Of History and Tradition
"Early bird, rise and shine...!"
I woke up in my boarding house room and, while pulling on my school uniform, glanced at the calendar. It's already the 15th. I'd awakened in this world on April 4th, which meant more than ten days had passed since my arrival.
All sorts of things have happened. The moment I stepped out to explore the neighborhood, I ran into a magic beast and had to fight it. On entrance ceremony day, I took down more beasts that broke into the training grounds. I eliminated a Korean vampire who was pretending to be a Japanese professor, and just days ago I destroyed soldiers who were hunting Koreans.
Thinking back on it all, I slipped into my jacket. A soft thud sounded as something hit the floor. A handkerchief.
Right. I'd thought I could finally attend school like a normal person, but this had suddenly appeared to complicate everything.
I unfolded the handkerchief again. It was crooked in several places compared to the version that would become the official flag of the Republic of Korea after liberation, but it was unmistakably a Taegukgi.
…Yesterday.
I recalled what had happened the day before. I had followed the girl in the gas mask and secretly slipped into the otherworld botanical garden.
The masked girl had been circling a table filled with various otherworld plants.
Perfect…! I pulled on the leather glove Major Aoki had left behind, fastening the button tight. I clenched and unclenched my fist, watching for the right moment to spring out, when—
"Yuko! Is this the right one?"
The girl who had been staring intently at the plant called toward the back of a nearby jungle tree, as if summoning someone.
"No! The one beside it! That's the nemukusa!"
"Heh— So this weed really captivates the opposite sex?"
Two or three more girls wearing gas masks appeared beside the first one.
It wasn't just one person?
I crouched lower to hide myself and listened to their conversation. But something about it felt off.
"I'm telling you, it works! The girl in the next class, Kaneko, used this to steal Kishiro's heart!"
"With this, maybe I can win Saito's heart too? Ah, isn't Saito just so handsome?"
"If we're talking about looks, it's Tamura! He's so gentle and..."
What is this? What on earth were they talking about?
"Anyway, did you see him today? Shirabayashi, I mean..."
"Right, right! He was secretly watching the female students more than usual!"
"He looks decent enough, but I suppose it's because he's Korean..."
No matter how I listened, their conversation had nothing to do with a girl carrying a Taegukgi and engaging in independence activities. They were simply ordinary Japanese schoolgirls who had come to swipe plants that might help their love lives.
Damn it... I'd completely misread the situation.
The girls left the botanical garden giggling. From outside came Professor Nakamori's angry shout: "You little brats!"
"Kyaa! Run!"
"Kyahaha! See you tomorrow, girls!"
"Stop right there, you brats!"
The laughing voices of the fleeing girls and Nakamori's shouts chasing after them gradually faded into the distance.
Phew.
Once silence returned to the botanical garden, I stayed crouched for a long while before letting out a sigh and standing up. In the end, I hadn't caught the girl. I'd expected her to return to the scene, but that hadn't happened.
I was about to leave when I paused, turned back, and approached the spot where the girls had been standing.
So they came to steal this. It does have a mild aphrodisiac effect, after all.
These were the same plants I'd seen during the morning exam, but they weren't ordinary. Most could be processed into medicinal herbs or ingredients for items with various effects.
There was the famous mandrake, the explosive plant known as nitro grass in the 21st century and called shosankusa here, along with countless other flowers, grasses, and fruits whose names I didn't know. Useful plants of all kinds were scattered everywhere.
I glanced toward the entrance.
They'll probably assume those girls took them.
I slipped a few stalks and fruits into my pocket and quietly made my way back to the boarding house.
I couldn't find her yesterday, but today...
I would find her for certain and warn her not to do anything dangerous inside the school. Any incident on campus could negatively affect me in all sorts of ways.
If she's carrying out independence activities within the school...
If a professor were injured or facilities destroyed, causing classes to be canceled or delayed, my own graduation would be pushed back as well.
I gripped the handkerchief tightly and steeled my resolve.
That cannot happen.
"Um, sir. Aren't you going to school yet?"
"Whoa!"
It was already time to leave, but since I hadn't emerged from my room, Ham Seoju, the landlord's daughter, must have opened the door to check.
"Oh my, what's with the handkerchief... Can I see it for a moment?"
"No! Absolutely not!"
"...?"
I panicked and shoved the handkerchief into my inner pocket, then hurried out of the room, put on my shoes, and crossed the yard.
"You can't even show it to me? Did some girl give it to you as a gift or something... Have a good day at school."
I left through the gate, catching Ham Seoju's blunt farewell only with the edge of my ear.
It really was a dangerous item.
"Hey! Baek Chulyeon!"
