Encounter
Encounter
"Ha-ru, over here!"
In front of the ice cream festival grounds.
Shin Ha-ru got off the bus and met her upperclassman in front of the festival grounds.
"Oh, you got here first?"
"I just got here too! Let's go check things out!"
"Yeah. Sure."
Seeing Chae-hyun chatter away with an adorable smile as soon as she spotted her, Shin Ha-ru found herself smiling.
Today, the two of them had decided to go around the festival together. The weather was nice, after all.
Walking along together like that, Ha-ru gazed fondly at Chae-hyun, who was talking brightly and laughing.
Chae-hyun was a year older than her, but she was short and so cheerful that she gave off more of a little-sister vibe.
"Want to try this? They say it's rice-flavored ice cream."
"Sure!"
Seeing Chae-hyun enjoy the ice cream lifted her own spirits.
Truth be told, she wasn't terribly fond of ice cream, but as she spent this leisurely day out with her close friend for the first time in a while, her mood was noticeably improving.
Shin Ha-ru didn't have many friends. Since childhood, studying and hero work had consumed her life, leaving her distant from others. Even after entering college, she might have remained completely alone if Chae-hyun had not actively befriended her.
Of course, she did have a couple of friends she'd made through her hero identity. Shadow Walker and Icicle, both A-rank heroes like her, were prime examples. But she'd been out of touch with them for a while now.
Shadow Walker only operated at night, so he maintained a nocturnal schedule—sleeping during the day, awake at night—which made meeting up difficult. Icicle was always busy covering the entire lower half of the Korean Peninsula by herself. As a result, their three-person group chat was often dead silent more days than not. To be fair, Stardus herself was plenty busy because of Egostic...
She walked along the street with Chae-hyun, turning over these thoughts.
They attracted plenty of attention as they walked. Kim Chae-hyun was cute enough to turn heads in her own right, but Shin Ha-ru stood out even more—tall for a woman, with blonde hair streaming behind her.
Anyway, after wandering around here and there, Shin Ha-ru and Kim Chae-hyun had eaten their fill and were now making their way toward the event booths.
"Whoa! They even have Egostic-flavored Ice Cream!"
Chae-hyun smiled brightly and suggested they go check it out.
Ha-ru had come out to forget Egostic, only to encounter him again in ice-cream form. Her face stiffened, but Chae-hyun, already deep in the Mangostic Fandom, did not notice.
So the two of them got in line and bought the ice cream.
All Ha-ru could do was sigh and snap photos with her phone of Chae-hyun happily smiling as she ate it.
Seeing Chae-hyun like that left her feeling bitter. At least Chae-hyun never badmouthed Stardus in front of her. Some of the more toxic Mangostic fans did insult Stardus, as Ha-ru had discovered to her shock when she searched for Stardus online and read their posts herself.
They took photos and wandered around the remaining streets, and before they knew it, quite a lot of time had passed.
She'd gotten to spend a lot of time with Chae-hyun, something she hadn't done in a while, so she could call it a pretty worthwhile day.
Though she was still uneasy whenever she thought about Egostic...
"Let's do just that one last thing and then go!"
Chae-hyun pointed to a booth where visitors threw darts at balloons. Apparently, anyone who hit enough balloons won a special three-tier ice cream cone.
"Sounds good."
And so they slowly made their way over.
The booth was designed to accommodate two customers at once.
One side was already occupied by another customer.
At first, she thought she was looking at a family on an outing.
A mom, a dad, and a daughter, maybe.
But the mom and dad both had black hair, and the daughter's was white. Dyed, maybe?
She'd never seen silver hair in her life, so she was curious. Up close, she got a better look, and the daughter seemed like she was in middle school, but the mom and dad were awfully young. It probably wasn't a family—but what was their relationship, then?
Right in the middle of that thought, she felt a flicker of puzzlement. Since when had she been the type to scrutinize strangers like this?
She might have blamed her curiosity on the silver hair, but normally she would do no more than glance at even a Black man with a bright green Afro before moving on. Yet this apparent family kept drawing her attention.
Especially that black-haired man. There was something familiar about him...
Well, she was probably just imagining things.
She shook off the pointless thoughts and decided to just watch Chae-hyun throw darts.
Stepping up close to the booth before she knew it, she called for the staff.
"Over here."
***
Oh, shit.
"Over here."
"Yes, right away!"
"Ten darts, please."
"Certainly!"
What on earth is going on?
I had only come to enjoy an ordinary festival. Why was this happening to me?
