Chapter 5: Position (5)
I dreamed.
A dream of my childhood — of the days not long after I'd remembered that I had suddenly lost everything and come into this world.
I had been terribly confused back then. To me, who had lived in an adult's body, the body of a child barely five years old was far too small, and there was almost nothing I could do in it. Even the things I knew, I couldn't say. I could tell I was at an orphanage, but that was all — I couldn't recall what on earth had happened to me. I didn't know what kind of world this was, or who any of the people around me were.
Being around small children was its own ordeal. Children that age are still children, and for me, thinking with an adult's mind, squeezing into their midst was terribly difficult. Kids converse in a language all their own, and I had to keep up with it while playing the part of a little kid — for years.
How many years?
I had been a child once myself, but hardly any of those memories remained. What was I supposed to be thinking, at any given moment, to pass for normal? How did you blend in among them and live an ordinary life?
The way the teachers looked at me frightened me, too. Whenever a slip of my "old self" showed through by accident, they would regard me with strange expressions. A few even began to suspect I might be a genius — when all I had were memories of things I'd already learned. Some watched me with expectation mixed into their gazes; others looked at me the way you'd look at something not quite human. Whether it was instinct, or whether I was giving myself away without realizing it, the other children slowly began to keep their distance.
It was frightening.
That was also why I had slipped out of the orphanage, dodging the teachers' eyes. Probably because no one imagined a small child could undo a latch set well out of reach and let herself outside alone. It wasn't that I meant to do anything once I was out. Just as I live now without any particular purpose, back then I couldn't hold onto one either. I can't even offer "I was little" as an excuse — I didn't think of myself that way.
Shivering in the cold, snot streaming down my face, I kept wandering anyway.
It was a familiar world. A world not so very different from the one I remembered. Maybe what I'd wanted, back then, was simply to confirm it — whether, in this world I'd been born into by sheer accident, I could live on intact, live an ordinary life.
It was not yet the era when aliens existed. And so the world was ordinary.
I don't remember whether that relieved me or not. Probably half relief, half emptiness. Even reborn, my life didn't look any easier. I had simply been born again into a country I knew, in a world I knew. I hadn't been old enough to call myself a proper adult, but knowing that everything up to that point had simply been blown away must have left me hollow all the same.
What comes back to me with real clarity is that the fear never entirely faded. Everything I had was gone — not that I'd ever been the sort of person who had everything to begin with. The shock arrived late, all at once, and the world went dark before my eyes.
Every adult who passed gave me a single glance as they went by, their expressions wondering why such a small child was out playing alone. Apparently, unlike most isekai protagonists, my mental fortitude left something to be desired.
Maybe it was the backlash of my body turning young again. It was hard to hold back the tears. A small child standing alone at the roadside with no guardian beside her, sniffling as though the crying would burst out of her at any moment — to the people passing by, I must have looked terribly unnatural and strange.
"Why are you crying?"
And then a child spoke to me. When I turned, what met my eyes was vivid pink hair.
Her bob was trimmed neatly to just below her neck, not a single stray strand sticking out, as though someone had smoothed it down only moments before. Her clothes were the same: the coat draped neatly over her shoulders didn't look cheap even at a glance. The girl herself didn't seem aware of any of it. She paid little mind to what I wore — the sleeves slipping past my hands, the stretched-out collar — never spared a glance for my grimy sneakers, and simply stared, unblinking, at my face. She was alone, too.
"I'm..."
I opened my mouth to answer, then clamped it shut again. Relying on a five-year-old? Absurd — that was what my reason kept insisting. But in the end, a single tear slid down my cheek. Was it relief that someone was showing me a shred of interest? Or had I simply decided that since she was only a kid herself, there was no great reason to worry? Once the tears broke loose, they were hard to stop.
Knowing nothing at all, she came to me and held me.
"It's okay."
Not knowing what was okay, or why it was okay, she whispered it right into my ear.
"It's going to be okay."
I felt pathetic, being soothed by that babyish voice. It was probably the first time I'd sobbed my heart out since being born into this world. And in all the time since, I never cried like that again.
That was where my memory of that day ended. I couldn't clearly recall what came after. Did her parents come and take me to a police station? Or did an officer approach me directly? One way or another, we parted. And for years afterward, I had no idea that the girl's name was Hayun.
I met her again on my first day of elementary school. One look at that vivid pink hair and I recognized her — but she didn't seem to recognize me.
"Hi."
She had happened to take the seat right in front of mine, and she turned around as she said it.
"I'm Hayun. Lee Hayun."
She said it in a voice far too grown-up for an elementary schooler. The name Hayun, and that pink hair. Even confronted with the two together, I failed to remember that she was the protagonist of a certain webtoon.
