Chapter 49
“Jaewang was looking for you, Yoon Sihoo. Might be best not to go out into the hallway for a while.”
“Really? Thanks for letting me know.”
The rumor that Lee Haru and Seo Yuna had gotten into a fight after the midterm exams spread through the academy in an instant.
The first-year students of Class C grew more and more dissatisfied with Seo Yuna by the day.
Eventually, pushed along by the children's complaints, Lee Haru privately met Yuna as class president to warn her, but she never told anyone what had happened there.
It was clear that a fistfight had taken place, but if that had been the case, both sides' parents would have been summoned immediately. That was what Lee Haru feared.
Sihoo was not the sort to take rumors at face value, but still, there was no smoke without fire.
In truth, he wanted to avoid coming into contact with Seo Yuna as much as possible.
“Are you Yoon Sihoo?”
But Yuna's persistence eventually wore down his patience.
To conceal the fact that he had deliberately been avoiding her, Yoon Sihoo answered nonchalantly.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You came in first this time, right?”
“Huh? Yeah.”
“Let's solve the ‘Records of Magic’ exam again from the beginning together.”
But the words that came from Seo Yuna were completely unexpected.
She was not trying to tease him.
She genuinely wanted to review the exam questions together with him.
So Yoon Sihoo chose to lie and say he had left the test paper at home.
After all, discussing a midterm exam with a complete stranger was ridiculous.
“It's fine. I've memorized all the questions. You have too, right?”
But she gave him no way out.
This was Yoon Sihoo and Seo Yuna's first meeting.
* * *
“This is the last one already. Multiple-choice question eighteen.”
“It was the question asking us to choose the magic circle whose casting mana was greater than 110/3 and less than 290/7, right?”
“I didn't have enough time, so I couldn't solve it. Which one did you choose?”
“Number one.”
“That was the correct answer, wasn't it? How did you get it right?”
Yuna grabbed Sihoo by both shoulders and made a huge fuss.
Whenever Sihoo got one of the questions Yuna had missed right, she always acted this way, waiting for him to explain.
The week-long string of odd behavior that had taken place during every recess ended today.
She had come to the front of Class A without missing a single break, and Sihoo couldn't bring himself to dash Yuna's enthusiasm.
“Normally, you should look for a magic circle whose mana consumption is in the low forties. Don't consider the high thirties.”
“Why? Couldn't it be 37, 38, or 39?”
“If you factor it into primes, the prime numbers get too large. Then the magic circles in choices one through five couldn't possibly be this simple.”
“What's prime factorization?”
“Um, so...”
Ding-dong-dang-dong.
The bell rang to announce the start of Friday's final class.
But today, Yuna couldn't return to her class.
She couldn't put off learning about the concept of ‘prime factorization’ until next week.
At the same time, it was almost pitiful to watch her fidget from foot to foot like a puppy because she had to hurry back before the teacher arrived.
“Then do you want to come to my house later? I'll teach you after school.”
“Huh...?”
At that casually tossed-off suggestion, Yuna froze in place.
* * *
“What brings you here, Sihoo? You brought a friend home to study?”
“Well, I think I did a little poorly on the midterms, so we're going to review together. That way, I think I can come in first again on the finals...”
“Her name is Seo Yuna? Where do you live, by the way?”
“I... I...”
“We're going to start right now. Could you please leave?”
“This child really does fuss. All right, study hard.”
The door closed, and Sihoo let out a sigh of relief.
He was not exactly lying to his mother, but for some reason, he still felt a prick of conscience.
It was the first time either Sihoo or Yuna had invited a friend to their home or been invited to a friend's home.
Besides, they were nothing more than first-year elementary students, still too young to acknowledge the existence of a friend of the opposite sex without embarrassment, so the situation felt awkward.
“Thank you... for not telling her where I live.”
“The strange one is my mother for asking so bluntly.”
“...”
“Are you uncomfortable sitting there?”
“No! It's not that.”
Yuna hurriedly waved both hands.
There was nothing wrong with the cushion she was sitting on.
When she first entered Sihoo's room, she began to understand a little of what Lee Haru had said.
Even a single room was larger than her entire home.
Here, there was no need to fold up the bedding, clear away miscellaneous belongings, or unfold the dining table just to study.
There was a bed, and a desk wide enough for one person to lie down on.
“Then shall we start studying?”
“Yeah...”
“Should I start by teaching you prime factorization?”
Prime factorization was something other schools only taught in middle school.
Sihoo could manipulate such difficult concepts with ease.
He was different from Lee Haru and Kim Hangyeol.
The knowledge Yoon Sihoo had built up was like an immeasurably high mountain.
Yuna's mind was so muddled that there was no room in her ears for Sihoo's explanation.
“Are you listening?”
“Then, Yoon Sihoo, do you think through all of this and solve the problems that way when you take the midterms?”
It was not a question born entirely of innocence.
There was no way her brain could carry out the processes he was describing.
Whenever Yuna felt the gap between herself and Sihoo, she felt as though her mind were growing hazy.
“No?”
But Sihoo's answer was surprisingly negative.
“To be honest, I guessed the answer to question eighteen, too.”
“What was that?”
“Why?”
“Weren't you explaining everything by showing me how you solved it?”
“You guessed on both sixteen and seventeen and got them right. I can get one right by guessing, too.”
“I didn't even know that...!”
Tears pricked Yuna's eyes.
But she was not sad.
