Chapter 15
Chapter 15
Her eyes were a vivid red, as if carved from rubies. Her skin was so pale it looked as though it had never once seen sunlight. And her hair, soft and lustrous, bore the clear signs of someone's devoted, meticulous care.
Taken all together, at a glance she was a cool-featured beauty—
"I-I'm sorry."
The expression on the speaker's face, however, was so painfully timid and awkward it undercut everything.
The truth was, the moment Shin So-hee had first seen that face, she'd been so thrown off that she couldn't think of a single thing to say. Judging by how pale and stricken the other girl looked, this clearly hadn't been on purpose. Shin So-hee had no idea how someone ended up falling from the sky, but in the end, she'd just been unlucky enough to be crouched there beneath her. And it didn't exactly seem like the girl had intended to shove her crotch into Shin So-hee's face, either.
Still, that didn't mean she could just say, "Oh, is that so?" and let it go. Too many things about this didn't sit right.
She couldn't pinpoint exactly what was bothering her, but a lot of things were.
"You think 'sorry' fixes everything?!"
Shin So-hee rolled her eyes for a moment and then shouted it out. The words had shot out of her mouth without ever passing through her brain, but that didn't make them totally insincere. Every time she tried to look the girl in the face, the image from moments ago kept burning its way back into her mind, making it impossible to focus.
She was sure this would replay in her head tonight, too. Thoughts like a friend suddenly hugging her from behind, or the accidental press of someone's chest against her arm when they linked arms—those usually surfaced in the middle of the night, or right after she woke up in the morning. But this? Someone had shoved a skirt and panties right in her face in broad daylight. The stimulus was way too intense to just see and forget.
Honestly, Shin So-hee didn't have an answer to that question herself. If someone had asked, "What do you want her to do, then?" she'd have had no reply. She just felt like she had to do something, considering how things had turned out.
"Wait—!"
Thankfully, or maybe not?—right before the two could sink into an awkward silence where neither could find any words, another pretty girl fell from the sky.
"Who do you think you are, grabbing Sara by the collar and causing a scene?!"
What was this? Was she actually dreaming? Had all her recent worries conjured up something this bizarre?
But it was far too vivid for a dream. Sure, dreams always felt real while you were in them, but sensing every little detail, the sound of cars passing by, the weight of the girl she'd been holding, the particular chill of the March wind, was strange. Even when her friends had shown up in dreams before, nothing had ever felt this detailed.
The second girl marched up to Shin So-hee in a huff, grabbed her hand, and yanked it away. Taking the opening, Shin So-hee let go at once. If she'd held on any longer, the two of them would've just stood there staring at each other in unbearable silence. Better this way.
Of course, dodging the awkward silence didn't mean she'd dodged the next awkward situation.
The second girl swept the first, the one called Sara, behind her, then glared at Shin So-hee with all the menace she could muster.
Shin So-hee felt a little sorry for her, but the girl's eyes were so inherently kind that the glare wasn't the least bit intimidating.
"And what are you supposed to be?"
"Me?"
The girl hesitated for a moment, looking embarrassed by the question. She acted like even she wasn't quite sure how to explain the fact that she'd fallen from up there, too.
"I-I'm Sara's friend!"
"So the Sara you're talking about—she's the one hiding behind your back?"
The girl nodded when Shin So-hee asked.
"That's right! I'm the friend of the girl you were harassing just a second ago! For no reason, to someone you've never even—"
She cut herself off with an "oops" expression. Glancing back over her shoulder, she asked quietly.
"You two haven't met before, right?"
"Right."
"See! You can't just grab a total stranger by the collar! What are you, some kind of thug?!"
"A thug... wow."
Shin So-hee smacked herself on the forehead in disbelief.
"So what you're saying is, this whole situation is entirely my fault? The girl behind you has absolutely nothing to do with it?"
"Exactly! Just looking at her should tell you that!"
It was a completely absurd argument. No matter how good a friend she was, this girl had only just dropped out of the sky a second ago. There was no way she'd actually seen how things had gone down.
"Hey, you okay down there?"
A man's voice called from somewhere above. All the kids on the ground, Shin So-hee included, looked up at once.
"W-We're fine!"
The girl called Sara shouted back.
"Fine? What do you mean 'fine'?"
The man's voice was incredulous.
"No, that's not—"
"Yeah. Go ahead and ask her."
Shin So-hee scratched roughly at the back of her head as she spoke.
"You're Sara, right? Tell us what happened just now. The perpetrator should be the one doing the explaining, after all."
"Ah, well."
Just as Sara was about to open her mouth—
Thump.
A soft sound came, and then a blonde pretty girl dropped down. Unlike hair dyed with cheap bleach, this was a perfect blonde, the color properly taken all the way to the roots. The fact that she'd tied it into two pigtails threw things off a little, but on second glance, she had the kind of face that could pull off any hairstyle.
Her chest was the largest of the three.
No, seriously. What was today? What was actually happening?
When she was a kid, while everyone else was watching magical girl shows and cartoons swimming in pink, Shin So-hee had been off reading boys' comics. She'd seen setups like this a few times in those pages. Not that she read that kind of thing anymore.
Like catching a pretty girl who fell from the sky. Or suddenly getting dragged into some fight only to find out the protagonist had a hidden power...
...Not that she actually thought something like that was going to happen here. There had to be some mundane reason mixed in. This was reality, after all.
"Is there another one coming?"
Shin So-hee looked up at the sky, but all she could see above were a few branches poking out over the wall.
"Are you sure nothing's wrong over there?"
The voice from before called out again.
