Chapter 45
“Name takes medicine every day. Is she really that sick?”
Jihye kindly helped me wash the flasks.
With a squeaky-clean sound, the fully oxidized residue washed away in the soapy water.
“It’s nothing serious. As long as I don’t forget to take my potion every day, there’s nothing wrong with my body.”
“What happens if you forget?”
“Hmm... Maybe I get a little angrier?”
“Pfft, what’s that supposed to mean? Do you turn into the Hulk?”
“Thanks for helping me. I’ll buy you a crepe on the way home after school.”
“A crepe? Why all of a sudden? But I don’t think there’s anywhere around here that sells them.”
“Then how about bungeoppang?”
“It’s March. Do they still sell those?”
“Then Pokémon bread.”
“Okay!”
Pokémon was still popular.
It even never failed to make the top ten in popularity rankings, even in virtual reality, where multiplayer games were all the rage.
Once again praising the greatness of the IP, we headed back to class.
“Aaaah!”
Attention was instantly drawn to the sharp, piercing scream ringing out from the end of the hallway.
Students who had been chatting in the hallway all turned their heads without exception.
“That sounds like it’s coming from our class. Let’s hurry!”
Our classroom was in complete chaos.
The children had formed a circle around something, so we couldn’t see exactly what was happening.
While everyone was anxiously shifting from foot to foot, Han Seori spotted us and ran over.
“What happened?”
“Name, what do we do? I think Seo Yuna secretly stole and drank the medicine you take... She’s been doing nothing but coughing and looks like she’s about to die...! Her face is bright red, too!”
“What?”
I immediately went over to Yuna and checked the situation.
Shards of the broken flask were scattered across the floor.
The potion, already fully oxidized and turned black, had spread all over the classroom floor.
‘She really went and caused trouble!’
First, I pushed the shards to one side so Yuna wouldn’t stab herself on the glass while thrashing around.
“You’ll get hurt touching those with your bare hands...!”
Just as Seori had said, Yuna was gasping for breath and repeatedly hacking up dry coughs.
She would have been much better off vomiting right there, but apparently unable to do so, she writhed in agony.
She had clearly gulped it down the moment she opened the potion’s cap.
There was a reason the potion I drank, despite being a treatment for a rare disease, cost only ten or twenty thousand won per bottle.
Because this wasn’t a ‘cure.’
It was merely a ‘suppressant.’
Potion.
Not Potion, but PORTION.
More precisely, Powerplant Outcomes with Residue Transmutation into Overcharged Nebulosity.
It was made by compressing ‘residue,’ a byproduct from the power plants that refined this world’s mana, into an overcharged ‘nebular state.’
It was impossible to explain it any more simply, but if I absolutely had to compare it to something, it was basically radioactive waste.
It was a byproduct with no economic value to begin with, forcibly given marketability, so there was a reason it was cheap even for a rare-disease medicine.
Generally, mana wasn’t directly harmful to humans the way radiation was, by its very nature, but taking the potion immediately while it was in its nebular state produced the serious results one could see here.
Of course, once it oxidized upon contact with air, its effects dropped to a negligible level, so the sooner it was taken, the better.
In short, it was a trade-off between therapeutic effect and pain.
Don’t they say that bitter medicine is good for the body?
Since I drank it all the time, I could take it immediately without any trouble, but Yuna was probably in considerable pain.
Anyway, that wasn’t important right now; calming this reckless little brat came first.
“Keh-huk...! Khaeluk...”
“Seo Yuna. Can you hear me?”
“Hnnng...”
“I’m going to put my finger in your mouth now. Don’t bite down if it hurts, okay?”
Since Yuna was awkwardly lying on her side, it was difficult for me to get into position, too.
First, I swept her sweat-damp hair to the side so I could see her face clearly.
Yuna seemed to realize that I had come up beside her.
Then she had probably understood what I was saying, more or less.
If you really bite me, I’ll slap you.
“Hic... Ah... it hur-hurts... Cough...”
“...”
“I’m sorry...”
Mmph.
Since talking any more would hurt, I quickly let her bite down on my finger.
Warmth spread to my left index finger.
Though I hadn’t intended to, I could also feel Yuna’s smooth, bare gums against my fingertip.
In the middle of all that, had her second front tooth already fallen out? A shyly emerging permanent tooth lightly poked my index finger.
Letting a child who had only just reached the age when her teeth began to fall out bite my finger...
You really do see everything if you live long enough.
“Hang in there just a little longer. You’ll be okay.”
She looked to be in bad shape, so I figured I had better hurry.
With my free hand, I hastily inscribed a makeshift magic circle on the floor.
[3rd-Circle Cast: Local Anesthesia]
[4th-Circle Reverse Casting: Irreversible Reduction Reaction]
The human airway was an extremely delicate area when it came to administering anesthesia.
