Episode 99: Hwayeon's Story 2 (1)

"These two will be with you from now on. Cha Soyoung, and Choi Soohan. Greet them."

I had awakened as an ability user, and I was training in the hall built into the basement of the house, trying to adapt to a body that had been reinforced. Mother brought the two of them down and introduced them there.

...What a bother.

"How many times have I told you not to let your feelings show on your face? You still haven't broken that habit?"

At Mother's frost-edged rebuke I wiped the expression away and turned my eyes to the pair standing behind her. Cha Soyoung, long hair tied loosely back, a calm impression. Choi Soohan, shaggy-haired, looking optimistic to a fault. I looked them over for a moment, then bowed my head.

"...Yoo Hwayeon. E-Class physical reinforcement ability user."

"Cha Soyoung. Elemental type, D-Class."

"I'm Choi Soohan! I'm E-Class physical reinforcement too!"

True to the impression she gave, Cha Soyoung returned a silent bow without so much as a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠change of face. Choi Soohan waved, bright and easy, in a voice gone a little raspy.

A sloppy grin. Nothing you could even set beside Seoha's.

Choi Soohan looked sheepish a moment later and lowered her hand.

"Cha Soyoung is a prospect of Hwarang. Choi Soohan is the observer the World Phase Ability User Association dispatched to watch you. Get along."

I had a feeling I could get along with Cha Soyoung well enough. Choi Soohan, I did not.

"You are to wear these. Without fail."

A few days later, while I was learning combat techniques in the training hall with the two of them, Mother stopped by again and handed me a pair of black masses. Large, heavy forearm guards, covering from the wrist to just below the elbow.

I strapped them on, whatever they were made of, and a solid weight settled over both arms. If even I, a physical reinforcement user, could feel that weight, it would certainly put force behind a strike.

"Not when you sleep. Not when you wash. Do not take them off your body. Wear them twenty-four hours a day."

She offered no further explanation. She asked Cha Soyoung and Choi Soohan how they were finding life here, took their greetings, and left the hall. The moment she was gone, Choi Soohan slung an arm over my shoulder as if we were already close.

"Whoa, whoa? Those look crazy tough! Armor? Or a weapon?"

When we were first introduced I had taken her for a boy. Choi Soohan was a girl as well. She had walked in while I was changing in the locker room, and I hit her without hesitating; I only learned the truth when she, insisting it was unfair, pulled her pants down to show me. Six years my elder, she was a physical reinforcement user of D+ aptitude, and her character was as unpretentious and lively as her looks—nothing that fit with mine. Cha Soyoung was the opposite. Taciturn and careful, just as she appeared, and she listened to other people in earnest. The sort of person I could trust with my back, if I took her as a comrade. I liked her.

"Forearm guards."

"Whoa, it's like they swallow light. This is what they call Bentablack, right? Black like that—these have to be a Phase World specialty, don't they?"

She reached out as she spoke and touched the guard covering my whole forearm. I shook the hand off.

"Vantablack. Continue the spar."

"Huh? Ah—w-wait, just a second!"

There was no need for words.

By day I studied at school. The moment regular classes ended I left to learn Hwarang's work, got off at eight in the evening, came home, and trained through the night in the basement hall with Cha Soyoung and Choi Soohan. Becoming a physical reinforcement user had let me cut my sleep to two hours without it touching what I could do, and I liked very much that the day had grown longer.

In the middle of training, a call came in from Siha.

We were still talking when Cha Soyoung and Choi Soohan blinked at me.

"What."

I shut off the Certifier to the sound of Siha's encouragement, and Choi Soohan came over with surprise written on her face. Cha Soyoung approached behind her.

"Whoa. First time I've seen you make a face like that. So you were a person after all!"

I had no idea what this woman was saying. If I wasn't a person, what did she think I was?

"I see you in a new light as well."

But Cha Soyoung was a woman from whom it was hard to hear five words in a day, and the faintly surprised look on her left me a little ashamed.

"...It's because she's a precious friend."

"A friend one can open one's heart to is precious indeed."

"Oh! If I become your friend, you'll make that face for me too?!"

Cha Soyoung was a composed adult. Looking at flighty Choi Soohan, a sigh rose in me.

A few months later, the Early Entry Permit issued by the World Phase Ability User Association arrived. On Mother's orders, I began to operate in earnest with Hwarang.

"All right. From here on, Miss Yoo Hwayeon, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the President's child, will be with us as well. Young lady, a word, if you would."

At the words of Boss Park Jiwoong—Hwarang's boss, in that easy, open voice of his—I stepped up onto the platform. Looking down, I found hundreds of men and women watching me, faces full of curiosity and goodwill.

"Yoo Hwayeon. E-Class physical reinforcement ability user."

I kept it short. Whispers rose from below the platform.

"Incredible. Only fourteen, and already E-Class."

"I know. She really is President Yu Youngeun's child. A first awakening, and it starts at F-Class."

