31. Reunions Are Moving
31. Reunions Are Moving
31. Reunions Are Moving
After the S-rank Magic Stone vanished, two people remained.
It was a situation where anyone would see them as the only suspects.
Ban Ha-na and I were handcuffed and escorted away by dozens of heroes.
Amid the crowd of heroes, murmurs started about my identity.
Apparently, while I was gone, I'd become quite a well-known figure in the outside world.
They looked at me with confused expressions.
"...Isn't that the kid? The one who was kidnapped recently..."
"Huh? Now that you mention it, I think you're right..."
Angela, a member of Black Dawn, had left, so the disguises she'd cast had worn off, and Ban Ha-na and I were back to our original appearances.
Because of that, some heroes were beginning to piece together that I was the kidnapped Han Si-jun.
'Well, I can clear that up soon. Not a big deal.'
There would be time for explanations later. What I had to do now was:
"Y-You lied to me. Han Si-jun...!"
Ban Ha-na, still fully deluded, her fingers trembling fiercely as they gripped my sleeve.
It seemed the only thing left was to calm her down.
Right after I teased her a little more, that is.
"Caught me. You're going to live in prison now. A horrible prison. You'll never escape."
"Th-That's not fair...! You're a villain! This is villainy!"
I had no idea what she even meant by calling me a villain.
Ban Ha-na just kept shouting "villain" over and over.
I didn't really grasp what she intended by it, but her sheer sense of injustice came through loud and clear.
Her constant racket must have annoyed one of the heroes escorting us—clearly fed up with our complete lack of tension—because he finally shouted at us.
"Quiet! You two have been arrested! Keep your mouths shut!"
"Yes..."
"Hiek..."
And so, with handcuffs on, we were arrested as suspects in the theft of the S-rank Magic Stone.
***
V. AGE.
This world is set inside an RPG game, modeled on Earth, but some things differ from reality.
If you committed a crime, you went to the police in the real world.
But here, two organizations stood in place of the police.
The Hero Association had its hands in everything hero-related. They held the authority to arrest villains, and they possessed fairly decent capabilities for what they were.
Standing against that Hero Association was the Hero Autonomous Union. A collective of heroes who had left the Association, operating under a guild format and wielding various rights.
A group formed primarily by heroes, whose fame was climbing higher by the day.
'I'm glad these guys were the ones transporting us.'
What if the group taking us in had been the Hero Association? That would mean going straight back to the very organization that had put out a hit on me, right after I'd barely escaped.
Just thinking about it made me dizzy.
Having the Union handle our transport was a huge stroke of luck.
Right as that thought crossed my mind, the gorilla of a man interrogating me slammed his hand on the table across from me.
BANG!
"Focus. No getting distracted. You two have been arrested as suspects. Understood?"
"Yes, completely understood."
"Understood..."
Normally, because we were suspects in the theft of an S-rank Magic Stone, the severity of the crime would dictate being thrown straight into Infinite Prison, the containment facility for major villains.
But given the circumstances—the suspect at the scene was me, Han Si-jun, the guy who'd been kidnapped for a week, plus the oddity of Ban Ha-na, who didn't appear in any registry whatsoever—
We were currently being questioned in an ordinary interrogation room at the Hero Autonomous Union, commonly called the Hero Union.
"...Let's verify one thing before we go. The S-rank Magic Stone. Did you two steal it?"
"We did do it, but not because we wanted to..."
"Elaborate."
I explained the kidnapping incident to him. The day I was abducted by Black Dawn, what they wanted from me, and what they were trying to steal. I threw in the lie that once they'd gotten what they wanted, Black Dawn had simply abandoned us there.
"This kid was also kidnapped with me—another one they tossed aside. We got close over that week. Right, Ha-na?"
"Y-Yeah, we were raised together since forever! They—they abandoned us! That's right! We were abandoned!"
Ban Ha-na stumbled over her words as she tried to explain. If anyone who knew her was listening, they'd figure out right away that her current statement was a lie.
"Hmm..."
The interrogator shot Ban Ha-na a skeptical glance.
If Ban Ha-na's status as a member of Black Dawn came to light, that would spell trouble for me too.
So I decided to add one more note to Ban Ha-na's story.
"As you can see, her intelligence is a little on the low side."
"Ah... Understood."
The interrogator looked at Ban Ha-na's blank, vacant expression and accepted my explanation. Thankfully, he didn't seem to be the deeply suspicious type. Either that, or Ban Ha-na genuinely did look like she had low intelligence.
Ban Ha-na reacted strongly to the "low intelligence" remark.
"I-I'm not stupid...!"
Which only sealed the deal. That reaction made her look even less intelligent.
"...Tsk."
The interrogator clicked his tongue, his eyes suggesting she wasn't even worth the response. He then stood up from his seat, like the matter was settled. He picked up the file containing what we'd said and headed for the door.
"You two. Wait here for now. A guardian will come pick you up. You're still suspects in this incident. The suspicion hasn't been cleared, so don't do anything stupid."
With those words, he left through the door.
'So... did it get resolved decently, then?'
A crime we'd been forced to commit because we were kidnapped. The reason I had no choice but to steal the Magic Stone: someone exploited me because I had no mana. And then there was the existence of Ban Ha-na, who'd been at the Black Dawn hideout.
