You Can't Avoid It?
I was discharged from the hospital. The tests had found nothing wrong, and the doctor had little to say—though when he told me to take the mask off, that crossed a line. Why was he trying to look down my throat? Aside from that, it had been fine. The food in the VVIP room was excellent, which only made it a pity. When would I ever set foot in a place like that again?
I rode back to his house in the car Dan Miryu had arranged.
"You're back?"
Mi Soryeong welcomed me the moment I stepped through the door. A rich, savory smell hung in the air.
"Something smells wonderful."
"Hehe. I may have shown off a little."
Dozens of side dishes crowded the table. For an ordinary meal, it was lavish.
"Did you know I was being discharged?"
Nothing short of that would explain a spread like this.
"No. But a woman has her ways of knowing, doesn't she?"
Mi Soryeong smiled.
Was her intuition on the same level as Hwang Seokgu's? A woman's instinct was a frightening thing.
"It's ready."
Once everything was set, we sat down at the table.
"Honey. Where's Chuyeon?"
"Oh, right. Chuyeon!"
Mi Soryeong raised her voice.
"Chuyeon! Come and eat!"
"Yes! I'm coming!"
A boy's voice answered from down the hall.
"...Is that your son?"
"It is. Now that I think of it, this will be the first time you've met him."
The tightness eased from Dan Miryu's face.
Dan Chuyeon.
The protagonist of Forever, and the destroyer who had brought the story to its end. His intentions had been good. Even so, he was the one who had made the ending a tragedy.
"...Mr. Phantom?"
"...Yes?"
"Are you all right?"
I touched my face. The hard mask was still exactly where it belonged.
"I'm fine. I was only thinking of something else."
"...I see."
The moment the protagonist crossed my mind, I lost my grip on myself. It hadn't even happened yet.
Step. Step.
Footsteps. Low. Faint. Even so, I couldn't afford to relax.
The protagonist of the world was coming.
"...Mom. What's for dinner?"
A boy wandered into the kitchen mid-yawn. His hair was green, the same shade as Dan Miryu's, and his eyes were clear and untroubled. His frame was solid, his stride upright, and his face took so thoroughly after his father's that an idol would have looked like a squid beside him.
I felt a tender, sunlit freshness in him, and a bright flame. Solid earth and flowing water wrapped his body, while white metal bound them fast. Five harmonies had gathered into a single human being, and that human being was the world standing right in front of me.
Dan Chuyeon.
"We've got a guest today, so Mom put in a little extra work."
"...A guest?"
Dan Chuyeon blinked and looked at me. I looked back.
"A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dan Chuyeon. I am Phantom, the phantom thief."
I introduced myself before the silence could turn awkward.
Dan Chuyeon turned his eyes on his mother and father. I could read the look without a word. Who is this weird person?
"...He's not a weird person. He works with your dad."
Mi Soryeong said it awkwardly.
"...Hello. I'm Dan Chuyeon."
He offered a stiff little bow.
"The pleasure is mine."
I took off the mask. It felt like peeling skin away. I smiled as widely as I could, doing my best not to seem strange.
Dan Chuyeon's expression stiffened, plain as day.
"When you speak to me, please call me Phantom."
Dan Chuyeon said nothing at all, and sat down.
"...Thank you for the meal."
He shot Dan Miryu a pleading look.
"...Haa. Thank you for the meal."
Dan Miryu let out a long sigh and lifted his spoon.
The meal began.
"...I'll head in first."
Dan Chuyeon finished eating, bowed, and excused himself.
"Go on, then."
Dan Miryu sent his son off. I listened to the light patter of footsteps fading down the hall.
"Your son has grown up well."
"He has. Properly. Admirably, even."
The strained look left Dan Miryu's face, and pride rose to fill it. He was a father.
"There's so much we never managed to do for him. And still he grows up just fine, all on his own."
Mi Soryeong came in with snacks.
"He doesn't cause any trouble at school, and his studies are excellent. His teacher has nothing but praise for him, you know."
Talking about it seemed to delight her. A smile bloomed across her face.
"He keeps good company. He watches his words. He's polite. There isn't a single thing he's lacking."
"He looked sturdy, too."
"Doesn't he? He was always healthy, but he must be training somewhere. You could set him beside a professional athlete."
Uh. Mm.
The volume of talk was climbing.
Mi Soryeong's eyes sparkled.
"Do you know what happened once? When Chuyeon was seven, for Parents' Day, he folded me a carnation out of paper. It was so lovely I thought it was a living flower, not origami."
"...He's clever with his hands, too."
"That's what I'm saying. Our boy is a genius, no question. Even when he was little, he had an air about him that was nothing like the other children his age..."
Mi Soryeong was a mother, too. For the record, Dan Miryu had already made his escape. A married man to the bone—his talent for survival operated on another level. And so I endured her for quite some time.
"Haha. It's good to see my wife so happy."
Dan Miryu, who had sidled back into view, sat down at the side of the sofa.
"...I enjoyed it as well."
Hearing about the protagonist had been pleasant enough. I had not needed the full account of his life, starting from infancy.
"My wife rarely gets to talk like this."
Dan Miryu smiled, a little bitter.
"She spends so much time alone that her ties to other people have grown thin."
"...Is that because of the Dan Clan?"
