It's Only Natural to Be Punished for Dereliction of Duty (4)
"I like you, Yeoni-noona."
The moment I blurted out Hwayeon's old pet name, her shoulders flinched again.
She lifted her face a fraction, and it was red as a beet. She looked as if she had no idea what she was supposed to say. Her lips twitched, and when she finally managed to force the words out, the effort showed.
"Why... all of a sudden? You said you didn't want to marry me..."
She's still holding on to something from way back then?!
Look at it the other way, though, and didn't that mean she still had me in her heart? The thought that this childhood-friend noona—gorgeous beyond belief now—still treasured a promise from back when I was a snot-nosed kid seemed to settle a pair of tinted glasses over my eyes.
The rose-colored glasses called fondness.
"I told you a few days ago. Back then I got swept up in the mood and said it out of spite. If I'd really hated you, I wouldn't even have talked to you. I sure as hell wouldn't have joined your raid team. I'd have inflated my price as high as it would go and picked a team that suited my taste."
As if that sounded plausible, Hwayeon gave a small nod—then flinched and stopped.
"After the accident that day, a lot happened, and I ended up forgetting you completely. But when I heard your old stories, it all came back. And I realized it. You were my first love, Noona."
She didn't answer.
"When we met again, you'd become so beautiful and so incredible it was like you were someone else, and I couldn't bring myself to get close. But it didn't take long to see your personality hadn't changed all that much from back then. And I became sure of something else, too."
"...Wh-what did you become sure of..."
"That you still like me. These past few days, there were times you dodged the question, weren't there? You were trying to hide those feelings then, weren't you?"
She went rigid.
"If I don't pay attention to a noona like that, who exactly am I supposed to pay attention to?"
"Haaah..."
As if ashamed that her heart had been laid bare, Hwayeon folded forward at the waist, unable to endure it any longer. She covered her face with both hands, but Spatial Perception tattled on her anyway. Behind those hands, her face was crumpled with a happiness too big to hold.
Had she liked me that much? I was a little moved. And, at the same time, disappointed—because right beside me, Franc's eyes were sparkling as she beamed a fervent signal. That's it! Confess now!
She'd suffered something awful at my hands and still liked me, and yet here she was urging me toward someone else. Franc really was an idiot... or was this just how Westerners thought?
From what I'd seen of divorce cases abroad, the wife who became an ex often walked out with the children. Something about custody going to the wife at a high rate. The husband who lost it became nothing but a child-support shuttle, wiring money every month, and in return got to see his kids once or twice. The jaw-dropping part was that he kept it up even after the ex-wife married another man.
Hearing that a man would go visit the ex who'd married someone else, just to see his kids, had left me speechless. If I saw my ex with some other guy, every ugly thought in the world would come flooding in. Were Western men all built with nerves of steel? That's what I'd thought. And now I wondered if Franc's mindset might be in exactly that state.
Thinking about it left me feeling strange. Still, leaving Hwayeon flopping like a fish on the hook was pitiful, and I'd already decided to let myself be crooked. So I made up my mind to claim her, just like this.
If she still liked me in that state, it ought to be easy!
"Now that I know you've been looking out for me and liking me all this time, there isn't a man in the world who'd dislike a woman like that."
"Ugh..."
"I like you, Noona. What do you think of me? Answer me yourself."
I said it.
I'd gone and said it.
But my head was a mess, because Franc had no idea what was going on inside me and was just squealing with delight beside us.
Maybe she didn't see me as someone to be with, and that was why she was like this. She'd said she'd stay with me for good, but maybe she meant to leave without regret the moment the time came for her to move on. And so she was trying to attach another woman to me...
Hwayeon, who hadn't the faintest clue about my tangled feelings, heard the confession, let out a grand sigh, and slowly straightened. Her brows trembled. Her face was scarlet. Her breathing had gone rough. In every way, she looked on the verge of falling apart.
"...only you."
"Huh? I didn't catch that."
Noona squeezed her eyes shut and said it again, voice shaking.
I was genuinely shocked. If that was true, she'd liked only me from the age of seven until now?
