Open Your Eyes
Open Your Eyes
The situation had gotten strangely twisted.
Let's save the question of why Si-woo is standing here in a martial arts uniform, holding a wooden sword, and looking like an apostle of justice for later.
What matters is how to clean up this mess right now.
If Si-woo finds out that I threatened Grace to take over the club room, my peaceful "childhood friend" cosplay is over.
In that case, as a possessor and the mastermind of this area (self-proclaimed), there is only one exemplary action to take.
Covering up a misunderstanding with another misunderstanding.
"Epheta. Rota."
With the incantation, the floor rippled and the Burning Wheel was summoned. The moment it appeared, it rubbed its body against my leg, acting cute as if it were wagging its tail, so I skillfully stroked the Wheel's hot rim.
"Attack."
[Wheel: Spinning as if to ask, while looking at Si-woo, if it should roast that protagonist guy to a crisp.]
I will omit a detailed explanation of how the Wheel's rotation can convey such a long message.
It's just that the thought circuits between an angel and its master are connected, allowing them to exchange intentions.
"No, not him. That girl over there, Grace."
[Wheel: ???]
Grace was shocked, Si-woo was shocked, and even the Wheel hesitated in confusion.
But it is the fate of a summon to do as it's told.
Our Wheel was a good kid, so it immediately cast partial materialization and slammed a giant pillar of fire into the back of Grace, who was standing there with a dumbfounded expression.
"Kyaaaack?! I don't want it a second timeeee!"
"Seo-yeon?! What are you doing right now!"
Grace's scream and Si-woo's panicked shout filled the club room, and I used the commotion as background music to maintain my poker face.
I kept the corners of my mouth fixed, not moving even a millimeter. My gaze was as arrogant and dry as possible.
Preparation complete.
Thump, thump. I walked through the clouds of smoke toward Si-woo.
I made eye contact with Si-woo, who was clutching his wooden sword in panic.
...The bastard is annoyingly handsome.
I walked thump, thump through the acrid smoke.
Behind me, the remnants of the flames the Burning Wheel had just spewed were flickering, and in the center was Grace, sitting on her butt and puffing out smoke.
And in front of her was Si-woo, frozen in his martial arts uniform, holding his wooden sword.
"...Seo-yeon?"
Si-woo's voice was laced with bewilderment, shock, and a hint of fear.
Well, he couldn't possibly be sane after seeing his childhood friend suddenly appear and slam a pillar of fire into another student's back.
"Ah, was that you, Si-woo? I was training, so I didn't see you."
"Trai... ning? That was clearly a sneak attack! This student's clothes are all burnt!"
Si-woo lowered his wooden sword and approached to help Grace, but I beat him to it before she could open her mouth.
"It's fine. We haven't officially taken over the club yet, so this area is under the club's basic principle: unlimited attack rules apply. I was just punishing some bad kids who were trying to raid the club rooms lately."
As I finished speaking, I performed a little act of lightly stepping on the back of Grace, who had collapsed on the floor.
It was something a villainess would do, but right now, this villain act was the only way to divert Si-woo's suspicion.
"...Seo-yeon."
Si-woo gritted his teeth, and his eyes shone with a sharp, unusual intensity.
"You've been really strange lately. The Han Seo-yeon I know wasn't like this. She didn't act like this, and she wasn't this aggressive. She wasn't the kind of person who would trample on someone she just met like this!"
Heh.
I snorted at his rebuke as if it were pathetic.
"What about you? Why are you suddenly wearing a martial arts uniform you've never worn before, holding a wooden sword, and guarding this club room? Were you close with the people in this club?"
A question thrown to extract information.
I need to figure out Si-woo's movements, which weren't in the original work, to modify my insurance plan.
Fortunately, Grace was neatly knocked out by my strike. As expected, fainting is the greatest convenience an extra can provide.
"...Grrr."
Hey, hey, you're going to break your teeth like that.
"...I received a request. The Leviathan side asked me to investigate because there were suspicious movements around this club."
It might seem strange for a mere intelligence agency to intervene in clubs, but the Academy is unimaginably huge and intertwined with more organizations than you can imagine.
So, it's not that strange of a story.
"So, in the end, it was the kind of secret request you couldn't even tell me about? How can I trust you when you're like that? You might think what you're hiding is justified, but I'm also trying my best to get stronger in my own way."
Leviathan respects and cares for Seo-yeon, but they don't accept her into their inner circle.
