Chapter 2: Private Life (3)
"Why? Does the vibe here seem that new to you?"
No, it's just a busy shopping district, no different from anywhere else.
Well, compared to the Gwanghwamun area I passed through on every errand, the atmosphere really was something else entirely. The disused rail line had been redeveloped into a park with an artsy sort of charm, and the people drifting along the streets somehow seemed younger than average.
That said, none of that was why I kept glancing around.
I'd never held a job like reporting, so I couldn't say for certain—but would a journalist get thrown off if their target changed location from what they expected? The reporter who had photographed me entering that convenience store with Hayun was nowhere to be seen now. Which meant, at the very least, they weren't shooting from 'nearby.'
I didn't own a camera or anything, but there was one thing I knew for sure: the better a camera's performance, the bulkier the body, and the farther it could reach, the more monstrous its lens.
...Though, granted, if they really were shooting from 'far away,' spotting them with my own eyes wouldn't be easy either.
"So... what do we do now?"
Anyway, we'd gotten off the subway and made it out to the crowded part of town. Great. Except—what exactly were we supposed to do here?
One of the things I had stopped doing since being reborn into this world was 'fandom stuff.' The me of my past life had been an otaku; the me of this one was not.
Truthfully, that was half by necessity. Collecting things cost money, after all. Piling up belongings inside the orphanage was its own problem too—we were expected to move out into the world once we came of age, and a mountain of baggage would only make that day more of a headache.
So the 'otaku hangouts' scattered around Hongdae never made my list. I had no intention of dragging these two along, either. Hayun might let it slide, but Jihye would milk that for teasing material for half a day straight.
"Uh... well."
Jihye rolled her eyes this way and that at my question, then said,
"Should we... buy some clothes?"
in a slightly uncertain voice.
"Clothes!"
The one who lit up at that, though, was Hayun.
I turned toward the voice to find her staring up at me with sparkling eyes.
Hmm...
Hayun loved cute clothes.
It was right there in her webtoon character profile, and I knew it firsthand from a childhood spent at her side.
Normally she was too shy to dress up much and kept things modest, but her magical girl outfit had been a decidedly adorable design. Even within the story, she was one of the characters whose magical girl look changed fairly often.
It wasn't that her transformed form took different shapes—it was more that her transformation seemed to follow whatever outfit Hayun happened to picture in her head at that moment.
"......."
The problem was that this was exactly why I was a little scared. Of Hayun, gazing up at me with those sparkly eyes.
Something told me that if anyone was going to pick out a violently pink outfit for me, it'd be her.
Not that I was dead set against it, but—
"...You don't like it?"
The moment I went quiet, Hayun's spirits visibly deflated.
"......."
I weighed it for a second, then said,
"Alright. Let's go take a look."
Hayun's face brightened again. And Jihye's brightened along with it.
Hayun was... hmm.
She didn't pick anything pink to the extent of my 'worries.'
But it was still pink to the extent of my 'dread.'
It wasn't an outright hot-pink thing drowning in frills and lace.
It was, however, still baby pink in the end. Thankfully the design itself was a long-sleeved tee that didn't stand out too badly. Then Hayun went and swapped my pants for a white skirt. It was long and pleated, so at least I wouldn't freeze...
"......."
Still, wearing pink was a little... hard on the heart—
but Hayun stood in front of me with her hands clasped and her eyes shining, and I couldn't bring myself to refuse.
Jihye, meanwhile, stood a step behind her, laughing at me without a shred of subtlety. I clenched my fist and choked down the fury.
Something was getting punched on the way home. An arm, maybe.
Thankfully, a coat wasn't the kind of thing you bought on the spot, so I changed into the new layers and we headed straight back out of the shop.
Black coat, pink tee, white skirt.
For someone who wore nothing but black on the daily, it was a design bright enough to be genuinely hard to endure.
"It's so pretty!"
Hayun—dressed perfectly modestly herself, mind you—said that, and hung onto my arm.
Had changing once stripped away a layer of her shyness, too?
Click.
"Ah—sorry."
I had whipped my head around at the camera sound with almost painful sensitivity, and Jihye spoke up, a bit flustered.
