Chapter 12
I’m translating the chapter into the required HTML structure and preserving the novel’s tone and character voices. I’m keeping the prose flowing, with separate paragraphs for each spoken line and no residual Korean text.CHAPTER_TITLE: The Opening Ceremony Has Begun (2)
After Vice Principal Mahiel’s address, his cautionary remarks, and the rest of the announcements, the banquet hall, which had been quiet, quickly turned noisy again.
He had spoken about the history of the Velospia continent, explained how Sielm Academy had been founded, and wished for the rise of new heroes as he declared the opening ceremony underway.
After that, things more or less returned to how they had been before the ceremony officially began.
Of course, now that it had genuinely started, the students’ movements had grown more active.
Some were building connections for the days ahead at Sielm Academy, or simply for their own benefit.
Some were hovering around, trying to make inroads with the opposite sex.
And some were gathered in small, familiar groups, chatting easily with the people they already knew.
Han Riae and Yoon Hwayeon belonged to that last group.
Han Riae headed over to Yoon Hwayeon’s party to talk with the friends she had known for a long time.
Riae had originally been part of Yoon Hwayeon’s circle anyway, and everyone there understood very well why Han Riae treated other people like a stone wall, so the conversation between them could stay lighter than it did with most others.
"Oh! Riae’s here!"
"Yeah~ I’m here, you bastards~"
They all greeted Han Riae warmly and started talking at once.
Like they always did, they clustered with a few close friends and made casual chatter, drinking as they went, occasionally drifting into talk about the opposite sex or something more serious.
The one who broke through that boring, mundane conversation was Lee Seona.
"Hey! So, so? How did you end up meeting that Lim Paran guy? Are you already dating?"
Short charcoal-gray hair, almost black like graphite, framed Lee Seona’s face, and in this small gathering she was one of the few people, along with Yoon Hwayeon, who could naturally keep the mood lively.
"It’s Paran, not Parang! And it’s not like we’re anything in particular..."
"Hey, even if you’re saying you’re nothing, what was that earlier? You were patting him like he was a baby."
"Haaah... no!"
"Ohhh, look at that. Our ice-wall Han Riae’s face is turning red. Keke."
"Aaaagh!"
As the discussion started with Lim Paran, the special admit student, the eyes of the people who had grown tired of dull small talk began to brighten one by one.
"But he really is handsome, you know. His voice is pretty too. I think I fell for him a little."
"Nah, he’s cute more than handsome. He’s a bit short too... totally little-brother material."
"Exactly... after only seeing muscle-bound men all the time, meeting a treasure like that was like getting my eyes washed clean."
"I didn’t believe it until I saw him myself... but when I did, I was genuinely shocked that his hair was really blue, like the kind that disappeared a hundred years ago."
After voicing their opinions like that, they slowly turned their eyes toward Han Riae.
They were tearing into her like hyenas that hadn’t eaten meat in a week.
Yoon Hwayeon, who had been quietly observing the situation while chewing chocolate, sent Han Riae a strange look and a smile before speaking.
"So you really didn’t do anything? Tell me straight, now~"
"Aagh! I’m telling you, I really didn’t do anything..."
"When I saw him earlier, Paran had tear tracks on his face, didn’t he? He was a little puffy too... what are you going to say about that?"
"Huh?"
"Right, his voice was a little hoarse too, and his legs were shaking..."
Damn it.
Han Riae’s face flushed red in an instant as she shrank back.
Of course she had noticed that too. That vicious woman always noticed everything.
She had used mana to wipe away the tear tracks and reduce the swelling as much as possible, but Paran’s mana was so unusual that it seemed the traces of her mistake had still shown through.
It made sense, really. That kind of thing was exactly the sort of detail that woman would pick up on...
"...I just went close and startled him. That’s all. Is that enough?"
"Mm, mm, that’s enough. I thought maybe our Han Riae had made a real mess of things~ I was just worried you might’ve done something rude to Paran, that’s all~"
"Tch..."
