Magic Club (3)
"You've all worked hard today. I look forward to seeing you grow even further tomorrow. That's all I have to say. You're dismissed."
As always, Lee Gil-young finished homeroom in record time and swept out of the classroom.
"Have you decided where you're going?"
Kim Gabyul asked as she packed her bag.
"Hmm. I think I'll join the Magic Club."
"The Magic Club? ...Do they even handle black magic there?"
"I couldn't say that far. It's not as though I'm going there specifically to learn black magic, after all."
"Well, true enough."
"So I plan to sit for an interview today."
"Yeah? Then I'll head out first."
I waved her off and set out at a leisurely pace.
I was now standing inside the Magic Club room.
They had said an interview was required, so here I was.
True to its reputation as a long-established club, the room was impressively spacious.
The moment I stepped inside, a girl seated in a chair, deep in concentration, looked up and asked,
"What brings you here?"
"I've come because I wish to join the Magic Club."
"Your name?"
"Baek Sejin."
"Baek Sejin? A freshman?"
Ha Ye-song.
She was the president of the Magic Club, though she was timid and rather fragile of spirit.
Combat-oriented clubs like the Swordsmanship Club operated on a pure meritocracy, so the strongest member traditionally took the presidency. The Magic Club was a little different—plenty of non-combat students joined—but the same meritocratic rule still applied. As a result, she had been forced into the role against her will.
I remembered an episode from the original novel where the Swordsmanship Club and the Magic Club had clashed, which was how her name had stuck with me.
Hearing my name, Ha Ye-song tore her gaze from the computer and looked at me properly.
The instant her eyes met my face, every trace of color drained from her cheeks.
"H-Have any of our members... d-done something to offend you...?"
"Pardon?"
I asked back, completely lost, and she immediately hiccupped.
"Hic! I'm so s-sorry! I'm sorry! Hic!"
Why is she reacting like this?
Caught off guard by her unexpected response, I asked carefully,
"This is the Magic Club, is it not?"
Whatever meaning she took from those words, her expression collapsed into pure despair.
"Y-Yes, it is... I'm sorry. I'm just a little timid. If you could give me a little more time, I-I promise I won't disappoint you...!"
"Haha. I'm not quite sure what you mean... I simply wish to join the club, nothing more."
"Ah... aah..."
On the verge of tears, Ha Ye-song sprang up from her chair and offered it to me. Realizing she now had nowhere to sit, she hurriedly fetched another chair from elsewhere in the room.
Isn't this a bit too timid?
"...F-First of all, since this is the M-Magic Club, every member has to be able to use magic... C-Could you tell me what kind of magic you mainly use...?"
She managed to get the words out even while stammering.
Honesty was probably the best policy here.
"Well, black magic, primarily... though I can manage other types to a reasonable degree as well."
"Eek...! B-Black magic...!"
At the mere mention of black magic, Ha Ye-song's complexion turned so deathly pale it was hard to tell her apart from a corpse.
Her terrified expression is rather entertaining. She clearly knows nothing about black magic.
Just then, two people barged into the club room without so much as a knock.
They threw the door open with bright faces and called out,
"Song! We're here!"
"Still training?"
One of them was the spitting image of Ha Ye-song; the other had bright light-brown hair.
The girl who looked almost identical to Ha Ye-song was Ha Ye-seo—the complete opposite of her sister, so extroverted she caused accidents wherever she went.
The light-brown-haired girl was almost certainly the vice-president, Park Min-seo. She handled most of the presidential duties in Ha Ye-song's place and was, for all practical purposes, the real head of the Magic Club.
The two girls who had made such a noisy entrance looked back and forth between me and Ha Ye-song, then froze in place.
A strange tension settled over the room.
"Ye-seo, did you cause trouble again?"
"No? I didn't do anything today."
"Then there's no reason someone like that would come all the way to our club room."
They clearly thought they were whispering quietly enough that we wouldn't hear, but the club room was so silent that every word carried.
Even Ha Ye-song, who had briefly worn a bright expression, began to darken again when the two of them refused to come any closer.
"Good afternoon."
Only when I spoke did they finally approach, little by little.
They positioned themselves in front of me almost as if surrounding me, and Park Min-seo was the first to speak.
"What business brings you all the way here? If one of our members has caused you any trouble, we will take full responsibility and resolve the matter amicably..."
