At the Festival
At the Festival
"Nice weather."
A warm spring breeze was blowing.
The last time I went out for a terrorist attack was already last week.
Since then I'd been holed up at home and hadn't gone out once, so this was my first time out in a while.
On the way to the festival.
Seo-eun, Soo-bin, and I were walking down the street together for the first time in ages.
Ah, I guessed Soo-bin didn't really count as 'in ages.' She was always going back and forth to buy groceries.
Anyway, feeling the sun on me for the first time in a while was genuinely uplifting.
Yeah. People needed to sunbathe and live a little sometimes. I'd heard somewhere that sunlight had—what was it called?—vitamin D. One couldn't stay cooped up inside forever.
"Big bro, you're wearing black again?"
Seo-eun chided me.
After living with her for so long, I had learned that Seo-eun had a rule for choosing between "bro" and "big bro."
Normally, she called me "bro," but when she wanted a favor or was in a good mood, she called me "big bro."
...Couldn't she just stick with "big bro"?
Honestly, if I sat her down and gave her a stern talking-to, I thought she might use it all the time.
Still, I didn't want to push that far. It would only make things awkward and create distance between us. I'd wait for her to open up on her own. Someday she'd call me 'big bro' without needing an excuse, right? Surely that day would come...
For now, she was in a good mood and calling me 'big bro,' which was nice. But why had she said I was wearing black again?
I checked my outfit. I was wearing a black coat, with ordinary clothes underneath—not that anyone could see them beneath the coat.
The result was an all-black outfit, just like when I played Egostic. What? Black was the only proper color for a coat, okay?
I decided to share a truth Seo-eun wouldn't know with her.
"Seo-eun, men wear black."
"What are you talking about?"
Seo-eun replied with a little snort of laughter. Huh? She normally was not this cheerful. I had been expecting a contemptuous sneer, so her reaction caught me completely off guard.
In fact, she was humming to herself as she walked. She looked genuinely happy.
Seo-eun, were you always this serious about ice cream?
Or was she simply happy to be out for the first time in a while?
Even Soo-bin was covering her mouth and smiling fondly, like she found this side of Seo-eun cute.
People stole glances at Seo-eun, probably because her silver hair was so unusual. Soo-bin was a striking beauty as well, so merely walking down the street was enough to draw attention. What was going on?
For the record, Soo-bin had a Recognition Reduction Filter applied after she appeared on a broadcast. It made anyone looking at that specific face unable to recognize it, so naturally it did not work on me, since I already knew that Soo-bin was Soo-bin.
Come to think of it, the contrast was rather strange. I appeared on broadcasts wearing a mask and using a filter, so I could walk around openly with my bare face. Soo-bin, meanwhile, needed the Recognition Reduction Filter every time she went outside.
For the record, the Recognition Reduction Filter was itself a marvel of cutting-edge technology. A genius American researcher invented it after asking, "How long are heroes supposed to keep wearing those ridiculous skin-tight masks?" After someone passed through the device, Recognition Reduction remained active on their face for a set period.
Every Hero Association office had one, and Seo-eun had somehow obtained the blueprints and built one for our underground base too. Thank you, Seo-eun-emon!
Without Recognition Reduction, we were doomed. Soo-bin would not even be able to buy groceries.
If Soo-bin could not go outside, we would have to order delivery for every meal. That would be the true homebody life...
"Oh, I see it!"
Seo-eun shouted, all worked up.
Yeah, I saw it too.
[The 13th International Ice Cream Festival]
I never imagined I would end up at an ice cream festival, but here we were.
Booths with freezers lined every street. All I could wonder was how enormous the festival's total electricity bill must be.
Booths with freezers lined every street. The only thought that came to mind was a vague curiosity about how much the total electric bill for this festival would be.
Seo-eun was already excited, whipping her head around in every direction, and Soo-bin was looking around too, like she found it fascinating.
"Oh, rice ice cream!"
Seo-eun went scurrying off somewhere. Hey, we were supposed to stick together!
Soo-bin and I slowly followed after her. By the time we got there, Seo-eun had already bought an ice cream and was holding it.
White ice cream in a cone.
"It's good! Big bro, big sis, want to try some?"
Seo-eun asked, eyes sparkling.
Rice ice cream. I'd heard of it, but never actually tried it.
"Sure, give it here."
I took the cone Seo-eun handed me and took a bite.
Huh. It's good.
I'd thought it might taste like instant rice, but it was a lot closer to vanilla.
"Oh, it's pretty good. Here, Soo-bin, have a bite too."
"Huh? I, I'm..."
Soo-bin suddenly panicked and started turning red. What was up with her?
"It's good, you sure you don't want to try?"
"Yeah, big sis, come on, try it!"