"Am I not supposed to take pictures?"
"No... no, it's fine. The shutter just came out of nowhere. Startled me."
That was the answer I gave.
I was wound way too tight. I gave my head a little shake and pulled myself together.
Whatever the Company had drilled into me, I was technically out here to have fun, wasn't I?
"Then I'll send you the pictures."
Jihye said it with a positively wicked grin.
Hayun looked delighted, but the more I studied that grin, the more obvious it became: she fully intended to permanently archive my 'pink outfit' look and pull it out for viewing whenever the mood struck.
I stole a glance down at Hayun, still clinging to my side.
She looked up at me—a girl just a touch shorter than I was.
The moment our eyes met, she broke into a beaming smile.
.......
I wasn't actually mad.
And even if there had been any anger left in me, I doubted it could have survived that expression.
For a first visit, we were having a pretty good time.
Well, of course we were—with two friends along, how could we not?
Hayun still seemed to feel a faint awkwardness around Jihye, but it was miles better than when we'd started.
Today wasn't bitter cold, but winter weather was still winter weather, so we decided to duck into somewhere warm for a while.
"I'm gonna run to the restroom."
The moment we'd ordered drinks and claimed a table, Jihye announced exactly that and stood up.
"See you."
"Have fun on your date, you two."
Jihye seemed to have developed a taste for teasing Hayun.
She waved at Hayun—whose cheeks had gone a little pink—and at me, glaring at her from the side, then hurried off toward the restroom.
"......."
"......."
Silence settled over the table.
Hm.
Hayun was usually pretty chatty when it was just the two of us.
Maybe dragging a friend along out of nowhere had made her completely awkward after all, I was wondering—
Click.
—when a camera shutter sounded right beside me.
I turned with a question mark practically floating over my head and found Hayun grinning, her phone's camera pointed straight at me.
"It looks suuuper good on you."
Look at this girl.
The tone of her voice alone was different from when her friends were around, or when Jihye was in earshot.
What do you even call this? A friend... or something else?
"Yeah?"
I pouted.
"Mm-hm. You wear black every single day."
"It suits me, though. I have black hair."
Maybe because it was just Hayun beside me, my guard melted and the grumbling came out on its own.
"How do you go out looking exactly the same every day? You're allowed to change up your image once in a while, you know."
"......."
I rested my chin in my hand and looked out the window.
"What? What? Are you sulking?"
"I'm not."
"Is it because I put you in cute clothes?"
"I told you it's not."
When I answered in a sulky mumble, Hayun giggled.
Bzzzz.
"Oh, I think our drinks are up."
The buzzer went off and Hayun grabbed it at once.
"I'll get them."
She was out of her seat before I could even stand, so I just decided to wait where I was.
Though I did keep my eyes quietly fixed on the back of her head. Some weirdo could try to strike up a conversation with her halfway there.
...It happens, from time to time.
Once I saw her reach the counter safely, I figured things were probably fine and pulled out my phone for a quick check.
On the news site I opened out of pure habit—
—was an article like that.
Not the front page or anything. But Blossom had been the heroine of the webtoon I used to read, so ever since Hayun became a magical girl, I'd made a habit of combing the entertainment pages of the digital newspapers. A few tidbits had even been genuinely useful to me.
And this piece came from one of the digital papers I browsed that way.
It was barely an article at all—more like a single photo tossed up on the page by itself.
The photo showed Hayun holding pink clothes up in front of someone.
I raised my head and quickly swept my eyes over the cafe.
...Thankfully, nobody was looking our way. Everyone was happily chatting with their own groups. Most of them were couples, and couples, naturally, had zero attention to spare for their surroundings.
Had it been shot with a telephoto lens?
The clothing store had been fairly packed. From a distance, the view would've kept getting blocked. But a smartphone...
"What?"
Hayun's face suddenly popped into my field of view, and I jolted backward so hard I nearly toppled off my chair.
"Why are you so startled?"
Hayun caught me, laughing.
The tray with our three drinks was already sitting on the table.
"Were you looking at something weird on your— oh."
"Oh."
I was too busy panicking to even think about hiding the phone.
