Let’s Get Along
“Let’s get along.”
When Yeonhwa still had no idea what was happening, Jinhyun lunged for her in an instant and shielded her from the villain’s attack.
“Ugh…! Jinhyun… huh?! Behind you!!”
Caught off guard, Yeonhwa ended up pressed beneath Jinhyun, her face flushing as though she still hadn’t come to her senses. Then, only belatedly noticing the villain behind them who had been aiming for both of them, she shouted with all the blood draining from her face.
Crash!
The sound of a steel pipe slamming into a human body rang out so loudly it was hard to believe it was real.
And yet Jinhyun, the one who’d taken the hit, didn’t seem all that bothered.
So that doesn’t even scratch him. Still, I was expecting at least a little damage.
Looks like the villains were even weaker than I’d thought.
“W-what…? You’re weak? Gah—!”
Jinhyun didn’t waste the villain’s moment of confusion. He spun on his heel with all his strength and drove a punch straight into the villain’s face, sending him reeling backward.
Even then, Yeonhwa still looked half-asleep.
But when Jinhyun shouted her name, she finally snapped to attention and pulled a lighter from her pocket, sparking a flame to life.
And just before the villains could reach them, a wall of fire rose up to encircle them.
It was an absurdly massive blaze for something that had supposedly come from a lighter, but that was her ability.
Pyrokinesis. The power to command flames.
The villains, who had nearly been swallowed by fire in an instant, barely managed to stop in time and escape being reduced to charcoal.
“Not bad. Guess the protagonists are protagonists for a reason.”
Watching a fight from a distance really was the most fun. This was pretty damn entertaining.
Still, I wasn’t satisfied. I’d been hoping Jinhyun would suffer a little more, but he was holding up annoyingly well.
I really did have a grudge against the game’s protagonist. I hated Jinhyun, no question.
I didn’t exactly bear Yeonhwa any ill will, but since she kept tagging along with him and was hopelessly smitten with him, she was inevitably getting dragged into it too.
If that bastard hadn’t existed in the first place, I wouldn’t have ended up like this. I wouldn’t even be in this body.
So he should suffer at least as much as I had.
The wall of flame dwindled in an instant, then twisted into the shape of snakes and hovered around Yeonhwa threateningly.
“Leave it to me from here, Jinhyun! Just hold those villains down until the heroes get here!”
Every time I saw it, I couldn’t help but envy her ability. To think she could summon flames like that from nothing more than a lighter. Pretty cool, honestly.
Of course, the greater the strength, the clearer the weakness.
The flaw in pyrokinesis was simple: if your body got wet, its power dropped drastically.
Her pyrokinesis grew stronger the easier it was for fire to take on her body.
Conversely, under conditions where fire had trouble taking hold, its power plummeted.
It was implemented as her passive in-game too.
Power reduced by 70% near water, in the rain, or in humid environments, and power reduced by up to 70% in proportion to missing HP—an obnoxious but unmistakably defining trait for the character.
As for the missing-HP penalty, the justification was that she was losing blood as she took damage, or something like that.
And I had already told those bastards about her weakness ahead of time.
One of the villains hurled a bucket he’d been holding straight at Yeonhwa.
Seeing it coming, Yeonhwa commanded her flame-serpent to swat it away.
But its physical force was barely more than a breeze, and there was no way it could knock aside a heavy bucket stuffed with something inside.
The bucket, swept along by the flame-serpent, didn’t go flying off. Instead, it spun in the air and dumped a deluge of water over her.
“Ugh…! W-water?! Why do these guys even have—!”
The great serpent of flame shrank down to something pathetic, no better than an earthworm, the moment she was soaked through.
“It was true! That crazy bitch wasn’t lying!!!”
The thugs who had been all buddy-buddy with each other broke into ugly grins once the fire vanished, celebrating.
I felt bad for Yeonhwa, but this was unavoidable. She was just too strong against punks like these.
Not only had she not even awakened yet, but even flames she released purely for self-defense, without any intention of hurting others, were more than enough to turn guys like that into charcoal in an instant.
And yet Yeonhwa looked like she still intended to fight with that miserable, shrunken little fire, refusing to step back behind Jinhyun.
Jinhyun, for his part, seemed to be caught in some fierce internal struggle over whether he should step in or not.
I could understand it, at least. He was a guy, and the girl who liked him was in danger, while he stood there watching from behind.
Still, he was the kind of bastard who could hurt others and hurt himself too—someone whose power he couldn’t even control, much less the intensity of it.
I let out a sigh. How did something like that end up as the protagonist, and why had Yeonhwa fallen for him in the first place?
“Don’t worry, Jinhyun. The heroes will be here soon…!”
Pathetic, really. Watching him like that strangely filled me with a sense of satisfaction.
But if I listened closely, the heroes really were approaching from far away.
They got here faster than I expected. I thought they’d take a little longer.
If those guys got hauled off by the police and started naming me, it would obviously turn into a pain in the ass.
...Too bad. Time to clean up the playpen. I had never intended to actually hurt Jinhyun. If I could’ve done that, I would’ve done it long ago.
I stood up and dusted the dirt off my stockings and skirt.
The point of this ambush had only ever been to create an incident that would let us build a connection.
Now it was time to make that connection.
From the rooftop to the signboard. From the signboard to the streetlamp. From the streetlamp to the sidewalk.
