Chapter 32: A Heart-Pounding Secret Date (1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 32: A Heart-Pounding Secret Date (1)
For having gone through such a major incident, the Academy was remarkably peaceful.
Well, whether the Chairperson apologized or outside forces infiltrated the campus, it wasn’t a problem that felt particularly real to the cadets currently enrolled.
If they hadn’t been able to stop the incident itself, the atmosphere wouldn’t be this bright. However, since a fellow cadet had stopped it and was even being commended for it, the students seemed to view it as nothing more than a slightly stimulating event to break up the monotony of their daily lives.
And here, too, were four fools enjoying the peace achieved through someone else’s hard work.
“Guys. Did I do something wrong to you? If I did, would you let me apologize?”
“No? Nothing like that.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just relax.”
“Spoken like a true loser. Is this kind of thing too much for you?”
With me in the center, Lilac, Butt, Androgynous Girl, and Pink Chihuahua stood surrounding me at exactly equal intervals—front, back, left, and right—as if they were my personal escort.
At first, I thought they were just playing some kind of prank, but since they kept this crap up all through lunch, it was honestly moving past annoying and becoming a little scary.
The other three surprisingly looked like they were having fun, so I looked at Pink Chihuahua, the only one whose face didn’t seem to find this amusing. She accurately grasped my intent and gave me an answer.
“If Lilac likes it, I like it.”
That was it.
Pink Chihuahua was a Super Lilac-Simp who couldn’t be stopped by something as trivial as embarrassment.
For the record, this shield had better defensive power than expected; it had enough presence to make Cheon Yu-hak, who tried to approach me during morning assembly, flinch and back away.
However, it also had a clear weakness: it was hard to maintain for long unless all four of them had the same class schedule.
“Ah, my afternoon class is over that way.”
“Mine too.”
As Pink Chihuahua and Androgynous Girl left, the defensive power of the invincible barrier was instantly cut in half.
For me, it felt like being liberated just before dying of embarrassment, so I was incredibly relieved, but Lilac seemed rather disappointed.
“Maybe we should recruit more members?”
Seeing as he was spouting such crazy nonsense out of disappointment, I had a reasonable suspicion that he was actually upset about me refusing to take the points. But no matter how I looked at it, the guy’s attitude was dead serious.
What kind of crazy person does this kind of thing seriously?
“…And why are you still here?”
“Uh, no. I… I just…”
When I spoke to Butt—no, Kim Ga-eul—she blushed and flinched.
By the way, she’s still calling me a loser even after I saved her?
“Hey, So-hyun, I’m the one who asked her to join us. Ga-eul had a hard time during this incident too, so it’s good for us to hang out together.”
As Lilac covered for her, Kim Ga-eul looked at him with a moved expression.
“Listen, Lilac. People in this world don’t call it ‘hanging out’ when they walk around spinning in circles around one person. Usually, that’s called an escort formation or bullying.”
“It’s not bullying~ We’re just friends joking around.”
“Oh, that’s the number one excuse every bully in the world uses when they get caught. You punk, were you a seed of a bully all along?”
I felt it again, but ever since the last commotion, I felt like I’d gotten quite close to Lilac very quickly.
Actually, at first, it felt a bit awkward to get close to characters in a novel, but judging by my ten years of experience with web novels, even if you try to act tough and refuse to get attached because it’s just a story, those walls eventually crumble anyway.
In that case, I planned to just be reasonably friendly from the start.
Strictly up to the level of friends, that is.
“Hey, Loser.”
“What.”
“…Do losers, like, hate bullies?”
“…Is there anyone who actually likes them?”
“I, well, I acted like one at first to set the mood, but I was just making my Academy debut. Originally, I was just average in my class.”
…What am I supposed to do with that?
“I wasn’t actually a bully. You shouldn’t misunderstand, okay? Right?”
“Typical bully trait. Picking a fight first and then constantly calling someone a loser.”
“Hey~ Loser…”
“So-hyun. Don’t pick on Ga-eul. She’s pitiful.”
“Nope~ I don’t want to. Typical loser trait: never forgetting even the smallest slight.”
The tearful Butt shouted that I was being mean and ran ahead.
Does she even realize her next class is with me?
“…Hurry up. Loser.”
She must have remembered halfway, because she turned back after only a few steps.
* * *
The Academy classes themselves proceeded without much difference.
If there was one thing that changed, it was that a different professor came in for Basic Monster Studies.
