Nothing Happened
It hurts.
The next day, and the day after that, I walked into the classroom like nothing was wrong and sat through my lessons. As if nothing had happened at all.
Well. Nothing had.
The teacher didn't seem to see it that way. Not if she was keeping me behind after class because she had something to discuss.
"You weren't showing up to lessons, so I sent the class president to check on you. And she never came back. I even pulled the CCTV footage. The last thing it captured was her going into the dormitory. There was no footage of her coming out."
I didn't say a word. I just sat there the way I always did, chin propped in my hand, swinging my legs like I had all the time in the world.
"Im Hyeyeon. That's the student, isn't it? The cameras caught her stumbling out of the dormitory looking completely dazed. The ones who went in were my students and Miss Im Hyeyeon. The only one who came out was her."
"...Even if you suddenly bring up the name of someone I don't even know."
"Harin. She was close enough to come looking for your room. If you tell me you don't know her name, do you really expect me to beli—?"
The end of her sentence dropped out, as if a burst of static had swallowed it. Or as if her voice had been run through a modulator.
Either way, the words called up the image of a pretty girl with blue hair. The one who'd taken one look at the students clumped together in midair, fallen on her ass, and run for her life.
"Just tell me what happened that day. This isn't because he's the son of some high-ranking Association official. She might have used an artifact to escape, but either way..."
The teacher started to continue, then let the sentence die and changed the subject.
"Anyway, the school has an obligation to determine what people's abilities are and what those abilities actually do."
"......"
"Or were you threatened? Did they cut your face and tell you not to talk? Beat you until your neck was black with bruises?"
The person sitting in front of me felt less like a teacher and more like a researcher assigned to manage young Awakened. Or maybe that was simply what you got when you were the one in charge of the F-class kids.
Seojun's teacher hadn't been written this way. I couldn't remember the details exactly, but I was certain the portrayal hadn't been this cold.
"This place encourages fights between students more than it stops them, but five people vanishing all at once is still a bizarre incident. Wouldn't it be better to answer while I'm still asking nicely?"
If she was so curious, she could go find them and ask. Why was she doing this to me, of all people? She could go ask them herself, or put a tail on them. Was there some reason she couldn't?
All that had happened was a handful of lower-rank kids had come looking for my room and then suddenly disappeared. These were the same people who hadn't so much as blinked when they disposed of a few low-grade test subjects. So why now?
"Well, of course, Subject 11. Not a single human who walked into your room walked back out alive. And then you throw a tantrum, or whatever that was. If you weren't a test subject the drugs barely work on, they would have disposed of you a long time ago."
For a moment the space around me seemed to warp, and I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, Team Leader Ju was sitting there with her legs crossed, looking at me. Her face — the one that had burst apart — was patched back together in lumps and smears.
"I told you. If you pull another stunt, I won't just leave it at starving you like last time. I guess the durability tests weren't quite enough?"
Come to think of it, I had already blown that one up. The person in front of me was a researcher who hadn't burst yet.
"Subject 11. You begged, didn't you? Please let me live. Or at least give me the drugs and run the experiment. Or just kill me. How can you wear a human face and do something like this, you said."
I closed my eyes for a moment, then cracked them open to slits. The teacher was sitting there. She had the same face as the researcher who'd stood with a chart in her hands, checking this and that, while my entire body was being fried with electricity and parts of me were on fire.
The drugs must have been wearing off. I caught the corners of my mouth before they could fall, forced them back up, and answered in a low voice, wearing a smile that would not stop trembling.
Only then could I see the teacher's expression. The voice that had been full of static came through clear, as if someone had finally pressed an audio jack all the way into the socket.
"Harin. If something happens, you have to tell me. That's the only way I can help. This is a place that deals with supernatural abilities, so all kinds of incidents..."
Her tone wasn't particularly cold. Her face wasn't stern. She wasn't looking at me with anything like contempt. The feeling that leaked through, if only in glimpses, seemed to be genuine worry for that student named Yejun.
It certainly wasn't for me.