I'd given a complete explanation on all that, so as long as the Hero Union held no particular malice toward us, they'd acknowledge the unusual nature of the situation.
Honestly, even if they pinned some crime on me, as long as I didn't end up in a cell, I was fine.
What I desperately needed right now was—
"I just want to get back home soon..."
A room to myself. I'd lived a fairly solitary life, I guess. Living communally with villains had seriously drained my mental energy. What I needed right now was rest. Time alone.
As I lay on the bed, indulging that happy fantasy, Ban Ha-na spoke up from beside me.
"Si-jun. Do you have a house?"
"Not a house, a dorm. A place where students live together."
"So I get to live there too?"
"Probably."
"Same room?"
"...Dorms are separated, boys and girls."
"Why!"
Even if you ask me, I can't answer that one. Clearly, Ban Ha-na had wanted to share a room with me. But no meant no. After I roughly explained how school dorms worked, Ban Ha-na seemed a little dejected, her head dropping.
"Hnnn... I wanted to live together..."
"That's probably not the main issue."
Ban Ha-na's problem wasn't living with me—it was whether she could even enroll. That was the real question.
Ban Ha-na currently wanted the student life without any real thought behind the desire. I didn't know if it would be accepted or not, but being an academy student was one of the things she wanted.
First hurdle. The age issue. Was Ban Ha-na even the right age to enroll?
I asked her directly.
"Hold on. How old are you? You're probably younger than me."
A subject I'd been letting slide: her age. She was shorter than the average girl, and from what I'd seen of her intelligence, she seemed younger. I'd made the assumption "she's definitely younger than me" and just went with it.
What was Ban Ha-na's real age?
Her mouth slowly opened, like a long-hidden truth was about to be revealed.
"I'm... well... According to what Grandpa said, I've passed eighteen years, so... 18! I'm 18 years old!"
Ban Ha-na laughed. "Hehe."
Meanwhile, I couldn't laugh anymore.
'She's older than me...?'
A shocking truth. Ban Ha-na, shattering my expectations. She was a full year older than me, a 17-year-old.
"Ha-na."
"Hmm? Si-jun, what?"
"I can't bring myself to use formal speech with you. Sorry..."
It wasn't even about pride—my brain had just classified using formal speech toward Ban Ha-na as something that must never be done. I'm sure she'll understand.
"...Si-jun. So you're younger than me...?"
"No, I mean, when you're born doesn't really matter, right? Huh? You just get along, become friends, that sort of thing."
Ban Ha-na scrunched her eyebrows, apparently displeased by my statement. She took a massive breath, then pulled the ultimate elder privilege: the condescending old-timer card.
"Silence!! Si-jun! You speak formally to me from now on! How dare you, younger than me and all..."
...Well, this is a disaster.
When I'd lived for a bit inside the Black Dawn hideout, I'd sensed the group's hierarchy. Maybe because Shin Hae-il was Korean, Black Dawn seemed to rank itself by age. Ban Ha-na was a member of Black Dawn, someone raised among them. Naturally, she would have felt, seen, and learned that age-based culture firsthand.
When I didn't respond, she cast her old-timer routine again.
"If someone's younger than me, they have to use formal speech. That's both the regulation and the rule!"
"What's the difference between a regulation and a rule..."
"Silence!"
Ban Ha-na's voice left no room for argument. Still, a no's a no. No matter how I thought about it, using formal speech toward a pink rabbit just wasn't happening.
"Show me some proof. Proof that you're older than me."
"Proo...of?"
Ban Ha-na was totally speechless at the word "proof." She had no way to prove her age. She'd been taken to Black Dawn the moment she was born, so there was no way she had a civilian registration. Which meant I could safely tease her.
"Isn't that whole 'older than me' thing also a lie?"
"I-I don't lie! Good kids can't lie!"
"Oh, really? Is that so?"
At my utterly soulless reply, Ban Ha-na's face flushed a deeper red than her pink hair.
"Si... Si-jun, get over here...! I'm gonna punish you!"
Ban Ha-na lunged at me without a second thought. Since she was in the seat next to me and handcuffed to the desk, it was a move liable to make her lose her balance.
"Wha...?"
"Wah...!"
CRASH!
In the end, we tumbled off our chairs and went rolling across the floor.
"...That could've hurt."
Thanks to the desk in the interrogation room holding us up, we hadn't flipped all the way over. We weren't injured because of it, but I had ended up face-down over Ban Ha-na.
If I didn't explain this moment to someone as "We fell and ended up like this!", it was a pose destined for misunderstanding. And since I had a fate that triggered in exactly this kind of situation, it was unquestionably destined to be misunderstood.
'At this rate, if someone walks in, they're gonna get the wrong idea...'
That thought flashed through my mind the very instant I tried to push myself off the floor.
Creeeak...
The door opened, and there I saw the silhouette of a painfully familiar woman.
'I really want to kill this fate.'
In a frantic hurry, I greeted her for the first time in a long while.
"L-Long time no see. Yu Ha-yeon."
"..."
Hahaha.
I'd tried to smooth things over with a laugh, but that seemed impossible.
Yu Ha-yeon. She was staring at this scene with dead, lifeless eyes.
"...What are you doing."
Yu Ha-yeon's voice rang out, ice-cold. The frigid atmosphere coiled through the interrogation room, and I sensed that I was completely screwed.