The Unseen King

Seven o'clock.

Elena woke at exactly seven. Her biological clock had switched back into queen-consort mode — twenty years of habit. The moment her eyes opened, her spine straightened.

Feels fucking great.

"Do-hyun."

"Yes."

"Thank you for last night."

"The pleasure was mine."

"I have a council meeting today. I have to be out the door by nine."

"Understood."

One kiss. On the forehead. And then Elena became the queen. She summoned her maids, dressed, pinned her hair up — from a woman in a nightgown to a woman beneath a crown. Transformation time: forty minutes.

I had left ten minutes earlier, to minimize the maids' stares. Clara was waiting in the corridor and bowed her head.

"Shall I have breakfast ready for you, Lord Court Magician?"

"No need. I'll eat in the city."

"As you wish."

Nothing in Clara's expression. Perfect blankness. Befitting Elena's close aide — airtight with secrets.

I slipped out through the palace's main gate.

Morning in the capital. Sunlight. The smell of baking bread. Market vendors unfolding their stalls, the creak of carriage wheels.

As I walked, I turned it all over in my head one more time.

Day fifty-three since the summoning.

Fifty-three days since I fell from Earth into another world.

Marisa. Irene. Rosa. Erica. Helga. Karin. Eva. Sophie. Rine.

And Elena.

Ten women whose bodies I'd been inside of. The innkeeper who kept me alive, the maid who opened the door into the palace, the knight and the physician carrying wounds home from the front, a lonely artisan, and the queen consort. Not one of them had I met the same way.

Ten. Fifty-three days.

Counted as numbers, it looks like an accomplishment. But each one of them carries a heart I touched and a responsibility I have to shoulder, and each of those is separate. It isn't a list you tick off on ten fingers and are done with.

And knowing that — like a complete bastard — I didn't want to let a single one of them go.

The skills I can use have multiplied beyond counting. I can tear apart and invert a person's common sense, dig through the memories in their skull, sway their feelings however I please. On top of that, I've gotten my hands on that system for breaking in females. My body has bulked up too — well over a handspan from where I started. The conditions for the next stage are still nowhere in sight.

The king's stomach, they say, is failing. Stomach cancer suspected. Natural death within three to five years.

A majority of the council stands with the queen. The three consorts have had the first pass of [Common Sense Alteration]. The Do-hyun mark on their chests — complete.

And then, the unknown gaze. For days now, a prickle at the back of my neck. Magical surveillance. Identity unknown.

Mental inventory — that's the end of it.

Everything is going fucking smoothly.

But the better it goes, the harder you have to watch yourself. It was the same in my counseling room. When a patient suddenly starts getting better, spilling everything nice and smooth — that was the most frightening thing of all. That the smoother the road, the worse the ambush is something I learned not with my head but with my spine.

Princess Lisette.

Kalandel's cunning.

An unknown watcher.

Too many variables. Fuck, seriously.

The outskirts of the city. Marisa's inn.

A two-story wooden building tucked into the edge of town — a dining hall downstairs, eight guest rooms above. The inn where I first stayed fifty-three days ago. These days I drop by two or three times a week.

I pushed through the door. The bell jingled.

"Well now — my lord."

Marisa looked up from the counter. Brown hair tied back in a single tail. Warm eyes. Big breasts. A slim waist. Full hips. An apron, dusted with breadcrumbs.

...Here we go again. Breasts, waist, hips — my eyes strip her down on autopilot and my cock reacts all on its own. Why is a guy who came for the smell of bread getting hard on the spot? Press it down, damn it. Fuck, that's such a turn-on. Where'd the brain go, the one that used to sit around analyzing warmth and comfort — nothing left but a loser whose lower half is the only honest part of him.

A forty-three-year-old widow. A woman who has run this inn alone for five years. A lonely woman.

This is the one case where I barely used [Brainwashing]. Marisa liked me from the start; I only gave it a nudge. No complicated analysis the way Elena took. Simple warmth.

