The Library Committee Chair (2)

Bihyung stared in silence at the Main Story hanging in the air before him.

Didn't see this coming.

It had begun with the message that surfaced when he folded Mina into the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts, and with the fortuitous encounter of Lore he had seized this time, the two of them together had given birth to this.

Neither the name nor the content of the Main Story is set... Nothing like this ever happened in the game.

Even the veterans, who never knew when to shut up, had never once opened their mouths about it. Which meant it was something even they had failed to reach.

No information on how I'm supposed to clear it.

Still, he thought he understood one thing.

Derivative stories.

They were the extra stories that trailed after every step he took. Gather them, resolve them, and the Main Story would probably clear itself along the way.

The guest's taken the host's seat.

Once, the Main Story had come first, and a derivative story was the sort of quest you could clear or ignore as you pleased. Now, if he wanted to push the Main Story forward, he had no choice but to turn his eyes to the branches. The reversal was ridiculous. It also, in its own way, felt like it had worked out.

Either way, they said it would become the soil for Lore.

A cold light sharpened in Bihyung's eyes as he picked up his phone. The Library Committee Chair had said she was looking for him, hadn't she? It smelled like a derivative story.

A little time passed.

The phone rang, a bright little trill.

"Hello?"

The instant he answered, a strangely sweet breath poured into his ear.

Ugh. My ear's getting damp.

"...Hello?"

He tried again, and this time an answer came.

Bihyung hung up at once. Then he stared a hole straight through the screen.

"Tch. It's not a spam call from some anomaly, though."

What was this supposed to be?

More time passed, and another call came.

"Yes. Senior."

She seemed to have settled a little, and now the Library Committee Chair was mortified by the black mark on her history. He understood. Everyone went through a phase of wanting to show off some other version of themselves. Even if the result was that he'd learned about the chair's rather damp hobby, it had nothing in particular to do with him.

Bihyung laughed, bright and easy.

"Yes. I'll respect it."

The chair lost even her usual leisure and, in a flustered rush, spilled the whole of the incident to him.

"So you're saying it was because of the curse."

"Something that had stopped for a while started seizing again, and that sound came out of you before you knew it. That's what you're telling me."

Was he supposed to believe this?

Her seizures were supposed to be pain like something stabbing straight through the meridians.

So what had happened, that a seizure now came out as a heated, panting breath? He turned it over, wondering whether he himself had done something, but no matter how he searched he had done nothing to her.

Too few points of contact for the story, or her character, to twist.

And yet, looked at another way, something else was strange.

Why was she so good to me?

The disciplinary committee alone was enough. She hadn't attended. She had gone to fetch the professor in charge, and she had pressed hard for a reward to be given and agreed to it herself. Bihyung decided to ask her outright and have done with it. He wouldn't be able to speak in any detail about the symptoms her curse carried, of course.

The answer came.

Him again.

...Oh, come on. Am I the protagonist?

Why did trouble come swarming in on its own while he sat perfectly still?

...So I did end up influencing her.

Now that he knew the whole of it, Bihyung decided to help her. He had needed to look into her curse anyway, and into the sense that had found the anomaly. And, well — he had taken plenty from her. A promise ought to be kept.

"Then when should we meet?"

"Understood."

The appointment made, he ended the call. Dueok, who had waited in silence for it to finish, spoke.

"Looks like you'll be busy tomorrow."

"Yeah. Not just tomorrow. For a while."

"Hmm. Then I'll pack today's schedule a little tighter. So we can push the Void Cluster forward, even a little."

"I'm counting on you."

It was what he had wanted. Bihyung smiled and followed Dueok into the training room.

Fists came down like rain. Front and rear, every side at once. As if the limits of the room meant nothing, the gale driving in on him carried a monstrous strength that could crush a person without effort.

Bihyung shut both eyes and perceived it through the Void Cluster alone.

Feel it.

An empty space had been born inside his body. From that hollow, Roots began to spread, and before long they had wrapped his flesh and staked out a domain of their own in the empty air. The instant a portion of those grown Roots trembled, fine as a plucked string, his body moved.

The impact detonated.

At a glance the strikes seemed to crash in all at once, but in the sway of the Roots there was a minute difference of time. Through that difference he built an efficient motion and threw his body at once onto a line ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that let the fists pass him by.

Applause cracked through the training room, filling it.

"You're already wielding the Void Cluster's sense as you please, Boss. Keep on like this, and it won't be long before you can step into the next stage."

"What's after the Void Cluster?"