The professors gritted their teeth and kept quiet about the topic of Jin Gyeong-tae, but the cadets were persistent in asking questions about him.
Ah, a few people asked me or Lilac as well, but Lilac kept his words brief, and I just went around saying the guy was a psycho from the start.
The one relief was that there didn’t seem to be many idiots asking the victims questions.
“Jin Gyeong-tae, huh.”
Come to think of it, it looked like he had something he wanted to say to me at the very end.
Sitting alone and spacing out after all the classes were over, all sorts of thoughts came to mind.
For the record, I wasn’t intentionally having a moment of reflection; I was waiting because someone asked for some of my time.
As for who I was waiting for…
“Have you been waiting?”
Speak of the devil; Cheon Yu-hak approached with a drink in his hand.
It looked like he’d bought it from a nearby cafe instead of just getting something from a vending machine.
“Yeah.”
Mmm. Even though I waited a bit, the smooth and sweet Green Tea Latte made me feel a bit better.
By the way, there’s a setting that while Cheon Yu-hak usually enjoys espresso or Americano, he drinks sweet beverages in front of people he trusts.
“What are you drinking?”
“Caramel Macchiato.”
Yeah, I don’t know anything about that setting. Let’s pretend I don’t know.
“First, I apologize for calling you suddenly when you might have had plans. It was a bit difficult to approach you inside the Academy.”
“I understand.”
I didn’t mean ‘I don’t want to talk to a guy like you,’ but rather that he probably didn’t want to approach ‘that’ escort formation.
It was perfectly understandable.
If Lilac didn’t read the room and asked Cheon Yu-hak to join in, wouldn’t their relationship sour just like in the original story?
“Actually, it’s nothing grand enough to call it ‘business,’ but I personally had a few things I wanted to ask.”
Cheon Yu-hak.
As another protagonist of this novel, he starts in a rival position, but there’s a setting that as the story progresses, he falls slightly behind Lilac in every aspect.
If Lilac is a champion of justice representing hope and the triumph of humanity, Yu-hak is a sort of egoist who is infinitely warm within his own circle but has zero interest in anything outside of it—more accurately, he’s a person with very clear boundaries.
To give a representative example, just like what he did to Kim Ga-eul, he absolutely hates it when someone outside his circle acts presumptuously toward someone inside it.
In truth, I still don’t quite know the distance between him and me.
It was a part that wasn’t written in the Setting Book.
I just speculated that since he’s the legitimate son of a corporate chairman who dominates not just Korea but the world, and Kang So-hyun is also the son of a very wealthy family, they might have had some interaction in the past.
“Are you planning to join Lilac’s team?”
“I told you last time, I’m not.”
“Lest you misunderstand, I have no intention of stopping you. If you’ve judged that to be the right path, you may join Lilac’s team.”
One thing was certain: he viewed me as someone inside his circle.
“You might find it strange, but I am confident. During our first year, we could test which side fits better while competing with me. If it were anyone else, I’d call it a waste of time, but Lilac is at a decent level.”
Ah, and unlike the original, Lilac wasn’t quite inside his circle yet, but he was on the boundary.
— You greedy bastard, wanting even more when your hands are already full. You fool. I guarantee it, because of that shitty personality of yours, you won’t even be able to protect what you can protect. You’ll end up dropping even what’s in your hands onto the dirt and regretting it. You moron.
It was an event further in the future than now, but thinking about the Cheon Yu-hak in the original story who spat those words at Lilac made me feel quite sentimental.
“Still, I’m not joining.”
“Is that so? It doesn’t seem like you’re planning to join my team either, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Haha, well, that wouldn’t be bad either. Anyway, the real business is next.”
“Really? What is it?”
“How did you recover?”
“What?”
“Your body. I still remember how you looked the last time I saw you before admission, already dying after consuming almost all your Innate True Qi.”
This was somewhat surprising.
It seemed he knew about my talent in quite a bit of detail.
“I heard your primary physician told you to never even think about using your talent again, and that you wouldn’t last long even if you just lived a normal life.”
He took a stance.
And then, a punch flew.
It was a punch at a speed a normal person wouldn’t even be able to react to, but I managed to barely dodge it by reading its trajectory with reinforced vision.
“Your movement just now, and the way you use Reinforcement again like it’s nothing… I can’t think of any other explanation than that you’ve recovered.”
“You know this is school violence, right?”
“No one was hit, and no one did the hitting, so it’s not violence. For your information, the CCTV here is under maintenance at this hour, so there’s no evidence.”
“I’ll make sure to carry a voice recorder from now on.”
