A Gate Outing Won with Tears
“Come now—shouldn’t you at least look a student in the face before you treat them?”
“I’m sorry….”
The vice principal stood with his hands on his hips, scolding her without mercy. Lua sat in her chair with her fists planted on her knees and her head bowed low.
“Healing may be convenient, but there will be students with stomachaches, students who can barely get the words out. Is it enough that only Nurse Han is comfortable?”
“I’m sooorry….”
Lua hunched her shoulders and clenched her fists tight.
Of all the times to get caught—right after I set it up….
Tears were already welling in her eyes.
In the past, she would have let any scolding or lecture go in one ear and out the other. Somehow, that was harder now.
However old the vice principal might be, he was still a grown man. If he ever resorted to force, Lua’s thin little arms would be no more use than a child’s. She may have been registering that difference in strength without even realizing it.
“U-uhhk….”
“Wh-what on earth are you crying for? Honestly.”
The vice principal cleared his throat, flustered.
“Uuu… I’m sorry, sniff.”
“Really now, Nurse Han….”
He clicked his tongue, pulled out a tissue, and held it out. His tone had already softened by a full degree.
Huh?
Taking the tissue, Lua realized something.
Before, crying had never changed a thing. If anything, people only scolded her harder for daring to cry over nothing.
But it was different now. Delicate little Lua’s tears planted guilt in the other person—and the uneasy sense that they had gone too far.
A woman’s tears are a weapon!
“W-waaah….”
“Good heavens, really!”
Lua broke into full, open sobbing. Her prediction hit the mark. The vice principal, who had been fuming only moments ago, was now floundering, trying desperately to calm her down.
This might actually be useful…!
Already scheming how to put the tears to work, Lua wondered what else she might manage with them.
—Brrring!
Just then, a phone rang from the vice principal’s pocket.
“Oh—oh dear.”
He fished out his smartphone, checked the caller, hurriedly pressed the tissue into Lua’s hand, cleared his throat, and hit answer.
“Ah, yes! Hello there!”
“……?”
Lua wiped her eyes and discreetly pricked up her ears. This was clearly an important call.
“Vice Principal, the gate is ready. About what we discussed earlier—will that still be possible?”
“Yes! Of course, of course. I’ll have the kids ready in no time.”
“Thank you. Then we’ll select a raid party on our end and dispatch them to the site.”
“Thanks to the Olympus Guild, the first-year special class students should grow by leaps and bounds.”
The moment she heard that name, Lua’s eyes went wide.
The main story!
She had been waiting for it to start any day now—and here she was stumbling into the information by pure chance. Looking at it that way, the vice principal’s visit to the infirmary had actually been a stroke of luck.
Content: a gate observation trip for the first-year special class.
The Olympus Guild was one of the major guilds under partnership contract with Felix Academy. In exchange for various forms of educational support, they held priority scouting rights over the academy’s graduates.
This time, as both guild publicity and an external education program, they were offering every student in the first-year special class the chance to watch professional hunters clear a gate in person.
Originally the protagonist is the one who shines here—but this time, I have to go.
Lua’s goal was to keep the situation as unchanged as possible and pull the main story along exactly as written. Only then could she make full use of the advantage of knowing the future.
In other words, the ending of this observation program has to match the main story beat for beat.
She spun the problem through her head at once. A way to tag along with the special class on the trip—
—Click.
In the meantime, the vice principal finished the call and hung up.
“Whew. Now, where were we—”
“WAAAAAH!”
Lua flung herself across the desk and wailed. The startled vice principal shook her shoulders in helpless confusion, but she only cried louder.
“Uwaaah! Sniff! Sniff!”
“N-Nurse Han! Stop crying! A full-grown—no, a grown adult can’t go around like this!”
“Hic! Hhk!”
“I-I’m sorry, all right? Hm? So lift your face a little….”
Lua peeked up and pretended to wipe her face on her sleeve. The tears had already dried, so she secretly dabbed on a little spit.
“Hhk, hic—no, I’m sorry, Vice Principal… I was… wrong….”
“No, no. I was the one in the wrong. I overlooked how introverted you are, Nurse Han.”
“Sniffle—then, um, could you grant me just one favor?”
“Hm? What is it?”
Fighting down the corners of her mouth that kept trying to lift, Lua delivered the main point.
“I’d like to accompany the first-year special class on their observation trip.”
Early Tuesday morning, the first-year special class students boarded the bus parked at the academy’s main gate. They had scrambled out of bed at dawn to make the schedule, and yawns were breaking out left and right.
“What kind of field trip makes us come out at this hour?”
