What Even Is Freedom?
What in the world was this "field experience learning"?
She had grown quite familiar with Hangul and the Korean language by now, enough that she could take a word apart, reassemble its pieces, and arrive at a fair guess. But barely a few months had passed since her arrival, and Bukgung Seol's stock of common sense about this world was still overwhelmingly thin. Decoding the homeroom teacher's announcement demanded a long, laborious grinding of the brain.
Field... experience... learning....
Given that the word "learning" was in there, did that not mean she would end up having to come to school after all? A sneer flickered across Bukgung Seol's lips the moment the thought landed.
"Then I have no need of it."
It was out of regard for Kim Jinhu, who had pressed her so insistently, that she was forcing herself to come to school like this at all. And granted, snacking on the treats that Namgung Yurin—lackey of the despicable Namgung clan—kept tossing her way had its perks...! And granted, humiliation aside, she did have in Cheon Yujin a properly worthy sparring partner for her martial training...!!!
But in any case—in any case at all—Snack-Yurin and that red-eyed Ratman relative of hers meant absolutely nothing to Bukgung Seol. She was already disgruntled enough that she couldn't eat her meals at home and kept having to take one of them at school. And now, on top of everything, she was expected to come to school on a Saturday to eat?
Quite. It was utterly impossible.
But.
"Snacks have been approved on the condition that you collect your trash along with your dosirak, so feel free to bring whatever you like."
At the teacher's words.
".........?"
Bukgung Seol was engulfed in doubt. She could roughly follow what the rest of the sentence meant, but a single word near its front had planted a splinter of confusion in her—and where confusion lodged, curiosity followed.
She made to give the shoulder of Namgung Yurin, who had been chattering away with Cheon Yujin for some time now, a couple of breezy, offhand taps... but even their seated heights differed considerably, and so she had to jab the girl in the side instead.
Somehow... that felt unjust.
"Hahk...! Wh-what? You scared me... Yah, Seol, what is it?"
"Do not call me 'Yadei'...! Does that not sound absurd to the ear!"
That's rich, coming from the girl who goes around calling people "Jjinhu." Yurin barely managed to swallow the retort.
In any case, the sudden cold touch against her side wrenched a shriek out of Namgung Yurin, and when she whipped her head around, there was the white-haired girl gazing up at her from below, clear, shimmering blue eyes angled upward—and at the meeting of those gazes, her heart very nearly stopped in earnest.
Then Bukgung Seol opened her mouth, her brows narrowed ever so slightly.
"Namgung Yurin. What is a 'dosirak'?"
"A dosirak...?"
A dosirak is... a dosirak?
Namgung Yurin cocked her head sharply to one side. A dosirak was a dosirak; she had never once tried to explain the thing in detail before. Part of her thought, yep, this kid really is a foreigner—but she found it utterly impossible to turn away from Bukgung Seol questioning her with eyes like that, and so the dyed-haired girl had to wring her half-abandoned study brain for all it was worth.
"A dosirak is... uh, home cooking you pack into a container and eat outside...? How am I supposed to put this? Ah, crap, this is hard."
"The rice one eats at home... eaten outside?"
"Ah, well, yeah. You can buy them at convenience stores and all, but most people... make them at home and bring them along, I guess?"
"Jjinhu's cooking... eaten outside!"
Bukgung Seol had merely never known the Korean word dosirak—the concept itself, naturally, was not something she could possibly have been ignorant of. But because she was still in the process of groping toward this world's standards of common sense, the notion of carrying rice eaten at home out into the open world had simply refused to surface in her mind...!
This is... an unknown experience!
Ever since arriving in a completely new world and winning release from the duties of the Cheon-gang line, Bukgung Seol had fallen head over heels for new experiences. The joy of eating Kim Jinhu's food outweighed even the sorrow she felt watching him weep as he dragged himself out of bed in the dead of pre-dawn to cook it.
Slurp. Her peach-blossom tongue slid out long, and she swallowed back her drool.
And then.
"Namgung Yurin. This 'field experience learning'... what must one do to be allowed to go?"
And so it came to be.
Saturday. The day of the field experience learning.
In front of the large chartered bus that would carry them to the gate's entrance, the homeroom teacher sank into deep, deep anguish. Common sense. What, in the end, was common sense? The teacher was of awakened origin too, with a brief stint as a hunter under their belt, and even after putting their pre-Gate career to use and becoming a full-time teacher, they had been assigned awakened students from the very start. They had thought themselves long since accustomed—accustomed enough to accept all the absurdities born of a world turned on its head as plain common sense.
"Um, Yurin...?"
"What's up, Teach?"
Just... how had it come to this?
They had been the one to say it, after all: feel free to bring whatever you like. Granted, freedom was a concept whose boundaries were famously vague. And as a homeroom teacher, they had known full well that even if Namgung Yurin looked every inch the hardcore delinquent, it was only her conduct that appeared that way—she was no genuine punk who went off the rails or bared her teeth at adults.
But as of today, that assessment might need a small revision. At the very least, the present situation... it would be no exaggeration whatsoever... to say she was indiscriminately trampling every standard and shred of common sense governing a student's "freedom" on a field experience learning...!!!
"Even so, that's... a bit much, don't you think... is what your teacher thinks..."
"Huh? Too much? What is?"
Namgung Yurin tilted her head with the wide-eyed innocence of someone who genuinely understood nothing. Was this shamelessness, or true purity?
A low buzz rippled through the waiting students.
"You're telling me that isn't too much?"
"She's not right in the head..."
