Chapter 10
Am I a man or a woman?
This was a question I had wrestled with in my previous life, too.
The human perspective is a strange thing. If a man died and was reborn as a woman, he would still perceive himself as a man, but if a woman realized that she had been a man in her previous life, she would still perceive herself as a woman.
In short, it was a difference in perspective.
It would have been easier if things were divided that neatly, but memories were not so clearly separated.
The self is incomplete and ambiguous, so sometimes I recognized my past life as myself, while other times I recognized it as an entirely different person.
That was because, although I retained the memories of my previous life, the cerebrum responsible for philosophical thought was completely different down to the level of individual neurons.
As a result, some things continued to be influenced by the values of my previous life, while there were inevitably other things I could not understand through those values.
For example, thinking that slavery was a violation of human rights was the former case, while becoming trapped in defeatist thinking and hating the entire world was the latter.
But when it came to the question of gender, things were especially ambiguous. I could acknowledge that my biological sex was female, but I had always reserved judgment when it came to my social gender.
Besides, I had not exactly been in a situation where I could calmly think about things like that back then.
I definitely did not seem to like men.
The Third Prince Hiasen Luminous Kaizen had been called the most handsome man in the Empire, but even after seeing his divinely sculpted face from up close, I had felt no particular emotion. Perhaps a little jealousy?
It was not as though I had ever particularly liked women, either. If anything, thinking about those troublesome women only made my head throb.
If you are wondering why I kept challenging a question I could not reach a conclusion on, it was all because of Arin. You again, Arin?
“Isn’t the skirt too short?”
“It already comes down to my knees. Boyoung unni’s is less than half this length.”
At least regarding my values about clothing, I could confidently assert that I followed men’s standards.
“I like pants.”
“Name looks prettier in a skirt! The kids will think it’s weird if a girl wears pants with her school uniform.”
Even by the time they became high school students, more girls would be wearing pants, but perhaps because they were still elementary schoolers, social standards were strict.
August 15. Unfortunately, in this world, Liberation Day fell on Sunday, August 14, so we had to go to school on Monday. Where had they sold off the substitute holiday, anyway?
The nun had already completed all the admission procedures, so there was nothing I had to take care of myself.
Once we arrived at school, all I had to do was stop by the teachers’ office and enter the classroom accompanied by my homeroom teacher.
Despite the sweltering summer heat beating down on us, Arin enthusiastically explained her classmates to me.
She even told me who liked and disliked what. She was incredibly earnest.
The walk to school was certainly long and arduous.
This was when I finally understood Arin’s monstrous stamina.
Anyone would become healthy if they walked this route back and forth once a day.
I cursed inwardly at the school built on top of a hill and powered my way up the slope.
“Hello, Mr. Guard!”
“Hey, hello! Good morning!”
The guard answered Arin’s ninety-degree bow with a smile.
We crossed the spacious athletic field and took the central stairs to the first-grade teachers’ office on the second floor.
The door to the teachers’ office opened after three polite knocks.
“Hello, Arin!”
“Hello!”
“Oh, Arin? Did you have a good vacation?”
“Yes! I did!”
Contrary to my expectations, she was surprisingly sociable. As it turned out, Baek Arin was something of a celebrity in the first-grade teachers’ office.
The teachers all thought she was adorable and tried to press at least one more cookie into her hands.
After a brief exchange of greetings, the person I assumed was Arin’s homeroom teacher rose from her seat.
“Is the friend next to Arin Name?”
“Yes, that’s right!”
Arin raised our intertwined hands. The teacher approached me and offered her hand.
“Hello, Name. I’m Ha Seonhwa, the homeroom teacher of First Grade, Class 8, which you’ll be joining starting today.”
I briefly let go of Arin’s intertwined hand and took hers.
“Isn’t Name really, really pretty?”
“Yes, but Name still seems shy, so could Arin take them to the classroom today? Of course, I’ll be heading there now, too.”
“Yes, yes!”
Ha Seonhwa led the way, and the two of us followed behind her.
As soon as we turned at a ㄷ-shaped bend, we saw signs indicating the first-grade classrooms.
“This is First Grade, Class 8. It’s a little far from the main gate, so make sure you can find your way here without getting lost.”
The characteristic clamor of elementary school students spilled out even into the hallway.
In the middle of it all, Arin even closed her eyes and took a short, deep breath.
