Chapter 2. Private Life (1)
"Hey, look, over there—did you see her? Did you see?"
Someone who had somehow managed to recognize Hayun jabbed an elbow into the person walking beside them as they spoke.
"Yeah. Not as gorgeous as I expected, honestly."
"Look who's talking."
Voice pitched as if they wanted to be overheard. They'd lowered it to something like a whisper, but not so far that it couldn't carry all the way to us.
The most irritating part was that the sound reached my ears at all—but the truly bothersome thing was not knowing whether this was 'something said for my benefit' or 'just the two of them yakking.' If I called them out, the reply would be either 'Why are you eavesdropping?' or 'We weren't talking about you.' Whether either of those answers was true, there was no way to know. Even the Galaxy Federation had never managed to build a technology that could crack open a brain and read what was inside.
Maybe I was being negative, but honestly, I figured the odds were pretty high it was 'meant to be heard'... Still, I knew from experience that reacting to every last jab like that only wore me out. If I grabbed them by the collar, I'd just get written off as 'a girl whose parents never taught her any manners.'
"..."
Blossom's—or rather, Hayun's—face clouded over a little.
Even people who think of themselves as pretty seldom go around announcing it. But pretty or plain aside, and whether or not she ever bragged about it, there was no one on earth who could hear their looks dismissed as 'not as much as I expected' and feel nothing.
If Hayun had been nothing but a pretty girl, it might not have been a problem. If she'd stood where I did—no standing whatsoever, a background Student A you'd barely notice standing still—she'd never have had occasion to hear remarks like that in the first place.
But Hayun was a magical girl.
"Want to hit a convenience store?"
In a situation like this, telling her 'don't let it get to you' would be next to meaningless. The moment she heard those words, she'd start letting it get to her. Better to shove some food at her instead.
"Huh?"
"Come on. You just realized you're craving something."
"Wha—?"
Without giving Hayun so much as a chance to answer, I seized her wrist and pulled. She followed without much resistance.
Right up until yesterday the snow had been pouring down at night, but for some reason the temperature had climbed above freezing by daylight, and the cleared stretches of pavement had dried out reasonably crisp. Thanks to that, dashing to the nearest convenience store wasn't much of a trial.
The moment we stepped into the cramped little store, my neck began to prick faintly. Apparently the scarf Hayun had bought me the year before last couldn't adapt to the sudden warmth. But cheering Hayun up was far more urgent than any of that, so I breezily ignored the sensation.
Now, then.
"Um, Jieun?"
"Mm..."
"Jieun?"
"Yeah?"
"Um... your hand."
"Huh? Oh—sorry."
Apparently, somewhere between aiming for her wrist and grabbing it, I had simply taken her hand. It didn't startle me quite as much as when Hayun had suddenly snatched my hand back when we were kids, but I still felt inexplicably like I'd fumbled, and I let go at once.
Besides, I think I'd been gripping harder than I meant to.
"It's fine... though you've got nothing to apologize for."
Hayun, flustered for no particular reason, wrapped her other hand around the one I'd grabbed as she spoke. Her face had gone a little pink.
Oh. I get it now.
Hayun was already a public figure. Even so, back in our neighborhood not that many people brazenly struck up conversation with her, and at school, making too much of a fuss over her got you frozen out by the other kids—but in a place that was neither our neighborhood nor our school, the rules changed.
Sure enough, Hayun had a mask over her face and a hat pulled onto her head, with big horn-rimmed glasses over her eyes. Her pink hair wasn't up in its usual ponytail either, just left hanging down.
If not a mask, hauling the scarf up to her cheeks would have done the job. And surprisingly, this much alone kept more people from recognizing Hayun's face than I'd have guessed.
Or maybe I should put it this way: even the ones who did recognize her mostly decided 'no, it can't be her' and walked on by.
Though the people who would recognize her, like those two just now, did.
"So. What do you want to drink? Peach?"
To hide whatever embarrassment was still on my face, I turned my gaze toward the fridge as I asked. Hayun had loved peach-flavored drinks since she was little. It didn't seem to be about matching her hair color. 'Playing a concept' like that had never been Hayun's strong suit.
"Yeah..."
Hearing that faint reply, I declared a state of emergency, flung the fridge open without ceremony, and pulled out two peach drinks. They had jelly inside—the kind of drink you could actually chew.
And before Hayun could stop me, I hustled to the register and paid.
The part-timer, who looked about college age, was boring holes into Hayun's face with his eyes, so I grabbed Hayun's wrist and hauled her back outside. This time I got the wrist, no mistakes.
Since we were out anyway, we decided to go all the way to a nearby park. It was only a few degrees above freezing, after all—she could stand a few minutes of it.
The park was nearly deserted. Everyone had probably ducked into a nearby café or shopping mall.
The benches still wore the traces of snow too plainly to sit on, so I just cracked the caps open standing up and handed Hayun hers.
"...Thank you."
Taking it in both hands, Hayun stared straight at me. Feeling that gaze, I hurriedly opened my own bottle.