"We call it Spatial Awakening. The stage immediately before initiation into the Ghost-Sense Path."

Spatial Awakening meant, simply, to awaken to space.

"But it doesn't stop at merely awakening to space. If that were all, it's a realm the Void Cluster can already manage well enough."

"Then?"

"Spatial Awakening takes the information the Void Cluster has accepted and, from it, can raise a domain over the area."

"A domain?"

"I made it sound grand, but in truth it's only this: within the range the Void Cluster accepts, the flow of your thought accelerates past everyone else's."

Even that alone was already enormous. The wider the Void Cluster's reach, the higher Spatial Awakening's reach would climb with it.

"As an added effect, you also come to grasp yourself in finer detail."

"Meaning?"

"What state you're in right now. How fatigued the muscle is. Whether stress is on you, whether any of various poisons have taken hold. You receive conditions like that with a keener edge, and you can read them."

A thin smile touched Dueok's mouth.

"Govern that Spatial Awakening well, and if your dominion over the senses rises inside the domain, that is the Ghost-Sense Path. Beyond yourself, you can set even another person's senses beneath ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠your feet."

Greater than he had thought. Which was exactly why he wanted it.

"Can I use Spatial Awakening as I am?"

"Yes. The body's recovered a little."

"Then use it."

"...You may not learn a thing."

"That's fine."

"Copying is something I'm confident in."

And so he threw himself back into the spar against Dueok, who had opened Spatial Awakening.

"This is Spatial Awakening."

With the words, he felt a presence flood the area in a single instant. As if he had set a foot inside an anomaly's domain, or thrust his neck into an exorcist's killing range, his sharpened senses rang the alarm down in the territory of instinct.

Inside that space, Bihyung's eyes went to Dueok.

And then —

I see it!

Bihyung's world stepped into the same domain as Dueok's Spatial Awakening. The presence spread from the Void Cluster, the senses, the Roots themselves — they wove a domain and set it against Dueok's awakening. Light broke over the room.

"Hoh. Already?"

A deep, startled admiration slipped from Dueok. He had shown it once. Only once. And yet the boss was handling it as if the art had been his from the beginning.

I'd heard dokkaebi mimic things well, but this is far past that realm.

The shock crossed Dueok's mind and was gone in an instant. Bihyung, for his part, was not satisfied with this much.

The world slowed. No. My thoughts sped up. Even this alone buys a serious edge in close combat.

So why?

It's not enough.

There was more. He was sure he could draw a sweeter thing out of it.

What?

He seized hard on the hunger rising through his head, and the years he had lived as a veteran handed him an idea with no prejudice in it.

Add yokai art.

The way I grafted spellcraft onto the Ghost Combat Arts, I'll graft yokai art onto the Void Cluster.

It means empty, doesn't it? There's no way it can't be done.

And so, in the moment a single spark of inspiration struck, his Void Cluster began to change.

He ignored the messages. What his own eyes felt, what his senses told him, mattered more.

Can I push the quickening of thought even further?

The yokai art of Wind settled into the Void Cluster.

However fast thought becomes, I have to be able to handle it with flexibility.

Then Water, and after Water the yokai arts of Earth and Fire, laid into the Void Cluster one after another. Before he knew it, the Void Cluster had gathered all five of the Greats.

A change, unmistakable, followed. Light tore outward. Bihyung's fist and Dueok's crossed and stopped with each other's faces a breath away.

Dueok let out an incredulous breath of a laugh.

"...Hah. You've already learned it? No. This isn't the level of merely having learned it."

"Looks like you can tell."

"Yes. Even if it's the same Spatial Awakening, the experience is mine. And yet our fists sit a breath apart, straight through that experience... There's no doubt you've made something finer than my Spatial Awakening."

Bihyung grinned. As if to prove the words, a message rose before his eyes.

A sensory art that reached the 6th Rank. Not an ordinary 6th Rank, either — a plus grade. Bihyung looked at it and was more than a little satisfied.

With this, a little of the preparation is done.

The Library Committee Chair's story, waiting ahead of him. And past that, the countless trials that would be waiting for him in turn. This was the moment he had set the bare minimum of a safeguard for sensing them.

"All right, then."

But he did not settle. He loosened his body again and looked at Dueok.

"Mimicry's confirmed. Time to check the rest."

A dokkaebi's appetite for a contest showed no sign of cooling, though the night had grown late.

Time passed.

"All right, all right. That's all for today's class."

Regular classes ended, and after school arrived. It was time to meet the Library Committee Chair.