1. Adaptation
The cake was a plain fresh-cream cake.
But it was so delicious that even now, I still haven't forgotten it.
Back then, the only treats available to me... were candy, and barely that. Of course the cake tasted heavenly.
"Is it tasty?"
I was startled, but I didn't let it show.
A vivid auditory hallucination... that was how I chose to think of it.
The researcher said that, then slowly smiled. Even though he knew I hadn't eaten the cake yet, it seemed he'd only said it to make conversation.
And then the researcher spoke to me.
"Could we talk for a moment?"
"...!"
The voice. The intonation. The way of speaking.
All of it seemed to resemble someone I knew, and I flinched upright.
While I sat there gasping in shock, the hallucination began to dissolve, piece by piece. The table and cake before me grew blurry, and at some point the researcher had morphed into the shape of my homeroom teacher.
No — more accurately, I'd mistaken my homeroom teacher for the researcher.
She seemed quite startled herself. Her eyes were still closed, but I could tell from her expression, from the way she held herself. Above all, the fact that she was clutching her phone told me she'd assumed something was seriously wrong with me.
...And only then did I realize I'd been leaning on my homeroom teacher's shoulder.
I'd probably been mumbling in my sleep, too, trying to endure the hallucination. I was so mortified I wanted to crawl into a hole, but I couldn't do that just yet. At the very least, I had to clear up the misunderstanding.
"...Are you alright, student?"
My homeroom teacher asked, her voice thick with worry. Her eyes were still closed, but her face was brimming with kindness.
And that was exactly what made it nauseating.
A deep, inexplicable disgust rose up from somewhere inside me. I clenched my teeth and tried to digest the feeling down. Then, suppressing my emotions as much as I could, I spoke.
"...That's not something you need to involve yourself in, Teacher."
It came out rather harsh, but that was still me trying to phrase it as nicely as possible. She and that researcher had an atmosphere that was unsettlingly similar. Just sharing the same space with her made my breath catch in my throat. I couldn't even stand the sight of her — I wanted to tell her to leave.
...But she wasn't the researcher, so I forced myself to calm down.
Neither of us said anything after that. She stared at me with a worried look, then turned her gaze back to the front. I pressed myself against the window side and fixed my eyes on the glass.
All the while, the intercity bus kept rolling down the road, and before long it pulled up at a stop near the Academy. I waited my turn, pulled out my transit card, and stepped off the bus.
"You're sure you're okay, student?"
"Yes. I'm fine."
Having said that much to the bus driver who worried over me, I walked on without looking back. If I got tangled up with anyone else right now, I couldn't say what might come out of my mouth. So I picked up the pace.
It was my one regret that the skirt was too short to run in.
As I walked up the incline, I spotted another bus stop. That one... looked like it was for the shuttle bus. Other students seemed to be waiting there to ride it up instead of walking.
I knew from my university days how that went. The shuttle spared your legs, but it was crowded, and you'd inevitably end up late. So I passed the stop by, intending to keep walking the whole way up.
...I didn't want to get tangled up with anyone else right now.
But as I trudged up the sloping road, someone seemed to be following behind me. I hesitated, then turned my head just in case — and immediately regretted it.
It wasn't another student. It was my homeroom teacher, trailing after me.
I did my best not to react, continuing forward as if I'd never turned around. But I couldn't exactly ignore her. At some point she'd fallen into step beside me, matching my pace as we walked together.
So I ignored her for a moment and simply stopped where I stood. Surely that would bore her, and she'd move on.
Instead, she stopped too, and didn't budge. In the end, I couldn't stand it and spoke up.
"If you're the homeroom teacher... shouldn't you be heading in early?"
"Hm?"
"Do you really have time to wait around here with me?"
"Haha, is that what this is about?"
"...I mean, you're already early as it is. But you should be getting in even earlier, shouldn't you?"
"I'd normally take the first bus in, but there was a lot to take care of today."
"..."
That wasn't a lie. If it had been a lie, I would have been able to tell immediately. So I said nothing more, and instead began walking — very, very slowly — hoping she would pass me by.
She didn't. She simply kept matching my pace beside me, as if she could wait forever. And then she was the one who brought it up first.