"No, I simply came because I wish to join the Magic Club."
"Pardon?"
Park Min-seo finally seemed to notice the school uniform I was wearing and let out a small "Ah."
"Oh, I see. Today was the start of the application period, wasn't it?"
Leaving Park Min-seo behind, Ha Ye-seo picked up the conversation.
"Did you bring an application form?"
"Of course."
I pulled the papers from my bag.
That morning, after sparring practice, Lee Gil-young had left a stack of club application forms in a corner locker of the classroom. The form asked for name, date of birth, special skills, hobbies, and the reason for applying.
"...I see. Special skills: swordsmanship and bare-handed combat... But why the Magic Club instead of the Swordsmanship Club or the Martial Arts Club?"
Joining the Swordsmanship Club would have let me watch the original novel's events unfold firsthand, but I had no desire to sit through Lee Jiwoo and Seong Hyeon flirting all day.
"Haha. Isn't shared interest the most important part of a club? I applied to the Magic Club because I wish to learn magic."
"Mmm... All right. We'll leave it here for today. You'll hear about the results within a few days. Even if you don't get in, please don't hold it against us."
"Understood."
Park Min-seo effectively showed me the door.
And so I left the club room and headed home.
But was the result normally delivered a few days later?
In the original novel, hadn't the protagonist been accepted on the spot?
Hmm... I couldn't quite remember.
"Ye-seo, what do you think?"
Ha Ye-seo, who had been watching Park Min-seo's face the entire time and staying silent, finally spoke up in a loud voice.
"What's there to think? He's obviously suspicious. Song, are you really going to let him join?"
Ha Ye-song, still lost in thought, missed her sister's words and asked back,
"W-What did you say?"
"Those squinty eyes! Are you really going to accept him?!"
"I... I think we have to, don't we...?"
"...H-Hey, Song, he didn't threaten you, did he?"
"Ye-song, what was that person's name?"
While Ha Ye-seo fretted over her sister's body, Park Min-seo asked with a worried expression.
"His name? It was Baek Sejin..."
"All right. Can you tell us what you talked about?"
"Nothing much... just his name and... the kind of magic he can use?"
"What kind of magic did he say he uses?"
"...Black magic, apparently."
Ha Ye-seo, who had been poking and prodding her sister, and Park Min-seo both froze solid.
"Black magic?"
"Black magic itself isn't a bad thing, but..."
Park Min-seo muttered, and Ha Ye-seo jabbed a finger at her and shouted,
"Exactly! That's the problem! Black magic isn't bad, but the fact that he can use it makes the whole thing way too suspicious!"
At Ha Ye-seo's outburst, Park Min-seo cast her mind back to the earlier conversation.
"It's true..."
"See?! Even Song thinks so!"
After a moment of thought, Park Min-seo spoke.
"When we mentioned the Swordsmanship Club earlier, his expression turned sour. Maybe swords are somehow connected to something he hates?"
"Like killing people? What if he's an assassin trained from childhood? That would explain why he'd hate them, right?"
Ha Ye-seo's blunt speculation made Park Min-seo flinch.
"Think about it. If he was trained from childhood to kill people, of course he'd be sick of swords.
He might have already killed a few people. What if he quit the assassin's path because he hated killing, and that's why—"
Park Min-seo listened to the continuing stream of speculation with surprising seriousness.
"Who knows? Maybe he even made a contract with a demon? Ah, but he said he uses black magic, so a demon contract is pretty much a given.
Or is it? There are people who possess black mana without contracting a demon..."
Park Min-seo, who had been listening earnestly, finally let out a hollow laugh.
"Enough. A suspicious appearance, black magic, trained from childhood to kill people...
And yet, while doing that kind of work, he somehow found what he truly wanted to do, quit being an assassin, and came to the Magic Club to learn magic?
People like that only exist in comics."
Well, that was true.
The problem was that if it was Baek Sejin, some of it—if not all—felt uncomfortably plausible.
No. That was just prejudice. Judging someone by appearance alone was wrong.
As president, she needed to settle the situation properly.
"Then how about this? If the first-year applicants don't fill the quota, we accept him then?"
"But we already told him we'd contact him within a few days. And he's the first person to apply this year—making him wait weeks feels a little..."
Her suggestion was shot down by Min-seo the moment it left her mouth.
And so the three girls' worries only grew deeper.