Hana Reveals Her Power
"Bye, Haru!!!"
"Do your best, Hana! See you after school~"
I waved after Haru, who had driven me all this way. A ride as far as the school was already more kindness than I had any right to expect. In my own childhood, I had taken the bus.
A private car was another matter entirely. It cut the trip nearly in half, since a bus had stops to make and never ran straight to the school in the first place.
Heading for the gate, I could feel that the kids were unusually restless today. They were always this loud, always chattering, but something about the noise felt off.
The hunch proved right as soon as I met Jiyu and Yumi on the way and we fell into talk. When I said the mood seemed a little strange, Yumi answered.
"The test results come out today, don't they?"
Beside her, Jiyu scrunched up her face. She clearly had no faith in her scores, and in a way that was only natural. My answer sheet had been clean because I had worked every problem out in my head. Jiyu's had simply been clean—she had never even tried them.
"Ugh... I don't wanna!"
A few students were already acting strange from the moment they came through the gate, tearing at their own hair and the like, all under the pressure of grades. The less confidence you had, the more it showed.
"Aren't you nervous at all, Hana? I'm really shaking."
Yumi's voice trembled too, as if the weight of the scores had gotten to her. I hardly thought about it. Honestly, hiding the fact that I used to be an adult and then seal-clubbing a crowd of elementary schoolers—what else could you call it?
This wasn't some novel about hiding one's power anymore. If anything, revealing one's power was the truer description. I probably hadn't missed a single question on this test.
"I'm fine, though..."
"You're not just talking big, are you? Be my comrade, Hana!"
Jiyu said it in a desperate voice. She wanted me standing with her as a fellow kid who couldn't study. Yumi was good at schoolwork, but Jiyu lived about as far from studying as a person could get.
We went inside, and by the time we reached the floor reserved for the third graders alone, the kids were clustered in the middle of the hallway. A huge poster had been stuck up on the bulletin board, and every eye was fixed on it.
For the ones who had studied hard, it was something to boast about. For the ones who hadn't, the fact that only half the student body was posted let them breathe a sigh of relief. If there were eighty students in all, only the top forty ranks were made public—a single ray of light for the kids at the bottom, since at least no one else would learn they had come in dead last.
Yumi, Jiyu, and I made our way over. The names ran from first place down to fortieth. I scanned the poster from the top, and a familiar name was waiting there.
"Whoa... Hana really is first."
Jiyu and Yumi said it in open awe. Awkward for no good reason, I scratched the back of my head. An adult, studying right alongside elementary school children... If anyone ever learned who I really was, they might ask me where I had gone and sold my conscience.
Even so, placing first in the whole school felt good. First place was always a thrill—a high as sweet as any drug.
I dropped my gaze and looked over the other scores. The test must have been difficult. Not a single kid was averaging in the nineties, and second place began somewhere in the high eighties.
Tenth was still respectable. But what was I, with a perfect hundred, supposed to say? Anything that came out of my mouth could just as easily sound like bragging. And the more I thought about it, the more the wind went out of me. A full-grown adult had wedged herself in among little children and stirred up a mess. The feeling landed all at once.
"Phew... thank goodness they don't post anything past fortieth!"
Jiyu took the absence of her own name as the most natural thing in the world. Just as she had said, the score sheet on the poster did not include her.
"See? I told you to study! All you ever do is bury yourself in novels, so of course this is what you get!"
Yumi launched into a rapid-fire scolding, and Jiyu answered as if she had a defense ready.
"But I only missed one question in Korean! If you read lots of books, it helps with Korean!"
"So you're saying it's fine to give up on every other subject?"
"That's not what I meant..."
In the end, it was Jiyu who tucked her tail. In Korea, excelling in a single subject would never carry you far. You had to post excellent grades across all of them.
"What do you think, Hana? Jiyu barely studies at all!"
