The Lone Outsider Introduces a "Friend"
After class ended, I brought Lee Narin to our after-school gathering.
The place, as usual, was the library.
Han Sia and Yu Somi still hadn’t arrived, and the door was locked, so I naturally picked the lock and let us in.
Turn on the lights, switch on the air conditioner, then sit in the meeting room tucked in the back and wait. That was all the setup required.
I’d already brought Narin here once during lunch today, so she was probably at least somewhat familiar with the place.
...
Still, after watching that whole process, Narin seemed a little surprised that we held our meetings in the library.
"This school seems kind of unusual. Since classes are over, I can’t imagine there’d be any reason to keep the library open."
Because I’d so casually picked the library lock and walked in, she seemed to think the school officially opened the library after hours.
I’d just duplicated the key and snuck in...
But if Narin went around telling people about today, that would be a problem, so I guessed I should explain at least a little.
"Well... actually, it’s not like our school officially opens the library either."
"Huh? But we’re in here."
"That’s true, isn’t it? Just because there’s a goalkeeper doesn’t mean the ball can’t go in, and just because the school didn’t open it doesn’t mean we can’t get in."
"..."
Narin’s face stayed as flat as ever, but there was a faint trace of unease in her eyes.
Maybe that was why she looked straight at me and asked cautiously, "Um... it’s really okay for us to be in here, right?"
"Yeah. It’s fine."
"Phew... You should’ve said that from the start."
"It’s fine as long as we don’t get caught."
"..."
At that, Narin’s expression stiffened slightly.
After all, saying it was fine as long as we didn’t get caught basically meant something bad would happen if we were.
After a five-second silence, Narin lifted her bag in her hands and said, "...I think I’m leaving."
"Hey, wait. Sia and Somi are coming any minute now, and it’d be a pain if you disappeared on us. Besides, there isn’t even any air-conditioning outside, so it’s not exactly a good place to talk, is it?"
So I had to talk fast and persuade her before she actually got up and bolted.
"Let’s put that bag down first and talk, okay? Ten minutes. No, just five more. Since you came all the way here, it’d be a waste to just turn around and leave! See that air conditioner? It’s the only one in the entire school that isn’t centrally controlled, except for the faculty office...."
But Narin still looked at me with deep suspicion.
"Calm down and think about it. I set this up at the request of you and Song Changwon, Narin. If you walk out now, isn’t it only you who loses? I’ve already spent money preparing gifts, so I might as well get something back on my investment!"
"You. Your tone is starting to sound more and more like a cult leader or a multilevel-marketing scammer."
Ah...! It really did, didn’t it? But how did she even know that...
Now her eyes were full of distrust toward me, and Narin really did look ready to stand up and leave.
So I grabbed her arm first and tried to talk her down...
-whoosh
"...!?"
To my shock, Narin shook free of my hand in the blink of an eye and darted away to the wall of the library.
For a girl, she was on the small side, so even though I had a huge size advantage over her, given how consistently I worked out,
honestly, I hadn’t expected her to slip away from me at all.
Was that even possible? Or did learning figure skating from a young age make you capable of things like this?
Though a pencil holder on the desk had toppled over and scattered a few pens across the floor in the process, overall it was an escape without a flaw.
...
Still, this was making the whole thing look a little strange.
I’d only meant to calm Narin down and persuade her, but if she slipped away like that... it looked like I was doing something shady.
So I tried talking to Narin again.
"Just calm down a little, Narin! I’m on the library committee! If you’re worried about getting caught by the teachers, I can smooth things over!!"
"That’s impossible. Maybe you lot will be fine, but I’m terrible at lying, so I’d be caught instantly. If I caused trouble by trespassing in the library on the first day of school, my school life from here on out would be hell. I’ve already ruined my reputation in class, and I don’t want the teachers blacklisting me too."
As she spoke, Narin sidled closer and closer toward the library door.
"More importantly, are there really girls coming here? If you’re thinking of doing something to me, you should give up. There are a truckload of old men who tried to approach me like this, got beaten up by me, and ran off. It’s true."
That was obviously a lie by any standard.
Besides, she seemed to have started making strange assumptions about me.
Of course, I could understand it, because this whole scene did leave room for some pretty weird interpretations, but still...
In any case, it was dangerous to just open the library door and walk out like this.
It hadn’t been long since class ended, and students and teachers were still likely moving around in the hall beyond the door.
If I opened it carelessly, there was too great a risk of getting caught.
It had been fine when we entered, because I’d been able to check whether anyone was nearby, but that wasn’t the case when leaving.
So I moved to stop Narin from heading out of the library.
I didn’t have time to explain everything in detail, so first I had to keep her from opening the door.
I blocked her from getting any closer to the library door, then forced her back toward the wall.
Good. Now to explain....!
-hop!
-tatatatat!
But Narin leaped high from where she stood, kicked off the wall behind her, and did a forward somersault in midair to vault clean over my head.
What the hell. Are they teaching something like air-walking in figure skating these days?
No wonder she won gold at the Olympics.
...
Unfortunately, her acrobatic move didn’t finish well.
Her landing was clean enough even to me, a man who knew nothing about gymnastics...
But where she landed, the pens I’d scattered on the floor earlier were rolling around.
In the end, Narin lost her balance on landing, and I had to move to keep her from getting badly hurt.
-thud!!
.
.
.
Ugh... my knee hurts.
