The Dragon and the Lick
Jeju Island school trip, day two.
Even though we'd eaten so much for dinner that the restaurant owner himself came out to take a photo with us, my sturdy stomach was completely fine the next morning. If anything had been wrong with it, I would have assumed some disaster had struck.
I woke up at a reasonable hour, forcibly dragged Choi Hoon out of the near-comatose sleep he was in, and headed down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.
"Ah! Siu! Over here!"
"You're early?"
"Hehe. I heard the breakfast here is supposed to be amazing."
"Of course. I picked this place after carefully considering all of that."
Ha-yan was already seated in the restaurant, happily munching away at a perfectly classic breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and buttered bread. I grabbed a plate of my own, portioned out a reasonable amount of food, and sat down beside her while stroking her hair.
Then Do Ji-yeon came into view—hollow-eyed, mindlessly spooning abalone porridge from her plate with zero expression. While buttering my bread and popping it into my mouth, I asked Ha-yan in a low voice.
"Did something happen last night? Why does she look like that? She looks clean enough, but her condition is totally off."
Ha-yan gave a bitter little smile and whispered back the same way.
"I showered and went straight to sleep after talking on the phone with you, right? But Ji-yeon went right back out and raided the other kids' rooms. That much was fine, but..."
"But?"
Ha-yan let out a deep sigh and continued.
"She got caught by our homeroom teacher. And not just him—the student affairs director who was talking with him at the time, too."
"Oh. That's a little sad."
The student affairs director... Even if teachers' authority had declined a bit these days, at our school the director's authority was as ironclad as ever. On top of that, this particular teacher had voluntarily held the position for over ten years out of pure mission to guide students onto the right path, so his power was considerable.
And of all people—after so many warnings not to wander around after lights-out, fully booked hotel or not—she got caught by both the homeroom teacher and the mission-driven student affairs director at the same time. Talk about rotten luck.
I took a spoonful of soup after the bread and asked Ha-yan again.
"So? Did they make her do hotel chores all night or something?"
Maybe they'd had her do laundry for the place? Was that why she looked like this?
"Nooo, not that. Just... um... you know. Our director's specialty."
"Ah. Killing people with words?"
"Yeah. Exactly that."
"She got caught in the absolute worst way."
It wasn't like the old days when teachers would beat students with sticks. The reason the director could pin students down on the spot? He possessed such overwhelming verbal firepower that even dragging in over a hundred celebrity Yoo X-seoks wouldn't beat him. Even I, a dragon, couldn't out-talk the man.
"She said she had to sit there and listen from ten o'clock until one in the morning before she finally got back. That's why she's in this state."
"Slurp. Reaped what she sowed."
I took a sip of organic orange juice and simply watched hollow-eyed Do Ji-yeon with a "figures" kind of look. She met my gaze weakly, apparently without the energy to even talk back.
"The mental damage is too much... Ugh. My head hurts."
"Can you climb Seongsan Ilchulbong in that mental state? I heard even though it's short, there are a ton of stairs."
Our morning goal for day two was Seongsan Ilchulbong. It was a must-visit if you came to Jeju Island, and we planned to check out the other spots around it as well.
But at my words, Do Ji-yeon seemed to remember once more that she was on Jeju Island for a school trip. With both hands she—
SMACK!!
"Gyaaaaaah!!! Why! Why the hell are you flipping out again all of a sudden!!!"
—no, she grabbed the head of Choi Hoon, who was slurping instant ramen right beside her first thing in the morning, forced his face up, and mercilessly slapped both of his cheeks. Hit by a bolt from the blue for no reason whatsoever, Choi Hoon glared at her with tears even welling up from the sheer impact, but she didn't spare him so much as a glance as she spoke.
"Yeah! We can't be all listless when we've come all the way for a school trip! We have to eat more of this delicious breakfast too! Of course we do!!"
Without even looking at Choi Hoon, Do Ji-yeon stood up and went to get more food. His cheeks had turned bright red from how hard she'd hit him in that short span. He stared after her vanishing back with a face that had completely lost all grip on reality, then turned to me and Ha-yan and asked,
"Is she crazy?"
"Uh... probably?"
For once, I had no choice but to agree with Choi Hoon. Because she really did seem like a total nutjob.
Regardless of Do Ji-yeon's mental state, our schedule rolled on. And right now, her condition was—
"Wow! Awesome! The weather's great and there aren't many people! Isn't this basically our world?"
—completely lively.
The reason?
"Hmm. Don't you feel like the sparks might fly your way, Ha-yan?"
