An Impossible Thing Has Happened
I reached Dan Miryu's house with Sword in tow.
The place was exactly as the fight had left it. The outer wall had collapsed, and the garden was a trampled wreck.
"Miryu! Are you all right?!"
Mi Soryeong was in the garden. She didn't seem to see me or Sword at all. She ran straight to Dan Miryu.
"Good lord, look at your face! What on earth happened?"
"Honey. I'm fine."
"Fine? A man who's never broken a sweat in his life comes home soaked through, and I'm supposed to believe he's fine?!"
There wasn't a single wound on Dan Miryu, but his torn clothes and bloodless face made it plain he was in a bad way.
"Ms. Mi. Wouldn't it be better to go inside and talk there?"
I couldn't stand to watch any longer, so I stopped her.
"Miryu, who is this?"
"I'll explain everything later. For now, let's go in."
Mi Soryeong startled at the sight of me, but Dan Miryu soothed her and led her inside.
"Haha. Hardly the state for receiving guests..."
Dan Miryu scratched his head at the ruin of the house. I paid it no mind and followed him in.
But—
"Hold it. You're not seriously going in looking like that?"
Mi Soryeong cut us off with a razor-sharp glare. She looked the both of us up and down, then jabbed a finger off to one side.
"Clothes off and wash. Right now. That strange one, too. I'll have something ready for you to wear."
Inside a household, a wife was the strongest creature alive. Two men were never going to win.
She seemed to recognize Sword slung over my shoulder. Her eyes went lethal.
"Leave that one."
"Chain him and throw him in the cellar. That should do."
Dan Miryu moved at once to answer his wife's mood. His eyes trembled worse than they had when he'd stood against Sword.
We moved fast. We dumped Sword in the cellar and charged for the bath.
"I didn't think you'd take the mask off."
Dan Miryu's eyes went wide at the face he saw across the bath.
"Call it groundwork. For a good relationship, from here on."
Dan Miryu and I had helped each other. If I meant to keep that, I had to show a little sincerity on my side as well.
"Very well."
We washed and climbed into the tub. The house was large to begin with, and the bath was big enough for two men with room to spare.
"You've been through a great deal, for a long time."
I looked at the scars on Dan Miryu's body. From the great ones down to the fine, it was harder to find a patch of skin that didn't bear one.
"Ah... you mean these?"
Dan Miryu stroked a scar and smiled, somewhere bitter.
"Things from the past."
He didn't look inclined to tell me any of it.
A past the setting never bothered to write down.
The Dan clan was the protagonist's family, and yet the story had said very little about them. At most, that they were a house of Guardians, and that their history ran long. No one had ever stopped to explain their origin, or anything of the kind.
Maybe they never felt the need to give the clan any weight. The Stone of Resurrection was gone, and the house had been wiped out.
Someone connected to them did appear, but even that person rarely spoke of it. A clan full of secrets. They had been in Korea for thousands of years. It would have been stranger if they had none.
"Did you always know how to use the Stone of Resurrection?"
I turned the subject. Dan Miryu stroked the necklace he hadn't taken off even in the bath.
"Yes. When a clan head inherits the office, he is taught how to use the Stone of Resurrection."
A story I had never heard.
"Then why didn't you use it from the start?"
If he had, things would never have gone this far. I wasn't blaming him. I was only curious.
"......"
Dan Miryu said nothing. He knew it, too. His face darkened, and he looked so troubled that I didn't press.
Well. He seemed to have no trouble using the Stone of Resurrection now. That was enough.
"How much do you actually know about the Stone of Resurrection?"
I picked the broken thread back up.
"Not a great deal. Only that endless energy dwells in it, that it can heal someone on the brink of death in a single moment, and that it can bring the dead back to life. About that much?"
Dan Miryu touched the necklace.
"Though I don't know whether bringing the dead back is truly possible. It's only ever been passed down in the records."
"It is possible."
At that, Dan Miryu looked doubtful.
"How can you be certain?"
"Because there really is a being who was brought back by the Stone of Resurrection."
Dan Miryu's eyes went blank.
"T-truly?"
"So you've lived your whole life being lied to."
Alive and well, right up to this day. I wondered where they were now, and what they might be doing.
"W-who is it?!"
The answer he hadn't expected seemed to excite him. He came toward me.
No. Don't get that close.
Dan Miryu was handsome enough to slap an idol across the face and plant them in the dirt besides, but this was more than I could take.