I dropped down quietly and quickly, then sprinted across the tops of the cars that had stopped in the street just to watch the fight unfold.
That meant it took me hardly any time at all to reach the space between Yeonhwa and the villains.
“Academy uniform…?!”
“W-why are y-you—”
Yeonhwa was startled by my uniform and trying to figure out who I was, while the villains seemed to recognize me and were stammering, asking what I was doing there.
“Move back. It’s dangerous.”
I wasn’t about to answer either of them right away, so I sprayed a thick cloud of smoke from my palm.
The terrifyingly fast-spreading haze swallowed everyone around us in an instant.
Blinded, the villains roared and thrashed about, but I was one step faster—I grabbed Yeonhwa and hauled her out of the smoke.
Even as she was dragged along helplessly, Yeonhwa kept struggling weakly, worried about Jinhyun.
“W-wait a second! Jinhyun is still in there! If the villains are targeting him, then I—”
“And what exactly are you going to protect him with in that state?”
What could she possibly defend with? A single flickering ember, trembling in the wind like a candle about to go out?
When I pointed that out, Yeonhwa fell silent, clearly aware that she was in no condition to argue.
Then, as if she’d noticed something strange, she spoke to me again.
“…Wait, more importantly, how did you know about my weakness—”
“Later. That boy’s name is Jinhyun, right? I’ll pull him out, so stay somewhere safe.”
Yeonhwa hesitated for a moment, as if everything was happening too fast, then nodded, seeming to prioritize Jinhyun after all.
“…Then please, I’m counting on you! I don’t know who you are, but… please help Jinhyun! And, um, who you are too—”
She was probably asking me to tell her. I gave a rough, “Yeah, sure,” and dashed back into the smoke.
Maybe the drugs were finally kicking in, because the villains’ silhouettes in the thinning haze looked pretty miserable.
Blood streamed from their noses and ears, and their eyes were so bloodshot they barely looked human.
Well, of course. There was no way a drug that strengthened powerless nobodies to the point where they could stand against ability users would come without a price.
“Urrrgh—! Aaaagh!!!”
The villains were shouting in pain and rage as they beat on Jinhyun, but Jinhyun still looked completely unfazed.
Pitiful. I slipped up behind the ones focused on pummeling him, covered their faces with my palm, and sprayed the anesthetic.
“Khk—! Guh…! Wha—…?”
I kept the concentration low, just strong enough for self-defense.
It wouldn’t kill them from toxicity, and it wouldn’t leave lasting damage, but it would drop them immediately, beyond the point where they could keep standing.
With one ally down, the remaining lackeys looked around in confusion as if they had no idea what was going on. Then their eyes met mine.
And one by one, in pairs, they collapsed.
It was only because they were stupid enough to keep staring at me.
After finishing off the villains, I turned to Jinhyun.
Apart from the dust on him from being hit, there wasn’t a single sign he’d even been in a fight.
“Hah. A-are you okay?! Are you hurt anywhere?! I’m sorry, this is all because of me…!”
As I stared at him in silence, Jinhyun, without understanding what I was thinking, came out with the sort of words I should’ve been saying instead.
Here was the guy who’d just been under attack, worrying about the person who’d taken down the people attacking him in an instant.
The one who should’ve been thanking me was him.
Amusing as that was, a hot anger began to boil deep inside me.
Who did he think he was looking down on right now?
“You’ve still got the energy to say that, so you must be fine. Walk out on your own two feet.”
Forcing down the fire raging in my chest, I stepped out of the smoke. That was when I saw the heroes sprinting toward us.
Before they could even ask if I was all right, I told them, faster than they could react, that I had already taken all the villains down and that no one was injured.
“…I-is that so? Then you must be a student at Heros Academy. Remarkable skill. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you were already working in the field.”
The heroes took one look at my body and seemed to assume I was a second- or third-year at the academy.
“I’m a freshman.”
“Ah.”
---
Thanks to Yeonhwa and Jinhyun working hard to explain the situation, there wasn’t much left for me to do.
Just the statement that I’d been passing by, saw a fellow academy student being attacked, and helped out.
And then the part where I acted shocked at the sight of the villain gang suddenly vomiting blood from all seven apertures and dying on the spot.
The police, who arrived later than the heroes, saw all that and tried to question me further, even suggesting I come with them to explain the circumstances, but Jinhyun talked them down with great enthusiasm.
He said if I was late to the academy entrance ceremony, it would be a huge problem, or something along those lines.
Still, I had to tell them my ability, my name, where I lived, and all that.
That much I’d already expected, so it didn’t bother me too much, but Jinhyun helping me out was so irritating I could’ve bitten through a pipe.
“I see… so you’re Blanca! Pretty. That’s a pretty name, Blanca!”
“Cut it out, Yeonhwa. We just met…”
“And she’s also our benefactor for helping us out! This is fate, isn’t it?! Jinhyun, you’re way too timid for your own good!”
And just like that, I naturally ended up accompanying them to the academy.
Same academy, same first-year class, same incident—it was fate, Yeonhwa insisted, clinging to me as if there was no helping it.
“My name is Yeonhwa! Lee Yeonhwa. This is Seo Jinhyun! Nice to meet you, Blanca! Let’s get along!”
Yeah. Let’s get along very, very well.
---