A Phantom Thief Needs an Accomplice or Two
A phantom thief, as a rule, needs an accomplice or two.
He washed until he was clean and changed into the clothes that had been set out for him. The label belonged to a brand he had never seen, but with the Dan clan's fortune in mind, it was surely some luxury name he simply didn't know.
"Ah, my wife bought these because they were on sale. They're not bad, are they?"
They weren't?
"And here I thought this was designer too..."
"We do have the real thing. Shall I bring some out?"
"Ah, no. That's all right."
Fine goods still sat heavily on a man who was, at heart, an ordinary citizen.
"Haha. If you ever need any, I'll be glad to make you a gift of a few."
The goodwill in that laugh was its own burden. Maybe it was only that he had never met this sort of person before; he didn't know how to answer it, and so he merely smiled.
Dan Miryu led him on. They arrived at the kitchen, where Mi Soryeong was cooking amid a rise of smoke.
"You're here?"
She turned toward them, still stirring with her ladle.
"And this gentleman is...? Don't tell me."
"Yes. I am Phantom. A pleasure, Ms. Mi Soryeong."
She startled, much as Dan Miryu had.
"A more intact face than I expected. And young, too."
"What kind of face were you picturing?"
"No face at all, or a mask where a face ought to be. Something like that. You're just an ordinary person."
She had produced an answer sharp enough to crack even him. A woman of formidable imagination. Still, he had to admit it would have been cooler that way.
Mi Soryeong laughed, soft and amused.
"Even so, an ordinary young man is better, isn't he? He almost reminds me of our son."
"Not at all. You look far younger than I do, Ms. Mi."
"Oh, and he knows how to flatter."
It wasn't courtesy. Mi Soryeong was genuinely beautiful—a face drawn to be lovely in a comic, stepped out into the real world, and all the more unreal for it. As if she had caught the sincerity in him, she covered her mouth and laughed, and even that laugh was like a painting.
The fifties, no less! The older she got, the younger she became!
"Mr. Phantom?"
"Yes?"
"What were you thinking just now?"
What is this feeling? Why is there a presence coming off Mi Soryeong that surpasses even Sword? Why is the kitchen icing over?
She was smiling, and she was not smiling in the slightest.
"I was worried that if you stepped outside, people would start hitting on you."
"Oh my. I'm hardly at that level."
"Not at all. Telling someone they look young is for old people. Why say it to a person who is already young? You've long since reached that realm, Ms. Mi."
"Even if it's empty praise, thank you. You're a better man than I expected."
Thank you, Phantom arts. I live because you're here.
He was letting out a breath of relief when Dan Miryu, vanished a moment ago, returned. Sensing the peculiar air between the two of them, he asked with a look.
"What happened?"
While Mi Soryeong's attention drifted back to the cooking, Phantom passed his meaning along with a bit of magic.
"Looks. Compliment. Survived."
Dan Miryu nodded as if he understood perfectly. His eyes were the eyes of a sage.
"Honey. What did you talk about while I was gone?"
He came up behind her with practiced ease. The arm that circled her waist was perfectly natural, and so were his face and his tone.
"Mmm. What do you think we talked about?"
Mi Soryeong hummed, not the least concerned that Phantom was standing right there.
"Can't you tell me in a way that won't make me jealous?"
Has he reached Absolute even as a husband?!
Their young faces made it easy to forget, but both of them were well along in years, and still they staged the air of a honeymoon. Proof that Dan Miryu's skill was extraordinary!
"How cute. You're jealous?"
"Of course I am. You were alone with a man who isn't your husband."
"Hehehe. We hardly said anything. I only heard a few empty compliments."
Translated, that was hurry up and tell me I'm pretty, too. If Phantom had caught it, there was no chance Dan Miryu hadn't.
"Empty? Isn't it the truth? You only get prettier, no matter how many years you put on."
"No matter how many years...?"
Her tone dropped. Why? Why had it dropped? And why wasn't this bastard Dan Miryu reading the room?
"I mean—maybe you age in reverse?"
"Hmmmm..."
Hey! No! Stop!
"Shall we say my wife's age stopped the day I first met her?"
"Is thaaat so...?"
"Uh... honey?"
Absolute, his foot. Offering Dan Miryu up as a sacrifice, Phantom hid himself at once. A pitiful voice went on behind him, trying somehow to salvage the wreck, but he did not go back. At times like this, running was the answer.
When he returned some time later, he found Dan Miryu sunk in a thorough gloom, staring at him with open resentment.
"Why?!"
"Dunno?"
Phantom slid neatly past him and sat down before a table laid with a feast. Mi Soryeong's mood had settled a little lower. Dan Miryu cleared his throat and reached for something that might break the air.
"Honey. What happened with Chuyeon?"
Mi Soryeong clapped her hands as if she had only just remembered.
"I told Chuyeon to sleep over at a friend's. We didn't hear anything because he was too busy having fun."
