Episode 95: Me, Franc, and Yeoni (4)
……
……??
Huh?
What the hell. I only closed my eyes for a second, and the world around me was pitch black.
I blinked up at a ceiling faint with moonlight, then turned my head. Franc was asleep beside me, her body lighting up in fits and starts. I checked the time, careful not to wake her. It was past three in the morning.
"Holy shit."
What? Where did my twelve hours go?
Don't tell me Dad had actually been right. I hadn't caught on at all, but had my mind been pulled taut, all the way to its limit?
Unbelievable. I'd felt completely fine, and all I'd done was shut my eyes for a moment, and I'd slept twelve hours like the dead. So what did it even feel like, when a mind screwed that tight finally came undone?
I tilted my head, decided that at a time like this the surest method of relaxation was the correct answer, and rolled over toward Franc.
A feast for the eyes, and good for my mental health... or was it bad for it? Either way, that perfect nude body — the kind that made me happy just to look at — was glittering like a firefly.
Franc under a bright sun was pretty enough to knock your eyes out, but Franc glowing alone in the dead of night was beautiful enough to drop your jaw. If the phrase the more you look, the lovelier she gets had ever been coined for anyone, it had been coined for her. I let my gaze travel her statue-carved nakedness, the places that dipped in and the places that swelled, and all at once a worry surged up.
I'd found a way to fill Franc's Soul Stone with TP. The method was the problem. If I went into heat like I'd swallowed an aphrodisiac every time I charged TP, that would be trouble.
Trouble for Franc, not for me! What did I have to be troubled about?
I'd learned it by living through it that day. Move Phase Power with Mana Sieve and drive it into my cock, and down there, into the seminal vesicles, and it was an absolute jackpot. The kind of effect every man alive would want. I got bigger, and semen production multiplied by hundreds of times. Thousands.
An ordinary man comes, loses his strength, and drops straight into sage time. Apply this, and semen keeps being made without end, and sage time might as well be somebody else's problem. No matter how excited Franc got, no matter how many times she went into heat, I could take all of it.
The problem was that doing it that way meant the semen carried Phase Power. A small amount, but still. And the aftereffects that came with it. So far nothing was wrong, and even when I looked my body over with Spatial Perception there wasn't a bad sign... so I could assume nothing bad would come of it, right? Every ability user had Phase Power anyway.
Hmm. When I'd come inside Franc's throat, the semen had glowed blue. That would have been the Phase Power soaked into it. Every time she took it she'd trembled like she'd been electrocuted, and maybe the Phase Power in the semen had been stimulating her spirit body.
Wait. Thinking back to when I'd gone for her throat, her inner organs were formed too, and she could feel. Did she feel pain? If her spirit body was cut, or attacked, what happened then?
I'd have to ask when morning came.
I looked at the slender line of her neck, then lay flat and stretched my left hand up, meaning to move Phase Power through Mana Sieve... and concentrated the Mana Sieve itself.
Mana Sieve. The power that let me touch Franc, and let me move the Phase Power inside my body however I pleased, so I could use other types of abilities too. The Phase Power that had been sitting quiet inside me gathered into my left hand. A water-light flowed across it for a moment, then began to condense, shedding blue radiance. The room dyed itself in rippling water-light, like an aquarium tunnel with the lamps switched off, and the feeling turned strange.
Dreamlike enough that I might get sentimental, maybe. Or was it just that my sensitivity was climbing?
Hmm. I'd thought a dark room flooded with water-light would feel a little horror-movie. It didn't feel like that at all.
What was it again. The reason horror films use so much blue lighting is that if you look at blue for a long time, it calms you. Settles you. Red does the opposite — your heart rate climbs and you get worked up. So they flash red and blue in turn, shake people's nerves loose, and then the ghost shows up and scares the hell out of them. That's the pattern. Which was also why they said women wore red clothes, red lipstick, red underwear, when they wanted to charm a man.
...Why was I thinking about this.
Anyway, filling the room with water-light felt like slipping into warm, gentle water, and that wasn't bad. No. Not merely not bad. It was pretty good.
I thought of moving the Mana Sieve I'd condensed to its limit and sending it out through my fingertips, and beads of blue liquid welled up at the tips of my fingers and began to run down my arm. The sensation was strangely wondrous. Water, and yet not like water at all.
The moment I thought I ought to absorb it, the stuff slowly trailing down my arm — was this TP, or Phase Power? It was different from the Phase Power spread through the air, so TP? — sank into my arm in an instant.
