In all sincerity, Odysseus did not entirely believe the captain's words. Respecting members' lives had its limits; when someone had hidden his ability this thoroughly, a minimum of investigation was only natural.
Of course he had braced for all of it, suspicion or interrogation alike. He had thought out his excuses in advance from the moment he had decided to take on the bear oaf.
"This is how you hold a sword."
But he had not known she truly would not ask.
"Why that look on your face?"
"Nothing... were you always this cool a person, Captain?"
"And what is that supposed to mean."
"I thought you'd pinch my cheek and give me an earfu—"
"Sitting there earning yourself a beating, truly."
"Thad doethn't mean I wath athking you to pinth it."
Odysseus slapped at the hand stretching his cheek out. But Captain Songha only snorted and did not let go. His cheek stung.
"Stop pulling my cheek. It's going to stretch out at this rate."
"Quite the thief scolding the householder, and with real relish too. Shall we go over who was in the wrong first?"
"At the very least it wasn't m—ah, I surrender, I surrender!"
Just as he thought he had barely been released, she moved to grab him again for speaking a bit of truth. Odysseus hastily backed away and guarded his cheeks.
"Nothing but quick on the uptake... never mind. Take up the sword."
"All right."
Fortunately Songha did not try more than twice. Edging closer to her, Odysseus' eyes swept over her grip.
"Like this?"
"Yes."
He had had a time when he held a sword, so imitating it was not hard. Odysseus took a firm hold of the wooden sword Captain Songha had given him.
Perhaps because it was a different kind from the sword he had used in his former life, the feel of the grip and the sword's center of gravity were quite unfamiliar.
"Captain, why do these only have an edge on one side?"
"It is a characteristic of the blades of Aragaya. There are double-edged swords as well, but single-edged ones are rather more common. This is one of them, the kind called a Maek sword."
"Maek sword?"
"It is the general term for single-edged swords in the Gauri style. The crossguard is small, and usually there is a ring and a three-leaf 三葉 ornament at the pommel... yours was procured in a hurry, so it has none."
Listening to Songha's explanation, Odysseus examined the sword once more. Sure enough, Songha's sword had a ring and a leaf-shaped ornament that his lacked.
"You've got plenty of money, so if you're getting me one anyway get me a proper—it's a joke!"
"Act up one more time. I will make this lesson never have happened."
"How petty."
Grumbling, the boy adjusted his grip on the unfamiliar sword.
"So what's the ring for?"
"Like this... you hook a cord through it and connect it to your wrist. So it is easy to take hold of again when you lose it."
"Oh, that's good."
The best thing was not to lose the sword in the first place, but not all things in the world turned as one wished. Odysseus began to like the ring rather a lot. Enough to be disappointed in himself for not having thought of such a thing sooner.
"Your stance is fine. Give it a swing."
SWISH!
"Hm. Do you see what the problem is?"
"It should have been straight, but it wobbled. I think it'll be like this for a while, until I put on some muscle."
"Yes. You know it well. Devote yourself to training."
Even so, he could keep up with the rest of the training well enough. Enough to think that once the problem of his unripe body was solved he would move on to the next part quickly.
"We will stop here for today. Fifty repetitions of each movement, repeated for a week. There is a risk of muscle dissolution, so do not do more than that."
"Yeees."
"I say it again and again: if something goes wrong with your body, never hide it. If your muscles melt it is all meaningless."
"All right."
It was an important matter, true, but hearing it every single time made it feel like nagging. Odysseus answered carelessly and massaged his body. The sound of Songha's dry laugh circled above his head.
"Ah, right. Captain, is there a reason you go around with your Field completely withdrawn?"
"...Is that not the same for you?"
"You went around hiding yours, so I assumed that's how it's done. Isn't it?"
"It does not have to be hidden. Though it is courtesy to keep it shrunk to a radius of a meter or two."
But her incredulous laugh lasted only a moment. At the question thrown at her, Songha's expression turned ambiguous. An expression much like the cigarettes she carried around at all times. Scorched and acrid, it did not let her insides show.
"Unless something special is happening, keep yours shrunk smaller than that."
"Because other people will catch it?"
"Yes."
"Is that why you withdrew your Field completely too?"
But reading someone did not necessarily require an expression. Odysseus tossed the words out obliquely. Bait that was fine if an answer came back and no matter if it did not.