"Nothing wrong, then?"
"No. If anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself. I did scold him for not calling even once, that late at night."
Dan Miryu let out a long breath. He hadn't shown it, but he had been worried.
The future changed.
In the original story, the protagonist came home anxious because his mother and father wouldn't answer the phone. What he found was a house in flames and his parents' corpses—and Sword, withdrawing with the Stone of Resurrection secured. Sword only knocked the protagonist unconscious. He didn't lay a hand on him otherwise. The protagonist later woke in a hospital and despaired at being left alone.
That future no longer existed.
Right. If it was a friend, it was that kid.
The protagonist's other half, the friend who would become a comrade. True to form for the protagonist's friend, that one had been born under a fate every bit as heavy.
And what am I supposed to do about them...
He would have to meet the protagonist, too.
While he turned it over, the couple was looking his way. Bad manners, drifting off in front of a meal.
"I'm sorry. I was lost in thought for a moment."
"It's all right. Shall we eat, then?"
Phantom looked over the feast on the table. There couldn't have been much time to prepare, and yet nothing was missing—meat, soup, side dishes, the whole of it.
"I'm extremely hungry. Seeing this only makes it worse."
His stomach growled. Come to think of it, this was the first meal he had eaten since falling into this world.
"My wife's cooking is second to none. Please, go ahead."
"Then I'll eat well, and gratefully."
He gave them both a small bow, then spooned up a bite of white rice. The moment he lifted the spoon, the other two began to eat as well.
When the meal was finished, they were lingering over something sweet. The sun was already climbing toward noon.
"So much happened, and yet it feels as if nothing did..."
Dan Miryu said it around a bite of apple. Phantom had to grant him that. It had only been a day, but what the day contained was enormous. He himself had only fallen in yesterday, and already it felt as if he had lived here his whole life.
"Now that you mention it, none of us slept a wink."
"Ah. I wondered why I was so tired..."
Perhaps because he had finally registered that it was over, sleep came rushing in. Superhuman body or not, drowsiness was hard to beat.
"Miryu, why don't you go get some sleep?"
"No. There's still something I have to do."
He had been rubbing at his eyes when Dan Miryu was suddenly in front of him.
"We haven't done the most important thing."
With that, Dan Miryu bent at the waist. Sleep fled all at once. What was this man doing?
"Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for saving me, my wife, and my son besides."
"I thank you as well."
Phantom was still blinking dumbly when Mi Soryeong came and bowed beside her husband.
"Ah—no, you really don't have to go this far..."
So much for a phantom thief's poker face. He stammered as he tried to wave them off.
"We do. You are our benefactor. This much is only proper."
There was no retreating from the will in Dan Miryu's voice.
"Uh. Then I'll accept it, gratefully. Please, raise your heads. This is too much for me."
The couple smiled and straightened.
"You have a side I didn't expect."
"I was certain you wouldn't be flustered in the slightest."
"I'm human too. Have a little mercy."
Well, when he was Phantom he became someone else even to his own surprise, but he wasn't Phantom right now, was he?
"Understood. Then it's time we heard your condition."
A condition?
The puzzlement lasted only a moment. He remembered attaching a condition when Dan Miryu offered to receive him properly.
If he hadn't said anything, I would have forgotten it completely. A virtuous man really is a virtuous man.
No wonder he was the Guardian of the Stone of Resurrection.
"A condition... You had quite a lot you wanted to ask, didn't you?"
"I did. But I had the feeling that, before long, you would tell me what I wanted to know."
There was certainty in Dan Miryu's voice.
"Impressive, Mr. Dan. The truth is, I had no intention of telling you very much right now."
He confessed it honestly. He had lost this round. Seasoned instinct was something you simply couldn't beat.
Dan Miryu looked pleased to have been right.
"I hope that someday you'll be sure to tell me."
"Of course. In that spirit, I'll state my condition here."
The order had gotten reversed, but he had happened to give Dan Miryu what the man wanted, and Dan Miryu didn't seem to be asking for anything more. So Phantom ought to speak as well.
"Mr. Dan Miryu. Will you work with me?"
"Work with you?"
"Yes. Put simply, a team."
He smiled without a shred of hesitation.
"I'm thinking of shaking the world. Will you come along?"
Dan Miryu was briefly thrown. Then he stared straight at the hand Phantom had offered, smiled just as boldly, and took it.
"So long as the team is righteous, gladly."
"Haha. You'll see for yourself, in time."
And with that, he had a reliable accomplice at his back. A phantom thief, as a rule, needs an accomplice or two.
"Then, to mark the founding of the team, I'll name our first objective."
"You have my full attention."
"Our first goal is this."
He flicked his fingers and, in the water left on a plate, drew a mark for them to see: six fingers joined into a circle.
"Th-that's...!"
Dan Miryu's eyes went wide at the sigil.
Negus, the villain alliance rooted across East Asia. He was going to wipe that filth out of Korea.