Mana (4)
Mana (4)
Liana had heard the word "talent" so many times in her life it had grown tiresome.
When she was born, her innate mana capacity easily exceeded dozens of times that of others. Her affinity was exceptional too, making the handling of mana effortless.
Her manipulation ability naturally grew as well. She was still young and hadn't yet awakened a unique ability, but no one doubted she would become an outstanding superhuman.
The awakening of her unique ability. A spirit-type unique ability so exceedingly rare it was, as the saying went, one you could count on one hand. The expectations placed on her soared sky-high, knowing no bounds.
Swept up in that atmosphere, she ended up becoming a hero before she knew it, and before she knew it, she was fighting on the African Front.
She had made her own choices, of course. The thought that saving people was better than sitting still. And she was making piles of money, so she could retire later and live well, and so on...
Anyway, she had spent quite a long time living as a hero, and even through that process, she'd heard the word "talent" countless times.
Whenever someone made a name for themselves, they were always talented.
Innate talent for mana, talent for magic, talent for martial arts, unique abilities...
Talent, talent, talent. She'd heard it so many times. Talent burst out in all manner of fields, and whenever she looked around, talented people were always piled up like mountains.
The past suddenly came rushing back. Memories that felt distant, and ones that felt recent, as if no time had passed at all.
The sky today was still blue. A different sky from the one over the African Front.
Liana stared vacantly at the sky, then turned her head.
A patch of grass barely a handspan away.
His initial upright posture was gone, replaced by a boy curled up like a shrimp, breathing evenly.
"Pfft."
A laugh slipped out. He looked awfully cute. Since his face naturally had that quality, everything he did came across as cute.
Was this a side effect of lookism? Or the charm of Lee Ha-yul, who had a gentle personality on top of it?
Either way, looking at him stirred an urge to pat him.
She saw him flinch now and then. Come to think of it, Lee Ha-yul seemed especially sensitive to the cold.
Just in case, Liana took out the outer garment she'd brought and draped it over Lee Ha-yul.
As the coat covered him like a blanket, perhaps satisfied, he let out a sleepy sound and curled up even more.
By now he'd completely burrowed into the coat.
At the sight, Liana held her breath to keep from laughing. She nearly burst.
After mentally tracing the character for patience for a good while, she slowly calmed down. Soothing her still-fluttering heart, Liana recalled the scene from just before.
A crystal orb crafted from mana crystals. A tool commonly used to develop basic mana-manipulation ability.
The process consisted of three stages.
Stage 1: making contact with the crystal orb's mana.
Stage 2: breaking down the resistance of the contacted mana, boring a hole, and drawing the mana out.
Stage 3: absorbing the extracted mana through dominance.
For Lee Ha-yul, who was just entering the introductory stages of mana, it was an even more difficult process.
Because before those three stages, he first had to become aware of his own mana and learn to operate it.
The crystal orb was the medium for that. While it's hard to discern its traits with just one, placing two different ones side by side would help the characteristics stand out distinctly.
In other words,
Lee Ha-yul had to go through the process of becoming aware of and operating his own mana, drawing it outward to make contact with the orb's mana, boring a hole through manipulation, and pulling the scattering mana in to make it his own.
At which point, Liana judged that Lee Ha-yul likely had a talent related to mana.
Special Admission. A cadet with a status that had no precedent whatsoever.
A headmaster who had cut off all external activity for decades, except for messages relayed through a liaison called the vice headmaster.
Conspiracy theories suggesting she might actually be dead had circulated—after all, she'd remained hidden somewhere within the Cradle for decades.
Amid that, the vice headmaster had relayed a message from her. Saying she had selected a Special Admission Cadet.
Even now, recalling the chaos of that time made her shake her head.
After all those events, what had finally arrived at the Cradle was Lee Ha-yul, fast asleep right in front of Liana's eyes.
She, too, had been greatly surprised when she'd learned the situation. But setting aside how or why, she'd thought that since the Headmaster herself had chosen him, he must certainly have talent.
In fact, Atra had told her he had a peculiar talent.
