Daily Encounters #036: From Grandma to Noona
Even after my aunt and uncle returned, the constant pampering showed no signs of stopping. Na Sua sat me on the bed, then settled down right beside me and started touching me everywhere. At some point I began wondering if this counted as sexual harassment, but everyone else watched like there was nothing wrong with it, so I let the matter slide. After all, I wasn’t a high schooler cramming for the college entrance exam—just a well-behaved middle schooler. So I figured it was fine.
“By the way,” Grandma said, opening her mouth with a benevolent smile. Everyone except Na Sua turned to look at her.
“When do you plan to marry Sian off?”
“Excuse me?” The question had been aimed at my aunt, yet I was the one who blurted out a startled reply.
“I mean, he’s growing up. It wouldn’t hurt to start thinking about these things, would it?”
I lowered my head. My still-developing body filled my vision. My aunt wore an expression like she couldn’t believe her ears. Soon she clutched her forehead as if she must have misheard.
“Grandma, Sian is only fifteen! He’s not even legally old enough to get married!”
“I’m not saying get married right now. Just that it’s good to make a promise in advance. If the guardians discuss it carefully, a marriage contract is perfectly—”
“A careful discussion?! Considering marriage at this age is the furthest thing from careful consideration!”
My aunt continued without pause, declaring that as long as she was his guardian such a thing would never happen. On the other hand, Grandma couldn’t come up with a proper rebuttal to her granddaughter’s fierce objections.
“And who arranges engagements while they’re still minors these days? It’s not like we’re living in the era before trains existed!”
“Dear, calm down for a moment…”
“Besides, if they get engaged now, Sian’s opinion won’t be considered at all! How do you plan to handle the conflicts that would arise?!”
She was absolutely right. Honestly, this wasn’t some historical period. Arranged marriages for minors were ridiculous. Suddenly getting engaged to a complete stranger was even worse. In today’s free world, when would something like that even happen? If anything, people were delaying marriage longer and longer in the name of self-actualization.
“Anyway, I am firmly against this. I will never allow it, and I’m sure my brother would have done the same if he were alive.”
“But Da-kyung, you and your husband…”
“That was a different time, and it was a path I chose myself. The current situation is completely different.”
In the end, Grandma’s opinion was crushed beneath my aunt’s ironclad logic. Maybe it was because she had met her husband when he was a fourteen-year-old boy and married him the moment she turned twenty—every point she made carried both intuition and persuasive power.
After that, Grandma never brought up the marriage topic again. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief inside.
I thought we wouldn’t see each other for a while after that. However, right before the new middle-school semester began, I ran into a familiar face in front of the house.
“Hello, Sian?”
For the record, it wasn’t the girl named Hana, Duri, or Dooli. The fact that the curtains in her room were still drawn even though it was the tail end of morning told me everything. She had clearly stayed up all night partying with her friends yesterday and was still sleeping off the aftereffects.
The person I had met now was none other than…
“Na Sua… Grandma?”
It was Na Sua. But the moment she heard my words, her expression darkened instantly. There was a noticeable tension around her mouth as well.
Dressed in an imposing suit, Na Sua took one deliberate step after another toward me. An adult woman—especially a tall Far North Elf—approaching like that created enormous pressure. She slightly lowered her head and looked down at me with a dark gaze. It was only a slight bend at the waist, yet her enormous chest was thrust forward, forcing me to take a step back.
Had I done something wrong? Was there something about me that displeased her? All sorts of thoughts flooded my mind in a chaotic rush. In the process, the question of why she had been waiting in front of the house since morning completely vanished.
“Sian.”
“H-Hiiik!”
She grabbed both my arms. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t shake her off; the training I’d done while learning magic had strengthened me, but it still wasn’t enough. Although her face was dark, Na Sua pushed forward an expression so bright it almost seemed to emit a halo. Then her red, undeniably attractive lips moved with crisp elegance.
“Sian, do you know until when the lifespan of Far North Elves differs from that of humans?”
A pop quiz, completely out of nowhere. Still, since she had me in her grip, I had no choice but to answer.
“Um… pureblood (1), half (1/2), quarter (1/4), so octa (1/8)…?”
“That’s right, you know it well. And do you understand what it means that their lifespan is different from humans?”
Wait a second. No way. It couldn’t be. There was no way she was doing all this for such a trivial—
“The age calculation method is different?”
“Yes… Then what should you call me instead of ‘Sua Grandma’?”