"She looks so much like the President. She really is her daughter."

"When she grows up, don't you think she'll be as beautiful as Her Excellency?"

I gave a slight bow and stepped back.

"...Huh? What. That's it?"

"She's... kind of cold."

"What was that..."

A brief silence hung, and then the murmuring began to swell. Boss Park Jiwoong stepped forward and raised his voice.

"Hey, hey. Enough. Quiet! ...Miss Yoo Hwayeon will, from now on, here in our Hwarang..."

Even from Boss Park Jiwoong, who looked like the ordinary uncle from next door, the voice that came out carried his fluster.

"That was one seriously short introduction. Hehe. Hwayeon, look, look. See how thrown they are!"

Choi Soohan cackled and jabbed my arm with her elbow. Cha Soyoung only met my eyes once as I came back down. She stood there, unruffled.

Boss Park Jiwoong had started in on something, and Choi Soohan at my left seemed to be talking to me as well, but all that circled in my head was what Siha had told me the night before.

She had called in a tearful voice, sobbing that Seoha had fallen ill.

"What are you thinking about? It's over, so let's head back."

Choi Soohan tugged my collar, and that pulled me out of it. I looked around. Everyone else had cleared out. Only Cha Soyoung, Choi Soohan, and I were left.

"...Let's go."

Some time later I heard through Siha that Seoha had fully recovered. Until then, though, neither training nor work would stay in my hands, and Mother scolded me severely once again.

It was the same kind of scolding as always, no different from any other day, but today a flame seemed to rise in my chest. Then the words she added at the end turned that flame into a question.

Boss? A boss—what boss? Is she thinking of setting me up as Hwarang's boss?

"I apologize. I will work harder."

Hwarang's boss? She wants me to become her hands and feet?

...This was something I would have to think over more carefully.

For a while, the same life repeated. On weekdays I learned Phase World intelligence and Hwarang's duties by heart. On the night before a holiday I followed an entering team into the Phase World, spent thirty-five hours killing Aberrants, absorbing Phase Power, and gathering materials, returned on Monday morning, and went straight to school.

Then came the first break after I joined Hwarang. I began going out with Boss Park Jiwoong on raids against High-Rank Variants, and the fatigue piled up at a brutal pace. If I had not met Siha on the occasional day off—eaten with her, heard how Seoha was—I would not have held on.

While that monotonous life went on repeating, my looks met a change so violent that the word upheaval fit. My face changed until even Siha, who was poor at empty praise, called me pretty. The frame that had been out of balance set itself right, and I grew taller.

In a single year my chest grew until it was the size of a baby's head. Had it not been for Seoha's tastes—which Siha, envying me, had let slip by accident—breasts grown this large would only have been in the way, and they would only have annoyed me.

"Does Seoha really like big breasts?"

"Ugh... he teases me every single day, saying a chest flat as asphalt isn't a woman's, and if you look at the dirty books he hides, or how he acts the rest of the time, there's no question."

"I see."

I believed the reason Seoha had rejected me was my appearance, so even on ordinary days I paid attention to how I looked. As I kept up the care needed to hold onto my changed face and figure, the people making eyes at me, or confessing, multiplied—inside Hwarang and at school alike. But there was only one boy in my heart, and so that attention did nothing but irritate me.

Enough that I wanted to kick them away.

There was even a morning when I had stayed up the night clearing backed-up work, gone to school, and been confessed to at the main entrance by a boy whose name I didn't know.

"Shut up and get lost."

He said he had liked me, and held out a letter. I didn't look at it. I tore it up in front of the boy doing the confessing and went back to the classroom—and all that came back to me from the people around was that I was proud, that I was haughty. No one cursed me for the way I had acted.

I was an ability user. My mother was an ability user, and the President. There would be no one bold enough to curse me to my face.

...If I received a letter from Seoha, I would be so happy.

I kept sleeping two hours a day and running that hamster wheel of a life until I entered high school at sixteen. Knowledge of the Phase World piled up, and in two years I went from E-Class to C-Class.

The moment I became C-Class, Mother took the forearm guards back. I heard later that two Superior-grade Phase Stones had been set into the inside of each—four in all. She must have meant to hurry my growth with them.

In that time my post in Hwarang rose as far as vice-captain, and because I had worked at the core, I gained a general knowledge of how a raid team was run.

By then I understood precisely what Mother expected of me.

I had the aptitude to grow as far as B-Class, so she meant to raise me that far, seat me in Hwarang's boss's chair, and use me as the power at her back.

The current boss of Hwarang, Park Jiwoong, was a C-Class sensory-type ability user, a man with an analysis ability. The ability itself was enough to lead a raid team, but his character was not that of a man who could command a group. So she would have meant to raise me, and set me in the boss's seat.

But my relationships with people had gone past strain. They were warping.

