Chapter 7
“Do you think you can get up?”
“...”
I had only just woken up. A stark-white hospital room, curtains, and nurses in white.
The society I had emerged into after breaking out of my repetitive daily life was too much for me to fully take in.
It felt like I had attended Seol-ah’s funeral just a few days ago, but my memories were all jumbled.
“You’ll still feel dizzy because the medicine hasn’t worn off yet. If you’re okay with it, shall we go holding my hand?”
I nodded.
Strangely, words wouldn’t come out properly, so I substituted nodding.
In virtual reality, it felt like I could speak automatically just by thinking, but reality seemed to have one extra step. I opened my mouth, but the words I was thinking couldn’t escape my throat.
Hospital. A boring place that forced me to do bothersome things. Perhaps because I had a child’s body, boredom was a surprisingly difficult emotion to endure.
I twisted my body around and rolled my eyes industriously to count the patients, trying to ease my boredom.
“103 centimeters and 15.8 kilograms... This is actually less than a five-year-old.”
The doctor muttered as he took the chart from the nurse.
The dull examinations continued one after another.
They had me cover one eye and match shapes, or hug a large teddy bear tightly.
They told me to hold my breath for a moment. Did teddy bears do chest X-rays these days? How child-friendly.
Because I had experienced one blissful, honey-sweet nap, I, who had slept less than six hours a day, now slept twelve hours and still felt drowsy upon waking.
While I sat in a chair, nodding off, someone presumed to be my guardian came to sit beside me and listened intently to the doctor’s words.
The doctor calmly continued his explanation, but the man beside me wore a fairly serious expression. Or maybe that was simply his normal expression. His features were so fierce that it was hard to tell.
Once the examination was over, the final stop was always the pharmacy. That roughly matched my common sense, too. The world was so strange that I often found it difficult to tell what was and wasn’t common sense.
“I suppose you’ll have to drink this every day from now on.”
The man handed me a drink that looked very much like PoXri SXteu. He even opened the can for me. How considerate.
Ah, I’ve tasted this before.
It wasn’t PoXri, of course.
Looking at the nutritional information on the back of the can, I knew I was right.
Mana potions I used to consume every day as meal replacements. So they sold them in the real world, too.
“Is it tasty?”
It wasn’t tasty, but it was edible enough. I didn’t offer any particular comment. The man didn’t seem to mind my lack of reaction.
“You don’t have anywhere to go now. What’re we gonna do? This is bad.”
Once I finished the pseudo-PoXri, the man took it and threw it into the trash can. He didn’t forget to crush it first.
I didn’t have anywhere to go to begin with, so what was he talking about?
“They’re a bunch of completely inflexible bastards, I swear. What, I’m not eligible for support because I’m not an officially classified victim of terrorism? They’re going on about insurance premiums and eligibility for aid. They say they can’t even tell whether you’re Korean because you don’t have a biochip. Damn it, if your mother’s Korean, then obviously her daughter’s Korean too.”
How had the country come to this? The man’s grumbling went on for quite a while.
I had difficulty understanding him because of his dialect here and there, but the gist was that all the funds provided for Seol-ah’s support had apparently been spent on funeral and hospitalization costs. Now, even if I stayed in the hospital for one more day, an astronomical bill would be charged in my name.
“Sigh, what would you know? You’re just pitiful.”
The NIS and the prosecution had completely washed their hands of the matter as well.
Given my age, I couldn’t possibly know anything about the terrorism anyway, and more importantly, it was difficult to identify the culprit.
Since Walpurgis had already officially declared itself eradicated in Korea, it was an awkward situation for the authorities to reopen the matter. To the state, I seemed to be nothing more than a pitiful girl who had lost her mother after she got tangled up with a terrorist group.
Even that likely wouldn’t qualify me for basic living assistance since I wasn’t an official citizen.
Detective Ma Beom-il seemed to have acted not to boost his record, but simply out of professional duty.
Though he spoke roughly, he applied no pressure to the hand holding mine. With his other hand, he kept looking over my health report as he walked.
“I’d like to take you home and let you meet Jihye, but... I guess the law says I can’t. I should blame my job.”
Was Jihye the man’s daughter? Judging from the name alone, it gave a round, soft impression in contrast to the man.
In the end, my status was closer to that of an undocumented refugee who had drifted in from who-knew-where than to that of a terrorism victim or an official citizen.
After driving over mountains and across rivers, we arrived at a remote orphanage. The facility looked very old, but the main gate even had the government emblem, marking it as a certified institution.
Because the man had contacted them before arriving, a middle-aged woman with graying hair was already waiting to meet us.
“Please take especially good care of her.”
“Yes, don’t worry.”
“I’ll come by often.”
“In my twenty-five years working here, I haven’t seen a single person who kept a promise after saying that.”
Quite a cynical personality.
That was how I said goodbye to Detective Ma Beom-il. It had been a fairly brief connection, and nothing particularly special had happened, but I still thought he was a rather kind person.
“Your name is Name? Goodness, that’s unusual...”
“Name.”
The woman glanced at my personal information sheet as she spoke. I immediately corrected her.
“NoName.”