She had done something rude. She absolutely had. She had helped a boy who went into a panic just from someone getting a little too close, and then, after that, she had startled him until he had a full-blown seizure...
"Still, our Han Riae may be clumsy and bad at dealing with people, but the kid’s personality is kind, isn’t it? I only thought you might’ve frightened him."
Damn it.
This one had caught on to the fact that I’d set Paran off.
This snake of a bitch.
"You talk like you know everything. What’s with that smug tone? You having fun right now? Huh?"
"Oh, no, no, not at all. I’m merely worrying about a mistake my dear friend may have made~"
Yoon Hwayeon smoothly dodged the pointed accusation with that unpleasant smile of hers, and the friends around them snickered.
Han Riae clenched her right fist tightly.
"So what kind of feeling did he give off? What sort of person is he?"
"Hey, we only met him for a second..."
"Exactly, exactly. Maybe he’s some monstrous devil, unlike how he looks?"
"...Shut up."
She had meant to stay quiet, but the moment she heard that, irritation shot up all at once.
Actually, it wasn’t hard to understand what kind of person he was supposed to feel like, or what sort of person he was.
She also knew exactly who they were talking about, which was why she suddenly got angry.
Lim Paran. Sielm’s first special admit student, and a hot potato.
His information had already spread everywhere: mana erosion, human phobia.
Han Riae slowly replayed her memory of the first time she had met him.
On the way to Sielm, there had been an incident. When Lim Paran had been surrounded by people, crying and having a panic attack, she had helped him.
Even after seeing that and figuring out a little about him, she had startled him anyway. Just because she wanted to see his reaction.
She had clearly been in the wrong one hundred percent, but he had immediately forgiven her and said it was fine. In fact, he had even apologized because he himself had panicked.
When she had carried him to her room after he passed out during the warp.
Even when he was in the middle of a panic attack and crying miserably, he had shown no resentment or cruelty toward her at all, only apologies and pleas for forgiveness.
The way he kept insisting it wasn’t his fault and still begged for forgiveness until the very end.
The way he lowered himself before her.
The way he endured it silently, even when it was a humiliating thing to do.
.....
Han Riae narrowed her eyes, lost in thought.
Even after thinking about it again, it still felt strange.
Of course, she knew perfectly well that the idea of the person who had recklessly hugged him until he fainted, startled him, and triggered his panic attack thinking like this was ridiculous.
But even so, it felt strange.
She had never heard of, let alone experienced, a condition where someone was so pathologically terrified of people that they went into a seizure.
It wasn’t as though she had never seen someone as small-framed as Lim Paran, of course.
Back when she had been working under her clan during her middle academy days, she had seen people like that by the mountainful.
It was true that this was a generation enjoying peace, with the chaos of fifty years ago having ended in her grandparents’ time. But danger still lurked everywhere in this world.
Where there is light, darkness still exists beneath it. The eastern side had already become a place monsters could no longer even enter, but if you went southwest, it was already a hellish land where monsters had taken root, a true paradise for them, and hunters died there in great numbers.
And even outside such huge danger zones, portals still collapsed from time to time, and monsters would emerge.
And the ones exposed to that danger were always the kind and powerless.
They were like children.
And whenever she thought of a child like that, Lim Paran’s face kept coming back to her.
The way he shrank in alarm, the way he smiled brightly and said her lap felt nice, the way he whined for her not to go.
How could a child like that possibly be in the same 273rd class as her at Sielm?
However she looked at it, it made no sense.
"I was the one at fault... and he says he’s fine, so..."
Her chest still felt tight.
Her mind felt uneasy too.
She should have been able to endure that little impulse without trouble, but she had failed to hold it in and made a mess of things before she knew it.
Even if she listened to Lim Paran and he said he was all right, maybe he was only saying that because he was afraid of her.
With a troubled feeling that was like dark clouds gathering overhead, she lowered her head in silence.
Seeing that, Yoon Hwayeon wiped away the smile she had been wearing and nodded.
