Chapter 19
While Seonghyeon was wondering what to do, Suyeon came out naked after washing, roughly dried herself off with a towel, and walked right up to him.
Seonghyeon panicked, covered his eyes, and turned his head away.
Even if they were friends, wasn't it a bit much to expose herself like that?
They used to go to the bathhouse together, but she couldn't do that now.
“Heeheehee. Look, this is a girl's body. Take a good look. You've never seen one in your life, have you? I get to see it all I want.”
“You crazy bastard, where'd the Suyeon who was just saying she was a man go?”
“That's right, I'm a man. Want to see a man's body?”
“Are you trying to sell both the spear and the shield? Quit contradicting yourself and pick one. Hurry up and get dressed.”
Seonghyeon flung the shirt Suyeon used as pajamas at her.
With the shirt covering her face, Suyeon grinned and fumbled her way into it.
Still giggling, Suyeon came over and sat beside Seonghyeon.
“What, were you worrying about something? Money?”
“What do you mean, worrying?”
“Did you think I wouldn't notice you sitting there all glum? You haven't changed one bit since back then.”
“Your face hasn't changed that much either. Even though you look like a girl now, you still have that same feel about you. It's weird.”
“Why? Pfft… Did you get hard?”
“No.”
“Ah, this one's impotent. Don't worry, you're in a hospital. Uh, you've become sexually impotent—”
As Suyeon imitated the doctor, Seonghyeon threw a pillow at her. It hit her square in the face with a soft thump, knocking her backward.
The bed on the floor caught her as she fell.
“Oof.”
“You deserved that.”
“Hey, fuck… I mean, that really fucking hurts!”
“Now that you can't say ‘fuck,’ it's ‘dog’?”
“Yeah.”
“Ha, right… If you couldn't even answer, that'd be different. Let me ask you just one thing.”
“What?”
Suyeon wanted to keep lying there, but worried her wet hair would get musty, so she sat up again, drying it with a towel.
As Suyeon sat beside him and gazed up at him (She was definitely enjoying this), Seonghyeon rubbed his forehead and continued the conversation.
“How did you get out of the elf village?”
“Elf village? Uh… I just woke up in the forest and found myself an elf.”
“You didn't run away from a village of the Lacia race?”
“No. If I'd woken up in a village or castle like an elf princess, I would've just kept living that way. Using a refined young-lady voice. Ah, greetings. Have you been well?”
“Well, my ass. You mean you woke up as an elf abandoned in the forest?”
“A female elf.”
“Right, a female elf. A princess,”
“I'm not a princess!”
“I mean the owner of that body.”
“I guess so…”
Seonghyeon recalled several hypotheses he'd been turning over.
He wondered whether Suyeon might know something herself, so he asked her.
He also needed to tell her a few things he'd been worrying about.
“You know that body belongs to a princess of the Lacia race.”
“Hmm… Strangely, I don't feel much of a disconnect.”
“Then does that mean the soul that originally inhabited the body is gone?”
“Maybe?”
“Hmm… All right, let's start with the facts. ‘El Lacia,’ attached to your name, is a surname used only by the most noble of elf nobility. In other words, it means you're royalty among the High Elves.”
“Whoa… Me?”
“Didn't you think something was strange when you got level-three power out of a level-one spell?”
“That's because I'm good at applying things—”
Suyeon was hit by another pillow from Seonghyeon.
Suyeon toppled backward, then popped back up like a roly-poly toy.
“Want to start a pillow fight?”
“Just listen. The Lacia are so precious that they might come after you. That's a big problem. For some reason, an elf princess named Erze El Lacia meddled with black magic and trapped you in that body. Then she wandered around without a soul and collapsed in the forest. That's when you woke up.”
“Isn't that just a huge theory?”
“Yeah, it's a theory. Otherwise, some goddess of reincarnation in another world popped you into that body and tossed you into the forest.”
“The second option seems more likely. If I really came from such an important family, they'd have found and rescued me within a month.”
“Not just from an important family—a princess.”
“Don't say it like that. It sounds girly.”
“It's true, though.”
“I'm not a princess.”
“Princess.”
“No.”
“Princess Erze El Lacia~”
“Ugh…”
Strangely, whenever someone called her Erze, the name of the body, Suyeon felt conflicted.
She wasn't sure if it made her anxious or excited. It felt more like she'd revealed her true name to someone and become ensnared by a spell of words.
Maybe that was actually what had happened.
