Liars Can Recognize Each Other
The corpses of monsters usually held small magic stones near their hearts. These crystallized fragments carried the monster’s Concept, which was why people also called them Concept Stones.
“It should be around here somewhere.”
I dug my hand into the mangled corpse of the dog monster. The others recoiled in horror, shuffling backward. I ignored them and kept working. Soon enough, two pebble-sized stones rolled into my palm.
“Found them! There we go. They’re small, but I got both an Eye and a Nose. Nice haul.”
The possibilities these stones opened up put me in an excellent mood, but everyone else just stared at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Namjin, are you hurt anywhere? I can heal wounds with my ability.”
Geum Taeseong asked once I’d finished my grisly little operation. His face was scrunched up tight, probably because I was absolutely coated in the monster’s filth.
“Hard to tell what’s an injury under all that.”
Today had to be the unluckiest day of anyone’s life in this entire school. Still, part of me felt strangely relieved. After all, it wasn’t just monster guts covering me.
When Baek Yeoul had kicked me square in the groin, I’d pissed myself. If anyone found out, I’d be known as the class piss-pants for the rest of my school days. Thankfully the situation was chaotic enough that no one seemed to have noticed. In a way, it was my own little stroke of luck.
Even so, better to destroy the evidence quickly.
“Hey, you guys handle the cleanup. I need to wash up.”
There was definitely a stream nearby. Remembering the creek where Changsik had stepped in dog shit earlier, I headed off to rinse myself down.
“Ugh, what’s that smell?”
“What the— Is that a monster?”
“Gaeul! Watch out! There’s a monster!”
When I reached the water’s edge, I found I wasn’t alone. A group of students wearing knight-shaped brooches on their chests had arrived first. Their faces were all unfamiliar, so they were probably from F-class… Wait. F-class? Gaeul, watch out?
I scanned the girls’ faces and nearly collapsed on the spot. Among them stood the very woman I had been searching for.
“…Seo Gaeul.”
She had no scar yet. Her face was a little younger. But there was no mistaking her. My goddess. My savior. Seo Gaeul.
I’d come to wash monster guts off my body and ended up meeting the love of my life. Maybe getting drenched in filth had been a blessing in disguise after all.
“Seo Gaeul!”
I shouted her name and sprinted toward her. The F-class girls shrieked, pinched their noses, and scattered. Gaeul, however, simply watched me with a calm, composed expression.
“Doesn’t look like a monster. A student, right? Here to wash up?”
She offered a gentle smile and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, holding it out to me.
“Use this. And you—”
Her gaze slid down to my tiger-print underwear. Those reddish-brown eyes curved into perfect crescent moons.
“You should probably put some pants on.”
“Hey! Ha Namjin!”
Suddenly someone came splashing through the water at high speed. The familiar voice made me turn. In the distance, Baek Yeoul was waddling toward us as fast as her legs could carry her.
“It’s Baek Yeoul?”
“Ugh, talk about bad luck!”
The F-class girls made no effort to hide their disgust at the sight of her. Their expressions were exactly the same as the ones they’d given me while I was covered in filth. Only Seo Gaeul greeted her comfortably.
“Hello, Yeoul.”
“Oh? You’re… um…”
“Have you been well?”
Even though everyone else rejected Baek Yeoul, Gaeul still asked how she was doing. As expected, Seo Gaeul really was a kind-hearted girl. Beautiful face, gentle personality—she was perfect in every way. Absolutely worthy of becoming one with me.
“Alright everyone, let’s go.”
While Baek Yeoul stood there awkwardly, Seo Gaeul flipped her hair like a graceful fairy who had finished her business and walked away. The faint scent of her shampoo drifted on the breeze. It smelled wonderful.
“Lucky break,” I muttered, pressing the handkerchief she’d given me to my nose. Mmm, that fragrant aroma~.
“I can return the handkerchief later as an excuse to talk to her. Today’s my lucky day.”
“…Lucky day? You can actually say that while looking like that?”
Baek Yeoul narrowed her eyes at me. What was wrong with how I looked? I was just a little dirty on the outside. I’d crawled through sewers far more disgusting than this back in the ruined world. This much filth was nothing.
Still, I should wash it off.
Splash, splash—!
