4. No, I'm Telling You It's a Misunderstanding
4. No, I'm Telling You It's a Misunderstanding
4. No, I'm Telling You It's a Misunderstanding
Shin Si-hwa, one of the academy's teachers, studied me with open curiosity and asked, "What made you decide to enroll here?"
Her voice was gentle, but there was weight behind the question. She was looking at someone with a wreck of a body like mine and wondering why I would even try to enter Hero Academy. That much was obvious.
Unlike Shin Si-hwa's inquisitive expression, my heart was rotting inside.
'I don't even know why I'm here. How am I supposed to know?'
To put it bluntly, you could call this a kidnapping. I was sitting quietly at home when I got pulled into a game. I woke up, and my childhood friend hauled me off to school. Nothing about this situation made sense.
Maybe I should just tell the truth.
'I don't really know why I enrolled either. I just followed my childhood friend.'
No, that would be insane.
Even if my admission was already locked in, I didn't need to give a teacher a bad impression. If she developed negative feelings toward me and they influenced my exam results, I could easily end up expelled.
In this world, there's no safer place than the academy. Am I crazy enough to walk out on my own? I had to avoid flunking out, collect the Hidden Pieces from the Common Episodes to build up my strength, and survive here as long as possible. Managing my image so I didn't get branded a problem child and kicked out was an obvious priority.
The only course of action was already decided. I didn't even need to think about it.
I put on my most fragile act and spoke. "I want to show them, too..."
"...Show them what?"
I drew the words out as if I lacked confidence, as if there were some deep reason I'd come here. I watched for Shin Si-hwa's reaction.
A student who entered Hero Academy with a sickly body. Someone weaker than the others. What could he possibly want to prove? That was probably what she was thinking. The corners of her lips rose with a faint glimmer of expectation.
'That's a partial success.'
This was the image I was going for.
A hero aspirant who'd been treated with contempt and discriminated against because he lacked power. A hopeful student who wanted to become a hero despite his frail body. Like a chipmunk trying to stop an armed robber. That sort of favorable impression—let's leave that in the evaluation notes.
When a teacher judges a student for the first time, she starts with what the interviewer wrote. I live and die by my image. You think I'd miss a chance like this? I couldn't pass up an opportunity to raise a teacher's affection level.
I kept my head lowered and continued. "That someone as weak as me can do it, too..."
"Weak?"
Ah.
Shin Si-hwa glanced at my file again and let out a soft gasp.
A body born without mana. A physique fragile to an extreme degree. What did it mean that a student like this had applied to Hero Academy—and passed?
"...You must have had a very hard time."
Oh, yes. My life has been nothing but hardship.
Shin Si-hwa was looking at me with pity in her eyes.
Now was the moment. I lifted my head to appeal to her sympathy and met her gaze. "Yes. Even with a body like this, I worked hard to become a hero, so—"
"Great power. Hiding it and living like that... it must be difficult."
...Excuse me?
Her nonsensical reply rattled my composure. Wasn't this the part where she was supposed to listen and ask about my past? She'd cut me off, and while her eyes did hold sympathy, her whole premise was completely misaligned with mine.
"Ma'am, that's not what I—"
"No, it's all right. You don't have to say anything. I understand completely."
What exactly did she understand? I was getting frustrated by the way Shin Si-hwa kept talking right past me without listening.
"You're misunderstanding—"
"Time's up! Next applicant, please enter!"
No, wait. This is a misunderstanding.
It was true that I was hiding my Unique Ability, but I wasn't hiding any great power—at all. But apparently, I wasn't going to get the chance to correct Shin Si-hwa's colossal misconception.
"Wait, I still have something to say—"
"Good luck out there, student. I hope you do well at the academy. Fighting!"
With a "this way, please," the attendant pulled me along, and I was forced out of the room without ever clearing things up. That unexplained incident would later rip the future I had envisioned to absolute shreds.
***
After every student's interview was over, Shin Si-hwa sat in her chair, looking over the sorted files.
"This one was good, too. There was real fire in her eyes."
The files of the students who'd left an impression. Shin Si-hwa had set aside the records of those who'd posted high Status scores or performed well on the exam.
As she read through them, she murmured to herself, "This year's class might be legendary."