I could feel my hands and feet trembling.
My back was already slick with cold sweat.
My eyes were darting around uncontrollably.
I glanced to the side. Seo-eun and Soo-bin had gone rigid too.
We all knew Stardus's bare face.
Which meant we all knew exactly how dangerous this situation was.
I swallowed.
I had no clue why Stardus had to be here, of all places, but I needed to run. Now.
Stardus possessed super-strength and flight.
But her super-strength was not merely a straightforward strength ability.
More precisely, her entire body possessed extraordinary physical capabilities.
At this point, she could mostly just produce absurd strength when she wanted to. Later, however, she would gradually transcend the limits of the human body and become a true superhuman.
Her senses would develop as well, allowing her to see farther and hear more clearly than ordinary people.
In other words, the Hero Association had classified her ability as super-strength because it did not yet understand it, but it was more accurate to regard Stardus herself as superhuman.
Her five senses were not the only things that developed. Her sixth sense did too.
She could instinctively notice when something felt wrong. Basically, Hyper Sense?
By the timeline of the Original Work, of course, this was still early. She hadn't reached the point of taking one look at me and instantly thinking, 'That bastard is Egostic!' But she had already developed enough to think, 'Something's weird here...'
Bottom line: I was screwed.
I needed to run.
But I'd already accepted the darts.
Wouldn't it look even more suspicious if I suddenly fled without throwing after accepting them?
"Hup!"
"Oh, you're pretty good!"
"Of course! I was always a little good at this!"
The woman beside us, laughing as she threw darts.
Kim Chae-hyun, Ha-ru's close friend and upperclassman.
In the Original Work, she was the upperclassman Ha-ru was closest to during her ordinary civilian life. Her bright, adorable personality had made her fairly popular as a character. Of course, there was what happened to her later in the story...
"Throwing and throwing the darts~"
Beside us, she was popping balloons with a flurry of mad dart-throwing. No, she was throwing so well I briefly thought it was Shin Ha-ru doing it.
"Excuse me, are you not going to throw?"
The attendant carefully asked me as I stood there blankly.
Oh, right. I needed to throw. Fast.
I should hurry and throw while Ha-ru's attention was still fixed on Chae-hyun, then get out of there.
"Oh, sorry. The person beside me was throwing so well that I became distracted. I'll start now."
I spoke quietly but quickly to the attendant, then grabbed the darts and started throwing.
"Ha-ha, Seo-eun. Watch closely. Let me show you my dart-throwing skills!"
"Uh, yeah. J-just throw them quickly."
Seo-eun answered while trembling, just as I expected. I wished she would act a little better—what good was it if her voice shook? Then again, my hands were trembling too, so we were in the same boat.
Anyway, I started just flinging them. Since I was just flinging them, my accuracy was obviously terrible. In the meantime, Shin Ha-ru's group next to us seemed to have finished already. Even though they'd shown up later than us...
"Wow! You got them all!"
"Wow, how did you do that?"
"Give us the prize, the prize!"
Wait, she hit all ten in the middle of this?
The attendant laughed and said Chae-hyun was the first person that day to hit all ten. After asking her to wait, the attendant brought out a cone and began piling scoops from the freezer onto it.
So that was the prize, the triple-decker ice cream cone.
Kim Chae-hyun held the cone in one hand and giggled.
Perhaps because it had three tiers instead of one, the ice cream wobbled precariously above her hand.
One wrong move, and something catastrophic was about to happen.
I'd finished throwing my darts too. Had I hit four balloons? Naturally, there was no prize. It would have been stranger if I had hit much while my hands shook that badly. Still, this was my chance to escape.
"Oh, dear. Too bad. We'll be on our way now."
After saying that, I turned and tried to slip away quickly. I needed to run.
That was what I was thinking as I pivoted to the side.
The problem was that Kim Chae-hyun happened to be standing right beside me at that very moment, holding her triple-decker ice cream cone and posing for a photo.
Unfortunately, she turned at exactly the same moment. Our shoulders collided, and she lurched toward me.
Along with the ice cream cone she held precariously in one hand.
And in that instant, I saw the future.
Splat.
'Eeeeek!'
The catastrophic future in which the ice cream would hit me.
Ice cream on my clothes would have been bad enough, but I knew that was not the real danger. Judging by how flustered Chae-hyun was, this incident was about to entangle me with Shin Ha-ru.
And so, watching the ice cream topple toward me as if in slow motion, I felt genuinely like crying.
...Is God just actively out to get me or something?
What the fuck. What did I ever do to you?