I'll Come Save You
Something I'd completely forgotten about suddenly came back to me.
Meeting Hongryeon!
According to the setting, she was in the same class as Siyun. So if I went to her classroom under the pretext of visiting Siyun…
"I get to see Hongryeon's bare face."
I'd seen her plenty of times in the comic, of course—but when I'd run into her during the Mudwell raid, she'd been wearing a mask.
"Haa… I can't wait."
I was so excited my heart was hammering and my whole body felt flushed with heat.
Would Hongryeon look exactly the way she had in the comic?
Probably a little different…
The first time I'd met the main and supporting cast after reincarnating into this world, I'd been a little surprised. They hadn't quite matched the appearances I'd pieced together from the comic alone.
Before meeting them, I'd half-expected a jarring gap—pretty on a two-dimensional page, maybe less so in person. But that hadn't been the case at all.
"I thought it'd feel like running into cosplayers…"
Instead, they looked as if they'd been born that way—natural, effortless. Whether their clothes were extravagantly flashy or quietly plain, everything somehow came together and made them shine. Even the exaggerated gestures and expressions I'd only ever seen in comics fit them so perfectly it was almost unfair.
If I tried to picture one of my old friends from before the reincarnation pulling those same manga-style moves, it would have been unbearably awkward. Here, somehow, those same motions felt completely natural. And every so often, when I became aware of my own body language, I realized I was doing the same things without thinking.
Had some kind of filter been installed in my brain the moment I reincarnated? Or had their overwhelming beauty simply steamrolled any sense of awkwardness into dust?
The more I thought about it, the more the latter seemed likely.
You know the saying—fashion is completed by the face.
Alright. Let's imagine.
What if a close friend from before the reincarnation showed up in a bright red top and yellow overalls?
It would have looked ridiculous. If they'd worn that to a meetup, I might have charged over and dropkicked them on the spot.
But if the person who showed up in that outfit was Tania?
That look would be a worldwide trend by the next day. And if she'd worn it to meet me, I would have sprinted over, thrown my arms around her with everything I had, and never let go.
I've wandered a bit. Anyway—the point is this.
The dazzling looks of the main and supporting cast from the comic were every bit as natural in person, and not a single shade less radiant.
Tania and Adele barely appeared in How to Become a Hero, so the first time I saw them I'd simply thought, wow, these unnies are insanely pretty. But when I first laid eyes on Elysia—on myself—and on Carmen, I felt it for certain.
And what I'd been looking forward to ever since the Mudwell raid was Hongryeon's bare face.
The face of a girl whose beauty, according to the setting, ranked first or second even within Eclipse…!
And the one competing with her for that ranking was Eclipse's boss—whose looks, by the lore, were overwhelming even by the standards of this entire world. Which meant Hongryeon's appearance was every bit as devastating.
In the original work, when her identity was revealed and her face finally showed at the Academy, readers had gone wild. She was the kind of beauty who spawned fan clubs both inside the story and out…
"She might even become my rival…!"
Looks like that wouldn't lose to mine at all!
My heart was pounding.
Thump-thump-thump-thump!
As my heartbeat sped up, my walking pace naturally quickened with it. What had started as a leisurely stroll grew faster and faster until, before I knew it, I was running. Every step fell in time with my racing heart, and a strange, giddy pleasure rose with the rhythm.
And so I arrived at Siyun's classroom.
I peeked through the hallway window, craning my neck for a look inside, and a neat classroom came into view. For reasons I couldn't name, the atmosphere was nothing like our class—always so stiff and formal. This felt more like the classrooms I'd known as a kid.
Students in tidy uniforms pulling out textbooks for the next period. Others who'd shrugged off their jackets and draped them over chairs, perched on desks chatting with friends. Aside from the kids floating objects with their abilities or racing around the room at superhuman speed, it was all perfectly ordinary.
And among them, one girl stood out—the one a handful of students kept glancing at from the corners of their eyes.
My keen insight—what I liked to call the Elysia Spark—let me read the whole mood of the room from that single brief look.