Kicking around in the stream felt refreshing. I’d hunted a monster, received a handkerchief from Seo Gaeul, and everything was going perfectly. Why was everything flowing so smoothly today? Had the goddess of luck attached herself to me?
Maybe—
“Hey! Stop splashing! Hey! I said stop splashing! Aaaah! Ha Namjin! Aaaaaah! Blech! Dirty water got in my mouth! Ew! Ptooey!”
Yeah… probably not her.
“I will now announce the results of the joint F-class and D-class practical exam. The team with the highest points is…”
The end of class. Captain stood in front of us on the school field, twitching his nose.
“Sniff sniff. Does anyone else smell something weird? Anyway. First place goes to F-class’s Team Summer.”
“As expected!”
“All that effort paid off!”
The F-class girls squealed with delight. Team Summer? I turned and saw a tall girl in a hoodie being swarmed by her classmates.
“That’s Yu Yeoleum. F-class president. Her skills are so good that people already treat her like an active explorer even though she hasn’t graduated yet.”
Geum Taeseong must have guessed I was curious, because he volunteered the information without me asking.
Yu Yeoleum. Yeoleum… I felt like I’d heard that name before.
“Next, the teams tied for second place. Two groups achieved joint second. The first is F-class’s ‘Fallen Leaves’ team. The second is, surprisingly, D-class’s ‘No Leftovers.’
“Whoa! We did it! We actually did it!”
Choi Changsik waved his hands, openly celebrating. The other students’ gazes snapped toward us in clear surprise.
“Them? How?”
“Must’ve been luck, right? They probably stumbled across some Concept item by accident.”
“Can they even get lucky? That’s Baek Yeoul’s team.”
“…Maybe the transfer student carried them?”
Good, good. I could feel everyone’s attention focusing on me! Being the center of interest was thrilling.
“…Ugh.”
Of course, there were people who hated the spotlight. The shy, introverted Oh Deokhui was one of them.
“Deokhui, you worked hard today. You’re surprisingly good at dancing, you know?”
Smack. Geum Taeseong lightly slapped the timid girl’s back. Her cheeks lit up like traffic lights.
“D-dance… Forget it…”
“Now for third place in points. Just so you know, the top three teams will receive small prizes, so look forward to it. Third place goes to—”
Another F-class team. Looked like F-class had swept the points this time. But that was only natural. They had entered the training ground first, so of course they claimed the best spots and vantage points.
Had their homeroom teacher, Moon Hyun-ah, cheated? According to Geum Taeseong, next time our D-class would enter the training ground first.
“Will the team leaders please come forward? Teacher Moon, if you would.”
The high-performing teams lined up on the platform to receive their prizes. Geum Taeseong patted my back.
“Namjin, go on.”
“Me? You’re the leader.”
“I think it should be you. Honestly, without you we would’ve just wasted time on that cliff and gone home empty-handed.”
If he put it that way, I didn’t mind taking the role. I had done most of the work anyway.
On the stage, I stood beside Yu Yeoleum and Seo Gaeul. I wasn’t about to waste the golden opportunity of standing next to Gaeul, so I spoke in my coolest voice possible.
“Ahem, hm, hm-hm. Gaeul, I’ll wash the handkerchief properly and return it later.”
“Hm? Ah… the handkerchief. The tiger-print underwear by the stream. So it was you. You look completely different now that you’re clean. I didn’t recognize you. Since I’ve never seen your face before, you must be the D-class transfer student?”
Oh! Seo Gaeul remembered me! When a girl remembers a guy, isn’t that a green light? Maybe she’d fallen for my tiger-like bravery.
Did that mean when I asked, “Won’t you let me kidnap you?” she might answer “Sure!”?
I was feeling optimistic about how easy this might be when Teacher Moon Hyun-ah, who had been handing out prizes, looked at me and frowned.
“What a smell. You must have been desperate enough to dive into a dumpster. Still, there’s no guarantee the same luck will strike twice.”
Her tone toward me was icy. Probably because the eyepatch made her nose extra sensitive. In that sense, didn’t this woman resemble that nose-hound from earlier?
“Sniffy, whether today’s events were pure coincidence or not, we’ll have to wait and see. If I beat every F-class student and take first place in the next practical, what will you do?”