“Hello! Did everyone have a good vacation?”
““Hello!””
“We have a new student joining our Class 8 today, so I’m going to introduce her. Could everyone take their seats?”
Despite being relatively young, the teacher handled the children with remarkable skill.
The children also orderly found their seats and settled down.
“All right, it looks like everyone’s seated. Would you introduce yourself?”
Arin was cheering me on from the seat at the very back.
Why was I so nervous just standing in front of a group of elementary school students and speaking?
I had planned to tell them my name and sit down, but my mouth would not open.
“...?”
Even when I forced myself to try opening my mouth, my heart trembled and cold sweat broke out.
Suddenly, the children’s forms overlapped with the ministers who had tried to devour me.
[Witch]
[Seed of the Demon King]
[Cursed One]
[Die]
[Die]
My breathing grew ragged.
[Why are you still alive?]
Thud.
When Ha Seonhwa placed a hand on my shoulder, the surroundings turned back into a classroom.
“It looks like our friend is flustered because this is their first time at school. Would it be all right if I introduced them to the class instead?”
Nice handoff. As expected, this woman was a professional.
“Their name is NoName. They couldn’t attend school during the first semester because they were ill, so you’ll all need to take good care of them, okay?
Arin is Name’s closest friend, so if you want to know anything about Name, you can ask Arin, and she’ll tell you.
Name, why don’t you sit next to Arin in that seat at the very back?”
Arin looked at me with worried eyes.
I hadn’t expected this, either. I had thought that speaking comfortably with Arin all this time had cured my mutism, but it seemed it was not that simple.
Morning homeroom continued from there.
Since this was my first time receiving elementary public education, too, I found it fairly fascinating.
The teacher called attendance, and we exchanged stories about what each of us had done during vacation.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, she collected our vacation homework, handed out the second-semester textbooks, and introduced what we would be learning in the future.
Because so much time had been delayed, the session continued all the way through first period.
Only when the bell rang for recess did the children finally catch their breath.
The children gathered into their respective groups of close friends and chatted.
Most of them stopped talking and kept stealing glances toward Arin and me.
They thought they were looking secretly, but they were only first graders. In reality, they were being incredibly obvious.
One of them came over and asked us a question.
“Your name is NoName, right?”
When I did not answer, Arin answered affirmatively in my place.
“Oh, yeah...! That’s right.”
“Did they come from Merlin Orphanage, too?”
“Um... uh... ah... no...?”
“Yes.”
Of course, I was not talking to that boy. I was talking to Arin.
Apparently, Arin did not want me to reveal where I came from.
The little boy returned to his group after saying that.
“Why did you do that, Name?”
“Do what?”
“It’s just... the kids don’t like it when you say you came from Merlin.”
“Let them dislike us.”
“Huh?”
Children this age would not understand, but nothing was more pointless than forcing people who disliked me to like me.
Some of those children were probably avoiding us because they were afraid of being associated with children from Merlin Orphanage, while others simply disliked us because their friends did.
Of course, since school accounted for most of a child’s relationships and social life, having no friends would be devastating. But I hoped they would understand that human relationships were also a matter of give and take.
Because they were fun, because they were handsome, because they were good at sports, and so on.
Ultimately, if Arin wanted to get along with the other children, she only had to show that her charm was not overshadowed by the fact that she came from Merlin.
I whispered into her ear in a low voice.
“They’ll definitely regret not becoming our friends later.”
* * *
Elementary school classes were generally boring.
Even when the material was interesting because it was new to them, there was no torture quite like listening to things I already knew.
That included singing along to “81, 82” while memorizing numbers and taking dictation from the homeroom teacher.
“Name, you’re already finished?!”
The math teacher had to leave due to an urgent matter, so we were assigned the task of writing the numbers from 51 to 100 in runes.
Everyone stared intently at the textbook and carefully copied each one. Meanwhile, Arin stared in disbelief at the sheet of paper I had filled from corner to corner.
Unwilling to lose, Arin increased her speed even further.
I had been mistaken about Arin in one respect: she was smarter than I had thought.
While some children still could not write up to 30, Arin could write at least up to 80 without mixing the numbers up.
She had excellent competitiveness and grit, and those qualities were naturally reflected in her academic performance.
“Arin got all but one right, too. You left out the dot in 79.”
