My First Fan: Baek Miju, the Good Friend from the Same Class (3)
“...Lunch? Yeah, sure. Yaaawn.”
“R-really? ...Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. It’s just eating with a classmate. If you’re hungry, let’s hurry up and go eat.”
It had been a month since I started surviving at the Magical Girl Academy. Somehow or other, what began as a trip to the cafeteria with just the class president now had an extra friend tagging along. Baek Miju. Or was it Baek Mijeong? I’d definitely heard the name, but I kept mixing it up every single time. I still couldn’t quite remember the class president’s family name either.
The three of us—me, the class president, and the girl I assumed was Baek Miju—strolling around the academy campus together. Since enrolling, I’d never once walked around with more than two people. Maybe that was why adding just one more person made the atmosphere feel strangely different. It was incredibly awkward. I really felt like an actual academy student now.
Wait, no. Come to think of it, my official identity right now really was an academy student. But what was this girl doing? The confident way she’d spoken to me earlier had vanished. Now this Baek Mijeong kept sneaking glances at me, checking my reaction. Had I done something wrong to her? Or maybe I’d scared her somehow?
No matter how much I dug through my memories, nothing came up. ...What was the point of thinking at all when I couldn’t even trust my own head anymore? Especially in this sleepy state where I couldn’t remember half the things I did. For all I knew, I might have unconsciously done something awful to Baek Miju without realizing it.
......What was for lunch today again?
“Class president, what’s on the menu today?”
“Altari radish with stir-fried pork, seasoned bean sprouts, soybean paste soup, and mandarin jelly.”
Whoa. The lunch menu was no joke. Just hearing the description made my salivary glands kick into overdrive.
“Oh… that’s not just a rice thief, it’s a full-on rice bandit. Or maybe a rice terrorist?”
“...Jihye, don’t you think that’s taking it a bit far?”
The class president pulled a face that somehow expressed seven shades of displeasure at my words. What? Did she actually dislike stir-fried pork? How could anyone reject a Korean soul food like that? There was no way a person who hated jeyuk existed in this world… Actually, there was. ...Female high school students.
The class president had been a Korean high school girl before anything else. It was knowledge deeply etched into my mind from when Jiah was in high school and hated the stuff. To a girl whose tastes ran toward malatang, rose tteokbokki, and braised chicken, shoving jeyuk, pork cutlets, or soup rice in her face would be a serious offense.
“Class president, do you hate jeyuk? Well, I guess most girls aren’t that into it. What about you, Miju?”
Still, I didn’t want to give up so easily. Even if it was just one person. Wasn’t there at least one high school girl out there who liked jeyuk? With that faint hope, I asked Mijeong, but—
“Huh… uh! What did you say?”
Miju hadn’t been listening to me at all. That… kind of stung. Still, I didn’t let it show. Because I’m an adult, damn it!
“You weren’t listening? I asked if you like jeyuk.”
“Ah. Um, yeah! I do.”
Oh my god. The knowledge my little sister had given me was completely wrong. It wasn’t that high school girls disliked jeyuk—it was just that the class president particularly hated it.
“See? The class president is the weird one for hating jeyuk!”
“I never said I hated it, Jihye. And at some point you started treating me like a walking lunch menu. Isn’t that a bit much, even if I am the class president?”
“Well, it happens. You are the class president.”
“...This is ridiculous.”
Two heads are better than one, as they say. With Miju now part of the group, it felt like I’d gained another weapon in my arsenal. I’d learned how to survive the class president’s brutal fact attacks by using Baek Miju as a hostage. This had to be proper life wisdom.
We reached the cafeteria. Unlike yesterday, the sight of Baek Miju receiving a tray alongside me drew different looks from the people around us. The fact that no one dared enter the radius around our table remained the same, but the nature of the gossip had changed.
“Now she’s even threatening Baek Miju? She’s seriously ruthless…”
“Even innocent little Miju. This is just unforgivable.”
“Hey, you’re not actually gonna pick a fight with her, are you? We all know she’s stronger than us. Sparring with her wouldn’t even get you your money’s worth.”
Just how far was my image going to be destroyed? At this rate I’d become the evil demon king who’d captured the innocent princesses—the class president and Baek Miju.
“Nom.”
Like I had the energy to care about any of that. I’d rather use it to eat one more spoonful of jeyuk. It was a relief that becoming a girl hadn’t changed my appetite much. That was practically a blessing. Just thinking about the alternative—if my tastes had shifted and I was sitting here eating pineapple pizza or mint chocolate right now… ugh, terrifying.
Maybe my tongue was the one thing still connecting my past self to my present one. There was only one downside.
“For someone who went crazy over the jeyuk earlier, you’re not eating very much, Miss Jihye. If you were just going to eat this little, why did you pile your tray so high? Greedy much?”
“It’s been a while since I’ve had jeyuk, so my eyes went a little wild…”
My stomach had shrunk. I’d known for a while that after nine years in this body my stomach capacity had decreased, but whenever I saw food the old me used to love, my eyes would glaze over and I’d lose control. An irresistible urge would surge up from the very bottom of my core. Today… was one of those days.