“Anyway, the elves will come after you. Whether they're bandit elves living in the gutter or precious High Elves practically on a par with royalty. The bandits will want your ransom, and the royals will be desperate to find you. Besides, the Lacia are so proud that they never associate with other races.”
“Ah… That's what the book said?”
“Yeah.”
“I wanna see.”
“Here.”
Seonghyeon opened the book to the page about the Lacia and handed it over. Suyeon skimmed it, then frowned.
Human script was full of curly squiggles, and she couldn't make any sense of it.
“It's alien language…”
“You can only read Elvish and Korean.”
“No, I can speak Japanese and Chinese, too. Nǐ chī bā le ma?”
“It's chī with the first tone, not chǐ with the third tone. You just turned that into a curse so naturally?”
When Seonghyeon instinctively grabbed a pillow, Suyeon raised her guard, and he smacked her with it.
He held back, but Seonghyeon was incredibly strong, and the [Emaciated] debuff left Suyeon so light.
Suyeon flew off Seonghyeon's bed and landed on her own.
“Oof… That hurt. But how'd you hit me so I landed over here?”
“No idea. Anyway, let's look for a book written in Elvish. There should be some only you can read. Besides, knowing Elvish is essential once you reach the lower middle levels of the Labyrinth. Some of the puzzles are written in Elvish.”
“The lower middle levels? Isn't that where you got carried?”
“Someday we can go together.”
“Hmm… I guess, as long as the royals don't kidnap me.”
After taking a deep breath, Seonghyeon lay down on the bed.
The spots where Suyeon had fallen twice were damp from her long hair.
“Did you dry your hair here on purpose?”
“Why would I dry my hair there and get your smell on it? You knocked me over.”
“I smell?”
“Yeah. To be honest, on the first day I thought you were some unscrupulous owner who'd bought me, so I kept quiet, but you smell.”
“I wash every day.”
“You kind of smell like piss. Is that old-bachelor smell? And yet you keep planting flags with women…”
“Fine, you're right. Want me to stop being a bachelor tonight?”
“Aagh, you crazy gay bastard. Impotent and gay!”
Seonghyeon picked up the pillow again and chased Suyeon, who ran around full of energy despite her small body.
Of course, her weak stamina made her collapse quickly, and Seonghyeon pummeled her with the pillow.
And so, the night wore on for the two of them.
**
Suyeon was the first to wake the next morning.
In the faint morning sunlight, she rubbed her eyes and sat up, then realized something heavy was resting on her chest.
Of course, it wasn't Suyeon's own chest that felt heavy—she was feeling someone else's solid body.
Lee Seonghyeon.
He acted like her master on the surface, but he was the only friend she could trust in this world.
They were only friends, but when night grew late, memories of the painful things she'd gone through in such a short time came back, and she crawled into Seonghyeon's bed.
At night, she heard the phantom crack of a whip and saw hallucinations of the slave trader tormenting her.
Strangely, when she was beside Seonghyeon, those memories disappeared.
He wasn't only a thread connecting her to the past… she also felt like he would protect her.
Though she was a grown adult, she still found herself wondering who was supposed to protect whom…
This world was truly a hard place for the weak to survive.
And Suyeon was one of those weak beings—a person, no, an elf.
“Seonghyeon.”
“Mmm…”
“Wake up, wake up~”
“Uh, ugh, I'm sleeping a little longer.”
And as she watched her friend toss and turn in his sleep,
a mischievous urge suddenly bubbled up in Suyeon, and she leaned close to her friend's ear.
For a moment, she thought of saying something like ‘Oppa, it's time to get up,’ but she didn't have the cringe tolerance to actually say it.
Instead, she wondered what might make him freak out even more and blurted something out without a second thought.
“Mr. Raine, it's time for your watch shift.”
“Gwaaagh! I'm sorry! I'm sorry…?”
“Good morning?”
“Hey… did you do that on purpose?”
“No?”
“Ha… You scared the shit out of me. Shit.”
“Since you're up, let's eat. We're late today.”
“Why are you the one saying that today? Sheesh, fine, I'm getting up.”
Seonghyeon sat up, scratching his wildly tousled hair, and Suyeon covered her mouth at that moment.
Since it was morning, his elephant was standing tall, and even though he was wearing underwear, that part was right at Suyeon's eye level.
“Ah… sorry.”
“You crazy bastard… you really are hard.”
“I'll put my pants on, I said I'll put my pants on!”
Suyeon actually chased after him and gave his thigh a quick slap with her palm.
Today, too, Seonghyeon's thigh bore a red, maple-leaf-shaped mark.