- A peculiar talent? Not outstanding, not mediocre—what exactly does that mean?
- I meant it literally. I haven't been able to properly grasp it either. His learning speed is fast, but... something is off.
- Huh.
According to Atra's evaluation, a strangely off talent...
She didn't quite know what it meant, but since they said he had a talent for martial arts, she figured he probably had talent for this too.
This had been the process to confirm it, and if he did have talent, she planned to guide him personally.
So she'd intended to watch Lee Ha-yul struggle with the crystal orb once. To point something out, she first needed to know what the problem was.
And so Lee Ha-yul had held the crystal orb, seemed to concentrate, and then,
in an instant, sucked it dry until it withered away. As if possessed by a beggar who hadn't eaten in days, he'd greedily absorbed it.
It was astonishing. The original three processes... in Lee Ha-yul's case, including awareness and operation, he'd finished something close to five processes in one go.
If it had stopped there, Liana would have simply admired Lee Ha-yul's talent. She would have been relieved—he has talent!—and would have wondered how to teach him going forward.
Contacting mana all at once, boring a hole to draw it out, and absorbing the escaping mana—
It was impressive, but not without precedent. Liana herself had done it. Lee Ha-yul had been much faster, but it wasn't an impossible feat.
But there was a difference between Liana and Lee Ha-yul.
The amount absorbed. Liana had gathered maybe just over half at best? Lee Ha-yul had taken almost all of it. He'd been overwhelmingly faster, and had taken twice as much.
That wasn't all. What truly made Liana feel something beyond admiration—something strange—came after that.
Liana glanced surreptitiously around her. The grass covering the ground seemed oddly drained of life.
She wondered if it was just her imagination, but when she compared it in detail with the grass far off, she could sense the difference.
Most of all, when she examined the mana closely, the mana concentration in the area was unmistakably thinner.
The affected radius wasn't that wide. Barely two meters, perhaps. What mattered was that he'd absorbed not only the crystal orb's mana, but the mana in the surrounding space as well.
And even more importantly.
The most serious question in the current situation.
Liana raised her right hand—the hand she'd rested on Lee Ha-yul's when he'd been holding the crystal orb, to give him a signal.
Astonishingly, unbelievably,
Lee Ha-yul had absorbed Liana's mana as well.
Of course, it had been possible because she'd been clad in mana outside her body and hadn't resisted. Had she tried to resist, Lee Ha-yul wouldn't have been able to encroach on her mana at all.
...Would he really not have?
Even as she thought that, Liana couldn't shake the nagging doubt in the corner of her mind.
Atra had said it. That he had a strange talent. That it was somehow heterogeneous compared to ordinary talent.
Liana felt it too. Perhaps the category differed, but she too judged Lee Ha-yul's talent to be heterogeneous.
What should she even call this...
Liana's gaze swept over Lee Ha-yul, the color-drained crystal orb, the surrounding vegetation, and her own right arm in turn.
Perhaps she could put it this way.
It was as if his access authority was different. Something about it felt distinct from ordinary mana affinity.
She understood now why Atra had been pushing him, yet why it had taken her time to fully grasp it. It was certainly heterogeneous.
Liana smiled softly and reached out. Her fingers met silky-soft hair.
An addictive texture.
* * *
Shin Seo-yul tended to rise early.
There was no special reason. She simply liked the dawn's unique air. She liked the sensation of it being cool but not outright cold, refreshing the inside. She liked how the sunlight was gentle rather than scorching.
So whenever she woke in the early dawn, she'd usually go jogging.
Dressed in comfortable clothes, with a slightly damp sports towel hung around her neck, she'd run for a while. Running at a moderate tempo, cloaked in the dawn air, gave her an exhilarating thrill that felt like her chest was bursting open.
After blowing off stress like that, devouring the snacks she'd brought from the dorm at some nearby sitting spot was happiness itself.
Right after finishing a jog, the taste of cool, sweet coffee poured into a body just starting to heat up—that was a happiness words couldn't easily capture.
"......"
