Festival (8)
Festival (8)
"Hello."
"Hel... lo?"
Still caught off guard, Baek Ha-na returned Jane Moore's greeting while shooting a sidelong glance at Yoon I-seul and Jaden, who were seated a little distance away.
She was silently asking why this person was here.
And why she was wearing handcuffs, of all things.
With no obligation on the schedule today apart from the Losers' Revival Match, the fact that Jane was in a pristine academy uniform was strange too.
Yoon I-seul approached to clear up Baek Ha-na's confusion.
But Ha-na couldn't help questioning Yoon I-seul as well.
"...When did you get here, senpai?"
The Losers' Revival Match was a contest only the representatives of each academy entered. To avoid commotion, all other students were supposed to wait at their hotels.
In fact, she and Jaden had ridden the bus together this morning and arrived at the Royal Academy as a pair.
At Ha-na's question, Yoon I-seul gave an awkward laugh and scratched her cheek.
"It's because of Jane sitting over there, I suppose?"
"......?"
"Ah, it's not a very complicated story. What happened was..."
Yoon I-seul gave Baek Ha-na a concise summary of what had happened while Ha-na had been holding her spot on the stage.
A call that came in early this morning.
It was from Sam Willis, the head professor of First Academy.
Once Yoon I-seul picked up, Sam told her:
That around the time today's matches wrapped up, Jane Moore intended to crash the stage to apologize for what happened at the party.
After the call, Yoon I-seul contacted Jane Moore in a hurry.
The reason was simple.
She knew from experience that Jane was fully capable of such a thing.
Thankfully, she managed to reach her, lured her out with an offer to help with the apology, and then slapped a set of mana-suppression handcuffs—sourced from the operations headquarters by Jaden, whom she had contacted in advance—onto Jane Moore's wrists.
Since Jane's ability could whisk her out of sight in an instant given half a mind, this was an essential step to remove variables.
"And so, after some persuasion, I got her settled into a seat."
"...Thank you."
Baek Ha-na felt genuine gratitude toward Yoon I-seul.
If Jane Moore had barged onto the stage after the match ended and tried to apologize in front of the audience and hundreds of cameras...
A shiver.
Baek Ha-na rubbed her goosebump-covered arms and shook her head.
What she wanted was the acknowledgment of one single person, not the attention of billions of strangers whose faces she'd never seen.
"...Didn't I tell you there was no need to apologize?"
Now aware that without Yoon I-seul she would have suffered a serious ordeal, Ha-na approached Jane Moore—who sat quietly in handcuffs—with a faint frown. She knew Jane hadn't done it with bad intentions. But this was going too far. Shouldn't she have asked at least once more?
"Sorry. I..."
"Miss Ha-na?"
Cutting Jane off, Yoon I-seul stepped closer.
She whispered into Baek Ha-na's ear.
"The truth is..."
Murmur murmur.
Yoon I-seul honestly confessed that she had fed a piece of bad information to Jane Moore. She knew full well that Jane, with her exceedingly simple way of thinking, would blurt it out immediately.
"So she probably thought you rejected her only for the sake of politeness."
"Mmrgh..."
Ha-na swept her bangs up and rubbed her forehead.
"Wow..."
Right then, Jane Moore, who had been staring intently at Baek Ha-na, forgot her own predicament entirely and opened her mouth slightly, eyes sparkling.
"Haa, if that's the reason, I can't even get angry."
After a short sigh, Baek Ha-na's expression settled back into its usual blank mask.
"Professor. Could you remove the handcuffs?"
"Understood."
Deciding that inserting himself into the girls' conversation wouldn't be gentlemanly conduct, Jaden had stayed silent until now. He stepped forward and unlocked the cuffs binding Jane Moore's wrists.
Now able to use her ability freely, Jane simply sat demurely and gazed up at Baek Ha-na.
"I want to apologize."
"...I'll consider it accepted."
"My heart feels uneasy. I'm sorry, too, for trying to make a major scene. I thought I had to do it that way. I really did insult Ms. Baek at the party."
"......."
A brief hesitation.
Ha-na, who had kept her lips sealed, nodded.
"...All right."
The rigid edge in her voice softened a little.
Perhaps sensing that, Jane Moore beamed and shot to her feet.
"I am truly sorry that I judged you by your appearance alone and insulted you without actually knowing you."
Jane Moore bent at the waist, expressing her remorse with sincerity.
'......?'
But when her head kept sinking lower and lower past a right angle, Baek Ha-na tilted her head.
Thud.
"I'm sorry!!"
"No..."
Jane Moore had prostrated herself.
Ha-na scrambled to pull her back up, but Jane sprang to her feet first.
"I'm sorry!!"
The problem was she immediately prostrated herself a second time.
And she even made a strange gesture with her hands, pressing them to the floor and lifting them above her ears.
"Hoo."
Having finished her two prostrations, Jane Moore exhaled a long breath and rose.
"Jane. In Korea, bowing twice like that is something you do for the dead."
"Whaaat?!"
Yoon I-seul's remark made Jane Moore jump in alarm.
