Chapter 11
Chapter 11
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 11
Chapter Title: Childhood Friend
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Han Si-hoo
"Hi?"
He saw Yoo Seo-ah from his childhood.
"Si-hoo."
She greeted the young Han Si-hoo.
It was a faintly surfacing memory.
The tragic commonality of having lost their parents in accidents had brought the two of them together.
"Si-hoo, what do you want to play today?"
Han Si-hoo spent his time playing simple games with Yoo Seo-ah.
After all, he had nothing better to do either.
A child's job is to play.
The crumbling houses of the slums.
A district that would never be redeveloped.
Yoo Seo-ah had settled down and lived in a suitable place like that.
Han Si-hoo hadn't always lived in such a place.
He had lived in a rather affluent area.
His family had been financially well-off.
The problem started after his parents passed away.
After all the adults who had been helping him left, Han Si-hoo remained by Yoo Seo-ah's side.
Could children survive on their own?
Fortunately, the world wasn't that harsh.
There was a kind factory owner who gave children simple tasks and paid them a daily wage without fail.
They could also find important items in the aftermath of a monster attack.
They sometimes received money for running a few errands.
Even at their young age, they could earn enough to get by.
Fortunately, even in the slums, there weren't many adults wicked enough to prey on children.
"Let's play together forever and ever!"
A brown-haired girl with a bright smile.
"You will, right?"
Yeah.
But they didn't just play together.
Whenever he trembled, unable to forget the memory of watching his parents die, she would quietly approach and say anything she could to comfort him.
Since they were in similar circumstances, it was a great comfort to Han Si-hoo.
"Um, it's all going to be okay. It will get better."
She would speak so kindly.
Even though it couldn't have been easy for her either.
Watching Yoo Seo-ah, Han Si-hoo thought to himself.
He had to protect that smiling face by his side.
And so, he began.
"Si-hoo, what are you doing?"
"Training."
"Training?"
"They said I can use [Swordsmanship]."
He only realized later that he had become an Awakener.
"Wow."
"I'm just going to practice a little more."
He practiced by swinging moderately sized scraps of metal and blocks of wood.
He had to be able to protect Yoo Seo-ah with his abilities alone.
Fortunately, even in the slums, there weren't many bad adults who bullied children.
There just weren't *many*.
They still existed.
"Si-hoo, you're amazing! You're incredible!"
He defeated one of the bad guys.
And he was able to protect Seo-ah.
It was also a moment when he could confirm just how outstanding his talent was.
"I'll always be by your side from now on."
"You'll protect me forever?"
"Yeah."
"...I really like you!"
Seo-ah said as she leaped into his arms.
His heart pounded like crazy back then.
It was a story from his childhood.
A story from long before the world found out he was an Awakener and he went to the Academy.
The brown-haired girl was still with Si-hoo.
And she was still smiling.
On the dirt floor.
A dirt floor?
"I'm sorry."
-I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
-Just kill me. I'm sorry.
He returned to cold reality.
The entire situation was over.
Yoo Seo-ah was sent to the Academy's infirmary.
Han Si-hoo wondered why this had happened.
He couldn't understand.
The Yoo Seo-ah he knew seemed to have vanished a long time ago.
He had barely managed to stop Yoo Seo-ah from trying to kill herself.
The blade that seemed aimed at Han Si-hoo had instantly changed direction toward herself.
A shocking turn of events.
As he stood there, gathering his thoughts, someone came and stood beside him.
"I-I'm sorry. Si-hoo. I'm sorry. Really."
"It's fine."
Rena Asilia.
She, too, was in shock from having stabbed the wrong person.
The problem was that she had only recently learned the protocols for dealing with Villains.
The world classifies Awakeners who use their powers for evil as Villains.
One of the methods for safely neutralizing a Villain without harming civilians.
Catch the opponent off guard with conversation, then take them down.
It perfectly matched what Han Si-hoo was doing.
To influence the opponent to the point of dropping their weapon!
Something felt off, but she hadn't missed the opportunity and attacked.
"I'm sorry."
Rena apologized to Han Si-hoo again.
Rena was hoping she could also apologize to Yoo Seo-ah, his supposed childhood friend.
"I never thought she was your friend... a childhood friend."
"It's okay," Han Si-hoo replied.
"It's just... I thought I heard you say you didn't have any old friends."
That was Rena's question.
She hadn't heard the conversation clearly as she was preparing for a surprise attack.
She never imagined it was a reunion with a friend.
What Rena knew about Han Si-hoo was limited.
Han Si-hoo was reluctant to talk about his past, and knowing he had lost his parents in an accident, she hesitated to ask.
-You didn't have any friends?
-Not a single one?
Han Si-hoo had hesitated for a moment before nodding.
That was around the time Yoo Seo-ah had started pushing him away.
He hadn't wanted to reveal Yoo Seo-ah's existence to the Academy.
Han Si-hoo had found Yoo Seo-ah's attitude of trying to distance herself from him strange.
But if that was what she wanted.
He thought everything would be fine as long as Yoo Seo-ah didn't come to the Academy herself.
The events at the Academy were already hard enough to deal with.
The semester was ending soon, so he was busy.
If he had remained friends with Yoo Seo-ah, none of this would have happened.