By then I knew that people's hair in this world came in a staggering range of colors. In this country, of course, black was still the overwhelming majority — and I was one of that "majority." Me, who had grown up nowhere special; no, in a certain sense, in an environment more deprived than other ordinary kids'. And Hayun — striking to look at, good at sports and study alike, kind on top of it all, admired by so many children. As time went on, I felt more and more keenly that the two of us lived in different worlds.
If I kept my mouth shut, the other kids never bothered to talk to me. The reason, most likely, was Hayun. Sit beside her, and a gloomy child like me is quietly eclipsed by Hayun's light. Naturally, no one's gaze ever found me. Not that I resented it — if I'd been the sort who craved being noticed, I wouldn't have been such a withdrawn person in the first place.
But.
Hayun treated me as a friend.
To be honest, more than a friend — a 'close friend.' Ask who Hayun spent the most time with, and it was me. Who she had known the longest, me. Who she called along whenever she went anywhere, me.
So I was happy. And at the same time, I felt something tangled and complicated. Because I was always at her side, I knew exactly how Hayun appeared in other people's eyes — and I was one of the very people who saw her that way.
I wanted to be someone special. But no matter how hard I tried, I could only ever be one of the people around Hayun. However much she treated me as her best friend, as though I were someone special, in my own heart I still felt I wasn't someone who belonged in that place.
Just a kid who'd had the luck to sit behind Hayun. A kid who'd had the luck to be the first person she spoke to at school, and so simply ended up trailing along with her. In the end, the reason I could only be that kind of friend to Hayun was that Hayun had chosen me.
I like Hayun... As a friend, and as a person, she's wonderful — kind, smart, athletic, pretty, attentive down to the smallest details.
And I'm none of those things.
Only later, after the Galaxy Federation made contact with Earth, did I learn that Hayun was the protagonist. Only then did I realize that I had been, quite literally, a side character. No matter how hard I tried, I was nothing more than one of the extras who appeared beside the protagonist — one of those faceless figures who never even got a name in the webtoon, drifting through the background of everyday scenes.
That was all.
Yes. I had always felt inferior to Hayun.
Always.
I like her.
I like her, and.
I'm jealous.
Of everything that surrounds her.
I always flailed and scrambled to chase after her, but by the time I took a single step, Hayun was already far ahead. Without ever realizing I'd fallen behind, she waves from up ahead with a smile. No — maybe our starting lines were never the same to begin with.
And that isn't a bad thing. Hayun never asked for any of it. Even if she had started from the same place I did, she would have used every talent she possessed to make the people around her happy — of that I'm certain.
I know that. And knowing it, every time I look at Hayun, I can't help thinking it anyway.
Why not me?
I'm right beside her. I even already know the story of that comic — maybe I know more about this world than the magical girls do. And still, there is nothing I can do.
The reason lies entirely within me. However hard I tried to blame someone else, the accusation always circled back around and pointed at me.
As a friend, I like her. Just as I am Hayun's close friend, Hayun is my closest friend too — one of the precious few I have. I want to hold a special place in Hayun's life. Not merely a friend who grew close because of where she happened to sit, but someone Hayun couldn't do without.
And so, I wanted to win. Even once.
Perhaps that was why I became a combatant a full year before Hayun did — perhaps that, too, was the same wish.
...In the end, Hayun found out.
Will she pity me?
I hope she doesn't.
I'd rather—
"Hayun."
Hayun kept vigil beside Jieun, who had lain without waking for days now. She still went to school, but the moment classes ended she came straight to the hospital. With Jieun lying there unconscious, nothing else could hold her attention. It surprised no one, really — Jieun had never been a light presence in Hayun's life.
"..."
"You're really not going to say anything?"
That was Happy Rose — Seohee. She was a grade above Hayun at school, and had begun her work as a magical girl about a year earlier, too. That didn't make her the leader, though. There was no such thing as status among magical girls to begin with. When one was needed, Hayun filled the role in name — but only because her magic was so versatile, and above all because she got along warmly with every single one of the others.
Dahlia and Iris were rivals, and Delphinium and Dahlia weren't on the best of terms either. Iris sometimes found Rose's brash, headlong personality a little grating; Rose, in turn, often threw obstacles into Iris's plans or opposed them outright. Hayun — Blossom — was the sort of person who clashed with none of those three, and so as long as Blossom stood at the center, the magical girls never once fell apart.
But now, even that was beginning to crack.
"..."
She knew how it sounded.
It was Rose who had driven a punch squarely into Jieun's head — but right up until that moment, it was Hayun herself who had been fighting as though her life hung on it. Delphinium had rained magic down on Jieun; Iris had opened fire on her. So none of this was fair. All that set Rose's act apart was that it had unfolded too vividly, right before Hayun's eyes.
The sound of gauntlet striking helmet. That vivid, awful sound — like something breaking somewhere.
