Chapter 17 — The Sorcerer And The Rank-Two Ability Exam (1)

“I’m not much good at reading people or hiding things, so I’ll just ask you straight out.”

Yun Juna took a single sip of the black tea set before her, lowered the cup, and put her question to him.

“Aren’t you the youngest son of the head of the Shin House, Master Shin Yuhyeon? Mr. Shin Hweein?”

Fumbling a half-hearted denial would be worse than none at all.

Shin Hweein tapped his fingers lightly around the rim of his cup, then raised his head, met her eyes, and spoke.

“That wasn’t something you heard from Lt. General Yun, I take it.”
“The situation made it plain. There’s no other way to make sense of how you vanished that day. Among those who know the Shin House’s inner workings, there’d been all sorts of talk about why Mr. Shin Uin was throwing himself into the search for his younger brother. And just at that time I heard from Miss Shin Myeongin that you’d hidden yourself precisely to escape Mr. Shin Uin.”

Though of course the biggest clue was that you command powerful shikigami, Yun Juna added.

How could even an outsider piece it together, and yet Shin Myeongin not?
No. If she did piece it together, things would get tiresome in their own way, so it’s better she stay in the dark.

“Even so, that’s still too thin a thread to pin it on.”
“My uncle was trying to attach me to you. He isn’t the sort to spend his niece on a whim. He’d only do it because you’re someone particular.”
“…Ah, yes. There was that.”
“And if I had to give another reason besides that, there’s Miss Ham Seoyeon.”
“Ham Seoyeon? What’s she got to do with it?”

Shin Hweein cocked his head, and Yun Juna narrowed her eyes at him for a moment, then asked, almost as if it had only just occurred to her.

“You didn’t ask her to pass a message along to me, by any chance?”
“Ah, that’s right. About working out together later…”
“So it really was that, that little—”
“Hm?”
“Ah, no. Would you look at this, please?”

What Yun Juna pushed across to him was the screen of her phone.
The first thing to catch his eye was that Ham Seoyeon’s name was saved as ‘Sham-Shaman,’ but it was the content that was the real problem.

[Sham-Shaman: I heard you made plans to meet Shin Hae.]
[Me: I don’t know how you know, but yes. To make him work out. He’s such a weakling.]
[Sham-Shaman: That’s not bad coming from you, but isn’t it a bit too old-school?]
[Me: Old-school? How so?]
[Sham-Shaman: He turned you down. Said you make him uncomfortable.]
[Me: ??? Have you got something going on with him?]
[Sham-Shaman: lol]

After that, there were no further messages.
Shin Hweein looked over the log for a moment, then cocked his head again.

“There’s nothing here about working out.”
“Just so. Cute, isn’t it, the kind of thing she pulls?”

For someone calling it cute, her eyes are awfully murderous.

“All right. What is it you’re meant to glean from this?”
“That she behaves as if she’s on rather familiar terms with you. It doesn’t read as a simple acquaintance, which only made me all the more certain of who you are.”
“…?”

Shin Hweein still could not follow her reasoning.

What does Shin Hae’s being on friendly terms with Ham Seoyeon have to do with confirming my identity?

He must have looked as if he were playing dumb, because Yun Juna spoke again, in a tone that said Are you still going to pretend?

“The two of you were going to be betrothed, weren’t you? I gather a great deal passed between the houses on the matter, and although it never actually came off in the end, you two were close from childhood, weren’t you?”
“…Ah.”

The moment he heard those words, a certain portion of Ham Seoyeon’s manner, a portion that had so far remained unaccounted for, slotted into place at last with perfect clarity.
There had been a reason, then, why from their very first meeting it had seemed she paid him more mind than was warranted.

So that was it. That was what it had been.