Under the repeated assault from me and Seo-eun, Soo-bin's face grew redder and redder until she finally dropped her head.
"Okay. G-give it to me."
She stammered and reached out her hand.
Wait, why had she turned back into the extremely timid Soo-bin from the early days?
Was it because I'd been too pushy about making her eat it? Had the nightmare of when we first met come flooding back?
"...Ugh... this is... indirect... Am I the only one being weird about this?"
She muttered something too quietly for me to hear, then closed her eyes and took a determined bite of the ice cream. Why was she eating ice cream with such solemn resolve?
"Mm... it's good!"
After one bite, her eyes finally lit up and she said it was good. Right? It tasted like slightly nutty vanilla ice cream and was surprisingly good.
After Soo-bin took a bite, the cone returned to Seo-eun, who neatly finished the rest. She ate well.
***
We wandered around the festival for a while after that, sampling ice cream. We tried so many different things that it felt like we were hemorrhaging money, but money was the one thing we had plenty of, so it wasn't a problem.
Since it was a global festival that traveled from country to country, we saw every kind of ice cream imaginable. Familiar basics such as chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and mint chocolate were everywhere, along with branded flavors like Dad Is an Alien and Shooting Star. Beyond those were countless varieties we would probably never encounter anywhere else.
There were horrifying hybrid flavors—wasabi, naengmyeon, steak, ramen, and more. The steak flavor was actually better than I expected. Was this what char-grilled ice cream would taste like? I did not even know what I was saying anymore.
Then there were flavors that had no right to exist in this world: desk, booger, and earwax. Why were they charging money for those...?
...Of course, we played rock-paper-scissors and made the loser try one, so we bought the booger flavor. Soo-bin alone threw scissors and lost. Her eyes watered as she ate it, and after one bite her complexion deteriorated so sharply that we threw away the rest. Don't eat it. Leave it to the trash can.
At the moment, I was eating mango ice cream. I had no idea why I had come all this way only to eat mango flavor, but... did you not agree, Seo-eun?
When I asked her accusingly, she whispered back without a trace of shame, standing on her tiptoes and putting her mouth right up to my ear.
"...You're the leader of the Mangostic Fandom, so of course you have to eat mango ice cream!"
"Seo-eun... honestly, don't you think the mango-whatever thing is kind of overdoing it by now? It stops being funny if you milk it too much."
"No? It's funny every single time. And no matter how much you deny it, your fan club is already called the Mangostic Fandom."
She burst out laughing after saying that much. She really was living for the joy of teasing me by then...
Well, as long as you're happy.
While looking around, we eventually ended up at the event corner.
This section sold collaboration ice creams—Frankenstein flavor, Micky MaXXX flavor, and so on.
And over there was Egostic-flavored Ice Cream...
What?
Wait, what-flavored ice cream?
"Get your Egostic-flavored Ice Cream! Only available here!"
A woman inside the booth was loudly hawking it.
What is that.
That's a violation of my publicity rights!
"Big bro, pfft, you even have an ice cream. Puahaha!"
Seo-eun burst into laughter. Was it really that funny?
Wait, is Soo-bin turning her head and laughing too?
What was even funnier was that it was the only booth with a line. The area in front was packed with people holding the ice cream and taking commemorative photos. For Instagram, perhaps? The whole thing was dizzying...
At Seo-eun and Soo-bin's forceful insistence, I eventually joined the line and bought ice cream flavored after me. What exactly did Egostic flavor taste like?
The ice cream itself was ordinary vanilla, topped with my trademark chocolate half-mask. They had even recreated the eyes and mouth in chocolate, which felt... bizarre. The only other difference was the mango filling inside.
Thankfully, it tasted fine. Did the seller realize that Egostic himself had come to eat Egostic-flavored Ice Cream...?
A little farther in, we found a game booth where you threw darts to pop balloons. Pop enough and you won a prize. Since this was an ice cream festival, the prize was ice cream too. A ten-tier ice cream? What was that supposed to be?
"Seo-eun, I'll show you. I was a master dart thrower back in the day, you know? I'll win you that ten-tier ice cream or whatever!"
"Big bro, you're not going to cheat with telekinesis, are you?"
Seo-eun had struck a nerve, so I hurriedly started the game. This was why I could not stand sharp-eyed little kids. The booth could accommodate two players, and no one else was there, so we could begin immediately.
"Hoo... this weighty and cool sensation."
I was spouting nonsense at Seo-eun while gripping a dart when someone else came up to play the game next to us.
Without thinking, I glanced over to see who it was,
And my brain came to a dead stop.
Brilliant golden hair.
A face that looked more beautiful than anyone in the world.
Uh... why are you here?
Uh... what are you doing here?