267. Knights of Charlemagne vs Rin - Misunderstanding (16)
267. Knights of Charlemagne vs Rin - Misunderstanding (16)
***
When the fifth match ended, the players seated in the Knights of Charlemagne's spectator section all erupted at once.
Yena bit her lip, unable to contain her rising anger as her face flushed red, while Seojin watched Serin in the Colosseum with coldly sunken eyes.
Hamin, who had been watching the match with a calm smile, blinked blankly at Serin's sudden action.
Mina ground her teeth and immediately hurried down to the Colosseum to start the sixth match right away.
The sight of Rin striking the cheek of Roland, the team captain, with her sword had been clearly visible even to their eyes as they watched the match.
Just as Mina quickly descended to the Colosseum, Sihyeon appeared as a cluster of light, and Yena immediately ran toward him. Seojin and Hamin also rose and approached him.
"Sihyeon...! Are you okay!?"
"What the hell just happened? Why did Rin suddenly do that to you..."
"Shouldn't we tell them to stop the scrim for now?"
Yena grabbed Sihyeon's hand at once and studied his complexion. Hamin was wondering whether the scrim itself ought to be stopped, and why Rin had acted that way in the first place.
Sihyeon was flustered by his teammates suddenly crowding around him, but their faces made him realize something.
'Was it because of that, at the end?'
Rin's action had looked like a rebuke aimed at him for giving up and lowering his sword.
Once he understood that, Sihyeon let out an involuntary laugh.
"No, guys. It's really nothing. I'm really fine. And what Rin did at the end—there wasn't any malice in it or anything like that...."
As he tried to explain the situation and clear up the misunderstanding, Yena suddenly shouted.
"Sihyeon!! Say something that makes sense!"
Watching Sihyeon speak as if defending Rin, Yena was the one who couldn't hold back her anger.
Rin's behavior, which had been openly disrespectful toward him, was still vivid in her mind.
When the person who had been treated so outrageously just smiled and said he was fine, she simply couldn't accept it.
'There's a limit to how foolish you can be!'
To her, the fact that someone had been slapped in the face was an enormous, utterly unexpected shock.
More than Sihyeon, who had calmly composed himself, she was so furious that her hands trembled.
"What do you mean, fine? No matter what, there are things you should do and things you shouldn't. Where does it say that just because someone's good, they can treat people like that!"
Yena vented her anger, shouting louder than she ever had before. Seojin and Hamin, who had been looking at Sihyeon, stared blankly at her.
Sihyeon blinked blankly too.
"...Yena?"
She had shown emotion when it came to matters involving Mina, but she had never shouted in anger like this before.
"Stop the match right now and confront Rin. Tell her to apologize for what she just did! No, seriously... She just ignored you because she's won all the scrims so far, didn't she? How can she act like that!"
By the end, Yena was on the verge of tears, as if she felt wronged. Sihyeon was flustered, but he shook his head firmly.
"...No, really, it's fine. I already got an apology, and in that moment, I was the one who showed a worse side."
After that, Sihyeon had a hard time convincing them, explaining that there had been no malice in Rin's actions.
When he told them that Rin had rebuked him to act like a pro and not give up until the end, and that she had apologized right afterward, Hamin and Seojin seemed to finally understand. But Yena, still clutching his hand, simply couldn't accept it.
To her, the fact that someone had been slapped was that shocking.
"Yena, I keep telling you I'm fine. Why are you about to cry?"
"But it's still so unfair. No matter what... How could she really do that?"
Even after hearing the full story, Yena let out a small sigh. Hamin and Seojin exchanged glances and quietly stepped aside.
Having moved to one side of the spectator section, they muttered with dumbfounded expressions.
"...What's with this mood all of a sudden?"
Seojin muttered with an odd expression. Hamin smiled faintly and replied.
"Right?"
While their misunderstanding had been mostly cleared up, elsewhere.
The sixth match began immediately, and as a fierce battle unfolded in the Colosseum, Sihyeon, who had been soothing Yena, found his gaze drifting over.
Mina was visibly consumed by rage, attacking desperately. Sihyeon frowned slightly.
'I'll need to explain things to Mina separately too.'
Like the other players, she seemed to be playing while firmly misunderstanding the situation.
"Sihyeon, there's Mina too, you know. She got really angry about what Rin did at the end."
Yena, who had followed his gaze, looked at Mina and let out a small laugh. Sihyeon laughed too.
After being eliminated from the playoffs, he and Mina had grown especially distant, and even the frequency of their conversations had dropped sharply.
Now even Mina, who had been so displeased with him, was getting angry on his behalf like that. Even knowing it was a misunderstanding, the feeling was strange.
He even felt anew what it meant to be part of a team.
'I really was an idiot.'
He had no time to wallow in self-reproach and be consumed by a sense of defeat.
He should have been using that time to work harder and look upward.
After losing heart against Jeanne d'Arc in the spring season, his mentality had never really recovered—but now it finally felt like it was returning to normal.
Thinking back, he really had been burying himself in foolish thoughts alone.
In the end, he had lost to Rin, but now his heart felt much lighter than before the match began.
***
WHOOOOM!
