A Hypothesis
There had been the sudden kidnapping by a villain. There had been the night I spent with Saran. A great many things had happened, all told.
But a working adult is a creature that always, inevitably, has to come back to the daily grind.
So I returned to the office like nothing had happened and picked my work back up — handling Batori and Saran's cases, grinding through the miscellaneous tasks, the usual stretch of ordinary days.
And then, after what felt like a little too long, I saw Batori again.
"Counselor, did you rest well last week...?"
"I did. I slept like a rock. It was an unplanned vacation, honestly... I'm really sorry I ended up pushing our schedule back. As your counselor, I owe you an apology."
"Hehe, no, it's okay...! I got to focus on nothing but working hard last week instead, so..."
Taking sudden leave had left a fair pile of work waiting for me, and the resulting scramble had forced me to postpone Batori's regular counseling session. That was why two full weeks had passed before I sat down with her again.
The mentoring session with Saran had gotten skipped last week too, for the same unavoidable reasons.
At any rate, it had been a while — but there was already plenty I needed to talk to Batori about.
"Miss Batori, congratulations on your promotion to D-Class. Just one more step to go."
"Hehe.... I'm still just a bottom-rung D-Class, though...."
"It's still something to celebrate. That's enormous growth, you know? Your name even made it into some of the more mainstream news this time."
"Heh, hehe...."
I had already known about Batori making D-Class. I had asked Personnel about it myself, and Batori had messaged me the moment she got the official notice. I had known for any number of reasons — I just hadn't been able to say it to her face until now.
Counseling session or not, this was something worth celebrating properly.
"Congratulations. I brought a little gift... it's nothing much, of course. Please take it."
"Oh......"
As a token of that congratulations, I handed Batori a present. It was nothing special. Really, truly nothing — just a bouquet I had spotted and bought on a whim. A flower shop had caught my eye on the way to work this morning, and since today happened to be the day I was seeing Batori, I had wanted to congratulate her and picked one up.
"Flowers.... I only ever got them at graduation. I've never received any otherwise..."
"I don't know anything about flower meanings. I don't even really know the types... I just thought they were pretty, so I bought them."
"Thank you..."
"Don't mention it. They didn't even cost ten dollars."
"But you bought them because of me. It's the thought that matters most, right...? So... I'm really, truly happy..."
"Heh."
The little goblin girl accepted the bouquet I held out and said all of that without ever taking her eyes off the flowers, completely lost in them.
It was such a modest gift. Was it really that wonderful?
If she made it to C-Class next, I would have to think about getting her something nicer. Jewels, maybe... though that would be pushing it.
"Congratulations again on the promotion. Getting to C-Class may be even harder than what you've done so far, but I believe you can do it, Miss Batori. I'll keep helping you. Let's keep moving forward together."
"Y-yes...!"
After that, we talked about work the way we always did. What kinds of things she was doing as a hero. What had felt manageable when she took down a villain recently, and what had given her trouble. A sort of... consulting session, in its own way.
"Hmm.... By the way, in most of these subduations, you didn't grow as tall as you did before?"
"Ah.... That's true.... Last time, when you cheered for me, Counselor, I went over 160..."
That was the part that had struck me as odd while I was going through Batori's records and a few photos pedestrians had taken. The last time I had cheered for her — and gotten the people on the street cheering along — her height had climbed all the way toward the mid-160s.
Lately, though, she was only ending up a little taller than me. The low 150s. For someone whose base height was 135 centimeters, that was still an enormous expansion, of course. But why wasn't she growing the way she had that day?
"Hmm.... There were quite a few people on the street, weren't there?"
"Yes..."
"And you got a normal amount of cheering?"
"That's right..."
So why wasn't the height coming? Why wasn't the strength coming, the way it had then?
It didn't add up.
"Hmm.... More people than last time, more cheering than last time — so why isn't it working as well? Maybe our understanding of your ability is a little off?"
The way I had it figured, Batori's Eodeokshini transformation ability boiled down to something like the more gazes, focus, and cheers she receives, the stronger her body becomes. But her recent showings sat a little at odds with that.
"Uugh... I don't really know..."
"Yeah..."
Anecdotal as the clips were, a fair number of people had been cheering her on. So why couldn't she break 160? Was there some kind of 160 wall for her, the way I myself had never quite managed to break 150?
Except she had already broken it once.
"Hmmmm..."
"Nnngh..."
The two of us sat in the café, sinking into thought together. And somewhere in the middle of that shared brooding, something suddenly occurred to me.
Quantity versus quality.
