Chapter 5
“E-excuse me…. J-just a moment….”
“Could you move aside? Check quickly and leave!”
“……”
A purple-haired girl was looking around helplessly amid the crowd gathered in front of the bulletin board.
It was pitiful to watch her being jostled from all sides by men and women alike because she was already so short.
You would think at least one person might help her, but perhaps because the examination time was drawing near, everyone was simply filling the area in front of the bulletin board, failing to notice Cha Eun-joo floundering nearby.
Even without my help, she would eventually find the examination room and make it inside on her own… but it was still a decent event for raising her favorability.
“Ah, ugh, ahh….”
“Want me to help?”
“Y-yes?!”
“You looked like you were having a little trouble. You’re trying to find your examination room, right?”
“……”
-Nod.
Was she afraid of strangers? After hesitating with an uncertain expression, Cha Eun-joo cautiously nodded.
Seeing her look up at me with slightly trembling eyes, like a wary squirrel, made me feel like abandoning the exam and kidnapping her and taking her home right then and there.
“What’s your name? I’ll look it up for you.”
“…Cha Eun-joo.”
“Which department?”
“M-Magic….”
“Cha Eun-joo from the Magic Department? Wait here a moment.”
After pulling her out of the crowd for a moment, I pushed my way through it and approached the bulletin board. I already knew where Cha Eun-joo’s examination room was, but I still had to pretend I was checking.
Once I had roughly made my way through half the crowd and could see the bulletin board, I came back and told her about the examination room I had already checked long before she arrived.
“It says Cha Eun-joo from the Magic Department is in Room 305 of Hyesong Hall.”
“Ah, th-thank you….”
“I have to go to Room 305 too, actually. Want to go together?”
“Y-yes…?”
“I’m also an applicant to Cheonmu Academy. I’m applying to Combat Support, though.”
“Oh, y-you’re an applicant…. I-I thought you were a senior at this school….”
…I had thought that, now that my face had filled out, I didn’t look quite that old. Maybe Lee Seonho’s face itself just looked a little mature.
Or maybe she was simply overwhelmed by the difference in our heights.
According to the character settings, Cha Eun-joo was not even 150 centimeters tall, so there was a difference of over 30 centimeters between us. From her perspective, it was only natural that she would assume I was a senior.
“So, shall we go together?”
“Mm….”
“I saw on the map earlier that Hyesong Hall is up that hill over there.”
“Uh-huh…. I saw it earlier too….”
“Follow me closely so you don’t get lost. There are a lot of people, so stay behind me if you can.”
“O-okay….”
Though she was still wary, Cha Eun-joo seemed grateful that I had checked the examination room for her and cautiously relied on me.
Doing my best not to look at her large breasts, which swayed whenever she took even a few steps, I headed toward Hyesong Hall.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
“Ah, my name is here….”
“We came to the right place, didn’t we?”
“Uh-huh, th-thank you….”
After finding her name on the list outside Room 305, Cha Eun-joo thanked me once again.
She seemed to have been worried that the classroom I told her about might be the wrong one. Unlike me, who had checked the bulletin board myself, Cha Eun-joo had essentially walked all the way here trusting nothing but my word.
There were no assigned seats in the examination room. To prevent cheating, applicants from the Magic, Healing, and Combat Support departments had been mixed together in alternating seats, so it didn’t matter where they sat as long as it was a seat appropriate for their department.
I found a pair of seats where the Magic and Combat Support applicants could sit next to each other, had Cha Eun-joo take one, and began the self-introduction I had put off.
“I’m late introducing myself. My name is Lee Seonho. I’m applying to Combat Support.”
“Ah, I-I’m Cha, Cha Eun-joo…. I’m applying to Magic….”
“I heard that earlier, so I know. What kind of magic do you use?”
“D-dark magic….”
“Oh, that’s interesting. I heard dark magic is extremely difficult, even among the different types of magic.”
“It’s n-not really like that…. I-I’m not that good at using it in the first place….”
In fact, I already knew all of this. I knew that Cha Eun-joo specialized in dark magic. I also knew that she couldn’t properly control it.
…And I even knew that Lee Seonho’s Suggestion worked quite well at helping her master the dark magic she couldn’t properly handle.
“W-what kind of ability do you have, Seonho…?”
“It’s hard to explain in a single word, but if I had to put it into a category, you could think of it as something like a buff.”
“A buff…? Like making someone stronger or increasing the power of their magic…?”
“Ah, my buff is closer to a mental ability than that sort of thing. It’s a little different.”
“I see…?”
“For example, it can calm an agitated mind or help someone focus when their thoughts are scattered.”
“Ahh, there are buffs like that too…. Th-that’s amazing….”
“Or I can use it to instill courage in a Hunter who lacks courage or confidence, so they won’t tremble in actual combat.”
“……!”
She’s reacting.
Was it because she immediately realized that the power I possessed was the power she needed most? The look in Cha Eun-joo’s eyes as she gazed at me had changed slightly.
A chance helping hand in front of the examination room. Coincidentally, the same examination room. And on top of that, the Awakening ability I could use happened to be the power she needed most.
Wouldn’t Cha Eun-joo, who had somewhat otaku-ish interests, be thinking of this encounter as something akin to fate?
If she thought of it that way, I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. Once Cha Eun-joo began trusting someone, she had a personality that made it difficult for her to cast them aside.
…That must have been why she had quietly obeyed even when Lee Seonho treated her like his lackey and made her do all sorts of unpleasant work in the original, too.