A mace wreathed in blue light surged at me ferociously. I narrowly dodged it and looked at the blue-haired female knight, whose face was badly twisted, and felt a headache coming on.
Crunch!
The female knight already seemed to have lost her reason to rage. In that moment, I understood how my actions must have looked to the other players.
BOOM! BOOM!
I dodged the blue-light-wreathed mace again and again, and each time, the mace, carrying a savage force, caused massive destruction.
'I slapped him right in the face, so talking it out doesn't seem likely to work.'
Explaining it at length throughout the match would have been absurd anyway.
It seemed like things had ended well with Roland, the person actually involved, but the problem was the other players who had been watching the match.
To them, watching from the spectator section, all they would have seen was me striking his cheek with the flat of my sword as an act of disrespect.
On top of that, Roland was the captain of the Knights of Charlemagne, so I could understand why they were furious.
WHOOOOM!
I twisted my body to avoid the mace as it swung again, unable to properly focus on the match.
First, I needed to finish this match and then clear up the misunderstanding with the other players on a large scale.
Now the female knight was attacking like a madwoman with a gaze almost full of hatred, and the scrim had completely lost its meaning.
"Haa."
As Serin let out a deep sigh, Mina, who had been swinging her mace like crazy, glared with her eyes snapping upward.
"Are you messing around right now?"
She hadn't liked her from the start, beginning with matters involving Hamin, but the sight of her toying with Sihyeon, their captain, had ignited another fury in Mina.
As Mina ground her teeth in rage, Serin looked at her and moved her lips with a deliberately awkward expression.
"Let's talk after this match."
"Now you say that...!"
When Mina only grew angrier at her words, Serin quickly resolved to end the duel.
Dragging out a scrim that had lost its meaning was pointless.
If anything, it would only deepen the other players' misunderstanding.
Rin, who had only been dodging attacks, immediately shifted to a rapid counteroffensive, and Mina's hands and feet quickly became tangled.
Once Serin stopped caring about the scrim, she began targeting Mina sharply, producing changes that were hard to comprehend.
—Spiral Form.
The moment the thrust mace's trajectory was knocked far off course along Serin's sword, Serin stepped forward.
Mina, far more tense than in the second match, reacted quickly and pulled her body back, but Serin thrust her sword straight in.
"...!"
The second match, which had ended so hollowly, overlapped in Mina's mind as she tried to dodge somehow, but Serin drove her sword deep, as if burrowing into Mina's guard.
She barely avoided turning into light by taking a hit to the shoulder.
But the match that unfolded after that was utterly one-sided.
Amid complicated feelings.
Without considering her opponent, without thinking about the situation, Serin focused solely on ending the match for real and delivered an absolutely overwhelming performance.
—Victory!
Less than five minutes after the sixth match began, she claimed victory again, and another silence settled over the spectator section.
Afterward.
With the sixth match over, Serin headed to the spectator section, her mind complicated.
'I really stuck my nose in for nothing.'
Honestly, she could have just ended it the moment Roland gave up in front of her.
But because she had gone and projected the real "Roland" onto him and spoken up with what she thought was advice, the whole thing had blown up.
Entering the spectator section, she studied the players' faces, wondering how to clear up the misunderstanding.
"...?"
They looked calmer than she expected, which even puzzled her.
There was no excessive reaction like the one from Mina, the player she had just faced.
After she entered the spectator section, Roland approached her first.
Then, as Roland explained and word spread that the earlier misunderstanding had been resolved, Serin's expression brightened, greatly relieved.
"..."
As the two conversed amicably, Yena, seated nearby, watched them with an inscrutable expression.
***
"...Hoo."
Ending her Another World connection, Serin sat blankly in the capsule, catching her breath.
Having just finished the scrim, she felt as if her thoughts were cutting out.
A dazed feeling.
It had been like this after the last scrim too, she thought, and let out a faint laugh.
'I should be more careful about accepting scrims from now on.'
In terms of time, the scrim had clearly lasted less than three hours, but it felt like she had spent a full ten hours.
It was as if she had drained her mind to the very limit of what she could focus on, like a battery that had run out.
"It was fun, but..."
Pushing her mind to its limit was a burden in itself.
Just now, in the last match, a warning message had popped up in the end.
It had ended well in a relaxed atmosphere, but a small regret lingered—had it really been okay?
With that brief thought, she pressed the capsule button.
She wasn't alone right now, so if she stayed inside, the others would worry.
Slide.
Through the capsule door as it lifted upward, the interior came into view along with two people entering her sight.
"Are you okay...?"
"Sis. Are you okay?"
As if they had been waiting for her to come out, both of them looked worried. I guess I must look bad on the outside too.
"I'm fine."
Even as she looked at the two worried people, she threw herself onto the bed as if burying herself in it.
Her silver hair scattered widely as the bed sank beneath her, covering her vision, but the soft sensation wrapping around her felt strangely good.
"..."
Seoyun and Sua, who had been watching Serin, exchanged glances and didn't try to start a conversation.
As they were about to leave the room entirely, Serin parted her lips lightly.
"So, how was it, actually watching the scrim?"
She was exhausted, but ironically, she couldn't sleep.