"What brings you by at this hour?"

"Breakfast, actually. Bread and tea."

"Have a seat. I'll set something out right away."

The hour when guests are few. I took a corner table by the window, where the sunlight was good.

Marisa poured the tea herself and brought the bread out. Herb tea. It smelled wonderful.

"Did you come straight from the palace?"

"Yeah."

"...You were up all night?"

Her voice trailed off at the end. Marisa knows. The days I come walking down to the city at dawn are the days I spent the night at the palace. She asks anyway, knowing full well. She wants it confirmed.

"Her Majesty's sleep therapy ran long."

"...I see."

A shadow flickered through Marisa's eyes. It vanished inside a second. The smile came back.

"Eat it while it's warm."

"Thank you."

I bit into the bread. Warm. Country bread Marisa bakes herself. Rougher than palace bread — and better for it.

Eating bread at Marisa's inn right after spending the night inside the queen. A fucked-up thing to be aware of, but I have no intention of stopping. Marisa is Marisa. Elena is Elena. Erica is Erica. Karin is Karin.

All of them are my women. All of them are precious. And all of them, I'm using.

I swallow that contradiction down with another bite of bread. A shit-stained realization — but it's the truth. I'll go on living with the truth exactly as it is.

"Marisa."

"Yes?"

"Heard anything strange stirring in the capital lately?"

The innkeeper network. An intelligence web faster than any guild. Everything flows out of the places where people drink and gossip — noble coachmen, mercenaries, traveling merchants. Every one of them has sat at a table in this dining room at least once.

"Strange stirrings... Well. There is one thing."

"What is it?"

"A summoned lady called Ha Eun-seo. You remember her, my lord? The one who fell here with you."

Ha Eun-seo.

Of course I remember. The Korean woman who fell into this world with me fifty-three days ago. We exchanged a few words that day, and I haven't seen her since.

"What about her?"

"A regular was talking about it yesterday — she's entered the palace. At the king's invitation."

The king's invitation.

Kalandel invited the other summoned one? Without a word to me?

"For what purpose?"

"I don't know. But they say the king sent the invitation himself — not the chamberlain..."

The king. Himself.

An invitation sent by the king directly, bypassing the chamberlain, means one thing: unofficial. Without the ministers knowing. Without the queen knowing.

I don't like this.

Ha Eun-seo. [Time Stop]. A skill that stops time.

My [Common Sense Alteration] works on the mind. It only takes hold while the target remains conscious.

If [Time Stop] activates, my skills might not touch her at all — because her consciousness is stopped.

She could be my natural enemy.

"Marisa. Find out whatever you can about Ha Eun-seo. Her patterns, where she's staying, who she meets."

"Yes, my lord."

"Thank you."

I stroked Marisa's hair. She closed her eyes and melted into it.

...Her hair barely touches my fingertips and my gut is already twinging. Going stiff as a rod over one handful of leaning warmth — hold it down, you bastard. Fuck, rest stop, my ass. A lump of pitiful instinct that stands at attention the moment one woman sits down beside it.

This woman is pure. She loves me. A case where the affection she'd carried from the beginning amplified on its own, beyond anything [Brainwashing] did. No complicated analysis needed, the way it was with Elena.

Marisa is my rest stop. When complicated thoughts wear me down, this woman's simple warmth is what lets me rest. Not that a bastard who reached into a person's heart just so he'd have a rest stop has any right to say so.

Afternoon. The palace garden.

I was out walking — after lunch, digestion and quiet thinking both.

The garden is vast: the grand garden at the heart of the palace. Roses, lilies, lavender. Plenty of this world's flowers resemble Earth's. Convergent evolution, maybe. Or maybe this other world is, in some way, a projection of Earth itself.

I stopped in front of the fountain.

A gaze.

I felt it again — the prickle at the back of my neck, the same sensation as before. But this time I could pin down the direction. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠My senses have sharpened from using [Memory Retrieval] so often.