"She used to be kind of scary, but ever since those two transferred in, she's gone completely weird..."
It wasn't only the teacher—even the students murmuring around Namgung Yurin had to choke down their horror. Because hanging from her shoulders was an icebox of staggering size, one that looked to be about half as tall as her already considerable frame...!
And it was clearly a high-end piece, at that. This was no ordinary icebox—magic circuits had been engraved across its outer shell. That thing had long since graduated from the category of icebox; it was, for all practical purposes, a portable freezer. Judged by actual price, it was guaranteed to cost several times more than a genuine electric refrigerator.
This wasn't even an overnight school excursion—just a field experience learning, out in the morning and home before dinner. No, even if it were a three-day, two-night trip, what business did a student—not even a teacher—have hauling a portable freezer along...?
What even is... freedom?
The teacher, who had been saddled by their own careless words with a responsibility they had never asked for, felt their head begin to swim.
Before long, one more figure arrived in front of the bus, and they realized Namgung Yurin had been merely the opening act. Walking toward them from far off came snow-white hair, scattering in the autumn wind—or to be precise, only the white hair was visible, and no face at all. A girl carrying a tower roughly twice the height of her own upper body.
Bukgung Seol.
Once the teacher worked out what the tower was, they had to return, once more, to the question of what freedom even meant.
"Um, Seol...? That is...?"
"Hoh. So you would ask what it is."
A laugh brimming over with self-satisfaction. But her face was hidden entirely behind the towering stack, so the smile itself could not be witnessed. The teacher no longer had the energy to ask how, unable to see a thing in front of her, she had walked all the way here.
And then Bukgung Seol—whose tone was always chilly—announced, with a rare flutter of pride:
"This is... the dosirak... that Jjinhu stayed up making for me since last night!"
"A dosirak...? This...?"
Indeed. It was a tower of cloth-wrapped dosirak, stacked so high that it swallowed her upper body whole. They had told the students to bring dosirak for lunch, yes. But they had most certainly not meant... whatever this was—a stack whose number of tiers could not even be guessed at....
But as the teacher stood there thinking, their mind suddenly snagged on one part of what Bukgung Seol had said. Last night. The sheer quantity of dosirak. And that word—not this morning, not at dawn, but last night.
Don't tell me....
Bukgung Seol's guardian... a young man, if they remembered correctly. Behind that lofty tower of dosirak, behind Bukgung Seol humming a happy little tune, there had to exist one man's bitter tears and a night of sleepless torment. They found they could not bring themselves to keep looking at that smile....
Then, all at once.
"...?"
They noticed that one member of the set menu that had driven everyone into shock and terror was missing.
"Yurin, Seol. Come to think of it, where's Yujin? It's nearly time—don't tell me she still isn't here?"
After the displays Namgung Yurin and Bukgung Seol had put on, the teacher was almost curious, against all reason, what Cheon Yujin would produce. And yet for some reason, not so much as the tip of her nose had been seen this whole time—
"Teach...er! This Bonjwa has been here from the very beginning... I have!"
"Y-Yujin?"
That clumsy politeness, that speech pattern bizarre beyond all reason—without a doubt, their student Cheon Yujin. But here from the beginning? What on earth was that supposed to mean? More to the point, the source of that voice. For some reason, it was coming from the exact spot where Namgung Yurin was standing.
"Ventriloquism...?"
The teacher murmured despite themselves and turned their gaze toward Yurin. And there found Cheon Yujin. They had simply been so spellbound by the swaggering majesty of the icebox that her minuscule presence had never registered.
Just as Cheon Yujin had claimed, the crimson-eyed girl had been at this spot from the very beginning. To be precise—
"........."
—she had been riding on top of an icebox bigger than her own body...!
Namgung Yurin's arms, bearing the weight of the icebox and Cheon Yujin both, were trembling ever so slightly. And yet for some reason, her smile looked brighter and happier than it had all morning....
Faced with this spectacle of pure nonsense, the teacher thought:
"Is that... a Cash Pet?"
"Eh?"
At the sight of her, they could not help recalling a character from a game that had been all the rage before the Gate crisis—a cat that rode around on its owner's body while snacking on ramen or the like.
"Stare all you like, but this belongs to... This Bonjwa... it does! I won't give it... I won't!"
"No, I wasn't planning to take it... but either way, that's Yurin's, isn't it...?"
"It belongs to Jjin."
"Ah. Right...."
So that's how it is. Okay, then....
"Jjin. Want a fried one?"
"Very well. Fish one out for me."
With a thunk, the icebox swung open.
—Nomnomnom!
Starlight glittered in the crimson eyes of the girl munching away at a piece of deep-fried ice cream.
Is that... pet food?
Around this point, the teacher gave up on thinking altogether.
"Alright, everyone! We had a slight delay... but we'll be departing soon, so please start boarding so that the headcount goes smoothly!"
Desperately averting their eyes from the red-eyed Ratman, who was already perched atop the icebox gnawing on snacks, the teacher boarded the bus and, true to the original plan, brought up the destination.
"The regional-type gate where you'll be doing your field experience learning today is called the 'Lake of Holy Water.' It's a Cheoin District gate, and since the transportation links are a hassle, we've chartered a bus like this."
"Teach! First I'm hearing of it—what kind of gate is that?"
"The Lake of Holy Water is its official, registered name. But you might know it better by this one."
The teacher went on with a gentle smile.
"The tourist gate, the 'Lake of the Unicorn.' Today, you'll all be getting the precious experience of seeing the sacred unicorn with your own eyes!"