Fanatic (3)
Six in the morning. The orphanage's daily routine hadn't started yet, but if I didn't get up now, the rest of the day's schedule would fall apart.
By the time I had washed, dried my hair, and finished getting ready, about an hour had passed and it was seven.
With school starting at nine, it was still far too early to leave. I started my morning studying. Looking at math problems first thing in the morning was a thoroughly unpleasant way to begin the day, but there was no helping it. Oppa Yuhan had told me to take it easy on the studying, but he was working himself ragged for my sake. I couldn't just sit around resting.
Before I knew it, it was seven-thirty. I hadn't even gotten through that many problems, but that was high school math for you—each question ate up a long stretch of time.
Outside, it was growing a little noisier. The other kids were starting to wake, and the orphanage's workday was getting underway. If I left around now, I would arrive at school at a decent hour.
Haram High School had fairly good facilities; the one real drawback was that it sat a bit far from Yohan Orphanage. Well, Oppa had told me I had to exercise, so walking for an hour in the morning wasn't exactly a hardship. With my stride, I could get there in forty minutes anyway.
Summer was almost here. Or maybe it had already begun. The sun had been up for a long time. Walking at this pace hadn't been a problem through the spring, but now I was starting to sweat. It would have been a lot harder if I had left my hair down.
I rolled up the sleeves of my dress shirt and loosened my tie. A few people seemed to be looking. Did I look like I was swaggering? Not that anyone else's opinion mattered. As long as I didn't look unsightly to Oppa, it was fine.
After walking for quite a while, the school gate came into view. As usual, a teacher was standing there. It seemed like the school just rotated them through the duty, and I had no idea why they bothered making it so hard on themselves. I wasn't all that curious, either.
Hair long enough to cover my waist entirely was bound to stand out even when I tied it down in a ponytail. Some of the teachers looked at it unkindly because it was too long, and until recently I had also gotten called out for dyed hair—but I had since dyed it a solid black, and that particular problem had vanished.
"Good morning."
"...... Yeah."
A thoroughly unenthusiastic look. After enrolling, I had lived a life that was the exact opposite of anything you could call model-student behavior. Still, I had been showing signs of change lately, so perhaps that was why the reaction didn't get any worse than that.
Eight-fifteen. I had arrived reasonably early. At this hour, there was exactly one other person in the classroom: a girl with good grades. I had been getting a lot of help from her with studying lately, and we were growing closer. Through her, I had also started talking with the other kids, so she was someone I was grateful for in more ways than one.
I said a casual hello, sat down at my desk, and finished the math problems I had started that morning, asking her about the hard ones as I went. Same as at dawn, I only got through a handful of questions, but time slipped by quickly, and before long Sijun came into the classroom, dropped into the seat beside mine, and started talking.
He hadn't been the tactless type. I couldn't figure out why he had been so determined to interrupt my studying lately. Still, he was the closest friend I had right now, and Oppa had told me to worry more about school life than studying, so there was no reason to look at it badly. We talked, and by the time I looked up it was nine—morning assembly.
Another day began.
Seventh period, PE.
The lesson itself was finished, but with about ten minutes left in the period we were given free time. I thought about slipping in among the kids who didn't like sports, heading for the stands, and memorizing some English vocabulary. Oppa had banned studying during PE, though...
Anyway, I kicked a ball around for those ten minutes. School was almost over as it was, so I ran hard, and I ended up sweating quite a bit.
I lifted the hem of my gym shirt to wipe my face, and a murmur rose from where the boys were clustered. They all seemed to be looking at me... the white undershirt I had on underneath must have shown a little.
High school boys were a species that put on every demure air in the book and then, the moment they huddled together, turned insufferably lewd. Not all of them, of course—but at least those ones over there, faces flushed, glancing my way and whispering among themselves. They were exactly that type.
I should be more careful. I worked on my body so I would look good for Oppa, not so I could put on a show for other guys.
I changed back into my uniform in the bathroom in a hurry and returned to the classroom. Homeroom started shortly after. Nothing in particular stuck. This week I had promised to go to Oppa's place after school to help him, so I just waited for the period to end. The endless stream of home notices today was especially grating.
"Next week... parents... home notice... please confirm..."
Right. With this many notices, homeroom was dragging on. Come to think of it, wasn't I on cleaning duty this week?
