Jeon Harin Must Cosplay as a Kitty
That day, the rain fell especially hard.
The day I Awakened as an Awakener.
The day the world recognized me as someone special.
I had believed my life would bloom wide open like a flower from that moment on.
But no.
The world was vast, talent was plentiful, and I was merely one of the lucky ones—never someone who could become a star shining beyond the heavens.
The wall of reality. The despair it delivered.
The gulf between the world I had dreamed of and the reality I kept colliding with.
Some people accepted it as only natural,
but I simply could not accept it.
It was a foolish thought.
A lacking, arrogant, even selfish thought.
Yet back then I believed more than anyone that I was a “special person.”
I believed it, had always believed it, and worked to make it true.
But as I said just a moment ago—
“Ah....”
I was merely one of the lucky ones.
An ordinary person who could never become special... of all things.
“I hate this....”
I hated it.
I didn’t want to admit it.
I didn’t want to accept it.
That my power.
My potential.
That my reality amounted to nothing more than this—I refused to acknowledge it.
“I hate thiiis....”
But would reality change just because I refused to admit it?
It was the same childish mindset as a kid covering both eyes and declaring the sun had vanished from the world.
A childish mindset.
A childish heart.
And, quite by coincidence—
KWA-RUMBLE!
“.......!!!”
Spirits prefer those purer than anyone else.
A pure heart. A pure longing.
A pure──desire to become more outstanding than anyone else.
As if resonating with her soul that ran wild like lightning itself.
[Nyaaa...?]
“.....Ah?”
Before her, a tiny little bolt of lightning was born.
...
..
.
In other words, simply put, it was this.
“You thought you’d become a lightning Spirit Contractor and happily offered yourself up, huh.”
“Offering myself up is a bit much...”
“Goldie Mom, please just admit it already.”
“...Uuuu.”
Hey now. Don’t go pouting those lips.
I slowly turned over the story Harin had told me in my mind.
Anyway, she became a lightning Spirit Contractor, huh.
Still, one thing struck me as odd.
According to my Attribute Physiognomy...
“You... how old are you this year?”
“Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three and you’ve got manners?”
“....??”
Lightning Spirit Contractors are traditionally without manners.
Strong rebellious streak, intense hostility—and the degree of it surpasses even fire Spirit Contractors.
On top of that their hearts are so fickle the lot of them are lunatics who live however the fuck they please.
Hotter than fire
and freer than wind—
exactly a gathering of personality wrecks born from collecting only the flaws of those two beings.
My case is just unusually weird.
As a water Spirit Contractor I had the temperament that at least made me relatively easy to talk to.
Anyway, looking at it that way, Harin’s manners—considering she was a lightning Spirit Contractor—fell into the extremely docile category.
She knew how to say thank you when she was grateful,
how to apologize when she’d fucked up,
and how to grit her teeth and endure even when the world refused to go her way.
And put another way—
“I think I get why the cat doesn’t like you.”
“Really?”
“More precisely, why it sees you as a sucker pushover.”
“...Eeh?”
Don’t flinch just because the wording’s strong.
Among Nature’s trio you’re the biggest problem, you know?
“Yeonhwa completely subjugated her spirit. It’s well-trained, so once she gets the hang of control she can somehow jump into active duty.”
“In Sujin’s case they’re equal friends. So if you just let them play around and their hearts line up, they can move to the next stage pretty quick.”
“But in your case it’s a ‘contract’ relationship.”
A mutually equal contractual relationship.
Peel back one layer, though, and by human standards this is an extremely unfair deal.
“You—how did you even contract with that thing?”
“Rather than ‘how’... I found it collapsed, brought it home and took care of it, and I guess it just chose me after that?”
“That’s why, Goldie Mom.”
No, wait.
“In this case should I call you Can-Opener?”
“...I am a butler, though.”
“Butler my ass. You’re just a can-opener.”
“............”
Her expression grew more and more discontent.
Seeming she still didn’t get it, I spoke again.
“Lightning spirits have a strong personality of wanting to do whatever the fuck they want. And you accepted every bit of it. So how do you think it would react?”
“Um... a kind, good-natured master?”
“A fucking retarded sucker can-opener bastard, more like.”
How much of a sucker does it see you as that even while it’s using your mana it still bares its teeth and tells you to bring churu?
There are even times it steals the churu on its own whim.
Does that look normal to you?
“That... maybe it’s because I couldn’t satisfy it?”
“Harin. How have you been living all this time?”
“...........”
Harin clamped her mouth shut.
Looking like the words were hard to force out.
I stared blankly at her and continued my own conjectures.
The mana she shows is exactly that of a lowest-rank Spirit Contractor.
Awakener level better than a normal person.
But beyond that, nothing.
Yet despite that she has enough of a crazy streak that a lightning spirit would come choose her...
“....Hmm. Hmmm.”