She could look a little spacey at first glance, but Hayun was Blossom—effectively the top magical girl operating in Korea.
Her physical abilities were in no way lacking.
And dynamic vision came as part of the package.
...Now that she'd already seen my screen, there was no hiding anything.
"This is... me, isn't it."
"...Yeah."
While Hayun peered into my phone, I cranked my brain up to maximum RPM.
"And this one's from today."
Hayun's brow creased slightly.
It was less anger than quiet seriousness. Honestly, Hayun was bad at looking grave. Her facial muscles simply didn't move in any direction you could call 'menacing.'
So read against her own standards, that expression meant Hayun was being 'incredibly' serious right now.
"Oh, the coffee's here."
And Jihye, returning from the restroom at that exact moment, announced it in a bright, bouncy voice.
Needless to say, the brightness didn't last long.
"...What? Did something happen while I was gone?"
Hayun's facial muscles might operate under certain limitations, but mine didn't.
And I'd never been good at hiding my face. To borrow Jihye's phrasing, my negative expressions in particular came through loud and clear.
"...Ah, that's—"
I opened my mouth, then shut it again.
Did I have to tell Jihye about this too?
She'd seen the article last time, so maybe it wouldn't be the end of the world—
"It's stalking."
"Stal—"
Hayun cut in with a voice of absolute finality, and I caught myself echoing the word before snapping my mouth shut halfway through.
Stalking... stalking... oh. She's right.
Reporter or not, tailing someone around and snapping secret photos was stalking. Full stop.
...People called it paparazzi, but still.
"Stalking?"
Jihye tilted her head, and Hayun slid my phone across to her.
"Huh? Wait, this..."
Jihye's eyes flicked between the top I was wearing and the one on the screen.
The top I had on was pink. The top in the photo was pink. Of course, the 'me' in the photo was blurred out by the soft focus, so there was no telling whether it was a girl or a boy.
Besides, the photo had been taken not after Hayun dressed me, but right around when she held the outfit up in front of me. My body wasn't in frame to begin with, so the shot read for all the world as 'a girl playfully suggesting pink clothes to her boyfriend.'
Even setting the location aside, since I never wore pink on any other day, I couldn't wriggle out with 'wait, isn't that from last time?'
Cold sweat slid down my spine. Probably not solely because the cafe heating was cranked up to maximum.
"Th-then... we're being followed? Right now?"
Whatever awkwardness Hayun had felt meeting Jihye for the first time today was gone without a trace; she nodded gravely.
"Yeah."
No, I mean—
seriously, what.
The reporter...
"What do we do? Should we call the police?"
When Jihye had first read that article, she'd found it pretty entertaining—but now that she knew someone was actually tailing us, her voice had gone thin and nervous.
Um...
this is a legitimate newspaper, though—
"...I'm sorry. For dragging you into something like this."
"Wh-what? No, no, it's fine! It's not like you wanted this to happen..."
Jihye flapped her hands in a panic.
Could a reporter actually be hauled in for stalking, though? Thinking it through, it felt murky. An ordinary person pointing a giant camera at passersby could absolutely get into serious trouble.
"First things first—we need to find whoever took this photo."
Hayun said.
She apparently didn't think it amounted to much of a legal offense.
There might be some moral culpability in tailing minors and photographing them, but that was all.
"And if there are photos of you two, I'll make them delete every single one."
Hayun's grave gaze moved back and forth between me and Jihye.
My back was soaked through. The short-sleeved undershirt beneath my new top was already clinging to me, drenched.
"So for now, then..."
"For now, we play dumb."
Hayun said it with a face so deadly serious that I couldn't muster a single counterargument.
And besides, there was no way I could confess that I was entangled in this whole affair. Hayun would look at me like a piece of garbage—and Jihye right along with her.
...Should I have just told them from the start?
Wouldn't that have been better all around?
Except then I'd also have had to explain that I was a combatant of Noir Corporation—the very organization fighting against Hayun's side.
"......."
And so, while Hayun sipped her drink with grave eyes sweeping the room, I couldn't even finish half of my americano.
Maybe it was because we'd spent the whole time in that cafe staring at each other.
Whatever the reason, the angles must not have come out right, because no follow-up article appeared.
