Call Me Nuna
Wh-what...?
"Get lost, you bastard."
Crude, and sickeningly familiar.
It was that exact inflection, the kind that had hammered against my eardrums all through my school years—the bone-deep accent of a schoolyard thug.
A chill raced down my spine. I reflexively hunched my shoulders and cautiously lifted my head.
A delinquent shadow loomed over me, staring as if she meant to bore a hole straight through the crown of my skull.
Her school necktie hung loose and undone; she stood with her weight cocked onto one hip in a cocky slant.
She was the perfect specimen of a female delinquent.
The only thing that set her apart from the bullies in my memories was an exotic beauty so sharp it made my breath catch.
Skin white as poured milk. Dazzling platinum-blonde hair. Ice-cold blue eyes.
And a towering frame that looked ready to fold my pathetic stick-insect body in half with one hand.
A Slavic beauty who could have strutted a runway to a standing ovation was staring down at me like I was a bug.
"Can't you fucking hear me? You deaf? This is my seat, so get the hell out, you retard."
Ah. Looks didn't matter one bit.
Her personality was pure grizzly from the land of bears.
"A-Ah...! I-I'm sorry...!"
I sprang up like a coiled spring and scrambled to surrender the seat.
She dropped her rear onto the spot I'd just vacated as if it had always belonged to her, then stared at her phone.
Left standing awkwardly in the aisle like a kicked puppy, I checked my own phone.
Huh...?
The seating chart glowing on the screen and the number on the chair my butt had just occupied.
No matter how hard I rubbed my eyes and looked again... it was definitely my seat.
...Should I just find some other empty spot?
I wrestled with the thought hundreds of times.
But if I abandoned my assigned seat on day one and got marked for it, I doubted I'd survive this cutthroat academy.
In the end I shuffled back toward the girl delinquent, trembling like a pig being led to slaughter.
"U-Um... excuse me..."
"Huh?"
Her head snapped up, eyes ice-cold.
Certain a fist was about to bury itself in my solar plexus, I squeezed my eyes shut and thrust my phone screen at her like a protective charm.
"Hyeek...! Th-that... th-that's my seat..."
The girl delinquent glared at me with a face that screamed This little shit wants to die, spouting bullshit?—then glanced at the number on my screen and looked down at her own phone.
I snuck a sideways peek at her display.
Seat Number: C-104
The seat I had been sitting in was C-103. In other words, her real seat was right next to mine.
A suffocating silence stretched between us.
She furrowed her brow hard and stood.
"...Get lost."
She'd gone to the wrong seat and was taking it out on me.
That was the beastly logic of delinquents for you.
She rose with open irritation and flopped into the chair beside me—her actual seat.
Only then did I scurry back to my own and perch gingerly on the very edge of the chair.
Sh-she looks at the wrong number and then acts like the victim... all that height and nothing upstairs...
Of course not a single syllable left my lips. I just raged through a furious inner monologue.
"Hey."
"Hiiik?!"
My shoulders popped up like I was doing a locking dance.
I creaked my head around like a wooden puppet, and there she was, chin propped on her hand, staring straight at me.
Holy shit, did she hear my thoughts?! Is she some mind-reading webtoon artist or what?!
My pupils shook violently; my brain blue-screened. Meanwhile her pale blue eyes slowly dragged down my skinny shoulders, my bony nape, and my deathly pale face.
"You are a guy, right?"
"Y-yes...? Y-yeah..."
I nodded in a daze. She let out a disbelieving snort of laughter.
"What kind of guy is this scrawny? One poke and you'd snap."
A heavy factual punch landed square in my solar plexus.
Yeah, one poke and I would snap. In this place I've got all stats at 1—paper-thin body and everything...
Even back in the real world I'd been a pathetic stick who got cursed out and kicked off construction sites for not being able to haul a single bag of cement. And here she was, digging that truth right into my face.
I wanted to fire something back, but my miserable throat sealed shut like a herbivore facing a predator.
Apparently my pathetic reaction amused her. Chin still on her hand, she launched into a full-blown personal interrogation.
"Name?"
"H-Han Siyul..."
"Han Siyul? What kind of trash name is that? Who stuck you with it?"
...Some civil servant at the community center, you thug from Bear Country.
I avoided her eyes instead of answering. She clicked her tongue in irritation and jerked her chin.
"Ignoring me? Whatever. Nationality?"
"Korea..."
Her eyes narrowed; then she let out a short, mocking laugh.
"Korea? Asia? Ching-chang-chong?"
"...What?"
I doubted my ears for a second.
Ching... chang... chong...?
My head went blank.
On first meeting, in the middle of the entrance ceremony grand hall, she just casually dropped an openly racist slur like that?
I stood there with earthquake pupils and a total brain freeze. She seemed to find my slack-jawed expression deliciously satisfying and giggled before continuing the questions.
"Still ignoring me? Age."
"Nineteen..."
"Birthday."
"November..."
She tapped her cheek lazily with the finger propping her chin.
"That so? Mine already passed."
"...And?"
"Then that obviously makes me your nuna. Right?"
Ah. This was the most sudden forced hierarchy sorting I had ever witnessed.
What kind of miracle logic was this? Just because she was born a few months earlier among same-year students, she was going to play big sister right out of the gate?
"Why... would it work that way...?"
