Meriri or Char?
Anyway. Situation resolved.
I let go of that disappointing hand-feel for what it was, and picked back up the handle of the plastic bag I'd set down for a moment while I took care of the monster.
Ugh. That reek.
The second I bent down to grab the bag, a sharp, briny seafood stench punched me in the nose. Faint ink stains and the lingering fishy aftertaste of the squid monster — now nothing more than scattered magic dust — still clung to the ground, announcing that it had absolutely been here. Maybe because summer was getting close, that god-awful smell seemed to carry especially far.
With nothing but get home and wash this off on my mind, I made it back to the apartment. The moment the door opened, I heard the quick, short-strided footsteps of the only other person who lived in this place. Didn't even need to look.
"Mari! I heard a monster showed up! Sorry I couldn't come—"
"I was fine on my own, so don't worry. Did you have fun with your friend?"
"Yeah! Yeseul watched Meriri with me, and uh… she talked a ton with Auntie too."
I'd only asked if she'd had a good time, and Siyeon was already tripping over her limited vocabulary trying to fit a whole day's worth of joy into words.
If I let her keep going like this, I was half-convinced the squid stink would seep into the apartment itself, so I cut her off and set the bag on top of the shoe cabinet.
"Hold on. I'll listen after I wash up."
I kicked off my sneakers and headed straight for the bathroom. The wall-mounted tub was still big enough to hold Siyeon or me; even with my legs stretched out under the water, it only reached a little past halfway. Once we hit high-school age, this thing was going to be useless.
My fingers stayed plump and baby-soft no matter how long I soaked — they barely wrinkled at all. I let myself marvel at that ridiculous youth for a second. Then the backlog of housework came to mind, and I couldn't just sit there.
Water sloshed as the weight left it; I stood up, scattering droplets that slid down taut skin in smooth curves, like water on a rain tarp.
I grabbed a bone-dry towel from the shelf and wiped down skin so smooth it didn't have a single age-appropriate bump anywhere.
It felt so little different from when I'd been a pure-hearted elementary-school boy that I didn't think much of anything at all. The only thoughts in my head were practical ones: should I put the towels in the washer first, or the clothes?
"Haaah."
With that sigh, I carried a basket full of laundry out of the bathroom and went straight to the washing machine on the veranda. Today was whites — clothes and towels. I'd gone with a front-loader because a top-loader was too much of a pain at my height.
Watching the wash tumble around inside with that hollow thunk-thunk-thunk, the pure little boy still living in my head whispered something small.
I wonder what it'd feel like to climb in there and spin…
It'd break, obviously.
I smothered the action I absolutely should not take under the blanket of common sense, and started pulling clothes from the basket one by one. After silencing the raving little maniac inside me with the very adult topic of money, I stuffed the whites in by the armful the way I'd meant to.
The familiar beeps of the washer buttons. The sound of water filling. Once I got it running, I remembered the black bag by the front door, picked it up, and pulled out the contents.
At the rustle of the bag, Siyeon's eyes left the computer screen and found me.
"What's that?"
"The stuff you mix into milk. Didn't you see the school notice?"
Even as I answered her, I tore open the paper carton and lined up the sticks inside. Strawberry. Banana. Chocolate. And last, cookies-and-cream. The click of a mouse cut the video's sound, and Siyeon came over, interested. I didn't particularly care which flavor I got, so I asked her favorite first.
"Which one do you want?"
"I… strawberry!"
She didn't seem to need much thought. Siyeon snatched up the soft-pink strawberry stick right away. Strawberry. I'd loved that one a lot when I was little, too. There was never any special reason for a favorite flavor.
All right. Next time I go out, I'll grab a few more strawberry ones…
I tucked the rest — everything that wasn't Siyeon's strawberry — neatly back into the opened carton. Some kids supposedly just ripped these open and dumped them straight into their mouths. I didn't get it. Wasn't that just scented sugar?
