The Eighth of Douglas Kim
Douglas Kim.
"Wh-what... did you just say?"
April eased herself away from me, her voice trembling with flustered shock — but there was no mistaking the hostile venom smoldering in her eyes.
In other words, she knew perfectly well she'd been caught.
"You're out of your mind, calling me that. Say something like that anywhere else and you'll get your face slapped. Got it?"
"You—"
"Or should I slap you right now? To help you get your head straight."
"........."
April said nothing.
I'd half expected her to threaten me back with force, but she didn't.
She simply kept her mouth shut, quiet, her eyes flicking side to side as if trying to read my intentions.
Is that the noble in her — overthinking everything? Or is she holding back because we're nominally the same family now?
Well, either way, it didn't matter.
This was the woman who'd not only insulted Lee Chang-jin but tried to drag me into her mess on top of it.
I'd better make sure her attention stayed firmly redirected, so she couldn't pull any more strange stunts.
"April."
"......Yes."
Come on, take the bait.
Chime—
Activating Skill: Confusion LV.3
Redirecting the target's aggression toward a magical beast.
......
Chime—
⚠ The target's stats are too high.
⚠ The target's memories have become intertwined.
You may manually stitch the misaligned fragments together.
......So that's how it goes.
It was a situation much like the one back in Egypt.
I'd tested it on the hangers-on trailing after me back then, too, and this same message had popped up for anyone with even moderately strong willpower.
Or, in some cases, nothing showed up at all.
So getting even this much was a stroke of luck.
April was at least A-rank right now — B-rank at her absolute worst.
Granted, my skill had improved, but it was a low-success-rate ability to begin with, so being able to nudge even a simple memory of hers was genuinely fortunate.
Smiling at her, I spoke up.
"Unnie, don't you remember? A hunter named Kim Young-hak once called you 'insane' to your face. You brushed it off at the time like it never happened, but goodness — even now, just thinking about it makes my blood boil."
"Ah... him. Yes, that did happen. But how would you know about that, Maknae?"
"I heard it with my own two ears in Egypt. He was bragging about himself — telling me I ought to follow the proud example of Douglas Kim."
Memory manipulation, you see, has to be stitched together coherently.
Confusion only changes or erases the subject or target of a rage — it can't simply erase the emotion itself.
Simply put, I slap someone, then make the victim believe the guy standing next to them did it.
April stared blankly for a moment, then blinked, her mind apparently returning.
Then, with a gesture, she flung open a soundproof barrier — shhk!
A long-range... psychokinetic mage?
"......Driver."
At her soft call, the knight behind the wheel turned around with a start.
"Oh my? Addressing little old me, of all people... haha, by all means, Lady April."
"Could you stop the car for a moment?"
"P-pardon? Here, on the highway?"
"Yes. Is that a problem?"
April spoke in a tone lower than I'd ever heard from her. A faint smile still lingered on her face, but her eyes had gone bone-dry.
And with it, I could feel a razor-sharp chill in the air.
She's furious...
"U-um, Unnie? Do you have some urgent business?"
"Something just came to mind... Maknae, I'm sorry, but you can manage the rest on your own, can't you?"
Oh, I can manage, all right.
But now that she'd kicked things off, I was worried. What exactly was she planning to do, storming off like this?
I decided I needed to keep an eye on her, and grabbed her arm.
"C-can't I come with you? I want to get closer to you, Unnie!"
"......I don't imagine it's the sort of place suited for a social call between ladies."
Oh, don't worry. I know exactly what kind of place it is.
"Even if it's not socializing — I'll tag along and learn whatever there is to learn. You're a senior of utterly unattainable stature to me, Unnie. Please, let me accompany you."
"Hmm... now that I think of it, you weren't born a noble, were you, Maknae?"
"No, I wasn't."
"Whew — well, nothing to be done about it. Fine. Consider this a learning experience, then."
The car pulled over somewhere along the shoulder of the national highway. The moment April stepped out, she took off at a run, and I hung off her side, dangling like a pendant.
She'd apparently assumed I couldn't keep up with her pace because of my rank.
"Maknae!"
"Yes, Unnie!"
"Our little excursion here stays a secret! Even a commoner like you must understand how undignified this looks, yes?"
"Everything you do looks dignified, Unnie!"
"Pfft...! What a sweet tongue you have."
