Please... Be There for Me
Once the debut date was locked in, Nature’s trio threw themselves into full-scale preparations.
“As you all know, Nature’s concept is spirit idols. We even have to transform.”
“Free…”
“It’s the boss’s personal hobby. What are you going to do about it?”
So, Sujin.
We’ve been given plenty. Time to work for it.
And while I’m talking, are you going to keep making weird noises?
“Anyway, what the boss wants is for us to showcase Spirit Union on debut day.”
Seiren.
Come out for a second and stay with me.
[No way~~~]
“….”
[…You haven’t pet my head.]
“Hey, seriously.”
Come to think of it, I hadn’t been bouncing Seiren around lately.
Work was busy. Situations kept piling up.
As a stopgap I tried summoning Lan or even Shinpung just to keep company—
[Really…?]
“…Tsk.”
Hold on. Five-minute break.
I bolted for the break room and stroked Seiren like a man possessed.
[Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh!]
“Haaaah….”
I already felt drained and we hadn’t even started.
Still, Seiren had worked up the will, so I rested my hand on her head again and whispered.
“Come in, Seiren.”
[Pardon the intrusion~?]
Seiren’s mana dissolved and seeped into my mana hole, mixing thoroughly.
The mana hole swelled. The mana load ballooned. The sensation of a human body being overwritten by a spirit’s.
Like sinking into the deep sea, descending past the abyssal floor.
“…This is the Spirit Union you’ll all have to perform from now on.”
"""………"""
“What? Looking a little hard?”
Don’t worry.
I’ve already cleared everything with the boss.
I gave my chest a light pat and pulled Seiren back out.
[I just got in…!]
“I’ll play with you later. Later.”
[….Bad boy.]
Seiren left those words behind and slipped cleanly out of my body.
She’s actually sulking, isn’t she.
I’d clearly worked her pretty hard while teaching Yeonhwa.
Even the petting just now had been a rough scrub to make her listen, so of course she’d pout.
I made a mental note to soothe her properly once training ended, then turned back to Nature’s trio.
“Anyway, as you just saw, the key is giving the feeling that you’ve become one with your spirit…
…What? Why are you all spacing out?”
"""………"""
Still that vacant look.
At this point I had a reasonable suspicion it wasn’t the difficulty that had frozen them.
What was the problem? I was turning it over carefully when—
“Instructor.”
“Yeah? Got a question?”
Yeonhwa raised her hand.
“Does that Spirit Union thing or whatever give you plastic-surgery results?”
“Where the hell did that come from?”
“Just answer.”
“Unbelievable.”
Fine. Does it give cosmetic results…
“…I think it does, yeah.”
Spirits are nature itself.
Humans, by contrast, live far removed from nature.
When a human becomes one with nature and returns to a more primordial, pure state, the distant ideal form—the ideal itself—can be projected onto the flesh.
Think of it as an intensified version of the phenomenon where awakeners end up beautiful.
Body tempering, or the way mages age slowly—same family of effects.
…Hmm. Something’s tickling at the edge of my mind.
A thought kept almost surfacing.
I was starting to wonder if I’d have to dig back into study and training I never asked for in this life.
“I knew it… that’s what it was.”
“Just think of it as heavy makeup…”
“Licht-kun, in real life…??”
“…Tsk.”
The atmosphere went slack in an instant.
I clapped lightly and pulled their eyes back.
“Focus. Break time isn’t here yet.”
Save the chatter for actual rest. You all got clothes from the boss, right?
I pointed at the outfit I was wearing.
“As you know, mithril has nearly one hundred percent mana conductivity. And what that means is…”
Zero resistance.
In other words, it holds mana beautifully.
Which leads to…
“…Lan.”
[Bark!]
Right—Seiren was still sulking.
As a quick fix I called Lan out, sparked lightning, and wound it around my body.
Crackle-snap!
“Oh… money really does talk, huh?”
Sparks raced along the fabric, crackling like it was about to burn, yet it didn’t hurt or strain me at all.
One hundred percent mana conductivity.
This was what a superconducting mithril weave meant.
Of course the reality’s a bit different.
It wasn’t pure mithril; it was an alloy. Past a certain output the clothes would burn.
But that wasn’t a worry right now.
With these kids’ current output, it was pure fantasy.
I gave a light nod and faced the three of them.
“This is your homework. Continuously release a steady stream of power while singing and dancing, then at the highlight scenes crank the output all the way up and let it fly.”
At least on the surface, it has to look like you’re using Spirit Union.
"""………"""
Their eyes rotted in real time.
Yeonhwa was already dreading another round of hellish mana control.
Harin looked worried her spirit would even keep up with the training.
