Lifetime Contract
When Han Yeeun drove her spear into the floor, lightning spread outward from that point, racing across the ground.
Crackle!
“Uaaagh, t-turn it off…!”
“……!!”
Having burned the surrounding villains pitch-black, Han Yeeun slowly walked toward me.
“Ha! No matter what you do, you can’t touch this place, can you!? This was well within my expectations. So what are you going to do about it!? What can you even do!?”
“Astrape. Target the metal.”
The moment her low command left her lips, the blue lightning exploding from the spear tip split into countless strands.
They slithered across the floor like living snakes.
Or maybe swordfish would be more accurate.
And for good reason.
“Th-they jumped!?”
The lightning crawling along the ground suddenly leaped upward, piercing every piece of metal the villains carried—pile bunkers, shields, chains, everything.
Like a colossal sea monster swallowing sailors in a movie, the lightning devoured the villains and electrocuted them through their own metal weapons.
I squeezed my eyes shut against the lightning that could incinerate anything, but it left me completely untouched.
“Huk… Haa…”
I hadn’t even moved, yet my breath came in ragged gasps from sheer tension.
Just how the hell do you pull off the trick of balancing an apple on a watermelon and shooting it with an arrow?
When it’s lightning instead of an arrow, it makes your heart feel like it’s going to explode.
No exaggeration—even in all this noise, my heartbeat was hammering against my eardrums like a madman.
“You fucking bitch!!”
“Help! Somebody help!!”
Apparently deciding it was hopeless, one villain grabbed my hair and swung a knife.
“Hup!!”
But Han Yeeun was faster, swinging her Astra… whatever spear first.
She hurled the spear—longer than her own body—as lightly and quickly as if she were skipping stones.
It drew a blue line through the air, buried itself in the villain’s shoulder, and sent him flying straight into a container box.
“Huk… Haa, wow… Ha… Hahaha…”
Literal lightning speed.
If this were a movie, the scene was so spectacular I’d have gone back to watch it again just for that one moment. Slight exaggeration, maybe.
“Are you okay, Oppa!?”
“That was seriously cool! You wiped them all out at lightning speed! Wait, not like lightning—actual lightning? I think I might genuinely fall for you a little.”
“Ehehe…”
“How did you even do that? I was completely soaked.”
“I just controlled the output so the lightning wouldn’t spread too far. I also guided it to chase only the high-conductivity targets. It’s all thanks to you, Oppa. It definitely would’ve failed without you.”
Han Yeeun scratched the back of her head shyly and twisted her body in embarrassment.
The god-like majesty and piercing gaze from moments ago had vanished. She was once again a blushing, lovestruck twenty-year-old girl.
“Here, I’ll untie you.”
“Oh, right.”
She picked up the knife from the floor and carefully cut through the cable ties.
“Sss…! Ahh…”
It had hurt a little while they were tight, but the moment the restraints came off, the pain that had been crushing my wrists flooded back all at once.
“You said it would’ve failed without me, Oppa!”
“I heard you, I heard you. You did great.”
Apparently still unhappy with my earlier reaction, Han Yeeun repeated herself.
I reached out and stroked her hair.
It had been impressive the first time we met, but after getting used to her drunken antics and constant aegyo, the flashy combat form somehow looked even cooler.
The villains got to watch romance unfold. I got to watch action. Win-win, right?
But then—
“You… you monster bitch…!”
One of the villains I’d thought was down in the corner snatched up a massive launcher-like weapon with trembling hands.
Even though his clothes were already burned to rags, he forced his body to move.
He took aim at Han Yeeun’s defenseless back.
“Yeeun! Behind you! Behind!!”
At the same time as my shout, a sharp metallic sound ripped through the air.
Shwoosh!
A giant harpoon drew a lethal line as it flew straight at Han Yeeun’s back.
“Astra—”
“Yeeun!!”
I yanked her into my arms, knowing it was too late. The massive harpoon tore through my arm, continued on, and slammed into the wall with a deafening crash.
Kwaaang!
“Aaaaaaaaagh!!”
It hurt. It hurt so much I thought I might die.
Was my arm still attached?
In my fading consciousness, I barely managed to check my right arm. Fortunately it wasn’t severed—just deeply pierced.
Though with the excessive bleeding, the wound, and the pain, “fortunate” felt like a stretch… but it was better than amputation.
“Aaaah… Sss…”
With a horrified expression, Han Yeeun laid me down, tears welling up.
“Oppa!! I could have blocked it! Why would you do something so stupid!”
“Ah… You should’ve given me a warning earlier… But how could I just stand there when you were being targeted…”
What had she been trying to say? Was she about to call her spear?
I really do have a talent for volunteering for suffering.
“Ah, there goes my muscle mass.”
“How can you joke at a time like this!? Are you kidding me!?”
She was crying like that; I couldn’t just stay quiet. I had to make her laugh somehow.
Han Yeeun stared down at me with a face drained of all color and clutched my injured arm.
But soon the sadness in her eyes was replaced by pure rage.
And then that same look from before—sparks began flying around her body.