......No venom in her voice anymore. Her hostility had already swiveled somewhere else entirely.
Our destination turned out to be the Hunter Management Bureau — the repository where you could look up records on every hunter in the world, not just in Korea.
Though the files on noble houses and anyone A-rank or above were, naturally, off-limits.
I asked April.
"Unnie... are you looking for Kim Young-hak?"
"Yes. I need to set right the wrongs I let slide, out of sheer indecision. You reminded me of them, Maknae. Thank you."
...Crap. That guy's dead, though. If her revenge (?) fails, is the blowback going to land on me again?
Worried that a third party might get caught in the blast radius, I'd deliberately pointed her at a dead man.
Unless she planned to dig up his ashes and stomp them into paste, there'd be no way left to exact justice from him.
Which meant she'd have no outlet for her fury either — and that was the part that worried me.
"He's... dead?"
Exactly as predicted, April's brow creased slightly — the look of someone regarding the bureau clerk as a deeply inconvenient obstacle.
But she didn't retreat meekly. Instead, she began forcibly pulling up his records — his activities, his personal connections, all of it.
Her desperation was so naked I almost wanted to ask her whether that was even allowed.
And then, after a short while, a single name popped up on the screen. A smile of pure delight bloomed across her face.
"Follow me, Maknae."
"Y-yes..."
...Hmm.
I'm sorry, Park Sang-tae.
What goes around comes around, I suppose.
You were robbed of the chance to quietly serve your sentence, dragged out to do someone's dirty work for nothing — and then it was your side that tried to take a man's life and sell him off piece by piece, wasn't it?
Whatever happens to you, you'll have no one to blame.
Still, if you die, I'll at least say a prayer for you.
"L-Lady April..."
Park Sang-tae was being held in the Awakened Penitentiary. After his confession in Egypt, he'd apparently been repatriated to Korea straightaway.
He flinched once at the sight of April — and upon seeing me standing beside her, his eyes shot open wide enough to snap clean out of their sockets.
Too shell-shocked to string two words together, he just gaped — so I explained on April's behalf why she had come.
When he finished listening, he convulsed.
"Wh-what...! Kim Young-hak did that?! Th-this is all a misunderstanding! Lady April! However reckless that bastard was, surely—!"
"Are you suggesting I'm lying right now?"
Her voice was ice. Park Sang-tae visibly wanted to push further, but April's thunderous, low-pressure aura crushed the words out of him.
His eyes had gone as pitiful as a candle guttering in the wind.
"......Mister."
"You... what the—"
"I heard it from him myself. Why else do you think Kim Young-hak killed himself?"
"...? Hold on! Kim Young-hak dying was—!"
Park Sang-tae's wavering gaze swung toward me, his face screaming what kind of nonsense is this?
God, I'd love to just brainwash him right now... but if I use the skill, it'll get flagged, won't it?
The Awakened Penitentiary exists precisely to monitor and catalogue every ability the Awakened possess. One wrong move in here and I could find myself in a very ugly spot.
So this had to be settled the old-fashioned way — with pure, unadulterated verbal bullshit.
I fixed Park Sang-tae with a wide-eyed stare.
"Kim Young-hak committed suicide."
"......And how, exactly, was that suicide?"
"Hm? Obviously it was suicide. A commoner Awakened daring to go up against Douglas Kim — and daring to insult our beloved Unnie April on top of it? That's the very definition of a suicide act."
At that, Park Sang-tae lowered his head. He clenched his cuffed hands tight and slowly closed his eyes.
Then, in a low voice everyone present could hear plainly, he spoke.
"Kim Young-hak's death wasn't a suicide, you rotten little bit— khurk!?"
The instant the words cut off, Park Sang-tae's face crumpled like tinfoil. Blood poured from his mouth, and his two cuffed hands flailed uselessly at the air.
It had happened the moment April made a small gesture — as if she'd seized something invisible in her fist.
Psychokinesis...!
Is she just going to wave it off because she's a noble? Sure, detection is one thing, but actually intervening is a whole different matter.
My hunch seemed right. The hunters stationed outside had surely sensed the skill activation — yet not a single one had come rushing in to stop it.
"Khu... khu... khurk...!"
The torture went on like that for a while. I couldn't tell what exactly she was doing to him, but it looked excruciating.
And even watching it, April didn't release the skill. If anything, she seemed to be smiling — just slightly.