‘But I’ll never do anything like the Lee Seonho in the original.’
There might be times when I needed Cha Eun-joo’s help, but I had no intention of exploiting her the way that guy in the original did. Nor would I make her handle unpleasant chores like cleaning my room.
If circumstances forced me to ask Cha Eun-joo to do something, then of course I intended to give her the ‘reward’ she wanted as well.
…Though I would carefully condition her so that the reward Cha Eun-joo wanted would be something on the lewder side.
“We’ll now begin the examination. Turn off all cell phones and electronic devices and put them in your bags. Be careful: if anything other than a ballpoint pen and correction tape is left on your desk, it may be considered cheating.”
“A-a ballpoint pen…. C-correction tape….”
-Clatter!
“Ahh, ah…!”
While she was in the middle of talking with me, the proctor’s words startled Cha Eun-joo, and she spilled the contents of her pencil case all over the floor while trying to put it away.
I smiled inwardly at the favorability event brought about by her nervous personality, gathered the fallen writing implements, and handed them to her.
“Here.”
“Thank you….”
“Good luck on the exam.”
“Y-you too….”
…This should have been enough to leave a fairly good impression.
From here on, all I could do was pray inwardly that she would pass the written examination without incident.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
True to its reputation as Korea’s number-one Hunter Academy, Cheonmu Hunter Academy’s written examination was quite difficult.
Even I, who had prepared by memorizing several likely questions, found myself stumped by some of the questions that appeared.
「With allied Hunters’ healing magic restricted, present three alternative strategies Combat Support can use to minimize damage.」
「Your Awakening ability has been blocked by an enemy’s interference magic during combat. What should you do first as Combat Support, and what instructions should you then give the team as a whole?」
These were subjective questions that required me to come up with proper reasoning and countermeasures, rather than merely choose the ‘correct’ answer.
Fortunately, most of the questions were ones whose ‘solutions’ had appeared in the original novel.
‘When Kim Isabel was unable to use healing magic in the original, Han Sora shifted the battle formation to focus on defense and evasion. After that, she used the resources at hand while figuring out the reason healing magic had been restricted….’
For the parts I didn’t know, I had no choice but to rack my brain and write down whatever I could, but I figured this would probably be enough to pass the written examination.
In the first place, it would make no sense for me to fail an examination that the original Lee Seonho had passed.
More than anything, the written examination for a Hunter Academy was simply a means of filtering out the most hopeless idiots who weren’t even qualified to become Hunters. Considering that, I didn’t need to exert myself to the limit to solve the questions like this, but since I wanted to get a good score if I was taking it anyway, I ended up spending a little too much time on each question.
…To the point that I temporarily forgot my initial plan to finish the questions before Cha Eun-joo and wait for her.
-Scrape.
While I was working on the seventh of the ten questions, I suddenly heard the sound of a chair scraping as someone rose beside me. When I looked over without thinking, I saw Cha Eun-joo tidying up her things, having already finished the exam.
‘…I messed up.’
I should have just skipped the difficult questions and left before Cha Eun-joo no matter what.
At the very least, I had planned to have lunch with her today and, if possible, exchange contact information, but my unnecessary stubbornness in the wrong place had caused me to miss the chance to spend time with Cha Eun-joo.
As long as I could pass the written exam, exchanging even one more word with Cha Eun-joo was worth more to me than any score above the passing mark.
I was staring blankly at Cha Eun-joo as she rose from her seat with a sense of regret when she suddenly met my eyes and began blinking at me several times.
-Blink blink, blink blink blink.
“……?”
-Blink blink blink blink.
“……??”
After making this incomprehensible gesture, Cha Eun-joo submitted her exam paper and left the examination room.
I was momentarily flustered by her inexplicable signal. Since things had turned out this way, I decided to focus on solving the remaining three questions.
The time I had been given was far too precious to waste regretting an opportunity I had already missed.
⁎ ⁎ ⁎
“Good work, student.”
“…Yes, thank you.”
I bowed to the proctor who looked like an assistant and left the examination room. About twenty minutes after Cha Eun-joo had left the classroom first.
I had stayed behind to solve the remaining questions, but unfortunately, all three were questions I didn’t know. More precisely, they were questions whose solutions had not appeared in the ‘original.’
I did manage to cobble together answers out of plausible-sounding words using the knowledge in my head…but honestly, I probably could have just left with Cha Eun-joo earlier without answering them, and it wouldn’t have made much difference.
‘I need to pay more attention from now on. I went to all the trouble of creating a golden opportunity, and look what I did.’
If I let today slip by, I probably wouldn’t see Cha Eun-joo again until the next practical examination.
I should have at least exchanged numbers before the exam started. Then I would have had an excuse to meet her, using preparing for the practical exam together as a pretext.
Of course, even without going that far, Cha Eun-joo herself was such an easy target by Lee Seonho’s standards that it wouldn’t really be a problem, but a missed opportunity was still a missed opportunity.
Honestly, I wanted to meet Cha Eun-joo little by little and enjoy some emotional healing while I was still only seeing Choi Mari morning and evening, without having triggered any romantic favorability events with her yet.
…And if I could make her definitively ‘my woman’ before entering the academy, all the better.
‘Though that plan has already gone completely down the drain.’
Just as I stepped outside Hyesong Hall, leaving my disappointment behind and hoping at least that I had done well on the written exam—
“D-did you do well on the exam…?”
“…Cha Eun-joo?”
…Cha Eun-joo, whom I had naturally assumed had gone home first, had come up to me in front of Hyesong Hall and spoken to me.