I tapped my bottle against the one she held two-handed, declared a toast on my own authority, and drank first. A sweet, fragrant, if somewhat artificial peach flavor washed over my tongue, followed by jelly bits chopped fine enough to squeeze through an ordinary bottle mouth.
When I swished a mouthful of jelly around, Hayun laughed softly and took a full mouthful of her own.
For a while, the two of us just looked at each other, swishing, saying nothing.
"...It's good."
"Yeah? Thank goodness. I was halfway to deciding I should've bought something warm instead."
And no wonder—drinking it was pleasant, but the moment I swallowed, a faint sting of cold crept up from somewhere deep inside. Hayun gave no sign of it whatsoever.
Was she just toughing it out?
If you asked me to name the person around me hardest to read, it would be Hayun, hands down. Everyone else just saw a girl who loved to smile, a perfect child—but I, who'd known her since we were little—
—no, honestly, I, who knew the contents of the original story, knew exactly how delicate a girl Hayun was.
A single comment on the internet could send her soaring or crashing, and because she hated being disliked, she simply swallowed every ugly thing she wanted to say and kept it down.
I was careful in my own way too, but honestly, she probably had things she wanted to say to me as well.
...All things considered, I thought Hayun was a good kid. And the world didn't have all that many good kids like her. Including me, the hopeless, ill-mannered ones were far more numerous.
If someone was going to grow up at all, shouldn't it be someone like her?
"So, what do you want for dinner?"
At my question, Hayun smiled bashfully.
"You bought this, so dinner's on me."
"...These two together didn't even come to three bucks."
"That's exactly why. I'll keep buying you things like this, now and then."
Even at my protest, Hayun showed no intention of backing down.
By sheer amount received, I was pretty sure I came out far ahead, though...?
Well, she'd always been well-off, so her sense of money was probably different from mine—maybe she counted by 'number of times.' Gifts didn't seem to make it into her ledger at all.
"Really? Then... take me wherever you like. I'm the one mooching, so let's make it whatever you feel like eating."
"Okay!"
And then Hayun took me—of all places—to a sushi restaurant.
It sat in the very heart of Jung-gu, Seoul, so even tucked away in some corner, it had to be spectacularly expensive.
...Me, I just ate and gave thanks. The sushi, my first in ages, was so good it brought tears to my eyes.
Let's keep this one a secret from Jihye.
And then, about two days later.
It hadn't been long since the new year began, so naturally I had nothing in particular to do.
The same went for Jihye. About all a broke teenager could do was ride the bus somewhere far off, wander around looking at this and that, and ride back—and doing that every day was out of the question, with the weather so cold and the fares having climbed so high.
For the record, no subway came anywhere near. Even as I caught myself thinking, funny how a 'rich district' can exist in a neighborhood like this, I'd remember that those people simply got around in chauffeur-driven cars, and my mood would turn sour.
Then again, a few years back I had wandered up there without thinking and walked around for a good long while.
Nothing but obnoxiously tall 'houses,' with not a convenience store or a restaurant anywhere nearby—nothing but 'homes.' The layout was astonishingly similar to the shantytown sitting directly across from it; the only difference was that the wall around those 'houses' alone could have built five of the shantytown's homes.
People too poor to live anywhere but a place with nothing around, and people so rich it didn't matter that nothing was around.
Mulling over that freshly recalled fact, savoring the sorrow of the wealth gap all on my own, I was interrupted by Jihye—rolling around on the floor as always.
"Whoa, look at this."
On the phone Jihye held out was Hayun. Pink hair worn loose, a scarf at her throat, thick unidentifiable glasses, a mask over her face.
.......
Oh. Wait.
I snatched Jihye's phone away and scrolled through the screen.
An astoundingly simple headline. The content was just as simple—less an article than a single caption line under a photograph.
I suppose they'd decided anything more was unnecessary. Tabloid pieces like this came out all the time.
The problem was that the photo was almost certainly us walking into the convenience store.
A hand was clasped tight around Hayun's. The store entrance sat a few steps above street level, and the shot had caught me at the exact moment I climbed them, making the hand's owner look a few centimeters taller than Hayun.
Besides, Hayun and I were both wearing gloves, so there was no telling anyone's gender, and I was cropped off right at the wrist. Anyone who didn't know the situation could be forgiven for reading it wrong.
Hayun's cheeks were a little red. Her eyes were wide with surprise, and she was probably looking up toward where I stood.
"So? Are you two actually dating?"
"......"
I narrowed my eyes and glared at the oblivious Jihye, who flinched.
"Like she would."
Hayun, dating... well, she could if she wanted to.
She had received confessions before. Turned every one of them down, but still. Probably less because nobody caught her eye and more because the whole business of dating felt like too much.
She was that famous.
There'd always be people swarming her for the fame alone.
...It was that kind of world, after all—the kind where some lunatic who'd dated a celebrity as their first love would go around crowing 'I was her first.' Hayun had probably felt more fear than joy after those confessions.
"That's me."
"Oh—you mean back then?"
Jihye's eyes went wide. That's right. On January first, I had gone out saying I had plans with a friend. Jihye had done the same.