As I neared the school gate, someone called from behind and caught up. It was Song Byeong-o.
I greeted him without much energy. "Byeong-o."
"...? Anyway, Baek Chulyeon, have you found the owner of that handkerchief yet?"
"No..."
"Oh dear! Still, you must be quite serious about this romance. Just look at how haggard your face has become in a single day."
Well, that was understandable. Try carrying a Taegukgi around in your pocket. Of course, Song Byeong-o had no way of knowing my real situation, so he continued lightly, "But there are only fifteen girls in our class. You'll find her soon enough."
"Yeah..."
We reached school, finished morning assembly, and attended the common subject for the morning: basic otherworld biology. Professor Nakamori adjusted his glasses.
"Um, today we'll begin on page twenty-four... Miss Yang, could you read for us?"
"Yes!"
Yang Bok-ja answered brightly, picked up her textbook, and began to read aloud.
"...This otherworld plant is called mandrake. It is basically harmless, but when extracted from the soil it emits a scream filled with malice that can harm humans!"
Nakamori adjusted his glasses again. "Well read! As you just heard, the mandrake lets out a truly horrific scream the moment it is pulled from the ground! Hearing that scream can cause mental confusion or fainting, so you must be extremely careful. For the next paragraph, Miss Lee, please read."
"Ah... Yes!"
Lee Yuha lifted her textbook and began reading line by line.
"...Its appearance resembles that of root plants that inhabit nature..."
"...so there are many cases of accidental death among ordinary people who enter the mountains to gather herbs..."
"...In particular, because of that appearance, the expensive Chosenjin..."
The classroom atmosphere plunged instantly. I was just as startled.
...What had I just heard?
Why had "Chosenjin" suddenly come up?
Lee Yuha herself frowned, apparently realizing something was wrong, and stared down at the textbook. Wondering what she could have misread, I found the passage and read it myself. The text said: "In particular, because of that shape, the expensive Korean..."
What? She hadn't misread it? What was this sentence?
I was momentarily thrown, but when I turned the page the continuation was perfectly ordinary. It explained that people often mistook the plant for expensive Korean ginseng because of its shape, attempted to harvest it, and then fainted upon hearing the scream. Such accidents happened frequently.
…Of all places, the line break and page turn happened in the worst possible spot.
It was a mistake caused by the nature of Japanese, where the same characters could be read differently depending on the word. There were multiple readings for the character meaning "person," but ginseng was read as "ninjin," so "Chosen ninjin" for Korean ginseng should be pronounced that way. Unfortunately the word had been split at "Chosenjin" on the page, leading Lee Yuha to read it as "Chosenjin."
I whispered to her in Korean, "When it refers to ginseng, the 'person' character is read as 'nin,' not 'jin.' So Korean ginseng is 'Chosen-ninjin'..."
Lee Yuha's face flushed bright red.
Professor Nakamori cleared his throat to smooth over the awkward atmosphere. "Ah... You may sit down, Miss Lee. Ahem, this is... Shirabayashi, you should put more effort into Miss Lee's Japanese tutoring! As the textbook states, accidents occur when ordinary people mistake it for a medicinal herb..."
***
"I'm making this kind of mistake again."
After the common class ended, Lee Yuha walked across the school grounds with me and spoke in her formal tone.
"Even though I have been learning with all my strength from the Yang family..."
Her expression was far from bright. Seeing her so deflated, I offered some encouragement.
"It was a perfectly understandable mistake. Japanese has such ridiculous reading rules that even natives mess it up all the time. Don't worry about it."
"...Is that so?"
"Yeah. Misreading kanji is a common error even among Japanese people. You read everything else smoothly, didn't you? At your pace, you're actually progressing very quickly."
I encouraged her even though I had absorbed Japanese automatically from Baek Chulyeon's memories.
"...In any case, you certainly have a way with words. Still, thank you for saying so."
Lee Yuha offered a small smile, but the gloomy shadow on her face remained. It wasn't only the Japanese mistake weighing on her; it was also our destination this afternoon.
Instead of major classes, a different activity had been scheduled. All students, regardless of major, gathered at the entrance of a Japanese-style shrine, in front of the torii.
Beyond the red pillars lay a flight of uphill stairs leading to a small shrine at the top.
Yes. The school grounds contained a shrine—a Japanese sanctuary enshrining Japanese deities—and students were required to visit and pay respects on the fifteenth of every month.
So on this April 15th afternoon, the students had assembled before the school shrine instead of attending regular classes.
It's said to honor the souls of students who died on campus, but...
Even in the 21st century, hunter academies saw many student deaths from accidents each year. This Gyeongseong Hunter Academy was no different. A memorial facility wasn't strange in itself, but the fact that it was a Japanese shrine made it so.
