Choi Hana Makes This Kind of Proposal? (2)
Baek Jiyu stepped into a café on Theia's campus.
Aside from the entrance ceremony, the new students had no other scheduled events today. Orientation week covered nothing more than the common theory courses and a general briefing on academy life. The real entrance ceremony, the cadets chatting around the café were saying, would be Friday's class placement evaluation.
"I heard they take applications for preferred departments during the placement eval too."
"Instructors from every department show up in person, so you should try to make an impression."
"We're throwing a start-of-term party right after the eval. You guys coming?"
Baek Jiyu carefully claimed a corner seat. The café was packed with cadets—especially female ones. Awakeners had always skewed female, so at an awakener academy like Theia that was hardly surprising. Even so, the other girls made her uneasy. Especially the ones who looked popular.
Ugh, places this crowded still overwhelm me.
Despite the crowd, no one paid her any attention. She was running Stealth, a skill triggered by her authority. Junwoo had told her she looked much prettier now than she had in high school, but the habits of a gloomy outcast didn't vanish overnight. The only reason she had forced herself into a café full of social butterflies was the two people sitting at a table across the room.
The café was too noisy for their conversation to carry clearly.
"…party…?"
"…I need Lee Junwoo…!!"
The fragments that drifted over made her freeze.
A… party?
And sitting there was her classmate Choi Hana—a girl who looked every bit the popular type Baek Jiyu was not. Of all people, she had walked in moments earlier with Baek Jiyu's childhood friend, Lee Junwoo. She knew she shouldn't have, but she had been so desperate to know what Choi Hana wanted with him that she had followed them.
A party… no way…
Choi Hana's looks alone had drawn people to her at first. But Baek Jiyu had heard that outside of practicals, Hana slept through almost every theory class—and through every break as well. For all that beauty, her social circle seemed no better than Baek Jiyu's own. Strange rumors had naturally followed.
—She's so pretty… I bet she hangs around with delinquents from other schools until late.
—Really? Come to think of it, last time…
There was even a rumor that someone had seen her with people from the underworld. Baek Jiyu didn't believe a word of it. She was a girl herself; she could tell. Someone who had truly gone down a dark path could never smile that brightly.
One morning she had overslept after an all-night Warworld session and been late for school. Near the high school gates she had spotted Choi Hana by chance—crouched on the sidewalk, staring at a stray cat. She had watched Hana press a finger to her cheek and pull every ridiculous face she could think of, trying to make friends with the animal. When the cat finally responded, Hana had burst into a cascade of laughter.
Even her smile was beautiful.
A girl that lovely could never be mixed up with the underworld. Her instincts were usually right about these things.
No—that's not the point right now!
She still believed Choi Hana was a good person. That was exactly why the word "party" had made her heart drop. Every academy cadet was a legal adult. Hana might well have been inviting Junwoo to one of those start-of-term drinking parties that popular kids always threw.
I mean… it's not like that's a bad thing…
As far as she knew, there had never been a single rumor of Choi Hana dating a guy—if anything, people whispered she might be into girls—so that wasn't the worry.
Junwoo's type is cute girls like Ha Yeeun, anyway.
The real problem was the other girls who would show up. Over the winter, while staying at Baek Jiyu's house, Junwoo had regained his old face. No more blonde-tanned punk look—he was back to the handsome features from middle school. Handsomer, even.
Ha Yeeun alone is enough to drive me crazy… if other girls start hitting on him too…
She didn't even want to imagine it. She hated NTR.
No… I'm not his girlfriend… we're just friends… I know that, but still…
Even so, the party gnawed at her. If it came down to it, maybe she should just go herself. The thought of that start-of-term party was so terrifying it nearly choked her—and then something else caught her eye.
Huh? What's that?
Junwoo pulled something from a document envelope. A résumé with Choi Hana's ID photo attached. A Theia High School transcript. Even a student record.
D-do popular kids have to bring paperwork to start-of-term parties now?
Her heart sank. The peer-relations section of her own student record was, of course, catastrophic. If attaching that file was the new trend, she could never go.
More people poured into the café.
If I stay any longer, someone might notice me.
Stealth wasn't infinite. She couldn't remain. Baek Jiyu tucked the lunch box she had packed to share with Junwoo back into her bag.
I promised myself I wouldn't eat in the bathroom anymore… I should find the rooftop.
Eating alone in the cafeteria was still too hard. In the end she left without managing another glance at the two of them.
Choi Hana looked at me with fierce resolve. I answered.
"A party proposal?"
"Yes! I need Lee Junwoo for the party I'm going to build!!"
That got my attention. Knowing her personality, I already understood exactly what kind of party she meant.
A dispatch-activity party for the future.
Theia assigned each class a major department, but in practice a huge portion of the curriculum and schedule went to cooperative training and dispatch missions. Those activities were where classes were sorted by actual ability—and where Theia's reputation had been built. The party Hana was talking about was one of those.
"No, that came out wrong. I mean I'll definitely be useful for your party activities!"
I looked again at the envelope she had given me and drew out the papers.
Feels like I've turned into a job interviewer.
That wasn't an exaggeration. Hana watched me with nervous eyes. Her ID photo was clipped to a résumé form—the kind of polished shot that would sail through any corporate screening—along with descriptions of her authority and main skills.
Hana still hasn't completed her 2nd Awakening.
Natural four-star characters usually launched already second-awakened. In the original game she hadn't reached her pickup banner yet, so only a single authority was listed.
Which actually works in my favor.
A little advice from me and she would finish the awakening in no time. As things stood, though, her cooperative-training class would almost certainly land in the Middle tier.