The girl they were watching was facing the window, so all I could see was her back: a tightly bound ponytail swaying gently. But the looks the other kids were giving her weren't so different from the ones that followed me whenever I walked around outside.
Respect. Admiration. Awe. And the tender, green shoots of something like love.
She herself didn't seem the least bit interested in any of it.
She must have felt my gaze, because she turned her head just slightly and looked at me—and the moment our eyes met, my breath stopped.
Her irises were pure black, yet they glittered like obsidian, calling stars to mind. Her skin was so translucent it might have been spun from moonlight, almost unnervingly so. A high, sharp bridge of a nose; a clean jawline made all the more striking by the way she'd tilted her head to look at me. Her tightly bound ponytail fell to about her waist and swung lightly, a few stray strands of hair swaying in a way that was almost painfully cute.
Her expression was blank enough that it might have read as cold—but a faint, unnameable warmth in those eyes softened the whole effect.
The instant our eyes locked, I understood it on pure instinct.
I want to marry that girl. A raw, possessive hunger.
"Ah—no, wait."
I understood something else on pure instinct, too: that this was the Hongryeon I'd been looking for.
Good lord. How was it even possible to look like that?
I hadn't felt anything like this since the first time I'd seen my own face in the mirror after reincarnating.
She truly lived up to her billing as the one who rivaled the strongest figure in the setting for sheer beauty.
She blinked, and that eternal-feeling instant ended; my breath came back.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
My heart was slamming against my ribs like mad, and from somewhere deep in my chest a desire to claim her for myself began to well up, thick and slow. I forced it back down inside.
Right. Expression management. Expression management.
I had to keep my face under control. This was a first impression—I wanted to leave a good one. Call it a girl's heart.
From her perspective, of course, she would remember me perfectly well as the person she'd fought. But she had no way of knowing that I had recognized her, so that didn't count. First impressions as enemies and first impressions as friends were different things. Mm-hmm.
I'd leave a wonderful first impression, grow closer step by step, make her completely mine, and then…
Ah. I'm doomed.
I'd just gained one more reason to save the world.
And the girl I had to save this time was an executive of Eclipse—the organization I absolutely had to bring down in order to save the world…!
But it was fine. It was romantic, wasn't it?
Forbidden love had always been the finest kind of love.
Teacher and student. Love that crossed gender, that crossed species.
And the greatest of them all: the one you love is the enemy you have to kill.
A mentor, a lover, a friend who had become—or had always been—the protagonist's sworn rival. After every hardship and trial, after growing into someone stronger in spirit, the hero stands at a crossroads.
Kill the beloved mentor, friend, or lover and win peace for the world?
Or save the one they love, even if far greater trials wait beyond?
Choose the first, and you get a tragic, aching love story. Choose the second, and you walk through the storms side by side with the person you've made into an ally.
Both are deeply romantic. Both are beautiful.
So which would I choose?
"Obviously I'm going to save her…!"
There's a saying: if you can't have it, destroy it.
I'd always hated that line.
I wanted to tell the idiots who said it to ask themselves whether they simply hadn't been strong enough. In most cases, getting stronger solved the problem.
I would become far, far, far stronger than I was now.
And I would claim every beautiful girl in the world.
Winning Hongryeon would clearly mean an incredibly hard road ahead…
But still!
I swallowed the surge of feeling rising in my throat, stretched my hand out toward her, and called out:
"I'll definitely come save you!"
The girl who'd kept a blank face ever since our eyes met finally looked completely stunned.
"…Excuse me?"
Well, of course she'd be flustered if a total stranger announced they were coming to save her at what was effectively their first meeting.
But I wasn't an ordinary girl—I was a beautiful girl—so I was allowed to do things like this.
The students inside the classroom looked back and forth between me and the dazed Hongryeon, then all turned red at once.
I understood. Two of the most beautiful people in the world in one place—that reaction was only natural…!
Then Siyun, who'd been glancing between Hongryeon and me among the other students, came over and asked in a pitying tone:
"…Senior Elysia. What are you doing?"
Siyun…? Didn't you used to call me unnie?