Chapter 12
Cough, cough.
“Did you catch a cold? In summer?”
“Yeah.”
I had somehow caught a summer cold, something even dogs didn't catch. On the very day of my health checkup, no less.
The cause was staying under the air conditioner for too long at the Career Experience Fair.
‘How weak must this body's immune system be if it gets sick from a temperature difference this small?’
“I think I've grown a lot taller. I finally passed 120 centimeters! What about you, Name?”
“105.3 centimeters? You've grown quite a bit.”
Growing roughly two centimeters in two months meant there was no problem with my growth at all.
“Aren't you the one who's too tall, Arin?”
“I'm still kind of on the shorter side in my class...”
Were kids these days really that tall on average? Well, it wasn't unusual for them to be 120 centimeters tall, and there were plenty who were over 130.
It was simply lamentable that I had to keep looking up at these little brats.
“Name weighs too little. You need to make sure you eat three proper meals a day, all right?”
I wished the school nurse understood that even gaining a single kilogram was a trial.
I couldn't even eat properly without potions. Besides, this therapeutic mana potion wasn't covered by insurance, so it cost a damn fortune.
Thinking about potions all of a sudden made things like height and weight seem trivial.
The orphanage wasn't covering all the costs of these potions.
Detective Ma Beomil had prepaid three million won's worth out of his own pocket, which was how I'd been able to keep taking them until now.
Unaware of that, Name had dutifully swallowed three of them every day.
“I'm scared of having my blood drawn. Could you hold my hand?”
“I'm already holding it.”
“Don't let go!”
It didn't even seem to hurt. Modern medical technology was amazing. Children's exaggerations remained the same as ever, though.
The children returned to class one after another, pressing down on the arm that had been drawn from with their other hand to stop the bleeding.
After a while, Ms. Ha Seonhwa scanned down the list and called several students.
“The students I just called didn't have their tests come out properly, so they'll have to do them again. When the recess bell rings, you can go to the auditorium, all right?”
The children who had been called stirred uneasily. Surely they wouldn't have to draw blood again? They were already worrying about it.
“And Name, I think you need to go to the hospital with me now. I'll buy you lunch on the way, so let's eat in the car just for today. All right?”
“Teacher, is Name sick?”
“No, Name just needs a liiiittle more thorough examination, so we're only going to a big hospital. Arin, you can get home all by yourself bravely today, right?”
“Yes...”
And, unexpectedly, Name ended up with a date scheduled with Ms. Ha Seonhwa.
“Name, grab your schoolbag and let's go downstairs.”
No matter how small Name's body was, I had no intention of stealing the car seat used by Seonhwa's daughter, who was estimated to be twenty months old.
Given Name's mental age, that was asking too much.
I simply settled into the passenger seat and carefully fastened my seat belt.
“Do you like bacon sandwiches?”
I took a bite of the sandwich she handed me.
“Is there anywhere you're hurting right now, Name? When you go to the hospital, you need to explain things properly to the doctor. If it's too hard to talk, could you at least tell me now?”
The only thing was that my lungs stung whenever I coughed because of the cold.
That barely qualified as pain to Name, so I made an X with my fingers.
“I'm telling you this because you're so mature, Name. I really want to thank you for helping Arin adjust so well to school.”
The common subject between Name and Seonhwa was, of course, Arin.
Especially since she was the sort of person who couldn't stand silence, Arin's name was bound to come up.
“I don't know if you know this, but Arin wasn't a child who talked this much from the beginning.
She gets lonely very easily, so at first I tried to help her make friends by having her participate in lots of group activities, but it didn't work out in the end.
Students aren't normally allowed to enter the teachers' office without permission, but I feel so sorry for Arin that I can't bring myself to say anything even when she keeps visiting.”
“Is it because of where we come from?”
“Yes. I just want you to know that the children in our class aren't avoiding you because they want to discriminate against you.
Something bad happened at our school last year.
Everyone has been avoiding you because of that incident. It's heartbreaking that you're being harmed over something you had nothing to do with.”
She added that it was even harder to stop because the people driving this atmosphere were the parents.
There were about thirty children in Merlin Orphanage in total, from elementary schoolers to middle and high school students.
The orphanage wasn't in the middle of the city but at its farthest outskirts, so they all attended schools run by the nearest Arabyeol Foundation.
But between the children who disrupted the academic atmosphere, school violence that kept occurring whenever people had almost forgotten about it, and rumors that they had recently even become involved with a criminal cartel, they had become the most avoided group of all.
Seonhwa found the situation heartbreaking—the fact that innocent children were being ostracized because of such prejudice.
At the same time, she was afraid that these children might go astray like delinquents and end up harming other children as well.
At the time, Seonhwa couldn't decide whose side she should take.
Every child from Merlin Orphanage carried a deep wound somewhere in their heart.
They had been abandoned by their parents at birth, their parents had been too busy with work, or they had cut ties with their parents...
There was no way two or three people could heal all of their wounds.
That was why they always hoped to be adopted.
They waited endlessly for someone who needed them.
But as each year passed, they realized that there was an age limit for adoption, and they despaired.
Little by little, they came to realize that the only people they could rely on were friends from the orphanage, and there was no guardian around to correct their wayward behavior.
After that, the conversation stopped for a while.
“This is a patient for a detailed examination from Arabyeol Elementary School.”
