Bora Is Diligent
Brrrrrrring!
Same as every other day, Kim Bora hauled herself out of bed to the racket of an alarm that refused to show mercy. Dawn light was already sliding in through the window, and she squinted against it as she sat up.
Getting up at dawn was hard. Maybe she should have asked to switch to an afternoon shift under the flexible-hours policy. But an afternoon shift would have meant missing something she didn't want to miss, so she had never chosen one.
"Uuuugh!!"
She pushed herself upright and threw her arms into a full-body stretch, and her back answered with a satisfying crack. The stiffness drained out of her all at once. Lately her condition had been improving by the day. Was that thanks to the new life-form she had taken in? Turning the thought over, she climbed out of bed and started getting ready for work.
The mirror did not show her the usual exhausted office worker ground down by fatigue. She had actually had the weekend off for once, Saturday and Sunday both, and had spent the whole of it sleeping like the dead at home. Bora bolted a rough breakfast of bread and eggs, pulled on the lab coat and dress shoes she always wore, and stepped outside.
Oh—she couldn't forget her employee badge. She darted back into the room, looped the badge around her neck, and headed out again.
Another lively day. Bora went down to the parking lot, climbed into her beloved Morning, and turned the key. The car slid forward as if it were gliding.
Feeling the old cabin rattle around her, she let the day begin.
Thirty minutes later, the institute was there to greet her. She bowed to the guards already on duty in the early morning and passed through the entrance.
Not long ago she would have been heading for the isolation room. Now that Hana had been moved, she no longer went down to the underground cell. She took the elevator up instead. At the desk, a handful of staff were already bustling about, getting ready to receive the institute's employees.
I got here early, and these people look like they don't sleep at all.
Nursing that idle thought, she rode the elevator up and up. Beyond the clear glass, Seoul lay small and far away, and it was beautiful.
She had heard that before she was even born, the Gates had erased nearly twenty percent of the city's area. Watching it all rebuilt, you could feel just how extraordinary humanity was.
The monsters from the Gates had handed humanity despair. At the same time, the byproducts those same monsters carried had become humanity's hope. Despair and salvation in a single package. Lucifer, through and through.
She got off on her floor and walked the corridor, tipping her head to peek through each window in turn, searching for the room where Hana was sleeping. Hana was fickle and could never be satisfied with just one room. They all looked identical, and still she migrated from one to the next, sleeping somewhere new every day.
"Ah!"
Bora found her. Not the lace-draped princess room, but one with a clean, modern feel. Hana seemed to have been sleeping here a lot lately.
She eased the door open so as not to wake her, then stood just inside and drew in the deepest breath she could. The air in a room where Hana had stayed for any length of time was purity itself, as if she had stepped into the heart of a deep forest. Simply breathing it felt like it was making her healthier.
A human air purifier, maybe? No—Hana wasn't human, so she would just have to call her an air purifier and leave it at that.
Drinking in that clean air, Bora crept toward the sleeping girl. The room was crowded with all kinds of furniture, and of everything in it, Hana loved the television best. Put a movie on and she would sink into it and watch all day.
Aside from the institute's own staff, the low-level clerks who only handled paperwork still had no idea what Hana was. If she had still been wearing the restraint around her neck, even an ordinary person would have known she was no ordinary person but a monster. The restraint, however, had already been taken off.
Wearing it weakened the body, and Hana was frail enough that a simple fall could hurt her badly. On the department head's orders, they had removed it for the time being. Leaving it off wasn't going to cause any great disaster anyway.
Asleep in the bed, Hana looked every bit an angel. Awake, she turned into a devil who lived to make trouble, but for now she was only breathing soft and even, and Bora poked those cheeks with a fingertip, poke, poke.
The soft round cheeks were pure addiction. Puffed up like steamed buns, they sank in exactly as far as she pressed, and the habit was dangerously easy to fall into. Once the office staff assigned to watch Hana arrived, Bora would no longer have her all to herself. This was her chance.
A low-level employee like Kim Bora getting to stay at Hana's side was not an opportunity that came along often.
She kept pressing, and Hana, eyes still shut, didn't so much as look at her. She simply rolled over and turned her back. Bora had done this so many times that Hana was clearly sick of it. So Bora launched herself fully onto the bed and gathered her into a hug.
Hana smelled wonderful. What was she even supposed to call that scent? It was hard to pin down, but there was no mistaking the bright, refreshing fragrance rising from her body.
A little put out that Hana had turned her back, Bora quietly lifted a hand and tickled her side. The reaction came at once.
Hana twisted this way and that, trying to wriggle out of Bora's arms, but Bora had already cast an inescapable net. There was no escaping her embrace.
"Eek!!!"
All Hana could manage was a feeble little cry.
I woke to Kim Bora's hand pressing firmly into my cheek. Wasn't a working adult supposed to arrive at the appointed hour? This was a perfectly normal company that started at nine, and yet Bora had shown up a full hour or two early.
Weren't Gen Y and Gen Z supposed to treat clock-in time as sacred? How little must she have to do at home, to come in this early? It was beyond me.
Was showing up at the crack of dawn just who Kim Bora was? Hardly. Before I arrived, she had been the classic sluggish employee who rolled in with ten minutes to spare. And when it was time to leave, she was out the door the second the clock struck.
I kept my eyes shut and turned my back on her. This body still wasn't growing properly, and it demanded the sleep it lacked. Over the weekend Bora hadn't come in at all, and I had spent those days in perfect comfort...!
Yesterday, of course, Lee Haru had been on duty and looking after me. The two of them took turns on weekends. How much money were they being paid, to give up a weekend they could have spent resting and spend it taking care of me instead?
Even so, Lee Haru was the sort who arrived only a little before nine, like a normal person. That meant I could actually get enough sleep.
But Kim Bora's early arrivals had given me a full-blown case of the Monday blues. I ignored her hand, kept my back turned, and tried to chase sleep again—only for a clammy, furtive touch at my side to drag me the rest of the way awake.
Tickle, tickle.
"Heh-heh-heh!"
I thrashed, trying to get away from the fingers dancing along my ribs, but there was no escaping that devilish touch. All I could do was pant.
Bora seized me by both sides and hoisted me high into the air. My feet met nothing but empty space, and I cracked my eyes open. Still heavy with sleep, my face was reflected in her eyes.
"Hana, good morning!"
Even the first time we met, Kim Bora had been overflowing with energy, but lately that energy felt like too much. At this rate I half expected her to go completely out of control.
Come to think of it, the way Lee Haru looked at me had been anything but ordinary too... Women really did have a weakness for anything cute and adorable. If my face had been fierce and ugly, none of this nuisance would have happened.
Bora took my hand and led me to a spot where the sunlight fell thick and bright. I could eat food, but sunlight and water suited me better. Sunlight and water alone were enough to fill my stomach without a bite of anything else.
Bora had watched me long enough to know that. She brought me to the floor-to-ceiling glass where the sun hit dead-on, and turned on the television.
She knew perfectly well that if she failed to hold my attention, I would simply wander off somewhere else. I had already decided to take the elevator to another floor today, but it looked as though that plan would have to be scrapped.
Bora sat down at the desk, opened her laptop, and set to some kind of work. What was she writing? Curious, I hovered behind her, but I was too short to see a thing. The interest drained out of me. I picked up my water bottle, lay down where the sunlight was best, and watched TV.
The unemployed life was, without question, the best.