Je...alousy (1)
Je...alousy (1)
Atra's position at Siyoram was somewhat ambiguous.
She held the title of professor, but she had no properly established lectures. No homeroom class, no particular field of research.
It made sense. Atra had been brought in exclusively as the educational supervisor for special admission cadets.
So she was, technically, a professor. She had been given a research lab, and there were staff members she passed now and then.
They weren't close. The kind of professional relationship where you exchange a light greeting if you happen to cross paths.
That was the result of Atra's uniquely heavy aura and her unsociable disposition.
- Professor Atra, has something good happened to you?
It was something she'd begun hearing even after she formed the master-disciple bond with Lee Ha-yul.
"Professor, did something good happen? You look so radiant."
She heard it again this time.
It was her first visit to the research lab after the break ended.
As a staff member's comment prompted a cascade of similar remarks, Atra touched the corners of her own mouth.
Checking her reflection in a mirror, Atra confirmed the face looking back at her.
It was definitely curving upward in a slight smile. And it wasn't stiff, but soft and relaxed...
"Something good... did happen..."
"Ah! I knew it! See, I was right, wasn't I? A complexion that bright can't be achieved with just cosmetic treatments, you know?"
"But my miracle beauty salon...!"
It was true—Atra's general expression had changed markedly from before.
Compared to the start of last year, it was practically a transformation of heaven and earth.
Back then, Atra had been so murderous that one slip of the tongue felt like your head would burst under her fist. Now it seemed like she'd let you off with a light knuckle rap.
That was why the staff members she ran into were now approaching her with a surprising degree of familiarity.
'Something good...'
Recalling a memory from a few hours earlier, Atra subtly turned her head.
In the center of the training yard, she spotted Lee Ha-yul settled on the ground, eyes peacefully closed.
He was meditating and reviewing the records of the sparring session they had just finished—a match that had primarily revolved around magic.
"......"
It wasn't an exaggeration to call the sight a painting. No matter how hard you scrubbed your eyes and looked, there were no flaws to be found—just a child overflowing with lovely features.
"Whoa, honey is literally dripping from your eyes."
A teasing, mocking voice rose from below.
Startled back to her senses, Atra looked down to see Daera sprawled on the ground, covered in dust.
"Don't you think your gaze is a little too sticky during sacred training? Huh? I think I'm about to die of diabetes over here."
"Quit talking nonsense."
"Wow, in my whole life I never thought I'd see my master stammer. As expected, the power of love is gr—"
- Thwack!
"—Gyak!"
Daera shrieked as a flick to the forehead landed, leaving an afterimage. She even grabbed her head and went rolling across the ground.
Atra swallowed a sigh at the sight of her disciple coating herself in dust like deep-fried batter.
"I let you rest for a moment, and in that time... Instead of entertaining idle thoughts, control your stamina."
"Gaaaah... you only bully meee...! Meanwhile you won't even flick your junior disciple—you just cradle him in your arms and coo over him!"
"The child... no, um... Ha-yul, unlike you, doesn't do a single thing to deserve being hit. That's why."
Atra shrugged, momentarily tripping over the address issue.
Daera rubbed her head where the knuckle rap had detonated and pouted.
"Master, I have a question, though."
"Hm?"
"My unique ability. How does it look to you?"
"Your unique ability... you said the name you discerned was Heavenly Thunder, was it?"
Heavenly Thunder.
As though proving the legitimacy of that rather grandiose name, its most conspicuous feature was, indeed, output.
"Its output is too strong."
Strong to a fault. Even when Atra clashed with it using White Night, the sheer ferocity made it impossible to suppress through a simple contest of power.
Even White Night—which she prided as having an edge in instantaneous output over Calamity Flame—struggled to restrain Heavenly Thunder.
"Of course, you do manage to control it properly, but I could see plenty of gaps starting from the fine-tuning stage."
"Yeah... I have no experience using it at a human scale. Even back in the Reverse Side, when I used it against my junior disciple, I couldn't land a single hit."
"What the fuck? Against who, with what?"
"No no no! Back when I didn't know! Back when we didn't know who each other were—!"
"Ah."