I let out a small sigh.
Life. Nothing ever went my way.
A white base, swarming with green and orange.
Weird way to put it?
Anyway, I was eating vegetable porridge. There were... a lot of vegetables.
Sehee really had no sense for cooking. If we ate this a few more times, the only things disappearing from the fridge in droves would be the zucchini and the carrots. Ah—there were mushrooms and onions in it too, so those as well.
Did someone with a back injury even need to be eating porridge? Well... looking at that expectant face of hers, I fully intended to eat it like it was delicious.
Yesterday Sehee had proposed something. Proposal was a generous word; it had been more of a one-sided request. She would come to my place after school and help me. I had more or less seen it coming, and sure enough, the moment school let out she had shown up here and gone straight to feeding me.
My back still hadn't improved much. I could make it to the bathroom, but sitting down somewhere to eat was another matter. Sehee had volunteered to spoon-feed me, but I was an adult man, and I had a minimum of dignity. Considering I had recently been mocked as a virgin in front of hundreds of people, I wasn't sure how much of that dignity was actually left...
Anyway, for now I had built a hill out of blankets and pillows and was leaning against it at an angle, spooning up porridge. Had she made this with salt water? How had she even seasoned it? As a cooking senior with more than six years of living on my own, all kinds of advice was sitting on the tip of my tongue...
"Sehee... this is..."
"It's good, right?! I looked up a bunch of stuff on NewTube and made it! I'll make something else tomorrow!"
There was no way I could say anything to a kid staring at me like that from beside the bed. The thought itself was something to be grateful for, so I washed it down with water, bite after stubborn bite, and eventually succeeded in finishing the thing.
After that... there was no game console in the house, and I couldn't use the computer because of my back, so we just started chatting. I was a guy, and Sehee was a girl in this gender-reversed world, so I did wonder whether talking endlessly would actually be fun—but I had hung out that way with Ari too, and Sehee and I had plenty in common, so it wasn't a real problem.
There was, in fact, a considerable upside to Sehee coming over. Boredom dropped off by a lot. I had injured my back and taken a break from streaming, which meant I was lying around all day, and even that had its limits. All I could do was stare at my phone from bed, and at some point even that had gotten old. I had seen a check-in text from Ari and tried calling, but she wouldn't pick up at all, so I couldn't even hang out with my only friend. And then Sehee had shown up, and we had been able to spend a few hours enjoyably.
I really had done well, having a little sister like her.
Talking with Sehee somehow always drifted toward school. From what she told me today, she was exercising hard, paying attention in class, and getting closer to her classmates. She was following what I had told her remarkably well.
Somewhere in the middle of that, my eyes landed on Sehee's backpack. A flicker of curiosity got the better of me.
"Sehee, mind if I take a look at your bag?"
"Huh? Why the bag? It's fine, though."
"Just wondering what kids these days carry around."
"There's nothing special in it... here."
The contents were a shock. Workbooks of every kind, textbooks, and a gym uniform stuffed in any which way. The gym clothes... well, that was probably average for a high school girl around here. But the books—how much was she studying these days to be carrying this many?
"You're... not just studying, right?"
"Of course not. You told me not to, Oppa."
There were suspiciously many of them, so I couldn't help being a little doubtful. I was looking through the books when a wad of papers tucked between them caught my eye.
"What's this?"
"Ah, school notices, I think? They handed out a lot today."
Most of it looked thoroughly useless. They had been handed out for a reason, of course, but that was how it looked to me. I was flipping through the stack when something jumped out.
No separate application is required.
Guardians who wish to attend may come at the designated date and time to observe class.
God. I had gotten teased so much over this in elementary school. By high school, it seemed like nobody cared much whether a parent showed up or not. I felt a twinge of envy, but that was all in the past.
Come to think of it, Sehee had probably been through the same thing all this time. We were both from the orphanage.
Looking at the notice, a rather pleasant idea drifted into my head.
Should I go, just once?
Streaming was in the evening anyway, so it had nothing to do with class. And it might be nice for Sehee's school life to have a memory like this.
"Oppa? What's that about? You're staring."
"Hm? No, I was just looking. Nothing special."
I shuffled the stack of papers and slipped them back into Sehee's bag.
Hmm. A surprise was always a delight.