"Ahh, I see. Then this is basically fake."
I suppose a paper could run a story about her dating a girl. But in South Korea, where casual physical contact between women was relatively common, printing an article claiming 'romance' over nothing more than holding hands with a girl her age would only get laughed off the internet.
I handed the phone back to Jihye, whose interest in the article had died on the spot, and picked up my own.
But with my messenger actually open, I had no idea what to say.
If the article had come from some major outlet, maybe I could have sent my condolences first—but, well.
Was it really a good idea to be the one telling a girl who might not even know about it that the article existed at all?
Bzzt. Right in the middle of that thought, my phone suddenly vibrated, and my heart nearly dropped out of my chest.
Call it a mercy—it wasn't a text from Hayun.
"..."
Politely worded, though.
I looked at the clock. Five in the afternoon. It would probably be six by the time I got there.
And that company's official weekday hours ended at six p.m. 'Executives' didn't work past that except in truly special circumstances.
Which meant: get there within thirty minutes if I knew what was good for me.
Physically impossible, of course.
"Huh? Where are you going?"
"Yeah, just up the street. A friend's calling me over."
"Oh, okay? Grab me a cola on your way back."
"Sure."
At least the orphanage had rules about the kids washing up properly first thing every morning, so aside from changing clothes, there was nothing to prepare.
The moment I stepped out of the room, I let out a long sigh.
No way they were calling me in over that article... right?
The thought flickered through my head, but I shook it off and ran for the bus stop.
"This photograph—it is you, Miss Jeong Jieun, isn't it?"
The photo Executive James laid out in front of me was indeed the one from the article. Unlike the version cropped down to just Hayun, though, this was the original. My face showed through well enough.
In it, my expression was frozen stiff as I took Hayun's hand and walked into the store, staring straight ahead without so much as a glance her way.
At a glance it looked like I was dragging her inside against her will, but Hayun's expression said exactly the opposite, which made the whole picture feel strange.
"...Yes. That's me."
Denying it would be pointless—the company clearly already knew—so that was the answer I gave.
I waited in silence to hear what on earth this was about, and then—
"My, my. Well, well."
James said it in a wildly theatrical tone, rose from his seat, and walked toward the window.
Befitting an executive of a major corporation, the window was enormous. The brightly lit panorama of Seoul spread out below it, a genuinely beautiful view. City Hall stood directly in front, and the plaza before it had been flooded and frozen into a skating rink, people tracing great circles across the ice.
"If you occupy such an exalted position, you should have said so from the start. We would have treated you far better than this, right from the beginning."
"...Did Noir Corporation take this photo?"
"Of course. We are in the entertainment business as well, you know. Providing decent citizens with pleasant spectacles is part of our duty."
It's fake news, is what it is.
The words climbed all the way up my throat, but I choked them back for now.
"So. What did you actually want to tell me...?"
"We will be increasing your donation."
"......"
I stared hard at James.
Hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out the window, James turned toward me.
"You do know what force powers their circuits, I trust?"
"...Hope."
The Galaxy Federation advertised it far and wide.
So did this company.
"Precisely. Hope. A wonderful thing, hope. But tell me—how far can such a fleeting energy source possibly carry them?"
Still performing, arms swept wide to either side, James pressed on.
"Is it not rather the courage to hurl oneself bodily at the obstacles before one's eyes that is the true wellspring of Earthling progress?"
Not wrong, exactly. But his reasons for saying it were deeply suspect.
"But, very well. We too understand how much the emotion called hope benefits Earthlings. I suppose that is why those girls stand out on this 'front line' of theirs."
"......"
I looked at the photo James indicated and said nothing.
In other words, this man was currently informing me that 'being photographed to this extent is simply a magical girl's duty.'
"So what is it you want me to do?"
I asked because both the promised raise and this whole speech he was delivering to my face reeked of impure motives.
"Order you to do something? Heavens, no!"
Having declared this, James came around the desk and reached out to rest a hand on my shoulder—then, catching the glare blazing in my eyes, quietly withdrew it.
"If anything, I intended only to advise you to stay on good terms with her."
So that's why you haul a girl off her day off at five in the afternoon?
"Truly. In exchange, might you see her somewhat more often than usual? We will see to the protection of your identity, Miss Jeong Jieun. Simply make sure the two of you are seen together frequently. We will handle everything else."
"......"
"Do not worry yourself. There is no problem whatsoever with you being friendly with a magical girl. Work is work, friends are friends. A firm line between public and private is no bad thing, is it? As for the donation..."
James named a figure nearly one and a half times what I normally received.
And that—precisely that—was why I could not quite bring myself to refuse an order to do something rotten to a friend.
...Yeah. Even I know I'm trash. I was scared of what refusing would cost me, fine—but still.
But there was almost no other work in the world that would let me earn this much for this little effort while still going to school.
When the meeting was over, I wandered the streets for a long time without eating dinner.
Normally, when my head got too crowded, a long walk like this was how I sorted my thoughts out—but even after an hour of circling, by the time I made it back to the orphanage, nothing had been sorted at all.
