Chapter 39 — After the Name of Her Dead Husband, Helga Chose Mine Again

"Arnon……"

The name of her dead husband slipped from Helga's lips. With our bodies still pressed together, every movement stopped. Shame bloomed across her gray eyes.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't you, just now. I'm the worst."

"It's all right. The most recent warmth your body remembered simply surfaced first."

I withdrew at once and lay down beside her. Until she decided whether to go on, the first thing to remove was the pressure of our bodies.

Helga told me she had let no one close for two years. Afraid she might forget her husband, she had polished his sword night after night and drunk herself to sleep. For the first time, she even put into words the regret that not a single child had been left behind.

"If I want a living man, it feels like betraying Arnon."

"Remembering someone and living frozen in place aren't the same thing."

After she had cried for a long while, Helga took my hand of her own accord.

"We can do it again. This time, I'll be the one calling the name."

"You don't have to answer right away."

"Are you giving me time to run?"

"I'm giving you time to choose."

I stepped back from the bed and handed her a cup of water. Helga drained it and set both feet on the floor — the chill of the stone, the moon past the window, the patrol bell that had rung twice in the corridor. By those senses she confirmed that this was not the bedroom of the past.

"Where is this?"

"Officers' quarters, room four."

"What's today's date?"

Helga gave the date and the day of the week without a single mistake.

"And my name?"

"Kang Do-hyun."

"And the reason I want to keep going, even after Arnon's name came out?"

"Not to forget. I won't have what I want now taken from me because of one mistake from the past."

The answer was anything but vague. I reset the yellow signal and the red signal: one press of a palm on her shoulder meant slow down, two meant a full stop with no questions asked. They were signals for the moments when words wouldn't come.

"And your ability stays closed."

"You can't verify that, though."

"True. So I won't ask you to take it on faith. If anything feels wrong tomorrow, you record it first, and you're free to demand an examination by a third party."

"All the way to the Queen?"

"If it comes to that."

Helga glared at me for a moment, then nodded. Trust was not a permit that silenced questions. It was closer to a promise that left the right to doubt alive.

Helga climbed atop me and slowly brought our bodies together. This time she did not close her eyes. Whenever a habit of the past rose up, she stopped and checked the face and voice of the present.

"Name."

"Kang Do-hyun."

"Again."

"Do-hyun. The man in front of you right now."

The movements deepened by degrees. Even as pleasure crested, Helga never lost her own pace. Tears came again just short of the peak, but this time she did not apologize.

And in that instant, [Memory Reading] opened all the way down to its deepest layers.

White flowers at a wedding. Clumsy soup. A sword and dog tags returned from the battlefield. The day the belongings came home without the man. Helga, unable to cry at the funeral. A cup in the empty instructor's office. The nights she had wished she could have left even one child behind.

Her emotions poured into me. I neither interpreted nor corrected them; I simply took the weight she had carried alone for two years and carried it alongside her.

"Wait."

This time I was the one who stopped first. I couldn't tell whether [Memory Reading] — which I had sworn not to use — had opened against my intent, or whether Helga's emotions had simply flowed into me like a resonance.

"Why?"

"I just saw a memory. I wasn't trying to open it."

The warmth drained fast from Helga's face. Shielding her body, she backed away to the foot of the bed.

"What did you see?"

I named only the scenes themselves — the white flowers, the soup, the sword and the dog tags, the cup. I did not venture to guess from them what kind of man Arnon had been, or what Helga had longed for.

"Something deeper, too?"

"Down to the regret that she wanted to leave a child behind."

"So you read it without my permission."

"Judging by the result alone — yes. I'm sorry."

I did not try to erase the harm by pleading innocence of intent. Helga dressed and picked up the key that lay by the door. So that she could walk out that instant if she wished, I withdrew to the far side of the bed.

"Could you change my memory right now?"

"Perhaps, in theory. But I won't."

"Even if I ask you to make me forget what I just saw?"