I let a little TP trickle out again, concentrated Mana Sieve into my eyes, and looked. The color seemed like blue mixed with water-light. I released the Mana Sieve and looked plainly, and only the blue remained. Moving it and looking back and forth, blue and water-color were definitely distinct.
Gathering Mana Sieve in the eyes. I ought to call this Mana Vision.
Mindlessly, I let TP spill like a little fountain and absorbed it just as it was about to drip off my arm, over and over. Maybe because the blue light dyeing the room wavered with the motion, Franc gave a small twitch and began to wake. A bright gold that didn't glare spread from her whole body, then the light sank away. She opened her eyes and looked at me.
"Seoha, you're awake."
"Yeah. Did I sleep the whole twelve hours straight? From the moment Noona started patting my chest?"
"It's... three in the morning. Yes. Your sister began to pat your chest, and you closed your eyes and sank straight into a deep sleep. She was terribly startled."
"She was? That's weird."
"What is it that you find strange?"
"I wasn't tired at all, and I closed my eyes for a second and opened them and twelve hours were gone. Felt like not even one second passed."
"Ah. Hehe. That would mean both body and mind were worn to that degree. It was the same when I trained as a knight. Once a seven-day simulated combat march with no sleep at all was over, everyone slept like the dead."
"Seven days without a single wink... Still, I wasn't anywhere near that. It was only two days."
"You were an ordinary high school student, Seoha. And for those two days you hardly slept, and you spent yourself on worry. After that you slept only four hours before you were taken straight before those wicked people for a review..."
More than that, I submit that it was because I poured a great deal of mental strength into pseudo-sexual acts with Franc!
...But I can't say that to Franc. Hehe.
Anyway. Everyone who'd given me a hard time got a wicked-person sticker from Franc.
"When did you fall asleep?"
"After your family fell asleep, I slept as well. But what are you doing, holding your left hand up?"
Whoa. She shifted, laid her head on my arm, and asked while using it as a pillow. Come to think of it, I'd been swept up in Hwayeon's antics, flustered and startled, and hadn't talked with Franc since.
"If I send TP out from my fingertips, it runs down my arm, and it was weirdly fun, so — the room's full of water-light right now. How does it look to you?"
Franc lifted her head a little, looked at my left hand, glanced around, and shook her head.
"I can see the blue shining from your left hand, but the room is dark, isn't it?"
Hmm? She could see the glow of the TP, but not the water-light filling the room?
"TP's running down. You can't see that either?"
"Pardon? Hmm... Ah! I can see it!"
"You can see the TP, but not the water-light..."
So the water-light was something only I could see, and the TP drawn out through Mana Sieve was visible to everyone? Then any ability that put out blue light, I'd better use while minding other people's eyes.
"Your Mana Sieve truly is remarkable, Seoha. You can move Phase Power however you please."
"That's because you gave it the name Mana Sieve. Anyway, something I was thinking earlier. When I touch you, you can feel it, right?"
"Yes."
She'd gone briefly shy at the flattery, but at the question that followed she blinked and nodded.
"Then do you have a sense of pain, too? If you were attacked, and some part of your spirit body got cut..."
At the worry on my face she tilted her head, then opened her mouth.
"Then shall we test it?"
"Test it? How?"
"You concentrate Mana Sieve in your hand, Seoha, and pluck a single strand of my hair."
"Oh. There's a way like that."
I reached out with the hand where Mana Sieve was gathered, gently caught one strand of her platinum hair, and pulled.
"?!"
The instant it came free, the platinum strand turned to light and was absorbed into her body.
"Mm. I don't feel a thing."
I checked her face at once. She wasn't lying on purpose, afraid I'd worry.
"So the reason you could feel touch was my Mana Sieve?"
"If you consider that others cannot touch me, and that even you could not touch me before, that would seem to follow."
No sense of pain was a relief. Franc was defenseless against an attack, and if she got hurt and suffered, I didn't think I could bear it either.
She laid her head on my arm again, drew a little closer, lifted a hand, and stroked my chest, light and slow.
"Sleep again. It is still night, so it would be better if you rested a little more."
"Before that, I need to finish talking with you. We got swept up in what Hwayeon did, and we never wrapped the conversation up."
"Yes?"
"Noona Hwayeon acknowledged you too. And she isn't going to leave me. So you change your mind as well, and become my woman. Quietly."
"Nnh..."
