An Unexpected Text
“Good morning, Eunhyuk…?”
Early morning.
Cecilia had woken up before me. She seemed to have just finished washing her face—her skin still faintly damp—and looked at me with a puzzled little voice.
I gave her a light wave of my hand and turned my attention back to the message, reading it carefully.
What on earth was this?
Well, if I thought about it, Unho had given me a heads-up before, so it wasn’t a complete surprise…
Even so, this was way too fast.
“What’s going on?”
Her voice came from beside me. I glanced over and found Cecilia plopped down on the blanket, leaning her head toward me.
“A text?”
“It’s from the National Police Agency…”
“…Again?”
A faint shadow crossed her face as she asked.
I couldn’t answer right away and instead let out a low murmur.
Again, huh.
She was probably imagining something like last time—the summons to the police station last Friday and the little mess that followed. It had been awkward for both of us. No wonder her expression darkened at the memory…
Unfortunately for her, this was far bigger than a simple summons.
“…Want to read it yourself?”
I held out my phone. She took it and began slowly reading the words.
“…Notification of school transfer for otherworlders and preparation guidelines? Uh… huh?”
“Yeah…”
“…Eunhyuk, this is…?”
“Basically, they’re saying they’re going to put otherworlders into schools and educate them…”
Even as I said it out loud, I scratched my head, unconvinced.
A school transfer notice?
Telling Cecilia—and every otherworlder, for that matter—to enroll in school?
What were they even thinking? I couldn’t begin to understand it.
First of all, I didn’t get why they were so determined to send otherworlders to school. If education was the goal, there were other ways. I’d heard the police were already keeping them under semi-isolation for protection. They could just gather them somewhere spacious every so often and bring in instructors.
So why use actual schools?
That led to another question.
A notice about “transferring” otherworlders into schools?
Not the specialized academies Unho had mentioned before?
In other words, they were going to slip otherworlders into existing schools?
Just hearing it, I could already picture the massive chaos. The elites higher up couldn’t possibly be unaware of something even I could foresee.
And another thing felt off.
Why was the administrative process this fast? Only a few days—literally just a few days—had passed since the otherworlders appeared. Yet everything was already moving this smoothly?
How?
“What should we do, Eunhyuk…?”
Cecilia asked in a voice thick with panic. I couldn’t give her a proper answer and just clutched my head.
It was sudden, and there was too much I didn’t know. The text they’d sent looked slapped together; beyond the bare outline, far too much information was missing.
“…Can I have the phone back for a second?”
“Ah, okay.”
If I didn’t know, I had to ask. Luckily, there was someone in my contacts who would know about this.
I tapped the screen and called Unho.
Unho finally picked up a full thirty minutes later.
I called, got no answer, hung up, waited, and called again… He must have been busy with something else, but I kept at it until I finally got through.
“…Good morning, Eunhyuk. Did you have a good weekend?”
“The weekend was fine. I just didn’t expect things to blow up the second it ended…”
A small, wry laugh came through the line. Feeling Cecilia’s gaze on me, I continued.
“…I have some questions about the school transfer notice.”
“Of course. I figured you would. Let’s see…”
There was a rustle of paper. He seemed to be flipping through documents.
“The text we sent was a bit sparse, wasn’t it? For most of the other otherworlders, a verbal notice was enough… Anyway. What would you like to know?”
“Is this mandatory?”
“For now… yes.”
The casual reply made me clutch my head again. I’d been hoping it was optional.
“He says it’s mandatory…?”
“Apparently so…”
When I told Cecilia, anxiety flooded her face almost instantly. Her ears, the tip of her tail, even her pupils trembled faintly.
A complicated feeling settled over me as I spoke back into the phone.
“What’s the reason? I mean, why suddenly something like school…?”
“Well… the main purpose is social education.”
“Social education?”
“Socialization of otherworlders through interaction with students… basically training them to adapt to modern society. Making friends, learning basic knowledge, that sort of thing.”