"Yes."
In the end Songha took out a cigarette and put it to her lips.
"I am going ahead."
"Yes, ma'am."
Odysseus stared at the captain's departing back, then remembered something he had not managed to say and raised his voice.
"Don't forget to teach me how to handle a Field properly later!"
"Hah, fine. All right. I will teach you next time."
He knew how to adjust a Field's range and intensity, but not the finer capabilities that must have been uncovered in the modern age. Pointing that out, Odysseus withdrew his gaze from the closing door.
Instead the boy recalled the other person's Field he had felt on that earlier night.
"I expected it, but......."
The cloying thickness of clinging mud, and the smell of blood laid damply beneath it. That sensation of being caught once and never getting out again, only sinking forever.
"Your life could not have been an easy one either."
Recalling the captain's Field, which had been like a bog, Odysseus stretched his legs out straight. He felt no particular guilt over having read the captain's hidden insides. Having one's essence seen through by way of one's Field was something every Field owner had to endure.
Just as the captain had no doubt grasped the being he was by way of his own.
'Well, it doesn't matter if she knows mine.'
What a Field revealed was about the disposition of its owner; it did not lay bare all of a person's private circumstances. Besides, as a born liar, Odysseus could adjust the feeling his Field carried, if only a little.
He folded up his excessive worrying and got on with the rest of the massage. PATTER, PATTER. Just then Argos, whom he had certainly left out in the corridor, came into the room. Songha must not have shut the door properly. Whether he had pried the gap open with his nose or not, the door dividing the training room from the corridor stood half open.
"Clever swine."
WOOF!
Could a machine be this much like the real thing? Even as Odysseus chewed over the image of the 'Argos' he had never been able to pet properly, he scratched vigorously at the crown of the Argos in front of him.
The little bundle of machinery licked his palm as though in return. Its tongue was not stiff enough to sting the flesh like a cat's, but with no saliva implemented it was truly dry.
"Fetch!"
Indulging in how cute it was, he threw a suitable stick off to the far side. Argos went scampering after it.
"Is somebody in... the kid?"
"Hello."
"Still training?"
"Today's is done. Right now I'm massaging."
"Ah, I see."
While Argos fetched the stick back, Odysseus quickly kneaded his arms and legs. Of course the time was absolutely insufficient, so the boy had to throw the stick again and again.
"Huh. The little thing brings it back well."
"Right?"
Being a machine, it never tired and needed no food or water. The battery would drain a little, but charging it settled that. In a way it was perfect for building stamina. Though brushing it was a bother, so he shoved that off onto Yujin.
"Anyway, do you have anything to eat? I'm hungry."
"You shake people down awfully naturally, don't you?"
"You don't have to give me any if you don't want to. I've no intention of complaining if you don't."
"Hah, I'm sure."
Grumbling, the member rummaged through his coat. What came out in his hand were a chocolate bar and a few beef sticks.
"Here."
"Thanks for the food."
Odysseus took them, delighted. A growing child's appetite had a way of surpassing adult imagination, and it took hardly any time for all of it to vanish as fast as a crab hides its eyes.
"These don't taste good. Buy something else next time."
"...Planning to shake me down again?"
"Come on. Call it almsgiving if you're going to call it anything. How often do you get a chance to put a magician like me in your debt?"
"Your tongue runs like water off a green mountain."
The chocolate bar was fine, but the beef sticks were sour and thoroughly unpleasant. Odysseus tossed the half of the chocolate bar he had deliberately saved into his mouth in one go and got to his feet. It was about time to go to work.
"Just get going, Oil-Tongue."
"Hey. Where did you hear that nickname?!"
"Old Man Red was talking no end of trash about you."
"Ah, come on!"
Odysseus calculated the reaction a twelve-year-old child would show and shrieked accordingly. It was a shout with half his real feeling mixed in. Naturally, the nickname Oil-Tongue was a humiliating title even to Odysseus, not just to a twelve-year-old boy. It was dreadful.
"Call me that nickname one more time and see!"
"What. Going to put a nail in my shoe sole?"
"I'll smash the external hard drive under your bed!"
"W-wait. Hey! How do you know abou—!"
"Pass it on to everyone else, clearly! I gave you a warning!!"
"Hey!!"
