Chapter 11: Communal Living (4)
We sat with our backs to each other. Hayun, for her part, was every bit as embarrassed at having been the one to bring the whole subject up, and so neither of us managed to look the other in the eye until the moment we actually stepped into the bath.
No—there was no way I could have looked. Villain or not, I still had something called a conscience.
The basin we climbed into was fairly tall. Shorter than an oil drum, if you wanted to split hairs... what was I even supposed to call this thing? A rubber one—the kind you'd bury half a garden's cabbage in at kimchi-making time to salt it down.
Hayun had been right: with two people crammed in, the amount of water needed did go down. It's an unflattering comparison, but think of dropping a brick, or a plastic bottle filled with water, into a toilet tank.
...I should have just said bathtub. With everything going on lately, my thoughts kept sliding toward the grim, and apparently my metaphors were following suit.
Inside the "bath," I splashed water over myself and scrubbed at my skin with my hands. Whether it was actually getting me clean, I honestly couldn't say. It wasn't as if we had body wash or soap.
I really am an idiot. I'd managed to pack everything else, and it never once occurred to me that I'd need to wash.
...That said, one thing at least was certain: the water was warm, and for the first time in ages, I felt good.
...
For a while, we just sat there in the awkwardness. If we'd had so much as a towel to shield ourselves with, it wouldn't have been quite this bad. Of course, "not quite this bad" still meant bad—I still couldn't look straight toward Hayun.
This place was an old country house, so the kitchen had a door leading outside as well. The glass in that one was at least frosted; even if someone happened to be standing out there, they wouldn't be able to see in.
...Not that anyone would actually walk past. I hoped. If someone suddenly flung that door open—
—the other girls would come bursting out and pin them down.
...
I didn't want to be reassured by that. I didn't much want to admit that I was being solidly taken care of by magical girls.
But damn it all—things I had spent over a week desperately racking my brains over, the magical girls had solved, every last one of them, in a single day.
I could handle mana. I could use magic. And yet the only thing I could actually do with any of it was cave an enemy's skull in with a hammer.
Vrrrm.
The circuit on my wrist whirred into furious motion. James had said it was fine to keep wearing it in the bath, so I had. Which I supposed meant I was expected to keep generating energy even while I bathed. Then again, it would be stranger if it weren't waterproof. No waterproofing would mean no fighting on rainy days. Never mind resisting impact.
I was sitting there half-committed in the bath, gloomily staring down at the circuit, when Hayun spoke up.
"That circuit... would it be all right if I asked what kind of energy it runs on?"
It was a very careful voice. It came from a direction entirely opposite my face—Hayun, like me, was apparently sitting with her back turned.
No—anything else would have been a problem. This was embarrassing enough already; I'd have passed on it getting any worse.
"No."
And I answered flatly.
I didn't want to tell her.
I knew it was excessive stubbornness. However you looked at our situation, we were in the same boat now. Cooperating somehow would help us both, and for that, it was better to have no secrets between us.
But... I was already miserable enough.
Everything I'd wanted to keep hidden had already been dragged into the open. The parts that had still been secrets after that had been laid bare just as thoroughly—and those secrets were even being cleaned up by the magical girls as we spoke. I knew it was a pointless feeling. Knowing it didn't make me hate admitting it any less. I couldn't stand the thought that I might have felt even the smallest bit relieved.
Maybe that was why there was an edge to my voice.
"Ah..."
Hayun made a small, rueful sound. Somewhere deep inside my chest, it hurt.
—Didn't you say you didn't want to hurt her? That you never wanted to see her wounded?
The me who lived in that aching place whispered softly.
—Didn't you say you love Hayun? That she's your friend? Then why are you being so cruel?
The tip of my nose prickled, and the world blurred a little at the edges. Thank goodness we were sitting back to back, too embarrassed to face each other.
And thankful, too, that Hayun didn't press any further.
If she had dug deeper, what would I have said? Probably snapped at her through a haze of irritation—told her to mind her own business. When all Hayun was doing was worrying about me. Maybe that was exactly it.
Deep in my chest, I felt defeated. The inferiority complex I'd carried since I was very small hadn't faded just because I'd grown older.
Lips pressed tight, I simply fixed my gaze ahead.
Swept away by a misery of my own making.
Had she asked something she shouldn't have? When Jieun didn't answer, Hayun grew a little anxious.
The air around her had changed completely from the Jieun she used to know. Even after so long apart, Jieun was still Jieun. Even in a situation like this, she asked for nothing. No plea for help. No offer to come along. It was a situation where Hayun might have to count herself lucky simply not to have been driven out.
...
Had Jieun come to dislike her? To find her a nuisance? Hayun had always taken Jieun's refusal to demand anything of her as proof of true friendship. Only now did she wonder whether even that had been Hayun cutting Jieun to fit her own pattern.
Jieun had wanted nothing—however hard and painful things became, she had stayed a friend while wanting nothing, and Hayun, for her part, had wanted far too much.
