A Reason to Stay
"At any rate, I have told thee as promised. I shall sleep now. Whether thou stayest or leavest is thine own affair!"
With that curt declaration, Choco spun on her heel and vanished onto the upper bunk.
Watching her go, Se-jin muttered under her breath.
"Did she just start hating me?"
"Haha... maybe...?"
Yeon's awkward little laugh made Se-jin's shoulders slump.
"It's all right, though. If you apologize, she'll get over it in no time."
"Really...?"
"Of course. You have no idea how sweet Choco is."
She did sulk like an actual child sometimes, matching that cute little form of hers — but Yeon swallowed that last part and said, instead,
"Don't worry, Se-jin. I'll talk to Choco for you."
"Thank you, Yeon..."
What a peculiar person she is, Yeon thought, watching Se-jin let out a long, relieved sigh. Keep her mouth shut and she had the kind of cold face that wouldn't so much as flinch if you drove a needle through her and drew blood. But the moment anything involving foxes came up, she did a complete one-eighty. It probably wasn't the sort of thing you ought to think about someone older than you — and yet, in those moments, Se-jin looked a little bit cute.
Whether or not she noticed any of this, Se-jin stretched both arms toward the ceiling, then asked out of nowhere,
"How did you end up starting this game, Yeon?"
"Huh?"
"Honestly, girls don't really go for this kind of game, do they?"
Back when games just meant sitting at a computer and steering a character with a keyboard, any RPG popular enough drew players without regard to gender. Virtual reality had changed all that. Once VR went mainstream and nearly every title launched as a fully immersive experience, the gender ratio had skewed to an extreme.
These days most women gravitated toward casual sandbox games — places to hang out with friends, or to dabble in mini-games. In anything that demanded real physical ability, you hardly saw them at all. Even back in Se-jin's school days, when Al Fantasia had already been the game of the moment, the girls had been obsessed with a rhythm game called Planet to Dance.
"A friend of mine talked me into trying it. She said there was a lot of stuff I'd like in here, and that I should stop bothering her already..."
"Ah, haha..."
"And then the second I actually started, she completely ghosted me. Before I signed up she was all, 'Just start and I'll help you out,' and then — nothing."
"That's really awful of her."
"So the next day I found her and punished her on the spot."
Yeon pictured Se-jin pinning someone's head under her arm and grinding a knuckle into their skull. Of course, given Se-jin's personality, that wasn't how she'd actually punished anyone — but the ridiculous image popped into her head anyway.
"What level is that friend of yours?"
"Two-forty, I think? Something like that."
"Wow, that's really high."
"She's been at it for a while. When the rest of us were playing other games, she was the one who stuck with Al Fantasia on her own."
As she said it, Se-jin found herself picturing that friend wandering the school halls alone. They'd grown close once they got to university, but before that they'd been little more than faces that recognized each other. It wasn't as if anyone had bullied her for not playing the same games. Still, drifting to the edge of the group had been inevitable. That girl had been quiet and introverted like Yeon, not the outgoing type.
Maybe I should be nicer to her next time we meet.
Thinking that, Se-jin asked,
"Did someone talk you into it too, Yeon? Or are you just the type who likes this kind of game?"
"Ah, neither, actually. If I had to put it into words... I tried a bunch of things and just sort of ended up settling here..."
Yeon gave an awkward little laugh.
"At first I started with Planet to Dance, same as everyone else. Oh, you know that one, right?"
"Know it? I climbed all the way to Platinum when I was really into it."
"Platinum? Wow, you were a pro... I was at the very bottom of Bronze."
Planet to Dance was, put simply, a rhythm game where you danced in time with the music and watched a little planet grow. The cute art style had made it a smash hit among girls, so Yeon had followed the crowd and started playing — and the results had been nothing short of disastrous.
She was a catastrophically bad dancer. Her body lurched and seized like a rusted machine that had never seen a drop of oil, and that was more than enough to send her rank plummeting straight to the floor. For someone already introverted, already low on self-esteem, watching a number that represented her worth drop in real time had been more than she could bear.
In the end, Yeon deleted Planet to Dance less than a week after starting and went looking for something else. She repeated that cycle a few more times before she finally landed here, in Al Fantasia.
Of course, Al Fantasia wasn't really a game that suited Yeon's personality either. You had to physically move your body to hunt, and she already knew perfectly well what a hopeless klutz she was. That much was obvious. She'd been thinking she'd last a day at most before she went looking for yet another game.
That was when she found it.
A dying baby fox.
"That was Choco, then."
"If I hadn't met Choco back then, I wouldn't even be sitting here talking to you right now."
A sudden wave of sentimentality washed over her, and Yeon pulled her knees to her chest.
"I probably would have decided it was impossible again before I'd even really tried, and gone looking for something else."
In that sense, being able to tame Choco could even be called a blessing. Because of her, Yeon had found a place where she belonged.
But if Choco achieved her goal — if she became a Gumiho — then what would happen to Yeon? She closed her darkened eyes, then opened them again. The anxiety and restlessness that had lingered there a moment ago were gone.
"That's why I like Choco so much. She gives me a reason to be here. And she never scolds me for being bad at things, either."