“Why don’t you carry one already? Considering your own value, it would be wise to carry one in the future.”
He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly.
“So? Is it true you’ve recovered?”
“What if I have?”
“My answer will change depending on whether that recovery can be maintained even if you continue to use Reinforcement.”
Actually, I had already guessed from his attitude toward me that he might know about my talent.
That’s why what he said next was rather unexpected.
“Originally, I had no intention of letting you use your talent even if you joined my team. But if you’ve obtained a means to recover, the story changes.”
Wait, so you were going to put a half-corpse who couldn’t even use his talent on your team? You, Cheon Yu-hak?
“Once you join, our team will finally be complete. I hope you think it over carefully.”
“Sure.”
I’ll think it over carefully and then not join.
“…Lastly, I heard you played a part in this incident. I’m glad you seem to have shaken things off a bit.”
“What?”
“No, I’ve said something unnecessary.”
No, it’s not! It sounds incredibly necessary! Yu-hak, can’t we keep talking about that?
“I should get going. Ah, the drink is on me, so don’t think about paying me back.”
No, I wasn’t going to pay you back in the first place, so let’s keep talking!
But then again, the atmosphere felt like I shouldn’t dig deeper, so I couldn’t easily bring it up.
Watching Cheon Yu-hak’s receding back, I drank the Green Tea Latte with a lingering sense of unease. The ice had all melted, making it quite bland.
* * *
Cathy was at home, soaking in the bathtub, carefully recalling her memories.
— Cathy Noona.
“Huu…”
She knew as a professor that she shouldn’t favor one student, but having gone through several incidents, she felt a sense of intimacy. Because the things he’d shown her were so impressive, that boy especially came to mind lately whenever she was alone like this.
Actually, when they first met, she just thought he was pitiful because his body was weak; she didn’t know he would weigh on her mind this much.
A boy who had become healthier than when they first met, but who still possessed such a fragile body.
Kang So-hyun.
Even with such a weak body, he showed himself doing things that even adults would find difficult without a second thought.
It was true of how he, a child with no combat experience, blocked a villain, and it was also true of how he, a boy who had lived in pain his whole life, used his talent even while injuring himself, despite having a means to recover.
Though he lacked experience, he was already a splendid hero.
However, it was precisely because of that that she was worried.
She was always watching him with her heart in her mouth, wondering if he was overexerting himself like her own younger brother.
Because even if he saved people from villains while coughing up blood, it would be meaningless if he himself was gravely injured.
Of course, he had answered that he understood and she believed he would manage himself well, but this kind of anxiety wasn’t something that disappeared so easily.
If only there were a way to help him relieve his stress.
Stepping out of the tub and drying herself, she suddenly noticed a text message on her smartphone and tilted her head.
“It’s from So-hyun?”
[Hello, Professor. I was wondering, if you have some time tomorrow, could you spare a moment for me?]
The moment she saw that text, two thoughts occurred to her.
The first was, Ah, he’s not calling me ‘Noona’ again. And the second was…
“What should I wear tomorrow?”
Forgetting to even ask the purpose of the meeting, she began worrying about her clothes first.
It was a secret from others, but she had a desire to go shopping with her younger brother on the weekends.
* * *
“I sent it, but I wonder if she’s busy since tomorrow’s Saturday?”
As I muttered to myself, Kang Ha-ni suddenly poked her head out from the bed.
“Huh? Who?”
“Professor Cathy.”
“Hey, honestly, isn’t it a bit much for a cadet to cling to a professor even on the weekends? Professor Cathy is super popular, so she’ll probably hate that.”
“Ah, right? I should probably apologize.”
Thinking it over, it did seem rude, so just as I was about to send a text saying I was sorry, my phone rang almost instantly.
“…Professor?”
[It’s not rude, So-hyun.]
“Pardon…?”
[It’s not rude, so don’t worry.]
“But still.”
[Then Noona will come pick you up tomorrow. Wait at the dormitory.]
The professor said only what she wanted to say in a tone that was practically an announcement and hung up.
Wait, what did she just say?
Noona? Pick me up? At the dormitory?
“Who was it?”
“Hey, I think I’m screwed.”
“What are you talking about?”
If tomorrow came like this, there was no doubt that shitty rumors would spread through the dormitory.
Following the rumor of the young master who coldly orders his butler around, if a rumor started that I was a guy who enjoys weekend dates with a beautiful female professor (26 years old, single), my future Academy life was going to be quite a sight to behold.