To the left. Beyond the rose arch. About thirty meters.

I turned my head, casual as anything.

A woman stood there.

Ha Eun-seo.

Fifty-three days.

The Korean woman who fell here with me on the day we were summoned. We traded a few words that day — "I'm Ha Eun-seo. What on earth is happening?" — about that much. Then we parted ways, each of us busy just staying alive.

I have no idea where she was or what she was doing for those fifty-three days. And then, today. In the palace garden.

Black hair, down to her shoulders, loose in the wind. Korean hair. A rare color in this world.

Compared to fifty-three days ago, she's thinner now. Colder.

Pale skin. No expression. A face that gives away nothing. She was expressionless the day we first met too, but this is a whole layer thicker than that.

About 165 centimeters. A thin frame. Black clothes — not a robe but a tailored otherworld coat. Practical. Attire made with combat in mind.

Our eyes met.

Three seconds.

No signal that she recognizes me, no signal that she's pretending not to. She simply looked. Fifty-three days later. For the first time since that brief meeting on the first day.

Ha Eun-seo's eyes. Black. Deep. Cold — no. Not cold. Empty. Not eyes without feeling, but eyes that refuse to show it. What would you have to see, what would you have to live through, for fifty-three days, to end up with eyes like that?

For three seconds, we held each other's gaze.

Ha Eun-seo turned away first.

Her long coat hem rippled in the wind, and she vanished behind the rose arch. No sound of footsteps. A light tread — or a deliberate erasure of sound.

Gone.

My heart was pounding.

A different kind of pounding than with Elena. Not sexual pull, not emotional turmoil.

Wariness.

The pure pulse of pure wariness.

Ha Eun-seo. The [Time Stop] skill. A woman who stops time.

A reunion after fifty-three days — was it coincidence? Just happening to come face to face in the palace garden?

No. There's no way a woman with [Time Stop] just happened to be standing in the same garden. She came to see me. Or — to observe me.

Whether the matchups between summoned ones were deliberately arranged by this world's system, or are simple chance, I don't know. But one thing is certain. My [Common Sense Alteration] interferes with the target's consciousness; the target has to be awake. [Time Stop] stops time itself, and consciousness stops along with it — a very real chance that my interference never lands.

And the other way around — what if my consciousness doesn't stop even inside [Time Stop]? Could a holder of a mind-type skill carry resistance to stopped time?

I don't know. No data. There has never been a recorded fight between summoned ones.

Fuck. My head goes ice-cold while my heart slams like crazy. Whether that's fear or thrill, I couldn't say. Probably both.

Ha Eun-seo was watching me. The "magical gaze" I'd been sensing since before — it may have been her all along. A summoned one invited by the king. An old companion resurfacing after fifty-three days. Eyes fixed on me.

Did the king call her here to keep me in check?

If it's Kalandel's paranoia, the scenario fits all too well. The court magician holds influence over the queen consort — summon the other one, set her to watch him and check his power.

But that's speculation. I'd need [Memory Retrieval] on Ha Eun-seo to be sure, and that means contact. One step closer, the way it was that day, fifty-three days ago. Not that I can see how getting close to that woman differs from pressing a fingertip against a blade's edge.

"Ha Eun-seo."

The words slipped out, to no one.

"[Time Stop]... a dangerous woman."

I returned to my quarters.

Sat at the desk. Spread out a sheet of paper and picked up the quill. No ballpoint pens in this world — inconvenient, but I'd adapted. I thought I'd put down some of what was circling in my head.

Then my hand stopped.

The moment I started writing, the names would come pouring out, one after another. And whatever that line of ink turned into, on paper it would become a list of prey.

I set the quill back down.

Twenty-seven. Kang Do-hyun. The bastard who went all the way to grad school because he wanted to fix people's hearts.

The man who chose this path because he wanted to heal minds is, in another world, manipulating them.