"I was going to confess again once you turned nineteen... My face and my body are so different from before. I thought... if it was now, you wouldn't reject me."
Franc was so delighted by Hwayeon's shy confession that, had we not been inside a car, she would have been spinning circles around the two of us. But my chest ached, and I couldn't get a word out.
To think that something I'd blurted out in a fit of spite in fourth grade, because the kids in my class were teasing me, had wounded her that deeply. My thoughtless childhood words had sat in her heart as a wound for more than eight years.
Knowing that, I couldn't take it back now. Not even as a joke.
With Hwayeon's personality, if she was rejected this time too, she'd live alone for the rest of her life. Her personality itself might even change.
Right. Letting the genes of a beauty like that die out in this generation would be a tremendous loss for humanity. So...
No. To be honest, imagining Hwayeon naked beneath some man who wasn't me made my blood feel like it was about to surge backward.
Screw it.
I got up, sat down beside Hwayeon, and—following Franc's advice—held her. Gently. Very gently.
"Nnh!"
A thin sound escaped her, and she turned her face, red to the tips of her ears, away from me. It wasn't just her face that had heated. Her body had too, and a flush of warmth radiated from the slender waist in my arms.
"Noona."
"...Mm."
I don't know anymore either. Whatever happens, happens.☆
If this was what made Franc leave me, and if Hwayeon cast me aside too, I'd accept it quietly then. The end of a greedy man.
I whispered it into her small, cute ear.
"I'll get stronger than you and protect you. So, Noona... be mine?"
"Y-yeah."
Whether it was the promise to protect her or the whisper against her ear, Hwayeon trembled faintly, showed a glimmer of tears, and buried her face in my shoulder.
It was hard to believe this was the woman colder and prouder than anyone when she was working. The only regrettable thing was that I was shorter than her. If I were just another eight inches taller, the picture would have been so much better. Being shorter than her, I didn't feel like I cut much of a figure.
Breathing in soft little hitches, she pressed a light kiss to my lips with moist eyes. The moment her hot lips touched mine with a soft peck, the heart that had been wrapped in guilt caught fire.
All of it because of Franc, shaking her fists up and down beside us with an excited face.
What was this sense of wickedness.
Embarrassed, Hwayeon turned her face from my gaze and said in a small voice,
"Th-thank... you."
"...I'm the one who should be thanking you."
Sitting like that, one horrific imagining flashed through my mind.
What if I'd received Hwayeon's confession without ever becoming an ability user?
I was genuinely glad I'd been confessed to now, after gaining my abilities. I lost badly on looks, but on ability, I didn't lose at all.
We didn't talk any further in the car, but Noona—hugging my arm to her chest, resting her head on my shoulder—looked like a girl in love out of a novel.
Franc, watching with a pleased face as that flushed Noona, all her coolness gone, leaned happily against me... honestly. Really.
To feel this unsettled right before something important. I'd become the boyfriend of Yoo Hwayeon, a woman counted among the finest in Korea, and I couldn't even enjoy it. The situation irritated me.
At this point, maybe I should just tell her about Franc...
The car, carrying two people and two different trains of thought, ran hard down the road and arrived at the Time River Building in Yeouido before my thoughts could finish.
"Welcome, Mr. Jung Seoha."
"Hello."
When I got out first, Director Lee Hyeryeong, waiting at the building entrance, greeted me with a smile. I returned it and stepped aside, and Hwayeon descended with a demure grace. Director Lee, and the men lined up behind her, went wide-eyed and stared at Hwayeon as if they meant to bore holes through her.
"...Whoa."
"A photo. We have to get this on camera."
"This is historic, seriously. My eyes are being blessed..."
The men in suits, who seemed to be Director Lee's direct subordinates, looked moved by the sight of Noona in a skirt.
She really was unfairly, almost criminally beautiful right now.
The sharp aura was gone, and she looked like a completely different person. Black hair, white clothes, black stockings—the contrast, instead of clashing, gave off a warmth that made Yoo Hwayeon look like an entirely different beauty.
