Dragon and Studying Abroad
The official document we'd received this time didn't look like much on the surface.
A few months from now the government was planning to lead an overseas tour of the political and business circles, and they wanted to meet with various CEOs in connection with it. National Intelligence Service re-education included, of course.
And the story Siu had uncovered with magic behind that document made it clear that his company was the real target.
Still, there was nothing that needed panicking over just yet.
There was still plenty of time left, after all—
and every last bit of the grunt work was going to fall on Rhea.
"What is it now, you insane master of mine?"
That single official document had thrown Ha-yan and me into another chaotic day.
Part of me wanted to erase the thing from existence entirely, but we'd already given our answer—and those people were doing this with Ha-yan in mind. So I started preparing in earnest.
Before that, though, we needed to get the kids who'd just arrived in Korea settled first.
The first preparatory meeting listed in the document was two weeks out.
If we looked after the three of them for about a week after they entered the country, they ought to manage fine on their own after that.
It wasn't as if Ha-yan and I could handle every magic lesson between just the two of us, either.
Worst case, Ha-yan had said, we could press a reasonable tuition fee into Mother's hand and ask her to take over.
Time kept flowing, and between one frantic task and the next a whole week had already slipped by. Before we knew it, Ha-yan and I were standing once more at Incheon International Airport—the same place we'd visited about a month earlier.
Right in front of the arrivals hall, no less.
I turned to Ha-yan, who was clutching a sketchbook with an excited look on her face, and asked,
"But they're really only sending three people? No attendants or anything?"
"Hm? You were the one who told them to come alone, Siu. You said bringing extra people would only make things complicated."
"Did I?"
"And I agreed with that, by the way. Here they're going to live as actual 'students'—how much money someone has or how much power their family holds doesn't matter one bit. Besides, those kids didn't seem like the type to lose their heads over something like that."
"Think they'll manage? I did a little digging. All three of them come from money. Not to the point of using Homunculi like us, but they all have butlers and maids working for them. Dropping kids like that into living alone all of a sudden? Even if we throw money at them, they won't know the first thing about Korean culture."
"That's exactly why they need the experience. By that logic, we have way more money than they do and we still live like ordinary people. Have we run into any real inconvenience so far?"
"Not even a little."
I'd only told them to come alone because I hated complications, but Ha-yan seemed to be taking the business of teaching those kids completely seriously.
One night I'd found her writing away with intense focus; when I peeked, she'd been drawing up an entire curriculum for them.
She wasn't planning to teach them teleportation—the level she used herself—but she was at least aiming for double casting.
Well. Even double casting was more than enough to make a living in mage society.
So there we waited in the arrivals hall—me with a blank face, Ha-yan looking a little giddy—until we confirmed that a flight arriving via Europe had just landed.
And then, inside the hall, three very familiar faces appeared.
The kids were looking around in every direction at their first sight of Korea and Incheon Airport. When they spotted Ha-yan waving, their faces lit up; then they noticed me standing right beside her, and their expressions froze solid. They walked over and delivered a textbook Korean greeting.
A full ninety-degree bow, at that.
"Hello! We'll be in your care starting today!"
"Please take care of us!!"
"P-please take care of us..."
It wasn't a normal greeting so much as three people bowing like they were apologizing for something. Ha-yan and I blanked out for a second, then immediately made them lift their heads.
"Oh, come on. What's with the sudden formality? We already met last time—why the deep bows?"
Lily scratched her head at Ha-yan's words.
"W-well, it's the first time we're meeting you in Korea, Unnie. Plus the tickets you sent made the trip so comfortable, and you even came all the way out here to pick us up..."
Beside her, Silvi spoke to Ha-yan in a tiny voice.
"Th-thanks to the magic tools you sent, we managed to shake off all the people tailing us..."
"Good. Well done. Nothing else out of the ordinary?"
"No. Hehe."
Silvi smiled, clearly delighted by Ha-yan's gentle pat on the head.
These kids and Ha-yan had gotten a lot closer than I'd realized.
This was the first I'd heard about Ha-yan sending anti-tailing magic tools separately. She'd only made extras for herself, her mother, her father, and one spare—so that must have been the spare.
I stepped over to Teave, who was standing a little awkwardly behind the two girls, and asked him a question.
He looked startled when I approached out of nowhere, then set his face into a determined expression and asked back,
"Is something the matter?"
"I'm not going to eat you, so quit looking so tense. Those people tailing you—any idea whose people they were?"