"I don't think she'd scold you even if you really were bad at it..."
Se-jin muttered it, recalling the kobold ambush. Ho-jin had been too busy blocking attacks to notice, but Se-jin, who'd had a relatively easy time of the fight, had seen it clearly — Yeon moving like the wind itself. An arrow coming straight at her, and she didn't so much as flinch: just a slight twist of the body to let it pass, then a fluid thrust that found the kobold archer's throat.
A klutz? Not a chance.
Of course, combat ability and dancing skill weren't the same thing, so maybe she really was bad at dancing. But after seeing those movements, "klutz" simply didn't apply.
Yeon considered Se-jin's words, then said,
"You might be right. She's gotten mad at me for all sorts of reasons, but she's never scolded me for hunting poorly. Maybe Choco's right, and I actually have a talent for this kind of thing."
"Oh, that reminds me — I've been wondering. Have you ever learned a martial art? Something like kendo?"
"No, I've never learned anything like that. My body hasn't been in great shape since I was little, so anything physical was always hard for me."
And yet she could move like that. Maybe Choco was right about the talent. Se-jin thought this, then looked at Yeon with a puzzled expression.
"Your body hasn't been in great shape?"
"Saying it 'hasn't been in great shape' might be putting it a little mildly. It's not exactly great now, either..."
Yeon said it as if it were nothing, then seemed to catch herself and offered an awkward smile.
"I didn't mean to bring up something like that. I'm sorry."
"No, no. That's not something you need to apologize for."
"I guess that's true..."
A silence settled between them. Yeon fidgeted with her toes, then snuck a glance at Se-jin. A look of discomfort had settled over that usually expressionless face. Yeon had thought nothing but foxes could change that expression — but it seemed Se-jin was an ordinary person after all.
I got too carried away...
It had been a long time since she'd talked this long with anyone other than Choco. Maybe that was why she'd gone and said things she didn't need to say.
I want to rewind time... Yeon buried her face in her arms.
"Ahem. Yeon?"
"Yes?"
Yeon lifted her head at the sound of a throat being cleared, looking puzzled.
"If it's not too much to ask... would you keep going? Ah — you don't have to. Only if you're okay with it..."
Se-jin's voice was careful. The consideration in it was so plain that Yeon couldn't help a small smile.
"I feel bad putting this on you. I misspoke, and now the mood's all heavy..."
"Don't call it a mistake. That wasn't your fault."
If you really wanted to assign blame, Se-jin was the one who'd asked an unnecessary question.
Yeon giggled at that.
"I wish I'd had an older sister like you."
"Are you an only child?"
"No, I have a little sister."
A healthy kid, unlike me. Yeon swallowed those last words and went on.
"She's just about to start middle school. She's a good kid. Whenever she came home from being outside, she'd always bring me flowers. I'd dry them carefully and use them as bookmarks."
"I'm envious. You two must be close."
"Do you have siblings?"
"I have an older sister. We're not as close as you and yours, though."
"I'm still envious."
Yeon trailed off into silence. Se-jin glanced at her, then waited without a word — until Yeon was ready to speak first.
"Like I said earlier... I've been weak since I was little."
Yeon's voice was quiet as she began.
"They said I had a disease. The name was so long and complicated I still can't remember it. But there was one word that stuck in my ears."
Incurable.
The weight of that word made Se-jin draw a sharp breath before she could stop herself. Yeon waved a hand, as if to tell her not to worry.
"Ah, it wasn't that serious, though. I was just born a little frail, and I caught more little illnesses than most people. As long as I managed it consistently, it was fine. Still, there was a lot that made living like everyone else difficult."
Going outside. Exercise. Things like that. She'd gone to school, but she'd spent more days hospitalized than she had in a classroom. So she hadn't had a single friend outside her family — unless you counted doctors and nurses.
Yeon fell silent for a moment, gathering her thoughts, then continued.
"Maybe that's why I was looking for a game I could actually play. Because in the real world, there was nothing but things I couldn't do."
"Yeon..."
"You don't have to feel sorry for me. I found something I can do, after all."
Meeting Choco really had been a blessing. A stroke of luck. Thinking that, Yeon gave Se-jin a clumsy smile.
"I know you said it was okay, but I can't help that the mood got heavy. I'm sorry."
"...No. If anyone should be saying sorry, it's me."
Se-jin murmured it with visibly sad eyes.
She's so much kinder than she looks.
Thinking that, Yeon said softly,
"Then if you think you did something wrong... would you grant me one favor?"
"A favor?"
"Let's stop being so polite with each other. Let's talk like real sisters. Deal?"
Se-jin stared blankly for a moment, then let out a small laugh.
"Deal."
"Yes!"
"I would've said yes even if you hadn't asked."
Se-jin muttered it, watching Yeon's face light up. But Yeon didn't miss a word. Her eyes went wide.
"Would've? I thought we just banned formal speech?"
"Aigoo, what am I going to do with this little sister of mine."
"Eek! No violence!"
For a long while after that, the smiles never left either of their faces.
And on the upper bunk, Choco — who had been quietly circulating her spirit power — slowly opened her eyes at the voices drifting up from below.
Those gold eyes, which had glittered with such keen light, looked somehow a little darker now.