"I caught your heart in that anxious look you showed for a second. You had my heart all to yourself, and you got scared of what you'd do if I up and left. That was it, wasn't it?"
"Auuu. Seoha, you cannot truly read minds, can you...?"
"I can see it because I love you."
"A-ah."
Franc flushed red, as if ashamed, and buried her face against my side.
"I feel bad toward you. I meant to love only you, and then I went and snatched up Hwayeon too... But I won't give my heart to any other women now. I'll live looking only at you and Hwayeon."
I concentrated Mana Sieve through my body, pulled hard at her waist, and gathered her into my arms.
"S-Seoha..."
"Are you going to find another excuse and refuse me again?"
"...N-no."
"You'll be my woman, then? Nicely?"
"Yes... I will..."
Franc buried her face in my chest, one tear slipping free, her voice wet with crying, her face gone red.
"Good. No matter what happens, I won't give you up. I love you, Franc."
"I love you too. Seoha."
I held the Franc who had shed that single tear tight against me, and buried my nose in the crown of her head. And even now, a guy like me was getting distracted by the feel of her breasts crushing against my chest...
Anyway, that was done. She wouldn't go on acting like an outsider with no tie to me. It had ended well. I was glad.
"You smell like apples. When we kissed, there was the sweet taste of apples too. It's strange."
"Huuu... I'm a spirit body, you know?"
"But it really is apple. Now that I think about it, Hwayeon earlier smelled like plum, and tasted like plum."
"Could that also be an effect of Mana Sieve?"
"Huh? Hmm. Could be."
I lifted my left hand and gently wiped the tear trailing at the corner of her eye.
"So don't cry anymore. Just trust me and follow, and—"
"A-ah?!"
Huh? Franc's eyes flew open, and she started whipping her head around. Then she shut her left eye, looked over my arms and the room with only the right, did the reverse with only the left, and spoke as if astonished.
"I-I can see it! The water-light faintly lighting the room!"
"Huh? How?"
"Ah! You were sending TP out of your left hand, weren't you, Seoha? Might it be because that hand stroked my eyes?"
...Wait, what?!
"There really was a little trace of TP still left on my hand."
I concentrated Phase Power at the tips of my left fingers again and started sending TP out, and a small sound of wonder escaped her.
"Aaah! How can a light be so beautiful..."
Hn? Was the blue she saw just by looking a little different from the blue I saw? At this point I was starting to wonder what my Mana Sieve ability even was.
"..."
For a moment I smeared the TP welling on my left hand across my own eyes.
Blink. Blink.
"Nothing's happening?"
"Might that be because it is your ability?"
"I just drew Phase Power out and put it on. ...The color and the attribute of my Phase Power don't seem any different from other ability users'. Weird."
"Even thinking of the Energy Eater, I believe that is your ability! The effect was surely there before it became Mana Sieve — you simply hadn't noticed!"
The Energy Eater whose trait had changed, she meant? Hmm... Franc, thoroughly excited, asked me to apply TP to her right eye as well, so I daubed it over the eyelid.
"Kyaa...?"
And then Franc's eyes went wide, and she stared at me in a daze, face rapt, mind gone.
"A-ah... Seoha, are you an angel...?"
Guh! Did she catch a dose of Noona's rose-colored glasses?
She gazed at me in bliss, then slowly pushed herself up, climbed over me, and looked down. I looked up at her, dazed myself, and she slowly began to nuzzle her cheek against my chest.
"Haaa."
Eyes closed, face flushed, rubbing her cheek against my chest in little strokes, she looked truly blissful. In that instant I caught one fact, and swallowed.
Everyone's asleep right now, so if it's now...!
I reached out with both hands and grabbed Franc's marshmallow ass, and my fingers sank into that lush backside, and the feel of it was insane.
"You mustn't!"
Smack!
"Ack?!"
Franc slapped the hand I'd put on her ass, looked down at me with the face of someone scolding a son — no, a little brother — and said,
"You are tired right now, Seoha, so anything that would make you more tired is forbidden."
Tch. So she hadn't been sexually excited. Just emotionally worked up! I stuck my lip out, sullen, and Franc burst into a soft laugh and gave me a quick peck.
"Once your body is healthy, I will do whatever you desire. Until then, you must endure. Understood?"
"...Anything?"
"Yes."
"Then you'll... let me have sex, too?"
"Nnh."
At the blunt question Franc looked as if she might die of shame, buried her face in my chest, then peeked up at me with only her eyes and answered.
"I-I will..."