"I-I was just thinking the same thing right nowwwww~~~~!!!! L-let's go slow!!"
"Slow? What are you talking about! We have to hurry up and climb!! After we come back we still have the horse-riding experience!"
"Hoonieeeee~~!!"
Ha-yan had asked me about a couple of spells right before the bus departed—condition enhancement and stress relief. Magic really was convenient. She hadn't properly learned lifestyle magic yet; her mother had always said that using too much of that kind of thing early on would wreck your body. But right now she clearly wanted to cast it on Do Ji-yeon. I didn't particularly feel like stopping her, so I quickly taught her the two spells, and Ha-yan cast them on Do Ji-yeon—who was sleeping like the dead inside the moving bus—without Choi Hoon noticing.
And the result...
"Uwaaaaah~~!!"
...was that she was now being dragged along, running up Seongsan Ilchulbong by a Do Ji-yeon who was far more energetic than yesterday.
"Did she take some kind of drug? The difference from earlier is way too big."
"It could be. Practically speaking, she might have just been overthinking and deluding herself?"
"You're saying that alone makes this much of a difference?"
Of course Choi Hoon also looked dumbfounded at the suddenly lively Do Ji-yeon, but it was a reason I could absolutely never tell him. One way or another, both he and Ha-yan suffered a bit because of Do Ji-yeon's lowest and highest conditions, but either way we kept walking toward Seongsan Ilchulbong.
The first stretch, which looked like a wide plain, was a landscape you'd only ever see in paintings. On both sides of the path people were coming and going, horses leisurely grazing on the grass. Ha-yan and Do Ji-yeon, who were far ahead of us, had both put on sunglasses and were enthusiastically taking selfies so the horses would be in the frame. Under the fairly strong sunlight I also took out my sunglasses, put them on, and captured the two of them—who didn't know what to do with their excitement—on my DSLR.
The magic must have taken solid effect, because Do Ji-yeon started running around the plain dragging Lee Ha-yan this way and that, and after the initial shock Ha-yan got excited too and began actively running around herself. As for me and Choi Hoon, we leisurely followed behind them while taking in the surrounding scenery in our own way.
After crossing that plain that was only a slight uphill, a considerable number of stairs welcomed us from there on. I approached Ha-yan, who was loosening up her legs with cute little movements, and asked,
"You even hiked yesterday. Are you okay?"
"Of course! That level of hiking is nothing!"
"Oof. My back. I'm dying here."
"I'm fine, so go do something about Choi Hoon behind us. His body looks way better than ours, so why is his stamina like that?"
"...Yeah. You're right."
Ha-yan and I already had pretty high base stamina, and Do Ji-yeon... well, seeing her immediately start running around once her mind cleared up answered that. But Choi Hoon?
"Ugh, damn. Why do we keep only going on hiking courses like this? Making people suffer."
His build excluding height was much better than mine, but his stamina was completely trash-tier. But who was here? Someone who could make Choi Hoon move more vigorously than even a teacher.
"You bastard! Why aren't you moving faster? You came all the way here and you're just going to sit without climbing? You wanna die or what!!"
"Aaaaaah!! My eeeeears!!! My ears are falling offff!!!"
Do Ji-yeon grabbed the ear of the dawdling Choi Hoon and started climbing the stairs.
"Shall we go too?"
"Yeah!"
Ha-yan and I followed up after them.
"The weather really was a divine move. If it had been cloudy, I don't think we could have felt this kind of emotion."
"Tell me about it. It was nice that there were fewer people than expected too. Ah, Cha Siu. You got good shots of Ha-yan, right? If you'd been in the back there would have been a lot of killer timing."
"Are you looking down on the photography skills I've had since elementary school?"
"Hey now. No way. I was just asking just in case, just in case."
After taking photos at the top of Seongsan Ilchulbong and coming down, we decided to take a short rest at a little snack-shop-like place below. Rhea, who had struggled a bit overnight contacting the company, was currently taking a short rest in the car. The other kids were resting while sharing the photos they'd taken on their phones, and I was also diligently organizing Ha-yan's photos that had completely filled the DSLR memory chip.
But then suddenly a shadow appeared behind me and—
Lick.
"Ugiyaaaaah!!!"
Feeling a moist, cold, incredible sensation on my neck, I shot up from my seat.
"Huh? A horse!!"
"Uweh? Why a horse?"
"Whoa. The horse keeps only licking Cha Siu's neck. Is Cha Siu candy?"
The other kids reportedly widened their eyes in confusion at the sudden uninvited guest(?).
What the hell is this all of a sudden?