Ironic? No. It's fucked up, but it's the logical conclusion.

Therapy and manipulation are one and the same technique, applied differently. A counselor rebuilding a patient's cognition; a hypnotist rewriting a subject's common sense. The method is identical. The only difference is consent — whether it exists or not.

A patient consents to treatment. My targets are altered without ever consenting.

The one exception is Elena. Elena alone partially knows what I am, and partially consented.

So is that what makes her special? Or is it only what I want to believe? Fuck — even that border is blurred.

I shoved the blank paper, untouched, deep into the drawer. Not writing it is the answer. Keep it in my head alone. The moment a thing like this is nailed down in ink, it becomes evidence.

Evening.

Sunset over the palace. From the west tower, the whole capital spreads out below — the streets within the walls, the market, the housing quarters; farmland and forest beyond the walls; a mountain range on the horizon.

Another world.

The world I was thrown into. A world I never chose. But now, my world.

I still don't know the way back. I'm not even sure I want to.

If I went back to Earth, what would I be? Grad student Kang Do-hyun. Writing papers, running counseling practicums, living off cup ramen. That was my life.

Here, I am the court magician. The queen consort's lover. A man who could remake a kingdom.

Which of them is the "real me"?

I gripped the railing and watched the sun go down. No answer comes. None comes, so I simply turn my mind back to this world's affairs. The questions without answers have only multiplied since I arrived.

I came down from the tower.

Night.

I didn't go to Elena. Today was a rest day. I can't be in the queen's bedchamber every single night — the more often I go, the greater the risk of being caught.

Instead I went down to the city again. Marisa's inn. Second visit of the day — this time, for dinner.

The hour when nearly every guest had gone. Marisa had closed the shop, set a table just for me in a corner of the dining room, and was waiting.

Stew. Stew here uses a root vegetable called "tor" in place of potato. Similar taste. A little sweeter.

"It's delicious."

"Really? Oh, thank goodness."

Marisa's smile. Simple and warm.

Around this woman, my head rests. The tangled politics, the dangerous schemes, even that queasy feeling caught in my throat every time I use [Brainwashing] — for a little while, I can set all of it down.

"Marisa."

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"What's this, all of a sudden?"

"Nothing. Just because."

Marisa tilted her head. Then she laughed — wide open.

"You can be pretty cute sometimes, my lord."

"...Cute?"

"Yes. Moments like this one."

Fuck — cute? To a twenty-seven-year-old man? To a bastard who's left his mark ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on the hearts of ten women? And yet here I am, mouth curling up at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠her words. Hopeless, the lot of me.

Eleven at night.

I left the inn. The road back to the palace — streets empty of people, moonlight standing in for streetlamps. This world's moon is bigger than Earth's, tinged faintly blue.

The night of the fifty-third day since my summoning.

After meeting Ha Eun-seo's eyes for the first and last time on the day we were summoned, I came all this way, taking ten women from Marisa to Elena as I went.

From nothing, to here. Skills, body, the number of hearts I could handle — all of it grew.

Fifty-three days.

Fifty-three days, and this is how far I've come.

This far is what fifty-three days' worth of life looks like. For a bastard who fell here penniless, that's far — far too far.

The palace walls came into view. Torches lit at intervals, the shadows of the night watch moving between them.

And today, for the first time, a crack had run through those fifty-three days of calm. A woman with black hair and empty eyes had watched me from beyond the rose arch.

[Time Stop]. A woman my skills might never touch.

The moon is bright.

The fifty-fourth day of this otherworld is about to begin.

A single sheet of white paper was wedged into the crack of my quarters' door.

No writing on it. Only ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a chair without a crown, and thirteen lines, drawn on the page.

When I turned the paper over, a short sentence appeared on the back.

I couldn't tell whether Ha Eun-seo had left it, or whether the one who brought Ha Eun-seo here had.

The fifty-fourth day in this otherworld began not with a question, but with a door.