Field Trip Day
Anyway, from that day on I decided to take sole responsibility for monster hunting for a while—until Siyeon herself said, I can do it! Whether that took a few weeks or a few months.
Even the teddy bear I used to toss carelessly into a room and leave behind, I kept close by until that unknown day arrived. So that if a monster showed up while we were out, I could deploy immediately.
When you thought about it, hanging the bear in the bathroom had been my fault in the first place.
Sunday—supposed to let me sort out my rattled nerves—passed in a strangely colorless blur.
And so Monday arrived: the dawn of the field trip.
The alarm on my smartphone had barely started to ring before I killed it in under two seconds.
“Haaah.”
A yawn that threatened to stretch long and then cut itself short. I sat up.
Under the kitchen sink sat a frying pan, bone-dry from long disuse.
“Transform.”
Cooking with this body wasn’t easy, so I spoke the transformation spell and seized the pan with overflowing strength. There was no rule that said I only had to transform when a monster appeared, and inside the house there was no one who might catch me.
I propped a plastic cutting board—equally bone-dry—across the sink, floated myself up a little, opened a can of luncheon meat, and set it on the board.
I lifted a wickedly sharp kitchen knife, sliced the meat cleanly in one direction, laid the strips flat, and chopped them the other way into neat little cubes. The cube-shaped ham went straight into the pan.
When I switched on the range hood, the sound of suction filled the kitchen. As the heating ham pieces began to spit and render their oil with a lively sizzle, I cracked in a single egg and scrambled it around with a spatula.
Instant rice was not to be microwaved—that only added moisture you needed to cook off for fried rice. For a beginner, that was how you accidentally made fried-rice porridge instead.
I tore open the packaging, dumped the rice into the pan of mixed, cooked egg and ham fragments, and worked the clumps apart with the spatula and the heat alone. Then I opened a pack of rice seasoning flakes and sprinkled them over the top, sol-sol-sol.
Fried rice done…
I packed the carefully made fried rice firmly into one compartment of each lunchbox. The next boxes were divided into two side-dish compartments that looked like they could take more.
From the fridge I ladled out seven or eight braised quail eggs into one side. The other side was for the so-called octopus sausages—sausages scored so that one half would open into “legs” when they cooked.
As I hung them over the cutting board and cut the slits, a thought crossed my mind.
Can’t we just eat something normal for once…?
A grudge against parents who only ever put in effort on picnic days.
“You never do this on a regular day. So embarrassing.”
I muttered miserably to myself and transferred the prepared sausages off the board. The pan still held residual heat from the fried rice. The sausages began to cook with delicious little sounds.
Plain might be bland, so when they were nearly done I lowered the heat, added a dab of starch syrup, and tossed them with the spatula until they shone. Seeing the legs open as prettily as the weekend videos had promised, I divided them half-and-half into the side-dish compartments.
Lastly, cherry tomatoes and shine muscat grapes. A quick rinse under running water; stems off the tomatoes, grapes plucked one by one from the bunch into an empty container. Fruit compartment at the bottom, side dishes in the middle, fried rice on top. Lids sealed perfectly, boxes tucked carefully into a corner of each bag.
Beyond that: trash bags, a first-aid band, tissues and wet wipes for spills, and a picnic mat so we could rest safe from ticks.
Mm. Ready!
Supplies that would have been overkill even for kids’ picnic prep. Satisfied, I checked the clock—already thirty minutes gone.
Already this late?
“Release.”
I drifted down from the air and landed lightly on the floor, feeling the overflowing power drain away, and headed for the bed where Siyeon was still asleep. I gripped her by the shoulders, blanket and all, and shook her with motherly insistence.
“Siyeon-aaah, time to get up.”
“Uuuh…”
“We’ve got a picnic. A picnic.”
I listened to the heartrending sleepy whimpers that made even the waker miserable, then let her wriggle her fingers and burrow deeper under the covers. When nothing else works, there is a last resort reserved for true emergencies.
Tickling.
“Kyah! Uheehit!”
The biological reaction of our slender bodies touching—Siyeon couldn’t hold back her laughter. Once she was conscious, there was no way she could stay down: fingertips digging into her sides.
“Still not up? Even like this?”
“I—I’m up! Stooop…!”
Under the fierce finger assault, Siyeon finally sat up. We rubbed her eyes and sat down at the low table. Breakfast was a few leftover pieces of sweet-and-sour pork from yesterday and the leftover fried rice mixed with a little black-bean sauce.
The greasiness of the sauce—still holding a few bloated noodle remnants from the fridge—met the heat of the freshly made fried rice and turned into a surprisingly decent morning meal. Would have been nicer if we’d had some pickled radish left, too.
