Side Story 01: Thank You for Investigating, Officer
"Mom, why are my teeth so pointy?"
'So you can better receive the sustenance the Lord bestows upon you.'
"Mom, why is my skin so rough and bumpy?"
'So the sacred garments the Lord clothes you in will not slip away.'
"Mom, I hate the convent. Can't I go to a normal school like the other kids?"
Slap!!
'The bishop wants you — how dare you say such a thing! You'll sleep in the penance room tonight!'
I opened my eyes. I couldn't remember the dream, but the foul mood it left behind told me I'd been dreaming about my childhood again. I must have clenched my teeth hard in my sleep — broken shards of tooth were rolling around inside my mouth.
Ptoo! Clatter-clatter.
"Hey, secretary. I'm in a shitty mood today, so I'll be a little late. Ah — I'm not skipping! Don't worry, I'll come in this afternoon."
I called my secretary to say I'd be late. The brat tried to mark me down as absent for the day, so I made sure to tell her I'd be in by the afternoon.
I spat the shattered teeth into the trash can beside the bed along with a mouthful of bloody spit, rinsed my mouth roughly with the water in the cup on the nightstand, and got up.
Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any bloodstains on the sheets. Bloodstains were a pain to scrub out — I'd have to call someone in — and that was a hassle in more ways than one.
With my teeth wrecked, breakfast was out of the question. I knocked back a health drink, settled into my favorite armchair, and closed my eyes.
If I shut my eyes and traced the thread of sensation running out from my body, I could see the world through the CCTV cameras made from my own teeth. I couldn't feel anything through them, but it wasn't a bad way to rest.
A domestic tour from the corner of my room. I couldn't manipulate the cameras, so the viewing angles were limited — and it wasn't as though I could go around telling people to adjust their CCTV angles so I could snoop better.
The fact that I could share the view through my own lenses was a secret known to fewer than ten people. And who would buy a CCTV from someone who admitted they could see through every camera they made?
Still, I'd scattered so many of them that hopping from place to place for a little rest was never a problem. I wandered here and there, watching scenery and people — until a cathedral appeared beyond one of the lenses, and I clicked my tongue and opened my eyes.
"Ah, fuck. Haa…"
It wasn't that I hated religious people, or religion itself. It was just a kind of PTSD from growing up under a mother who'd been deep in a cult.
The reason my name is Cheon Sa isn't the "sa" from shark — it's exactly what it looks like: angel. I did rename myself later to use the shark character, though.
From the age of three I lived inside a monastery with my devout mother, and until I turned twelve I was raised there, educated into something resembling a proper nun.
Then, at the coming-of-age ceremony held when I turned twelve, I threw a fit and refused the "grace" that bastard cult leader tried to force on me. From that day on, my mother and I were treated worse than slaves.
My mother scolded me, desperate to end our life of servitude — but rather than submit to the malice and rage pouring in from every side, I chose to fight back.
Until I turned seventeen I lived less like a nun and more like a gladiator, brawling at least three times a day. The year I turned fifteen, my mother left her room and ascended to the side of the god she'd always loved so much.
One day, after I'd grown used to showering under water hot enough to scald me head to toe while covered in my own blood and my opponent's, pointed at and called a demon — the miracle arrived with almost insulting ease.
A government agent who'd infiltrated the cult led a surprise raid of nearly a hundred elite operatives, and the cult that had seemed like it would never fall crumbled like nothing at all.
I heard that between the bishop, the nuns, and the priests, nearly a hundred of them were rounded up — but at the time I was lying in a hospital bed wrapped head to toe in bandages, listening to the beep of vital monitors, so I didn't have the presence of mind to care about those bastards.
After that I was debriefed by the government and returned to modern society. But for someone who'd spent almost every moment of her life inside a convent, the modern world was a path of sharp thorns.
Nobody was hiring a grotesque Mutation Type ability user whose teeth periodically clattered out of her mouth, and nobody was turning on the lights for one either.
In the end I wound up selling thin needles and caltrops made from my own teeth in some seedy corners of the market, got arrested, and — once the practical value of my ability was recognized — laid the foundation for what is now OFS. But the price of that pardon was a standing obligation to periodically do whatever jobs the government dumped on me. Another headache.
"Ah, right — did the results come back on that investigation into Jeong-ah's kids?"
Most of the jobs the government handed down were annoying, unpaid, and useless. But every so often there was a worthwhile request — like the one where I'd been tasked with watching Jeong-ah's son.
Apparently an incident had occurred during a sports festival: Jeong-ah's eldest had dropped a massive lightning bolt and seriously attacked Ryu-yeong, her son's friend, who had been sparring at the time.
Follow-up field surveys and testing at the Erosion Control Center determined that output of that magnitude was impossible for the child, so they'd dragged me down to the police station to investigate the possibility of outside interference. I'd been in periodic contact with the officer ever since, and I'd asked her to dig a little deeper.
Rrring… Rrring…
"Yes, Ms. Cheon Sa. I've got your call."
