Well, Because I Stole It
"Why is that boy so late today?"
The woman peeling an apple glanced at the clock, fretting over a son who still had not come home.
"Exams are over. He can stay out late. He's at the age when he ought to be out playing."
The man lay on his back eating an apple, eyes on the television, idly scratching his stomach.
"He could at least leave a message..."
She grumbled at her husband's unruffled calm.
"Try calling him. If he doesn't pick up, leave a message. If he comes home too late, you can give him a talking-to."
"Hmm..."
The suggestion seemed to tempt her. She stared down at her smartphone, hesitating, then quietly switched the screen off.
Beyond the black glass her face still held its worry, but she stopped herself there. Too much meddling would do a growing son no good.
"You're not going to?"
For all his show of indifference, the man reacted the instant she turned the phone off.
"He's still at the age for playing, after all."
She handed his own words back to him and drew a slow hand along the body of the man lying there.
"H-honey? Why are you petting me?"
"Good blood really does tell, doesn't it. How long has it been since you passed fifty, and you're still this young and... lively."
The woman saying so was herself the proud owner of a youthful beauty that could stand beside any woman in her twenties.
"And... which part of me is lively?"
Today, of all days, his wife's lovely face was terrifying. A chill slid down his spine, and his body trembled.
To the senses he had been born with, she was a lioness and nothing else.
"Our son's coming home late... Nights like this don't come along often, do they?"
Knead. Knead.
Her hands passed his arm for his shoulder, his shoulder for his face, then traveled down again to stroke his legs. Under that unhurried touch he felt his whole body coming apart, piece by piece.
If he did not get out of here quickly, he was going to be eaten.
"...C-come to think of it, it really is late. I should tell our son to come home."
"Oh my. And where did the man who was so uninterested a moment ago disappear to?"
His pitiful hand was gathered gently into hers. Her hand was soft beyond measure. It was also the jaws of a beast, binding its prey.
No! No, no, no—!
He screamed it only on the inside. He knew exactly why his wife was like this. He had failed to play along with her, and she was thoroughly sulking. The price was going to be his chastity.
"I'll go wash up."
A death sentence, whispered small beside his ear. He could not run. What awaited him was the dignity a head of household was bound to keep, and his iron resolve that there would be no second child.
He was hardening that resolve within himself when something unclean snagged on his senses.
"One moment."
"Yes?"
At the sound of his voice she looked back. The man hunting for a way to flee was gone. What she saw was a warrior, and the head of a house.
"I'm afraid this will have to wait."
"Oh dear..."
By then the unclean thing had reached her senses as well. A red presence, sticky and damp.
She knew what it was.
Killing intent.
A truly dreadful killing intent was drawing slowly nearer from outside.
"I'll go out first."
He opened the door and stepped through. His back was solid beyond measure, a great mountain.
"Yes. I'll get ready."
She, too, went into the room they kept prepared for nights like this.
The two of them would win. They always had.
They were Guardians.
A man with a sword on his back stood before the gate of a certain house.
"It's time."
Dozens of subordinates waited behind him. Every one of them wore a mask, and every one of them was armed with a gun.
He looked his men over once, then took up the sword on his back. The bandages came loose. Moonlight fell across a jet-black blade and showed it to the world.
"Move."
"Yes, sir!"
Their answer and his cut came together. The sword split the gate. In a single stroke the door broke apart and dropped to the ground.
Beyond the door he had cut lay a beautiful garden. Flowers and trees bloomed with an easy naturalness, as if inviting a guest to look around before stepping inside.
A man stood at the center of that garden.
In a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, he might have been stepping out for nothing more than a stroll.
He was Dan Miryu, master of this house.
"And who might you be, calling at this hour of the night?"
Men in heavy arms forcing their way into a home ought to have left him startled and shaken. Dan Miryu did not stir. He was calm as a still pond, and what came off him was a great mountain risen straight toward the sky.
So. A Guardian.
The man abandoned any thought of walking away whole. Perhaps, he told himself, he might protect his own body and just barely slip free.
But if he achieved his purpose, nothing else mattered. Ever since he had lost everything, living had not been living.
Even if it cost him his life, he would obtain it.
Feeling the pendant at his throat, he made the vow fast.
Dan Miryu pushed his glasses up and took in the ruffians who had invaded his home. Heavily armed to a man, they called an army to mind, something like a special-forces unit.
The one leading them was different from the gunmen at his back. That man held a sword.
He did not look more dangerous than the men with guns. Dan Miryu knew better. Of everyone here, this one was the most dangerous.