The cursed youngest son of the Shin House, and the youngest daughter of the Ham House, looked at askance for harbouring a foreign deity in her body.
It must have been someone in the Ham House, displeased with her, who had pushed for the betrothal.
But however hard they wished to push it, marrying her off to a Shin Hweein who might well die before reaching adulthood was simply too much, and on those grounds the talk had been called off.
And if Ham Seoyeon, troubled by that, had felt the wish to be kind to Shin Hweein…

“I’m told the head of the Shin House was the one who put a stop to it. He’s renowned even as a prophet. Most likely he reckoned your worth far above that woman’s.”
“Hm?”

But Shin Hweein’s musings were dashed to pieces by Yun Juna’s next words.

Not the Ham House, the Shin House? And Father himself, at that?

“You truly didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Then you wouldn’t know this either. The story is that the head of the Shin House, by way of apology, proposed a match with his second son instead, and the Ham House refused.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“It became a topic in other houses too, at the time, for that very reason. Forgive me for saying so to your face, but back then you were in poor health, Mr. Shin Hweein. For a simple political marriage, there’d be no need to withdraw the youngest and put forward the more robust second son, so the move suggested, people said, that he valued that — Sham-Shaman, no, Ham Seoyeon — that highly.”

The questions remain for me too, but there’s nothing more foolish than trying to guess at Father’s intentions.

Yun Juna, having said the thing herself, now somehow wore an expression of vague dissatisfaction, and Shin Hweein looked at her and spoke.

“She is an ally of mine, yes, but not from the beginning. We were out of contact for many years, and we simply happened to cross paths again, by chance, in my Shin Hae guise.”
“Is that so… By chance.”

For some reason, Yun Juna seemed to grow even more put out.

“In any case, am I to take it you’ve accepted my uncle’s proposal?”
“Yes. There’s no method that vaults a man from Rank-Three to Rank-One in a single leap. If I can quietly become Rank-Two, there’s nothing better.”
“You already have Rank-One in mind? Come to think of it…”

Yun Juna looked across at Shin Hweein, her face arrested by a fresh kind of surprise.

“When I last worked with you, as I recall, your spiritual power was a good deal less than mine. Now it isn’t. To grow that quickly… have you been taking some spiritual elixir?”
“It’s not the sort of thing any ordinary spiritual elixir could manage. I had a connection.”

Shin Hweein let out a faint laugh, drained his teacup, and rose from his seat.
Yun Juna, who had taken only a single sip of her own tea, stood to follow him.

“Send me the detailed schedule later. Until then.”
“No, before that, with me, please—”
“Hm?”

The moment Yun Juna strode up and made to seize his arm, Leon surged out of Shin Hweein’s shadow and caught her hand.
And that was not all. By some art, Geum Moa had appeared behind her, smiling brightly, the edge of her hand poised against the woman’s throat.
It wasn’t as though Yun Juna had meant Shin Hweein any harm, and yet the response was forward enough to embarrass him.
Above all, Leon, who normally would not so much as show himself within the cathedral, made it all the more startling.

“My apologies, my lady. But one must not lay hands so casually upon my lord. Especially someone as strong as you.”
“…My apologies.”

Yun Juna opened and closed the hand Leon had released a few times, then said, with a wry smile,

“Your shikigami… have they grown stronger too?”
“You know the Shin House’s shikigami arts. Sorcerer and shikigami grow strong together, as a rule. …My apologies. These two in particular are oversensitive.”
“Two? Eep—!”

She probably hadn’t sensed Geum Moa’s presence at all.

Only now noticing Geum Moa, who had taken up the position at her back, Yun Juna nearly leapt out of her skin and rolled aside.
Geum Moa, for her part, was still glaring at her with eyes that looked ready to kill.

“This person, the famous one of the Shin House…!”
“Since you already know it all, I’ll just fill in the rest: the reason Shin Uin is hunting me is her.”

Since she said the word ‘famous’ herself, just that much should be enough to make her understand.

Sure enough, Yun Juna boldly looked Geum Moa up and down, Geum Moa who was glaring straight back at her, let out an enormous sigh, and nodded.