“Water and lunchboxes are here, wet wipes and tissues up front, medicine if you get hurt is here, trash bags are here.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
“Don’t get hurt, okay?”
It was a one-sided conversation no one would believe was happening between kids the same age. Siyeon and I were in different classes, so once school activities started I couldn’t look after her directly—which only made me more anxious.
Honestly, what was there to worry about on a kids’ picnic…? Still. Just—just blindly, the worry came first. It was like watching a video of someone carefully setting up dominoes while a cat wandered around the room. That feeling of knowing something could go wrong at any moment, without knowing when.
“All right, everyone! Follow the teacher carefully!”
One teacher per class leading at the front. The kids clustering and surging after them felt like ducklings trailing a mother duck. Or maybe a little like a march. Thank goodness I didn’t have to do that kind of thing in this life.
We had to move by class, so there probably wouldn’t even be time to meet during the field trip. Free time was something they only gave kids with slightly bigger heads. Hand that to first-graders who were already hard enough to control, and if anything went wrong the school would flip upside down.
Field experience learning. A picnic. Either way, the activities you could do with first-graders didn’t amount to much.
“Look, everyone—those things floating on the pond are called water striders.”
“Where?!”
“There! Over there!”
We hadn’t even gone far—just a park a little ways from the school. A place with some grass and a pond, where the whole job was to herd kids who were stampeding around looking at everyday insects.
It was the season tipping into summer, so the park was thick with nameless flying bugs. Every time black flecks drifted past my eyes I waved my arms to shoo them off. Of all days to come out, why did it have to be one crawling with insects?
Once the bug-watching was more or less done, lunchtime arrived under the shade.
“All right, everyone—take out the mats you brought and spread them out connected!”
“Yeeees!”
Under the teacher’s direction the mats were unrolled and joined until a wide safe zone had formed in the middle of the grass. With the mats layered like this, at least we wouldn’t have to worry about ticks.
“I brought inari sushi!”
“Trade for kimbap!”
“No way!”
I left the kids arguing over what they’d brought and opened my own lunchbox. The top compartment was packed full of the fried rice I’d worked so hard on that morning. The chilled yolks of the soy-braised quail eggs from the fridge mixed into the rice into a pretty decent combination. Sometimes making something to eat like this wasn’t so bad.
After I’d neatly packed the cherry tomatoes and shine muscats into my stomach for dessert, I pulled a bottle of water from my bag and twisted the cap. An unopened mineral-water mouth. I opened it with a crackling sound, then gulped it down, washing the last bits of food cleanly past my throat.
“Kheuh.”
A refreshing sigh to mark the end of the meal, and I tidied the thoroughly emptied lunchbox.
The schedule after lunch was to flop or sit on the spread mats and draw one impressive insect we’d seen on the worksheets they handed out. Midway through, a sound like a drone rose up—buuuuuuung.
The irregular noise that had been going on for a while finally made me focus. I shifted my gaze to a nearby tree.
It was far too large to be a mere wasp.
Whoa. We’re done for.
Marveling at that awe-inspiring size, presence, and sound, I quietly stood and stepped off the mat. The moment I moved outside the mats, the teacher noticed the conspicuous behavior, came over, and asked,
“Mari? What’s wrong?”
“There’s a bee over there—shouldn’t we get away?”
“A bee? Where…”
I pointed at the giant Asian hornet—so big you could even see its compound eyes. The teacher’s face hardened in an instant. She immediately dropped into a crouch and began urgently calling the students.
“Kids! Kids?! There’s a bee, so get up slowly and come over here!”
Once the students had somehow evacuated, the giant hornet settled onto the empty mats and began crawling about with little skittering steps, as if searching for a good nest site. Our teacher and class had long since taken shelter at a distance. While we stood far off staring blankly at the vacant mats, a teacher from another class walked over slowly and asked ours,
“Seol-a-seonsaengnim, is something wrong?”
Seon-uk-seonsaengnim, the male teacher from the next class. As he approached with a tilted head, our teacher answered in a low, troubled voice.
“Ah—there’s a bee on our mats…”
“A bee? Just one—leave it to me!”
“Y-you really shouldn’t get close…”
Ignoring the warning, Seon-uk-seonsaengnim strode boldly toward our mats. A bee, sure—but a bee whose physique was on a completely different level from ordinary wasps? What else could it be but the Asian giant hornet himself.
That day, I learned for the first time just how fast a person can run. The terror that came from that overwhelming size had nothing to do with age.
The field-trip worksheet that told us to write down an impressive insect. I had no choice but to draw the face of the giant hornet on that paper, as if spellbound.
What a spectacle. What a spectacle.