If the rest were hyenas, this man was the hydra out of myth.
No small fry. Dan Miryu grasped that fact at a glance.
"I don't know where you've come from, but this land is private property, plain and simple. Leave at—"
"Where is the Stone of Resurrection?"
Dan Miryu quietly studied the man who had cut him off and said only what he pleased. A troubled look crossed his face.
His face and his thoughts were not the same.
They're after the Stone of Resurrection?
Where, and how, had they come by that information? A thing hardly anyone in the world even knew existed.
Who are these people? Is this all of them? Is there a power behind them?
The thoughts brushed past, and briefly.
They did not last.
It doesn't matter.
A guardianship handed down from distant ancestors.
Whoever came, he would keep the mission passed from generation to generation.
"The Stone of Resurrection? We have nothing of the sort in this house. I don't even know what that is. I believe you've got the wrong address."
Dan Miryu's manner, his very build, was that of a man who had no idea what was being asked of him. In that moment anyone would have taken him for someone caught in a wrongful accusation.
The man swung his sword.
The crash tore the air. A single swing destroyed everything around it and shot forward, and the slash turned the beautiful garden to rags in an instant.
Dan Miryu stopped the attack with his fist. Force enough to bring all things down died a futile death against it.
There was not a scratch on his fist.
"...It seems you have no intention of withdrawing quietly."
"Attack."
In the instant before the man and Dan Miryu collided—
"Oh ho. What an interesting situation we have here."
A phantom thief had appeared.
He had made it. Barely. Not late.
Thank you, God.
He did not even want to imagine what would have happened if he had been late.
I'd have buttoned the first button wrong. Spectacularly wrong.
The protagonist's parents would both have died. The Stone of Resurrection would have been taken. The protagonist would have torn through the story like a man possessed, and he would have been torn through it right alongside him.
Thank goodness the setting book had listed the protagonist's home address. He had searched it on his phone and found the place by the skin of his teeth.
They haven't clashed yet?
Doing his best to ignore the sweat running off him, he looked at the people in the garden.
Green hair, hardly the look of a Korean, and glasses: Dan Miryu, the protagonist's father.
Short brown hair, a long scar down his face, a Western man: the villain, Sword.
Seen in the flesh, the pressure they gave off was enormous.
Both of them are among the strongest people in the world.
Dan Miryu was head of the house that had guarded the Stone of Resurrection for generations, and he had driven Sword to the brink of death.
Sword was the final boss of Part One of Forever. Even after the fight with Dan Miryu left him unable to bring his full strength to bear, he was the villain who had pushed the protagonist to the edge of death.
Readers called him the villain who, all by himself, was shooting a martial-arts manhwa inside a hero comic.
That strength, and that charisma, had made him very popular.
"Who are you?"
Dan Miryu's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
The voice had gone rigid.
He bent at the waist, folding his arms inward, and offered them a bow. A glance showed Dan Miryu calmly trying to take his measure, while Sword gave a small start at the sound of his own name.
"Sword?"
Dan Miryu's eyes glinted, faintly, at the name.
"Oh, you didn't know? That gentleman's name is Sword. A mercenary very much on the rise, and an ability user counted among the finest in the world. And the people behind him are Sword's mercenary subordinates."
The words stirred not only Sword, but his men as well.
They had reason. They had prepared this raid with their identities hidden to the last, and some stranger was rattling their information off as if it were nothing.
"First Squad, take that one alive. The rest of you, recover the Stone of Resurrection inside the house."
Sword mastered the unrest and gave the order. The judgment of the man who set the unit's mood was swift.
A moment ago they had wavered. In a breath they became cold machines of war.
He could not allow that.
"Mr. Sword. Isn't this what you're looking for?"
In his hand was a stone pouring out green light.
Perhaps it was the sight of that stone, bright beneath the moon.
Everyone in the garden stopped.
"Why is that over there?!"
Mi Soryeong, Dan Miryu's wife, had only just armed herself and come outside. She saw what he held and cried out in shock.
Dozens of people were staring this way in blank dismay, so he answered the question hanging in the air.
He was a phantom thief. If he did not steal it, what else was he supposed to do?
He dropped down beneath the wall and ran.
"Catch him, right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
At the killing shout that rang against the sky, his shoulders hunched of their own accord.
"This won't kill me, right?"
Rotten or not, he was still a phantom thief. He ought to be able to make a clean getaway.
BOOM.
Before his eyes a car was sheared clean down the middle, and a building shattered and fell.
From behind him he felt something closing in at a terrifying speed.
I'm fucked.