Yuri (1)
A new wind was blowing through the Academy. Word had spread that a 1-class transfer student was on her way.
"We're so fucked. 1-class? Yoo Sia's supposed to be the only one."
"Hey, we have to get in line somehow."
Students at the Academy were not given Hunter ranks. They were classified from 1-class down to 8-class instead. 1-class meant a student with the potential to become S-rank — and at present, Yoo Sia was the only one in the entire school. A gift that rare was almost unheard of.
"This is our new transfer student. She actually cleared the Academy's admission standards a while ago, but she had a chronic illness and was only just discharged. Her grade is 1-class or higher, so I expect you all to treat her well. Go on — introduce yourself."
"Hello."
A girl with pale gold hair offered the greeting in a calm, even voice.
Chaewon stared at her with glittering eyes.
A transfer student! This time I'm definitely going to make friends. She's pretty, so she'll get along with Sia too.
Unfortunately, Chaewon had very few friends. No — even that was putting it generously. She had exactly one: Sia. And Sia was so perpetually busy that Chaewon had been spending more and more time alone. She wanted one more person to be close with. It just wasn't that easy.
Her reputation, after all, was terrible.
Dirt-poor. Talentless. An 8-class student rotting at the very bottom of the ladder.
Harlim Academy was no ordinary school. The connections you made here followed you for the rest of your life as a Hunter, and so relationships formed around a single question: What use are you? People liked to call a school a miniature society. The Hunter Academy was the real thing.
And Chaewon occupied the worst possible position in it. Being cute was her one and only selling point — but Yoo Sia kept her so close that no one else could get a foot in the door. Sia was the Academy's brightest prospect, the one everyone was watching. Her family was powerful, her abilities exceptional, her popularity inevitable. And yet the only person she was actually close to was Chaewon. She built her walls high and guarded them without a single crack.
That was never going to look good. But Yoo Sia was strong, and so those feelings were worthless. The more cunning students, perhaps for that very reason, turned their arrows of blame on Chaewon instead. The irony was that every time Sia looked after her, their classmates hated Chaewon a little more — a vicious cycle, steadily tightening.
The problem was that the two people at the center of it had no idea. Sia had been raised so preciously that she had never learned to recognize this particular ugliness in people. And Chaewon... well. Chaewon simply had no social radar whatsoever.
If I give her the strawberry milk I saved from this morning, maybe we'll get close.
The thought put a puppy-like look on her face. If she had possessed a tail, it would have been wagging itself into a blur.
Childish.
Around Yujin, Yuri looked as pure as anyone could be. At the Academy, she was someone else entirely.
Yuri had been called a genius for as long as she could remember. Her gift for magic was such that by the age of ten she had already surpassed the average mage. That brilliant talent had been broken under the name of Mana Addiction — but that, at last, had been solved.
In the five years Yuri had spent in a hospital bed, a great deal had changed. The biggest change of all was this: where a license alone had once been enough to become a Hunter, graduation from the Hunter Academy was now mandatory. Yuri was not yet of age, which meant the new law applied to her. And so a girl whose skill had nothing in common with an undergraduate's was forced to sit in Academy classrooms.
Naturally, the whole place felt like children playing house. She had been running raids since she was twelve.
I just need to graduate already so I can help Unni.
Yuri turned the thought over as she twirled her pen. Chatter rose around her, but it felt like it belonged to another world.
That was when a tiny girl appeared in front of her desk.
"Ah — hi."
It was Chaewon, watching Yuri's face with painful caution as she spoke.
Yuri, unfortunately, had been planning to graduate early. That was why she had already shut down the handful of students who had tried to talk to her.
Just in case. Let's see what she's worth.
Yuri looked at Chaewon and took her measure.
Five mana. Nobody special.