Was it better for the quality to be high, or for the quantity to be large? The old argument over which one mattered more. The same split you got whenever people talked about food. Some people figured that as long as you got a truly enormous portion — enough to stuff you completely — a little shortfall in flavor was fine. Others were happy with a reasonably full stomach, so long as the taste hit their tongue hard enough to leave them stunned.
And if you lined that up against Batori's ability...
"...Miss Batori. Getting cheered on by a lot of people, versus getting cheered on with real passion. Which one feels better?"
"...Huh? What do you... uh, uhh......"
"Let me put it more precisely. Ordinary cheering from ten people, versus one person cheering for you with their whole heart. Which would be better?"
That seemed like a fair way to think about it. Ten was a number I had picked out of thin air, but a rough ten-to-one comparison felt workable enough.
"Uh, I don't think... I've ever thought about it that way..."
"Has anyone ever cheered for you as hard, as passionately, as loudly as I did that time?"
"Probably... not...... Hmm..."
Batori started turning it over, sifting back through her memories. I, on the other hand, was already fairly sure this would turn out to matter a great deal — and the reason was her ability itself.
Eodeokshini.
I hadn't known much about it at first, but taking her on as a case had led me to look it up in more detail. After all, the single most reliable clue to an Awakened's power was the name of the ability itself.
Saran, with her snake transformation, carried a snake's traits in every particular. It followed that Batori, with her Eodeokshini transformation, would carry the traits of a dokkaebi — of an Eodeokshini.
So I had dug a little deeper.
"I did some searching on the Eodeokshini folklore and put together a light summary. Here."
I pulled up the notes I had made and turned the tablet toward Batori. A brief two-slide presentation, and even that included a few lines of the old stories — the actual summary could have fit on a single page.
"It is said that an Eodeokshini grows ever larger when a person sets their gaze upon it."
"To be seen is to grow. The old stories speak of a look — not of a crowd."
"An Eodeokshini is supposed to grow larger when a person looks at it. You almost never see the stories say people, plural, right? Almost never many people."
"That's true...?"
"Of course, looking at everything so far, you do get bigger when more people are paying attention to you than when it's just a few... but that doesn't necessarily mean it's decided by headcount alone."
"M-maybe...?"
"It's a hypothesis, anyway."
An answer I had turned up by spinning the gears a little faster than usual. What mattered to Batori's ability wasn't simply how many people happened to be standing around her. It was how deeply the attention, the gazes, the cheering actually landed in the heart.
Of course, it was only a guess on my part... I would have to run more tests before I could call it proven.
"Miss Batori, besides me... have you ever had someone else cheer for you that hard......"
"......"
Yeah. Of course not.
Right.
I didn't press her any further. For her sake.
Anyway, now that the thought had surfaced, the next step was obvious. The hypothesis had to be tested for real.
"Hmm.... This doesn't seem like the place to get loud. Where would be good..."
"Why...?"
"I'm thinking of cheering for you. A lot. Like, really, truly a lot — and I can't exactly do that in a quiet café."
Getting cheered on by a crowd was something she would have experienced often enough as a hero. Getting cheered on like an absolute maniac, though — that had to be rare. Batori was still a lower-rank hero, which meant she almost never ended up helping victims whose lives were hanging in the balance.
I was going to do it myself. I was going to cheer for her with everything I had.
"...Want to go to a karaoke booth?"
"H-huh...?"
"A karaoke booth has a microphone, you can be as loud as you want, and you don't have to worry about anyone else. Seems like a pretty good option."
That was what had come to mind. An ordinary coin karaoke place. The kind of everyday spot almost everyone had been to at least once — the same kind of place the Team Leader and I sometimes wandered into after a company dinner. It wasn't far from here, either, and the hourly rate was cheap.
"Shall we?"
"Uh, um, I... I've never actually been..."
"It's fine. It's just karaoke, you know? We're only going to spend some time alone together in a little closed room. Nothing to worry about."
"Ah, ahh... o-okay..."
Well, given Batori's personality, never having been to a karaoke booth wasn't that surprising. I didn't find it strange. She was thoroughly introverted to begin with. Even Saran, who had time to spare, never once went wandering around outside on her own.
So I decided we would head to the karaoke booth together.
"......"
Somehow... every time I meet up with Batori, I naturally end up slacking off on the company's dime.
Then again, I'm doing it to help her. That's not a problem, right? The whole reason I'm out in the field in the first place is to help Batori.
Yeah, yeah. It'll be fine.
What's the big deal if a salary worker milks the clock a little, anyway?