It's already unbearable having to perform the imperial bow and recite the oath of imperial subjects, and now we have to worship at a shrine on top of it.
Moreover, the principal deity here was Susanoo, the storm god of Japanese myth. The empire had fabricated the idea that Japan's Susanoo and Joseon's Dangun were the same being.
It was a filthy attempt to erase Joseon's history and traditions from the root. Even I felt disgusted by it; for someone from a proud yangban family like Lee Yuha, it must have been far worse.
Hmm.
I glanced at her. Come to think of it, what sort of household was she from? She'd mentioned once that her grandfather had done work similar to a hunter.
Well, anyway, I'm praying.
When my turn finally came, I stepped before the worship hall, closed my eyes, and clasped my hands like the others.
Please let me graduate safely and reach America.
Whether it was Dangun or Susanoo or whatever entity had granted my wish to be sent to the past, I only hoped it wouldn't fulfill the rest of my desires in such a twisted manner.
After finishing the rites, I was descending the shrine steps when a faint scream echoed from afar.
"Kyaaaaaaa..."
Lee Yuha heard it too and turned her head toward the sound.
"Did you hear that just now?"
"...It's coming from the otherworld botanical garden!"
The direction was unmistakable. We ran over and found Professor Nakamori, the otherworld biology instructor, collapsed in a corner of the classroom attached to the garden.
Pushing through the crowd that had already gathered, I moved closer. Beside the unconscious professor lay an entire uprooted mandrake—what they called "mandarake" here.
The scream had clearly come from the plant. A small flowerpot lay overturned nearby. It looked as though Nakamori had been repotting plants, accidentally pulled the mandrake out by mistake, and fainted from its scream.
Students and professors muttered among themselves.
"For Professor Nakamori to make such an error..."
"Well, his eyesight is quite poor. It must have been an accident."
But something felt off to me.
There's more to this.
An otherworld biology professor wouldn't make such a basic mistake. Looking closer, the label on the fallen flowerpot read "shadow flower"—a completely different plant. Someone had deliberately planted the mandrake in the wrong pot to make the professor faint when he tried to repot it.
But why?
Why knock the professor out? To steal something?
I pushed through the noisy crowd of students and faculty into the botanical garden itself and immediately noticed something suspicious.
The nitro grass is gone.
The otherworld plant now known as shosankusa. Unlike the small amount I had taken yesterday, nearly a whole handful had been torn out by the roots. The exposed soil was still damp. It had happened very recently.
When combined with certain ingredients, it reacts with magic power to cause a powerful explosion. The fact that it's missing means...
It was obvious. Whoever took it was planning to manufacture explosives.
Moreover, by luring everyone to this remote corner, it seemed they intended to carry out their plan somewhere else right now.
But where? What are they trying to blow up?
If they were going to commit sabotage on campus, what would they target? The main building? The training grounds? The faculty research wing? The dormitories?
No. A student engaged in the independence movement wouldn't be the type to indiscriminately kill civilians. They wouldn't plant a bomb in school facilities filled mostly with innocent students and professors...
…The shrine.
The thought struck me suddenly. It was isolated, so there would be no civilian casualties, yet it was the most symbolically significant building on campus. If a girl carrying a Taegukgi wanted to cause damage with explosives, that would be the first place to come to mind.
I quietly slipped away from the crowded botanical garden, crossed the entire length of the school grounds, passed the torii, and climbed the stairs. The shrine, already located in a secluded spot, was now completely deserted. All the students who had finished worshiping had left.
Except for one person.
Just as I expected, a girl wearing a gas mask stood in front of the worship hall.
This time it's the real one.
She stood before the hall holding a glass bottle that sloshed with some unknown mixture and nitro grass.
I'm perfectly fine with you blowing up the shrine.
I pulled the glove onto my right hand and broke into a run toward her.
But why does it have to be at the school I attend? There are shrines everywhere outside campus.
The girl finally noticed me and panicked, trying to dodge, but I was already within arm's reach.
"...!"
"You! Where do you think you're going!"
I swung my hand to knock the glass bottle from her grasp. Or tried to.
But she let out a short "Eek!" and twisted her body with surprising agility, easily evading my hand. Immediately afterward, with a sharp "Hup!" she lifted her leg high and sent a kick flying toward the side of my head.
Whoosh!
The fierce sound sliced past my ear. I stepped back at the last instant to avoid it.
What the—?
From the sharp movement, a reddish-brown ponytail slipped out from beneath her gas mask hood and swayed.
The girl withdrew her leg, reset her stance, and began to circle me with light, flowing steps that kept her distance.
Watching her, I thought in bewilderment, …Taekkyeon?!