12. The New Term (3)
In modern society, clothes are not worn for the sake of health and hygiene alone.
Who puts on underwear merely to soak up the sweat on their skin, or outerwear merely to keep dust from touching their body? Those are nothing more than incidental perks that come attached once you have already decided to get dressed. People wear clothes to show who they are—and so that others can read their social standing at a glance. That is what clothing is.
After turning it over for a long while, I spoke into the phone, a little awkwardly.
"…Um, Principal."
"Yes?"
"…Wouldn't a suit be more appropriate than a school uniform…?"
"The title may be Health Committee Member, but the work itself is just that of a health teacher, isn't it?"
As I said it, I let out a thin sigh, quiet enough that the principal would not hear.
When it came to what one wore to an official function, nothing was as convenient as a suit. A joyful occasion like an entrance ceremony, a sorrowful one like a funeral—slip into a suit, and you were already halfway there.
And last of all…
I'm not a student, for one. A school uniform? Over my dead body.
What came back, though, was Principal Seok Jaehwa's voice, dead set on the uniform for no good reason.
"I think a uniform would be perfectly fine, though? You're the same age as this year's freshmen to begin with. And a suit and a uniform don't look all that different."
I hated the version of myself that had once found that voice, brimming over with passion, somehow charming. It was nothing but pigheaded stubbornness.
"Wouldn't it look a little strange if the person sitting in the infirmary was wearing a school uniform?"
"But unique is nice, isn't it?"
"If I go around in a uniform, I won't feel like a health teacher at all."
"Then just wear a gown over the uniform. That's nice in its own way, don't you think?"
"…When you're speaking with the other teachers, I feel like my uniform might confuse them…."
"Everyone already knows your face, Woojin, so I shouldn't think there'll be any confusion."
"……."
"And if you wear the gown over it, even people who don't know you won't have any choice but to recognize you."
I'm thirty years old. What the hell am I doing in a school uniform. Humiliating.
I couldn't say that outright, so I spent five minutes earnestly trotting out one excuse after another, and not a single one took. This was why talking to old people was exhausting….
"……."
…I should just let him win. Even if it was embarrassing, wear it long enough and I would get used to it.
I had been lying in bed taking the call this whole time. Rubbing my eyes against the fatigue, I answered.
"…Then I'll go in the uniform."
"Excellent! And about the entrance ceremony—you won't be with the students, Woojin. You'll be behind the stage…."
"Yes? Yes…."
Awkward.
"……."
The uniform I was wearing again for the first time in ten years felt unbearably awkward. The pitch-black tie. The navy vest. The blazer I had draped over the back of the chair I was sitting in, so I could pull the gown on over everything. All of it, unbearably awkward.
It was absolutely not because memories of high school were welling up one after another. I was simply awkward from wearing one after so long. Absolutely not….
"……."
And it seemed I was not the only one who found this look awkward.
"Noona. Aren't you going to go see your friends?"
"I only came because I was passing by anyway. But…."
Thirty minutes before the entrance ceremony was due to begin, Lee Hayun—the second-year senior who had dropped into the infirmary as if it were the most natural thing in the world—looked at me in her usual fleece. Above the zipper drawn all the way up to her chin, her mouth worked in little motions. From the slightly mashed way she was speaking, she was probably sucking away on a piece of candy.
"Why are you in a uniform?"
"…That's what I'd like to know…."
"……?"
I don't even know the reason myself. As if you would.
Hands tucked into the pockets of my white coat, I turned in a lazy circle with the chair, around and around. Still, I was glad it was not as embarrassing as I had expected. Probably because it was not all that different from the uniform I had worn in high school. Hayun's academy uniform, for that matter, had not been much different from what the high school girls nearby wore. So if I simply told myself I had gone back to my high school days….
"Ha…."
I'm twenty….
I am twenty….
An age at which a school uniform should not feel awkward. An age that does not yet know how tiresome it is to fuss over an outfit not only on weekends, but every single day. An age that does not yet know that a dress shirt and a suit are, in the end, the most comfortable thing there is….
Lost in that feeling, I was spinning blankly in circles when Hayun came up beside me and stopped the chair with her own hands.
"Anyway, it suits you. The uniform."
"…You think so?"
"Yeah. I've only ever seen you in regular clothes, but it goes with the gown better than I expected…."
"……."
"…Hey, I gave you a compliment. Why are you reacting like that?"
"…I was just wondering if it's really right for me to be wearing a uniform."
"If it suits you, that's enough. No need to worry about it, right?"
"You think so?"
"Yeah."
A simple impression. A simple response. But once I had heard all of it, a hollow little laugh slipped out of me before I knew it.
Just as I had picked up speech habits from Jiyoon, who gamed with me every night, it seemed I had caught something from Hayun as well. Her personality, say. Something along those lines.
Right. Sitting here going I don't wanna wear a uniform, waaah… was not going to change a thing. The moment I let myself relax and started to smirk, Hayun—still working the candy around in her mouth—broke into a dopey grin of her own.
"The clothes and all…. You finally look a bit like a little brother."
"So until now I seemed like an older brother?"
"Ah, no? I mean…. You seemed the same age. Yeah."
"…Shall I do it like last time? Call you Hayun, as if I were some third-year senior?"