Rather, the situation was so absurd that Yuna wiped away the tears and even let out a small, breathy laugh.
“I almost mistook you for a machine instead of a real person!”
She was crying one moment and laughing the next.
Sihoo was dumbfounded by this unexpected side of her, but at the same time, he sensed her humanity, and the corners of his mouth rose naturally.
As far as Sihoo could tell, Yuna was pretty when she smiled, and her red hair was even more charming.
She seemed like the type who would be popular with both boys and girls, so Sihoo could not understand why the other students in her class were bullying her.
In fact, he felt a deep sense of regret at the thought that today was the last time he would get to talk with Yuna.
“Thanks to your help, I think I can do well on the finals, too.”
Though he wanted to talk together just a little longer.
Sihoo casually asked,
“We've finished solving all the exams now. Are you going home?”
“What are you talking about?”
Yuna pulled two more books and a bundle of test papers from her schoolbag and held them up.
“The Basics of Runes! It's your turn now, right? I look forward to your help.”
She nonchalantly insisted that there was still plenty more to do and urged Sihoo to get started.
What a relief.
“Yeah. I look forward to working with you, too.”
* * *
“Ugh...”
“You're awake? If you're dizzy, you can lie down a little longer. Otherwise, you can leave early right away without filing a report. Your homeroom teacher gave permission.”
In Seo Yuna's vision, translucent insects squirmed against a stark white ceiling.
She rubbed her eyes once more, and the insects vanished completely. Soon, she realized that she had woken up in the infirmary.
It felt as though she had had a good dream and a bad dream at the same time, but she could not remember the details.
“You're just going home?”
“Yes. Thank you for taking care of me.”
She packed her schoolbag and outerwear, remembered to thank the school nurse, and then looked at the clock.
[14:50]
It was already late enough that most of the children had long since gone home.
“Cough, cough.”
A sudden cough made her heart lurch as she thought the nightmare of recklessly drinking a potion was recurring, but fortunately, she did not taste anything more bitter than a pill.
As she moistened her dry lips with her tongue, the memory of collapsing came back to her, and her face grew hot.
[Seo Yuna. Can you hear me?]
[I'm going to put my finger in your mouth now. Don't bite down if it hurts, okay?]
When something forced its way into her mouth, fear seized her first.
It was the kind of terror she felt when unknown medical devices seemed to poke into her while her eyes were closed at the dentist.
But before long, a mysterious energy spread throughout her body, and Yuna's pain subsided considerably.
‘It felt like all the pain had been a dream.’
[Just hold on a little longer. It'll be all right.]
‘What on earth was that...?’
The hand stroking her face was as warm as her mother's, and it made her miss her mother terribly.
She shook her head at the foolish thought.
‘I must be dizzy because I haven't been eating enough lately. From now on, I should eat plenty, even if it's only lunch.’
Crossing the school garden, Yuna stopped blankly in front of a lilac flower bed that someone had carefully planted alongside the school building.
They were flowers that the first-year students had planted with their parents at the entrance ceremony.
At this very spot, there were also flowers Yuna had planted the year before.
She had written a message wishing that she would be able to graduate from the academy safely, then carefully planted them with her brother.
But lilacs released their intense floral fragrance in full during spring, only to disappear without a trace after summer passed and winter arrived.
The spot would then be replaced by the wishes of the new first-year students the following year.
Once you grew used to daily life and settled into it, it was easy to forget your original purpose.
That was why Yuna had come to hate the lilacs that spread their nose-piercing scent.
“@%$# &&@ %@# You! Are you crazy?!”
The sudden shout was enough to awaken Yuna from her thoughts.
The faintest light leaked from the building across the flower bed.
She was drawn inside the building as if bewitched.
Perhaps it was because she was intoxicated by the scent of the lilacs.
Curiosity, and a small bit of delinquency.
Since she had already skipped one class, she felt no hesitation in her steps.
Yuna saw the secretary leaving the room where the sound had come from, her brow deeply furrowed.
‘Did one of the academy's higher-ups scold her?’
But there were still signs of someone inside the room.
[It's been a long time since such an outstanding talent entered the academy. Ho ho ho!]
The room was arranged so that there was another room inside it.
Yuna pressed herself against one wall and listened to what they were saying inside.
The original room had been divided by a partition wall that did not block sound, so the voices reached Yuna's ears without being filtered at all.
[Student, what kind of medicine did your friend take that you even had to use an anesthetic spell?]
[She took a potion without knowing what it was.]
“...!”
It was Noname's voice.
‘Why is Noname here?’
[A potion...? Is it the kind the military mages I'm thinking of drink?]
[You sound exactly like Professor Cheon. Yes, that's right.]
[Ah...]
‘And what is a military mage, anyway?’
Unfortunately, Yuna could not understand every word with the knowledge in her head.
The conversation ended there.
Yuna feared that she had been discovered and struggled to calm her pounding heart.
[Student Noname, you too... Make sure you work hard at school.]
‘At this rate, they'll find me! Where can I hide...?’
Yuna slipped her small body between a stack of empty tangerine boxes piled up for recycling.
Before long, the door to the interview room opened, and a frightening-looking middle-aged man came out and fumbled a cigarette from his pocket.
Yuna barely managed to breathe a sigh of relief.
“It's truly unfortunate that she's terminally ill.”
But that word, casually murmured by the middle-aged gentleman,
“Terminally ill...?”
was enough to stir the trauma buried in the depths of her mind once again.