“…Sniffy? My name is Moon Hyun-ah, so please call me Teacher Hyun-ah. And first place? Pfft—. Go ahead and try. You clearly don’t know how formidable our F-class students are yet. If you somehow manage it, I’ll even give you a kiss on the cheek!”
Teacher Sniffy laughed as if she had heard the most ridiculous joke imaginable. The prize ceremony ended like that.
“Your name was Ha Namjin, right?”
I was about to step down from the platform, heart pounding with curiosity about what the “second-place prize” in the paper bag could be, when someone called out to me. It was a tall female student wearing a hoodie over her uniform—about the same height as me. Athlete?
“You’re… Yu Gireum, wasn’t it?”
“No. I’m Yu Yeoleum. You said you’d take first place in the next practical, so I couldn’t just ignore it. I never lose, you see.”
Yu Yeoleum extended her hand toward me.
“I’m Ha Namjin. Let’s both do our best.”
Crunch—.
Her grip was incredibly strong. To squeeze my hand this hard… Did she like me? Unfortunately, since my heart already belonged firmly to Seo Gaeul, I couldn’t accept Yu Yeoleum’s affection. Still, that faint strawberry scent drifting from her was pretty nice! And her chest looked quite large under that hoodie, too.
###
“That concludes today’s classes. Everyone head home safely. There have been reports of strange people loitering around the school lately, so be careful.”
Class was over. I was thinking the day had felt unusually long when everyone suddenly swarmed toward me.
“Transfer student! Is it true you basically soloed that monster?”
“Join our team next time! I heard you have multiple abilities!”
“Namjin! Team up with me! I need to earn points!”
Oh boy. The rumors about me had already spread. This was getting troublesome.
“I told you, I wore awesome panties today.”
“Panties? Pfft— ahem, cough.”
“Ugh, the smell.”
“Anyway, Namjin! Think about it!”
The guys who had been begging me to join their teams suddenly covered their noses and mouths and started backing away. What boring people. If they couldn’t handle this level of stench, they’d never survive the ruined world.
On the other hand, my deskmate Baek Yeoul had some real grit. She sat right next to me and didn’t even twitch an eyebrow.
“Bread Butt, doesn’t the smell bother you?”
“I told you I’m not Bread Butt! And my family runs a food company, so we handle all kinds of ingredients. Compared to kimchi or kusaya, this smell is nothing. More importantly…”
Baek Yeoul fidgeted awkwardly. What was she doing?
“What? Gotta poop? Want some toilet paper?”
“…No! It’s just… um, earlier… th-thank you for saving me.”
“You mean when I took my pants off and showed the monster my tiger panties?”
“…Yeah! Thanks to you I even earned some points.”
So that’s what she’d been hesitating to say. I’d thought she was about to confess something huge. If she had nothing else to say, I should head home and start planning “The Seo Gaeul Kidnapping Operation That Begins With A Handkerchief.”
As I stood up, Baek Yeoul suddenly grabbed my wrist.
“L-let’s be on the same team next time too!”
Her voice was louder than expected. Everyone who had been preparing to leave turned to stare.
“Eep!”
Realizing she had shouted, Baek Yeoul panicked. In her flailing, the bag she’d left on her desk fell to the floor, spilling books and school supplies everywhere.
“Ah, my pencil case!”
How did she cause accidents so easily? She really was an unlucky girl.
But one of the items that fell from her bag caught my eye in particular.
“Huh, this is…”
It was a photograph. A picture of Baek Yeoul with someone else. She was in a middle school uniform, smiling brightly. It was a nice photo. But there was one strange thing.
The face of the person hugging her had been completely blacked out.
“Bread Butt, what’s this?”
“Give that back!”
She snatched the photo from my hand, fidgeted for a moment, then clamped her mouth shut. But my head was already filled with exclamation marks.
My Emotion concept had faintly recognized the blackened face. There was no way I wouldn’t know.
That “someone” was Seo Gaeul!
“Bread Butt, you and Seo Gaeul were close enough to take pictures together?”
“…We went to the same kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school.”
Same kindergarten through middle school? Then she was basically a Seo Gaeul specialist! To think the key to helping me had been right beside me all along. What luck.
“Alright, Bread Butt. I’ll team up with you next time too. But I have one condition!”