In Hwarang, no one took issue with my leadership or with my results, but more and more people disliked my methods, and more and more pointed at my unsociable character. Choi Soohan, too, inserted herself into everything I did, and the friction between us grew frequent.

And on the day I passed beyond D-Class and became C-Class, I collided with Choi Soohan in earnest.

"I'm saying you're too insensitive and too cold! Look around you a little! People got hurt because of you again today! It almost turned into a death!"

"In the Phase World, injuries are an everyday thing. So long as they don't die, a recovery ability user treats them. There's no problem."

"So long as they don't die, that's enough?! That's not it! What do you think the people fighting beside you are?!"

"Team members."

"Wrong! They're comrades! Comrades you can trust with your back when it's dangerous, and fight alongside!"

"If that's your definition of a comrade, then they fall short of the name."

"What?! Then—then I'm not your comrade either?!"

"An exemplary comrade would be someone like Cha Soyoung. You fall short of the standard in every part of it. Focus. Judgment. Will. Drive."

"......!!"

Choi Soohan had risen to D-Class right after she met me, but after that her growth seemed to stop. She stayed at the early end of D-Class, and her Phase Power barely increased at all. She must have struck the limit of her aptitude. Cha Soyoung, by comparison, was growing slowly but steadily, and now stood on the verge of C-Class.

Out of inferiority, Choi Soohan must have been jealous of me.

"No..."

"...?"

"This isn't it. You... You don't have any humanity in you."

"Business has no need for something like humanity."

"...You know what? You're a genuinely unpleasant bitch. One of these days, that attitude of yours is going to make you cry tears of blood!"

Having poured the abuse out, Choi Soohan ran from the training hall with tears standing in her eyes.

Cha Soyoung, who had been watching, let out a sigh. Choi Soohan left the hall, and after that she did not come back.

The supervisory observer the Association had dispatched was gone, and I thought they would send another. They did not. Instead I was told they would introduce a buddy, and that by continuing with her, my permission to enter the Phase World would be maintained.

And today, the buddy arrived.

"Hello~? I am Sophia Adelberg, I am~."

The person who appeared before me was a Western woman, with a faint accent and a peculiar way of speaking.

Sophia Adelberg was smiling and smiling at me, and for a moment I wondered if she was the same sort of person as Choi Soohan. She was similar to Choi Soohan, and nothing like her at all.

"It's an honor to meet the most talked-about person in Korea~."

"I look forward to working with you."

"Oh my~? What a cold reaction~! Did something unpleasant happen, did it~?"

...Was it showing, that I still hadn't forgotten Choi Soohan throwing those words at me and leaving?

"No. Miss Adelberg."

"Oh my~ I don't like a form of address that keeps such distance. Won't you call me So-phi-a, nice and close?"

She didn't seem a bad person, but the glitter in her blue eyes carried a hint of mischief.

"...Let me introduce you. This is Cha Soyoung, a dealer with Hwarang. An elemental D-Class ability user."

"Pleased to meet you. Sophia Adelberg."

I had turned the talk because I felt uncomfortable, and offered Cha Soyoung instead. Adelberg pushed her lips out in a sulky look, then soon gave Cha Soyoung a slight smile of the eyes and greeted her.

"Nice to meet you~ I am Sophia, a D-Class long-range healer~."

A healer. To introduce a precious long-range recovery ability user as a buddy—what was the Association intending?

A buddy, as I had heard it, was an ability-user system that began in Britain. Where individualism ran rampant among ability users, its purpose was to improve their relationships—literally to bind suitable people as friends, and have them keep one another's company over a long time.

In the meantime Miss Adelberg exchanged a few words with Cha Soyoung, then turned and looked at me.

"I am a C-Class physical reinforcement user."

"Okaaay~ Please take good care of me, yes~!"

Hhk. Wh-what is this woman doing!

"This is an affectionate greeting from my country, you know?"

She pushed her small lips forward and brought her face close, so I covered my mouth with my hand. Did this woman not even know shame?

"Aww~ Refusing a greeting is rude, it is~!"

"Kh. A k-kiss—where is there a greeting where people kiss!"

"My country, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it is!"

Even when I put on a cold face, Miss Adelberg tried to force the contact anyway. As I pushed her off, Cha Soyoung, beside us, let a small smile show.

"...Heh."

D-don't laugh. Helping would be the decent thing.

A few days later, I learned that Miss Adelberg had a character without a single gap in it, however loose her behavior looked.

Long-range recovery had its faults. The farther the distance, the more the heal's accuracy fell, and if an Aberrant stood between her and the target, she could not heal at all. Miss Adelberg seemed to have nothing to do with those limits. Her accuracy was high, she had the stamina to sustain it, and her management of resources was skilled besides.

With a sociable character the exact opposite of mine, she planted her feet inside Hwarang quickly. Her skill at handling people was excellent as well, and before long she drew enough favor within Hwarang to acquire the nickname Angel of Healing. I, too, came to acknowledge her, and quickly.