Relief washed over me, almost.
For all I knew, the reporter only posted one piece a day.
If nothing new went up for the rest of the day, the whole thing might as well never have happened. I could just enjoy the outing, go home, and put it behind me.
But hopeful expectations like that exist precisely to be betrayed.
"They're close to us."
I'd already received it.
The articles went up on internet newspapers in the first place, so naturally Hayun could monitor them too.
Maybe the view counts were healthy, or maybe the reporter had simply thrown caution to the wind entirely.
Did they believe there was no way they'd ever be found out? If anything, I was hoping nothing would come to light until today was over.
The photo captured Hayun looking up at me with a fairly grave expression.
At a glance, it could pass for the face of a lover mid-fight, seething.
.......
And it was around this point that I finally understood something.
The person Hayun showed... the greatest range of expressions to was me.
She never wore this many faces in front of her other friends. Before all this, while she was still feeling awkward around Jihye, she'd been exactly the same bashful girl she was around everyone else.
She only lit up like the sun when it was just the two of us, and only let herself truly enjoy things when she was showing her face to me.
Because we were childhood friends. Because she knew, better than anyone, that there was nothing left between us to trip over.
...Which was probably also why James had insisted on handing me this particular mission...
My heart began to ache, sharp and deep.
"...I think it's a front."
Hayun said.
She didn't bother turning around to check. Did she think the stalker would bolt if we kept looking over our shoulders?
"I said that company looked a little familiar, remember? It's a subsidiary of Noir Corporation."
It was?
Well, to the public they did dabble in entertainment, come to think of it.
"...Hold on a second."
Hayun, now fully in professional mode, began tapping away at her own phone.
Just as I was blinking at her, she looked up and flashed me a small smile.
That smile looked a little... sad.
"Don't worry too much. I won't let any photos of you end up in the papers, Jieun."
Hayun said, calling me by my name.
That's not the problem, though...
I folded and unfolded my hands. Maybe it was all in my head, but the blood didn't seem to be reaching them.
Hayun dug through her bag and fished out something that looked like a wristwatch.
"Ah—that."
Jihye started to react, then hastily clapped a hand over her own mouth.
"...Is it okay to transform here?"
"It's fine."
Hayun said.
"I'm not going to transform right here. We'll have to move somewhere a little less visible first."
she murmured, barely above a whisper.
Apparently nobody wandered this stretch of street just to skim celebrity gossip, because no one seemed to have caught on that Hayun was Blossom yet.
"Even if a kaijin shows up, I can handle it."
Hayun declared it with a clenched fist, her circuit settling back into white.
Um... how do I put this.
If that paper was operating legally, then pummeling the reporter wouldn't exactly be the right thing to do... right?
She seemed even more worked up with me sitting right here, and I had no idea what to say to her.
One slip of the tongue, and I had the feeling I'd make a mistake there'd be no coming back from.
...I was short on friends as it was. I did not want my childhood friend to hate me.
I quickly swept my gaze around us again.
Still, I couldn't spot anyone nearby raising a camera.
"U-um, hey, Hayun?"
"Don't worry so much—"
"N-no, it's not that."
Normally, the one fumbling like this would be Hayun, with me responding from a comfortable distance.
Right now, the roles were completely reversed.
Hayun seemed convinced she was acting like this because I was slightly visible in that photo.
"I... need the restroom. Real quick."
"Ah."
At that, Hayun gave a wry smile.
"Okay."
And then, as if to reassure me:
"Let's get inside one of the buildings nearby first."
At her words, Jihye and I both nodded and ducked into the nearest building.
The moment I stepped into the restroom, I shut the toilet lid and sat down on it.
Then, right there, I struck Rodin's Thinker pose.
.......
And realized I had no idea what I was supposed to be thinking about.
My head was so hopelessly tangled that nothing resembling an answer would come out.
Damn it.
I hadn't been this rattled even facing Blossom head-on.
...Not that what we'd had exactly qualified as a showdown.
In the end I abandoned the Thinker pose and just grabbed fistfuls of my own hair.
And since no brilliant ideas were being wrung out that way either, all I'd really accomplished was burning time.