Chapter 82
“Next is Seo Yuna.”
“Yes.”
Monday's first period was always Magic Infusion.
And today, since the period was being set aside to check the scores from last week's performance assessment, we were given an unexpected free period.
Since I had already finished checking my score—sixth in the class—I returned to my seat early and read a book I'd brought from home.
“Next is Seol Rime.”
“Yes.”
Yuna didn't go straight from the teacher's desk to her seat; instead, she deliberately took the long way around to my desk.
“What are you reading?”
“The Ten Best Knife-Fighting Techniques.”
“Why are you reading something like that?”
“I have a use for it.”
After spending the past week exploring on foot instead of going straight home after school, I had learned that there was nowhere nearby suitable for learning dagger techniques.
So, as a second-best option, I ordered a book from an overseas bookstore and was learning the secret techniques of Sammy Franco, a master of dagger fighting.
I only realized it after reading halfway through, but none of the material here seemed usable in the game at all.
“Next, Yoon Sihoo.”
“Yes.”
The moment Sihoo left his seat, Yuna dashed over and claimed the seat beside me.
I closed the boring book, lay facedown on my desk, and looked at Yuna.
Yuna rested her face on the desk in exactly the same way, as though she wanted to imitate me.
I pinched her drooping hamster-like cheek. It really was soft.
“Yuna, aren't you going to play with the other kids?”
“How can I play when I don't even know what they're talking about?”
“True. It's all game talk.”
Stories about getting first place in ‘Fall Guys’ or ‘Brawl Stars,’
stories about how a favorite streamer accidentally pressed the wrong button while playing ‘BlockCraft’ on stream and blew up his own castle with TNT,
and stories about Zhuge Liang challenging Lü Bu to a duel and winning fair and square in the story mode of the ‘Roblox’ Tower Defense Edition... What even was that last one?
These were topics Yuna, who had neither a phone nor a capsule, couldn't follow.
“Kids who play games are all childish. I'd rather spend that time studying more.”
“Really?”
“Oh, right. You said you played games too...”
Yuna said in a dejected voice.
“Next, Lee Jihyuk.”
“Yes.”
Sihoo returned to his seat, but Yuna pretended not to notice him.
“Could you move?”
“No.”
“This is my seat.”
“Then go sit in my seat.”
Seo Yuna seemed particularly unhappy today.
And I thought I knew why.
“Did you do well on the performance assessment?”
“No...”
“Did you lose a point?”
“Yeah...”
Someone might mistake it for humblebragging, but children with high standards tended to swing between delight and despair over even the smallest mistakes.
I patted her back and wondered how to comfort this sulky child.
“Let's do something fun together.”
“I'm not really in the mood...”
“But it's really fun. Then I'll go do it with Seori?”
Even then, she really wasn't going to do it?
Only when I actually stood up from my chair did Yuna grab my collar and stop me.
She was such a greedy little thing.
While the other students gathered in groups around the classroom and chatted away, we sat facing each other quietly on the wooden floor at the back of the class.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Do you know how to play gonggi?”
“No? I don't know it.”
“You don't?”
How was that possible?
How could she not know Korea's representative folk game for elementary school students?
Even if she was a loner, it was hard to believe she didn't know it.
I couldn't believe it, so I searched for it on my phone just in case.
‘Gonggi.’
A colorless, transparent gas that makes up the lower atmosphere surrounding Earth.
Nowhere did it say anything about a game played with gonggi stones.
I really had fallen into a world utterly lacking in cultural roots.
In the end, Yuna became the target of my first effort to set the world right.
Why not start by making some gonggi stones?
[Transmutation: High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE)]
First, I made appropriately sized plastic shells in various colors.
Normally, I would have created iron beads and put them inside, but since they were only there to provide weight, I simply condensed mana into a mass and infused it into the plastic using a semipermanent preservation technique.
“Ta-da.”
“...?”
“Look, I'll show you how to play.”
Games played with one's hands touch upon the most primal instincts of every human being.
A game that anyone, regardless of age or gender, can enjoy.
From this moment on, I would teach them gonggi, a drug-like game that had astonished the Kaizen Imperial Family, horrified the Holy Kingdom of Alpenheim, and even caused the Demon King to issue a personal wanted notice.
Clatter—
* * *
Class 2-A at Sephyron Academy was divided into several groups.
Even though there were only twenty students in total, it was only natural for friends who got along to spend time together.