Sujin just plain didn’t want to do it.
Look, if you stare at me like that, what am I supposed to do?
“You ordered new figures, didn’t you?”
“I will give it my absolute best effort!”
Good.
While we’re still smiling at each other, let’s all do our part.
…Oh, and one more thing.
“I can tell the difference between the dummies you bought as fakes and the ones you actually wanted.”
“Huh?”
“I’m only going to smash the White Knight Nendoroid. Precisely that one.”
“….”
Apparently grinding her teeth over my figure-smashing habit had driven her to buy decoy figures.
Source: the shipping labels. I looked up every line item on eBay and Coupang.
Sujin.
I’m more serious about this than you ever imagined.
“So no tricks. Work hard, okay?”
“…You… don’t understand the human heart…!”
“For your sake I could even become King Lear.”
“!!!”
Sujin flinched hard.
“…I’ve… thought this for a while now, but…?”
She slowly lifted her head toward me.
“Self-destruct, Nam Sujin.”
“Aaaaaah! See?! See, you knew all along!”
Of course I figured out your entire otaku spiral.
You should’ve realized the moment I even had the freeloader stuff down cold.
“You think I became a water spirit contractor for nothing?”
“…Are all water spirit contractors like this…?”
“Whether it’s books, manga, or movies—once you’re buried in them, it’s all the same.”
And on top of that, water contractors tend to have zero pride and just go with the flow.
Wind contractors are free spirits in a different sense.
If the wind soul resists being bound,
a water spirit contractor feels more like they’ve already transcended the world.
“Anyway. You all know what you need to do now, right?”
"""…Yes."""
Faces that screamed they really, truly did not want to.
I gave them a bright little smile.
“Um… Sunwoo-nim?”
“Hm?”
While I was standing a step back, supervising to make sure the kids were actually working—
Ayoung settled in right beside me.
Her belly’s almost…
The pregnant swell was unmistakable now.
An ordinary pregnant woman would have struggled just to breathe, yet as an awakener she seemed to be holding up.
Or maybe she was simply enduring it on pure spite and grit.
[──,───]
“Hmmm.”
According to Hecate, it was pure spite and grit.
If her body was that hard, I wished she’d just go home and rest.
“I… I’m going to have the baby.”
“Yeah.”
That’s your choice.
I kept my eyes on the Nature girls.
“…There’s something I want to ask of you.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“When I give birth… can you stay by my side…?”
“….”
For a second my breath locked solid in my throat.
My head spun.
I genuinely doubted whether the words that had just reached my ears were real.
I quietly drank from the plastic water bottle without a word.
“…I know it’s a shameless request.”
Ayoung clasped both hands together and mumbled, fidgeting.
Yet she never stopped. She stepped closer and spoke straight to me.
“Even so… please.”
“There’s no one else I can ask except you, Sunwoo-nim….”
“Alone… enduring it alone is just too… frightening…”
A voice thick with pleading.
Hecate confirmed it was sincere.
“Asking the other girls… would be too much, wouldn’t it.”
But catching the baby with my own hands and cutting the cord—
No matter how you looked at it…
“I swear I won’t be a bother.”
“….”
“After that I will never ask you for anything or demand anything again.”
“…Mm.”
She laid a hand over her heart.
“What I want… is really just that one thing.”
“…Okay.”
Hecate reported:
Sincere.
Sincere.
And—false.
On top of that, sincerity never automatically means truth, so I quietly let out a breath.
What are you thinking.
I didn’t say it out loud.
Unconscious lies are common enough.
No need to dig my fingers into someone’s raw places on purpose.
I soothed my burning throat with more water.
“Does that… count as something a ‘comrade’ or a ‘party leader’ is supposed to do?”
“…Probably not.”
She knew it herself; her head dropped.
“But… st-still….”
“…?”
Trembling fingertips.
Eyes that looked a little scared.
Then she clenched her fists hard and lightly bit her lip, forcing it down.
“…This is how I’ll ask.”
“….”
The words “all right” wouldn’t come out easily.
That was only natural.
But more than that, I felt uneasy.
It wasn’t just the doubt of “Is this something I should be doing?”
It was a quiet warning that whispered, “You must not go any further than this.”
I clenched my fist and answered, fumbling.
“If I’m not busy.”
“Pardon?”
“…If I have the time. That much.”
“…Yes.”
Neither affirmation nor refusal—an ambiguous answer.
It wasn’t a lie, but it was nothing more than “not a lie.”
As an aside—
the due date overlapped with Nature’s debut day.
“…Sunwoo-nim.”
Yun Ayoung smiled quietly.
That smile was deeply shadowed, and cold.