The Magical Girl Prodigy from the Next Class Boldly Came to Befriend Me (3)
Lunchtime had arrived. Somehow, the class president and Mijeong had tracked me all the way to the infirmary where I’d been sleeping. With each passing day, the president’s skill at locating me only seemed to improve. Mijeong was clearly learning from her, and her own tracking abilities were advancing by leaps and bounds. If I wanted to skip class again, I’d have to find somewhere besides the infirmary—preferably a place with a sofa.
“Ughhh! Hah.”
“Stretching?”
“Yeah.”
“Stretching is fine, but… could you not do it while we’re eating?”
The class president scolded me as I stretched in the middle of the cafeteria. While eating, she said. I’d already finished my meal. Still, if I argued back, I’d only receive a fresh barrage of nagging, so I swallowed my retort.
For growing children, nothing mattered more than a proper meal. Even in this era, our people still insisted on three solid meals a day. Some students heaped their trays high with rice, while others waited until the very end of serving in hopes of scoring extra portions. That was a gamble—if the cooks ran short, the latecomers would be stuck with whatever scraps remained. If the portions were strictly measured, they broke even. In other words, they were betting their lives on the slim chance of leftovers.
Compared to them, I…
“My stomach really is small.”
“Jihye does eat less than most.”
“S-still, isn’t that a good thing? It means you’ll never gain weight!”
My appetite was noticeably smaller than it had been when I was a boy. No matter how loudly my mind screamed for more on days with delicious side dishes, my body refused. Today was no different—duck bulgogi, radish kimchi, and enoki mushroom doenjang soup, with seaweed to sprinkle over rice. It was a shame I couldn’t eat more. My limit was half a bowl, less than the average girl. With a body this small, of course I couldn’t handle a full portion. Just like Mijeong said, I’d never put on weight. If I tried to eat more, my body would simply reject it. I might as well accept that.
“Yeah. That’s… comforting.”
“You don’t sound comforted at all.”
Couldn’t the president stay quiet? It was already depressing enough to be stuck in this body, and now I had the added debuff of needing excessive sleep. Did she have any idea how frustrating that was? I wiped away invisible tears.
I set down my chopsticks and waited for the president and Mijeong to finish. Bored, I watched the students still lined up, waiting for the last of the food to be served. A sudden question occurred to me.
“I just realized something. Why does our academy serve meals this way instead of buffet-style?”
It would be so much simpler if we could just serve ourselves like a buffet instead of forcing everyone into this lottery system.
“H-have you… been to other academies?”
“I have. Most of them were buffet-style.”
At Mijeong’s question, memories surfaced. Back in Magica, as Association President, I’d occasionally toured academies. After morning inspections, I’d head to the cafeteria starving, and the lavish buffet spreads had made my eyes spin more than once. Yuni and the chick had always tried to rein me in, and even Salbyeol would scold me about maintaining presidential dignity. Of course, my constitution still limited how much I could actually take, but I’d always tried to sneak a little extra anyway. Every academy there prepared buffets so students could eat their fill. Not here, though. This was Earth—South Korea, specifically. The military-style culture hadn’t been completely uprooted yet. At least, that was how it felt to me.
While I was lost in thought, the president’s voice cut through the nostalgia.
“Um… Jihye. Sorry to interrupt, but are there other academies besides this one?”
Oh.
“A-academies? There’s only the Magical Girl Academy here… probably!”
Mijeong’s follow-up landed right after. Under their twin stares, I realized my mistake.
“……”
“It’s rare to see Jihye this flustered. Right, Mijeong?”
“D-don’t tease her too much, Se-yul!”
For a moment, I was speechless. Staying silent in this situation only made it look like I was hiding something. I needed to say anything to smooth it over, but… nothing came to mind.
The president pressed on with a sly tone.
“I was joking before, but… Jihye, are you actually some kind of secret agent sent by the Association?”
“No way. J-Jihye wouldn’t do that… right?”
A secret agent? What kind of childish fantasy was that? The president might act mature, but moments like this proved she was still just a kid. At seventeen, she was exactly the age to get swept up in secret-agent daydreams.
“…Yawn.”
“Wait. Did you just try to brush it off with a yawn? So you really are a secret agent?”
“R-really? My guess was right?”
They were getting carried away. Time to shut this down.
“You idiots. I yawned because I’m sleepy, not because I’m a secret agent. I’m not a kid. If the Association really sent me, they’d make me a teacher, not a freshman.”
“Hmm… I guess that makes sense.”
“Y-yeah… My guess was wrong after all…”
“Forget the nonsense. Going back to what we were talking about—why is this academy using serving trays instead of a buffet?”
I quickly cut Mijeong off and steered the conversation back. The students who had waited until the end were now receiving their portions with thoroughly disappointed expressions. They’d lost the gamble.
“Our academy does have a buffet.”
The president’s answer caught me off guard.
“Huh? But we’ve been getting served this whole time.”
Did the president not see the students who’d gambled and lost? She calmly corrected me anyway.
“Starting from second year, it’s buffet-style. First-years get served portions.”
“…What?”
That made no sense. Why only first-years?
“For example, have you ever seen any second-year seniors in this cafeteria?”
“N-no… I haven’t.”
Now that she mentioned it, I’d only ever seen other first-years here. Even though first-years used separate classroom buildings, I hadn’t expected the cafeteria to be segregated too.
“So they’ve set up two completely separate systems. That’s incredibly inefficient.”
“I agree. If you want to know why they went this far, ask the principal.”
Why bring up the principal all of a sudden? …Don’t tell me it was that lunatic.
“Ah… I-I remember now. The principal said first-years need to grow up strong, so… he did it on purpose.”
What kind of nonsense was that? These kids were already exhausted from studying and training. At least let them eat properly. How was stunting their growth supposed to help? To be fair, the portions weren’t that small, but still.
At least the question that had been bothering me was finally answered.
“Yeah. The principal’s… a complete nutjob.”
Just call him a lunatic. A lunatic crazy enough to detect Salbyeol’s hiding magic.
As the conversation wound down, an uninvited guest appeared.
“Um… Lady Cosmo. Are you feeling better now-yoyo?”
“……”
I nearly jumped. Where had he come from this time? Thankfully, I didn’t flinch or scream. The others continued eating without noticing anything strange. On Earth, for whatever reason, mascots weren’t public knowledge. I couldn’t risk exposing Salbyeol by saying something careless.
So… how should I respond? Salbyeol seemed to read my hesitation and flapped his tiny wings energetically.
“You don’t have to answer me-yoyo! After all, the reply to what I want to say isn’t meant for me to hear-yoyo.”
What was he babbling about now? Appearing out of nowhere just to speak in riddles. When I gave him a confused look, he explained.
“Because you’ve been avoiding me-yoyo… This might be your karma-yoyo!”
The moment his cheeky words ended, a small figure appeared in the distance. Ah. So this was why Salbyeol had shown up again.
A child about my height was walking toward me with confident strides—no hesitation, just pure boldness. Her black hair was tied into pigtails that brushed her cheeks, lower than the usual style most kids wore. It gave her a calmer impression, but the slight upward tilt of her cat-like eyes kept her from looking merely calm. She radiated confidence and self-assurance.
A girl I’d run into several times by chance. We’d never met privately, yet we’d built a strange sort of familiarity. The same girl who had boldly introduced herself as Starlight.
She stopped in front of me and declared in a loud voice:
“You. Be my friend!”
And all I could do was break out in a cold sweat at her sudden confession. My friends beside me looked just as stunned.