half-naked, Director Lee couldn't hide the flush on her face. She laughed with exaggerated fuss as she gathered up the contract bearing Siha's signature—and still her gaze kept sneaking back to me.

"Pervert auntie."

I drew the front of the bathrobe tight and muttered it almost under my breath, and Director Lee's shoulders jumped.

"Ahem! Miss Siha will be assigned to General Affairs by special appointment. Her annual salary has been set at two hundred million won, as specified."

"Parachuted in?"

"……Ahem! For the time being she'll learn how work flows inside Time River as my second, and once we establish an Integrated Management Division, she'll be promoted to director of that department."

"Best friend of the boss, and sister of the number-one Search ability user. She'll have more pull than anyone."

"……A-ahem! We'll align her training and her work hours with Miss Siha's class schedule. Today I'll content myself with a signature on the contract! We can sort the details the next time we meet!"

Even with me jabbing at her the whole time from the side, Director Lee kept clearing her throat and steadfastly told my sister everything she needed to know.

"Thank you for the consideration, Unni."

"Hoho. Of course I ought to do at least this much for you."

Hmm.

"Then, Director Lee. Starting tomorrow, please procure high-grade Phase Stones that don't have much Phase Power left in them. A hundred at most should do. I'd like the total Phase Power brought to somewhere around 22,000. And among the mid- and low-grade Phase Stones we currently hold, there is one with a Phase Power of 98, isn't there? Please break the seal and have that ready as well."

"Understood. Is this for official use?"

"Personal use."

"I'll have them ready right away."

Director Lee gave Hwayeon a quick bow and fled the room, as if afraid I would open my mouth again.

"Hwayeon. Isn't a starting salary of two hundred million won a bit steep?"

"Considering your ability, two hundred million is too little. Our team runs on the supremacy of ability, so your salary will only climb with how well you work. You shouldn't think of that figure as high."

"But I'm not even someone just starting out in the workforce, and I'll be doing this alongside my studies."

"Seoha makes several dozen times your salary."

"Ahaha. When you put it that way, it does look small. Even with the difference in our abilities."

Noona had an ability? What was she talking about?

"What kind of ability do you have, Noona?"

I asked in surprise, and Hwayeon turned a gaze full of trust on my sister.

"Siha has a superhuman faculty. A memory and a power of recall close to perfect recollection, an ability to apply what she learns more than ten times that of an ordinary person, and a personality that takes hold of people. When a single person builds a world-class group, it's usually someone of Siha's type."

A faculty? She meant an ability? Noona had the talent to become someone that incredible? I couldn't believe it, and when I looked over at her sitting there all prim, she had both hands pressed to her cheeks, mortified.

"You're telling me a ditz like her is going to be someone that great?"

Her face crumpled on the spot. She flipped the empty water bottle and rapped it against my head. Tok, tok.

"Hey! Why am I a ditz?!"

"Haha. You're the only one who calls Siha a ditz, Seoha."

"Honestly. People don't know the real you at all. I can't believe a noona like this is going to become the incredible person Hwayeon is talking about."

"Why can't you believe it?!"

"The part where every time I catch you sighing, you promise to grant me a favor?"

"Uh……"

"Or the part where you work out in training clothes like tights, in the middle of a pack of wolves drooling over your figure?"

"……"

"Or if not that, then at the hospital……"

"S-stop……"

Noona covered her face with both hands, crouched down, and started to suffer. I had said it to tease her, but objectively, she really was remarkable.

Before she ever set foot in daycare, she had fallen so completely under the spell of the fairy tales Mom read aloud that she mastered English at four, just so she could read the foreign ones herself. While Dad was watching a Chinese medical channel she mastered Chinese at six, because it sounded interesting, and at seven she mastered mathematics through an engineering-college level for no better reason than boredom.

When it came time to enter elementary school, curiosity about what they might teach there drove her to teach herself every subject through the high school curriculum before she even enrolled. After that, the foreign languages she picked up as hobbies climbed toward the double digits. That was my sister.

So no, it wasn't for nothing that I had grown crooked with an inferiority complex as I got older.

At that level, the odds were excellent she would turn into an insufferable, self-worshipping genius who looked down on everyone else. And yet she was diligent, calm, and more considerate and gentle than an ordinary person.

Even at Euihan High School, where the self-proclaimed geniuses of the whole country gathered, she never once lost her place at the top of the class—and I had never once caught her studying at home. The student council presidency, a post you were normally allowed to hold for only a single year in your second year, she kept winning back for as long as she was enrolled, so her standing with people, and her charisma, had to be well above the ordinary as well.

From what I heard, the current president had been hospitalized with overwork and stress just trying to live up to the record Siha had left, and the system she had built……

Hwayeon stroked Siha's hair—flushed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all the way to her neck—with a gentle hand as she spoke.

"To other people, Siha is no different from a perfect superhuman. She only shows that ditzy side to you."

"I know. I only said it because it was fun."

"Ugh……"

I laughed off her glare and thought, just as well.

My sister had a quietly naive side, and I had worried some rotten guy might trick her and take both her body and her heart. This was my chance. From here on, I would stay beside her and keep the bad ones from swarming.

"Oh, right. You said Hwayeon had been teaching Siha about surviving in the Phase World, didn't you?"

"Yeah."

"Mm. Hwayeon's teaching me well."

"I was going to teach you what I'd seen and learned myself, but Hwayeon definitely knows more than I do, so learn it properly."

"Okay."