"Don't! Not that!"
"Hayun…."
"I said don't!! You—…!"
"Mmph—I won't, I won't, so please don't grab me. You've got spit on your fingers, Noona."
"…W-we've even kissed, so what's the big deal about this…."
Hayun and I traded playful remarks, both of us grinning, but only for a moment.
With the entrance ceremony about to begin, I left the infirmary and crossed the school grounds beside Hayun, who had taken the lead the way a noona should, insisting she would show me to the auditorium. Beyond her gently swaying ponytail, the hallway—stone empty all through the break—was packed today with people I was seeing for the first time. Prospective male heroes I had not the slightest interest in, of course, and even female heroes whose names I felt I ought to know.
Hmm…. Because they were still young? Because of the makeup? Or, having set my sights on heroes of Lee Jiyoon and Han Sua's caliber, had my standards climbed so high that faces at this level had simply fallen out of memory? Put them in their hero costumes and I felt I could have placed them exactly…. Recognizing someone the moment I saw them was not as easy as I had thought.
Ah. That girl looked like someone I had seen somewhere, too. Same for the one over there, holding a friend's hand as they headed into the bathroom. And the girl at the corner of the hallway—I was fairly sure she had actually been one of the A-rank heroes.
…She had a boyfriend. Fuck.
I was walking the hall like that, looking around like some country hick fresh up to the capital, when—
"……."
Was it the gown over the uniform? The uniform under the gown? Or had I, without realizing it, been staring around far too much like a pervert? The sidelong glances I had been feeling aimed my way since a little earlier were growing more numerous by the moment.
"Hmm…."
…Judging by the fact that most of them were girls, it was probably the third reason. I had been looking pretty blatantly, to be fair. There were just so many heroes I recognized that I could not help myself….
If I meant to hook the students—a big catch like Han Sua, especially—it would be best to keep ugly rumors from getting around. I swept one quick look around, cleared my throat for no particular reason, and quietly fixed my eyes on nothing but Hayun's ponytail.
"Hello."
"Yes, yes. A pleasure."
"Pleased to meet you. I'm Seo Woojin."
"The uniform? Ah, the principal asked me to wear one."
"I'm not a student. I'm a teacher. For the time being. A health teacher is still a teacher, so…?"
"Please, call me whatever's comfortable. I imagine being called Woojin would be the easiest."
"My age…. I graduated last year, so I'm twenty."
"Why aren't I a student, you ask?"
"What would someone who can only heal have to learn here? Haha…."
A few teachers whose faces I had seen even during the break, a few I was meeting for the first time today. Stepping into the space behind the stage—something like a broadcast booth—I exchanged brief greetings with them, and that was the shape of it.
There had been a whole row of heroes with decent enough names sitting up on the stage earlier, and there were some back here as well. These were probably the ones who had not quite put their years in. I hoped a single round of hellos would not become an excuse for them to start drifting in and out of the infirmary at all hours.
…Maybe I should have been ruder. Hmm.
"Woojin."
"Ah, yes."
A voice reached me just then. When I turned my head, a rather wan-looking man held out a few thin sheets of paper. He was one of the teachers, apparently, but he was a man, so I had not bothered memorizing his name or his ability.
"Did you get the message? There's supposed to be a short greeting, so we can introduce you to the students."
"Yes. I heard from the principal. Only yesterday, though."
"He does tend to just wing his way through life…. Kidding. Anyway, it's roughly like this."
I let my gaze drift down in time with his words. What met me was a short string of sentences—congratulatory remarks on their admission, paired with a brief account of who I was.
I could roughly guess why I had to do something like this, what they were after. But the wording was, how should I put it, fusty and stiff. Honestly, it read like something an old man of about the principal's vintage had written. Still, what could I do. If they said do it, you did it.
"So later I go up and read this, correct?"
"Yes. The order is probably…. after the student council president finishes speaking? …Ah. No, it isn't. After the principal's welcoming address."
"Ah."
"You can come up when I give you the signal."
I had not known the academy even had a student council. …Thinking about it now, I felt as if I had caught the words student council president in passing the last time the principal came by the infirmary. The name I had heard then was Baek…. She had not been a famous hero, in any case. I should have actually listened instead of letting it slide because it was a bother.
Just as that thought was trailing off—
"……I-I'm sorry. I must have been nervous. I got the hiccups…."
Hic—
The sound of a hiccup spread through the auditorium speakers. With someone's apology right on its heels, the entrance ceremony began.
That crazy bitch.
Why is she here?
"……I firmly pledge to devote my loyalty."
The student council president carried on with the national ceremony, holding on to her composure however she could. Baek Seoyeon's gaze stabbed into one girl standing in the very front row of the freshmen.
Yozora.
Why on earth was that crazy bitch—enormous in nothing but the chest—standing in the academy auditorium like that?
Had the Company decided to plant a spy too? No. They shouldn't have had the means. And this is the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the Republic of Korea. You're Japanese, you crazy bitch. Why are you reciting along so earnestly?
…And that. Who's the brown-haired girl right next to you, already getting 'close' with you? Is she a villain too?
"……."
…Dizzy.
Seriously.
So dizzy I feel like I'm going to throw up….