Actually, I hadn’t meant to throw my whole body into it, either, but I’d moved so suddenly that my feet got tangled and I fell too.
Still, at least I’d kept Lee Narin from smashing her head into the library floor, so I supposed that was something.
And just then, I heard the door to the library open and Han Sia and Yu Somi came in, so I probably didn’t need to hold Narin down anymore.
"Ian, hi! I heard you were introducing us to a new friend today... Hmm... Was the person you meant to introduce not a friend, but a best friend? I don’t remember agreeing to that..."
"So you’re showing your true colors already, Lee Narin. If you want war, I’ll crush you with everything I’ve got."
But for some reason, their reactions seemed off.
Sensing that something was wrong, I looked again at how Narin and I were positioned right now.
...
Sure, I had caught Narin as she was falling backward, so I’d stopped her from toppling over.
But then I’d tripped going forward and fallen, and she’d been shoved down onto the floor with a hard smack on her rear.
Now, because her butt hurt, she was groaning and lying back with both hands clutching it.
...
Which meant my upper body was currently wedged between the legs of Lee Narin, who had just fallen backward onto her ass.
...
Ah. This looked like a complete 69 position, didn’t it?
.
.
.
It was a messy situation, but fortunately the misunderstanding cleared up quickly.
Narin, who had been trying to leave the library, had also calmed down by then.
"Yeah. Actually, I trusted Ian all along! I mean, if Ian had that kind of intention, he’d have already... ahem."
What kind of intention was that supposed to be?
"Still, I’m glad the misunderstanding got cleared up so fast. I almost said something really harsh to Narin."
"You already did. I heard you say you’d crush me with everything you had."
"Heh. Let’s just overlook a tiny issue like that. We’re friends, after all, right?"
"..."
But... regardless of whether the misunderstanding was cleared up, it seemed like it would still take some time before Narin and my friends really got close.
.
.
.
After that, the four of us gathered around the library table and took turns introducing ourselves in a simple round of self-introductions.
The atmosphere was a little stiff, but after what had just happened, this was probably still a pretty decent outcome.
Then Yu Somi reacted after hearing about Narin’s figure-skating background.
"Figure skating, huh... Actually, I didn’t even know that existed until I won gold at last year’s Olympics. When I was little, I saw the ice-fighting arc from Ranma 1/2 and just thought, 'Oh, so there’s a sport where people dance on ice.'"
...Ranma 1/2? Wasn’t that a little too old? The anime version was way older than we were.
Of course it did get aired on TV now and then, but I had no idea how many people actually knew it.
In fact, Sia, sitting next to Somi, looked confused because she didn’t know what Somi was talking about.
...
But unexpectedly, Narin bit right into the hook.
"Ah, I’ve seen it a few times when it was on TV. It was fun because there were a lot of girls who were good at martial arts..."
Hearing that, Yu Somi’s face suddenly lit up.
At this rate, if she took just one more step, Somi was probably going to spend the rest of the day talking about anime.
But Narin had no way of knowing that and had already stepped straight into the swamp without a bottom.
"Actually, the reason I started training was because I watched anime like Pretty Cure. When I was little, I wanted to become a champion of justice who beat villains with fists and kicks like the girls in it... but it turned out figure skating had nothing to do with that at all. I was tricked..."
"Huh? Wait. Then when you said last time that 'figure skating is just pointless kids' play'..."
"Yeah. Figure skating has nothing to do with fighting. All that stuff about the female characters in The King of Fighters fighting while skating was just pure fantasy."
...
So that was why her body control had been so strangely good.
If she’d been interested in that sort of thing from the start, then her amazing physical ability made a lot more sense.
And apparently her parents, in order to keep their precious daughter from veering off into the path of an MMA fighter, had tricked her into learning figure skating by telling her it was a kind of martial art.
Come to think of it, the dress you wear for figure skating does kind of resemble what magical girls wear...
After that, I wanted to ask more about Narin’s figure-skating career, but I couldn’t.
As expected, Yu Somi kept relentlessly clinging to the anime topic and refused to let Narin go.
"Have you been watching any anime lately?"
"No. I haven’t watched any since I started middle school. I got busy in all sorts of ways, and I always hated starting in the middle without knowing the earlier story."
"Ah! In that case, I know a good way to fix that..."
"Ohhh... so this means I won’t have to depend on TV broadcast times anymore..."
"If you like shows with pretty girls fighting, there’s a new one that came out earlier this year called Magical Girl Mado..."
Yu Somi was getting excited.
Come to think of it, the work she’d just mentioned was a magical-girl series, but the content was a little shocking...
Wasn't that a bit too intense to recommend to a beginner?
I briefly debated whether I should stop Somi.
...
But Somi looked too happy, so I decided to let her be.
From the perspective of a veteran, there’s hardly anything as fun as luring in a newbie and showing them the ropes.
And if anything went wrong, then it would unquestionably be Song Changwon’s fault for asking me to introduce Yu Somi.
That said, Sia couldn’t follow the anime talk at all, so she looked a little bored.
Still, the main goal today was to introduce Yu Somi to Lee Narin as a friend, so there was nothing for it.
So while Somi devoured Narin with conversation, I decided to keep Han Sia company by eating chocolate with her and serving as her talk partner.
...
Ugh, so sweet. If I ate too much of this stuff, I’d probably die young from diabetes... Do girls really like things this sugary?
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