The Secret of My Constantly Nagging Childhood Friend ♥

The moment the loading bar filled to the end, what floated up onto the screen was something far too ordinary.

Yeah. The interface itself, the layout of the screen—everything about it was ordinary. Grab any random cloud app off the store and install it, and you’d probably get a screen that looked exactly like this.

Which meant the real problem was… those three syllables stamped right there in the middle of the display for anyone to see.

A name so familiar to me that even if I wanted to pretend I hadn’t seen it, I simply couldn’t. The name of the very person who, only a few hours ago, had barged into someone else’s house still wearing her shoes and turned my insides upside down—now preserved inside this unidentifiable app.

…What the hell is this?

My brand-new phone was actually a refurbished unit passed off as sealed stock, the storage was suspiciously full, and there was even an app that looked like pure phishing bait pre-installed? Sure, that kind of thing could happen. The world was full of lunatics, and one of the deepest pits where those lunatics gathered was the secondhand marketplace. Maybe some piece of junk that had floated out of that swamp had passed through that phone-peddler’s hands and ended up with me.

But for the app that launched from it to have the name of a girl I’d known for over fifteen years—someone who was practically family by now—stamped inside it? No matter how I looked at it—

This doesn’t make any damn sense.

It wasn’t even a ghost story. By any normal standard, it was impossible. And yet I knew. I knew there existed a power that could drag things that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠defied common sense straight into reality.

Blessings.

That unprecedented force that had appeared one day alongside the Towers. Even factoring that in, though, the current situation still refused to add up. Because Blessings were the kind of misogynistic bastards that only ever granted themselves to women—and only to a tiny handful of them at that.

The possibility that, just as Blessings had suddenly been given to humans, the power had now been opened to men as well? And that I, of all people, had drawn the short straw as the first winner? Honestly… the idea that this was some object that had leaked out of a Tower and was just mimicking a Blessing so it could use me somehow felt a lot more realistic.

That was exactly where my thoughts stalled.

As if it had read my mind, a single message rose onto the phone screen. A message that looked like it had been written specifically so someone would see it. The moment it filled the display, I clenched my teeth on pure reflex.

Part of me wanted to look away. To pretend nothing had happened, that I hadn’t seen a thing, and then hide the phone somewhere it would never see the light of day again. But I couldn’t. Because of the possibility—however slim—that if this really was something that had come out of a Tower, then the fact that her name was written here meant Lee Chaerin was already tangled up in it too.

Everything I had learned until now said as much. That was why I forced my fingers—trembling with fear of the unknown—to move and tap the message on the screen—

“…????”

Someone once said that when a person is too shocked, the first thing that fails is their ability to speak. That was exactly my state right now. I had broken out in a cold sweat doing this, and the result was… a tit selfie of the friend I’d known for fifteen years.

And yet the clothes looked… familiar somehow?

Given how long we’d known each other, I could picture what Lee Chaerin usually threw on without even looking, but even accounting for that, the outfit felt uncomfortably familiar. Almost as if I’d seen it in person recently.

That was when it hit me. The clothes on Chaerin in the photo weren’t just similar to the ones the personality-disordered girl had been wearing when she stormed in this morning and unleashed a barrage of nagging—they were identical.

…So this was taken today?

While she was yelling at me about what time it was and how I was still lying around, and begging me to clean up and live like a human being… she had been sneaking off to take pictures like this behind my back…?

It didn’t feel fake. Just to be sure I checked the other photos, and every single one was the kind of thing Chaerin would actually take. Food shots, candid moments of Yadong-i—the stray cat that hung around behind our academy and was nicknamed the food king—even a few pictures I had seen before myself. So I couldn’t just dismiss them as something someone had casually fabricated.

I was still flipping through the photos in speechless silence when, as if one mountain after another, something even more shocking appeared.

…Fuck?

No matter how I looked at it, that was the bathroom in Back Mountain Park. So she wasn’t just doing this shit inside the house…?

Hiding in a public bathroom stall where anyone could walk in at any moment, spreading her pussy wide with her fingers and pissing freely—a pose no woman with her head screwed on straight would ever strike. The lewd, vulgar side of my childhood friend that I had never known.

Even listing only what was right in front of my eyes without a single exaggeration, it was pure arousal material… but honestly, more than being turned on, my head hurt. Because it wasn’t just anyone. It was Lee Chaerin. The girl I’d known since the days she was still wiping snot in kindergarten, the one who felt more like a little sister than a friend by now. She would foam at the mouth if she ever heard me call her that—insisting she was the older one—but I meant it sincerely.

And I had just found out that girl was sneaking around doing this behind my back. How was my head supposed to not hurt?

Maybe someone got dirt on her and blackmailed her into…

If it had felt like that, I would have tried to fix it somehow. But no matter how I looked at it, this wasn’t the face of someone being forced. Maybe it was the years of knowing her. Just from the expression in the photos, I could tell. Chaerin was doing this purely because she wanted to.

At the exact same moment Taeseong was left speechless and blank-faced by the fragments of truth he had suddenly collided with, Chaerin—having finished all her scheduled training—had just arrived at the shop where her mother worked.

Ding-a-ling—

“Oh my, Chaerin’s here? How was training? Did it go well?”

“Yeah, well… training’s training, I guess.”