They seemed sharp enough that they might have done some investigating of their own even while using the tools Ha-yan had sent, so I figured it was worth asking.
And this Teave kid turned out to have a pretty quick mind and excellent instincts.
He immediately pulled out a tablet PC and showed me a rough summary of the people who'd been tailing them—notes he'd written on the plane—as he spoke.
"I've only written down the parts I personally recognized. I couldn't use the internet, so the details aren't very precise, but..."
"No, this is plenty. As long as we know roughly who they belong to, our side can dig up the rest. Good work. You've got a decent head on your shoulders."
"Th-thank you!"
Hearing my praise for the first time made Teave's whole face brighten.
I waved him toward the other two girls, and the sharp-eyed boy immediately moved over to where Ha-yan was standing.
Then I handed the tablet to Rhea, who had been silently watching from the side the whole time, and asked,
"Well?"
"Hmm. Just as expected of the students Miss Ha-yan chose. All three of them have good instincts and solid heads on their shoulders. And they know quite a lot. The information is surprisingly accurate as well."
"Honestly, I didn't care much at first. No—if anything, I was hoping something would come up so they wouldn't show..."
Ha-yan was looking at the three students with the brightest expression imaginable.
"When she makes a face like that, there's not much I can say. I'll just have to put up with a little extra hassle."
Rhea looked at me with genuine surprise at those words.
"What's gotten into you, Master? At first you were so irritated and put out you barely knew what to do with yourself."
I scratched my head lightly at Rhea's question.
"What am I supposed to do? Ha-yan's insisting on taking full charge of their lessons. It's not like I can tell her no. And when she's this happy about it, it feels wrong for the guy who sticks to her side all day to stand there scowling."
"So you've given it quite a bit of thought, then?"
"I'd prefer if you called it a survival strategy."
"If you call it thrashing about, I'll accept that."
Rhea refused to let me have the last word, as always, and headed over to Ha-yan's side. I just stood there watching her go, smiling quietly to myself.
We led the kids out of the airport and headed for the place where they'd be staying.
The three of them trailed after us like ducklings, completely absorbed in chattering among themselves about every bit of the Korean scenery they could see around them.
From the snatches I overheard:
"Wow... In Japan we never went anywhere except the airport and the hotel, so it didn't feel that different, but this is the first time I've been in another country with no attendants at all."
"You're not the only one. Same here. Ugh, without those nanny-attendants who nag me every second, I can't even tell you how free I feel."
"L-look over there. It looks like they're selling lots of delicious things... Is that an ice cream shop?"
Basically they just felt like ordinary teenage tourists.
"Hehe. Adorable."
"You're only one year older than them, you know..."
Ha-yan simply watched the kids with a fond, satisfied smile on her face.
The van took us to a newly built officetel near the school.
The units were fairly spacious, but for the sake of privacy we'd decided to buy three studio-style offices and rent one to each of them.
We assigned them three rooms right next to each other—701, 702, and 703—and as soon as the kids started looking around their rooms, their eyes went round and they turned to us with questions.
"E-each of us gets our own place?"
I answered Teave as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Of course? Did you think you'd all be living in the same house? You're a guy and the other two are girls—that'd be a little weird, don't you think?"
"N-no, that's not what I meant. I, um..."
Teave was hemming and hawing, which told me the three of them had already talked about this among themselves.
I immediately turned to the two girls standing beside him.
"What? Isn't a private room better? And they're fully furnished, too. I didn't know what kind of bedding you'd like, so I stocked every type, and later I'm planning to give each of you a corporate card for living expenses."
"...Ooooh."
"What's with that reaction?"
This time Lily carefully spoke up.
"W-we just assumed we'd be staying in a hotel or something on our own. So..."
"So?"
As if realizing just how wrong they'd been, Lily squeezed her eyes shut and said,
"Aside from a change of clothes... we didn't bring anything else."
And then Silvi dropped the line that really spiked my blood pressure.
"A-and also... we've never lived alone even once before..."
"Ah."
Right.
These kids Ha-yan had "chosen" to bring to Korea...
Even if they weren't on my level, they were still very much "children of privilege."
Ha-yan and I had completely forgotten that part.
Ha-yan looked a little flustered and whispered to me in a small voice,
"I think the list of things we have to teach them just got a whole lot longer..."
"...Babysitting duty is kind of not my thing."
Just like that, we'd suddenly been stuck with social-skills classes on top of everything else.