Within the same class, party member selection is free.
For efficiency on dispatch missions, party composition was left largely to the students—like a group project where the kids pick their own teammates. In short, Hana was asking me to put her on my party.
But why?
I glanced at the student record tucked in with the rest. Attendance and peer relations were, as expected, nothing to brag about.
"Classmates rate her highly, but she herself is not proactive about social relationships…"
Running her organization had left her chronically short on sleep; it was inevitable. When I had visited An Yumin's classroom, I had often seen Hana face-down on her desk, dead asleep.
Well, that doesn't matter…
What mattered was that an excellent opportunity had just fallen into my lap. With peer relations as poor as her record suggested, she had probably decided to lock in a party with the one person she already knew from the retest—me. Getting stuck without a group on a team project was pretty miserable.
Still, if that was her only reason, I couldn't just agree on the spot.
"The class placement evaluation isn't even over yet. And my practical scores in high school were the worst in the class. I have no idea which tier I'll end up in."
My goal was still Top 5 of the first years—and growth that would surpass even Aegis.
I need party members who will actually trust me.
Even when I had been close to powerless as an awakener, I was the one who had turned the natural three-star An Yumin into the freshman representative. I planned to pour far more effort into a new party than I ever had into Aegis. No matter how good Hana looked on paper as a teammate, if she couldn't follow me for certain, it was a problem.
If she turns out like the Aegis members, the whole plan falls apart.
I was an extra. Passing the retest still left me a nameless cadet with terrible grades. I knew she valued loyalty highly—her father's will—and as a leader she had an eye for people. But I still needed confirmation of how she saw me. And accepting too easily would look… cheap. A little push-and-pull was necessary.
After a brief silence, Choi Hana—still wearing the awkward smile of a nervous interviewee—answered with sudden force.
"You don't need to worry about that! Junwoo, you're definitely going to land in the Middle Class! No—with a little more time you could even reach High Class, but for now I believe you'll end up in the same Middle Class as me!"
She hurried on.
"Could you please check the next page of those documents? I wrote out the reasons you absolutely have to pick me for your party."
I did as she asked. Roughly ten pages of carefully organized text appeared.
A Report on the Merits of Lee Junwoo, Exemplary Paladin of the Paladin Department?
A title that had almost nothing to do with me. Reading it, though, I found page after page of genuine evaluation.
"I'm not someone who has any right to judge you, Junwoo… but I know your excellence that well, so I believe I can work even harder as a party member!"
She pitched herself to me with the desperation of a real job interview. The personality assessments in the document were full of misunderstandings, but her analysis of my work as Aegis's operator and of the retest results was remarkably accurate.
A leader who runs an organization really is different. She even prepared all this.
I no longer had any reason to refuse—not for academy parties, and not for the work I would eventually do with her organization as Unknown.
I held out my hand to the girl still watching me with tense eyes.
"Looking forward to working with you."
Choi Hana shook my hand with pure delight.
"Just leave it to me!"
Her expression was solid and trustworthy. She pumped my hand vigorously—then seemed to realize she was gripping too hard. She let go and suddenly bowed her head.
"I-I'm sorry. I held on too tight… Well then, I'll see you next time!"
She shot up from her seat, gave me a full ninety-degree bow, and hurried off. Then she spun around, came back, and pressed something into my hand.
"This is the friend fee!"
Friend fee? I opened my mouth to answer the absurd phrase, but she was already gone.
Her personality… is something else.
I thought of the original Choi Hana—surprisingly clumsy under the cool exterior. Then I looked at what she had given me and nearly jumped.
This is a Rain Weapons membership card.
The young lady Hana served was Scarlet. Rain Weapons was a subsidiary of the military conglomerate run by Scarlet's father—a famous weapons manufacturer.
Not an easy thing to get. Nice.
I had no need for any "friend fee," but an unexpected prize was still a prize. As the Paladin Sword had shown, weapons with rarity could form authorities of their own.
This will help with the placement evaluation.
I left the café and sent a text to Jiyu, who should still have been somewhere on campus.
Song Sia returned to her house. The main residence was a mansion, and the room she occupied was vast.
"I have purchased the book you requested, my lady."
"Leave it there."
The family servant bowed politely. A distant relative of her mother's house and Song Sia's personal maid—a vampire, but in practice more of a watcher than a companion.
"There has been some noise lately regarding Aegis activities. I will refrain from reporting it to the head of the house for now."
Song Sia knew a warning when she heard one. Her father despised anything that damaged the family's reputation.
"And I still don't understand why you asked me to buy a romance fantasy novel. Please don't waste too much time on frivolous things. You are an academy cadet now."
With that final remark, the maid left. Song Sia checked her phone.
In that message she found a familiar name.
Of all people… Lee Junwoo…
Song Sia's opponent for the class placement evaluation was Lee Junwoo.
Unbidden, she recalled the entrance ceremony earlier that day. An Yumin, searching the crowd with frantic eyes—and the face those eyes had landed on. The look was a little different, but it had unmistakably been Lee Junwoo.
Why was An Yumin looking at him like that…
An Yumin had always despised Lee Junwoo. Yet the expression on her face when she saw him talking to someone had been strange. Song Sia couldn't fully name the emotion, but surprise and resentment had been plain.
"Why…?"
She couldn't understand it.
An Yumin definitely despised him, didn't she?
So why that face? He had already left Aegis. Whoever he grew close to was none of An Yumin's business. And yet that expression, thick with feeling, made Song Sia uneasy all over again—the same unease she had felt back when Lee Junwoo was still in Aegis, when she first realized he only ever chased after An Yumin.