Can I Meet Harang Again?
The lightning blooming at my fingertips felt different from usual. Faster, sharper—as if I weren't the one wielding the lightning, but the lightning were wielding me.
But it wasn't bad. I didn't know why it had become like this, yet it wasn't beyond my control. If I was going to face Kang Ryu-yeong, the stronger the power, the better.
Watching Ryu-yeong climb up into the sparring arena, I glanced at the sky. Dense black clouds and the thick rain pouring from them battered against the wind dome the teachers had raised, making a racket.
While I was wondering whether the lightning had grown stronger because of the rain, I saw Ryu-yeong slowly mounting the arena steps.
She was wearing a strange robot-like mask, with machines clamped onto every joint. The whirring noise coming off them was a little grating.
"Didn't you say you wouldn't use tools?"
"…I'm simply not picky about my methods. You don't seem to be using your wires today, Senior."
"Yeah. I'm in good condition. Harang helped with my training, too."
Being in good condition was true enough—but Harang helping with training was a lie. He couldn't leave the house. Still, he was the reason I trained at all, so maybe saying he'd helped wasn't entirely wrong?
The moment I mentioned Harang, Ryu-yeong's expression darkened. That irritated me. She was the one who'd been too weak and put him in danger—so why was she the one looking more heartbroken?
"Even if Harang and Mom and Dad forgave you, I have no intention of forgiving you."
"…"
Ryu-yeong only nodded, offering no reply.
The teacher acting as referee told us to take our positions at opposite ends of the arena. I whipped my head around and strode to my end.
I was irritated. I didn't even know where the irritation was coming from. I just found Kang Ryu-yeong so incredibly annoying. Did she not understand that either slamming her head down in a proper apology or that pathetic look of hers only made people more irritated?
"Then!! We—begin~~!!!!!!"
At the starting signal, I slipped sideways past the charging Ryu-yeong and formed a spear of pure lightning in my hand, driving it toward her side.
Zzzzt… BOOM!!!
The spear never landed a direct hit—Ryu-yeong rolled before it could pierce her side—but the humid air made the blast that erupted against the floor send a faint, prickling current through the space around us.
She rolled clear of my spear, then bounced straight up and snapped a kick at me. I sparked current between the floor and my feet and slid backward like ice on a rink, then shaped the lingering charge in the air into tiny needles and fired them at her one after another. Mid-kick in the middle of that electrified air, Ryu-yeong took lightning needles all over her body—but she swung the foot she'd extended through a wide arc and slammed it into the ground with a heavy THUD!!, generating a shockwave that snuffed the needles out.
WHIIIRRR!!!
After that, something in Ryu-yeong's presence shifted. The machines began whirring louder and more violently than before, water dripping from every joint where they met her body, and she closed the distance on me at a far greater speed.
I snapped the wire at my waist open and spun a spiderweb wall of lightning across her path, but she veered sideways as if she'd done it a hundred times and slipped into a blind angle where the wall didn't reach.
With the gap gone and her fist driving in, I tried to spark friction again and slide clear—but she tracked me the instant I moved—
BOOM!!!
In the end I had to wrap my body in lightning and catch her fist with my bare hand. The moment our hands met, a massive thunderclap rolled out and raw lightning poured off me in every direction.
"You used your wires, Senior."
"…What the hell kind of tools are you even using?"
Even as we traded pointless words at point-blank range, our bodies kept attacking. The fist I threw was blocked by her arm; the leg she drove at me was caught by my hand.
It wasn't as if I'd never learned hand-to-hand combat. Mom and Harang had drilled that into me often enough. But no matter how much denser my power was compared to hers, dragging out a close-quarters fight with Ryu-yeong put me at a disadvantage.
I flung a few hastily formed lightning spears at the arms and legs she kept throwing at me, but she just tanked them and kept pouring attacks on me anyway.
In the end, I only shook her off by raising a violent lightning storm centered on my own body. The technique left my head spinning after a single use, so I'd always preferred not to rely on it…
"Hah… hah… You're still strong, Senior. If I beat you… can I meet Harang again?"
"…What? Does that even make sense right now?! Because of you, Harang—!!"
I was still clutching my spinning head, trying to steady myself, when Ryu-yeong said it. If she beat me, could she meet Harang again.
Did that girl have no sense of guilt? Or was her brain made of muscle just because she was a Physical Type? Did she not understand what Harang had gone through because of her?
It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off. It pisses me off.
BOOM!!!!
"Because of you… because of you, do you have any idea what Harang went through!!! And you're saying that crap right now!?!"
My head was already spinning, and hearing that only made the rage surge. The top of my skull crackled with pain, but none of that mattered now.
BOOM!!! BOOM!!!! BOOM!!!!!
My ears were ringing so badly I couldn't properly make out the distant sounds—but even so, Ryu-yeong's voice cut through crystal clear.
"So you're saying I can never meet Harang for the rest of my life?!?! I can't do that!!!"
"Shut up!!!!"
Rumble… BOOM!!!!