Since it was an important organ involved in breathing, it had to be handled carefully with a topical anesthetic.
I inscribed the local-anesthesia magic circle based on the lidocaine and prilocaine in EMLA (Eutectic Mixture of Local Anesthetics) cream, the most representative topical anesthetic.
Then, to remove the residue remaining in her airway, I cast a magic circle that induced a reduction reaction, condensing the residue back into its nebular state.
Since the process could hurt a little, I had chosen local anesthesia.
“Mmph!”
When the magic circle activated, Yuna squeezed her eyes shut.
It was admirable how desperately she tried not to bite my finger, but the way her tongue kept writhing along it made me ticklish.
When I pulled my finger out later, wouldn’t it be covered in saliva?
For Yuna’s sake, I decided to take it out where no one would notice as much as possible.
Before long, the reverse-cast magic circle lost its light and vanished first.
The color returned to Yuna’s face all at once.
Her face had been as red as a strawberry, and it turned deathly pale the moment the local-anesthesia magic took effect, which worried me a little, but fortunately the problem had been resolved.
“Teacher, over here!”
“Yuna, are you okay?!”
Just then, Yoon Sihoo arrived with the homeroom teacher.
Teacher Jackie must have hurried to the classroom after hearing that Seo Yuna had taken some strange medicine and collapsed.
“Hey, NoName, get your hand off Yuna right now!”
Sihoo shouted,
“What are you doing...?”
Teacher Jackie and I stared at each other in bafflement.
The anesthesia magic was still... Oh, it was over now.
I laid Yuna down—she had fallen asleep as though she’d fainted—and quickly pulled my finger from her mouth.
Condensed residue naturally had a high coefficient of viscosity, and unfortunately, it had mixed with her saliva.
Why was that unfortunate?
Because the saliva connecting Yuna’s mouth and my index finger was forming a thin, elongated parabola. It was a pale gray, neither black nor white.
“Name, what is that...?”
When the teacher pointed at my hand, I felt awkward for no reason and hurriedly wiped away the residue.
Slurp.
Since I didn’t want to get it on my clothes, I used my mouth instead.
“...?!!”
In my mind, I made myself believe that it was delicious, sweet honey.
Definitely not something made from power-plant waste mixed with a little kid’s saliva.
So could you stop looking at me like that, Yoon Sihoo?
* * *
‘Damn... I should have paid more attention. I should have pressed her about what it was as soon as she started carrying that strange medicine bottle.’
In a corner of his mind, Sihoo couldn’t shake the thought that he might have been mistaken about Name.
When he saw Name chatting amiably with her classmates, she looked every bit like a girl her age.
Surprisingly, she also seemed to be getting along quite well with Seo Yuna, whom he had expected to clash with her.
But the problem arose when Seo Yuna drank the contents of the flask.
‘It wasn’t medicine; it was poison...!’
Could she have been undergoing the poison-resistance training that spies routinely received?
When Yuna showed no sign of improving, Sihoo realized how serious the situation was and ran straight to the teachers’ office to fetch the homeroom teacher.
Compared with the other students’ helpless confusion, it was an extremely rational response.
‘Maybe she even deliberately lured Seo Yuna into drinking that poison herself.’
It was difficult to discern Name’s inner thoughts from her utterly expressionless face.
If something really happened to Seo Yuna, Sihoo felt he would end up cursing himself for having handled the situation so carelessly.
“What? Yuna collapsed?”
“Yes, it’s urgent! Hurry!”
Teacher Jackie, who had been enjoying tea with the other teachers in the staff room, came running.
They rushed from the first floor to the third in an instant, then had to check Yuna’s condition and take her to the infirmary or hospital.
Yet the classroom itself was solemn.
A strange magic circle was being cast in midair above the spot where Yuna had collapsed.
It was NoName again.
So she was finally showing her true colors.
“Hey, NoName, get your hand off Yuna right now!”
Though he shouted loudly, Sihoo was afraid.
What if that child did something to him, too?
Would the teacher standing beside him be able to protect him?
Doubts began to sprout one after another.
But her actions were somewhat embarrassing for someone holding Yuna hostage.
Because she had a finger in Yuna’s mouth.
Then she pulled out her finger, brought it to her own mouth, and performed the shocking act of sucking on it.
“...?!!”
The homeroom teacher was just as flustered.
NoName said sheepishly,
“I treated Yuna, more or less. She’ll be fine if she gets plenty of rest.”
“What do you mean, you treated her...?”
Just as the homeroom teacher was about to ask something, a central announcement came through the speakers in each classroom.
[Hup-hup. Ah-ah. NoName of second-year Class A, NoName of second-year Class A, please report immediately to the Administration Office on the first floor of the main building. I repeat: NoName of second-year Class A, please report immediately to the Administration Office on the first floor of the main building.]