It had been a brief misunderstanding. Daera glared at Atra, who awkwardly let out a false cough before asking her real question.
"My Heavenly Thunder. Could it possibly be a bloodline inheritance?"
"Bloodline inheritance?"
Atra tilted her head at the sudden remark, and Daera added an explanation.
"I suddenly got curious. Like Calamity Flame, Taesan, or Azure Sea. All three are attribute abilities, so I wondered if my Heavenly Thunder, being an attribute ability too, could also be a bloodline inheritance."
"Hm... it's not impossible."
The traits of a bloodline inheritance are difficult to identify in advance.
The most famous example is the unique abilities of the Three Great Families. Even they only realized the fact once a descendant inherited the parent's innate talent.
And even if it isn't strictly a bloodline inheritance, it's common for attribute abilities to at least pass down a degree of affinity to their descendants.
"Then maybe your unique ability or my master's could be a bloodline inheritance too? Like if I have a kid, they might manifest my innate talent?"
"...I suppose that could happen."
Atra responded to Daera's innocent question with an unreadable expression.
A child. The word itself stirred a different feeling in her than it did in the past.
In the past she had felt nothing. No, it would be more accurate to say she hadn't even thought about it.
But now...
"...Anyway. Did you think over your weak points while you rested?"
Thoughts inappropriate to entertain during training muddled her head.
Shaking her head to dispel the stray thoughts, Atra changed the subject. Daera, who had been splashing water on her face, nodded.
"My anti-personnel combat response is way too lacking. I have some remnants left from what I learned a long time ago, but it's an even bigger problem because they're tangled with my current habits."
"Right. Right now your skill is heavily weighted toward anti-monster combat."
Daera's abilities were skewed toward anti-monster combat.
The reason was that she had survived in the Reverse Side, where nothing but monsters existed. Atra already understood that, having heard the details of Daera's circumstances by now.
"That part can be sufficiently shored up through training. Tangling your habits is also just a matter of straightening them out through experience."
"Yes."
"Since you haven't completely forgotten what you learned before, I plan to proceed this semester in the direction of gradually reviving that."
However...
Swallowing the rest of her words inwardly, Atra crouched down beside Daera and glanced sideways.
She observed the right arm, careful not to let Daera notice. The empty right arm, to be precise.
The truth was that the weakness most clearly exposed in today's spar was the absence of that right arm.
Daera's instinctive and adaptive movements compensated for the missing right arm, but inevitably they created gaps.
That absence directly translated into a vulnerability in anti-personnel combat.
With one limb missing, a significant blank appeared in the repertoire of her techniques. When combinations were considered, that hole only grew wider.
'What to do about that...'
If she could have her way, she naturally wanted to regenerate it for her.
But it was already too late.
Covertly biting her lip, Atra recalled the results of Daera's examination.
The exams conducted after Daera returned, when she was re-establishing her identity through the Association.
Most of her bodily functions were normal.
She hadn't contracted any diseases, and there were no abnormalities—likely thanks to the fact that she had strictly classified, processed, and consumed monsters exactly as she had been taught.
- Regeneration of the right arm is deemed impossible.
But when it came to the right arm, there was nothing to be done.
It was a loss that had occurred in a dungeon, before she had fallen into the place called the Reverse Side.
Years had already passed.
The spiritual blueprint had long since been damaged, and even if you enhanced her regenerative power, the vanished arm wouldn't grow back.
'Haah...'
Thinking about that part made her stomach turn black with grief. It was worse because no clear solution came to mind.
Now that the spiritual blueprint was damaged, no regeneration method known to the world could be applied.
In that case, the only option was to attach a prosthetic arm, but it was virtually impossible to find a prosthetic arm with performance suitable for a superhuman of Daera's level.
...
Atra glanced at Lee Ha-yul, a pure white prosthetic arm surfacing in her mind.
Lee Ha-yul's left arm. In the place where the prosthetic arm called Proof of Protection had been, a smooth new arm had grown out.
It was cause for a toast.
Everyone had put their heads together worrying over how to remove that prosthetic arm, and it had obligingly detached itself while the arm regenerated.
So the prosthetic arm had become unnecessary. Which meant...
