The Misfits Are Happy Just by Seeing Each Other's Faces #3
I am the Artist Choi Changsik, I say. A humble owner of a mere Grade 1 concept. Let me state upfront that one should not expect any meaningful assistance from me in the heat of actual combat.
He reached down, picked up a pebble from nearby, set it on his palm, and blew on it with a soft whoosh. I watched with mild curiosity, wondering what was about to happen. The pebble transformed into a perfectly round piece of candy.
“My ability is Change, I say. Though when one speaks of change, it amounts to nothing more than turning stones into sweets or turning random junk into slightly more useful objects. Furthermore, the rebound of this ability forces me to speak in this peculiar manner. Should I fail to do so, headaches plague me the entire day.”
He scratched the back of his head like it was no big deal, but I was genuinely impressed. Turning pebbles into candy? That was fucking awesome.
“Dude, that’s seriously amazing! Can you change the flavor too?”
“Am… amazing? That is the first time I have heard such words, I say. As for flavor, I can alter it within the scope of what I remember. Even if it is not candy, I can transform it to some extent into foods of similar size that I have tasted before.”
For real? If I’d had an ability like that, I could have lived happily every single day eating candy even in a world that was going to end in a year. I definitely needed to get close to this guy.
“I’m Oh Deokhui. Call sign Silence. My concept is ‘Stillness.’ I can make the area around me quiet. The rebound is… d-dancing….”
The girl with long bangs covering her face introduced herself and explained her ability in a short, concise way. But she seemed so embarrassed by her own words that she kept fidgeting and shrinking into herself.
Now it was Geum Taeseong’s turn.
“I’ve got Reversal. My ability can just heal wounds. You could say the ability itself is basically my rebound. It’s a high-risk concept, so I don’t use it much.”
Listening to them, it seemed “rebound” referred to the backlash that occurred when you used a concept’s power. It could change the way you spoke, force you to suddenly start dancing, or make you do even stranger things. To someone like me, whose awakened life had ended the moment it began because my legs got wrecked, all of this felt completely new.
I possessed the Leap concept. If I used its power, would some kind of rebound hit me too?
Before long, everyone’s eyes turned to Baek Yeoul. She fidgeted for a long moment, then grabbed the hem of her uniform skirt tightly and introduced herself in a voice that sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
“I-I’m Baek Yeoul, and my concept is… a Grade 1 ability called Bad Luck. I don’t know about the rebound. I still can’t control my concept yet….”
Small sighs rose from every direction. Everyone knew exactly what Bad Luck meant.
“The reason our starting point was a cliff… it was probably because of me….”
So that was it. Being around Baek Yeoul brought bad luck! That explained why the seat next to her was always empty and why no one wanted her on their team when forming groups.
Could the drunk-driving truck accident have been because of her bad luck too? The way my legs got destroyed? Global warming? The extinction of the dinosaurs!?
Thinking about it that way was genuinely scary. Scary… but something about it still didn’t sit right with me. Were we really that unlucky right now? Nope. I didn’t think so.
“From what I’ve lived through, the most dangerous moments are exactly when the greatest opportunities appear. There probably isn’t anyone higher than us in this training ground. That means we’re in the best position to scout our surroundings thoroughly.”
I slowly scanned the forest around us. My scavenger instincts were firing on all cylinders, telling me exactly where useful items might be hiding.
“By the way, I possess the Leap and Emotion concepts.”
“What? Namjin, you’re a multi-concept holder…!?”
“I thought you were merely an exhibitionist pervert, yet I had no idea you were this impressive, I say!”
I could see expectation and hope lighting up everyone’s faces. Come to think of it, I hadn’t explained myself to the group yet. Honestly, I preferred showing what I could do rather than explaining it with words.
“Hey! Everyone just follow me! We’re gonna farm store points!”
###
“Climbing down this damn cliff is brutal!”
The rocky cliff face had to be nearly thirty meters high. Descending it with nothing but our bare hands was pure torture. If awakened people didn’t have stronger stamina than normal humans, we all would have collapsed halfway down.
“Bottom reached! Only took thirty minutes. Not bad.”
Squish. Squish. Stepping on the thick carpet of weeds felt surprisingly nice. The rich scent of the forest surrounded us from every direction. The cool breeze after sweating buckets felt even better.
Seo Gaeul was probably feeling this same breeze right now. I wanted to find her immediately, but without knowing her exact location, blindly wandering around would be stupid. In that case, focusing on earning store points to get that special class audit ticket was the smarter move.
Heh. As expected, I really am smart.
“…So what are you planning to do now?”
Baek Yeoul kept glancing at me nervously. She seemed anxious that the new transfer student had taken charge of the group assignment. They say blessings come to those who believe without seeing.
“Just wait. I’ve got a plan for everything.”
I scooped up a handful of dirt, brought it to my mouth, and chewed thoughtfully. Baek Yeoul and Geum Taeseong looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
“Hey! Why are you eating dirt!”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“The soil has a lot of moisture. Look at all the shaded areas too. There’s probably a water source nearby.”
It was my first time here and we had no map, but I already had a rough direction. I’d also spotted a few promising spots from the top of the cliff earlier.
“Let’s go!”
“Hey! Wait for us!”
I took off running, and the rest of the group followed behind me. We soon reached a small stream. The clear water flowed with a pleasant, refreshing sound.
Then Artist-Choi Changsik suddenly screamed.