The unfairness was so sharp that a tiny counter-question slipped out of me before I could stop it.
The playful curve in her eyes that had been looking at me like a toy instantly dropped to sub-zero temperatures.
"You got a problem?"
"..."
"If I say so, then it is. What are you gonna do about it? Unhappy?"
Clear, violent pressure.
Under her piercing gaze I just flapped my mouth like a goldfish that had swallowed honey.
Then I answered in a voice that shrank into itself.
"...Y-yes..."
At that pitiful reply her eyebrow shot up at a crooked angle.
"Speech is awfully short. What did I just tell you to call me?"
"...Y-yes, Nu-nuna..."
In the end I flattened myself before violence.
Call me pathetic if you want; I had no choice.
If I talked back to this brainless delinquent girl, my skull would have a hole in it before the day was over.
Seeing my instant surrender, she snorted another laugh.
She crossed her legs, lounged back against the chair, and changed the subject.
"What department are you?"
"...De-department...?"
When I answered with a blank look, she clicked her tongue as if I were hopeless.
"Your major. Support type, tanker type, whatever. It's written on your student ID."
"Ah...!"
I'd been so distracted by the entrance ceremony that I hadn't even checked something that basic.
I frantically dug through my pants pocket and pulled out the student ID I'd swiped at the gate earlier.
My lips stuttered to a halt as I fumbled through the letters printed at the bottom of the plastic card.
"It... says unaffiliated...?"
The brow of the girl who'd been resting her chin crumpled hard.
It was a weird mix of pissed-off and utterly floored.
"Unaffiliated? You're unaffiliated? Ha, no wonder."
She looked me up and down and giggled.
"You look exactly as worthless as you are. Scrawny thing that snaps if you poke it—yeah, you belong in the trash bin for washouts."
Every time she opened her mouth she picked the words that cut deepest. This vodka bitch.
...But she's been grilling only me this whole time and hasn't said a single thing about herself?
Feeling too one-sidedly stripped bare, I squeezed out a scrap of courage and carefully moved my lips.
"...Um, Nuna... what's your name?"
The smirking delinquent's eyes cooled again in a flash.
"Why do you want to know? A punk like you? Just call me nuna."
A cold, single-stroke rejection came back.
I dropped my gaze to the floor again.
"Y-yes..."
She stared down at the dejected crown of my head for a quiet beat, then let out a short sigh.
"Anastasia Volkova."
"...?"
"Still just call me nuna."
She'd acted like she wouldn't tell me, then casually tossed her name out anyway. Unbelievable.
Still, the moment I heard that hard surname "Volkova," a country flashed through my mind.
That overwhelming height, the platinum hair, and that viciously foul temper.
"...So you're from Russia after all?"
"Yeah. Russian nationality."
The instant Anastasia nodded like it was nothing, I kept my head bowed and silently chewed through a vicious stream of curses, burning with rage.
You crazy bitch. More than half your country's territory is in Asia, and you pull that ching-chang-chong crap on a fellow Asian?!
She was a completely unsalvageable piece-of-shit thug.
I was still grinding every possible insult under my breath when—
Suddenly—
Someone's face shot up into my lowered field of vision.
"Hiiik?!"
I jerked my shoulders and flung my head back, only to find Anastasia had already leaned her upper body right into my space and shoved her face under my bowed head.
Her blue eyes locked dead-center on my trembling ones.
"What did you just say? You were flapping those lips and cursing me out, weren't you?"
"N-no...!? I-I didn't do anything of the sort...?!"
My voice cracked into a strangled squeak. Thick cold sweat poured down my forehead and back like a waterfall.
Even my pupils were shaking like aspen leaves.
Anyone looking would have seen the giant neon sign on my face screaming, Yes, I just unleashed a juicy double-dose of curses. It was the most transparently red-handed lie imaginable.
H-holy shit. How did she know?! I was cursing in Korean! Lip movements don't get translated...!
While I freaked out alone, Anastasia simply smirked at my completely see-through face.
"You did. With this snout right here."
"Uueep...?!"
Anastasia's slender hand suddenly clamped onto my chin and the corners of my mouth.
Her long thumb and forefinger dug hard into both my cheeks, and under the pressure my lips were forced out into a pout like a goldfish's.
She held my cheeks and turned my face this way and that, giggling.
"What the hell. Why are your cheeks so soft and chewy? Total pelmeni dough."
Pelmeni dough...? What is that even supposed to mean...
Apparently she'd discovered an unexpected texture on a face she'd assumed was pure bone. She started kneading my cheeks like a kid with a new toy.
Under those merciless fingers my mind went white.
Memories from school days flooded back whole—being cornered in the classroom by bored female delinquents and reduced to their boredom-killing plaything.
I had neither the strength to resist nor the courage to shake her off. I could only surrender my cheeks and plead in a mushy, mangled voice.
"P-please stop... my cheeks hurt..."
"Ahaha, this is fun."
And just like that, right when I was about to be ground into powder as some delinquent's chewy toy—
The noisy chaos of the grand hall suddenly quieted. Spotlights poured down onto the massive stage up front.
A middle-aged man in a suit walked up onto the platform and tapped the microphone; the dull thumps of contact filled the hall.
Then a deep voice rolled out through the speakers.
"Ahem— New students, everyone please take your seats."