Storm Before the Calm
“It’s all fixed. It was just a slight crack in the bone. You can use it without worry, but be careful—you could make it worse if you get hurt again.”
The arm that had been throbbing non-stop felt perfectly fine the moment Maria healed it, as if the pain had been a lie from the start.
Seeing that, I couldn’t help thinking that regenerative powers really were tempting as hell.
And since the Liberators didn’t exactly have a decent healer on hand, I even considered—just for a moment—whether I should kidnap one on the day we executed the plan.
I wasn’t serious. Maria was a heroine, after all.
I was just feeling a little sorry that our organization didn’t have a proper healing-type ability user, that was all.
After rotating my arm and wrist a few times to make sure nothing had slipped out of place, I thanked Maria for fixing me up.
“Helping someone who’s been hurt is my greatest joy. Still, Blanca, what on earth were you doing to get injured like that?”
Maria sounded worried, as if wondering whether I’d gotten into a fight or run into a villain, so I answered her honestly.
“I jumped down five stairs at once, twisted wrong, and rammed my arm into the wall.”
“Ah… I see…? Please try to be more restrained in the future. Beast-kin may have excellent balance, but that doesn’t mean your bones are especially sturdy.”
Apparently she hadn’t expected that answer at all, because Maria just blinked at me for a moment before telling me not to do that again.
I didn’t really need to lie, but deceiving other people wasn’t exactly an enjoyable pastime.
Still, Maria was a racist too. How tragic.
Cat beast-kin really did tend to have good balance, but that didn’t mean everyone was like that.
Then again, I had fooled her, and it would be pretty rude to hiss at the person who’d just healed me.
So I smiled naturally and said I’d try, then went back to my seat.
“Oh? You were hurt?”
“It’d be embarrassing to even call it an injury. I just got scraped a little. It’s nothing, really.”
Lapis had evidently been watching me closely, because she asked with concern whether I was all right. I brushed it off as nothing and spent the rest of the afternoon killing time.
I exchanged a few aimless, unproductive bits of small talk with Yeonhwa, and gave her a little coaxing when she asked if I’d cheered up yet.
During class, I stared out the window because I was bored, and entertained myself by observing random people for no reason.
I told Ahaeha about the story I’d heard in the limousine over the weekend and asked if she wanted to go to the department store with me.
And when I saw Minho struggling to communicate with the heroine who used verbal commands, then actually resorting to written messages with her, I couldn’t help snickering.
Then, during the break in third period, just when I was debating with Ahaeha over whether superior and inferior abilities even existed, an unexpected person approached me.
“There’s no such thing as a superior ability or a bad ability. It’s all about whether it’s easy to use or hard to use. That’s how I see it.”
“You’re Seolhwa… Yang, right? That’s a perfectly reasonable opinion. But did you need something from me…?”
“I need to talk to Blanca. Can you wait a second? It won’t take long.”
Ahaeha hesitated, thrown off by Seolhwa’s bold, straightforward manner, but after telling her not to take too long, she handed me over without further complaint.
“Handed over” made it sound like I was some kind of possession, which felt a little strange, but… they weren’t bad people or anything.
Besides, maybe I was just getting too sensitive.
Living at the academy had shown me that the people here might casually discriminate, but they didn’t do it with malice.
Unlike the people from the Outskirts, or the trash in the back alleys, these people had some actual decency.
Whether that was because they were rich or because they’d been well educated, I couldn’t say.
“So… what did you want to say?”
“It’s about the department store. Blanca, you’re tall. I was worried they might not have clothes that fit you.”
Seolhwa said this while tapping her fingers together.
“…Come on. Surely they’ll have something.”
For a second, I was so dumbfounded by what she’d said that I couldn’t even speak properly.
No matter how tall I was, that was a little much, wasn’t it?
There were plenty of people taller than me… well, not plenty, but not zero.
Where were those people supposed to buy clothes, then?
But then an answer came from an entirely unexpected direction.
“…That might be true, Miss Blanca. Even when I lived at home, I couldn’t find clothes with the right fit, so I had them custom-made.”
“Ahaeha…?”
Ahaeha really did have a point. Even if you broadened the definition to include adults, she was still tall enough to hold her own.
But she wasn’t absurdly huge like I was. She was just a good, practical height. And even she couldn’t find anything that fit, so she had to go custom-made?
“See? Ahaeha says the same. And Blanca, you’re taller than Ahaeha. I’ve had trouble like that too, though I’m shorter than her. There were pretty clothes I liked, but they didn’t fit, so it was a pain.”
Had that kind of scene… actually happened?
There definitely was a part in the original story where the outfit Seolhwa bought at the store ended up a little too small and clung to her body in all the wrong ways.
More importantly, the conversation was starting to veer in a very strange direction.
“Seolhwa? Ahaeha, too? What were you talking about here?”