So he would see to it that they could never hold that nickname in their mouths again. Leaving the desperately calling member behind, Odysseus scurried out of the training room.
***
Meanwhile, in a certain city in the eastern part of the Western Continent. An Air Ship, a weight class above an Air Boat, had just arrived at the harbor. It was a dedicated passenger liner that regularly crossed Seomuyang, said to be the largest of the oceans enclosed by continents.
"So this is the Western Region I have only heard tell of... the air of it does seem different from Aragaya."
"The land is different, so it could hardly be otherwise."
"Ugh, did everyone come here to sightsee? Scenery or whatever, I feel so stiff I could die. Can't I catch someone and kill them?"
"I will take that as a joke, Cheongsol."
The last to disembark there were people of distinctive appearance.
A giant of a man with a shaved head, dressed in gray monk's robes. A black-haired Kentauri woman draped in blue silks and carrying an oiled-paper umbrella. A girl in twin tails, conspicuous for her flamboyantly dyed hair, her piercings, and her nail polish. A woman whose tired face was hidden behind glasses, but whose suit made it easy to tell she was an office worker.
"Thanks to my disciple I set foot on Western soil I never trod in all my life."
One man, notable for a height over two meters, a white suit, and odd eyes of white and gold.
"The most interesting thing to happen in nearly a hundred years."
As the odd-eyed man walked slowly out, the harbor wind welcomed him. So thick was that welcome that the overcoat laid over his white suit and his black hair, which reached his hips, fluttered considerably.
Had more than half of that hair not been fixed in place with a hairpin, and had the two lapels of the overcoat not been joined with a cord and pendant, some of it might well have flown off into the air.
"My disciple has truly done a great thing for me."
"What. Old man, are you still calling the traitor your disciple?"
"A bond once tied may change its shape, but it is not severed. Is there any need to go out of my way to call him something else?"
But the man spared not the slightest attention for that rough wind. The odd eyes of white and gold looked up at the clear sky.
"More to the point, I am rather peckish. Is it still too early to take lunch?"
"Please wait a moment. I will move the reservation earlier."
At the man's words the tired-faced woman took out a tablet-type device and tapped at it. The screen inside the device flipped from one thing to the next at a speed the eye could not follow.
"Ah, right. Sanang. What's the menu?"
"Considering that a week of flight would leave everyone in poor condition, I chose familiar Han food, as I told you earlier."
"Whaaat? We came all the way to the Western Continent for Han food?"
"This humble monk would like a hamburger."
"...I am fine with it. My stomach is already churning from motion sickness; I would rather not push the greasy food of those Western bastards into it on top of that."
"It makes no difference to me, so follow the majority."
"...It seems no one listened when I conveyed the schedule."
But the woman, who had obligingly moved the reservation up, reacted sharply to complaints about the menu. The eyes visible within those sharpened lids were a black without a single point of light.
"The place serves fusion food as well as Han food, so if you truly wish it, order that. And if that too displeases you, you are welcome to go find what you want yourselves."
Everyone seemed to flinch at that eerie black. The woman adjusted her glasses and gently smoothed the furrow between her brows.
"Assuming you can speak the language here, that is."
"...Ah, hell. Fine. I'll just stuff my face, then."
"Hmm. I do know how to run a translator... then might you order hamburgers for the evening?"
"For dinner I will arrange a specialist Western restaurant that includes hamburgers."
"My thanks."
In the end the twin-tailed girl and the man in the monk's robes each took a step back, and the woman called Sanang eased her expression a little further as well. A tired face soon wrapped itself around her again.
"I will show you the way at once."
"Er... Sananggaram. I am sorry, but may I ask about the schedule after the meal on the way? I will remember it properly this time."
"...Hah. There will not be a third time. Bear that in mind."
The woman, whose irritation was gradually giving way to a headache, adjusted the device's screen once more.
"After the meal we move to the hotel, stay one night, and at noon tomorrow we depart for another city."
"Is no intelligence work needed? Er, we still do not know where the traitor is, do we?"
"As for that, there is no problem."
She brought a photograph up on the device's screen.
"Because we have found traces of the being presumed to be the traitor."
The photograph was filled with a corridor made filthy with corpses and blood, and a single person running its length. The image quality was poor, so the face of the runner could not be made out, but the gold jangling at that being's ear was vivid.
Five people's eyes glinted, each in its own color.