That face, shy and embarrassed, looking up at me, sent excitement surging until I thought I'd lose my mind. My cock swelled in an instant, and the sensation of it poking her lower belly through my pajamas came through, and I could hardly stand it.
"Nn. Fraaanc."
If I whine and feel her up, maybe she'll pretend she lost and let me!
I grinned.
I lewdly kneaded the ass caught in my hands, and Franc smiled, bright and bright, scattered a radiant ring of light, and went into the Soul Stone.
"...W-wait, wait, wait?! No! I won't! I won't feel you up, I won't knead, so come back out!"
A flare of light.
I stared blankly at her nude form being born as gold light gathered in the air, and presently Franc, bared before my eyes, face flushed, smiled and smiled and said,
"I go about naked like this, so I cannot help that you... look. But until you are healthy, excessive contact with certain places is forbidden!"
"That's—!"
If I said it was unfair, didn't she rub her breasts on me and touch me too... she'd probably cut back on even that much skinship. So then—!
"And if you touch my Soul Stone directly and force me into hea— into arousal, I will not come out of the Soul Stone for a whole day!"
Kuh. She'd seen through me?!
"Franc, that's too mean."
I put on a face that genuinely meant it, and Franc, who had been floating in the air looking down at me, smiled bitterly, lay down using my arm as a pillow, and said,
"Which is why, once you are healthy, I will do everything you wish then... You are a good boy, Seoha, so you can make me that promise, can't you?"
Ngh. Put like that, I couldn't refuse. Then what mattered was making the vague promise more precise.
"And what's the standard for healthy?"
Asked, Franc stopped, unable to answer. I watched her through narrowed eyes, and she started avoiding my gaze, flustered.
"You didn't think that far."
"Urk. I-I will go by whatever Father judges to be healthy!"
"...Fine. I can accept that much. Father, though? If Dad heard you call him that, he'd be thrilled he's suddenly got two daughters-in-law."
"Eek?!"
Only then seeming to realize what she'd said, Franc buried her face in my side and started flailing.
A shame I couldn't do it right away, but the moment Dad said I was healthy I could get straight to the heh-heh-heh with Franc, so I'd better work at getting healthy fast!
I wanted to with Hwayeon too, but somehow, judging by Noona's reaction, that probably wasn't happening until I was at least nineteen...
Thinking about it, I got a little sulky, and for a while I poked Franc in the side, put on a crying face, tormented her while she resisted weakly, and then sought sleep.
"...oha."
"Seoha..."
"Seoha, get up!"
"Nn."
"Seoha..."
"Nn...?"
"Seoha, get up!"
"Huh... Noona?"
"You up? Eat breakfast, then sleep a little more."
I opened my eyes, and Noona's face was there in front of me, looking sorry. Maybe she felt bad for waking me by force — she was stroking my forehead. Franc was sitting beside me too, awake at some point.
Had Franc stayed beside me the whole time without sleeping?
"I'll get up."
My head felt strangely blank. I pushed the blanket aside and sat up on the bed, still a little out of it, and when I closed my eyes Noona asked, worried,
"What's wrong? You feeling sick?"
Through Spatial Perception I could see Franc wearing a worried look, so I deliberately opened my mouth as if I were perfectly calm.
"I think I just slept too much. I can't seem to come to."
"You're tired, that's all. Sleep a little more and you'll be fine."
I wanted to eat breakfast and go see the Time River Building... If I did, Noona would go past worry and get angry. If I opened my eyes to answer, I'd be found out, so I just answered simply.
"...Yeah."
But through Spatial Perception I could see her shooting me a sidelong look! What, she noticed?!
"You're thinking of going to Hwayeon, aren't you? I'm calling to tell her you'll come after lunch, so don't even dream of heading out this morning."
"Wha— how did you know?!"
I jerked my eyes open in surprise and looked at Noona, and she wore a face that said knew it, and gave me a knuckle-flick that all but failed to actually touch my head.
"It's obvious what you're thinking! Go out this morning and I will not let it slide! Got it?"
"Got it..."
I'd just hug Franc and roll around in bed and look at the Authenticator. Come to think of it, a few mails had come in, hadn't they?
I washed my face and went out to the living room, and Dad was in the exact same spot as yesterday, in the exact same posture, reading the paper. A few books were stacked on the low table in front of him. Once he finished the paper, he meant to read those too, apparently. Even if it was work, reading nothing but books like that had to be insanely exhausting.
I sat on the floor across from him and looked over the front page of the paper he was holding, and Mom, who'd been cooking in the kitchen, spoke up.