“Haa. So wherever you go, it’s base appetites that cause the trouble.”
“It always is.”
“That’s right. Truly, I’m worn to death by these fox-of-flame types who don’t even know their place, sniffing after the young master.”
“Moa, you’re the biggest one of them.”

Geum Moa’s line sounded so much like a self-introduction that Shin Hweein, exasperated, threw it back at her, then turned to Yun Juna and asked,

“All right. If you have anything left to say, use words for it, not your hands.”
“Exercise.”
“…”

Shin Hweein quietly turned his head away, and Yun Juna, advancing in that very direction, leaned her face in and said with iron resolve,

“Exercise. You have time today, don’t you?”
“To be quite honest, I haven’t long returned from a mission. I need to put things in order and rest—”
“It wasn’t a mission that involved much in the way of physical exertion, was it?”
“…Hhh.”

Shin Hweein let out a long sigh, then held up two fingers.

“I cannot move about carelessly outside the cathedral, so it must be limited to what can be done indoors, and both parties are to wear clothing that exposes no skin. These two conditions must be observed without fail.”
“Let me look into it.”

And so, after she looked into it, it turned out the cathedral was, of all things, fitted with a perfectly complete gymnasium.
Shin Hweein borrowed exercise clothes from Father Lucas, Yun Juna from Sister Barbara, and they assembled inside the facility.
The shikigami had wanted to come in too, but they were likely to react theatrically to every move Yun Juna made and try to interfere the way they had earlier, so all of them were driven out save Flame-tail, who was left behind as overseer.

— You, woman. Try anything funny and I’ll burn you to a cinder this instant.

“I cannot for the life of me imagine what they’re so worried about.”
“Their caution is reasonable enough. Most sorcery requires at least some preparation time. Mine does not.”

Shin Hweein creased his brow at that.
Now that he thought of it, when the Cardinal had spoken of her earlier he had used the term ‘multi-ability awakened,’ and as far as Shin Hweein knew, that was not a phrase one applied to a sorcerer.
He cast his mind back to what she had shown when they had moved together before.
She was a Yun-born who had spent long years in the military service and trained in the martial arts, and yet, now that he considered it, he recalled she had fought her enemies almost exclusively with that greatsword.
And there was that overwhelming strength, the strength that swung the greatsword like a pair of chopsticks.

“A Warrior?”
“Just so. I am a Rank-Two Warrior. I’m also a Rank-Three psychokinetic.”
“I see.”

The air she gave off had been different from a common sorcerer’s, and he had merely assumed she had gone through some specialised training.
Had he looked her over with his spirit-eye he would of course have realised at once. But to peer with the spirit-eye at one whose skill outstripped his own was to court the embarrassment of being caught at it, and so until now he had deliberately refrained.

An esper, because the spiritual power within the body is converted to a different form, cannot handle sorcery.
There are cases of awakening two abilities at once, but using a special ability and sorcery together is impossible.
Only now did Shin Hweein understand why he had never seen Yun Juna use sorcery, and he gave a silent nod.

“At least being a branch-line member is a relief. Had I been born to the main line and unable to use sorcery, I’d have been treated worse than I am now. …Ah, no. That was—”

Having spoken with such self-deprecation, Yun Juna belatedly recalled Shin Hweein’s past and, startled, clapped a hand over her mouth.
Shin Hweein let out a faint laugh and waved a hand at her, enough of that.

“As you can see, I’ve found a way through too, now. We’ve both had a hard time of it, haven’t we.”
“Yes… I’m glad.”

At his words Yun Juna smiled bitterly, tapped a nearby piece of exercise equipment, and said,

“Shall we begin, then.”
“Tch.”

From there, hauled at her direction into the iron-pumping, Shin Hweein had to test the limits of his frail body across every kind of exercise.
The all-but-nonexistent muscles of his whole body he supported, barely, with spiritual power, and wrung them out, and wrung them out again.