What reason could she have for not naming the emotion that fueled her energy? Was it something far deeper and darker than Hayun imagined? Even now she could hear the circuit on Jieun's wrist turning. Even in this moment, alone with Hayun.
...Could it have been the same all along? That dark, unidentifiable feeling—perhaps Jieun had felt it every single time she met Hayun. Hayun simply hadn't noticed, because back then there had been no circuit to give it away.
Absorbing, in front of Hayun, every other child's jealousy. Swallowing that malice—how could she not have grown sick of it? Or maybe—maybe Hayun dragging the other magical girls along had only made the darkness worse.
Even the auxiliary circuit on Hayun's own wrist was turning, resonating with Jieun's energy. Hayun bit her lip.
She wanted to turn their relationship back to what it had been. But that relationship had already shattered. Perhaps by Hayun's own fists.
Under the banner of justice, every time that pink wand had come down—along with Jieun's breaking bones, her split lip, the blood that ran. Perhaps whatever Jieun had felt for Hayun had shattered just the same—broken apart, burst open, bled out.
The heavy, damp air pressed down on Hayun's shoulders.
Splash.
The water that had risen to Hayun's chest dropped all at once. Jieun, who had been soaking, had stood up.
"...Done washing?"
"...Yeah. Just going to dry off."
There was no real irritation in Jieun's voice as she answered. She heard cloth whispering over skin. And then, quite suddenly, Hayun wanted to turn around. She couldn't have said why, even to herself. Maybe she was just a little sulky. She had feelings too.
She was the one at fault, so she had no right to complain. She understood why Jieun thought that way. Hayun had gotten so much wrong, and Jieun had paid for it in losses too great to count. And yet. And yet... they had been so close.
To Hayun, Jieun had been a friend unlike any other. Of course she was close with the other magical girls too. But they were different from the kids at school who had sidled up to her with black motives hidden behind their smiles—and who had, for those motives, tormented Jieun. Hayun and the magical girls stood as equals.
Even so, she didn't think of any of them as precious as Jieun. They would risk their lives fighting for one another, but what she felt for Jieun was something that couldn't be measured on the same scale. Not a simple exchange of favors—something else entirely.
Perhaps it was only natural that Hayun hadn't been able to resist that impulse. For all the years they'd known each other, she realized she didn't actually know all that much about Jieun. Rationally, she understood why Jieun had hidden all of it. In her heart, she couldn't accept it. Maybe she'd gotten a little carried away at the prospect of bathing together like this. And so—impulsively, in the most literal sense—Hayun turned around.
And her breath caught.
Because the pale, bare figure was as beautiful as she'd imagined? Perhaps that was part of it.
If not for the deep blue bruises etched across that back. If not for the vivid red marks on those shoulders. If not for a body gaunter than she'd pictured, its ribs plain to see even from behind. Surely it would have been.
Even with all of it, it was a beautiful body. Someone cruel might even have said that made it stand out more—that it made her look all the more pitiable. But what Hayun felt was shock.
She knew perfectly well those bruises couldn't have been left by her. They had to be wounds from the battle only days ago. Or perhaps a little older than that—barely over a week back, Jieun had fought off countless kaijin. But even so. Hayun had left wounds like those on Jieun's body too.
No—worse ones, obviously. Bones don't simply break. They splinter, and inside, the shards scrape and shred muscle and blood vessels. Bruises far larger than those, and swelling around them, are inevitable. She'd supposedly gone to the treatment center and been healed, but—
...Come to think of it, Jieun had been shot before, too. She'd blunted it with mana, but she had still bled. There'd been no sign of penetration, and even a flesh wound heals without a single scar as long as mana flows through the body. But it would have hurt far longer than a proper visit to the treatment center would have.
When had Jieun last been to the treatment center? Left alone, a bruise can linger for quite a while. Depending on severity, two or three weeks is common. But healed with mana, one fades in minutes. Allowing for how unpracticed Jieun was with mana, maybe a week. And yet they remained that vivid.
...Jieun hadn't taken a single blow that heavy in the last battle.
Her body shook. Not because the water had sunk and bared her skin to the air. That chill came from fear. Even now, Jieun was in pain. She had been living in a place like this, dragging that hurting body around. The only one around to talk to her was a single ill-tempered Squeak-seong-in. No one to comfort her, no one at all to help her—alone in every practical sense, without even decent food—
Whether she sensed something strange or not, Jieun turned her head, and Hayun hastily shook herself. The sunken water sloshed violently. Had Jieun noticed? Had she realized Hayun had been staring blankly at her back? Her shoulders trembled.
"...Cold?"
Thankfully, the question that came back was about that. At a voice that didn't seem to entertain even the possibility that Hayun had been looking at her body, Hayun's shoulders shook again.
"All dried off. I'll get dressed and head in first."
Apparently Jieun had taken the shivering for cold. Whether that was a good thing or a bad one, Hayun couldn't tell. Could it be that even if Jieun had known she was being looked at, she wouldn't have thought anything of it? If that wounded body... seemed to her only natural—
Even after she heard Jieun dress and go inside, Hayun couldn't bring herself to rise for a long while.