"You leaned on my shoulder on the bus earlier, remember?"
"...Yes."
"It didn't seem like simple fatigue to me. Did something happen?"
"..."
Instead of answering, I jerked my head away and blinked.
Glass panes surfaced across my vision. Fragmented shards of an unbroken glass wall floated weightlessly in the air.
And my teacher should certainly have been in her civilian clothes. Yet for some reason, I could have sworn I saw the white of a lab coat fluttering on her frame.
I gritted my teeth and focused as hard as I could to tear the hallucination away. If I let it torment me here, of all places, there would be trouble.
...For today, I would endure it through sheer willpower. Tomorrow, I'd press my aunt until she gave me something — a drug, a sedative, anything. Aunt Ailee was capable. She'd surely have something to handle this exact situation.
So, acting as if nothing was wrong, I gave my teacher a curt reply.
"...Nothing happened."
"...I see."
She walked on in silence for a while, and so did I. Then she spoke to me again.
"I know you helped apprehend a criminal yesterday."
"...I'm sorry?"
"There's been some discussion about it. Would you be interested?"
"..."
I kept my mouth shut and thought.
I had no idea how my homeroom teacher knew about that. No — fine, let's say, for the sake of argument, that she knew. But considering the Academy's character, the matter would have already been settled among the staff, conclusions drawn without any input from the student involved. And now she seemed to have dredged it up artificially, just to have something to talk to me about.
Every fiber of me wanted to ignore it, but ignoring her any further didn't seem like an option either. So I muttered under my breath and said I'd listen.
She smiled a kindly, pleasant smile and said,
"A student of the Academy aided in the apprehension of a criminal. That is, by rights, something worthy of commendation."
"It was nothing."
"Even so, it should have been on the news by now."
"...As if that would ever happen."
"But this would put a great burden on you, wouldn't it? Am I wrong?"
"..."
She was smiling, but I couldn't.
If the news had run, as she said, attention beyond anything I could bear would have come pouring down on me. A freshman at Busan International Academy — and not just any freshman, but the one who'd defeated a Villain in the entrance exam. If that freshman had helped catch a criminal...
...I couldn't even imagine how gleefully the reporters would have torn into me. Just thinking about it was enough to stop my breath.
And if she had learned all of this, what would she want to do with me?
So I fought to keep my expression composed. And as if I'd guessed right, she said exactly what I'd been dreading.
"That's why the decision of what to do about this matter came to me — as your homeroom teacher."
"...Right. Can we get to the point?"
"And I've been deliberating over whether to hand that choice over to you."
"...I'm sorry?"
"Because you seem to dislike drawing more attention than necessary."
"..."
"Dressing yourself up like a delinquent is part of that too, isn't it?"
"...Yes."
"That's simply the kind of student you are."
I tried to steady myself, and failed. I was so thrown that I couldn't even keep my face in order. So I stopped in my tracks and stared at my homeroom teacher — because the words she'd just said felt like something I'd heard somewhere before.
...The glass wall was surfacing again, slowly this time. My vision dimmed at the edges.
My homeroom teacher should have been standing in that spot. Instead, before my eyes stood a middle-aged man in a white lab coat.
He regarded me as if I were something intriguing, and said,
"So this is the kind of child you are."
Child. There was no emotion in the word. It was closer to a hollow, meaningless compliment — appended only because the object before his eyes was a successful creation.
...And the lilt in his voice, delighted at the arrival of a new toy — it grated on me so unbearably that nausea surged up my throat.
I stood still for a moment, wondering why this memory had surfaced now, of all times. Then, dazed, I lifted my head and studied the man's face.
It resembled him. No — it was him.
That conviction took root inside me, firm and immovable. Instinctively, I tensed my body, let a trace of Manifestation flare, and forced it back down. Then I clenched my jaw and breathed slowly, deeply.
But I didn't stop looking ahead. The person in front of me was not that man. I was merely layering a hallucination over my sight — the person standing there was my homeroom teacher.
So, straining to keep myself calm, I answered.
"I'm simply someone who dislikes drawing more attention than necessary."
And with those words, I forced a smile.