“You’d best take off the mask. It looks stuffy, and besides, I can’t tell where your limits are.”
“My… limits… have long since…”
“Not yet, you mean.”

— Tsk.

When the worn-out Shin Hweein at last took off the mask, the face revealed was the very one carved on his Rank-Three certificate.
While he gasped for breath, feeding his heart and lungs with spiritual power, Yun Juna, who had been quietly watching him, asked at length,

“This isn’t your real face, I take it.”
“Hoo… No. I was shut up in the annex, true, but there might still be someone who remembers the face I was born with.”
“Hm. Considering Sham-Shaman’s taste, I’d say it’s likely…”
“What was that? I couldn’t quite catch it.”
“On to the next exercise.”
“Khh!”

Counting the simple cardio she’d had him do before and after, Shin Hweein had to endure a full two hours of it.
While mixing him a protein drink she had prepared, Yun Juna poured forth her doctrine.

“There’s a point to watch in how you handle the spiritual power. You must never reinforce the muscle itself with spiritual power, or try to forcibly heal it. You make the spiritual power into the energy-source and move the muscle with it. Only then will the muscle grow naturally, and quickly. The spiritual power a sorcerer wields can, if you set your mind to it, serve as the finest supplement for building the best of muscle. Do you understand?”
“And after exercising…”
“The same. Healing with spiritual power and feeding the muscle cells with spiritual power may look similar, but they are entirely different things.”
“It’s far more troublesome, the spiritual-power expenditure is incomparably greater, and recovery is slower.”
“And that’s the measure of how strong the muscle becomes.”

It was possible, perhaps, that Shin Hweein had misjudged the woman.
But the explanation was easy enough to follow, and looking at her firm musculature, which the exercise clothes could not hide, it carried a certain persuasive weight, so that before he knew it Shin Hweein was channelling spiritual power into his muscles, exactly as she had told him.

“Like this?”
“In sorcerer’s terms it’s a knack of considerable difficulty to acquire, so it’s not something you’ll master overnight. But if you bear it in mind and practise consistently, you’ll come into roughly the strength of a Rank-Four Warrior. There are, in fact, lower-ranked sorcerers who do their work by training their muscles in this fashion.”
“Is that so.”

In that case, then yes, what he had just learned was likely the right thing.
He knew that saying so aloud would only earn him a what a smug brat sort of look, so he kept it to himself.

“I’m truly grateful for today. Carrying myself with spiritual power, it was manageable enough. Though, with the chronic ailment in my body, repeating it day after day may be difficult…”
“Hm. To my eye you look in better health than when I last saw you. Or am I wrong?”
“…That, well, yes.”

By that business with Miu, the North Sea Dragon Princess, all his vascular ailments had evaporated, and Shin Hweein’s body had been transformed from a patient who must keep to his bed without spiritual power to a patient who can at least move about without it.
That she had read the change at once was startling enough, but what followed startled him more.

“I’m thinking of staying at the cathedral myself for the time being. I should be able to get clearance for a temporary residence.”
“What?”

Looking at Shin Hweein, whose lips were trembling visibly, Yun Juna spoke with a satisfied expression.

“Up until the exam, let’s drill the body just that little bit more. Persistence brings strength. You can do it too.”
“And what about my say in this?”
“Now then, why don’t we go and clean up and have a meal. A healthy diet is just as important as exercise.”
“As I was saying, my say in this…”

Finding that Yun Juna paid his words no mind whatsoever, Shin Hweein peeled his gaze from her and shot a look at his overseer, Flame-tail.
If ever there was a moment for the overseer to do something, this was surely it. But Flame-tail merely wagged his tail furiously and said,

— It’s good, very good! Just stay this course!

By any reckoning, the choice of overseer had been wrong from the very start.
In the end, until the day of the private examination Lt. General Yun had spoken of, for a full week, Shin Hweein was reduced to working out two hours a day, every day, with Yun Juna.