At the same instant as my shout, a massive bolt of lightning crashed down from the sky, and my vision flashed pure white.
My vision went white. Senior Seol-hee—something like deer antlers of transparent blue lightning grown above her head—was shouting at me, then an enormous sound tore through the air and everything turned white.
Something burning hit my nose. I could feel the countless machines wrapped around my body crackling as they tore free and fell away, but my vision kept flashing white.
In my fading consciousness, a small, bitter resentment rose up. It was true that Harang had been put in danger because I was weak—but he had forgiven me, and I was working this hard. Why couldn't I get any recognition?
I'd kept bringing gifts and medicine to apologize. I'd spent almost every hour of every day training so I could protect him. I'd even abandoned my own resolve and started using tools.
It was unfair. A different kind of unfairness from when Mom used to crush me under her thumb. Harang had forgiven me. Harang seemed to want to see me again. So why was his sister standing in the way?
The flashing stopped, but my vision stayed blurred. Black smoke seemed to be seeping from my mouth where the mask had been stripped away, and my whole body stung and ached with a raw, scraping pain.
I didn't know if the tears running from my eyes were because my body hurt or my heart did. I slowly raised my left arm and checked my wrist.
Even through the haze, the opal set into the bracelet on my arm stood out sharp and clear. Confirming it was unharmed—despite the pain of my whole body feeling like it was burning—sent a rush of joy through me.
The moment I knew the opal was safe, the strength left my body and I sank down. Then someone caught me as I started to topple sideways. Familiar. Warm. Harang's hands.
Relief that he had come for me washed over me, and I entrusted myself to him as my consciousness slowly slipped away.
The last things that entered my eyes in that dimming awareness were my tools, blackened and burned, tumbling across the floor—and the opal, sparkling beautifully as if nothing at all had happened.
The dense black clouds kept nagging at me, so even during Seol-hee unnie and Ryu-yeong's spar I couldn't concentrate, glancing up at them again and again.
Mother and Father tried to reassure me that autumn rain was always a little fierce, but the unease I felt wasn't simply because the rain was heavy.
And my unease became reality.
BOOM!!! BOOM!!!! BOOM!!!!!
Lightning bolts falling from those dense black clouds began striking precisely at the weak points of the air dome the teachers had raised.
Neither the teachers nor my parents seemed to recognize those spots as vulnerabilities. They only said the lightning was coming down under the influence of Seol-hee unnie's power.
And the lightning that kept striking eventually—
Rumble… BOOM!!!!
—shattered the teachers' barrier and became a massive bolt that engulfed Ryu-yeong. The sparring arena and the athletic field flashed white under a giant burst of light. At that, the teachers hurriedly began evacuating everyone—but Mother and I were already running toward the arena.
Both of us were racing out because we were worried about the two people inside. Still, a slight difference had opened between us.
From the fallen lightning, I felt an energy that should not have existed—that should not have been felt. Faint, but unmistakable. Something I might have been longing for all along, and something I had never wanted to discover this way.
"Seol-hee!! Ryu-yeong!!! Are you okay?!!"
"Mother! I'll take care of Ryu-yeong!!"
"Harang! You go with Dad!"
A faint residual mana had been left in the sparring arena, carried down on that massive bolt.
"Mana, answer my call."
"What I need is strength."
"Let it take form as power within me."
⟨ Strength ⟩
I felt the faint mana scattered through the air being drawn into my body. It wasn't enough to form a full circle, but it was enough to cast a first-circle spell.
I ran to Ryu-yeong as she started to collapse, caught her, confirmed she'd lost consciousness, and lifted her in a princess carry.
She was taller than me and completely out cold. Even with all the bodyweight training I'd been doing lately, I shouldn't have been able to lift her—but with magic's help, I could hold her the way you'd hold a stuffed bear.
I gave a bitter smile to Mother, who was staring at me in open shock.
"…I'll explain later. Right now, saving Seol-hee unnie and Ryu-yeong comes first."
At my words, Mother gave a small nod, scooped Seol-hee unnie into her arms, and began moving under the teachers' guidance. I gathered as much of the nearly vanished residual mana as I could, cast a healing spell over Ryu-yeong, and followed her.
With that massive bolt as the finale, the dense black clouds vanished, and the uneasy feeling vanished with them—but my head ached a little from everything I was going to have to explain later.
"Have you found anything to your liking?"
"…That Prophet brat told me to go watch some elementary school sports day, so I figured she meant the snake kid or the lightning brat, but…"
From a height where people looked smaller than ants, I looked down at the ground with easy familiarity and watched a pretty little kid running while holding the snake kid in his arms.
"Ended up seeing something pretty interesting. That Prophet brat really is useful after all."
"Shall we capture them?"
I turned my head toward my servant—whose face I could never quite tell was eyes-open or eyes-shut—asking me in that emotionless voice, and answered with a grin.
"Nah. Not yet. They're too young. Later—when they've become decent specimens worthy of me."
"Understood, Lady Noe-ryong."