"Anyway, I'm sorry. It's okay if it's hard to talk about."
"...No."
Seeing Han Si-hoo's dazed expression, Rena hesitated before disappearing.
"Sorry," she said one last time.
Han Si-hoo kept thinking.
It's my fault.
When he met Seo-ah at the Academy last time.
He had wondered if they could make up.
When Yoo Seo-ah came to the Academy, her arm was wrapped in a bandage.
Yoo Seo-ah had been perfectly fine before Han Si-hoo enrolled.
It was strange that she had her arm bandaged for some reason.
-Th-that medicine I take.
-I don't have enough money to buy it. I came to borrow some.
-I'll pay you back later.
She had tried to borrow money, claiming the price of her medicine had gone up.
He couldn't understand.
Perhaps the bandage was just part of an act.
After all, Han Si-hoo knew about the medicine Yoo Seo-ah took.
It was a medicine she had started taking for a persistent cough.
There was no way it could have gotten so expensive.
He had never seen such an expensive medicine.
He soon reached a conclusion.
She had simply approached him again because she needed money.
He couldn't understand why their relationship had soured like this.
He gave her the money.
He didn't lend it to her.
-But don't come looking for me again. Let's not get involved anymore.
-Huh?
-Take it and get lost.
-O-Okay...
He had thrown Seo-ah's own words back at her.
Had it always been so hard to control his emotions?
At the time, he couldn't understand Yoo Seo-ah's behavior at all.
Finally, in the present, he understood.
The drug.
The drug had broken Yoo Seo-ah.
Someone had broken Yoo Seo-ah with a drug.
-Um, Si-hoo.
-Could you lend me some money for transportation?
Memories resurfaced sporadically.
In the end, she had tried to borrow money for transportation.
The distance from her home to the Academy was quite far.
-I walked here.
Yoo Seo-ah wasn't the type to lie.
Neither Han Si-hoo nor Yoo Seo-ah lied to each other.
That's how it had always been.
The medicine cost five million won.
That's how much Yoo Seo-ah was paying for it.
That raised the question of how she had paid for it before coming to see Han Si-hoo.
There was no way Yoo Seo-ah, living in the slums, could have that kind of money.
If she had sold off everything she owned, she wouldn't have even had money for transportation.
She had no one to borrow money from.
No one to contact.
There was only one option left for Yoo Seo-ah.
To rely on her only friend.
At least there was a chance Han Si-hoo would help.
And he did help.
Han Si-hoo had only treated her in a similar fashion because he felt wronged by the insults he had received before.
He had been greatly frustrated by Yoo Seo-ah's attitude of trying to push him away by any means necessary.
She doesn't apologize.
Her reason for asking for money seems like a lie, too.
He had never been angry with Seo-ah before.
Just this once should be fine.
That's what he had thought.
Yoo Seo-ah had treated Han Si-hoo as if he were the person she hated most in the world.
But then she came back to him.
The smile she wore when she met him was so strangely friendly.
It was abnormal.
Thinking back, it was too strange.
"Damn it..."
Seo-ah is smiling.
No, she's crying.
Because of you.
Han Si-hoo remained standing in that spot until someone came to find him again.
***
"...So she's your childhood friend."
Lee Yoo-ram said.
"Yes."
"The Academy can be a bit forceful when they find an Awakener. Still... you should have taken good care of her."
Enrollment in the Academy was semi-mandatory.
Han Si-hoo had no intention of abandoning Yoo Seo-ah.
The Academy did have a family protection system.
But since they weren't blood relatives, requesting protection for Yoo Seo-ah was impossible.
As a place where hundreds of Awakeners gather, the Academy didn't have the luxury of attending to every individual's circumstances.
Still, benefits were always given to Awakeners who performed well.
If he had shown excellence at the Academy, he could have been more helpful to Seo-ah.
"Si-hoo? Are you listening?"
"Yes."
"Even so, you know we have a hard time curing things like drug addiction or illness."
They could reattach a severed limb but couldn't cure a common cold.
That was the nature of healing-type Awakeners.
In some areas, they had no choice but to rely on conventional medicine.
"I've roughly repaired the arm you broke and the wound Rena inflicted. That's not the problem."
A fatal stab wound could be healed, but not a cold.
It was a strange system, but it was reality.
"But she had a lot of old wounds, too. I couldn't heal all of those."
"Old wounds...?"
He remembered the bandage wrapped around Seo-ah's arm.
"Hmm... She had bruises on her stomach, too. It looked like someone hit her."
Bruises on her stomach?
An image of Yoo Seo-ah being beaten flashed through Han Si-hoo's mind.
Did that doctor do it?
He didn't know.
It was something he didn't even want to imagine.
-You'll protect me forever?
The image of a young Yoo Seo-ah asking that question overlapped with the present.
As did the image of himself, promising that he would.
In the end, he failed to protect her.
He *didn't* protect her.
Why did I do that?
You, of all people, knew how dangerous the slums were.
The Academy is cozy, isn't it?
Were you that desperate to get away from Seo-ah?
Deep down, you thought someone like Seo-ah was a nuisance, didn't you?
Why?
A colossal sense of guilt washed over Han Si-hoo.