I Really Hate Checkups
I sat there clutching an arm gone red and swollen. A blood test had to analyze the actual makeup of whatever they'd drawn, so of course the results were taking forever. I huddled on a cold chair in the corner, unable even to hide how puffy my eyes had gotten.
Researchers drifted along the hallway now and then and glanced at me once. That was the full extent of their interest. I waited with the candy Kim Bora had given me tucked in my mouth.
Still, I was a life-form that had come out of a gate, so at least one hunter had been posted to watch me. Park Deokgu—the man who'd grabbed me inside the gate. He was the furry one. If you asked me, he looked more like a monster than I did, but the situation insisted otherwise.
If I got angry enough, could I bring this whole building down? Fresh from having my blood drawn, I entertained an empty fantasy that would never come true and glared at Park Deokgu, standing quietly beside me.
Ziiing—
I stared hard enough that lasers ought to have shot from my eyes. Maybe he felt it. He glanced my way once, then whipped his head the other direction in a hurry.
Good. Glare at someone that hard and they owed you a reaction. No reaction, and the whole stare would have been pointless. I rubbed the cotton hard over the spot they'd drawn from, and the pain seemed to ease.
I would never, for the rest of my life, forget the face of that demon of a researcher who had stuck me with the needle. In my Death Note, that person's name... well, I didn't know the name, so it would just be a drawing of the face. I was turning that thought over when Kim Bora opened the door from inside and came out.
"Hana~ Were you waiting nicely?"
I knew exactly how heartless that Kim Bora could be. When they'd gone to stick the needle in, she had grabbed my shoulder and held me down. I swore I would never forget that sharp, cold grudge.
She crouched in front of me until our eyes were level, and I turned my head aside so I wouldn't have to look at her. Payback for earlier. Anyone watching would call me petty, but I was certain that if they took one blood draw themselves, they would understand my position perfectly.
"She was glaring holes through me a minute ago. Thought I was gonna jump out of my skin. What's a runt that small doing with eyes that fierce..."
Park Deokgu clearly hadn't forgotten my laser stare.
"She got sulky because we had to force the blood draw. Aigoo... maybe we were too rough."
Kim Bora knew exactly why I was sulking. And she was just going to force it on me anyway? I swore I would never, ever let this sulk go. That oath melted clean away in under a minute, undone by the candy she produced. Kim Bora might be guilty, but the candy she pulled out was innocent.
Nom, nom.
I munched the candy she'd brought and eavesdropped on the two of them talking. They must have assumed I couldn't communicate.
Same as the researchers yesterday. Because I couldn't speak, they figured I couldn't understand what I heard either, and they spilled the most important information right beside me. I pricked up my ears and listened hard.
"All that's left is the mana test."
Kim Bora said it while sorting through the papers. She was probably saying it for Park Deokgu's sake, so the man watching me would know.
"Yeah? A little more and this boring gig's over. Don't get why they're posting a watch on a shrimp this small. What's there to be scared of..."
Park Deokgu had no idea how terrifying this body of mine really was. Someday I was going to smash this lab that had dragged me off and was running strange experiments on me, so his words stung my pride. I clenched a fist and thumped his thigh. Pap, pap.
"Looks like she wants more candy?"
Seeing me like that, he took it for a request for candy. Unbelievable. My thumps were that weak? Someday I would have my revenge on the Park Deokgu who had hauled me here. I didn't know when, but if I waited, an opening was bound to come.
At any rate, after every manner of test, the gate life-form known as Hana—utterly spent—went in for the last one with no strength left in her. There had been incidents of her throwing a fit during the CT and the other MRI scans, but Kim Bora had subdued all of it with a single piece of candy.
The researchers looking over Hana's results wore grave expressions to a one... but every test was finished now, and only the last remained. In a sense, it might have been the most important of all.
It was the single most vital weapon hunters and monsters were born possessing. Without it, you could never become a hunter, and entering a gate was nearly impossible.
The thing that weighed most heavily on a hunter's rank was the mana test.
They brought Hana into the laboratory for it. The examination was important, but since she had no idea how the measurement worked, Researcher Kim Bora stayed right beside her.
They had judged that pairing her with the person she had clung to since their first meeting would help the experiment enormously.
Sure enough, Hana darted all over the inside of the lab. In the center of the room sat a crystal orb wired to specialized machines that were, in some respects, better and more accurate than the mana meters the government used.
In novels, didn't you set your hand on something like that and watch the crystal shatter under the protagonist's overwhelming power?
The life-form they had brought in might be hiding tremendous mana behind that cute exterior, so the researchers began the experiment, each of them visibly tense.
I ended up inside a room I couldn't place. After all the strange tests today, I felt wrung out from head to toe. Why did they have to run them back to back without a single break? Time might matter, but nobody seemed to care much about the condition of the one actually being tested.
Annoyed, I ran around the room and managed to burn off some of the anger sitting in my chest. While I was at it, I stole a glance at the crystal orb in the middle. From what I'd overheard, this was the last test, so I hoped it would be over quickly.
"Hana, want to put your hand on this?"
Beside me, Kim Bora caught my hand and was putting real effort into getting it up onto the crystal. I watched her maneuver my hand this way and that with a thoroughly sullen face.
Out of pure spite I yanked free and fled all over the room. With a body this quick and this small, she wasn't going to catch me easily.
Contrary to that expectation, Kim Bora read my path as if she had predicted it and scooped me up without any trouble.
I had no choice but to hang there in front of the crystal with my legs dangling in the air. Against all my hopes, Kim Bora was basically a swift ninja.
"Seniors? We're starting the mana test now."
She had something like a comms piece in her ear. She was probably talking to the researchers I could see up above. As a last act of resistance I kicked my feet around, as if to say I didn't want the mana test, but they never touched the floor.
The look she gave me—hurry up and put your hand on it—crackled too hard to ignore. I couldn't win against it, and I had no choice but to set my hand on the crystal. I hadn't lost. I was simply granting Kim Bora's request.
I had barely ever taken a mana test in my life, so I set my trembling right hand down on the orb with a firm little thunk. The moment my palm met it, something began to climb up through my hand. It felt as if the crystal and I were connecting into a single body.
The sensation was incredibly subtle. Back when I had been a man and taken a mana test, I had never felt anything like this. Then again, I hadn't possessed a scrap of mana back then, so of course there had been no reaction.
Which meant this body was carrying explosive mana. I started imagining just how high mine was, and how I would receive an A-rank, and a laugh bubbled up. It was time to land a devastating blow on everyone who had dismissed me for being small.
Mana spun round and round inside me the way blood circulates. So this was what mana felt like? My whole body felt ticklish—ticklish enough that I might actually laugh.
Having mana move through me didn't feel all that bad. It just seemed less explosive than I had imagined. I had so much mana that this idiot crystal probably couldn't absorb it properly.
A chill ran through me. A dagger in the chest. At last, the moment had come to shock everyone who had looked down on me.
"F-rank. At this level, she's about a porter on their first trip out of a gate?"
"Auu?"
All I could manage at Kim Bora's words was a deflated little sound. Me—someone who might have been the owner of A-rank mana—was F-rank?
The crystal had to be broken. I let out an argh and started beating the innocent orb.