"We're really fine!"
Sara shouted back, louder and clearer this time.
"Yeah? You're sure?"
"Completely sure!"
"I'm leaving!"
"Leave already, geez!"
"No manners, honestly," the voice grumbled.
"Man..."
Sara bristled for a second in the direction of the wall, then pressed her lips together, apparently unable to come up with a retort.
"Well, that part's true. No manners at all—shoving your panties in a stranger's face."
"Ah, uh, that's—!"
At the bomb Shin So-hee had just dropped, Sara couldn't muster a proper reply and let out another strange noise....To be honest, the reaction was a little entertaining.
"...Sara?"
The girl who'd fallen second turned around with a stunned expression.
"...What the heck is going on right now?"
The girl who'd fallen last still hadn't figured out the situation.
Huh.
What a mess.
Shin So-hee scratched the back of her head again.
*
"So."
It was only after they'd all calmed down a bit and talked things through that she could piece together roughly how the whole mess had come to pass.
"You were trying to 'walk home from school' to dodge your employees."
Sara nodded.
"And to do that, you absolutely couldn't leave through the main gate."
Sara nodded again.
"So you got a recommendation from an upperclassman who's been at the school a year longer—a recommendation for a wall that's easy to climb over?"
"..."
Sara gave a tiny nod, head still lowered.
"And of all the places you could've landed, I happened to be crouched right there, and you ended up wrapping your fully spread skirt right over my head."
Maybe hearing it spelled out so objectively was too mortifying, because Sara couldn't bring herself to lift her head.
Shin So-hee smacked her forehead once she'd heard the whole explanation.
What kind of contrived situation was this, something straight out of a romance comic?
The sheltered young lady who dreams of the outside world, sneaks away from the people protecting her, and, knowing nothing about the world, ends up in danger. A classic event setup where the protagonist comes to save her.
Of course, in this case, Shin So-hee's role in the scenario was less the protagonist and more the villain she runs into first.
"Haah..."
Shin So-hee let out a deep sigh. She looked over at the pretty girl who'd been bravely trying to rescue the damsel-in-distress from her.
"Ah, um, I'm sorry..."
The righteous girl with the chestnut ponytail had introduced herself as Yu Ha-neul.
So she was in the protagonist role, then. The one who dashes in to rescue the lady or princess from the villain she meets first.
Well, she really had dropped down from the sky—sure, you could call that dashing.
Shin So-hee let out another deep sigh.
Right. Like I'm some kind of protagonist. It was neither strange nor special, just boring, ordinary reality. When Shin So-hee sighed again, Yu Ha-neul and Sara both looked even more mortified.
The girl who'd jumped in last wore an apologetic expression too, probably influenced by the other two's demeanor.
"..."
So there the three of them stood, lined up against the wall with heads hanging low, while Shin So-hee faced them with a sour look on her face. Passersby kept shooting glances their way.
To anyone watching, it was the picture of a thug extorting victims—a commoner blatantly shaking down three girls who looked like they had money.
Shin So-hee scratched the back of her head again and sighed heavily.
"Alright, whatever. If it really was just a coincidence, then I don't have any real reason to be mad."
Shin So-hee knew that standing around any longer was only going to work against her. There was no point in dragging it out.
"Let's just pretend this never happened. And let's not run into each other again. You don't need to know my name, either."
"Yeah, uh."
The righteous ponytail, Yu Ha-neul, called out to Shin So-hee, looking incredibly guilty about something, but Shin So-hee just frowned and waved her hand dismissively.
"What. What more do you have to say? Just drop it. I said it never happened, okay?"
Honestly, a small part of her had been excited. The three pretty girls aside, the first one who'd fallen, Sara, was genuinely beautiful. Insanely so. So beautiful Shin So-hee thought she'd never seen anyone that pretty in her entire life.
But stories, by their nature, had supporting characters and main characters. These girls were surrounded by people, and there was no reason for someone who'd made that bad of a first impression to squeeze herself in and ruin the atmosphere. Shin So-hee had plenty of friends at her own school, so she knew how these things went. It would be even more awkward if she tried to wedge herself into a group that was obviously made up of rich kids.
...Her delusional tendencies were really starting to get serious. Maybe I should actually see a counselor, she thought, and she was just about to turn away when—
"Well, I'll be going. You... uh, what was it."
Shin So-hee looked over at Sara as she spoke.
"Well. Enjoy your walk. I'm off? Next time we see each other, we're strangers, got it?"
She'd just said it and was about to leave when—
"W-Wait!"
Suddenly, Sara shouted something in Shin So-hee's direction.
"What?"
Shin So-hee turned back with a frown. And when she saw those red eyes staring straight at her, she was a little startled.
"Earlier, you asked if just saying sorry was supposed to fix everything."
"What?"
Shin So-hee answered, feeling most of the sense that had been slowly draining out of her head finally escape through an unidentified hole.
"Didn't you hear what I just said? I said let's just pretend it never happened."
Though honestly, considering she knew she'd be thinking about this again tonight, just pretending it never happened did feel a little off.
"Just saying sorry doesn't feel like enough!"
But without even hearing Shin So-hee out, Sara quickly blurted that out.
"..."
The problem was, after saying that much, Sara clearly had no follow-up. She just stood there, leaving Shin So-hee tilting her head.
"...So?"
"Umm..."
Where had the confident expression from a second ago gone? Now wearing a slightly blank look, Sara spoke in a much less certain voice.
"How about... a meal or something...?"
"...Huh?"
That was the moment Shin So-hee's ordinary life flipped completely upside down and into something entirely unrecognizable.