Jieun had been right. It was cold. But the cold didn't come from the temperature alone.
Still, thank goodness I'd at least packed towels. The daily necessities you actually need for living outdoors—I had those more or less covered.
...I might end up lending the girls underwear and clothes, too. Thankfully, none of them seemed to be dramatically taller than me, or heavier. My clothes hung loose even on me, so that was a small mercy.
A mercy? Hmm. Hard to say.
Because I'd climbed out of the bath whenever I pleased, Hayun's body had been left in full view. I'd glanced over without thinking, caught Hayun's snow-white back shivering, and hurriedly looked away. I dried off as fast as I could and pulled on my underwear.
It had been a water-only wash, but after soaking in warm water for the first time in ages, my body felt a great deal better. Honestly, I even felt a little refreshed. I still ached here and there, but maybe the good mood was doing its work—it seemed a touch more bearable. And the room was warm, too—
...
—no. No, it wasn't. I shook my head quickly.
Yes, they were helping me. But petty as it was, I'd decided not to admit it. Which meant I absolutely refused to dwell on how much more comfortable my life had become. I had things of my own. Quite a few of them.
I figured I could hold up my end of a trade well enough. The energy being spent here came out of my circuit, after all, and these girls owned nothing but a single set of threadbare clothes apiece. Mine were just as ragged, granted, but I at least had "spares." Underwear, at the very least, I'd packed a fair variety of. And there were the canned goods.
...
Somehow, the longer the list of trade goods got, the worse I felt.
In the middle of the room, the girls were huddled close together. With no blankets, they'd stuffed plastic sheeting full of leaves and knotted both ends. There was the stove Iris had built, at least, and the nights weren't quite as bitter as midwinter yet, so maybe they'd be all right—
Creak.
I was off in my own head when the door opened and Hayun came in. Her face was full of worry. Because she hadn't managed a proper wash? Or maybe scrubbing down with plain water had just felt strange to her.
Seriously—next time we went out to bring down a kaijin, should we stop somewhere and buy supplies? Would we even get the chance?
"All done."
The moment our eyes met, Hayun said it quickly. In an instant, her gloomy expression was fine again. She was forcing it. Mostly because of me, probably. I had... ended our conversation so strangely a little while ago. Remembering that mood, my conscience twinged again.
Come to think of it, Hayun must have done the cleanup alone. Draining the cold water from the makeshift bath and refilling it, ladle by ladle, with fresh. The cauldron sat practically right beside it, but with no running water, it had to have been grueling work. My debt had grown. I clenched my teeth.
"Okay! Then next it's me and Iris."
Rose popped up, color in her cheeks. Iris, looking distinctly unenthusiastic, glanced back and forth between me and Hayun before rising a beat later. The two of them headed for the kitchen, and we went to where Delphinium and Dahlia were waiting.
Delphinium and Dahlia kept glancing my way. Even though I was the only one who hadn't helped with anything today. Even though the two of them had just fixed our food situation on the spot. I stood there a moment with my fists clenched tight, then let out a long breath. Then I turned straight toward the tent.
Inside, I unzipped the big hiking pack. I stared in silence at the food within—then, gritting my teeth, pulled out one fresh can of Spam and two cans of tuna. Right—not nearly enough for everyone to eat their fill. There were six teenage girls in their prime eating years present. Combined with the other food, though, it might just scrape together the bare minimum of nutrition.
I carried the food out and more or less dumped it in front of the girls.
"...Today's rations."
The girls looked at the food, then back at me. At first, I took them for accusing looks. After all, I'd insisted this was all we had to eat, then handed over mostly nuts and energy bars. I figured they might be annoyed to learn I'd been sitting on canned goods. But there was only one emotion I could read on their faces.
'Are you sure?'
Or was I imagining it? Was I only seeing that because I was drowning in my own guilt? Either way, it was a moment when I felt endlessly ugly.
"...When the others come out... once everyone here has washed up, we split it."
Eating this way, the food might run dry in a matter of days.
But even so.
Even so, I didn't want to simply keep taking. Which is why—
I refused to lose.
I didn't want to throw away the last scrap of pride I had left, either.
"Well, well."
And James, who had been watching me the whole time, made a sound of interest. Pretending not to see the girls' eyes, pretending not to hear James's voice, I turned away. I walked out of the house at a brisk pace.
A full moon hung in the sky. In its bright light, I could see the field Delphinium and Dahlia had been tending. Just as they'd said, sprouts were already growing there. Healthy ones, at that. Caught in some feeling I couldn't put into words, I ended up staying out there a long while before going back in. Until the last two had finished washing, too.
And when I came in again, the girls still hadn't laid a finger on the cans or the rations. Apparently they'd been waiting for me to come in and sit down with them.
Time after time after time—since these girls had arrived here, I'd felt it over and over—but that indescribable feeling was something I could never get used to. I didn't want to get used to it, either.
I hated myself—hated how, even as I knew I was being petty, I still relaxed at mealtimes we shared together.