Im Yuri, the genius mage, had her own way of gauging another person's strength. She evaluated people in units of mana. One mana was her own power — a convenient shorthand, not a particularly granular scale. Five mana was the floor, and the closer someone sat to one, the stronger they were. It had never happened, but if she ever sensed someone at one mana, that would be a person who could kill her.
If you asked her how she felt mana, Yuri could not have explained it. It was like asking someone to explain how they lifted their arm. What was certain was that she could feel it.
Chaewon was weaker than her by a laughable margin. What little interest Yuri had never possessed vanished on the spot. She turned her head away without a shred of mercy.
"I'm Han Chaewon..."
Chaewon's voice shrank. Yuri's reaction had clearly knocked the confidence out of her.
And then it happened.
Yuri jolted, shoving her chair back as she stood. Her eyes locked onto something across the room.
Yoo Sia was standing there, her gaze ice-cold.
Two mana...! That's impossible. I've never felt anything like this.
Yuri's mana test was as natural as breathing. She did not have to try. It simply came to her — especially when the other person was carrying hostility. Like right now.
Two mana was a staggering figure. She had never, not once, sensed anything like it. Objectively speaking, even two mana meant you would need two of them to barely kill her, so it was not exactly a threat. The problem was the location. This was the Academy. These students were not rivals. They were not even close to professional Hunters.
And yet — two mana.
Even in the raids she had run in the past, the highest she had ever sensed was two-point-five. She had never seen better. This was a first.
Yuri stared at the girl without blinking.
"Wh-whoa. You okay? You don't look so good."
"...You."
"H-huh?"
Yuri was quick on the uptake. She understood at once that Sia's hostility was because of the girl standing in front of her. Of course it was — the reaction had hit the moment she ignored Chaewon's attempt at conversation.
Yuri looked at Chaewon with indifferent eyes and held out her hand.
"...Let's be friends from now on."
"Wait, really?!"
Chaewon's eyes sparkled. Unfortunately, the person Yuri actually wanted to be friends with was someone else.
She might be the same as me.
Yuri had been born with overwhelming talent. Ordinary people found geniuses uncomfortable, and so she had never been welcome in any group. Not even from her own parents. The only one who had ever looked at her without prejudice was her older sister, Yujin.
That was it. Yuri was exhausted by other people's bias, and anyone who could free her from it would do.
I should get close to her. But who's this one supposed to be?
Yuri glanced at Chaewon. She seemed close to Yoo Sia, though Yuri could not begin to guess why Sia would bother looking after her.
Family, maybe. Not that it matters.
She would drift away on her own, whether Yuri intended it or not. Yuri believed that completely. Everyone who had ever approached her first had eventually backed off, frightened by the sheer scale of her talent.
Ding, ding, ding!
The bell for break rang out.
"Good work today, everyone. Don't forget next week's assignment. Your next class meets in a different room, so don't be late."
"Yes, sir! Thank you!"
The moment the professor stepped out, the classroom erupted into noise. Yuri stood, intending to walk over to Sia's desk.
She did not get far.
"First time switching classrooms, right? Want us to show you the way?"
The students she had exchanged a few words with during first-period break had already crowded around her seat.
What a pain.
"No, I'm fine. That girl already said she'd show me around."
Yuri pointed at Chaewon, standing beside Sia.
"Han Chaewon?"
The girl's face crumpled badly.
"Yeah, that's her."
"You just transferred, so you wouldn't know — you really shouldn't hang around with her."
"Why?"
"Everyone in our class hates her. She's insufferable. Stick with her and that label's going to stick to you too."
I see.
The mood of the class was clear enough. Most of the kids in this room were hyenas — the kind who tore into any animal too weak to fight back. Yuri had felt it herself, back when her body was still failing her. The same children who had spent years catering to her every whim had turned on a dime.
"Thanks for the concern, but get lost. I can't stand people like you."
"What? Fine. Do whatever you want. I came over because I felt sorry for you, being the new kid. What a shitty attitude."
Yuri ignored her, stood up in one motion, and walked to Sia's desk.
