13. Yozora Is an Idiot (2)
Han Sua.
As she slipped quietly out of the officetel, her father's instructions rose in her mind, one after another. Most of the people she would meet at the academy were ordinary civilians, so she was to read the room and behave accordingly. Flash her money around, and she would only draw the wrong kind of eyes.
Be as easygoing as possible. Be as gentle as possible. Act as much like a normal person as possible, and make as many friends as she could.
The mysterious-recluse act was a concept that only worked in the old days. These days, with the internet what it was, getting along with everyone would do more for managing her image after graduation.
One by one. Every last one of them.
"……."
…Ha. Hilarious.
The terrors of a competitive society. How you were supposed to use people like machine parts, like slaves, without ever growing fond of them. He had drilled all of that into her like brainwashing, back when he wouldn't let her make a single friend—and now, of all times, he wanted her to make as many as she could?
Obvious. He was only using her image as an excuse to polish the company's.
It was something her father tossed out whenever he happened to cross paths with her—a man she barely saw more than a few times a year. Honestly, she still couldn't bring herself to agree. She could understand it, though. Everything she enjoyed now was something he had won by stepping on his own brothers and sisters.
So Han Sua had lived until now doing her best to listen to her parents. If even family was something you climbed over, that was a little frightening, wasn't it? What if she let her guard down and got stepped on too?
"……."
…Well. In the end, Project Listen to Mom and Dad had been a spectacular failure. Tutors and all the rest—if your head simply didn't work that way, forcing the studying only got you so far. That much was obvious.
Terribly sorry about that. The daughter born to two people who had graduated at the top of their class from famous universities overseas turned out, surprisingly, to be dumb as a brick, and she had gone and shredded—rrrip, rrrip—enough money to buy a house on the outskirts of Seoul without breaking a sweat, straight into thin air.
…So this, too. The fact that she had been forced into a Miren Academy uniform probably meant don't disgrace the family; at least become a Hero and make yourself useful. She understood that much. She would wear the uniform like a good, obedient girl, but—
"Haa…."
She didn't particularly want to be a Hero.
Han Sua eased the scarf at her neck down a little and let out a lonely sigh. She didn't want to be popular with people, and she didn't want to make a lot of money. Beating up vicious villains? What if she got seriously hurt doing that? Someone stronger than her could handle it.
As many friends as possible, her ass. She just wanted to throw all of it away and roll around her studio reading manga. The one she'd been on last time—she'd heard online that the next volume went completely off the rails….
The street was packed with the morning commute. Wedged into the crowd, Han Sua cracked her stiff neck—crack, pop—and the brown hair she'd tied back any old way swayed. She stood at the crosswalk, staring blankly at the white breath leaving her mouth, when a voice came from right beside her. A little below her.
"…Um, excuse me."
"Are you maybe a new… student too? Your uniform is the same as mine. Hehe. Oh—a senior?"
She turned her head, unhurried, and found herself looking at the crown of a head covered in black hair. Han Sua was fairly tall herself, but if she could see the top of someone's head this easily, the other girl had to be on the short side. Somewhere around five-one to five-three. Han Sua dropped her gaze a little lower.
What she found was a face smiling bright as anything—and, through a long puffer coat hanging wide open, a chest the size of something out of a manga.
For a second she thought she was being sexually harassed. Her face went red for no good reason, and she yanked her eyes back up.
"I am bad with… ahem, ahem. Bad with directions. Is this the right way?"
…What's with this girl. Her pronunciation's weirdly off. Japanese?
"…Yes. Cross the crosswalk here, then just keep going straight."
"Sank you very much. Hihi."
…Cute. The pronunciation.
"I like manga-books too."
"Manga? Really?"
"Mm. You know Book Off? I never saw one in Ko-rea."
"Hmm… first I've heard of it."
"It's a used bookstore. When I lived in Japan, there was one right in front of my house…."
"Ahh~"
She had put up with it for as long as anyone could be expected to.
The endless chatter drifting from the seats ahead was about to split Lee Jiyoon's head open, so in the end she slung her bag over her shoulder and stood. Better to move herself than to come out and say, flat, Sorry, but could you shut your mouth?
"……."
Unfortunately, every corner of Class 1-A was buzzing with boys' voices and girls' voices, so it was the same wherever she went. She wandered here and there with a sour look on her face and ended up back in the seat she'd started from.
…Just endure a little longer. It's everyone's first day. That's why they're like this.
"So I can call you Yozora-chan?"
"Hiek—already?"
"Huh, I can't?"
"If you really want to call me that, I don't mind…. It just feels a little soon, maybe…."
I'm going to lose it.
From the scraps of conversation she could overhear, the girl with the pitch-black hair sitting in front of her was named Yozora. And the one beside her, with the long, loose brown hair… Han Sua. She didn't know much, but a conglomerate family's daughter. She might not remember anyone else, but she remembered this one. At the practical exam before admission, she and Lee Jiyoon had been the only two to score a perfect mark.
From the look of things, Han Sua had taken a liking to that Japanese girl.
"Huu…."
But Jiyoon remembered her not being anywhere near that cheerful back then. Colder, maybe that was the better way to put it. Or that she'd looked as if she couldn't care less about the exam. …Were those the same thing?
Whatever. Those two had her head pounding so hard she could barely think. If she had a spare moment later, she'd stop by the infirmary….