"Ah, uh, s-sorry!!"
And she dropped her head to the floor yet again.
"...That's enough, so please stop now."
"Oh, okay."
Jane Moore sheepishly stood and sat back down in her chair. Then, looking up at Baek Ha-na with shimmering eyes, she asked,
"Um, I know I shouldn't ask this... but does that mean you forgive me now?"
Ha-na let her swept-up bangs fall back into place and sighed.
"Like I said on stage, I'm not really angry. So it's not a question of forgiving or not."
"Uh, my Korean is still not very good..."
Baek Ha-na and Jane Moore looked at Yoon I-seul at the same time.
Yoon I-seul translated what Ha-na wanted to convey into English and explained it again to Jane Moore.
"Ah!!"
Having finally understood Baek Ha-na's words thanks to Yoon I-seul's effort, Jane Moore shot to her feet. She approached Ha-na, clasped her soft and warm hands, and spoke.
"Ms. Baek is truly generous!"
"Well..."
She wanted to say that wasn't the case at all, but figuring it would only be a hassle, Ha-na nodded vaguely.
"In that case..."
"Rather than that... Miss Baek? Please stop calling me that. It's really ticklish... I mean, embarrassing."
"......?? Tick... lish?"
Jane Moore made a mantis-like poking gesture at her own side with her small hand, shaping something vaguely resembling a mantis claw.
"Pfft..."
Ha-na covered her mouth with a hand and turned her head away.
But everyone present saw it.
It was only a flicker, but Baek Ha-na had burst out laughing.
"The ticklish!! Swish! Swish-swish!!"
At that, Jane Moore's eyes lit up. She pranced around Baek Ha-na, slashing the air with her mantis-claw hands.
As Yoon I-seul watched Ha-na twist her head this way and that trying to suppress her laughter, she filed away a new piece of information.
'Miss Ha-na has a taste for unexpected physical comedy...'
Yoon I-seul's conjecture was surprisingly accurate.
Perhaps from having been with Claire since childhood, Baek Ha-na often burst out laughing at peculiar things, too.
And Jaden, who had been observing all of this from the back, quietly composed an email to Baek Woo-jin while thinking,
'Wherever they go, they're a collection of beauties who wouldn't be out of place anywhere... but somehow their personalities are all oddballs like Ha-na.'
The cold-looking beauty whose thoughts were impossible to read: Baek Ha-na.
But she had a taste for physical comedy that even an old man wouldn't laugh at.
The innocent-looking beauty with deep black hair and a mysterious aura: Yoon I-seul.
But she was an extreme meritocrat, and for all her pure image, she was dark inside.
Finally, the classically beautiful Jane Moore with her own backlight.
But she was a justice-obsessed loose cannon who could fly off anywhere at any time.
'Looking at all three together, Miss Ha-na is normal.'
The truth was, Baek Ha-na also had a flaw just as enormous as the other two, but it was something that rarely surfaced. Jaden, unaware of this, concluded his assessment of the three.
"Stop, stop..."
"Hehe, I'll stop."
Only after Ha-na, face slightly flushed, held out a hand did Jane Moore cease her uncanny mantis impression.
"...Haa. From now on, just call me Ha-na. I'll call you Jane, too."
"Wonderful! Ha-na!! So, are we friends now?"
"...Yeah. Friends. Let's be friends."
She seemed like a highly exhausting person, but she didn't come across as a bad one, so Baek Ha-na nodded.
"Great!! I've been forgiven and I'm friends with Miss Ha-na now, so I can become even stronger now!!"
"......"
"......"
Baek Ha-na and Yoon I-seul simultaneously tilted their heads at Jane Moore's contextless, out-of-the-blue rambling.
Fanfare~!!
Just as Yoon I-seul turned to ask Jane what on earth she meant, a brassy, energetic tune blared from inside Jane's pocket.
"Oh, it's Sam."
Jane Moore pulled out the trumpeting smartphone and held it to her ear.
"Sam!!"
"I'm in the Arena Academy waiting room!! An incident? What kind of incident?"
"More importantly, I became friends with Ha-na!!"
"Ah, outside? Yes, I'll come out now."
Her lips flapping at incredible speed, Jane Moore pocketed her phone and gave the three a slight bow.
"Sam says he's come to pick me up, so I'll be off now. We'll exchange contacts at the closing ceremony party!!"
Having left behind exactly what she wanted to say and nothing more, Jane Moore breezed out of the waiting room.
"So, sorry...?"
"...It's okay."
Normally Baek Ha-na would have replied, 'What's there to be sorry about?' but this time she couldn't bring herself to. That was simply how impressive Jane Moore was in many ways.
Ding.
The two girls turned their heads at a short alarm sound.
Feeling their gazes, Jaden tapped at his smartphone and said,
"Let's head back. The matchup has just been posted."
He showed the screen to both of them.
[ Arena Academy vs Royal Academy ]
Both of Baek Ha-na's eyes went cold.
Royal Academy.
The academy attended by the prince who had tried to touch her as he pleased at the airport.