I Hate Vegetables
Thud.
The moment I slipped on the ring Kim Seyoung handed me, my sense of balance dropped out from under me. Fortunately, before I could sprawl all the way onto the floor, she caught me—as if she had known perfectly well that I would react like this.
"Give it a little time, and you'll be all right."
She said it while drawing me into her arms. True to the CEO's word, after a short while my body felt like itself again.
"What is this?"
Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked. It was obviously some special kind of ring, and yet I couldn't make out its effect at all.
"Hmm... I suppose you'd call it an artifact that keeps bad things from hurting Hana's body."
"An artifact...?"
An artifact. For someone who had lived a perfectly ordinary life, it was equipment out of a dream. The price was so outrageous that most professions let you look and nothing more. Buying one was hopeless.
Only hunters bought them—people who went hunting inside the gates, and whose earnings soared beyond any other line of work. So long as the monsters stayed inside the gates, ordinary people had no reason to spend that kind of money.
"Whoa..."
I breathed the word as I stared at the ring. I, who didn't know the first thing about artifacts, was wearing something this precious. It might not have been anything special, but having one at all was something.
Like riding in a luxury car, it was the sort of item you could boast about simply by possessing it.
I raised my ringed hand high overhead and turned it this way and that, studying the brilliant light it threw.
Then Bora presented me with yet another gift.
"This is...?"
She looked at me and said,
"Hana, if you see any shady-looking uncles, or anyone dangerous, you yank this handle as hard as you can. All right?"
It was an Emergency Buzzer. Watching me, Bora demonstrated how to set it off.
The instant she pulled the handle at the bottom, a deafening racket exploded from it and the buzzer flashed and flashed.
"That's way too loud!"
I shouted, clapping my hands over my ears. Bora only showed me the once before returning it to normal. I accepted the Emergency Buzzer from her in a daze.
Then, just as she had instructed, I clipped it to my bag strap. It felt less like an accessory and more like I had hung on a weapon more vicious than the artifact itself. Most people, I suspected, would run the moment this thing started screaming.
"What else do I need to pack for you..."
For a good while after that, I sat through Bora's lecture on how to get through school in one piece.
If Bora had her way, she would have physically scooped Hana up and taken her somewhere else entirely.
But that remained a wish, and only a wish. The way people looked at this life-form from inside a gate was anything but kind.
These days their byproducts brought real benefit to modern society, but once upon a time they had been nothing more than things that slaughtered people. Only a few decades had passed. It was still too soon to turn the public's mind around.
Even Bora herself, when she first saw Hana, had not quite treated her as a person. Anyone past a certain age was likely to look at this life-form with an unfriendly eye.
The one mercy was the younger generation. They had never lived through those days, and the creature's byproducts helped ordinary life so much that they regarded it with a measure of goodwill. That, at least, was fortunate.
She could see that tendency in Kim Seyoung even now. The artifact Kim Seyoung had given Hana was something Bora could not have bought if there were ten thousand of her.
Its effect was simple. It was a protective artifact. Struck by a fifteen-ton truck doing a hundred kilometers an hour, Hana would not take so much as a scratch. It even carried a GPS function that could tell them exactly where she was.
An ordinary person could not put a mark on Hana's body with a knife or a gun. And so Bora could send her off to school with an easy heart. At the very least, Hana was now entirely beyond physical threat.
If Hana was to live properly in modern society, education was essential. (Bora, of course, had no idea that Hana was a modern person herself.)
So school was, to some extent, necessary. Bora and Haru could teach her knowledge. They could not teach her how to get along with children her own age, or how to live among people.
To manage any of this, a great many legal procedures had to be followed. Fortunately, Hana belonged to the Starlight Guild. Having the guild at their back was an enormous help in clearing those procedures.
Hana was a sheep. A sheep that earned a great deal of money, kept inside the fence called the Starlight Guild—and inside that fence she would be kept warm and well fed, and treated very well indeed.
But the moment she stepped beyond it, the Starlight Guild would slaughter that sheep. As an example to any other sheep that left the pen.
The fortunate part was that so long as she behaved inside the fence, there was no danger at all. They even helped. There was no greater benefit than that.
All she had to do was act as if she had gained a reliable older brother at her back. The Starlight Guild would pour unlimited support upon a Hana who did not leave the fence.
And since she already held the favor of the guild's direct bloodline—sidelined though that bloodline might have been—there was little that could stand in Hana's way.
The results had shown that Hana's lifespan was far longer than a human's, so they could afford to spend their time at leisure. Someday, one step and then another, couldn't she step out of the Starlight Guild's embrace and live on her own?
From Hana's side, there was also the option of never leaving at all. Bora had already resolved that everything would follow Hana's choice. All she needed to do was educate her properly until Hana came of age and could form a will that was truly her own.
Hand in hand with Bora, I went to the cafeteria. The restaurant in this building turned out surprisingly good food. We rode the elevator and pressed the button for the floor where it was.
Like a building that had not been standing long, the research institute was spotless—stylish, even, in places.
I could survive on water and sunlight alone, but I could not give up the pleasure of eating. And when I did eat, I got full, same as anyone.
When we arrived, the smell of good food came drifting over. It was the dinner hour, so aside from people working overtime, almost no one was eating. The cafeteria was quiet.
If we had come at lunch, it would have been packed with people crowding in for a meal.
Grrrgle.
My empty stomach clamored to be fed, and soon. Saliva gathered at the corners of my mouth as I swept the cafeteria at speed.
"Hana, what are you going to eat?"
There were three items on the menu, so I hesitated a moment before answering.
"Pork cutlet!"
Bora said all right, then scooped me up and set me down in a chair at one of the tables.
She always did this, but it was still a little embarrassing.
"I'll be right back, so you sit still. Understood?"
"Okay."
With that she gave my head a good ruffle and went to fetch the food.
A moment later she returned with a tray in each hand and carried them all the way over. They looked heavy, but Bora was strong. If I had tried to lift a tray one-handed, I would definitely have dropped it.
The moment the tray of pork cutlet was set in front of me, my mouth watered of its own accord.
I took up knife and fork and launched an assault on the pork-cutlet soldier. Beneath my superb swordsmanship, the soldier was sliced to pitiful pieces.
Having divided the cutlet into eight with that magnificent technique, I stabbed a piece with my fork and popped it into my mouth.
The combination of crackling breading and the soft, juicy meat inside surpassed any food I knew. My mouth filled with pure delight.
I attacked with the fork again. This time, together with the delicious pork-cutlet sauce. When the savory crust met that sweet sauce, it tasted better than anything else in the world.
I wore a blissful expression as I savored it. Bora watched me and laughed.
"Hana? You have to eat your vegetables, too."
I had no idea where she had gotten them, but she had come back with vegetables piled high. I stole a glance at her face.
I used to eat vegetables just fine. Strangely, ever since I had entered a child's body, they simply did not appeal.
How to put it—like the feeling of eating dog meat? Like eating a friend I knew well. If someone told me to eat them, I could. I just did not want to.
I decided to deploy my secret method.
"Bora, I'm thirsty."
"You are?"
At that, she stood and headed for the water dispenser. In the gap, I shoved the vegetables onto the tray of the person sitting beside me. He was too busy chatting with his neighbor to notice a thing.
What was left, I nudged ever so slightly onto Bora's tray, careful not to let it show.
Eating vegetables that were basically grass was, when it came down to it, a little hard to bear. Sweet things like fruit, though—those I could manage. I was absolutely not a picky eater.