Thousands of students entered Hero Academy. But the graduation rate among them was only thirty percent. That meant seven hundred students either packed their bags and left, or ended up in the ground.
And yet she could still call them legendary, for a variety of reasons. The younger sibling of an active S-rank Hero. The jewel of the Hero Association. A female student showing an unnerving rate of growth. Each of them existed here with impressive exam results.
As she flipped through their files, Shin Si-hwa stopped when she reached one for a certain male student.
"...Han Si-jun."
What in the world was this student?
Even after years as an academy teacher, she had never seen stats like these. Stamina 2, the kind of number you'd expect from an elderly person. A male student with a congenital heart condition because he lacked a Mana Core. Han Si-jun, someone you would never expect to make it, whose very enrollment felt like a miracle.
Yet she couldn't get him out of her head.
[Unique Ability]
—This student's Unique Ability is to be kept confidential.
Normally, a student's Unique Ability is fully documented so the teachers can evaluate it. But unlike the others, Han Si-jun's file contained a directive to keep the ability a secret—and it was stamped with the certification seal of the Association.
"His Status is this low, so just how powerful must he be to have gotten in?"
This was Hero Academy, a place where only ability counted. No matter how low his Status, there had to be a reason he qualified. His determined gaze. The file wrapped in secrecy.
Shin Si-hwa had jumped to her own convenient conclusion: Han Si-jun must possess an exceptionally powerful Unique Ability that made up for his stats.
She looked at his file and whispered lightly, "I'll look forward to watching you. There's plenty of time, after all."
Heh heh.
She smiled gently, clearly not thinking for a second that she might have gotten it wrong.
***
The interview left a sour taste in my mouth. Once it was over, we finished the entrance ceremony in the main auditorium and headed toward our assigned classroom.
"...Sigh."
"What's up? Did something happen?"
A lot happened. A grimy feeling I couldn't wash off. It had been stuck to me ever since the interview ended. Just what did Shin Si-hwa think of me? She wrote something decent, right? If not, I'm seriously screwed. For someone like me who has to survive on image, a teacher's word is the most important thing in the world.
"That's the guy from this morning..."
"Subway Guy is a first-year...?"
I'd already spectacularly torched my image with the other students, so at least that was settled. Apparently, a combination of a frail-looking male student and a black-haired beauty like us was hard to miss—the rumors had already spread. The only ones left are my childhood friend and the teachers, right? Right.
We ignored the by-now-familiar whispers and kept walking toward our classroom.
Click. Click.
The crisp sound of our shoes echoed. We arrived at a door labeled 1-A.
A door that would open with a push.
I stood there for a moment, hesitating.
So I'm in the same class with her again. In my memories, we were lucky enough to share the same class for most of our school years. Our seats were always next to each other. We even drew the same number for cleaning duty. Our adhesion rate was high enough to make you wonder if we weren't childhood friends but a single organism. Well, I guess that's fate. Can't be helped, right?
I opened the classroom door and stepped into the new environment.
"..."
Bleak. The classroom was dead silent. Every student was already seated without a word. What, do none of them know each other? It was a reasonable doubt.
"Back row by the window, right?"
"You don't even need to ask. Obviously."
My all-time favorite seat was the one in the back corner that gave me a clear view of the whole classroom. And the best part about a spot by the window was the breeze—it breathed life into my weak heart. I had my reasons for picking the seat.
I took the window spot, and Yu Ha-yeon sat down next to me, just like always.
"Don't you ever get sick of this? Same spot, same pattern every time."
"...I've never thought it was boring. Wait. Does that mean you're tired of seeing me every day?"
Yu Ha-yeon asked with a face full of mischief. I answered in the same teasing tone. "If I said I was tired of it, you'd just sulk again."
"Wh-who's sulking?! I'm not that narrow-minded."
Narrow-minded wasn't really the issue. Other things were narrow. Her chest, for instance. Not that I was wrong.
Yu Ha-yeon propped her chin on her desk and shot me a crooked grin. "When I'm with you, it always feels new."
"...Stop trying to be all fatal and cool."
Heh heh.
We looked at each other and laughed, same as always.
Yeah, well. Having a childhood friend like that is a good thing, isn't it? A childhood friend you can joke around with, a comfortable relationship that just keeps going. We kept chatting quietly together until the teacher arrived.
Just like the old days.