“Damn it, I barely slept last night.”
“Whatever it is, it’s fine. Today’s basically a free pass on every class.”
All they had been told was to come prepared. Where they were going, and what kind of observation it even was, remained a complete mystery.
“Huh? It’s the school nurse.”
A student climbing aboard spotted Lua tucked into a corner of the back seats and spoke up.
“You’re coming too, Nurse? That’s rare.”
“It’s been a while since we saw your face.”
As attention swung her way, Lua shrank down and hid behind the seatback in front of her. The armband on her sleeve that read Safety Officer felt painfully conspicuous.
“If this weren’t the main story, I’d still be in bed right now….”
She was still grumbling when a sudden presence made her turn her head. Someone had sat down beside her.
“Oh?”
It was Himari. When Lua looked over, Himari dipped her head in a small but polite bow.
“Um, you can sit with your friends if you want….”
“No.”
“What… do you mean?”
“I am alone as well.”
At that, Lua glanced around. The special class students already seemed to have paired off into their own little clusters. Ten people made for even numbers, but with three students taking the very back row, Himari had been left on her own.
“You’re not very close with the other students…?”
“…….”
Himari gave a tiny nod. Lua looked back toward the students in the rear seats—Yu Juju and two others. Sociable, outgoing types; the class’s natural social butterflies, in a word.
“What about trying to get closer to them?”
“…No. I cannot befriend the discourteous.”
Himari glanced at Yu Juju and frowned. Lua tilted her head.
Did something happen between those two?
“Of course, if I am making you uncomfortable, Teacher, I will move.”
“Ah—no. Stay.”
The frown eased, and Himari offered Lua a faint smile. Then she reached over herself and fastened Lua’s seatbelt for her.
“Thank you.”
“Teacher, casual speech is fine.”
Himari said it as she buckled her own belt.
“In Korea, I have heard, the older person uses casual speech with the younger.”
“But… in Japan, you use it between people who are close, right?”
At Lua’s words, Himari’s smile deepened a shade past the one before.
“Then I would like to be close with you, Teacher.”
“Uh—why?”
“Even though I committed a discourtesy, you treated me.”
She lifted the ring finger of her left hand as she spoke.
“I thought you were a splendid person.”
“Th-that’s….”
Unexpected praise. Before she knew it, Lua was cooling her suddenly warm face with the back of her hand and turning away. It felt as if her blood had started circulating twice as fast.
“A-all right. If that’s how it is.”
“Thank you.”
Before long, the bus pulled out.
It passed through the academy’s main gate and onto the highway linking the artificial island to the mainland. At that early hour, the students either dozed with their heads bobbing or silently fiddled with their phones. Lua, too, soon found herself nodding off against the window, jolting awake, and drifting off again.
As if determined to break the mood, a man seated in the very front rose and took the microphone.
“Hello, everyone!”
A bright, cheerful voice. Students scattered throughout the bus lifted their heads to look at him. Lua and Himari did the same.
“I’m Kim Jaehyun, First Raid Division Chief of the Olympus Guild. I’ll be serving as overall lead for today’s gate clear and observation.”
—Clap clap clap.
Sleep had fled; the freshmen’s eyes lit up.
Olympus ranked among the top ten major guilds in Korea. Its First Raid Division was considered the guild’s main fighting force. The Kim Jaehyun standing before them was almost certainly a hunter inside the top three hundred. In short, a successful senior.
“Tough getting moving this early, right? Same here.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the bus.
“But a hunter’s world is a cold one. Once you earn your licenses and start working as pros, you’ll learn that a little drowsiness is the lightest trial of all.”
“…….”
“All right! Enough small talk—let me explain today’s observation.”
Kim Jaehyun worked the remote in his hand, lowering a screen and projecting an image.
“Approximately twenty hours ago, a gate appeared near Jamsil in Seoul. The erosion scale is a three-story underground shopping arcade—small, in other words. Rank: C-class.”
A photograph of the underground mall entrance, blackened by erosion, filled the screen.
Gates appeared as erosions of real-world space. Clear one within three days and the space returned to normal; fail, and an overflow occurred—monsters spilling outside while the eroded space itself locked into that state. A full-scale disaster.
“Wave analysis confirms the monsters present are undead—living corpses.”
“Ugh.”
The girls’ faces went pale. Himari’s did not.
“You will observe the process from our raid party’s first entry into the gate through the defeat of the boss, myself included. Of course we will take every possible measure for your safety, but—”
Kim Jaehyun paused, as if savoring the students’ reactions.
Of course, Lua already knew what he would say next.
“—unexpected situations can always arise.”