He stared down at the sole of his shoe, his face turning bright red as he failed to hide his intense emotions.
“Is this not excrement! Aaaargh! The stench! How can one be this unlucky!”
He’d stepped in shit? The smell was intense. Definitely not from a normal animal.
“I-it’s probably because of me…”
Baek Yeoul instantly became depressed. Her concept was Bad Luck. It meant that just by existing nearby, unfortunate things would happen to the people around her.
Suddenly I was curious. Why had Baek Yeoul awakened an ability like Bad Luck? An awakened’s power came from intense desire. That meant she must have desperately wished for terrible misfortune—for herself or for others.
Thinking that way made her seem like a completely broken person. But!
“Luck is like a seesaw. When one side goes up, the other goes down. When someone laughs, someone else cries. When someone cries, someone else is bound to laugh, you know?”
Stepping in poop must have been a huge misfortune for candy-maker Changsik. But for the rest of us, it was a massive stroke of luck.
“Changsik, make some candy for me.”
“Candy? What exactly are you trying to do!”
“Just hurry up!”
“Understood, I say. Then please gather some pebbles. In the meantime, I must wash my shoes in this stream.”
I diligently collected stones. Geum Taeseong, Baek Yeoul, and even the quiet girl picked up pebbles with subtle expressions, following my lead. They were probably all thinking it was worth a shot. They’d be shocked once they saw the big picture.
“Then I shall transform these into green-grape-flavored candy! Hooooooo—”
When Choi Changsik blew on them, the pebbles changed into candies of similar size. Like before, the ability was so enviable it brought tears to my eyes. Unlimited candy refills? Yes please.
“What are you going to do with them?”
Geum Taeseong looked mildly interested as he stared at the pile of candy, so I answered simply.
“You have a lighter, right?”
Geum Taeseong was a former delinquent. Even if he didn’t smoke anymore, he’d probably still carry a lighter. Sure enough, he pulled one out of his pocket.
“Yeah, I do.”
I stacked stones, gathered dry branches, and made a simple brazier. For someone who’d lived in a junkyard, starting a fire was nothing. Whoosh.
I set one of the training mess tins on top of the burning wood, poured in water and the candies, and the kids’ expressions grew even more puzzled.
“Whatever, let’s add the pudding I packed earlier too.”
Bubble bubble bubble. The pudding and candy began to boil over the campfire. By now everyone must have smelled it—the faint, sweet aroma spreading gently through the air.
“It needs to boil more. Let’s wait just a little longer.”
About a minute after I’d turned it into pudding-candy porridge, the bushes nearby rustled violently.
Something burst out.
━Graaaaaah!
It was a dog with black fur. Its size made it look almost like a wolf. The most striking feature was its unusually large nose. Its ears and eyes looked strangely smooth, as if they had atrophied.
At a glance, it was clearly not a normal creature.
Choi Changsik foamed at the mouth when he saw it.
“Kyaaak! It’s a monster! A monster has appeared! To encounter one in this vast forest! How terribly unlucky! This always happens when you’re grouped with Miss Yeoul! Miss Yeoul! How will you take responsibility for this!”
“…I-I don’t know! Everyone, we have to run!”
━Grrrrr.
The large-nosed dog drooled heavily. While everyone else tensed up and fidgeted, a chill of excitement ran down my spine. I hadn’t expected things to go this perfectly.
“In a vast forest, I figured there would definitely be monsters near the water.”
In the ruined world, every day had been about survival for me since I couldn’t enter safe zones. All those days of watching for bandits and monsters just to drink from contaminated streams were finally paying off.
“Judging by how warm the poop Changsik stepped in was, the one who left it couldn’t be far! Still, since I didn’t know the exact spot, I boiled the pudding and candy!”
Monsters loved sweet smells. They swarmed like bees to flowers. Even the Ing-ing I’d tamed used to go crazy for sugar water.
Heh. I suddenly missed that little guy.
Anyway!
“Normally monsters are wary and don’t fall for lures easily. In that sense, Bread Butt’s ability worked perfectly. Things are going so well I’m honestly wondering if this is even allowed!”
Encountering a monster in a forest like this was normally very unlucky. In fact, everyone facing it had frozen like mice in front of a snake. But one person’s misfortune could become another’s fortune.
“In a forest like this, finding something like the Captain’s ‘fucking awesome pen’ would be hard. So from the beginning, what I was aiming for was a monster! Hey, Taeseong. How many store points do we get for taking down one monster?”
“Taking it down?”
Geum Taeseong flinched, clearly flustered. Keeping his distance from the monster and staying on guard, he answered in a low voice.
“Namjin, none of us have combat-suited concepts. Is this going to be okay? If it were F-class with all those Supernovas, maybe. But in our class, only the class president has actually taken down a monster in real combat!”
He was asking whether a bunch of misfits like us could handle a monster. On the contrary, I was the one wondering why they thought we couldn’t. With the abilities we had, it should be more than enough.
“Then everyone listen carefully to what I say from now on. The person who will be the key to this monster hunt is… you, Oh Deoksoon!”
“……!”
The quiet girl trembled at my finger. She flinched like she’d been struck by lightning in her sleep. It was honestly pretty funny.
“M-my name isn’t Oh Deoksoon, it’s Oh Deokhui…. More importantly, I’m the key…? No way. I-I’m clumsy at moving and that’s why I’ve always been kicked out of group projects…”