The hand holding a coffee worth a mere 8,500 won (VAT included) trembled faintly. She didn't suffer from tremors. She was a healthy girl who'd never dealt with any lingering ailments.
But her hand trembled. Her face, too, had turned cold.
Part of it was the chilly dawn air hitting her, but part of it was that her mood had simply turned cold.
A park thoroughly steeped in the dawn atmosphere. Drawn by a charming park where a path stretched among the green trees, she'd headed there.
And then she saw it.
Lee Ha-yul, curled up asleep on the grass near the lake.
Cute. That was her first impression. Didn't his very looks emphasize cuteness?
His lines were delicate, soft. Looking at his face, she found it absurd that he seemed prettier than she was, and looking again, found it just as absurd that he was handsome.
The reason those unfavorable gazes—about him being a parachute candidate or a disability special case—had been gradually receding was surely due in part to those looks.
He was truly the spitting image of a fairy.
Last time, Hong Yeon-hwa had offhandedly likened Lee Ha-yul to a fairy. Maybe she'd said it unconsciously, because the way her face had frozen stiff the moment she realized her slip of the tongue had been so unforgettable.
She remembered ganging up with friends right after to tease her, asking if she'd been bewitched by a fairy, and getting smacked several times for it. She'd been laughing her head off back then, but looking at this, she couldn't help sympathizing with the fairy comparison.
But! Still!
That wasn't the important part.
Near Lee Ha-yul, who lay by the mist-shrouded lake at dawn, a woman sat demurely. Even to Shin Seo-yul's own eyes, she was a beauty worthy of admiration.
Even in this place brimming with verdant life, those green eyes drew the eye uniquely. Liana Bellus. The homeroom professor for the Ipchun Class.
As a member of the Usu Class, Shin Seo-yul wasn't acquainted with this professor. At most, she'd exchanged greetings a few times while visiting Hong Yeon-hwa and Baek A-rin. So she didn't know the circumstances on that end.
Why the two of them were there together at dawn on a weekend.
Why Lee Ha-yul was sleeping so peacefully beside her... no, he even had a coat draped over him? It clearly didn't look like it belonged to Lee Ha-yul...
And she had no idea why Professor Liana was stroking Lee Ha-yul's hair, either.
Was there some circumstance? The only certainty was that Shin Seo-yul didn't know that circumstance, nor even whether there was one at all.
Just then, Liana turned her head. Their eyes met. After widening her eyes briefly, Liana let out a soft laugh and raised her index finger to her lips.
- Shh.
Shin Seo-yul's shoulders flinched at the voice burrowing into her ear.
It was Sound Transmission, a technique for directly conveying intent to another through mana. It wasn't a flame-type unique ability typically used by support teams, but a skill occasionally employed by fairly skilled superhumans.
"......"
Shin Seo-yul fell silent for a moment, then nodded. At that, Liana smiled, looking satisfied.
Shin Seo-yul turned her back and left the park. She didn't stop walking until that oddly piercing gaze vanished.
When she glanced around, it had already become a time better called morning than dawn. The number of people stirring about was gradually increasing.
Coming to a stop, Shin Seo-yul furrowed her brow and thought of her friend.
A friend with a personality as fiery as it was nasty, but who showed her good points once you got close, and whose reactions were delightful when teased—a redheaded punching bag of a friend.
The absurd sight of a girl who didn't even tone down her personality in front of her parents suddenly putting on feigned innocence like some sheltered maiden the moment she stood in front of Lee Ha-yul.
That time her friend had slipped up toward another friend and asked what kind of candy men like... The way Hong Yeon-hwa looked at Lee Ha-yul... And the scene just now. Lee Ha-yul, asleep on the grass in the park, and Professor Liana, who'd personally draped a coat over him and stroked his hair...
After gathering all the information accumulated over a lifetime, she ventured to predict one conclusion. A full-length drama played out in her head.
"Oh..."
At the shocking conclusion she'd finally reached, Shin Seo-yul shuddered and shook her head.
"Tch... That opponent is a tough one."
Even for her friend, this opponent was formidable.