"I didn't come here to make small talk with you. The outcome was decided the moment I walked in, after all."
".......!"
Park Sang-tae's finger jabbed toward his own mouth, his expression screaming — what did I ever do to you?
April let out a soft snort at the sight.
"I apologize. Losing the man I was meant to kill left me feeling low — but what luck, his dear close colleague is still alive and well. As a death-row convict for serious crimes, no less."
"......!!!!"
"You do understand, don't you? Nobles are permitted to do these things — and far worse, in their place. Well then, goodbye."
"!!!!!!!"
N-no, wait!
I grabbed April's arm with a firm tap.
"Maknae...?"
"Unnie, hold on. Isn't it beneath you to dirty your hands over a commoner too dim to even know what he's dealing with?"
"Hm? My hands won't get dirty. This is psychokinesis, you know."
"R-right, of course."
Ah... Vincent's warnings are finally starting to hit home.
Yeah, who'd want to join a family crawling with psychopaths like this?
I can't let it end like this.
Death leaves a trauma behind.
With the memory of Kim Young-hak's dismembered corpse still flickering at the edges of my mind, the last thing I wanted was another front-row seat to a killing.
Still clinging to April's arm, I fired off my most pleading gaze. She tilted her head, then spoke.
"Do you dislike seeing me like this?"
"No, it's just... if he goes that easily, doesn't it feel like a punishment far too light for his crimes?"
"......Oho. You do have a point. Very well. My mood is sufficiently settled anyway — let's head back."
Only then did April release the skill. Park Sang-tae crumpled to the floor and promptly passed out cold.
I scurried after her out of the interrogation room, then hurried ahead without a single backward glance.
Forget all this — I want to go see the mansion already...!
At my impatient urging to hurry up, April asked, bemused.
"You know where we're going?"
"Of course."
Hehe. How could I not?
All the noble estates within Korea's top six were gathered on the artificial island off Incheon.
The design was simple in theory: a single colossal island studded with floating islands, each tailored to its house's emblem, all linked together — and atop them, ultra-luxurious mansions and sprawling gardens.
The only way in was a single long bridge, and even that was guarded around the clock,
which is why it was famous as a place no ordinary citizen could dream of setting foot on.
Which, in turn, made it exactly the kind of place everyone was dying to know about.
April might not realize it, but most ordinary citizens could map out which island belonged to which house down to the last detail.
Finally... FINALLY... I get to see it...!
And so I traveled on, giddy as a schoolchild — blissfully unaware that the moment we left, Park Sang-tae was scheduled for execution.
"W-WOOOOW—!!"
"......Um, Raebi."
"I know, Unnie. Undignified."
But what's a girl supposed to do?! Tens of thousands of square meters of ultra-luxurious, state-of-the-art artificial island! Beautiful Western-style mansions and gardens perched on top of it all...!
Who could look at this and hold it in?! HOW?!
I'm sure it barely registered for someone who saw it every day, but my circumstances were a little different.
Not caring one bit what kind of look April threw my way, I drank in the scenery, gasping to my heart's content.
"Wow... just... wow."
"Okay, okay. Enough. Compose yourself, please. Look — the head of house is coming out to greet us."
April's hand patted my shoulder in rapid little taps — taptaptap.
I followed the direction her other hand was pointing and spotted an enormous man.
Two meters tall, give or take, a shaggy brown beard, and a pair of glasses perched on his nose — the whole package radiated exactly the scholarly 'Douglas' vibe the name promised.
He spotted us and began striding over at a brisk pace.
"You do know how to greet him properly, yes?"
"Yep."
I answered April's question with total confidence.
I hadn't known before, but Vincent had briefed me in exhaustive detail.
When greeting the head of house, you don't merely bow your head — you lower yourself onto one knee.
The knee is always the right one, for men and women alike. Got it! And then the line goes...
Before I knew it, Douglas was right in front of us. I sank onto one knee before him.
"I am Raebi Na Tiernected Douglas Kim, the eighth of Douglas K—whaaah!"
Mid-greeting, my body suddenly swooped upward. I flailed instinctively, trying to slip free, but those bear-paw hands didn't budge an inch.
He simply watched me panic in his grip for a moment — and then bellowed like thunder.
"BWahaha!! So you've finally come, have you, my audacious little magical beast!!!"