Siha, face still red, fidgeted with the water bottle she had crushed against my head. Being teased by me must have embarrassed her quite a bit. Hwayeon, by contrast, kept glancing between the two of us with a face that looked somehow light, and satisfied.

Marriage with Hwayeon, of all things……

If Franc hadn't been here, I would have burned hot enough to want to beat my seven-years-ago self to death. I had punted away the chance to marry a noona that beautiful. Well, the promise had been made when I was a brat who couldn't tell his ass from his elbow, so Hwayeon probably didn't dwell on it either. And I had Franc.

……But what was it she had started to say, partway through, and then swallowed?

When the silence stretched, Hwayeon rose from the sofa.

"It's late, so both of you should stay the night."

I checked the clock. It was already pushing ten.

"I should call Mom. Do you want to, Noona?"

"You do it. We'll go change into pajamas."

"Do you have pajamas I can wear, too?"

"There are women's pajamas. Shall I bring you some?"

"……I'll pass."

What did women's pajamas even look like? Probably not the baggy kind Siha wore at home…… Could they be like the negligee Mom wore? The image of myself in one rose on its own, and I grimaced; the two of them giggled again and walked off toward the dressing room.

I turned on the Certifier and called Mom, and she picked up as if she had been waiting. Worry soaked her voice.

"I'm at Hwayeon's, with Noona. Sorry for calling so late."

Huh? Mom's voice had shifted, as if she were quietly hoping for something.

"Noona and I signed official contracts with Time River, and then we got to listening to Hwayeon's story, and it got this late."

"Yeah. Hwayeon said it was late and told us to stay."

……What was she talking about.

"Subtly what? When have I ever whined and clung?"

"D-did I?"

……Aaah! Now I understood what Mom was saying!

"What do you keep going on about?! Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow! I'm hanging up!"

Mom's desperate voice reached me in the instant before the line cut. Ignore it. Ignore it!

Franc, who had been listening beside me to the talk with Mom, wore a cat's smile as she stared straight at me.

She looked so smug I wanted to stuff a peanut in her mouth, but now that I could touch her, I was going to lay on the affection until she couldn't make that face anymore! I would carve my mark all over that beautiful body!

……Heh heh heh. Carving ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my mark into her body. That was way too obscene.

The moment I hung up, the two of them came out in their sleepwear. Unfortunately, it was just something like black tracksuits. Even so, the fit was tight enough that Hwayeon's voluptuous figure showed right through, and I just— slurp.

She had brought a thick blanket out as well, and she tossed it at me.

"……So I'm sleeping on the floor?"

"No. You're in a bathrobe, so you might get cold. I brought a thicker blanket. Sleep under that."

If she had told me to sleep on the floor, I might have sulked. The bed was that big.

"Oh, this is incredibly soft and light."

What kind of blanket was this? So soft, and fluffy. Just like Hwayeon's breasts…… Ahem. Ahem.

"Sleep!"

"Huh?"

The moment the word left her, every bright fluorescent lamp died with a soft rush, and the ceiling filled with tiny glittering points like starlight.

Voice recognition? It seemed to be a sleep mode, and the ceiling looked like a sea of stars. The ceiling was higher than in an ordinary house, too, so it felt like looking up at the sky.

But looking at it left me with a strange feeling. My chest heaved, and a vast emptiness opened up. I tilted my head, then turned toward the two of them…… and found them lying on one side of the bed, sharing a thin blanket.

"……You two aren't actually dating, are you?"

"Are you going to keep saying weird things? You said that last time, too."

Siha glared at me, perhaps remembering how I had teased her earlier. Say any more and she would come over and hit me, so I shut my mouth.

"One of the reasons I dislike men is Siha."

"Huh?"

"What?"

"Siha is soft, as if she has no bones, and when I hold her she smells so good I could melt. But men stink, their eyes are disgusting, and it's obvious all they think about is knocking me down and climbing on top. Of course I came to hate them."

……My conscience prickled. I mean, I hadn't thought about knocking her down!

Even so, I felt oddly guilty, and when I looked away from Hwayeon she gave me a small smile.

"You're an exception."

Mm. Hwayeon, hugging Siha and nuzzling her face into a chest that wasn't even there, certainly looked incredibly happy. Siha looked down at her, let out a soft sigh, closed her eyes, and murmured.

"It feels like I've gained a little sister."

Mom's words from the call came back to me all at once, but I dismissed them as nonsense. Thinking about it hurt enough to bring tears, but even objectively, I didn't suit Hwayeon. And it wasn't even dating—marriage? Absurd.

I only needed Franc.

Oh, right. What about Franc?

She was lying beside me, watching me, but when she fell asleep her body gave off light, so Hwayeon would notice.

Lying under the blanket and gazing up at the ceiling's soft glow, I finally found the cause of that strange feeling.

The ceiling called to mind the night sky after I had met the Supergiant Turtle in the Phase World.

Even thinking it over again, the feeling was uncanny. My heart pounded with a flutter, and something clear and refreshing spread through my head, as if my senses were expanding. The memory of swimming alone through fear came back as well, and my body trembled a little.

It's all right. This isn't even the Phase World. I would be going in seven months from now, but before then I would reach D-rank through Phase Stones, and with the Mana Sieve I would learn how to wield attribute-type and recovery-type Phase Power.

And when that time came, Hwayeon would be there beside me.

I took the anxiety apart, reason by reason, and broke it down, and little by little it ebbed. Turning over this and that about the Phase World, I sank slowly into the swamp of sleep.