First aid had already been given. Why Jieun still lay there, no one could say. You couldn't even claim there was anything wrong with what Rose — Seohee — had done.
Hayun passed a hand down her face. Dark shadows pooled beneath her eyes. Her parents disapproved of her being here at all. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was acting against their wishes.
"Hayun."
"...I know."
Hayun murmured it, drained. Without a word, Seohee came to her side and rested a hand on her back.
"We didn't do anything wrong," Rose said. "We didn't set off those explosives. If anything, the fight is what held us up — that's how something like this happened. Not that she knew, either. If she'd known, she'd have had no reason to be in there. Probably nobody knew."
Rationally, Hayun could understand every word. But behind them lurked the unspoken conclusion that, in the end, the combatants had been the problem. The battle had cost them time — and it was true that near the end, Jieun, resisting fiercely and then, for some reason, running berserk, had gotten in the way even more.
"The people we've been fighting all this time..." Hayun murmured. "Has anything like this ever happened before?"
"...I doubt it."
Rose answered — but she didn't seem able to put any real confidence into her voice. "We held back our strength. Right? And those people fought with circuits of their own. So until now, there shouldn't have been any real trouble."
Even so, the words carried the admission that if not this badly, someone must surely have been hurt along the way.
"It's not our fault." Seeing Hayun's face, Rose said it again, as if to drive the point home. "...It was for justice. Wasn't it?"
For justice.
For the first time — strangely, truly for the first time — Hayun found herself wondering whether the combatants might actually have been ordinary people. Until now, she had assumed they were professionals hired by the Company. Or thugs, maybe. Not once had it ever occurred to her that the beings inside those suits might be "ordinary people." No one had ever told her otherwise; she had simply thought it, all on her own. How could anyone imagine that the figure inside the suit was her best friend?
...And if not that.
Don't tell me. Jieun...?
Hayun shook her head hard. No. It can't be. There had to be a reason. Some reason she couldn't escape — a reason she'd been moving like that in a place like that.
"Oh."
While Hayun sat with her mouth closed, lost in thought, a slightly startled voice came from behind her. She turned to find a girl who, like her, had been visiting steadily these past several days. Jihye, she was called. They had already met once — the girl who stood at Jieun's side so naturally, closing the distance with even less reserve than Hayun herself.
"Oh, um — sorry, if you're—"
Maybe it was because there were two magical girls in the room. The girl looked a little flustered.
"Sorry. We'll get out of your way."
"No, no — if you were in the middle of something important, please, go ahead..."
"It's fine. Nothing that needs saying here, anyway."
With that, Rose patted Hayun on the back twice and walked out of the room. Hayun hesitated a moment longer, then rose from her chair.
"Oh — um, you can stay longer if you'd like. It's really no trouble at all."
At Jihye's words, Hayun's steps toward the door paused for a beat.
...It was such a natural thing to say. As though Jihye's own presence here were simply a given.
What were the two of them, to each other?
Until now, Hayun had known nothing at all about this girl called Jihye. Come to think of it, Jieun had always been the one listening to stories, never the one telling them. When she actually tried to recall, Hayun realized she knew nothing of Jieun's private life. She wanted to ask, right this moment — how long they'd known each other, how on earth they'd come to know each other.
But Hayun stopped her.
Hayun, loved by everyone, always. Hayun, perfect at everything she did. That name was what kept her from asking such a question honestly.
And besides — she turned her gaze away. Jieun still slept with her eyes closed. Right. Besides, words like those meant nothing unless she heard them from Jieun herself. Unless Jieun told her of her own will, what good was hearing it from anyone else?
Jihye was holding a few snacks in her hands. Not that Jieun could eat them. Or — had she brought them to eat herself?
Startled by her own thought, Hayun blinked hard. But even so, it wasn't her place to say anything. Jihye, at least, would never have done anything like strike Jieun. However unavoidable it had been, that fact did not change. And having thought that far, Hayun wanted even less to be near Jihye.
She couldn't chase her out, either. That, too, Hayun forbade.
"...Please take good care of Jieun."
"Yeah. Leave her to me."
Retreating at last, Hayun added the words for no good reason. Jihye accepted them far too naturally — as though she already knew exactly what to do, and how. A good kid. One who came all this way to visit, even though she surely had a life of her own.
And yet, somehow, Hayun found she couldn't look at Jihye with purely fond eyes. To hide that flustered feeling, she turned quickly and left the room, a little too fast.
She hurried down the corridor and out to the stairwell. Making sure no one was around, she passed a hand down her face.
What do I do? What am I supposed to do?
Hayun couldn't begin to grasp it. Whenever she felt like this, Jieun had always produced some clear, simple answer — or at the very least, she'd have helped her run away.
"..."
Having thought that, Hayun only grew sadder.