"Son. How are you feeling?"
"Good, I think. I slept a lot."
Her eyes were a little worried. Show a weak side now and the overprotection system would kick in immediately. I wasn't particularly fond of that.
"Not long after you fell asleep, your mother came to see you."
Huh? She did? So if there was no hostility, it didn't tell me no matter who came close? Surprisingly sloppy.
I was scratching my head when Dad turned a page of the paper and said,
"That much fatigue had built up in your unconscious."
"But after I made it back alive, I spent nine days in the hospital doing nothing but loafing and eating."
"Lying around with no purpose fatigues mind and body too. The best thing is a regular life and healthy eating habits, and going back to an ordinary life."
Remembering the condition Franc had set in the night, I asked Dad.
"So I'm not healthy?"
Dad glanced at me once at the question, and said, still expressionless, voice low,
"How could you be healthy."
Tch.
Franc was standing beside Dad with her arms crossed, chest pushed forward.
"See? I told you!"
Told to look at that, and all I could see was Franc's chest?
Breakfast wasn't ready until twenty minutes after I'd come out to the living room. I'd thought it was taking a while — she'd been making abalone porridge.
Eating the porridge and the vegetable salad she'd prepared with care, I flattered her that it tasted better than the VVIP cuisine at the Redcon Hotel, and she broke into a beaming smile, thoroughly delighted.
Jing—.
After I finished breakfast and helped Mom and Noona clear the table, I went into my room and turned on the Authenticator, and a new-mail alert came up.
"Ah! It's the reply to the text I sent fallsexmachine!"
Franc, interest piqued, plastered herself against my back and stared a hole through the hologram. I was curious too, so I tapped it quickly and checked the contents.
So they hadn't seen a spirit? I couldn't tell whether the person couldn't use one, didn't use one, or simply didn't have one. The writing looked a bit half-assed, but I'd sent a half-assed text myself, so I was in no position to complain.
"Mmm. Yeah, I should probably look into it on my own."
"Yes."
Franc didn't seem particularly disappointed. Had she not expected much?
I tried searching the keyword spirit for a moment, but only useless junk about evil spirits, ghosts, and folklore monsters came up, so I closed all of it and tapped the contract-fee and Energy Eater capture-bounty mail again.
Both had come from Director Lee Hyeryeong.
Wow. Hwayeon had said she expected seven hundred million, and four hundred million more than that had come in? And honestly, I still didn't really understand what the contract fee was even for... If I thought of it as money paid so I wouldn't go anywhere else, was that it?
I had no intention of transferring, of course, but I was curious whether I'd have to pay the whole contract fee back if I ever left Time River.
"Th-that, I don't really know either. I'm sorry."
I asked Franc, but even Franc, knight that she'd been, didn't know this part.
I dug around on the internet for a bit. A contract fee, it said, was when you made some contract and paid ten percent up front as a prepayment, and once the deal went through you paid the remaining ninety... Huh? This didn't seem to match my case.
Oh. Was it like pro athletes? I looked up athlete contract fees for a moment, and it said the contract fee was received only once, and the salary was received every year.
"So it's a yardstick for how much I'm worth, I guess."
"Ah. So it was a meaning similar to Knight Potential."
"Huh?"
"Many of Britain's knights are retainers belonging to a particular house, but there are also many free knights who receive a set compensation and take part in raids. Those free knights have a Potential attached to them, and the higher this Potential, the greater the pay they can receive."
"Hoh. So that was a thing."
Anyway. At eighteen, without having done a single thing, I'd made 6.1 billion won? On ability alone?
Heh heh heh heh.
I laughed, sly and filthy, and Franc smiled awkwardly and wrapped her arms around my neck.
There was a lot of money in my account now, but thinking it would all go out as a fine before long made my stomach twist. Still, there wasn't anything I particularly wanted to do with it...
No driver's license, so I couldn't buy a car. Practicing my ability was more fun than games, and my life had basically become a comic now anyway. Romance novels? I had Franc and Hwayeon. Porn and dirty comics? Franc's body...
I swallowed.
The feel of Franc's breasts against the back of my neck pulled a laugh out of me on its own.
Anyway, no use for it right this second, but it was nice to have.
A reference note was pinned to the bottom of the message.
"That's quite a lot of tax."
I couldn't accept it, so I sent Director Lee Hyeryeong a text.
Tirong.
Send!
And I tapped the Time River organization chart and started to look through it.