The Department Store
"Mmm..."
Bora looked over the physical examination report and let herself feel relieved. Physically, aside from the body having grown, nothing was wrong. Even so, some kind of special ability seemed to have appeared. The plants around the research institute had started growing at an eerily unnatural pace.
The proof of it was as simple as looking out the window. It was the dead of winter, and the trees should have been nothing but bare branches, yet every last one of them had changed. Leaves crowded the boughs as thick as midsummer, and the flower beds that ought to have held nothing but bare soil were bright with blossoms in full bloom.
Anyone glancing over might easily have mistaken it for spring already.
"Hnn..."
Beside her, Hana sat wearing a thoroughly gloomy expression. The body had changed so drastically that she clearly hadn't adjusted, and because the result was so alluring, the male researchers kept stealing glances her way.
Of course, the moment Bora turned a furious glare on anyone looking at Hana like that, they jerked their heads aside and pretended they hadn't been looking at all.
Men really were all wolves. Most of them, to be fair, were staring in pure astonishment. Plenty of people simply could not believe their eyes at how much Hana had grown in a single day.
Bora stroked Hana's hair. Of everyone here, Hana was the most bewildered, so a little warmth was essential.
Once the examination was finished, they went back up to the room. There was nothing harmful wrong with Hana's body. What they had confirmed was that the mana in her was beyond abundant—piled up to an excessive degree.
They had also confirmed that the mana accumulated in her body dispersed little by little as time passed, which meant that after a certain while she would return to her original form.
Hearing that, Hana seemed to calm down somewhat. But there was a far bigger problem. She had no clothes to wear. Her original outfits were not even in the running.
If they forced her into the clothes from when she had been a little kid, she would not be able to step outside the room. They would look far too indecent on her now.
Haru's clothes did not fit her properly either. What she had on was a stopgap at best.
Hana was holding her dinosaur pajamas, stretched so badly they hung limp and could no longer be worn. The sight of her clutching them with that sunken look made Bora's chest ache.
Watching her, Bora spoke.
"Hana. Shall we go outside?"
"Uu... don't wanna..."
But if they just sat here, the mana would drain too slowly, so they needed to walk around outside. The mana around the research institute was simply too dense.
While Bora was puzzling over how to get Hana out the door, her eyes landed on the dinosaur pajamas in Hana's hands.
"Let's go buy dinosaur pajamas! A different dinosaur this time!"
At that, Hana looked at Bora with eyes that seemed to sparkle, and nodded.
"Yeah! I wanna go buy new dinosaur pajamas!"
Bora shot Haru a look—the meaning was clear enough. Get ready to head out. Reading it, Haru nodded and started preparing to leave.
"We should buy clothes first, shouldn't we?"
"You're right. She's wearing my things, so the size is off."
They had succeeded in luring Hana outside with the promise of dinosaur pajamas. The outfit she had on now was not exactly unbecoming, but they still needed to buy her something else.
And so Hana was hauled along by the hand, Bora on one side and Haru on the other. The moment they reached the floor that sold women's clothing, she had the distinct feeling of being buried under garments.
"Do I... have to wear this?"
Hana looked at the clothes in her hands and spoke to Bora and Haru. She had come to buy dinosaur pajamas, and yet somehow the two of them wanted her to try on other clothes first.
"Couldn't you just put them on once?"
"Please!"
Watching the two women press their hands together and beg, Hana nodded.
"If I wear this, you're buying me the dinosaur pajamas. Got it?"
"Yes, yes."
So long as Hana would just try the clothes on, a hundred dinosaur pajamas—a thousand—would be nothing at all.
Inside the fitting room, Hana let out a sigh. Kids' clothes barely read as feminine, so she had worn those without much burden. Every single outfit Bora and Haru had handed her now, though, was unmistakably, lushly feminine.
Do I really have to wear this?
No matter how badly she wanted the dinosaur pajamas, did she have to go this far? She sank into a fierce debate with herself.
But she could not give up the dinosaur pajamas, so without another word she started getting dressed. Fortunately the underwear had already been bought, so there was no need to purchase that.
The figure was so completely different that she even felt a pang of guilt. Is it really all right for me to have a body like this...?
The outfit Bora and Haru had picked was a plain light-brown knit, with a flare skirt below. Women were something else. Seeing them wear skirts even in the dead of winter was enough to draw a sigh of admiration. After she had nearly frozen to death in a cold snap, she herself had taken to bundling up tight all winter...
Once the clothes were on, Haru and Bora clapped in delight.
"It suits you perfectly!"
"We absolutely have to get pictures of this..."
With that, the two women pulled out their phones and started snapping away at Hana in her new outfit. Embarrassed, Hana ducked her head and waved her hands as if telling them to stop.
Even that was adorable.
Kim Jincheol had arranged to meet his friends in front of Starlight Department Store. Getting together with the boys was about as ordinary as picking his nose.
Today, though, something around the department store felt off. The plants nearby were in full bloom, and weeds were pushing up thick between the paving stones. They had not grown all the way out like a soccer pitch, of course. Still, it definitely had not been like this when he had come yesterday...
"Hey!"
He met the friends who had been waiting out front of the department store. The plan was a bit of shopping, then a movie. When guys got together, that was about all there was to do.
"Is today some kind of special occasion for the plants?"
"Right? On the way here I thought it was summer."
Ever since the gates had appeared, incomprehensible phenomena had become commonplace. Compared with that, an event on this scale was minor. Still, there was a chance it could be dangerous, so he pulled out his phone to check.
"Nothing about a gate showing up today. Guess it's just an anomaly?"
Science had advanced, and humanity had succeeded in grasping, to some extent, the principles behind how gates formed. They still could not stop a gate from appearing, but they could predict, more or less, where one would show up.
Of course, even a confident prediction that no gate would appear was not a hundred percent. Just like in the novels that were always coming out, a gate could still burst into existence without warning.
Even so, this was the middle of the city, and there were plenty of hunters around, so there was no need to worry too much. Evacuate properly, and no one would get hurt.
And so Kim Jincheol went shopping with his two friends. He was deep in concentration over the clothes when he heard the people around them start to murmur.
Did some celebrity show up?
That was usually the sound when someone famous arrived. Celebrity or not, Jincheol kept his attention on the clothes in front of him. But his two friends must have seen whatever it was too, because they tapped him on the shoulder.
"Hey, Jincheol! Look over there!"
"Holy crap, is she a model or what?"
Jincheol figured his boys were making a ridiculous fuss. Sure, pretty women were rare, but was it really worth carrying on like this...?
The moment he turned his head and saw the group of women, though, he understood exactly why his friends were losing their minds.
There were three of them, and not one had an ordinary face or figure. Jincheol had seen celebrities a handful of times, and even by that standard these were women who pulled a gasp out of you.
The women on either side were not the sort you spotted often on the street, but the one in the middle—the woman with green hair—stood out even more.
It was not only the unusual color of her hair. She was far prettier than the beauties flanking her, and for some reason she looked young. Almost as if a little kid had simply had her body scaled up.
But when he saw what she was holding, he could not help but flinch. She was hugging an armful of merchandise printed with a character that looked exactly like the one his much younger sister watched on TV.
Wasn't it called Little Magician Rumi? Seeing that her tastes unexpectedly matched his little sister's, he decided she was an unusual woman. It was not common for a grown woman to be into a children's animation character.
Just then one of his boys, fearless to the point of having no sense at all, walked right up to the group and asked the woman in the middle for her number. The result was exactly what anyone would expect. The women on either side stared at his friend with eyes full of contempt.
He was one of Jincheol's boys, sure—but the guy had a screw loose.