First were the groups of boys led by Kim Hangyeol.
Hangyeol, who had been popular even in his first year, naturally took the lead in setting the mood of the class after advancing to second year.
As a result, although many girls in the class disliked him, there wasn't a single boy who did.
Next were the groups of girls centered around Lee Haru and Jeon Nuri.
Usually, whenever they started a conversation, several children would gather to join in, and the group would repeatedly form and dissolve.
There were also the Han Seori group, which consisted of boys and girls alike and spent its time brainstorming what prank to pull that day using all sorts of strange topics, and the Yoon Sihoo–Go Gyeongwon group, which suddenly expanded its influence whenever exam season arrived.
It was late March, still a long way from midterms, and the students had been given free time.
Most students chose a group to play with according to their preferences.
In that sense, Bae Yohan, the boy sitting next to Yuna, would rather belong to Hangyeol's constantly laughing group than sit beside Sihoo, who quietly read books, or Yuna, who muttered to herself.
“That buff to Groll this time is ridiculous. It's already a top-tier pick, and they buffed its basic attack damage and projectile speed again!”
“When will we ever be able to use Edgar in the league?”
Yohan clearly had no idea what the boys were talking about.
It seemed they were evaluating Brawl Stars' patch notes, but to someone who didn't play the game, it was no different from alien language.
Eventually, bored, he wandered around the classroom and found Yuna in a corner, silently screaming as she tore at her hair.
“......!!!!!!”
“What a shame. I had a shot at a five-year record.”
“One last time. I can do it. I really can.”
There was also Noname, the stormy transfer student whom every second-year student knew.
Come to think of it, had Yuna always been such an emotional child?
Yohan recalled the beginning of the semester, when Seo Yuna had happened to be assigned the seat beside him.
The rumors that she had a bad personality clearly hadn't been exaggerated. He had been frightened more than once by the way she glared at him during class, telling him not to bounce his leg or cross the boundary of his desk.
Clatter—
Tap—
“...!”
Rumble—
“Aaaah...!”
“Ah, I was only one stone away again. What a shame.”
While Yuna writhed on the floor, Noname brushed off her bottom, stood up, and came to pick up the gonggi stone that had rolled beneath Yohan's feet.
“What are you doing?”
“Playing gonggi. Want to try?”
“...?”
Gonggi? It was the first time Yohan had ever heard the word.
As if telling him not to refuse, Noname grabbed his arm and pulled him down to sit directly on the cold classroom floor.
The chill seemed to travel from his buttocks all the way up to his head with a tingling shock.
“What is this?”
“A newcomer. Yuna, explain the rules.”
“Do we really have to play together?”
“The more people there are, the more fun this game is. Just trust me.”
“Fine. Then listen carefully, Bae Yohan. I'll explain it only once.”
Yuna raised her index finger with a frightening expression.
Yohan swallowed hard and gave a slight nod.
Clatter—
He finally understood what the sound he had been hearing at regular intervals was.
It was the sound of five brightly colored stone pieces hitting the floor.
Yuna grinned and glanced at Yohan.
“This is level one. Watch closely.”
The overall rules of gonggi were simple enough for even a beginner to understand at a glance.
In level one, you toss one stone and pick up the others one at a time.
Likewise, in level two, you toss one and pick up two at a time, while in level three, you split them into a group of three and a group of one.
“It gets difficult from here.”
Yet confidence could be heard in her voice.
She tossed one of the gonggi stones in her hand and set all the others down. Then she tossed it again, and the scattered stones were swiftly sucked into Yuna's hand.
“Hoo... haa...”
“You look way too serious, Yuna.”
“Noname, don't talk to me for a second. I'm concentrating really hard.”
“And you call that explaining the rules.”
The five pieces left Yuna's hand and floated in midair.
The different pieces collided and spun, breaking free to move independently.
But as they fell back to the ground under gravity's pull, Yuna swiftly caught them on the back of her hand.
“...!”
Though he still didn't understand the rules very well, even to Yohan, what had just happened looked like a feat of magic.
How could every single stone have landed perfectly on her small hand without missing one?
But Yuna still had the final step ahead of her.
At the moment the tension reached its peak, Yuna, who had stopped even breathing, raised the back of her hand and left it to fate.
Swish—!
A heavy energy unlike anything he had ever felt before rose from the palm of her hand.
A strange light shone in Yuna's eyes.
“This is gonggi.”
It was the gaze of a general who had led an army to victory in war.