Director Lee, who'd been staring at her in surprise, seemed to read something in Hwayeon's awkward expression. She turned a heated look on me, then at last broke into a wide smile, clasped her hands together, and cried out.
"Congratulations, Boss!"
I caught Noona's familiar scent coming off a woman I barely knew. Was this one a ghost at reading people too?!
"Mm, thank you. ...Are the preparations finished?"
Perhaps embarrassed, Noona closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and slipped back into her old cool demeanor almost at once. Even so, when our eyes met, she gave me a secret little smile.
Whatever else was going on, the fact that a beauty like that smiled only for me made my cheekbones want to twitch.
"Yes. We received word three minutes ago that Deputy Minister Kim Hakjun of the Office for Government Policy Coordination has departed for the World Phase Ability User Association building."
The man among them who carried an air of experience made the report. The Office for Government Policy Coordination? A government man? If he was a deputy minister, how high up was that, exactly?
Director Lee, having read my expression in that short span, explained while looking at me.
"The Deputy Minister is a Grade 1 national civil servant, or higher."
"If he's Grade 1, he's Grade 1. What's 'or higher'?"
"He stands at the final step just before rising to a political appointment—vice minister or minister—but that is by his own choice. His rank may only be Grade 1, but his actual power rivals a minister's."
"Whoa. How is that even possible?"
"The explanation in some quarters is that it is so he may serve as her sword."
Wow. Staying at Grade 1 on purpose, out of loyalty to Madam? So he could be of use on the ground?
Hwayeon glanced at me and Director Lee as we whispered, then questioned the man.
"And the documents?"
"Right here."
Hwayeon nodded at the large aluminum briefcase in the man's hand.
"The status of the legal response?"
"Legal Team Leader Jeong Chisan is coordinating directly with the Association's working-level team, with a specialist firm in tow. Today's deliberation will determine the direction of our response going forward."
"The deliberation's conclusion will come quickly. Until I contact you, have the legal team on full standby, with every preparation in place."
"Yes. What grade should we set for the response protocol?"
"Special grade."
"Special grade... Understood. We'll implement it immediately."
Once Noona issued her orders in her original calm, proud manner, the experienced man who'd given the first report left two men in their thirties as escorts and returned to the Time River Building with the rest.
Noona took my hand and got back into the limousine. Perhaps because of the joined hands, a fair number of the men and women sneaking glances our way let out sighs.
The men, I could understand. But why the women...?
Feeling both a little smug and a little burdened, I fidgeted my fingers. Noona seemed to take it as rejection and asked, slightly deflated,
"Do you... not like holding hands?"
"As if."
I laced my fingers through hers the way lovers did, and the corner of Hwayeon's mouth curved, just faintly. Director Lee, seeing it, smiled as brightly as a rose opening in the morning. It was terrifying.
Why was she smiling like that? I couldn't read it.
More than that, the people who'd been sighing—I'd thought they were just passersby, but most of them seemed to be Time River staff.
The looks stabbing into me, the what kind of bug is this looks, were no joke. To put it bluntly, they were the eyes people turned on the hanger-on stuck to a megastar.
A reaction that made me feel, viscerally, what kind of existence Yoo Hwayeon was inside Time River.
Director Lee, the last to board, closed the car door, wiped the smile from her lips, and opened her mouth like a capable secretary.
"We have thirty minutes until arrival, so I'll give a short briefing in that time. Mr. Han Jeongmun."
"Yes."
The ordinary-looking man in his thirties called Han Jeongmun took a file from the black document case in his hand and passed it to me and Hwayeon.
"It's in the documents you're holding, but I'll summarize. We assess that the World Phase Ability User Association has obtained, through some channel, partial information on Mr. Jung Seoha's ability, and we expect them to use this incident as a pretext to attempt to win him over."
"Hah."
"Having identified Mr. Jung Seoha as an unprecedentedly powerful special-type sensory ability user, the Association—"
I let out a cold snort, unable to believe what I was hearing, and Director Lee, mid-explanation, faltered.