…
It sounded ridiculous. At the same time, though, a small part of me thought it wasn’t completely absurd.
I’d been thinking about this recently.
What would Cecilia need in order to live in this world?
Protection from everything external…? Buying things for her, accompanying her whenever she went out, handling every legal matter myself…
Sure, I could manage that to some extent. But not forever. Life ahead was long. Not just a few days. Weeks, months, years—decades of living in this world.
Simply “getting by” wouldn’t be enough. Cecilia had to live here from now on.
Common sense, knowledge, values, economics, ethics, politics, social connections… she would need all of it.
She did need it.
Once I thought that far, I could no longer dismiss the idea of “school” as pure nonsense.
“Haaah…”
I let out a deep sigh. Cecilia flinched and stared at me. Seeing her anxious, trembling eyes made something like guilt creep up inside me.
Two things worried me.
First: could this timid little cat even adapt to a place like school?
And second…
“…It sounds good in theory, but what about safety?”
“When you say safety…”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
I glanced sideways. The TV was on, tuned to the news.
Information was always scarce. Always necessary. I’d realized that a few days ago, yet I’d still been lazy about checking the news for a while. To make up for it even a little, I’d turned on the TV while waiting for the call to connect.
And that was the information I found.
This world was rejecting change even more than I’d thought, still treating otherworlders like foreign contaminants. Not everyone felt that way, but there were a great many who did.
“Down with the otherworlders!!”
“““Waaaaaah!!!!!”””
“Eek.”
At the roar pouring from the screen, Cecilia’s face went deathly pale and her whole body flinched. I slowly reached out and patted her trembling back.
“…I didn’t realize the protests had gotten this intense.”
Unho had probably heard that shout just now too. The protesters’ voices were so full of venom they carried clearly even through the phone.
“A massive demonstration so large they can barely suppress it, let alone control it. Plenty of radicals among them, so civilians and police alike are getting hurt…”
“….”
“If you open something like a school in this situation, won’t it cause a disaster?”
As I’d said earlier, I wasn’t rejecting the idea of school itself. I couldn’t. But if even the bare minimum of safety couldn’t be guaranteed, the whole thing was a non-starter.
“…We’re planning to pay special attention to security with that exact point in mind.”
“Do you really think you can hold back a protest of that size?”
“Of course, in the time remaining before the actual transfers begin, we’ll thoroughly lower the intensity of the protests through Q&A sessions and public announcements…”
“So completely stopping them is impossible, then?”
A brief silence fell. I checked the TV, which was still blaring nothing but shouts, then picked up the remote and turned it off. I kept gently patting Cecilia’s still-trembling body.
“…It is necessary.”
“I know. But there are a lot of practical problems.”
The conversation wasn’t going anywhere. Unho seemed to sense it too; a thoughtful voice came through the line.
“…The official start of transfers is scheduled for next week.”
“Yes. It was in the text too. …I can’t help feeling you’re rushing this.”
I rubbed my brow as I answered. After a short pause, Unho continued.
“Until then… why don’t the two of you discuss it and decide?”
“…Huh? Didn’t you just say it was mandatory?”
I asked, puzzled. Wait—could this mean…?
“…To be honest, I don’t think this transfer system is completely free of problems either…”
I cheered inwardly. That was exactly what I’d wanted to hear. In other words, if necessary, he would raise objections to the transfer system itself on my behalf. Just like with the temporary guardianship system last time.
I was genuinely glad this man wasn’t a bad person.
“…Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Then for now… I’ll contact you again later.”
“All right. I’ll be waiting.”
Click. I hung up.
“…Whew.”
“Is it over…?”
As I exhaled—part exhaustion, part relief—Cecilia looked up at me and asked carefully. I studied her expression for a moment, thinking.
“…Cecilia.”
“Hm?”
“…Do you want to go to school?”
No matter how much I thought about it, the only thing I could do in the end was ask her directly. I watched her eyes go wide and waited for whatever she would say next.