"Ah, Inspector. About that elementary school investigation I asked you for — how did it go?"
"…Haa…… We confirmed an erosion reaction. Nothing in the surrounding air at all — but right at the point where the lightning was said to have struck, in the sparring ground floor, and fairly deep down, we found a faint trace."
"So it really was…"
"Yes. An erosion reaction, lightning, and a thick bank of storm clouds and torrential rain that wasn't in any weather forecast."
There was only one being who rode storm clouds and struck with lightning laced with erosion particles.
"The X-class villain Noe-ryong was there."
"…Understood. Thank you for investigating, Officer. I'll buy you a meal sometime."
"Your taste in food doesn't match mine, Ms. Cheon Sa, so I'll decline. And I intend to use my authority to keep this incident from being reported upstairs and to destroy the records. I won't be taking any objections."
"No — I was going to ask you for exactly that. If anything, thank you. I'll end the call here."
Click.
"Noe-ryong, huh… Haa…"
If it had been some mid-tier S-class villain, I'd have taken a little government support, rounded up our people, and gone to lean on them with a half-threat. But Noe-ryong changed the math entirely.
Beings who were human and yet not classified as human. Entities whose power was judged impossible to rank on the normal scale, and so had been given the designation X — and not as heroes, but as villains.
I worked my phone and sent Jeong-ah a rough text saying the climate-related ability users in the area had apparently whipped up storm clouds because they couldn't stand the sight of a kids' sports festival. I added that the culprit had been caught thanks to the inspector, so she shouldn't worry about it any further — then started getting ready for work. It wasn't even ten in the morning yet, but it had already been a thoroughly rotten day, so I figured I might as well just go in and get some work done.
I threw on whatever clothes were at hand, draped my OFS-branded coat over my shoulders, stretched, and closed my eyes —
"…Ah."
Rrring…
"Yeah, secretary. Check Gangnam CCTV number fourteen — that looks like a villain. Yeah, yeah, doesn't seem like they've started anything yet, so call the nearest precinct and send some of our people who are close by just in case. Yeah. Oh, and I'm coming in."
As always, preventing something before it happened beat cleaning up after it.
I stepped outside and looked up. The sky was disgustingly clear. That Noe-ryong brat was probably up there somewhere looking down on us and causing trouble…
"That's all. Is there anything else you need?"
"Mmm… Start with something to drink and something to eat."
I listened to my servant's report on the investigation into that cute little kid who'd caught my eye a while back, made a mildly annoyed face, and told them to bring me food — but the servant took a few steps and then stopped dead in place. There was only one reason that servant ever did that.
"Ah, what the hell~!! What are you doing here, Inhyeong-sa!!"
"Why, I came because I was worried you might do something strange with my daughters. Call it a mother's heart."
"Bullshit!!"
That old hag — older than me by a long shot — appeared dragging her floor-length white hair, which suited her age about as well as a noose, sweeping it across the floor of my cloud-house as she came.
I kept my hair short so it wouldn't get caught in the clouds. Every time that bitch visited, long strands of hair got left all over the place, and cleaning them up was a pain in the ass.
"More to the point — my daughters tell me you've found a pretty child?"
"You crazy wiretap bitch. And don't get your hopes up. It's a little male brat with the equipment attached, so ha… fuck. I loved him, you goddamn bitch."
"My, my. If you're reacting like that, he must truly be beautiful. A shame for a homosexual like yourself — but for me, that's rather good news."
I spat a curse full of regret up at the empty air, and Inhyeong-sa smiled brightly, clearly delighted. Ugh. An old granny's smile. Disgusting.
"He's a kid under government surveillance. Touch him carelessly and they'll grab you by that granny hair of yours. Ah, fuck! Let go!!"
See? Just because I called her granny, she wrapped her hair around my arms and legs. What's the point of getting older if your heart just shrinks down into something petty?
"Oh my, oh my~ Where do you see a grandmother here~? You and I both still look like we're in our twenties~"
"You crazy bitch. Denying it doesn't erase the years you've lived— Ah!! I'm gonna shock you!! I will!?!? I can do it!!"
BZZZZT!!!
The moment I tried to tell Inhyeong-sa that living a long time didn't make the years disappear, the bitch tried to drive the hair she'd wrapped around my limbs straight through my skin — so I coated my body in electricity and burned every last strand to ash.
She clutched the blackened hair and put on a sad face, but it was just the act of a sly old devil-hag. I spat on the floor and flopped onto my cloud-made bed.
Haa… He really was beautiful. If he'd just grown up exactly like that, I could've had a new wife for the first time in fifty years…
"Haa… That bastard Ye-eon-ga. She must've sent me there just to mock my love."
I really did love him, you fucking bitch. Let's meet again once I tear it off later. No — should I be the one to tear it off? …Nah. Even if I did, the trace of what was attached wouldn't disappear.
Aah~ Isn't there anyone out there with a gender-change superpower already~!!!!