"Ah, sorry. They say an ability user isn't allowed to seize an ordinary person's weakness and threaten them, but here the Association is doing exactly that to an ability user. It's ridiculous."
When I needled her, Director Lee smiled faintly and went on.
"...The Association has of late been concentrating on recruiting capable or promising talent, so we believe this is certain. In line with that, we've drawn up three response scenarios with government personnel, in case of unforeseen developments, and it begins at today's deliberation. What we need from you, Mr. Jung Seoha, is to give the deliberation committee an accurate account of the situation immediately before you were dragged into the Phase World, and to support the statements of the government representative attending with us. That will be sufficient."
She went on to explain the questions the committee members were likely to ask, and the posture, the position, and the attitude I ought to take in answering.
Meanwhile Hwayeon confirmed a few points with the man named Han Jeongmun, and the moment Director Lee finished, she spoke with knife-edge firmness.
"I can't reveal everything in this seat, but Seoha's talent is an ability so strong that precedent is hard to find in all of recorded history. Whether Time River can go global will be decided by his existence alone. So under no circumstances can we leave the Association any opening to intervene with him."
At the sight of Director Lee and the two men tensing, she nodded and continued.
"The same goes for the government. Given my mother's personality, there is no chance she will let this pass... Do you understand what I am saying?"
The three of them swallowed hard at Noona's chill and answered with set faces, as one.
"Yes!"
Director Lee and the ordinary man called Supervisor Han Jeongmun said nothing more, but a man named Choi Jinsik—who seemed to put a little care into his appearance—couldn't hide his curiosity. He glanced at me and opened his mouth.
"However... I'm not doubting the Boss's eye for talent, but Time River is currently in a trend where stagnation, for a number of reasons, is holding the raid team back. Unless a transformation occurs, I think this will be difficult to break. I worry whether globalization is possible on Mr. Jung Seoha's strength alone."
No rank beside the name—he seemed to be a regular employee, and yet he made a remark like that in front of the Boss. Pretty brave. Competent enough to have been included here, maybe?
There was no jealousy or envy aimed at me, so he really did seem worried. Hwayeon, perhaps taking it as doubt of me, spoke with a slightly furrowed brow.
"Even if you add up the value of every person the government and the other raid teams have taken from us, it still does not reach Seoha. He has the makings to surpass even me in the not-distant future, and he has already sprouted that bud without anyone's help... I suppose even this will not be enough to ease your concern."
"Th-that much..."
At Hwayeon's firm answer, not only Choi Jinsik, who'd asked the question, but Director Lee and Supervisor Han Jeongmun too went blank with shock.
"The special type is a lineage about which continuous research has revealed almost nothing, and the gap in potential and aptitude from person to person is as vast as heaven and earth. And Seoha's potential is, without question, on the side of heaven. Once he becomes an official member and enters the Phase World, everyone will know whether they wish to or not, so if there are employees thinking as Mr. Choi Jinsik does, soothe them well. That time will not be far off."
"Yes!"
As if that still fell a little short, Director Lee continued with a fox's smile.
"For Mr. Jung Seoha's backup and support, Miss Jung Siha has also decided to join Time River. If there are still members who can't hide their doubts, telling them that ought to do it."
"Wh— r-really?"
...What. They were more shocked that my sister was joining than that I was.
It stung my pride a little. I acknowledged my sister's genius, but... hmm. I wanted to show them an ability, so they'd believe in me. What should I show?
"And Mr. Jung Seoha is Miss Jung Siha's own younger brother, you know?"
"Ah! I see. I understand."
Huh?! That was a reason worth being convinced by?!
Hearing Director Lee, Choi Jinsik made a face that said Ah! No wonder... so that's what it was! Supervisor Han Jeongmun, who'd been quiet, wore the exact same expression.
Just what had my sister done at Time River, that being her little brother was enough to settle even their doubts?!
I must have made a sulky face without realizing it, because Director Lee smiled and pressed an index finger to her lips, as if to say Seeecret.
Tch.
As for an ability to show them...
