#03 Goetamdong
"Transform! Solaria!"
After transforming, I steeled myself and walked toward Seol-ah, who was gazing back at me with eyes absolutely brimming with admiration.
"Wow..! Sunbae, you look so cool!!"
"Uh.. th-thanks..?"
Flustered by the compliment, I gave nothing more than a light reply, then left Seol-ah behind and approached the demon beasts.
"GRUUOOAARGH!"
The beasts must have sensed my energy—they stopped chasing the people around them and slowly turned to face me.
"S-Stop hurting the citizens and just disappear already!"
Apparently, transforming didn't change my personality one bit. Just the thought of moving around like this in front of a huge crowd made me shrink back, hyper-aware of every stare.
Ugh... this outfit, seriously...
What if people start thinking I'm some kind of weirdo?
"KWAAAK!"
Terrified that someone might be looking, I was so busy clutching at my embarrassingly exposed side-boob that I completely failed to register the oncoming beast's attack—and took it head-on.
SMACK—!
"Kyaaa···?"
And yet, for an attack I'd actually been hit by, I came away without a single scratch.
It wasn't that I'd taken zero damage, but the damage was clearly far less than it should have been.
W-was this what Mea meant? Does putting on this suit boost your base abilities too?
Maybe the demon stone I absorbed yesterday helped as well...
The demon beasts were visibly flustered to see Solaria standing there without so much as a bruise despite having clearly struck her.
Now! This is my chance—
"Solar Ray!"
Light pierced through the beasts, and in an instant, they vanished.
"Wh-whoa!!!"
The surrounding citizens, who had watched the whole thing, gasped in awe and surged toward me.
"H-huh?!"
Before I knew it, a crowd had gathered all around me...
"Excuse me! Did you see that just now?!"
"Thank you for saving us! I honestly thought I was going to die!"
"Who are you?! What's your identity?!"
Questions and expressions of gratitude came flying at me all at once.
Click—, click——
The sound of camera shutters rang out here and there as well.
Oh god... this is so embarrassing...
Whatever terror I'd felt at nearly being mauled by the beasts was long gone; the scene was in a full frenzy, like some idol fan meet-up.
Amid the stares and camera flashes raining down from every direction, Solaria suddenly remembered what she was wearing and hurriedly covered herself up.
"Don't— don't take pictures!!"
The barrage of questions flying at me from all sides had long since sent my sanity fleeing the scene.
If this kept up, I was guaranteed to die of embarrassment, or worse, have my identity dug up and become a national laughingstock.
I have to get out of here!
Desperate, hands clamped over my face, I staggered backward in a half-crouched pose, thinking of nothing but escaping this three-ring circus.
The very moment I squared my stance to bolt—
A woman who'd nearly been caught by the beasts rushed up and shouted:
"Wait, please! Um—thank you for saving us—could I at least get your name?! Your name, anything!"
Still dazed from being jostled around by the crowd, I answered on pure reflex:
"S-Solaria, yossh!"
And then—dressed in that flamboyant, scandalously revealing magical girl getup—I sprinted at full speed toward a deserted back alley.
"Sunbae, that was seriously so cool back there!"
"Yeah, yeah..."
Utterly drained, Seoyoung shuffled off to her morning lecture...
It had been less than three hours since I'd revealed myself as Solaria, and already the entire internet was flooded with countless posts—photos of the magical girl everywhere, everyone speculating about her and her true identity.
By now I'm probably saved in every smartphone in the country...
Sweeping a hand over her still-racing heart, Seoyoung barely managed to survive her morning classes. But even by afternoon, the fatigue and mortification refused to fade.
Lunchtime, after the lecture ended.
"Ugh... after that whole thing, I couldn't absorb a single word of the lecture..."
Running on empty, Seoyoung sat down on a quiet bench in a secluded corner of campus, trying to soothe her exhausted body. She was basically a zombie with her soul torn clean out.
And then it happened.
"Hello there?"
"HWAAK!!"
Startled by the dulcet voice suddenly piping up right beside her ear, Seoyoung nearly toppled backward off the bench. Fortunately, the woman who'd approached in an instant snatched her by the wrist and caught her just in time.
"Ha, I love how honest your reactions are. You okay?"
"Ah.. y-yes, thank you..."
Once she recovered and looked up, Seoyoung found herself facing a striking senior—a woman with sharp, piercing eyes and what looked like a faculty ID hanging around her neck, radiating anything-but-ordinary vibes.
"Anyway, let's skip straight to the point——"
Paying no heed whatsoever to my circumstances, the senior plunked herself down casually on the bench right beside Seoyoung before she'd even finished her sentence.
Ugh... why is this person so zero on personal space?
"You're the one who took down those monsters downtown earlier, aren't you? That was you, right?"
Thud—!
My heart dropped straight through the floor.
Wh-what? How did she know?
I distinctly remember checking—eyes practically on fire—that no one was around before I transformed! Did she somehow see the transformation process itself?
My mind went white as every worst-case scenario flashed before my eyes.
I never dreamed I'd get made on my very first day.
What do I do? Do I play dumb and flat-out deny it? No—look at those confident eyes asking me point-blank. She's obviously got some damning evidence in hand...
Cold sweat trickled down my spine. As the panicked Seoyoung sat there, lips flapping uselessly, unable to form a proper answer, the senior narrowed her eyes and curled her mouth upward, looking amused.
"Um—"
"HEY—!"
I snapped back to my senses at the loud voice.
"Y-yes?! Ma'am! Yes!"