Maybe because the main customer base was students, at this slightly late hour the shop was completely empty—not a single customer in sight.

“Where’s Kim Taeseong?”

“Taeseong? He looked tired, so I told him to head home first.”

“Ha, shit… that guy’s just being dramatic.”

“Honey… don’t be so hard on Taeseong. Kitchen work and dishwashing are exhausting.”

“That’s why we pay him by the hour for every bit of work he does. And at one-point-five times the usual rate, too.”

He was probably back home right now, snickering lewdly over some game full of weird women. I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠could see it without even looking. Seriously, why did that guy waste money on that crap?

I was still grumbling when my eyes caught Mom lightly thumping her own lower back with her fist.

“Ah, forget it. I’ll handle closing myself, so just go home and get that massage you like.”

“Hmm? You, Chaerin? Closing everything by yourself will be hard…”

“It’s not that big a deal.”

Truthfully I was a little tired after coming straight from training, but I didn’t want to watch Mom clutching her aching back and groaning. And… I also didn’t want to look tired in front of her.

So I forcibly pushed the repeatedly refusing Mom’s back and sent her home, then dropped myself onto the chair attached to the counter.

“…It’s really quiet.”

I felt this every time, but it was still a little strange. During the day the place was so loud with kids chattering you could barely hear yourself think, yet at night the shop was pure silence. The kind of silence that made your thoughts multiply.

Maybe that was why the words I’d heard at the training grounds earlier kept floating back up.

‘Red hair? Is that her?’

‘Probably.’

‘Hmm…’

‘What?’

‘The media kept hyping her as the greatest prospect of all time, so I was expecting something, but she’s just pure firepower with no other tools.’

Voices of disappointment.

‘I heard Lee Chaerin still can’t even control her own ability properly?’

‘Well, that just means her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠firepower is that strong.’

‘What good is crazy firepower if she burns her own clothes along with the enemy because she can’t regulate it?’

‘For real? That’s pretty serious…’

‘Still, at least she’ll pick up a lot of male fans thanks to that. Heh.’

‘Hey hey hey, she can hear you.’

All the way to the voices that, drowning in their own inferiority complex, snidely tore me down. Honestly, my personality wanted to yell at them to stop whispering behind my back and just fight me properly… but I couldn’t, because every word was true. That I was pure firepower with no other tools, that I couldn’t even handle the single Blessing I had—both of those were facts.

If they had just made things up to trash me, I could have shot back cleanly. But when they used things that were technically true as material, it was hard to argue. Fighting back just made me feel like the idiot. Because of that, every time I joined group training like today, the anger just piled up higher and higher.

Who the hell asked them to expect anything in the first place…

They got their hopes up on their own, got disappointed, got jealous… I was sick of it.

“…I can’t do this.”

I had sworn I wouldn’t do that kind of thing anymore—out of guilt toward Mom’s face if nothing else… but just one last time, for real…

At the exact same moment someone whose eyes had spun from excessive stress was steeling herself with a certain resolution, Taeseong—who had been reeling from the shock of his childhood friend’s secret—had finally managed to sort out his thoughts.

So Lee Chaerin’s…

Should I call this a hobby or a sexual fetish? Either way, she had been sneaking around doing this behind my back. And pretty often, too.

As if putting a period on that conclusion, a new photo was added to the phone screen. A mirror selfie of Lee Chaerin, taken against the backdrop of the darkened shop.

Maybe she at least had enough self-awareness to know she was doing something shameful. She had used the phone and her hand to cover as much of her face as possible, but the woman in the photo—showing off her breasts, the deep pink of her nipples and areolae, even a glimpse of what lay below—was unmistakably Lee Chaerin.

What actually caught my eye, though, wasn’t the person so much as the background.

“This is actually insane.”

Taking tit selfies alone in her own room? Fine, that could happen. Hiding in the bathroom at Back Mountain Park, spreading her legs like she was marking territory, and self-documenting the disgusting sight of piss and pussy juice flying everywhere? People had weird tastes; that was just how humans were.

But this… this crossed a line.

This girl, who knew full well how hard Auntie had worked to get the shop on its current track, was doing this kind of shit inside the shop itself?

I couldn’t let this go. If I didn’t do something about this bitch right now—

Needle thieves became cow thieves. If I left her alone like this, she was definitely going to cause some massive accident.

I was grinding my teeth and muttering to myself when—

…What the hell is this now.

After a brief moment of blank shock, I tapped the screen with the attitude of “fine, let’s see how far this goes.”

Just reading it made my head spin. I clutched my skull at the sheer parade of messages.

What? Do what with who?

Okay, fine, leave that part aside—what happens if I fail…?

The part about “Administrator privileges revoked” or whatever didn’t even register. I didn’t know what that was, and I had never asked for the damn thing in the first place. The problem was the line that came after it.

The part that said “Lee Chaerin’s Blessing extinguished.”

It was far too cruel to dismiss as a joke, and given everything this shitty app had shown me so far, it was hard to treat it as one either. And more than anything… I had seen it with my own eyes. I knew exactly how far a human who lost their Blessing could fall.

“This fucking app piece of shit…”

If I didn’t want to watch my childhood friend get completely destroyed, I had to quietly do whatever it told me. Was that it?

Fine. Fuck it. Let’s do this.