“How dare you… How dare you…!”
“Die! Just die quietly!!”
The villain, terrified, tried to load another harpoon, but her hand shot into the sky first.
Like a bird circling its master, the spear that had been floating in the air traced a trajectory through empty space, following the tip of Han Yeeun’s fingers.
“Catastrophe.”
With her ice-cold voice, the spear flew above the villain’s head.
Kuuuuuung—!!
“Uwaaak!?”
Along with a roar that seemed to tear the heavens apart, white lightning erupted from the spear and swallowed the villain whole.
This wasn’t the thin yellow lines of sparks, static, or ordinary lightning.
It was a thick white pillar you could genuinely call a surface.
In the blink of an eye, that white lightning erased not only the villain’s body but more than half of the harpoon he held and the container box he’d been leaning against.
It had literally disappeared.
As if someone had selected that exact section in a graphics program and hit delete.
Where the lightning had swept through, only blackened ground and heat haze remained.
Gulp.
It had been cool before, but this time it was genuinely terrifying.
Even so…
“That was fucking awesome.”
“Eh? Ahahaha…”
Han Yeeun laughed while scratching her head, looking a bit sheepish.
She was such a small girl, but when she got serious, she really was cool.
“Are you okay where you got hit? I’m sorry. Because of me you couldn’t fight properly, and you had to suffer through hallucinations and auditory hallucinations…”
“Is that something someone currently gushing blood from their arm should be saying!? Stop the bleeding! Stop it right now!!”
I tore up a villain’s clothes for makeshift first aid, then looked at my limp right arm.
“Ah, ah! Gently! It hurts!”
“Huh? Isn’t stopping bleeding supposed to hurt?”
“Well, yes, but…”
Honestly, I didn’t know much about it either.
How hard to press for this level of bleeding, what the proper treatment was—I wasn’t exactly an expert.
Still, this felt closer to torture than first aid.
“You idiot… Who throws themselves in front of a magical girl…? If you die because of me, I’ll die with you.”
“Who said anything about dying? Still, trading one arm to see Yeeun’s ridiculously cool side is a fair equivalent exchange.”
“I won’t accept anything less than half of Oppa’s life as equivalent exchange.”
“Ahaha…”
Han Yeeun hugged me tightly and buried her face in my chest.
“Let’s get out of here first. It’d be bad if one of them woke up while we’re still here.”
“Yeah… Ah, wait. I took a lot of hits to the stomach earlier, ugh…”
“Hold on! Just hold on a second here!?”
Han Yeeun, barely holding it together, stepped out of the warehouse with an expression even worse than when she’d been suffering from the hallucinations.
The first thing I noticed after leaving the warehouse was the sea.
No wonder I’d heard what sounded like seagulls squawking—it was the ocean.
Yeah.
“The sea!?”
“Ah… I feel a little better after getting some fresh air… What’s wrong?”
“My house is in Seoul!? Where even are we!? Incheon? Gangwon Province? Busan? Don’t tell me we’re in another country!?”
“Calm down. It’s just Incheon.”
“Calm down? How long is it going to take to get home!? How many hours was I unconscious on the way here!?”
Han Yeeun, who had released her transformation, sighed and clapped her hands twice, changing back into her magical girl form.
Then she spread her arms wide toward me.
“Come here, princess. Let me carry you.”
“…We’re flying?”
“I wish I had teleportation magic or something.”
“I have a fear of heights, so let’s just walk—uuuuuup!?!?!?”
Before I could finish my sentence, Han Yeeun scooped me up in a princess carry and shot into the sky.
“I’ll just take the subway!! Put me down!!!”
“What are you talking about? How do you expect to go anywhere with that arm? Ah, stay still! You’ll fall if you move!!”
I clung tightly to Han Yeeun and didn’t even have the presence of mind to enjoy the beautiful West Sea scenery.
But Han Yeeun deliberately loosened the arm holding me.
What is this person doing!?
“Oppa, you’ll be good to me, right!?”
“I’ll be good to you!”
“For the rest of our lives?”
“For the rest of our lives!!”
“It’s a lifetime contract, okay?”
“Yes!!”
“For life!!!”
The blonde magical girl, her face covered in blood and bruises, laughed brightly.
How much time had passed? One minute? Ten? I was usually fine with roller coasters, but this was unbearable.
“Mm. That was a flight with a very stable flavor.”
“Now I feel like I’m going to throw up…”
The moment we landed in the quiet bushes of that morning park, I dropped to my hands and knees—two feet clearly weren’t enough—and assumed the most stable position possible.
“The ground… Truly, people should stay close to warm nature…”
“Weren’t you the one who said I’d kiss the ground before getting close to nature? Come on, let’s go home. Your sister-in-law is waiting.”
“Right… I… have to…?”
Only then did I remember the truly important thing I’d forgotten.
“What’s wrong? Your face is pale… Is it from the flight? Do you feel that bad?”
That wasn’t what mattered.
I could sacrifice my body any number of times for someone else.
“The strawberry ice cream I was supposed to bring Chae-eun…”