They'll Notice Someday
They'd said they would be my friend. That much, at least, they would do for me — as much as I wanted.
I had two friends now. That was double. A full hundred-percent increase. Granted, one of them had abandoned me and couldn't recognize me even with me standing right in front of him, and the other I had more or less forced into existence. But still.
Coming to the Academy had been the right decision after all. Because I had made friends, of course.
Today was the weekend. Surprisingly enough, weekends meant you could wander the city however you liked. You couldn't cross the river and head north unless that was where you were from — but otherwise, you could go just about anywhere your feet would take you. The Research Lab. The military posts guarding the gates where monsters sometimes came spilling through. The plazas thick with people.
Countless skyscrapers unfurled along the wide roads, a vista so vast it stopped the breath. Before I became this girl, it had been nothing more than the same suffocating scenery I saw every day of my life. So why did it make my chest pound now?
Maybe it was because I was, relatively speaking, a free person in this world. The only things binding Yu Harin were memories, and a boy who hadn't even finished growing up.
I pulled out my phone, opened the call app, and dialed Sihyun.
"Yeah? What's up, Harin?"
"On weekends I can truly, genuinely wander around as I please. There's no one following behind me, is there? Or a tracker sewn into the uniform, or anything of that sort?"
"Not at all. Why are you asking? What kind of trouble are you trying to—"
"That's all I needed to know. I was hoping to indulge in a hobby I haven't had time for."
"Hey, wait— you need to plan something like that first—"
"You did tell me to call when I wished to go out. That you would give me a ride anywhere."
"Harin...?!"
She had said I could go anywhere, hadn't she? There was one place she hadn't mentioned. I could walk right up to someone passing the time on a stretch of lawn well in front of the Research Lab entrance — a place without so much as a single security camera.
"...An Academy uniform?"
A woman with green hair, wearing a dress uniform that hung loosely on her frame, was lying on the grass. She frowned at the sight of me, as if a student had no business showing up in a place like this.
She was pretty. I had to give her that. Prettier even than she had been on the television I used to stare at, transfixed, back in that apartment. Which meant a human like this could, if she felt like it, beat to death maybe a quarter of everyone in this city. Not all of them — but a quarter, easily.
Still, she was looking at me more with disbelief than suspicion, and that was a relief. If she had been on high alert from the start, this would have gotten very inconvenient.
After Sihyun and I spent a long stretch terrorizing Research Labs, the government had scrambled to station guards at the important ones, at least. As if they wanted to make a show of force, most of those guards were A-class or higher — humans far stronger than Seojun. Most of them were celebrities. Once you got that strong, it was hard not to be famous.
Every Awakened, without a single exception, had to attend school. People did occasionally awaken as adults, but those were vanishingly rare cases. Most discovered their abilities as children. And the students at those schools all sparred — they competed against each other in every kind of match. Kids as strong as Seojun, or the stutterer who had just become my friend, even got broadcast on television. I mean, people flying around like bullets with swords in their hands, breathing fire, freezing things solid, blowing things apart — how could that not be entertaining?
Anyway, the famous ability users, even the ones who could wipe a city off the map if they went all out — they were all my seniors. Which meant if I walked up to them in a school uniform, I could strike up a conversation just fine. Show up in a suit or something suspicious with my face covered, and they would attack first.
I was so full of anticipation I was probably grinning from ear to ear.
"What's a student doing in a boring place like this? You wouldn't want to end up working somewhere like this later on, like me. Hehe."
Wearing a neatly pressed uniform and carrying a schoolbag that did not suit me in the slightest, I apparently still looked like a student. Regardless of what was inside the bag.
She stared at my uniform for a long time before she spoke.
"They still sort classes and uniforms by grades these days?"
"It's only been ten years since you graduated. That's hardly 'these days.'"
"Hmm. So you know who I am."
"Of course I do. Who wouldn't recognize Lee Sohyun sunbae's face?"
And I knew more than just her face. I knew she was quite close with Seojun. You know the type — the much older, attractive character who's always teaching the protagonist the tricks of the trade. Maybe not stronger, but far more skilled.
"Seojun mentioned you. He said if I wanted to properly learn techniques, or how to handle an ability, I should come find you."