* * *
In the end, my well-worn comprehensive medical examination report, passed through the hands of many people, finally ended up in mine.
Since I wasn’t an expert in this field, there were occasional terms I couldn’t understand, but in summary, I was a walking general hospital.
Short stature and low weight were just the beginning. My body had now gone beyond merely adapting to mana potions and become addicted to them; I was physically incapable of living without potions.
Perhaps because of that, my body’s balance was completely wrecked. I had just enough muscle to breathe, so even walking demanded tremendous mental effort from me. The numbers made it look incredible.
If there was one saving grace, there were no major problems with my intellect. The only blemishes were slight autistic traits and a speech disorder. Come to think of it, I did have trouble making eye contact with people.
Or had I ever properly met anyone’s eyes until now? I decided not to worry too much about my inability to speak, since it seemed likely to improve little by little.
I had thought the orphanage woman was extremely cynical and unfriendly compared to Detective Ma Beom-il, but judging by how she didn’t even bat an eye after learning about my physical condition, she was simply a person without prejudice.
No wonder such impassive people survive for so long in social welfare.
[Merlin Orphanage]
This was the place where I would be staying from now on.
A two-story wooden house rarely seen in the city. Each room was truly tiny, barely large enough for a bunk bed.
Auntie Park Yeong-hui, who completed my admission procedures (I learned her name from her name tag), immediately led me to my room.
Room 206.
It was the room farthest to the side on the second floor.
[Hwangbo Yeong]
[Baek A-rin]
The woman took down the upper nameplate beside the room.
“Yeong-i moved to a first-floor room yesterday, so you can use this spot. Arin gets the lower bunk, and you get the upper one. It’s lunchtime now, so everyone’s in the dining hall. If you haven’t eaten lunch, you can come eat.”
With those words, Auntie Yeong-hui promptly left.
I had no belongings. Even the civilian clothes I was wearing had been bought for me by Detective Ma.
It wasn’t as though I was hungry, either.
I suddenly had time to kill. I tried opening one of the potions the man had given me, but it was impossible with my strength.
In the end, I gave up wrestling with the can and headed for the full-length mirror beside the door. I think this was the first time I’d ever seen my whole appearance. Come to think of it, there wasn’t a single mirror in the hospital.
Seven years of uncut hair reached down to my waist.
I swept aside the bangs covering half my face because I hadn’t made a proper part.
Perhaps because it was so thick, my hair was unusually pitch-black, while by contrast, my face was deathly pale from never seeing sunlight.
My eyes took up most of my small face, perhaps because they resembled Seol-ah’s. No, maybe they were slightly slanted to the sides, giving me a fierce look.
As I engaged in a staring contest with the mirror using my three-whites eyes, I felt a little creeped out.
My arms and legs were incredibly thin. It wasn’t just that I had no muscle; now that I looked, I barely had any flesh, either. Snow-white skin covered the contours of my bones.
“Who... are you...?”
A timid young girl whispered through the crack in the door.
When I stood blankly in front of the mirror, the girl relaxed her guard a little and entered the room.
“Are you the one the nun said was coming today...? No... Wait, you are, right?”
The person she called a nun seemed to be Auntie Yeong-hui from earlier.
“What’s your name? I’m Arin. Baek A-rin.”
“Name.”
“Name? Is that your name?”
I nodded.
“You’re so tiny, Name. It’s amazing—you’re the first younger kid to come here since I arrived. I’m seven years old. How old are you?”
I tried to say seven, but once again the words caught at the back of my throat.
I had no choice but to hold up seven fingers for her.
“You’re seven? Liar!”
But you’re this tiny?
Arin seemed unable to believe that a child a head shorter than her was the same age.
“Hey, Great White Shark! Are you happy now that you get the room to yourself? Aren’t you bored because I don’t play with you anymore?”
A tall, boyish girl flung open the door and entered. Before Arin had time to react, she looped an arm around Arin’s neck.
“Oh, Big Sis Yeong...”
“Who’s this? Aaaah, you’re the new kid who was supposed to arrive today, huh? Nice to meet you, nice to meet you. I’m Hwangbo Yeong. And you?”
“...”
“Huh? Why are you ignoring me? It’s rude to make someone who asked feel bad for no reason.”
“Uh...! She said her name was Name. Right, Name?”
“Is our Name unable to speak well? Or are you doing this on purpose to annoy me?”
“No, no, I think Name’s just nervous because this is her first time here.”
“Really? Then whatever. You two are both so tiny, you make a good pair.”
As soon as Yeong dashed down the stairs, Arin let out a sigh of relief.
“She’s Big Sis Yeong, who used to share a room with me. She’s in fifth grade, and she knows a lot of scary older kids, so if you happen to run into her again, you need to treat her well.”
From the first floor, I could see her leading a group of other children around. She seemed to be almost the leader of the elementary-school kids.
Perhaps the reason Arin had continued sharing a room with Yeong, despite their age difference, was that Arin had the lowest rank in the group.
Even now, Arin was bouncing around in joy after reclaiming the first-floor spot Yeong had forcibly taken from her.
This wasn’t some imperial court, and I had not the slightest desire to get involved in the children’s political games.