“Ah, Yeonhwa. We were talking about the department store. Want to hear too?”
“Yep, yep!”
Yeonhwa listened with obvious delight to whatever it was we were discussing.
Then, once she’d heard the whole thing, all the liveliness that had been on her face vanished, and she was left staring with a very dry expression.
“Ah, I get it. Because of boobs, clothes don’t fit… that kind of story…”
“Doesn’t apply to Yeonhwa.”
“…Seolhwa, that was maybe a little unnecessary to say out loud…!”
Yeonhwa gave Seolhwa a creepy little smile and put subtle pressure on her at the same time.
“Hmm. Anyway, I understand what you mean. Clothes from the department store might not fit the measurements, and that could be a problem… right?”
“Yes, that’s right, Yeonhwa. So I was thinking… what if we just go to a specialty clothing store instead?”
“Yeonhwa, I’m scared.”
A specialty clothing store.
…Huh.
What kind of place was that?
I’d never even passed by one, on either side, so I had no clue what they actually did there.
Was it some kind of Dongdaemun clothing market?
But the word specialty store made me uneasy for some reason.
Places that called themselves specialty stores usually sucked money out of you like a vampire.
I wasn’t exactly strapped for cash, but I still hated the idea of blowing that much money on a single outfit.
Clothes were something you wore a while and then threw away, weren’t they?
“I mean, I’ll go wherever you all want… but isn’t that a waste of money? There’s no need to go all the way to a specialty shop just to buy one outfit.”
When I said that, Yeonhwa and Ahaeha both stared at me with identical expressions of profound shock.
“Blanca…”
Yeonhwa looked at me with pity, as if she was thinking something on her own, while Ahaeha folded her arms and snapped at me in exasperation.
“Honestly, I can’t even stand to hear that! I’ll pay, so let’s go. The person who beat me can’t be this lacking in taste…!”
It seemed I’d scratched her pride.
No, what did clothes have to do with pride, exactly?
The moment I opened my mouth to ask, Ahaeha cut me off before I could say a word, as if she didn’t want to hear it.
“Ah, no, I’m not listening. We’re going. Don’t worry about the money. I’ll buy it for you!”
“Rich. Jealous.”
Ahaeha looked fully determined to take me there herself.
If she was going to buy it for free, then I had no reason to complain.
Whatever the process, the result was still a win for me, so I smiled and thanked Ahaeha.
“Y-you don’t need to thank me that much… ah, no. Yes! Thank me! I’ll use this chance to teach you what elegance is!”
Her face flushed bright red for a second, and she floundered, but then she seemed to settle on a stance and started acting like a young lady from a wealthy family, insisting that I be grateful.
Since she couldn’t beat me with strength, I guess she wanted to win culturally instead.
Fine by me.
Not long after, the bell rang for the next class, so we couldn’t keep talking, but I didn’t think there was much else to say anyway.
If we kept going, my head would only hurt more.
- * * * * * -
In the afternoon, before autonomous training began at the stadium, Yustitia gathered all of us and started speaking, saying she had an announcement to make.
It was about the field trip.
I quietly listened from the side, trying to catch any clue as to what faction she belonged to, but Blanca didn’t show any particular reaction.
The story itself was simple enough.
Tomorrow, we were going outside the academy to observe how heroes worked in the field, and the hero in charge of supervising the students would be the one called Gazer.
We’d have to arrive at the academy parking lot by 8:30, so everyone should wake up a little earlier and come in early.
That was all.
“It’s exciting that we’ll get to see a Ranker Hero at work… but our homeroom teacher? That feels kind of weird…”
“Idiot. You should be grateful, not complaining.”
The students reacted in their own ways, but Blanca looked bizarrely indifferent.
Her face was so blank it was hard to tell what she was thinking.
At this point, I had to assume she didn’t know there’d be a villain attack.
For now, the safest assumption was that she didn’t know anything.
Yustitia told everyone the briefing was over and let the students do as they pleased.
After hearing from Seolhwa that we’d be going to a specialty clothing store instead of the department store, I was a little dazed, but there wasn’t much difference between one and the other, so I let it slide.
“Blanca. Have you gotten even a vague idea of how to do what Senior Meirin talked about?”
I walked up to Blanca, who was sleeping soundly on the grass, and nudged her awake with some random question.
“Huh? Oh, no. Not at all.”
Blanca sat up at once and answered my question.
“You too, huh. Senior sure is careless. Improving an ability isn’t something that easy.”
“Maybe because she’s talking to someone else, she can say it more comfortably? She admitted it herself when she was talking to Lucia.”
Blanca immediately flashed a grin and joined me in badmouthing our senior.
“Maybe. Or maybe I picked the wrong club… More importantly, Blanca. Since that attack, have any villains been hanging around you?”
Since I’d opened the door, it was time to gently test the waters.