So that was it. She was reacting this strongly just because I had called her grandma. It was absurd. She was hundreds of years old; calling her grandma was only proper, wasn’t it? To be this hypersensitive over a single word… If not grandma, then what—should I call her auntie?
A string of thoughts jumbled together in my head, and the answer tumbled out.
“Sua Auntie?”
“……”
Apparently that was wrong too. Na Sua’s expression grew even darker.
“Really? I’ve never been married, and I’ve never even dated anyone, you know?”
“Then… spinster?”
“Ha…?”
Why was she looking at me like that? Honestly, if someone lived for hundreds of years without marrying or dating, they were a spinster, weren’t they? Expecting a better title than that was simply—
“Kang Sian? You shouldn’t say such things to people.”
“Ah, I’m sorry…! I must have spoken out of turn…”
But first I had to survive. I couldn’t afford to get hit by ice-school magic and turn into a donut. Cold sweat poured down my back as I scrambled to take back the impulsive words I had blurted out.
After I apologized for what felt like forever, she eventually drew a gentle arc with her lips.
“It’s all right, it’s all right. We’re going to be seeing each other every day from now on. There’s no need to apologize this much.”
“Ah, yes…”
“Of course… If you consider my age in human terms, I’m only in my early twenties. I’d appreciate it if Sian kept that in mind.”
That didn’t seem right at all. No matter how I looked at it, that didn’t seem right. The words Don’t you have a conscience? flickered through my mind.
Whether she knew how I felt or not, Na Sua slipped one hand into my hair and gently stroked it.
“Noona.”
“Noona?”
“So from now on, call me Noona. Understood?”
“Y-yes. Sua Noona.”
“Good boy. Sian is such a good child. It was worth this Noona waiting all this time.”
Then, as if praising me, she gently pulled me into her arms. The height difference wasn’t too extreme, so I avoided being buried in her chest, but a subtle sensation still pressed distinctly against my collarbone. Na Sua carefully and appreciatively wrapped her arms around my back.
It felt personal and kind. Yet at the same time, it also felt like a predator eyeing its prey. I couldn’t say exactly why. I simply felt it because my instincts were screaming the warning.
Then everything began to tremble. In my eyes there was only the clear sky, the parted room curtains, and white hair. In that way, in my derailed life, ordinary days were steadily being erased.
What clearly revealed this fact was the situation after the new term began.
“Sian, how is it? Isn’t it nice going to school with Noona?”
Na Sua had attached herself to me on the way to school. To be precise, Grandma had assigned her to me for my safety.
Good grief.
Following me on a one-hour commute every single day? And even following someone else’s orders? That was something an ordinary mindset could never manage. The fact that it had continued for months was practically admirable.
“Noona enjoys going to school with our Sian. Does Sian not feel the same?”
“N-no…”
“Sister, it seems Kang Sian doesn’t like it.”
The truly tragic part was that someone besides Na Sua was involved. The even more tragic part was that the someone happened to be Cheon Mari.
“Hey, stop making things up.”
“Like how a guilty thief’s feet are restless—you’re feeling guilty, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Ehehe~ You totally are!”
I could have just asked the driver to take me all the way to school. What kind of idea was it to drop me off in front of the house and then chatter nonstop for a whole hour? No matter how I looked at it, I could only see it as deliberate malice meant to torment me.
“Sian, what this Noona thinks is—”
“Ah, Kang Sian. By the way, you—”
Two women speaking to me from both sides like a dual-core processor. Me, stuck in the middle, having to commute with them every day. This was the derailment of life and the erasure of normality. I swallowed my tears at the reality that I could no longer heal through walking. The only small comfort was that on the way home I could sit on the bus and enjoy an entirely different world.
“Oh, Sian. Grandma said it would be good if I picked you up after school as well.”
“What? After school too?”
Rest… Destruction… Now there was truly nowhere left for healing.
“B-but after school I usually hang out at Nartika with Mari.”
“You take the bus home from Nartika every time, right? From now on I’ll pick you up by car every day.”
“…? Didn’t you say last time that you didn’t have a license or a car?”
“Yes, that was true. But I got my license recently, and I bought a car with the money I saved.”
“…Did something happen?”
“No, nothing at all, so don’t worry. This is simply this Noona making an investment for our Sian.”
“Huh?”
I didn’t understand. I really didn’t understand. As time went on, the situations around me only grew stranger. It felt like I was being deliberately messed with.
And sure enough, it happened exactly one year after I had started training. The problems that had been piling up one after another finally exploded.