"Yes. The lady of the Dan Clan has to be careful."
Mi Soryeong. The original never explained her, either. What sort of life she had lived. How she had given birth to Dan Chuyeon. I knew none of it. The man standing in front of me was no different.
"Does she not go out often?"
"You might as well say she has nowhere to go."
From her personality, I would have expected a friend or two.
"...It's difficult."
"Yes..."
A brief silence settled between us.
"So—where would you like your house to be?"
He changed the subject.
"A detached house nearby, somewhere with no one else around."
A studio or an apartment would get in the way of my work as a phantom thief, and if I meant to build a hideout, I needed a space that was mine alone.
"If that's what you're after, I know just the place."
Dan Miryu grinned.
"Come with me. I'll show you right now."
We stepped outside.
"Where are we going?"
I had expected a car. We walked.
Dan Miryu hadn't taken more than a few steps before he pointed at the house next door.
"Here. This is it."
"...I beg your pardon?"
I looked at Dan Miryu's house: a sleek, modern hanok. I looked at the house beside it: an ordinary home, nothing like his.
"We'll be neighbors. Close as kin."
Dan Miryu's smile deepened.
Why does this feel like I've walked into a trap?
"Were you planning this from the start?"
"Hard to say. The house happened to be empty, and it occurred to me to offer it."
Dan Miryu indicated the other houses.
"If you don't care for it, there's that one. A little farther off, there's a house with the mountain at its back."
"...Do all of them belong to you, Mr. Dan Miryu?"
"Hahaha."
He spread his arms wide.
"Every house, every plot of land, every building here belongs to the Dan Clan."
All of this? In the heart of Seoul?
"Does no one live here?"
"No one. We sealed the whole of it off."
So that was why there hadn't been a single car in the neighborhood.
"Who used to live here?"
"The Dan Clan's family, and the people bound to them."
So this had been the clan's own ground. Then why was it empty...
I stole a glance at Dan Miryu. Each time his eyes fell on a house, they went distant. Better not to ask.
"The quiet seems as if it would suit me."
"Doesn't it? The lot is good, and so are the roads and the markets."
Dan Miryu looked delighted.
"It's fate, in a way. I'll let you have it cheap."
"...All right. Let's do that."
"Which house will it be, then?"
I looked them over. From first to last, every one was a fine residence, with an air of old nobility clinging to the walls. The designs were nothing to complain about. They all looked good.
"I'll simply take the one beside yours."
"A wise choice. Neighbors are best, after all."
Dan Miryu led me on.
"At last, this house has an owner!"
Not long after, I found myself signing a contract before I quite understood what was happening, and I walked away with the deed in hand.
"The remodeling and the interior are on us. I'll give you the finest house I can."
"...I'll be in your care."
"Ah! You'll need furniture and the rest, won't you?"
"Yes. I'll have to furnish it from scratch."
"In that case... Honey!!!"
Dan Miryu called toward the inside of the house.
"What is it?"
"Want to come pick out furniture for Mr. Phantom?"
"Mr. Phantom is moving?"
Mi Soryeong appeared, startled.
"It's the house right next door."
"We'll be neighbors! What a surprise!"
Mi Soryeong practically snorted with delight.
"Furniture and appliances are my department! Hurry up and start the car."
Dan Miryu took his lady's orders and bolted.
And then, treated as department-store VIPs, we bought furniture and appliances.
"...Please have everything delivered here on that day."
"Of course. Your total comes to ——— won."
How much?
I didn't know. I couldn't hear it. Caught between husband and wife, I simply held out my card. Money I could never have touched in a lifetime of earning vanished into empty air.
"Thank you! Please come again!"
Clerks and important men in fine suits saw us off. They did not straighten their backs until we were gone.
"It's gotten a lot more expensive than it used to be, hasn't it?"
"The economy's in bad shape. Even so, we got it cheap."
Ah. So that had been the cheap price.
I had never had the soul startled clean out of me before. The lives of the rich were beyond my understanding.
Even so.
Watching the couple laugh as if the day had lit them up, I smiled. If they were happy, did the rest of it matter?
A few days later, the move was finished.
"Thank you for the help."
"Don't mention it. We're neighbors now. We ought to look after each other."
I wiped the sweat from my brow.
"Mr. Phantom, you mentioned before that you'd be out and about. Do you have somewhere to be?"
"I'm going to meet someone."
"Who?"
"Hm..."
I thought of the person I meant to see. Could I even call them a person?
"Someone who can be of help to us."
"Is that so?"
The protagonist's master. There was no way they wouldn't be of help.
"Someone who will be of help to your son, as well."
"...?"
Dan Miryu only tilted his head, puzzled.
"Well... just see that it doesn't turn into a problem."
"Nothing will happen."
Set beside Unjinhoe, or Sword, this was nothing at all.
I looked up at the sky for a moment. Clouds were drifting south. I wondered what she was doing.
In a meadow high on the mountain, a woman gazed at the sky. Countless stars refused to drown in the lights of the earth and pressed their own existence upon the dark. She frowned as she watched them.
Hah. She had stepped outside because her sleep sat wrong, and it had only soured her mood further.
"Fortune-telling isn't to be trusted."
She turned and went back.
The immortal of the earth did not believe in Heaven. She had no way of knowing how it might come back around.