Never. No matter what.
"To get strong enough to see the ending I want."
Though he'll never know that the ending is the cancellation of my "accident-free" insurance.
At my words, Si-woo's expression twisted grimly, and he pulled two dice from his pocket.
Huh...?
This is unexpected.
Roll.
The dice rolled through the air and stopped on the floor.
[Judgment: 4 / 6]
[Power Coefficient: 24]
Wait a second, 24?! That's not a number a first-year can output.
At that moment, Si-woo leaped like a bullet, so I gathered my magic power and took a defensive stance.
But the impact I expected to come didn't happen.
"...?"
When I opened my eyes slightly, I saw Si-woo snatching Grace and moving her to a safe place, right next to me where I was awkwardly holding a defensive stance.
"...You don't need to get stronger. I'll shoulder everything and get strong enough for both of us."
Si-woo's shoulders were trembling slightly.
"I don't know what happened when you met the mages. But you've changed since then. You're recklessly summoning familiars and trying to gain power even by trampling on others."
Si-woo carefully laid Grace down and slowly turned back to me.
"So that I'm not always the kid being protected by you... I'll get stronger so you don't have to get your hands dirty with dangerous things. So, Seo-yeon."
Si-woo is the protagonist.
Upright, righteous, and that's why he can be the protagonist.
"Please stay the Seo-yeon I know until the end. Don't change anymore."
Getting more involved with this guy will only mess up my insurance cancellation plan. My mentality isn't soft enough to be swayed by his desperate gaze.
"...No, I will change."
I stepped back, drawing a clear line between us.
"I'll stop here. I don't care what you do about the club issue. But let's make one thing clear."
I stared straight into Si-woo's wounded eyes and hammered it home.
"We are friends. Just that. Nothing more. Don't try to meddle in my life."
"Just... friends?"
Si-woo's expression distorted miserably, as if the world had collapsed. I felt a tiny pang of conscience in a corner of my heart, but I maintained my poker face and nodded.
"Yes. Just friends. Don't expect anything more."
"..."
Just friends. Besides, I'm not the Seo-yeon you knew anyway.
I do have a fondness for Si-woo as a person.
After all, we've spent so much time together.
"...I looked into your abilities. Leviathan is also very interested in your summoning magic. But do you know what conclusion they reached?"
Si-woo suddenly raised his head and shouted.
"Do you even know how broken your inner psyche is!"
"What's wrong with my psyche? It's just cute."
I tapped the Burning Wheel floating next to me.
In my eyes, it looks like a cute mascot, a round wheel spewing flames with a few eyeballs on it, right?
"What's wrong with my psyche? It's just cute."
I felt goosebumps all over my body at that one sentence Seo-yeon spat out so nonchalantly.
Seo-yeon was smiling.
She was stroking that thing floating beside her with a harmless, affectionate smile, as if looking at a flower blooming by the roadside or a puppy.
But the scene reflected in my eyes was by no means of that peaceful variety.
All magic is born from the combination of humanity's common Idea and the caster's inner psyche.
If the caster's spirit is noble, the magic shines brilliantly, and if the caster's heart is sick, the magic is bound to show distortions.
Then, what kind of psyche of Seo-yeon does this thing in front of me represent?
"...Seo-yeon, please."
The true form of the summon Seo-yeon calls the Burning Wheel is by no means just a wheel.
A monster with two huge, golden-glowing concentric circles piercing through each other's bodies, spinning violently.
Thousands of living eyes are embedded on the cold metal surface.
The eyeballs were rolling in different directions, staring at me as if dissecting me piece by piece, and the sound of eyelids blinking every time the wheel rotated scraped against my eardrums.
It's numinosity.
The instinctive fear of holiness that ancient humans felt when they encountered a divine being. The overwhelming unpleasantness and awe given by a being that far transcends human understanding.
This is... cute? This bizarre, torture-device-like shape with thousands of eyes staring at you?
"You, do you really think this is cute?"
"Yeah. It's round and the flames are warm, too. Our Wheel, how good is it?"
Seo-yeon's answer was without hesitation, which made it even scarier.
She genuinely perceived that shape, which looked like it had crawled up from hell, as a cute mascot.
It wasn't just that her psyche was twisted; Seo-yeon's common sense itself had leaped to a place far, far away.
"Do you even know how far outside of common sense your actions are right now?"
I gripped the wooden sword that had fallen to the floor.