"What's with you? Why are you thinking so hard your heart's falling out of your chest? Oh, I get it—you're wondering how I knew, aren't you?"
As if to answer that unspoken question, the senior fished her smartphone out of her back pocket and thrust the screen in front of me.
"I heard the monsters I'd been tracking showed up downtown, so I was watching the area with a drone... and then out of nowhere, someone appears, takes the whole pack down, and bolts."
"So I followed her with the drone, and guess what—right around here, her transformation just poof, came undone?"
"Ah..."
I thought it was enough as long as no people saw me.
Like I'd ever have detected that tiny little machine floating up in the sky. I'd been so busy watching ground level that I'd completely missed what was above my head.
"That aside—you really are her, right? That magical girl who beat the crap out of those hideous things."
"ACK! W-would you keep it DOWN!"
Seoyoung lunged, both hands flying to cover the senior's mouth in a panic.
You're not supposed to announce it to the whole world!
"Ah, I guess this spot isn't exactly private? Okay, then—want to come with me for a minute?"
As if the option to refuse didn't even exist, the senior took Seoyoung by the wrist and led her away.
Half-dragged, half-kidnapped, Seoyoung ended up at the student council building shoved into the farthest corner of the university.
The senior walked deep into the interior—so deserted I wondered if anyone actually passed through here—and then flung the door wide open.
"Come on in."
As Seoyoung stepped inside, her mouth slowly fell open.
It was nothing like the drab, bureaucratic club rooms she'd seen elsewhere. Multiple monitors glowed along the walls, and in one corner stood a small table for quick meals, a mini-fridge—even a cozy bed for napping off fatigue, plus a full shower room.
This isn't a club room—it's basically a fully furnished studio apartment? I could practically just live here, eating and sleeping, no problem.
"Guess I'm late with introductions. My name's Jeong Yerin. Ah, and this place is a private research lab I wrangled out of a professor I know... officially, though, it's registered with the school as a proper student club for administrative purposes."
The fourth-year senior who introduced herself as 'Jeong Yerin' added that I should call this private hideout of hers the 'Monster Research Club'—or 'Goetamdong' for short.
Seoyoung gave her own brief introduction in return, then couldn't help but ask:
"Whoever named it, their sense for naming is atrociously bad, though..."
"It's peak efficiency, what are you on about? You hear it once and instantly know what the club does. Maximum directness."
...I'm guessing Yerin-sunbae named it herself.
"Uhhh... so, why exactly did you bring me here?"
Dropping into a chair, Yerin smirked.
"The club name is the answer. For months now, I've been digging into the identity of those monsters that started popping up out of nowhere. But these things give zero warning—they vanish with no trace, then burst out just when you're about to give up. I couldn't grasp what drives them, what their purpose or operating principle is, and it's been frying my brain."
Yerin's eyes gleamed sharp with scholarly hunger.
"And then, lo and behold—the hero who beats those monsters to a pulp appears right before my eyes? Obviously I have to pin her down and squeeze every bit of information out of her. And as a bonus, if I get to observe up close how she wields those supernatural powers—the whole transformation process—that's a jackpot."
So what she's saying is, she wants me to hand over information about the monsters?
But is it even okay to just spill all this stuff...?
As Seoyoung's face went white with worry, Yerin shot her a sideways glance and flashed a mischievous smile.
"Going by that expression, you definitely know something about those monsters. But hey, Seoyoung—do you not grasp your situation here? That transformation sequence I photographed earlier—if I splash it all over the internet communities right now, what do you think happens to you?"
"Gah—! That's a dirty, cowardly blackmail! Fine, fine! I'll talk, okay, I'll talk!"
"Kidding, kidding. As obsessed with research as I am, you think I'd blow up a resource this precious with my own hands? Ah—though I am serious about wanting that information."
In the end, I caved completely—hands, feet, everything—and told Yerin-sunbae everything Mea had told me.
About the demon beasts, about how I came to transform, about how I was supposed to hunt them down as a magical girl.
Having heard me out with evident fascination, Yerin-sunbae mused:
"Hooo... demon beasts, huh. So you're going to be fighting these things from now on, is that it?"
"Th-that's about the size of it, yeah."
Yerin-sunbae clapped her hands together as if this worked out perfectly for everyone, then stepped toward me.
"Great, then. From now on, I'll help you out. In exchange, every so often—when you bag a beast—hand over the stone it drops so I can run my research."
"The demon stones, you mean?"
"Right. Those crystalline cores that drop when you kill a beast."
Yerin-sunbae's eyes flashed with pure research-lust. Judging by that reaction, this woman's head was already entirely full of schemes to get her hands on demon stones.
"Ah—of course, I'm not asking for them for free."
Yerin-sunbae pulled an envelope out of a box in the corner and handed it to me.
"I barely spend money on anything besides research, you see. I'll cover everything on the support side—intel on where the beasts appear, their locations, all of it. And separately, whenever you sell me demon stones for research, I'll give you a genuinely good price. Well? Isn't it perfect?"
Chewing it over, it was a deal that cost me absolutely nothing. I'd been anxious enough about having to physically run around hunting for enemies every time one appeared—and here was a guaranteed support network from an engineering-school senior.
"...Okay, deal."
Still, at the end of the day, she's offering to help me, right?
I don't exactly lose anything by saying yes...
Finished with her conversation with Yerin, Seoyoung opened the club room door to head to her next lecture.
At that exact moment, she smacked right into a man walking in through the door.
"Hm-mmm? And who might you be?"