'What a disgraceful thought...'
It was a disgraceful thought even by her own reckoning. An artifact her disciple had obtained in some remote place. Its grade was top-grade, no less.
To hope to pass a treasure that any faction wouldn't find lacking as a family heirloom onto someone else—that was a greed even a thief wouldn't entertain.
Chastising herself, Atra stroked Daera's head once and lifted her gaze.
Her eyes met a pair of pure white irises that had been open, she realized, for some time.
Her body flinched at the gaze that was fixed straight on her and her alone, paying no mind to the rest of the world.
"Ah... is your meditation finished?"
Her voice trembled slightly under that stare, which seemed to see right through her disgraceful thoughts.
"...?"
No answer came back. It was only then that Atra sensed something strange.
Lee Ha-yul's face had gotten bigger than before.
No. His cheeks were puffed out.
The sight was a showstopper—bulging like a poisoned blowfish. Now that she looked, his eyes seemed filled with some kind of dissatisfaction.
Thump, thump, thump... The limp end of his Winged Garment was tapping against the floor like a dog's tail.
Atra's heart plummeted.
"What... is it...?"
The words came out even more unsteadily than before.
Atra wrestled the corners of her mouth, which were trying to twitch upward.
Cute.
Was he deliberately acting cute? If that was his intention, the effect was devastating. Atra was undergoing severe mental conflict.
"......."
【...@#@...】
Lee Ha-yul offered no reply. Only strange vocalizations that even the necklace couldn't interpret escaped.
He just filled his cheeks with air and glared fixedly at Atra with clear dissatisfaction.
Reading his wordless intent, Atra approached Lee Ha-yul, lifted him from where he sat, and hugged him tightly to her chest.
Thankfully, he didn't reject being held in her arms. On the contrary, as if he'd been waiting, both arms wound tightly around her waist.
Smiling gently, Atra stroked Lee Ha-yul's head.
"What is it? Hm? Little one."
But his response remained an utter mystery.
Even when she soothed him with cooing and coddling, just as Daera had said, he merely kept his silence and buried his face in her chest.
Atra fell into contemplation over this unprecedented display of aegyo.
Of course, the Winged Garment stealthily coiling around her body had happened in the past, but...
"What's this? Why's my junior disciple suddenly being all cute?"
Daera, who had been sprawled on the ground dealing with three bottles of water, tilted her head.
Though their time together was short, she had already grasped the fact that Lee Ha-yul was prone to childlike clinginess.
But this was the first time she'd seen him act that clingy right in the middle of training.
Tilting her head, Daera approached where Lee Ha-yul and Atra were.
- Smoothly—!
"Huh?"
The moment she came within arm's reach, the Winged Garment shot up and blocked Daera.
- Squeeze...
Conversely, the arms wrapped around Atra's back tightened. The Winged Garment, winding around her body, also expanded.
【This is my master】
"Excuse me?"
The necklace, which had been silent until now, activated. Daera's eyes widened in disbelief at the voice thick with a sticky, clingy emotion.
A mental image surfaced in her head. It was a ridiculously simplistic and illogical mental image, but...
"Junior disciple, don't tell me... you're jealous...?"
【Grrr...】
A rather menacing growl sounded from the necklace, clicking roughly.
But there wasn't the slightest actual intent to threaten. On the contrary, it sounded like a confirmation, which only increased Daera's bafflement.
The half-disbelieving Daera opened her mouth in shock.
"Seriously, junior disciple! How can you be jealous of something like this! She's your master, and she's my master too!"
【Ptooey】
"Ptooey? Ptooey!? Since when did my junior disciple turn into a delinquent—No, wait, can you at least let me get close—!"
【Hiss...】
Daera marched forward with a yell, but the Winged Garment kept shoving her firmly back.
Her fighting spirit flaring, Daera twisted her body this way and that, attempting to break through.
Yet the endlessly extending Winged Garment blocked Daera perfectly, covering every blind spot without fail.
"Uh, um... you two? Let's settle down for now..."
It was a scene that was almost comical.
But Atra, caught squarely in the middle, couldn't bring herself to laugh—she could only stand there flustered.
* * *