…….
…Mm. Treatment. Just get treated. There'll be plenty of students besides me anyway.
In the end Lee Jiyoon jammed her earphones deep into her ears, folded herself over the desk, and forced herself toward sleep until the teacher arrived.
Ah… I want a drink….
"So you've been in Korea about three months, then?"
"Mm. My parents came to Ko-rea for work, so I followed."
Han Sua liked cute things. According to what the client's people had dug up, one of the charges in her mobile payments belonged to some otaku game, and every time she burned a few thousand dollars on it, a cute character illustration was plastered dead-center on the title banner. So Yozora had adjusted her pronunciation—back to something like the way she'd sounded not long after she first started learning Korean. She had tested it on Kwon Namho while he was sucking down cigarettes, and his verdict had been, You eat something wrong? Even so, he had added, belatedly, that it was kind of cute. That ought to be enough for Han Sua to buy it.
…Of course, the self-loathing was bad enough that she desperately wanted a drink. That part she couldn't help.
"Anyway, you're the first person I've met here who likes manga-books."
"Yeah? …Ahaha. Kind of embarrassing."
"Sua…. What does Sua-chan like?"
"What kind? Oh, genre? Um… romance, or slice of life. Stuff like that."
"Romance? I like that one that came out recently. The one where your eye color changes depending on your true feelings…."
"……?"
And Han Sua liked manga. Romance most of all. Yozora had spent days wondering whether there was some way to use that, but nothing brilliantly perfect had come to her, so she had simply picked out a few dozen famous romance series and memorized their storylines and characters down to the last detail. Get close by saying she liked that stuff too, then let something like actually, I don't really know it slip out, and the affection meter would plummet. Say the things Han Sua liked back to her, and it would creep up a little at a time. And once, bit by bit, she somehow pushed that meter to MAX—
"…Hey, Yozora?"
"Mm?"
"…That thing you just said. What manga is it?"
"Eh. A manga that got popular on Pixiv. You don't know it?"
"I dunno. First I've heard of it…."
"Maybe 'cause it's a little dirty?"
"……."
"Oh, you don't like dirty stuff?"
"…I-I mean, it's not like I need to go out of my way to look for that."
Then a once-in-a-lifetime favor, asked of Han Sua—at least once—ought to be possible.
"……."
What kind of face Seo Woojin would make then. How he would react. What would become of Han Sua, who looked purer than Yozora had expected. She was so curious she couldn't stand it.
Without thinking, Yozora smiled. A little lewdly.
From what I'd heard, only the second- and third-years had class today. The first-years were simply going home.
I'd been walking the halls, getting friendly with a few male teachers whose names I didn't know—I'd heard them; I just hadn't bothered to remember—and now I crumpled the empty paper coffee cup and came back to the infirmary. Class hadn't started yet, so there were no patients. Even if there had been, that call bell or whatever it was would have reached me.
So today I only had to take second- and third-year patients. Lee Hayun, who hurt herself at the drop of a hat, would probably show up, but if the room was crowded, anything lewd would be difficult. Work her up and then meet again outside the academy? Or just stop by her house with her. The thought of Lee Jiyoon, already home ahead of us, pretending she didn't know, pretending she hadn't heard, pretending she'd shut the door tight and done nothing but play games—playing innocent like that—got me a little hard. I could decide once I saw how the day went.
"……."
…That aside. Han Sua. Why had she looked oddly worked up?
"Hmm…."
Lee Hayun, maybe. But it wasn't like Han Sua—always so busy pretending to be easygoing—to be grinning from the entrance ceremony on just because she was in a good mood. And hadn't she been standing right beside Yozora, the one who'd been going on about lives getting ruined?
…Planning to get close and then dump her? Something that small wouldn't ruin a life, but before the regression Han Sua hadn't seemed to have a single friend, so as strategies went it wasn't a bad one. Sorry to Yozora, working so hard—but if I scooped up a discarded Han Sua and treated her warmly, I might be able to condition her a little more easily. She was doing something more useful than I'd expected. I'd have to give her a reward she'd actually want, one of these days.
The twenty-year-old face of Han Sua I'd glimpsed suited my tastes even more than I'd thought, and I let one filthy fantasy chase another for a while. I was gnawing on the rim of the paper cup when the door slid open without a knock.
First period hadn't ended. It wasn't even time for it to start. Probably one of the teachers who'd come to curry favor with me. I set the cup down and put on a face that was friendly enough and, at the same time, cold enough. If it was a man, cold was the only option. Bright-eyed students were one thing; I had no interest in dealing with women past thirty.
"Who is it?"
"…Ah. You were in."
But the voice from outside the door was a young one I felt sure I'd heard somewhere. Fairly recently, at that.
"It's the student council president, Teacher. Might you have a moment to talk?"
While I was still trying to place it, cyan-white hair peeked through the gap in the door—the same hair I'd seen in the auditorium a little while ago. So it was the student council president. Baek Seoyeon, was that the name? Pretty enough, but she wasn't a Hero who existed in my memories, so I'd wiped her just as quickly. I'd only meant to be reasonably kind to her. Then I saw the strange thing between her fingers.
"…Of course."
"Thank you for making time when you're busy."
Yozora
That was what it said.
Because I'd seen the little slip of paper with those three characters written on it, the smile I'd kept hanging at my mouth out of habit vanished in an instant.