I was starting to get it a little.
Even fire Spirit Contractors become decent at anger management once their heads get cracked open.
In that sense Harin would be similar.
Somehow the kid’s personality was way too good.
Good-natured to a degree unfitting for a Spirit Contractor.
I thought I knew the reason now.
“You’ve been hurt a lot, haven’t you?”
“...It couldn’t be helped.”
Unlike the others, Harin was fundamentally twisted.
And the identity of that twist was her own skills, her expectations, and the reality that refused to match them.
To the point the unique crazy streak of Spirit Contractors had been crushed out of existence.
It seemed Harin had been ground down hard by society.
So it didn’t feel like a couple pieces of advice would wrap things up.
Still, I thought I could correct the points she was misunderstanding.
“Harin. What do you think a contract between spirit and Spirit Contractor is?”
“...A bilateral contractual relationship?”
“Did you eavesdrop on me and Hyewon’s conversation?”
What’s this bilateral contractual relationship crap.
I shook my head and answered.
“It’s a soul oath.”
“Soul...?”
“Want me to put it simply?”
Harin.
You can see how much that fuck-cat hates you right now, right?
“But even while hating you that much, why doesn’t it break the contract and run away?”
“That’s.....”
Why?
For what reason?
Harin raised her head and answered.
“Because I give it churu well...?”
“No. Because it can’t break the contract.”
That’s what makes the contract between spirit and Spirit Contractor interesting.
There’s no unfair deal like this unfair deal, but from the spirit’s side it’s also unfair—because the spirit can’t unilaterally terminate first.
In the end it’s no different from each holding the other’s weakness.
“But at the Academy they said spirits unilaterally break contracts.”
“It just ignores you even when you call. The contract isn’t broken.”
So for a Spirit Contractor the worst case is when the spirit doesn’t show up at all.
It keeps eating the mana from the contract while obstructing contracts with any other spirits.
On top of that, even if you want to learn magic or other techniques the spirit actively interferes, so as an Awakener you’re half as good as dead.
“...Being a Spirit Contractor was such a scary profession?”
“Don’t think of it as too scary. It’s just one of the worst cases, and normally spirits don’t go so far as to fuck people over that badly.”
Still, in your case Harin, there’s still hope.
“At least it can be summoned. So it’s not the worst yet.”
“That means....”
“Among the three, you’re the worst, though.”
“Ugh.”
So you have to work the hardest here.
You’re a rare and unique lightning Spirit Contractor—shouldn’t you put in that much effort?
“Then... what should I do?”
“You confident you can follow if I order you?”
“...Don’t be mean.”
“Yeah. There’s that personality coming out little by little.”
A lightning Spirit Contractor ought to have some crazy energy.
I immediately picked up my phone and asked Hyewon for an item.
“Huh?”
What the hell was that supposed to mean, Hyewon.
I was about to ask when the call already cut off.
Well, she wasn’t the type to do anything that would actually land me in trouble, so I didn’t need to worry about it.
“What did you ask for that even the boss sighed like that?”
“Ah. Nothing major.”
You.
I’m going to make you do cat cosplay.
“....What?”
“Can’t exactly feed a person churu, so Jjayo Jjayo is fine, right?”
“Hold on. This is actually a pretty big deal right now?”
“Yeah. Grape flavor good, or strawberry?”
“That’s not the important part right now!”
“Harin.”
“!,....Instructor?”
I smiled as I answered.
“Behave before you start getting spiteful, yeah?”
“...Grape flavor.”
“Okay. Grape it is.”
Harin with her tail lowered.
If she’d talked back one more time I would’ve shoved a churu straight into that mouth—pity it didn’t happen.
After training ended,
I headed to the hospital and went to the room where Ayoung was staying.
“Does it taste all right?”
“It’s good.”
Same as always—I peeled an apple.
She ate the apple.
We made meaningless small talk.
“Sunwoo.”
“What.”
“Sunwoo.”
“What.”
“Just... felt like calling you.”
“Cut the crap.”
Ayoung’s face grew steadily brighter.
Now and then I could even catch a glimpse of the smile from our Academy days.
“Sunwoo.”
“.....Why are you calling me.”
Yet for some reason—
“I... have something I want to confess to you, Sunwoo.”
“.............”
The sense of dissonance that felt ready to shatter at any second was still there.
I quietly watched Ayoung and waited for the rest.
And then—
“I love you, Sunwoo.”
The dissonance landed exactly on target.
“In my life. In my short existence.”
One sentence.
Then another.
“Even though I promised my body would always look only to the Lord—”
Ayoung’s sincere,
“I cannot shake off the feelings I have for you.”
—words she herself believed to be “sincere”—
“Yeah.”
I gave a light nod and answered.
“Would’ve been nice if I’d heard that seven years ago.”
“.....What?”
A Spirit Contractor must never lie.