"Easy. Calm down. You're not my type."
"Ah! Forgive me. I didn't realize..."
Dan Miryu seemed to notice what he'd done. He cleared his throat and drew back.
"To think it can truly bring a person back to life..."
He still couldn't believe it. He stared hard into the necklace.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you who was brought back. It's something that person doesn't want known."
"Ah... I see..."
He looked disappointed.
"Phantom, how do you know a thing like this?"
"Because I'm a phantom thief."
A phantom thief has a way of knowing everything.
At my answer, Dan Miryu sighed.
"All things have their time."
I said it to him and rose from the bath.
"Ah. I'll get out with you."
Dan Miryu rose as well.
It was a body Mi Soryeong would be glad of.
Truly... truly...
Damn it...
Clack. Clack.
A man was tapping at a keyboard in a room. A chandelier poured light from the ceiling, and masterpieces hung along the walls. The room he occupied was opulent.
He stopped typing and stared at the monitor.
Knock. Knock.
He had been staring, unblinking, for a long while when a knock rang through the room.
"Yeah. Come in."
At his leave, the door opened. A woman stood there with a sword at her hip. She came in carrying a drink.
"Writing again today, I see."
She sighed. She could not understand what he was doing.
"Other people's opinions are precious. My own thinking isn't always absolute, you know."
He answered her.
"Then what became of the book you wrote before?"
"Ah, that?"
He spoke as if embarrassed.
"Total flop. Nobody read it."
"Hah. Of course not. You put it out through a one-man press and thought it would sell?"
A philosophy book that wasn't even the work of some renowned professor—who would buy that, self-published, in an age like this?
"This time I thought I'd write it on the internet. Plenty of sites for argument these days. Wouldn't that be better?"
He showed no sign of bending. She looked at him as if he were hopeless and set the drink down beside him.
"Ooh. Cola! You really do know my taste."
He drank as the fizz climbed the glass.
"Ahh! The greatest invention humanity ever produced. I've never tasted anything this good."
He drained it and turned to her.
"So. What's going on?"
She reported, flat and calm.
"Word has come that Sword failed."
"Sword failed?"
He sounded thoroughly surprised.
"I gave him three D-2s just in case. Don't tell me he used all of them and died?"
"No. He was defeated by Dan Miryu."
The man took his chin in hand and thought it through.
"Dan Miryu... Sword wouldn't have failed to use the D-2. Which means..."
"Yes. That is correct. Dan Miryu used the Stone of Resurrection."
The man clutched his head. This lay outside anything he had assumed.
"So. Dan Miryu used the Stone of Resurrection..."
The stone the Dan clan had guarded for thousands of years—Dan Miryu had used it. The meaning was not a light one. It meant an Absolute had been born in Korea. Living things on Earth who could beat Dan Miryu once he had used the Stone of Resurrection could be counted on one hand.
"Now this is interesting..."
Because of something in his past, Dan Miryu shrank from using the Stone of Resurrection. Unlike the other clan heads, he went so far as not to carry it on his body. That was why the man had sent Sword. Sword could have killed Dan Miryu before the stone was ever used.
"Was there another helper?"
"Yes. There was an unusual person in a fedora, wearing the Smiling Mask."
"Yeah? And Sword? Is he dead?"
"The body has not been confirmed. The police appear to have caught only Sword's men. Not Sword himself."
"Then they took him. With the Stone of Resurrection, side effects from D-2 aren't even a problem."
He stated it as fact. She accepted it. If he said a thing was so, then it was so.
"Get me a report on this fight with Sword, and convene a meeting of the executives."
"Understood. In that case, what will you do about the plan to invade Seoul?"
The invasion of Seoul was a plan in which the Stone of Resurrection and Sword's existence weighed heavily. But Dan Miryu had become an Absolute, and they no longer had the strength to take the city.
"Cancel it. No—pull out of Korea altogether."
"Understood."
She withdrew to the door without a sound.
"Anastasia. You're not worried about your father?"
He asked it on purpose, like a brat stirring trouble. She looked at him with a face that did not so much as shift.
"He is only a mercenary who failed his contract. Nothing more. Nothing less."
"Hah. Scary."
The words she let fall were cold as midwinter. For an instant, it felt as if the whole of this space might be cut to pieces.
"I will withdraw."
"Go on."
He turned his eyes back to the monitor.
The darkness reflected there drew a white line to either side.
And when the darkness in the monitor wavered, there was no one left in the room.