"Not now. I'd have to confirm, once the shock and the agitation have settled, that it's still your choice."

Helga thought for a long time with the key clenched in her fist. Then, without opening the door, she sat down on the chair.

"Then answer me this first. Did what you saw make you start to pity me?"

"I came to know a weight I hadn't known. But that memory is a clue that Helga loved Arnon — not a command that decides her today on her behalf."

"Were you about to say that Arnon would have wanted me to live on?"

"No. I can't presume to fix the will of the dead. The Arnon in Helga's memory is the Arnon Helga remembers — not objective testimony."

Only after that answer did the key sink out of Helga's hand.

"No one ever knew."

"Now one person does."

Without coming near me, Helga cried for a long time. I set water and a towel within reach of her hand and waited. As her weeping began to ebb, a door that had been locked somewhere deep in my chest swung open.

Heat swept through me from head to toe. My body changed as well — from twenty-four centimeters to twenty-six. Helga startled at the sudden pressure, but her first question was for my condition.

"Your ability just opened, didn't it?"

"Level three. Should I stop?"

"Of course you stop. Right now, you explain first."

The instant the command fell, I pulled away from her. The first thing I did upon gaining a new power was not to use it — it was to stop.

I gathered my clothes and sat down on the floor. Helga checked the clock and wrote down the time of the awakening and the symptoms I described: the tingling in my fingertips, the flush of heat at my temples, the illusion that other people's emotions felt closer than usual. More dangerous than the changes in my body was the sense that the ability's range had widened.

"Do you know exactly what you can do now?"

"No. Only the sentences the system gave me, and what I feel. What merely feels possible and what has been verified have to be kept apart."

I explained that if I layered non-contact suggestion over emotion manipulation, I might be able ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to rearrange even a person's familiar standards of judgment. A short nickname surfaced in my head.

Brainwashing.

More precisely — common-sense alteration.

Neither was the system's official skill name. It was the name I gave it so I would never forget the danger.

"I don't like that last line."

Helga pointed at the words [Bitch System] in the status window.

"Neither do I."

"Don't trust, as it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stands, a power that strings three people together and slaps a beast's name on them. In the operation log, write it as 'simultaneous linking.'"

"That's what we'll do."

The system's names described the phenomena; they said nothing about the ethics of using them. We pinned a question mark beside each of the four entries.

How far would [Non-contact Suggestion] reach? Could [Memory Reading] select only the memories relevant to a question? Did [Emotion Manipulation] merely separate emotions — or could it make a person feel ones that had never been there? And did [Simultaneous Linking] connect several people's judgment, or replicate a single person's command?

"Don't test all of it today."

"Agreed. It's the day of the awakening, and we've already crossed a boundary once."

"One coin test. That's it — and if I call a stop, it ends on the spot."

"Before that, let's leave what we were doing where it stopped, for tonight."

Helga made a briefly regretful face, but soon nodded. It was right not to fold the thrill of a new power any further into a private choice on the same night.

Then Helga asked, "Have you used it on me, too?"

"No. The power that just opened, I haven't used even once."

"Then let me be beside you the first time you use it. Someone has to see how far you go."

Even on the night we became lovers, the knight instructor did not set down her role as watcher.

To verify the new ability, Helga proposed a simple test. She set three coins on the desk and memorized, in her mind alone, the position of the one she had chosen.

In the first control trial, Helga left the room and I did nothing but stare at the coins. Nothing came through. I could see with my own eyes that the gold coin bore the grime of many hands and the silver's edge was worn, but an object held no mind for me to read.

"Can you work out what I picked from the coins themselves?" Helga asked from beyond the door.

"No. Objects don't remember."

In the second trial, Helga came back in and, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠choosing nothing, merely shuffled the coins. I opened [Memory Reading] from two steps away. Visual information about their order surfaced, but there was no 'choice' in it. The ability could not manufacture a decision that had never been made and read it back.

