Hidden Ability
"Whoa... there are so many people."
The crowd gathered in the distance left my mouth hanging open. All these people, come just to watch a fireworks festival—the power of fireworks really was something else. They'd drifted in by twos and threes until the grounds were packed.
"Hana, don't let go of my hand, okay? There are so many people today. Wander off and you might get lost!"
"Okay!"
Maru was right. I was certain that the moment this crowd swept me up, I'd be a lost child. If I let go the way I had at the wine event, I might spend the whole day hunting for Maru and no one else. I had a phone, of course, so if she told me to wait somewhere specific she could find me again—but that would waste far too much time.
We walked for a good while before we reached a quiet stretch where hardly anyone was around. The moment we arrived, Maru pulled out her phone and placed a call. I kept hold of her hand and turned my head this way and that, taking in the view. It was a rise something like a hill, with a clear look at the river and the great bridge, and the way onto it was barred with police tape—the kind officers strung up when something had happened. We could have ignored it and stepped over, of course.
"Yes... we've arrived..."
Maru was deep in conversation with whoever was on the other end. I had no interest in eavesdropping, so I satisfied my curiosity by looking around instead. From where we stood I could see the bridge, and below it the vast Han River flowing past.
I'd heard that rivers overseas were all narrow little things, while Korea's Han River was enormous even by the world's standards—so huge that some foreigners were astonished a river like this could run straight through a city. Anyway, Maru seemed to have finished her call. She scooped me up into her arms.
"Hana, the staff will be here any minute, so just wait a little, all right?"
"Okay."
Not long after she said so, staff dressed in black appeared, carrying something between them. We'd come out to see the fireworks and Maru hadn't brought a single thing, which had left me full of questions—but once the staff showed up with everything, I understood why she hadn't carried it herself.
They spread a picnic mat, set the food out on top, and vanished. At the sight of it, Maru stepped inside the tape. I was still in her arms, so I went in with her automatically.
"The festival should be starting soon. Let's eat while we wait!"
As she spoke, Maru began unpacking the food the staff had brought. Fried chicken, pizza, and all sorts of other things to eat—far more than we could possibly finish. When I looked overwhelmed, she laughed.
"Hana, it's all right to leave some. The staff will take care of whatever's left."
"Really?"
"Mm-hm."
That settled any hesitation I had. I lifted a slice of piping-hot pizza. The cheese stretched in one long, gooey strand, and just looking at it sent my appetite surging. I had no idea where they'd gotten it, but to have hot pizza delivered on the spot like this... Modern society really was incredible. There was nothing money couldn't do. And if there was, it only meant you didn't have enough of it.
Maru and I talked as we ate, and before I knew it the world around us had gone dark. Soon after, grand music began to roll across the grounds. A microphone had been mumbling away for a while, but now everything had fallen as still as the hour before dawn. It felt as if the opening ceremony had ended and the fireworks were about to begin in earnest.
I wasn't wrong. The lights went out, lively music started up, and fireworks burst in time with the song. They'd said the show would run for about an hour.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Across the sky, fireworks of every color burst like embroidery being stitched into the dark. I forgot all about the chicken in my hands and gave the festival my full attention. Beside me, Maru already had her phone raised, filming.
Maybe because everything around us was pitch-black, the fireworks seemed to show even more clearly. And our spot was perfect—dead center, right in front of the show. If this were a movie theater, it would have been the seat just above the middle: the screen filling your vision, yet still wonderfully easy on the eyes. A true prime seat.
"Woooow..."
I couldn't hold back my awe as the fireworks went off. Where else could you watch them burst from a spot like this? For an ordinary person, it was a precious experience they would never have.
As the music flowed and the fireworks bloomed overhead, a thought rose in me. I wanted to be someone who made fireworks like these. A job that gave happiness to so many people—wasn't that a wonderful job? I knew, of course, that preparing a fireworks festival took tremendous effort.
"Hana, isn't the fireworks festival wonderful?"
Maru paused her recording to ask. The festival wasn't a nonstop barrage, either. They fired for a set stretch, rested a little, then prepared the next round.
If they shot fireworks for a full hour straight, the launchers probably wouldn't hold up. Or the machines might survive and the money wouldn't. I'd heard a single firework cost a fortune, and no ordinary event organizer could afford to fire them every second.
"Yeah. It's so pretty!"
The bursts were so beautiful that I took pictures of my own. Set as my phone's wallpaper, they would look incredibly lovely. And since my phone was the very latest model, even fireworks exploding far away came out clean and sharp.
"The chicken's delicious, too!"
Eating while I watched the festival was wonderful. Tasting something delicious and watching fireworks at the same time—there was nothing better.
I ate pizza as the fireworks popped and bloomed overhead. If every event were like this, I'd show up to as many as they wanted.
The Starlight Research Institute was, at its core, an institution devoted to studying otherworldly life-forms. Ownership of any such life-form discovered inside a gate belonged to the guild that had cleared that gate.
The institute itself, however, had long been gasping under deficits, for the simple reason that otherworldly life-forms did not appear often. Even the Starlight Guild, which cleared more gates than anyone, encountered an intelligent life-form only once every few months—or once or twice a year.
Studying these life-forms mattered, but the fact that it didn't make money mattered more. And so the institutes had tried every trick they could think of to earn on their own. All of that changed once Hana appeared.
Now there was no need to scramble for funds. They could research at their leisure, no longer hounded by performance quotas. A case like Hana's probably didn't exist anywhere else in the world. An otherworldly life-form with the ability to make money? If another institute heard that, they might have snorted and told them to stop lying.
"Do you think our institute just got lucky?"
"Obviously. There's no other lab swimming in this much money."
The researchers settled into their proper work with easy hearts. The higher-ups had always pecked at them for results, but there was no need for that anymore. Perhaps that was why the atmosphere felt so much looser. What had once been a walk across thin ice was now a cat padding over the Han River, frozen solid and thick.
Ever since Hana had come in, the mood of the whole place seemed to have changed.
Rinea, for her part, cooperated with the research. This was the first space she had ever entered where the World Tree's energy ran so strong. The concentration was the same as standing beside the World Tree's true body itself, and a place with energy that dense was rare. An ordinary person would already have fallen under the World Tree's spiritual thrall.
Of course, the World Tree was no harmful being who, like a demon, cast people into a pit of ruin. It was not a power that left them wasting away from illness, or put their lives in danger. They would, however, feel an extreme fondness whenever they looked upon the World Tree.
At a concentration like this, wouldn't the World Tree appear in their dreams? Ask them for their liver and gallbladder, and they might well hand them over.
To feel the World Tree's energy this strongly, a person would normally have to remain in the same place for months. An ordinary person exposed for only a day or two would not be drawn in by it. Yet as Rinea cooperated with the research and watched the people around her, she could see they had already been steeped in months' worth of that concentration.
Whatever worry she'd carried—what if something went wrong?—had already vanished without a trace. To the World Tree, this place was no different from a playground.
Rinea resolved to wait quietly until the World Tree appeared. Waiting day after day was hard, but the knowledge that she might meet the World Tree's soul made even that hardship feel light.