Once the housework felt more or less done, Siyeon — who'd been looking at the computer — glanced over at me lounging on the bottom bunk and said,
"But, but! Yeseul said she likes Char better than Meriri!"
Oh. So that story wasn't over.
The conversation that had stalled on her thin vocabulary started back up. Listening carefully, it turned out she and this Yeseul kid had gotten into a little argument because they liked different characters from the anime. Meriri, Char… right. The green-haired one and the blue-haired one from that magical-girl show?
Come to think of it, magical girls in anime did have a habit of roaming around in packs. There were probably more than just two of them. But they were all on the same side anyway, weren't they? They cheered each other on and fought together. What was there to gain from arguing over who was better?
Kids' brains…
My sensibility had long since rotted through; I didn't understand any of it. It was the same old plot every time — they'd bicker a bit, hit a crisis, overcome it with the power of love or whatever, and scrape by with a win. Right now I was just a doll nodding along and saying, Oh, is that so? at Siyeon's level.
And then, mid-nod—
"Mari, do you like Meriri better, or Char?!"
"…Huh?"
The question hit me out of nowhere. If I had to say, I didn't like either of them. Wait — didn't I actually feel more affinity for the monsters? Instant-teleporting down from a massive orbital warship with cutting-edge tech.
Outside of Earth, where the magical-girl setting existed, they apparently held colonies all over the place. Rich kids, basically. And even so, they refused to settle for what they had and kept trying to invade this one planet — tireless, self-made, genuinely impressive little bastards. Looking at them with adult eyes, they were something else.
Still. I couldn't say that out loud. I'd never even seen this Yeseul kid's face, but taking the side of the person right in front of me was the smart move.
"Meriri's better, yeah."
"Right?! Meriri's the best!"
I thought that was the end of it. But a little kid's obsession is a formidable thing. Elementary school lower grades can pour their entire consciousness into whatever has them hooked. A conversation I thought we'd moved past was still lodged in that head, and it followed her all the way to school.
"Mari said she likes Meriri better too!"
"What?! Char is prettier!"
Recess. Siyeon had come all the way from another class and dragged me out into the hallway — and right beside her was the kid I assumed was Yeseul, the other half of last time's argument. I couldn't be sure, but listening to them talk made it obvious.
So… why am I here…
"What's so great about Meriri?! She can't even catch monsters right!"
"Nuh-uh! She helps a ton!"
The passion of children who could work themselves into genuine rage over a single character. They'd hauled me out here and then just kept talking to each other. I finally ran out of patience and looked at the fall-prevention bars mounted horizontally across the school window.
"Haaah…"
A long sigh. Three steps forward. I rested both arms on the bar and stared up at the blue sky. Whether or not the clouds knew what was going on inside a person, they floated along, swimming through a sky that looked like the sea.
Kid fights over reasons so petty they made no sense. Nothing drained me quite like being forcibly dragged into one. It was like watching your little cousins brawl at a family holiday gathering. Did elementary school teachers have to sit through this kind of thing every single day?
I shoved the half-open, sticky hallway window all the way up and muttered my frustration into the air, turning it into words.
"This is fucking miserable…"
Honestly, at times like this, I wished a monster would just show up already.
In the end, even after sacrificing the entire recess, nothing got decided. The bell that usually meant boring class was, for once, the most welcome sound in the world. After school, rather than get pulled into another round of that dead-end magical-girl debate, I chose the path home a step ahead of everyone else.
On the narrow road leading off the main street toward the apartment, Gomtaeng asked in a low voice,
"Mari-nim… do you not have any friends?"
A rude question out of nowhere. For a second, my feet and my thought process both stopped cold.
What? Just like that? Is this little bastard trying to start something?
My steps froze in place. Sensing something ominous in that unnatural stop, he hurriedly spat out whatever excuse he could think of.
"Ah — no. That wasn't what I meant—"
"What, has your boring life gotten so dull you're starting to miss the pain?"
I clamped my hand around the smartphone case on the back of my phone — the little guy who'd been stuck there looking like an ordinary decoration — and ripped him free.