Only in the third trial did Helga pick a single silver coin and set it at the far right end. This time the surface showed the order — silver, copper, gold — together with the choice of 'right.' But as I sank beneath it, the thread ran on, all the way to a memory of the first time she had gone to the market with Arnon. The worn ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠silver coin Arnon had accepted in place of change that day, the crack of Helga's fury at being cheated, the alley where the two of them held hands for the first time.

Level three could reach far deeper than the question asked.

I closed the ability at once.

"Why did you stop?"

"I meant to see only the coin, but old memories connected to it opened as well. From now on, the range I can read is wider than the range I've been granted."

Helga confirmed the far right end — the position I had reported — and covered the row of coins with a cloth.

"So it isn't getting the right answer that matters."

"It's how far it leaked in."

"Shall we test the distance, too?"

"Not today. There has been one more intrusion already."

"Even if I'm the one asking for it?"

"Rules exist so that having permission doesn't turn you into someone who does everything he's allowed."

Helga tapped the paper twice with the end of her pen. It looked like a habit of grading my answers; in truth it was how she gathered her next question.

After a moment's thought, Helga drew out a fresh sheet of paper.

Beneath the eighth clause, Helga drew a heavy line. It was the face of someone recalling both Arnon's battle report and the name Lebran.

"It can't be laxer than the order's own discipline."

"Should we show this to the Queen as well?"

"Not yet. I don't mean hide the power — first prove you can keep to this on your own. The moment the crown knows, it will hunt for uses before it looks at rules."

Helga's judgment was cold. She was saying she would be the new power's first brake, not its first accomplice.

Together we wrote our names beneath the rules. It was no official document, but it was the most important record left on the night I gained level three.

Helga also asked whether her own emotions had been the cause of the level-three awakening. I answered that I didn't know for certain. A deep resonance, accumulated mind interference, and the change in my body had simply overlapped in the same moment.

"So if I break down again, do you reach level four?"

"I will not test it that way."

"The answer passes. The expression is half a fail. You are glad the power grew, aren't you?"

I couldn't deny it. The sense that I could read people more deeply and change them more easily was as sweet as it was frightening.

Helga spread my hand open and pressed a finger into the center of my palm.

"Don't mistake the power for something that lives in your hand. The decision is made here."

Her finger moved to my chest.

"And don't decide alone. At the very least, whenever you use it on me, you ask first. Always."

The limits of the new power were set first by a person's promise, not by numbers.

"There's one more thing."

"What is it?"

"Today's permission covers today only. Being allowed to see a memory once doesn't create the right to see the next one."

"Do we really have to write down something that obvious?"

"Because the obvious is always the first thing omitted."

Helga copied it, word for word, onto the ninth line of the rules.

Nine. Past consent is not consent for the next use.

Beside each clause on the sheet we left blank spaces as well — lines for who would halt things when a rule was broken, who would be told, and where the records would be sealed. A promise doesn't hold on good intentions alone. Only with a procedure for breach does it become a rule.

"If you violate it, I suspend your duties."

"And report it to the Queen."

"And if you changed a memory deliberately?"

"I'll accept investigation and confinement, once I've been separated from the person involved."

"Easy to say."

"That's why we sign."

Helga wrote her name beneath my signature, and in place of the order's seal pressed the edge of a coin into the paper. A way of leaving the trace of today's agreement without impersonating official authority.

When the paper was folded, Helga slipped one copy into my pocket. The other she hid inside her scabbard. If I ever forgot the rules, she said, she would show me the paper before she drew her sword.

We did not join our bodies again. Helga rested a hand on my chest and waited until my breathing returned to its usual rhythm.

"Do-hyun."

"Yes."

"Can I sleep beside you and still remember Arnon?"

"That isn't mine to permit. It's yours to choose."

After thinking for a long while, Helga pulled the blanket up and took my hand.

"Then tonight, I'll choose. Stay here."

The new power had come into my hands — but I planted nothing in Helga's memory. When morning came, we would decide together, before her open eyes, the sentence for the first experiment.