“Yes, please have the guardian sign here. There's no separate payment process, so you can wait in the back.”
“Could you tell me roughly how long it will take?”
“Um... I'd say about twenty to thirty minutes. Why don't you follow that nurse over there, sweetheart?”
And so Name was led away by a nurse.
They went through the same series of procedures I had undergone at the hospital before.
A machine emitting high-intensity, fine mana waves circled Name's body, and, as always, it was soon time for an interview with the doctor.
The doctor looked quite young to Name, and perhaps he had severe astigmatism, because the way he squinted behind his thick lenses was a little comical.
Of course, this time as well, Ms. Ha Seonhwa accompanied me as my guardian for the consultation.
Seonhwa was the first to speak.
“Is the condition very serious?”
“I'm not sure how to explain this... To begin with, the name of the disease is Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy.
It is also a hereditary disease, but in this patient's case, we believe it was caused by a genetic mutation from long-term exposure to high concentrations of mana—in other words, it was acquired.”
“With muscular dystrophy, does that mean the muscles contract...?”
“Later, it can progress to the stage where the muscles atrophy.
At first, as you can see, it progresses gradually, so many people don't realize they have it until they become adults. Whether it's fortunate that we found it at such a young age...
Still, you should assume that they won't be able to engage in physical exercise for the rest of their life.”
As with most hereditary diseases, the doctor added, no medicine capable of curing it completely had yet been developed.
The doctor prescribed medication and supplements to alleviate the symptoms, and tripled the dosage of the mana potion Name was currently taking.
The potions I had guzzled desperately to survive had instead brought about the result of shortening my future lifespan.
‘Talk about getting screwed over.’
“It's hard for a child to drink even three liters of water a day. Will they really be able to drink all this bitter potion...?”
“That is the best option for now.”
* * *
Round and round, and money was the problem again.
For such a tiny body, I sure cost a damn lot of money.
The orphanage might even kick me out. As far as I knew, Merlin Orphanage had already reached its operational limits.
Should I consider myself lucky that all four of my limbs were intact...? In any case, my looming financial problems felt like a much greater reality than my health.
Do you want to pay now to preserve your limbs, or save money and become paralyzed from head to toe?
It wasn't a balanced choice. Obviously, without even needing to ask, the former.
The talkative teacher didn't say a word until she dropped me off near the orphanage.
She probably needed time to think, too.
A teachers' college wouldn't teach her how to comfort someone whose student had contracted an incurable disease.
I didn't go straight into the orphanage. Instead, I wandered around the nearby alleyways.
I didn't know whether it was because I was in a woman's body or simply because that was my nature, but every now and then, I found myself becoming sentimental.
If I went into the room, Arin would rush at me like a retriever and smother me with comfort, but for now, I preferred being alone.
The protagonists in novels from the early 2000s always woke up as adults after they died, so I had no idea why I always started from the beginning.
If I were an adult, I could at least tutor a bunch of runny-nosed brats using the knowledge from my previous life, but I was now stuck in a child's body barely over a meter tall.
At least until I stopped looking like a child...
[Gung PC Bang]
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“Want to hang out for a bit before we go in?”
“It costs 3,000 won an hour here.”
“It's 2,500 won for members.”
“Still, that's too expensive.”
“I'll pay today. There isn't even another PC bang around here anyway.”
I overheard a conversation between two boys who looked like friends.
Right. Why hadn't I thought of that?
If I didn't have a suitable body, I could make do with virtual reality.
Even when they were trapped in capsules, there had occasionally been people who attached personal cameras and played games.
Every one of them kept running their mouths without a break. I didn't need to go that far, though.
The lighting in the PC (Personal Capsule) room I entered on impulse was generally dim.
The owner was nowhere to be seen. Was it an unmanned system?
As the students had said, it was a little more expensive than the prices I knew as common sense in my old world.
But this was the only PC bang on my route to and from school. That was all because the child protection zone happened to overlap it so awkwardly.
Right, I had just been thinking that the time I spent at school was a waste.
Spend the night in a capsule equipped with cleaning magic, then sleep at school during the day.
What a perfect plan.
To begin with, even at Merlin Orphanage, I was already sick of dealing with the lousy kids who occasionally picked fights with me.
The entire amount I had received as this month's allowance was 5,000 won. I paid for an hour and a half and entered a capsule.
A familiar yet cozy feeling enveloped me….
It was truly disgusting.
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“I ended up coming back after all. But Mom isn't here anymore.”
Six partition walls rose in the empty space, transforming it into a single-room apartment.
It was the familiar one-room apartment I knew.
Bright-white wallpaper, a bed, a table, and a chair, one of each. But there was no trace of Seola anywhere.
“I wish we could have played together, but I wonder if Mom would have disliked games?”
I leaned against the bed where she had lain.
“I made a friend named Arin. She's nicer than I expected.”
I thought I'd live alone in this life too, but I'm always receiving more love than I deserve.
“They say I'm very sick. Mom would have worried a lot if she'd known, wouldn't she?”
Even though it was only a game, she threw herself in front of me to block me every time I was attacked.
“It's really funny. I was supposed to be the one who could die in Mom's place.”
What was I supposed to do if Mom went and died in my place?
Really...
Then the game would become strange...
We always played a game we could never win, but I think that, in this life, I was happiest during that time.