Caught off guard by Yumi suddenly turning the question on me, I faltered. I hadn't studied all that hard in my own school days either, so it stung a little.
"Isn't it okay to play a bit when you're in elementary school?"
"Says the girl who came in first?"
"Um..."
Struck by such a ferocious fact, I had nothing left to say. As expected, the pure attacks of children were impossible to withstand.
When I hemmed and hawed, at a loss, Jiyu grabbed my arm.
"The top student in the whole school says it's okay to play, so I'm innocent!"
And she grinned from ear to ear. Thanks to Jiyu, the slightly awkward air eased, and even Yumi couldn't help laughing at the sight of her.
"Haru, Bora, my report card's out!"
Getting out of school in the afternoon was one of the genuine perks of being an elementary schooler. It was a real shock to learn that even high school students no longer had mandatory night self-study. Not long after I was dismissed, I heard, the middle and high schoolers were let out too.
When I had been in high school, I stayed until ten at night. I spent more hours at school than at home, and if you asked to skip night study, the homeroom teacher would never accept some half-decent excuse. You were excused only if it would help your future, or if you were genuinely, seriously ill. Seeing how things were now, I could feel that the further time went on, the easier the system itself became.
Come to think of it, I didn't have to do military service either. I was in a little girl's body now. I was grateful that the insane business of being sent back to the army would never come to pass.
"Let's see... Oh my? Hana's first in the whole school?!"
"Really? Bora, may I see it too?"
Haru and Bora took the report card I had brought home and made an enormous fuss over it. They seemed even happier than I was. I had taken the news in stride, but from their side of things they were carrying on as if their own child had come in first in the whole school.
"Hana might really be a genius, don't you think?"
"I know... We did teach her, but first in the whole school, and a perfect score..."
From Haru and Bora's point of view, mistaking me for a genius wasn't exactly wrong.
"I did good, right?"
Even so, seeing the two of them so delighted made me feel good right along with them. Grades like these meant I deserved a reward. I looked up at Bora and Haru with sparkling eyes, and they nodded as if they already understood.
"Shall we eat out today, to celebrate Hana coming in first in the whole school?"
"I want galbi! I wanna eat galbi!"
The moment I heard the answer I had been hoping for, I blurted out that I wanted galbi—those sweet marinated short ribs. The cafeteria served them too, but they never tasted like meat grilled right in front of you at a barbecue place. Hundreds of employees had to be fed, so no matter how carefully the kitchen cooked, the ribs were done in bulk and inevitably came out a little cold.
For the first time in a long while, I wanted meat hissing on a real grill. Meat was meat, as far as I was concerned—that was my whole philosophy—but the particular kind you craved still changed from day to day. Today it was galbi, soaked deep in a rich, sweet marinade. My mouth watered at the thought alone.
I didn't even think about taking off my school uniform. I bounced around Bora and Haru, circling them in little hops, and I had gone around maybe twice when Haru slipped her hands under my arms and pulled me into a hug.
"Hana, that's enough spinning. Shall we go eat galbi?"
Held in Haru's arms, I couldn't help letting out a cheer at the promise of galbi. As expected, for a student, test scores were king. The thought that I could keep coasting like this at least until middle school put me in an excellent mood.
Of course, if I didn't study, I wouldn't be able to solve middle school problems. I made up my mind to put two or three hours a day into it. At my current level, I could probably handle everything up through first-year middle school, couldn't I?
"Is there a good galbi place nearby?"
"I'll look one up on my phone."
"Thanks to Hana, we're getting to enjoy a luxury we don't get these days."
Bora, Haru, and the staff assigned to look after me had been issued a corporate card with no spending limit. There was only one card, so they had to ask accounting before they used it, but aside from that there were no other restrictions. Everything they fed me, just as now, was free, and the card came in handy for eating out or for buying other food besides.
Frankly, even if they charged an imported luxury car to it every single day, I doubted it would make much of a dent from the research institute's point of view.