"You ambush a student you've never met, smile while trampling on them, summon such a horrific monster, and then draw a line saying we're friends? What on earth is the ending you're talking about? Is the ending you want to become one with these monsters and discard your humanity?"
Seo-yeon didn't answer, just looking at me with indifferent eyes.
In those eyes, instead of the warmth of the Han Seo-yeon I knew, only a cold light resembling the thousands of eyes embedded in that wheel was swirling.
"Leviathan warned me. If a caster's psyche gets too close to the archetype of the Idea, the human ego evaporates."
What Seo-yeon summoned is not some common angel.
A fragment of the Ophanim recorded in the Bible.
A fragment of divinity that humans dare not contain.
Seo-yeon was burning herself to keep that massive entity anchored in this world.
And it was clear that something was slowly wearing away as the price.
"Seo-yeon, you probably think you're getting stronger right now. But in my eyes, it only looks like you're slowly breaking apart."
I took a step forward and tried to grab Seo-yeon's shoulder.
But my feet wouldn't move due to the overwhelming pressure emitted by the golden rings rotating beside Seo-yeon.
It felt like thousands of eyes were mocking me at the same time.
'What can you do? You insignificant human child.'
It felt like I was hearing auditory hallucinations.
"I don't care if we're not friends! I don't care if you hate me! But I will definitely pull you out of this madness. I will definitely... bring you back to the days when you didn't smile at that monster calling it cute, but hid behind me saying it was gross."
...How?
The voice that came out of my mouth was trembling enough to sound strange even to me.
The poker face I had tightly bound was shattered miserably.
I staggered toward Si-woo, lowered my head as if to pounce on him, and dug right under his chin.
"What are you going to bring back, Kang Si-woo?"
The golden rings glaring with thousands of eyes flickered before my eyes.
The filter is turning off.
The cute mascot is gradually becoming a monster.
Si-woo was terrified, yet he tried to grab my shoulders, but I pushed his chest away hard and sneered at him.
"The Seo-yeon you knew is already gone. No, was there even such a person to begin with? What's in front of you right now is just a crazy bitch trying to see the world by summoning the monster you talk about!"
"Seo-yeon, please...!"
"Don't come near me!"
I shouted and swung my hand, and a massive wall of fire instantly surged up, blocking the space between us.
Leaving behind Si-woo's face, distorted by the heat, I ran out of the club room without looking back.
I ran. My breath was reaching my throat, and my lungs felt like they were burning, but I couldn't stop.
I know. I know it too.
I knew better than anyone that I was doing something crazy right now.
The ugly truths of this world, which I had covered up with the excuse of game strategy, began to explode in my head.
This world is a dystopia with no dreams or hope.
30% of Earth's GDP is poured solely into preparing for war against monsters, and hundreds of millions beyond the Academy City are mobilized for forced labor and resource extraction every day, dying.
A crazy era where Bismarck-class battleships, which would have been built by betting a nation's fate in the past, are called expendable destroyers, becoming scrap metal and being buried at sea by the dozens every day.
A hell where the more magic you use, the more your soul is polluted and dies, and ordinary people without resistance have to rely on gas masks and filters for their entire lives to breathe murky air.
In such a world... who am I?
Who am I?
Han Seo-yeon.
Si-woo's childhood friend written in the setting book.
An insurance-type heroine who appears whenever there's a crisis to heal and ends up with Si-woo.
All that's in my head is her text; there isn't a single shred of warm memories spent with Si-woo.
Acting as if the memories that remained only as text were my own, I was borrowing the power of a monster to survive in this hellish world.
Only after leaning my back against a cold wall in a remote alley of the Academy City could I barely catch my breath.
"I can't get caught...."
I covered my face with trembling hands.
"I am Seo-yeon. Han Seo-yeon. An insurance-type heroine. So...."
[Notification: Caster's ego has reached the critical threshold.]
[Warning: System synchronization error occurred!]
[Message: You are Han Seo-yeon. Execute the scenario.]
[Message: You are a player. Survive.]
Dizzying status windows flashed and appeared before my eyes like glitches.
"Right... this is a game. It's just a game. Me feeling that terrible Wheel is cute, me pushing Si-woo away... it's all just a strategy to see the ending."
I lifted my head and looked at the sky.
The red moon visible beyond the artificial clouds looked like one of the thousands of eyes mocking me.
"I just have to follow the strategy. Then everyone will be happy. Si-woo, and me...."