I kept the smile in place and simply nodded.
By the time the counseling was over and I stepped out of the classroom, the sky had been dyed red. A warped moon hung above that sunset-stained expanse. It wasn't sneering at me — but that was how it felt, which probably meant my head had gone a little bit wrong.
At some point I had realized I was no longer entirely sane. I hadn't wanted to dwell on it, so every day I shook the thought off and buried it under that white powder. But on days like this, it still found me, and I felt it in my bones.
I went back to my room, took the bottle from my little handbag, and checked how many pills were left. Not as many as I'd hoped. I was so tired of myself — this person who nibbled them down one after another and then sank into a pit the moment they ran out.
I had been going to find Seojun. Now even that felt like too much trouble. Why had I wanted to see him in the first place? Even thinking about it was starting to wear me out.
But not doing the thing you'd set out to do wasn't a good habit either. I would go find him and talk. About anything.
I — Yu Harin — had wanted to find that friend no matter what. And once I had, it wouldn't matter what I did afterward. Whether I jumped off a building or wrapped a bomb around my head and set it off.
The trembling stopped.
I got up from the bed, put on my uniform, and left the room.
Everywhere I looked, students my age were walking through the school with bright, easy laughter, looking happy among their friends. Society existed in here too, so you could be happy enough without ever stepping outside. They were students, but they were still Awakened housed in a national facility, which meant the money got deposited either way.
I had received a wad of cash myself. I couldn't remember where I'd put it.
I walked for a long time. Aimless walking was the one thing that made a head on the verge of bursting feel a little more bearable.
Watching all those happy people, something stale rose up from inside my chest, and I wanted to cough my insides out as smoke. I slipped into a quiet alley, lit a cigarette I'd rolled from powder mixed with tobacco leaf, and drew the smoke in deep.
A pleasantly hazy sensation settled over me. My vision seemed to loosen at the edges. I stared blankly at the ground, then at the sky, then at the ground again.
A stray cat came padding toward me without a sound and stood there looking at me for a long time. I rummaged through my pockets for something to give it, remembered the bread I'd started at lunch and never finished, and pulled it from my right pocket to toss over.
The cat only kept staring. It didn't eat.
I was thinking it would be nice if it just ate what it was given, when the sky flipped upside down.
My arm was bent at a grotesque angle. My body felt bound by something I couldn't see. I held my breath, certain that sickly yellow gas was about to come flooding in — then remembered this was not the laboratory, and turned my head to look around.
The blue-haired girl — Im Hyeyeon, was that her name — was looking at me, wiping cold sweat from her forehead and letting out a sigh thick with relief.
And someone was standing beside her.
I couldn't even remember the face, and I was certain anyway.
So this was that, then. The scene where the heroine and the protagonist of the Academy team up to capture some deeply suspicious figure. They solve the problem, grow closer, and a tight little bond takes root between them.
But I had been closer. From the time we were little kids who barely knew any words — from the days we'd stare at the glittering city and say we didn't just want to look at it from far away, we wanted to live there — I had been right there beside him.
"...It hurts."
Was it the arm bent the wrong way? Or the fact that I was bound? Or being shoved face-first into the ground? Or that kid who hadn't even met my eyes yet and didn't know who I was?
Looking at the two of them, they seemed like fully grown adults. Well. At this age, even if the head wasn't finished, a body that had grown all the way out was the normal thing. They were normal people — so normal they couldn't be compared to something like me, withered and twisted from never eating properly.
I twisted anyway, hoping at least not to stay bound. The more I moved, the more the thing cinched my body in grotesque directions. Only my arm bent further the wrong way.
"Moving won't do you any good. That's a capture tool made for high-level Awakened. Wasn't easy to get."
A familiar voice. Full of confidence. The kind that wouldn't take a single step back even in front of a thug twice his size. The kind that would come sit down next to someone who was crying and give them the strength to keep going.
So I laughed without meaning to. In little choked bursts.
I don't think I cried. I laughed because it was funny. Obviously.