"Hi. I didn't get to introduce myself earlier. I'm Im Yuri, the new transfer student..."
"Chaewon, what's our next class?"
"H-huh? Monster Theory."
Yuri slipped her awkwardly extended hand into her pocket.
Did she just ignore me?
She stared at Sia in disbelief. Sia, for her part, had already turned her back and was walking out the front door.
"Sia's probably just shy."
Chaewon offered Yuri an awkward little smile.
"I see..."
Judging by the situation, getting close to this Sia girl was not going to be easy.
So that's how she wants to play it?
Taming kids like that was not particularly difficult. You just had to snap their pride in half.
The class in the other room began.
"I told you this period would be a debate, didn't I? Come up in your assigned groups, present for three minutes, and sit back down."
The professor looked at Yuri.
"Anyone want to present with the transfer student?"
No one in the class raised a hand. Word of what Yuri had done earlier had already made its way through the room.
Then someone did.
"We'll do it with her."
It was Chaewon.
"Alright. I'll give you some time to organize your topic and your material, then come up to the front."
About thirty minutes passed before it was their turn.
"Our presentation topic is the weaknesses of magical beasts."
Sia's voice was crisp and precise as she pointed at the screen. Reference materials began to appear.
"Hunters always have to think in terms of efficiency. You need to be able to kill a monster without expending too much power. That's why we put together a breakdown of beast weaknesses."
A murmur of interest ran through the class. Sia lifted a hand and quieted them at once. She looked thoroughly used to standing in front of a room.
"If you look at the materials, a Balrog's weak point is said to be its horns. In fact, during the Roulette Gate incident about four years ago, Hunters subdued a Balrog without much difficulty — because they already knew the weak point..."
That was when Yuri cut across her.
"And we're supposed to take that at face value? Beasts are constantly evolving. You can't be sure. Blindly trusting a weak point could get you killed, couldn't it?"
Sia's pretty brow furrowed.
"As I said earlier, knowing a monster's weak point dramatically improves your efficiency when you kill it. You shouldn't put blind faith in it — but you shouldn't ignore it either. A skeleton's weak point, the sixth vertebra, is still a weak point to this day. Which means they don't evolve as frequently as you're suggesting."
"Then you should have said so in that much detail. This is in front of everyone. Being vague and muddying the information doesn't do anyone any good."
"Um, guys? You do know this is a group project, right...?"
Chaewon fidgeted helplessly between them.
"I'll buy you tteokbokki after, so can we please just wrap this up nicely."
Group projects were one of the heaviest factors in their grades. If she tanked her score, she would not be able to look her brother in the eye.
"Chaewon. What do you think?"
Sia looked at her.
Chaewon flinched.
"H-huh?"
"Is she right, or am I right?"
"Obviously I'm right. Ask a real question."
Chaewon approached the two of them on trembling legs and whispered into their ears.
"Whoever gets the higher score is the one who's right, so make up already. Or I'll get mad!"
Sia sighed and looked at Yuri.
"Want to talk after this? Just the two of us."
"What, you wanna throw hands? I'm not scared."
Beep, beep, beep!
"You're home?"
I beamed as I looked at Chaewon. Her face, however, was dark.
"Chaewon, did something happen?"
"...Today was a lot."
She dropped onto the sofa with a dejected look.
"What happened?"
"A new transfer student came... and she got into a fight with Sia."
"...With Sia?"
There's someone at the Academy who can pick a fight with Sia?
Maybe if it was Yuri. Wait. It isn't Yuri, is it?
"Do you happen to know her name..."
"I don't know. I'm taking the rest of today off, so you have to leave me alone! Got it?"
I could only watch as Chaewon disappeared into the bathroom.
Since when did I ever pick on her?
Raising a kid is no walk in the park.
More importantly, Street Corner Restaurant was about to start. I had a live broadcast to catch.
I flipped the channel.