One, Two, Three
"Th-this... what is this?"
Somehow, this body felt more gifted in the hands than the one I used to have. Difficult skill combos that would have been a real strain before were coming out smooth, almost without effort.
I was in the middle of laning. Mid had every kind of champion, and among them I was on Irelia.
She was a champion whose whole trade pattern depended on resetting Blade Surge by killing a minion or striking a marked target. The player's mechanics mattered more than anything. In pro play, where communication ran relatively clean, Irelia rarely saw the stage—but in solo queue, no champion fit better. When the opponent was worse than you, she was perfect for simply rolling over them.
Right now I was crushing the enemy Orianna with ease. If you understood spacing and the timing of a trade, Irelia couldn't stick to you so easily, but this was the Diamond 2 to 3 bracket. I'd been Master. The moment a tier gap opened, even a slightly awkward matchup could be flipped on its head. Wasn't that the charm of this game?
The thrill of overturning a bad champion matchup through a jungle gank, or through one flash of individual mechanics—that was one of the reasons I could never quite put it down. And nothing felt better than dominating your opponent, carrying the team, and dragging everyone to a win.
Even now, I slipped past the enemy Orianna's ball with Blade Surge and cast Flawless Duet. A skillshot without a hair of error landed dead on her. The follow-up—Blade Surge, ultimate, Blade Surge—sent the enemy champion neatly back to the fountain. Ever since I'd changed into this body, my mechanics seemed to have shot straight up.
I was still in a child's body, and already this good. I couldn't even begin to guess how far my skill would climb once I grew.
Some absurd person out there was claiming League had no all-chat, but in this game all-chat was alive and perfectly well. In theory you were supposed to be fighting the enemy. In practice, that was the nature of the game: you fought your own teammates in chat far more often.
The enemy team wasn't comforting their struggling teammate. They were raising them strong, with the whip. By way of thanks, the Orianna player sold every item and sprinted down mid. The ending was exactly what I'd expected.
To someone who'd ground out thousands of games in a single season, it was a familiar sight. No—one of the scenarios I'd watched so often I was sick of it.
Yeah. This was League. I wiped my nose and happily ate the Orianna charging down mid. The game ended in an easy surrender.
I clicked past the results screen flashing Victory. A game that closed on a fifteen-minute surrender didn't need a damage check. I finished out with four honors from my team.
Looking at a viewer count that had somehow climbed to twenty, I couldn't help but laugh. No mic, no cam, and still this many people watching—that was enormous. I wasn't some popular streamer with a name to my credit.
Diamond 1, zero LP. Five more wins and it would be my promotion series to Master. I was sitting on a monstrous 30–8, an absurd win rate. Most Challenger players hovered between fifty and sixty percent; mine, pushing eighty, was downright bizarre.
In truth, even Challengers posted numbers like that when they were leveling an alt. Duo queue could push it higher still.
It was just an inflated ego. Aside from the games where I'd been griefed, I'd won almost everything, and my self-esteem was scraping the sky.
Playing League these days, I'd felt a real high. For someone who'd been stuck as a perennial Master, I could see a hope of climbing to Grandmaster. The game was going that well.
There were still people who mistook me for someone older. HanaBoraHaru wasn't that unusual a name, was it? Then again, considering the way I'd thrown money around in Icarus, there was no earthly reason to look at me and see an elementary schooler.
I logged off as I was. Tomorrow I had the regular physical, so I needed to sleep early.
Whirrrrr.
The moment she stepped into the cylindrical device, something began to spin, scanning Hana over and over. She stood inside the machine with both arms held straight out to either side, staring blankly into nothing.
"Hmm... so she isn't growing any taller?"
"Height and weight haven't changed from last time."
"The other tests don't show anything particularly different, either."
Once, they would have run every precision test they had and picked Hana apart down to the last detail. There was no need for that now. Hana was a citizen of the Republic of Korea, and the research from before was already on record. Her physical was over in less than thirty minutes.
Bora flipped through the documents as she spoke.
"Her hair's effects keep getting better, though."
Back when they'd made green tea from Hana's hair—no one could say the exact length, but supposing you'd needed ten centimeters of it then—five centimeters of her hair now produced the same effect. The lotion was identical to Starlight Green Tea. The efficiency of Hana's hair had surged. The heads of Starlight Green Tea and the cosmetics line would be grinning from ear to ear. The same hair could yield far more product.
And Hana's hair color was growing deeper by the day.
Whether her blood, or other parts of her, might hold effects as well, no one knew. Research of that kind now fell under child abuse, so they didn't pursue anything in depth. The exam they were running served only to check Hana's condition. Keeping up appearances, if you wanted to call it that.
"Speaking of which, isn't Hana the richest person in our institute?"
Not even ten years old, and she was the wealthiest person in the place. Hearing that, Bora nodded.
"You're telling me. We set her royalty share low as a condition of giving her legal status, and it's still like this. The way it's structured, Hana's percentage only grows as time goes on, so give it a little longer and won't she just buy the whole institute outright?"
Given the wealth Hana would command once she was receiving a proper royalty rate, it was entirely possible. It would simply take some time. Even the money she received in a single month now was more than an ordinary person could save in a lifetime of work. Freed from money—the greatest obstacle in life—Hana was enough to make a person a little envious. Wasn't a rich idler a class above even a landlord?
Bora skimmed the physical chart, set the papers down, went downstairs, collected Hana, and returned to the room.
I was eating jelly. Soft and sweet, the flavor was addicting me with embarrassing ease.
Then, mid-bite, a pain flared around there. Had I gotten some kind of bruise? I ran to the mirror and inspected the sore spot.
"My tooth is loose...?"
My old body had already finished losing its baby teeth, so I'd never had to think about it. This one, it seemed, still had them.
This can't be happening. How many more teeth am I going to have to pull?
I grabbed my front tooth and wiggled it this way and that, and it flopped loosely. I was supposed to brace and yank it out, but I was terrified. It was going to hurt so much. I bolted for the office.
The office was packed with people working hard. The staff seemed to keep growing. I went up to Haru.
"Haru, my tooth is loose."
I opened my mouth wide and showed her the wobbling front tooth.
"Yeah...? If it's loose like this, I think we're going to have to pull it..."
That was Haru's verdict after getting a look at the state of me. How, exactly, did you pull a tooth? Gently. And if she could manage it without it hurting, that would be ideal.
Contrary to my hopes, it did not look like it was going to be gentle. Haru produced a length of string from somewhere and headed for my room. All I could do was follow, a bad feeling settling in my chest.
Smiling, Haru tied the string to my front tooth. I could see what came next. She's going to tie it to the doorknob and slam it, isn't she...?
My guess was right on the money. Haru prepared to shut the door.
"On the count of three. I'll close it when I say three."
"O... okay."
I stared at Haru with trembling eyes. Please, just pull it without it hurting. But it was going to hurt. When she says three, I'll tense every muscle I've got.
"One!"
"Two!"
BANG!
"!?"