"Hmm... there were definitely a lot of unfriendly looks."
"Most people just keep their mouths shut, but I’d bet they all think poorly of him."
"And there are plenty of people who act innocent while badmouthing him behind his back too..."
Unfriendly looks. Even now, if she looked toward Lim Paran’s side, there were people sneaking glances at him while he rested alone, quietly trembling.
It was publicly known that he had a human phobia.
There were people who approached him just to see that phobia for themselves, and others who only stood nearby out of envy and jealousy.
She had told him to come with her because she was worried he’d get treated like that... but he had softly refused.
From the nuance of his words, it seemed like he had been considering her feelings...
But seeing that from this distance only made her mood worse.
"Honestly, there are parts I don’t get either."
"...?"
"Hey, don’t glare at me like that. That’s not what I mean."
At her words, Han Riae glared sharply, and Yoon Hwayeon flinched backward before continuing.
"What I really don’t understand is that Lim Paran isn’t just a special admit. He’s the first special admit student. The first."
Yoon Hwayeon kept emphasizing the word first.
"It’s a little awkward for me to say this myself, but when it comes to potential and combat power, Riae and I are basically at the top, right? And there were tons before us too."
That was true enough. There had always been plenty of brilliant talents, and Yoon Hwayeon and Han Riae were among the best of Sielm’s present generation.
The current 273rd class, including Han Riae and Yoon Hwayeon, was packed with promising talents and was even called a golden generation.
The 272nd class, the current second-years, also had the heir of the Seolhwa family, who was counted as another tremendous prospect.
Even Han Riae’s own grandparents, who had ended the age of chaos, had been first-rank hunters from Sielm.
And the active hunters operating in the southwest were a long list of Sielm alumni as well.
"No way there were no talented students at an academy that’s been around for over two hundred years. No, there were tons of them!"
Each year, the academy selected around six hundred to seven hundred students on average.
It had been operating for more than two centuries, so the number of graduates would easily have passed ten thousand.
If all of them had been gifted prospects, they would have been people praised everywhere they went.
"Everyone says the same thing: 'Just how insane must his talent be for him to catch the eye of the star-turned-principal and become a special admit?' But when you actually look at him... he doesn’t seem all that special. That’s the thing."
"Hey, we haven’t even properly started our classes yet."
"Yeah, but come on, you can tell just by looking, can’t you? Some people have this aura the moment you see them, and he doesn’t have any of that."
"You’re full of shit."
There were some parts of Yoon Hwayeon’s words that Han Riae could agree with.
If he had been admitted in a way even she couldn’t, then surely he must have possessed tremendous potential.
But right now...
Han Riae looked over at Lim Paran with a complicated expression.
She had been ready to launch a flying kick at anyone who picked a fight with him or made him suffer, but thankfully there was no one like that nearby.
Lim Paran had no one beside him, and yet he was still trembling a little as he dozed.
It was the sort of sight that made pity well up on its own.
Because he was a member of the Melitton family, information like that naturally came in fairly well.
She hadn’t seen a photo, but she could still find various details about him.
He had appeared in the aftermath of a dungeon explosion two weeks ago, covered head to toe in cuts, and one eardrum had been torn.
He had an incurable condition called mana erosion, feared people, and couldn’t remember anything about himself.
Mana erosion was somewhat similar to awakening.
It involved new mana being generated in the human body, so the principle was the same.
But awakening created mana that was strong and suited to the person’s body depending on their personality, family, environment, and so on.
Back when Han Riae herself had first awakened, she could barely manage to squeeze out mana at all, let alone perform Mana Circulation.
But they didn’t take any measures at all?
They had brought a boy who had only just learned he had mana erosion into the academy under the label of special admission and done absolutely nothing.
Even for Sielm, where growth was faster than anywhere else, it seemed almost shockingly indifferent.
Will Paran be okay...?
Yoon Hwayeon had been quietly watching Han Riae, who was simply staring at Lim Paran and getting lost in thought, with an odd expression on her face.