I thought for a moment, but I didn't really have anything fit to show other people.
I remembered what my sister had told me the first day I went back to school after coming back alive, then shook it off and recalled the common abilities of sensory users I'd seen on the Certifier community.
Special-type detection ability users were split into sensory types and analysis types. Both used the word "sense," and both grasped, in the realm of instinct, the weaknesses of the Aberrants or monsters they detected and passed them on—from the racial weaknesses of the species down to the vulnerabilities of the individual.
But they only detected things in a lumped-together way, like radar or sonar. They couldn't grasp things in fine detail the way I could. So if I used Spatial Perception to find something like a particular illness, wouldn't that do?
I didn't want to scan a man's body, and I didn't want to advertise that I could scan a human body at all. But saying something subtle—you don't look well, you should see a doctor—ought to be fine.
This was absolutely not because I felt inferior to my sister!
I focused Mana Sieve into my eyes and looked at Choi Jinsik. He flinched one shoulder and stared back.
Mmm. The toenails on both feet were a complete mess. Broken, bent, torn. The cartilage in his left knee was half split—had he been in an accident? The muscles in his thighs and lower back were severely knotted, and his spine looked curved, as if he'd been sitting at work for a long time.
His muscles were so full of fatigue toxins he looked ready to break down at any moment. No—his bone density was low, too. He wasn't just about to be worked into the ground. He was one step from actual bone disease. His lungs were packed with nicotine and discolored black, and his heart was so fatigued that his blood moved sluggishly. And there were too many smaller things besides.
Was this what an ordinary office worker looked like? I gave a slight shake of my head and spoke toward Choi Jinsik.
"I'm getting a strong bad feeling from you, Mr. Choi. You ought to get a thorough checkup at a general hospital."
"What do you mean by that..."
Come on, just catch on and don't ask! The mind-reading ghost of an auntie next to me had already caught on!
"Mr. Jung Seoha... Did you sense the aura of illness in Mr. Choi Jinsik's body?"
"From what I saw, his whole body is in bad shape, but his heart, his knee, and his spine are especially bad. Leave it alone and a red light's going to come on."
I hadn't sensed it. I'd seen it. Director Lee's throat bobbed, as if she'd recognized the difference. Choi Jinsik seemed to realize it too. His expression clouded, and he put a hand to his chest.
Beside us, Han Jeongmun pointed it out.
"Mr. Choi. Didn't you say you competed in a triathlon a month ago?"
"Yes..."
"You've looked tired often since that day."
Choi Jinsik said nothing.
"Mr. Choi Jinsik, once today's work is finished, get a thorough examination immediately and submit the diagnosis."
At Hwayeon's order, Choi Jinsik hardened his expression, tensed, and bowed his head.
"Understood, Boss."
A simple demonstration succeeded in winning the trust of Lee Hyeryeong, Han Jeongmun, and Choi Jinsik, and a short while later we arrived at the entrance of the Association building.
The everyday passage—from the guard post watched by heavily armed ability users, through a well-kept garden, to the building's front door—wasn't the high-rank and Returnee entrance I'd used last time, and perhaps because of that the people coming and going were endless. Almost Gangnam Station at rush hour.
We got out, passed the entrance, and reached the long stairs leading to the front door, and a gentleman in his early sixties approached with four men who looked like attendants.
The one who looked oldest... calling him a grandfather didn't quite fit. His eyes were too keen, and he looked a bit young for it. Anyway, the old man met my eyes and spoke.
"Jung Seoha. Would that be you?"
"Yes. I'm Jung Seoha."
"A pleasure to meet you. Her Excellency almost never praises anyone directly, so I was curious what sort of person you might be—and indeed, even from a distance, you are a remarkable boy who stands out. I am Kim Hakjun, Deputy Minister of the Anomalous Ability Innovation Office under the Office for Government Policy Coordination."
Madam had praised me? I didn't think I'd done anything worth praising.
Deputy Minister Kim Hakjun offered his hand with the kindly face of a grandfather, and I took it politely and shook.