“J-Jihye. If it’s too much for you to finish, can I… maybe eat some?”
That was when Mijeong appeared like a relief pitcher. The gentle smile she gave me as she offered her kindness made the corners of her eyes look incredibly warm. The class president always seemed ready to take care of me, yet she never helped at times like this. So Mijeong’s appearance right now perfectly scratched an itch I hadn’t even realized was bothering me.
“Thank you, my friend Mijeong. I think we can become really good friends from now on…”
“E-eh? Really? …I’m glad.”
The kid might have terrible stranger anxiety, but at her core she was a good person.
“Sigh… It’s Miju, not Mijeong. Why does Jihye always remember names so strangely?”
I thought I heard the class president’s quiet little complaint. Must have been my imagination.
“U-um, Jihye. I… have a favor to ask……”
“What is it?”
As a matter of loyalty to the friend who’d helped me finish my jeyuk, I’d grant her just one request. Go ahead, let’s hear it.
“Could you… teach me a little magic?”
“Cough!”
Contrary to all my big talk, my friend Miju had come at me with a completely unexpected proposal. It made me choke, and I spent a good while coughing. Of course it had to be spicy jeyuk… even my nose was burning now.
“Cough, cough. It’s possible, but… why do you want to learn from me? You already have a teacher. Cough!”
Even though I spent half of every class asleep, I still had a rough grasp of the curriculum. On top of that, I knew exactly what kind of teaching style the instructor used on these little chicks. After quietly observing for a month, I could say with confidence that the teacher was an excellent educator. Her personality was a bit twisted and she had the mindset of an old fart, but since she was a combat-type magical girl, that was understandable.
“If class time isn’t enough, you could just ask the teacher after school. It might not work every day, but she’s kind. She’d probably teach you properly.”
“Yeah… but I want to learn from you, Jihye.”
No, seriously, why? There was already a highly skilled educator right there. Why come to me? Even if I’d studied some pedagogy and had once been in a position overseeing the entire academy, I couldn’t compare to the current active staff. The comparison itself would be incredibly rude. I was nothing more than a retired magical girl number one. Nothing more, nothing less. I couldn’t understand why she was making this request to a sick old man dying alone in a corner room.
“...Sorry. That’s impossible.”
“E… eh?”
“Yaaawn. Just attending the academy is exhausting enough. I don’t have the stamina to give you extra lessons after school.”
Even if she made that shocked face, it couldn’t be helped. My trash-tier stamina required more than eighteen hours of sleep a day just to function like a normal person. I could barely take care of myself—there was no way I had energy left to teach someone else.
“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. If you spar with me, you might end up with the same result as the class president.”
“Hey, Kim Jihye.”
“Ah. I said I was sorry, class president. I even apologized to you the next day, remember?”
After getting thoroughly scolded by my sister, I’d gone to the class president the very next day and apologized for my behavior. She had clearly accepted it generously back then… So why was she treating me so coldly now?
“Th-that’s not—! It doesn’t matter.”
“No, I’m telling you my stamina won’t hold up…”
“Then what if it’s not sparring? What if you just explain things with words? We could keep it short, like one hour. If that’s too much, thirty minutes is fine too!”
Miju fired off her words like a rapid-fire rap without a single stutter. From the look on her face, I could sense not just desperation but outright obsession.
…Just what about the current pathetic version of me made her go this far?
“My friend Miju. Then let me ask you one more thing. Why me, of all people?”
“That’s…”
No matter what answer my friend Mijeong gave, I was fully prepared to refuse.
“…Because you’re cool.”
“Yeah. Cool… wait, what?”
There had been a time when I thought that way too.
“You’re cool! You seem like an incredibly amazing magical girl! Unlike the teacher, your transformation doesn’t change your clothes or hairstyle at all. You just hold a simple iron pipe in your hand. The way you casually block every spell with that shabby-looking weapon is just so…”
....
“Class president. Please stop her somehow.”
“This is outside my area of expertise. I’m pretty overwhelmed myself right now.”
This was a serious problem. If even the class president couldn’t handle it… This friend named Baek Mijeong. Were her gentle appearance and hesitant, watchful behavior all just a smokescreen? At this level she could work as a spy, seriously.
“…It’s like an aura of a skilled person hiding their true power is radiating from Jihye. Or maybe it’s more like the relaxed atmosphere of an organization boss? Or perhaps Jihye is actually a secret agent for the Magical Girl Association. In that case, to such a wonderful elite magical girl……”
“Okay. Okay… that’s enough now.”
It felt like all my energy was being sucked away. I was genuinely dizzy. Not from sleepiness, but from the price of suddenly facing an incomprehensible horror. To stop an eight-ton truck with a broken steering wheel, I ultimately had no choice but to kneel before that fear.
“Sigh. I’ll teach you. But only one hour after school each day.”
“R-really?”
“Anything more than that is impossible. My stamina won’t hold up.”
“That’s more than enough! Thank you, Jihye! I’ll treasure this moment for the rest of my life!”
No… you really don’t have to do that.
“But Jihye. Could you… give me lessons too?”
Class president… sneaking in a request for yourself like that is a little shameless, you know.