"Him? What exactly is your relationship?"
When she asked, her face seemed to harden a little. Maybe because she was clenching her fist when she said it.
"Just a simple..."
The kid who abandoned me. Who can't even recognize me standing right in front of him. Who doesn't give a damn about someone like me.
"Childhood friends."
I smiled brightly and brushed it aside. The woman looked like she wanted to ask more, though.
"So you're guarding the Research Lab from here?"
"...I'm supposed to guard the entrance, but that just makes me look like a watchdog."
"Then what if the Research Lab were attacked while you weren't there?"
She answered as if that were a ridiculous thing to even ask.
"Even if it got attacked, there's no way I'd let the attackers get away. Honestly, the people in the lab are a bit... well, anyway."
I wondered how those people seemed to her. Soft, bookish types you couldn't reason with. Or perhaps the kind of monsters who kept running human experiments. For this woman, it was probably the former.
"You're a senior I respect a great deal, you know. You're the only person who was assigned to a D-class and climbed all the way to A-class."
"That was just luck, really. If you work hard and luck is on your side, you can become just like me. You're young and pretty, so you might even end up better than I am."
But becoming like the person standing in front of me? That seemed unlikely. I had no interest in performing for cameras or trying to look beautiful. Luck, whatever. She was just pretty and decently strong, so she had climbed. They had needed a character to play the protagonist's mentor, that was all.
What was with that proud look on her face? She hadn't accomplished a single thing herself. That was right. She had just gotten lucky. Literally.
Meanwhile some of us didn't have any fucking luck and got locked in a Research Lab basement having that sick shit done to us.
"Encouraging words really are nice to hear. Honestly, I put on this uniform just to hear empty words like that."
"...?"
I set the bag down.
"Anyway, what's your relationship with Seojun? I've never heard him mention a childhood friend who looks like you."
I wouldn't have looked like this, no.
"Who knows what we are."
The woman who had been lying down sat up.
"I'm probably that childhood friend, though."
Had I raised her guard a little? Or was she going to come over and take me to a café or something?
"I know you visit the school from time to time to teach Seojun things. I also know the two of you are quite close, and that Seojun doesn't tell anyone else about it."
Green hair, though. What did you even eat to get a color like that? She would stand out wherever she went. Then again, it wasn't that bright, so maybe she didn't stand out as much as I thought.
"Well, going around saying he's spending time with someone like you and learning how to fight would get exhausting. And you probably told him not to talk about it."
"And I know Seojun is the kind of boy who doesn't talk if you tell him not to."
"Who are you, really?"
"Just Yu Harin. And that's all."
With that, I drew a pure white mask from inside the bag with my left hand. With my right, I gathered a fistful of white hair and smoothed it loosely into place.
"Someone I've known for a long time nags me every single day to wear this when I go out. It looks rather nice, don't you think?"
I tucked my hair inside the mask and settled it over my face. At once it felt as though I weren't wearing anything at all. I had heard it was made by someone with some kind of ability, but honestly I didn't care. All it did was make me hard to see on camera.
I kicked the bag and smashed it open. The blood I had so carefully collected in bottles spilled out across the grass. A thick, metallic smell rose into the air. Of course, if I had taken it from someone else, my newly made friend might have grown suspicious — so I had held back and drained it from my own wrist. Not knowing I could go out on weekends, I had wasted so much time holed up in my room staring at the television. I regretted that a little now.
I had thought I would have to sit around unable to even enjoy my hobbies, just staring desperately at a boy who couldn't recognize me, letting the days slip by.
I drew a knife from my clothes, drove it into my wrist, and twisted. The wound split wide, the flesh hanging in tatters. I had chewed up every last one of my remaining pills before coming here, so it didn't hurt much. Still, looking at my body like this always put me in a foul mood. It reminded me of the old days. A faintly stinging, dizzying feeling — that was the closest I could come to describing it.
The woman tensed when she saw the knife in my hand, then seemed to ease a little when she watched me tear open my own wrist.
Anyway.
He wouldn't recognize me at all. So I had no choice but to do this. I had come because I didn't want to be alone, and he wouldn't even speak to me, let alone stand beside me.
If the people around him vanished one by one — someday, he would notice.
How hard I had tried.