Despite my being far younger, the way he used respectful speech and showed me regard carried a gentleman's air, not unlike my own school's principal.
"Good day, Deputy Minister."
Once our greetings were done, Hwayeon gave Deputy Minister Kim a small bow.
"Well, well. Is it truly the young lady? Three years have turned a dawn-damp flower bud into a rose in full bloom. I nearly failed to recognize you. Heh heh heh."
At Kim Hakjun's words, Hwayeon smiled faintly, turned her gaze aside, and spoke again.
"Thank you for coming to our aid in the midst of your affairs. But Mother will have instructed you to win Seoha over, while pretending she had not. You may praise him all you like. There is nothing to be gained."
"Is Her Excellency's appetite for talent not well known?"
"Then I hope you will generously understand our side's checks as well."
"Oh dear. This has become rather difficult. Heh heh heh."
Deputy Minister Kim spoke while smiling with pleasure at Noona's words. A politician to the bone—his way of blurring a thing, pretending and not pretending, was first-rate!
"It is nearly the appointed ten o'clock, so shall we move to the deliberation room, where the old snakes are waiting? I will escort you."
And a smooth change of subject on top of it!
Deputy Minister Kim didn't hide the pleased face of a man looking at a fully grown granddaughter, and started off first. Hwayeon let out a small sigh, took my hand, and headed for the front door of the magnificent building, more than a hundred floors tall.
We split into two groups—Noona, Deputy Minister Kim, and me, and Director Lee with seven others—and moved in a rush, but the area was full of ability users who'd come for Phase World entry permits and people visiting on business, so we didn't particularly stand out. The Association building's pure-white central hall seemed to hold easily over six hundred people, and half of them were ability users, so maybe that was only natural.
I almost never saw ability users in daily life, so it felt a little novel. It didn't feel like Korea.
Following Deputy Minister Kim, I was looking over the dozens of staff and visitors being handled at the long, wide information desk that filled one wall when people who recognized Hwayeon began to appear.
"Huh, the Time River Boss...? She's wearing a skirt?!"
"Didn't Yoo Hwayeon only ever wear pants?"
"She's even prettier in person...? If I could sleep with a woman like that just once, I'd have no regrets."
"What's with the kid next to the Time River Boss? There's blue light coming out of his eyes."
"Senior. Isn't the man with them Deputy Minister Kim Hakjun of the Anomalous Ability Ministry?"
"Yeah. The Time River Boss and a government man visiting the Association together. Something's up."
Tch. Which bastard was that, in the middle? I glared with displeasure at the one who'd run his mouth about sleeping with her once.
The man—leather armor built on blue hide, glossy green scales pasted over the vital points as if to reinforce the defense—saw my blue-glowing eyes, flinched, and turned his head.
Couldn't even meet my eyes, and still talking shit.
A man's beast of a brain is built so that the moment certain keywords enter the strike zone, dirty fantasies start flowing. A normal person doesn't let those fantasies out of his mouth.
I'd respect freedom of thought. Remarks like that, though, dropped in here and there by people who'd plainly eaten their common sense for breakfast—at least I don't say mine out loud—I couldn't stand.
A little irritated, I took Noona's empty hand.
Look, you bastards! I'm this lady's boyfriend! Graaah!
"What. Was he her little brother?"
"A little brother for the Time River Boss? That'd mean he's President Yu Youngeun's kid, wouldn't it? I never heard news like that."
"A nephew? Or a close friend's little brother."
"Oh? Right. I heard the Time River Boss has one close friend."
"Then that kid is...?"
"Must be the best-friend's-little-brother buff."
Th-these jerks were hitting me with facts. Cheap...
More than that, we'd only held hands, and Hwayeon's face was faintly reddening. If I'd so much as put an arm around her waist, she might have died of shame.
Ignoring Director Lee behind us, whose mouth was splitting with a grin as she watched, I made a show of fiddling with Hwayeon's hand—and a conversation that bothered me reached my ears.
"A boy the number-two raid boss in the country and the chairman-cum-deputy-minister of the government's Ability Promotion Committee are accompanying as if to protect him...? He draws the eye."