“Huh? You already checked them all? How can you tell so quickly?”
She hurriedly added the dot above the character.
Perhaps the encyclopedia Arin had given me would have been better after all.
Whenever I was bored, I kept looking through the backs of the textbooks. How much could there possibly be in an elementary school curriculum? After studying them thoroughly for a week, there was hardly anything left that I did not know.
As I looked out the window to alleviate my boredom, the boy sitting in front of me turned around and spoke to me.
“Could you look over mine, too?”
Was he jealous of Arin having me check her work? I casually glanced over his paper and pointed out three mistakes with the back of my pencil.
“Thanks!”
Runic writing was based on a hybrid system of the ancient sexagesimal system and the modern hexadecimal system, so there were many parts that children would find especially confusing.
For example, when writing 78, one had to write 60, 10, and 8 in parallel. Small mistakes often occurred during this process.
Of course, they were taught without understanding the principles of different bases, so most of them simply memorized everything by rote.
“I wanna be smart like Name, too...”
Lately, Arin’s whining had been getting worse with each passing day.
To put it another way, she was getting cuter.
Every time she puffed out her cheeks, I thought of a hamster and smiled without meaning to.
When I poked her cheek with my finger, a tiny puff of air escaped through her small lips.
“Arin is plenty smart.”
“But I’m not as smart as Name.”
“Then I’ll teach you something fun.”
I knew there was nothing more interesting to a curious child than learning ahead of time, so I drew several pictures on the back of the A4 sheet.
“What are you drawing? Isn’t that a magic circle?”
“It’s different from a magic circle. This is a transmutation array.”
Unlike magic circles, which directly generated magic, transmutation arrays played a supporting role in activating spells.
Complex patterns intersected countless times at the tip of the pencil. Even when I tried to draw it as quickly as possible, it took a little over two minutes.
“It’s a hidden-picture puzzle. I’ve hidden ten numbers from 1 to 100 in runic script. Want to try finding them?”
“Okay!”
She found the easiest character, ‘1,’ first.
After struggling with the paper for about three minutes, Arin succeeded in finding all the characters she had learned. She had a good eye.
“I found them all?”
“Then connect them all in order from the lowest number to the highest.”
“Let’s see... 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... Where was the rest? 34, 55, 89. Oh? It’s star-shaped! That’s so cool!”
“Now look.”
I laid the pencil down horizontally and pointed to four numbers lying on a straight line.
“See? All the characters here have a long vertical dot on the right, right?”
“Oh, you’re right! They do.”
I rotated the pencil about 36 degrees and pointed to another straight line.
“This time, there’s a round dot on the lower left.”
“Wow, wow! Can I try?”
“Here.”
Arin showed great interest and found the features the characters had in common. What I had shown her was the Arabesque Transmutation Formula.
In mathematics, it corresponded to the relatively simple concept of the Fibonacci sequence, but in the field of magic, it was quite difficult.
Runic characters were not created through social conventions like alphabets or Chinese characters.
They were a kind of incantation concept that inscribed the flow and laws of mana in their simplest form, giving the characters themselves the potential to twist those laws.
Of course, even among runic characters, there were A-types, B-types, and Omega-types depending on who had simplified them and how. But the character taught universally was undoubtedly the simplest A-type.
However, no matter which runic character one used, it satisfied the laws of this transmutation formula.
For example, 1, 13, 2, and 3 all contained morphemes signifying earth.
Earth-attribute magic, or magic belonging to the earth realm, showed its highest efficiency when amplified by multiples such as twofold, threefold, or thirteenfold.
It was too early for Arin to understand this background, so it was enough for her to realize that runic characters had not been created randomly.
* * *
“Wow, kids these days are really fast. Someone even drew a transmutation formula as a doodle.”
“Was that homework for Ms. Ha’s class? Good grief, something came up for me this afternoon, so I just slapped it together as homework. If you’re not going to use it as scrap paper, throw it away there.”
“But I feel like I’ve seen this somewhere before. Hmm. What was it? I feel like I might remember... but maybe not.”
Mr. Kang Cheolmin scratched his head and took a sip of tea.
“Are you talking about the one from the sixth-graders’ transmutation-formula presentation contest?”
“No, I feel like I saw it much longer ago. What was it... I think I saw it in criminal execution law when I was preparing for law school back in the day...”