"And behind them is Lee Hyeryeong. If Time River's lady of the house is on escort duty, this isn't a light matter."
"It may be the appearance of a colossal rookie, the first since Ricartov, the Icefiend of Russia."
"Hasty judgment is forbidden, but... hey, call headquarters, give them that boy's description, and ask if we have anything on him."
There was more than one party having a conversation like that. Had Noona aimed for this?
She looked at me as if to ask why I was staring, so I shook my head.
There were various classes in the hall, and among them an awful lot of ability users at G Class or below. Here and there in a hall that had to be a good ten thousand square feet, people waited while looking at their Certifiers, as if waiting for someone.
The look of them gathered in twos and threes, talking, and the attire of the people moving toward the place marked as the entry elevator, wasn't the clothing of people going off to fight.
I could see I-Class and H Class users carrying backpacks three or four times the size of their torsos, and H Class people with huge packs among groups of five or six.
Low-class ability users hauling unusually large loads... were these the porters Director Lee had mentioned last time?
Back then I'd formed the preconception that they were pitiful people having their labor exploited. Looking now, their expressions weren't those of the exploited, and the people moving with them didn't seem steeped in some chosen-people arrogance, looking down on their supporters.
This was where it differed from the novels.
I tracked the party riding the elevator upward with Spatial Perception. In countless little rooms, each maybe a hundred and eighty square feet, something rippled as ability users vanished and reappeared, over and over.
On the entry side in particular, one person representing the group poured sweat and concentrated intensely, and only after concentrating like that for a long while did they enter the Phase World.
That must be what an ordinary Phase World entry looked like. So you really did have to concentrate that hard to get in.
Just then I caught twenty D-Class ability users entering the Association building in full gear. From their equipment to the state of their consumables, they were on a different level from the ability users loitering in the hall.
Behind them came ten H Class ability users carrying large loads. The H Class users were living support, as expected, bearing packs bigger than themselves, and the packs were stuffed tight without a single gap. I had nothing to say.
Living-support ability users came in all types. Some were physical reinforcement. Others had fire, water, or earth attributes.
I'd thought physical reinforcement would be best for moving heavy loads... but they had to camp, so was that why they brought attribute users along too?
Having cleared entry procedures quickly, they took the team-entry elevator up to the fifth floor and were gone. Floors four and below were entry rooms for small parties, and floor five and above were team-unit entry rooms for raid teams, then?
"What are you looking at?"
I was waiting in front of the business elevator, staring upward, when Hwayeon spoke.
"Upstairs. People keep vanishing and appearing."
Surprise ran through the party. From You can see that? to So he really is the talent Her Excellency covets—admiration, and a slip of jealousy besides.
"So you saw it. Designated Phase World entry sites are, as a rule, inside the Ability User Association building. Those large elevators over there are used to transport ability users."
"Then everyone gathered in the hall right now is waiting to form a temporary group and enter the Phase World?"
"Yes. Gatherers. You can think of a great many materials used in ordinary people's daily lives as things collected by people like them."
"Then what the raid teams bring back?"
"The use is different. A raid team's trading partners are corporations, and so the materials get used heavily as feedstock for secondary and tertiary industry, and for industrial research."
I nodded along with Noona's explanation.
If I hadn't met the imoogi—no, if I hadn't been chased by wolves at the start and gone cliff-diving—I might be squeezed in among those people right about now. And then, taking gathering commissions and popping in and out of the Phase World like them, I'd have been snatched up by Hwayeon and ended up her kept man...
Ahem.
As I chatted amicably with Hwayeon, Director Lee and Deputy Minister Kim watched us with pleased expressions.
I sighed at the sight of Franc, hidden behind a wall with only her head poked out, smiling the exact same way.
Franc was hardly in a position to call Hwayeon stubborn. It hadn't been long since she'd told me to find another woman, but in that time the two of us had shared a great deal, and shared love, and still her thinking hadn't changed.
I was going to have to sit down with Franc and have a serious talk.