47. End of Summer (5)
In September, when the season arrives and summer begins to end, Stella starts its new term.
Unlike other magic schools, Stella’s opening ceremony was held not on the athletic field but in the main auditorium, and with powerful temperature-control magic running around the clock, no one would ever collapse from the heat.
Even the principal’s address was kept extremely brief.
“Work hard in autumn too.”
A single sentence.
That was all.
“A-ahem. Then next, Vice Principal……”
It had been so short that Vice Principal Akiheyden had to come out and forcibly fill the time. Apparently he had far too much he wanted to say, because he dragged on with his lecture for quite a while, steadily driving up the students’ irritation.
‘……It’s starting again.’
Eizel found herself realizing anew just how accustomed she had become to Stella.
At first, she had entered with grand aspirations for the sake of her great goal and lived under constant tension, but now she could afford to relax, if only a little.
It felt as though the entrance ceremony had only been yesterday, and yet it was already the second semester. Perhaps that was because the first half of first year had been filled with one intense incident after another, and even the summer vacation had passed in a frenzy.
It truly felt as though time had flown by in an instant.
‘I’ll work hard in the second semester too!’
This sort of resolve from Eizel was exactly the kind of thing Flame, while reading the original romance fantasy, had once thought, Does this even make sense?
Not everyone was like that, of course, but realistically, for an ordinary high school student, the arrival of a second semester would probably inspire annoyance before diligence.
That said, Flame herself also belonged to the group that studied extremely hard, so from Baek Yuseol’s point of view, the two of them belonged to a rather abnormal category.
“That concludes the opening ceremony.”
Once the ceremony ended, the students gathered in their respective classrooms.
First-Year S-Class.
Compared to the other classes, the number of students was significantly smaller, but it was a place where strange and genius-level students gathered.
And here……
Baek Yuseol was here too.
Unlike other classes, there was not the slightest trace of any noisy excitement over the start of school.
In the middle of that quiet silence, Baek Yuseol was sprawled across his desk, taking a nap on the very first day of school.
Naturally, Eizel seated herself at the seat beside the seat behind the seat beside the seat behind the seat beside him.
A truly ideal and perfect distance—
not too far, not too close, not burdensome, yet not so distant as to feel detached either.
Slide….
After sitting and waiting for a while, the back door of the classroom opened, and Hong Biyeon entered.
She first stared fixedly at the seat where Baek Yuseol was lying, then met eyes for a brief moment with Eizel, who had seated herself near him, and immediately turned her gaze away.
‘What is her problem, seriously……’
Since that day, Eizel’s hatred toward Adolevit had only grown stronger.
But when it came to Hong Biyeon, something felt……
strange.
It wasn’t as though she hated her terribly, but it also wasn’t as though she liked her either.
It was that sort of feeling.
Bang!
Unlike the quiet way Hong Biyeon had entered, the front classroom door flew open loudly, and S-Class instructor Lee Hanwol strode in.
He swept his dark eyes over the classroom, then stopped at Baek Yuseol’s seat and frowned.
But soon, as if it made no difference, he went to the podium and spoke.
“It’s been a while. Some of you probably spent summer vacation loafing around, and others probably didn’t. Starting from the second semester, we go into proper practical training, so even if you’re S-Class, I assume there’s no student here who did absolutely nothing.”
Flinch.
As if struck by his conscience, Baek Yuseol’s body trembled and he slowly raised his upper body.
With half-dead eyes, he blankly looked at Instructor Lee Hanwol.
“I don’t care what you did during break. But…… before we enter second-semester practical classes, there is one way to indirectly confirm your level of achievement.”
The moment he said that, every student in S-Class pulled out their notes, reports, magic parchment, handmade spellbooks, and the like.
Eizel was of course included among them.
“Namely, the vacation homework check.”
Stella’s vacation homework was done in report format.
It didn’t end at simply solving a few assigned questions—some students outright wrote entirely new papers, or came in after developing magic or magical tools.
That was how difficult it was, but for Stella Academy, that level was only natural.
The assignments were submitted separately for each subject, but judging from the way Lee Hanwol was checking them all together in one sweep, Eizel had also prepared several report pages.
Though she had spent the entire vacation with a packed schedule, this level of homework had not been especially difficult for her.
Probably, not just Eizel but any outstanding S-Class student of Stella could have finished it even more easily than eating cold porridge while lying down.
“……I’m screwed.”
And yet for some reason, Baek Yuseol—who sat at the seat beside the seat in front of the seat beside the seat in front of the seat beside Eizel—grabbed his head and lowered it deeply.
‘Hm……?’
A bad feeling coming over her, Eizel glanced at his desk.
There was nothing on it.
‘No way……?’
As if to confirm her worst suspicion, Baek Yuseol pulled out absolutely nothing, even as Lee Hanwol slowly made a full lap around the classroom.
“……Baek Yuseol. Where is your homework?”
“I had a perfectly magnificent report prepared…….”
“But?”
“I think I left it in the refrigerator and forgot about it. Shall I go get it now?”
“……Look forward to the special curriculum.”
“Yes…….”
Even though Baek Yuseol was being scolded, for some reason Eizel found herself smiling, and quietly let out a small laugh.
When Lee Hanwol returned to the podium, Eizel slyly shifted over to the seat beside the seat in front of the seat beside hers and approached him.
Before, she had had no reason to sit closer.
Now, she had one.
“Excuse me.”
“Uh. What.”
When Baek Yuseol answered with a face that looked half-dead, Eizel quietly pulled out one of her spare notebooks and offered it to him.
In this notebook, the magic circles she had doodled whenever she got bored while studying had piled up and piled up, and in the end had become a wholly new magic.
“Would you… like this? It should be enough to help you avoid demerits.”
Even as she said that, she felt a little worried.
Talented geniuses usually had strong egos and high pride, so even when they made a mistake, they often hated receiving help from others. If the same situation had happened to Hae Wonryang or Hong Biyeon, for example, they would surely have written an entirely new spell in five minutes rather than ever borrowing someone else’s homework.
“Mm, if you feel uncomfortable about it, then there’s nothing I can—”
But Baek Yuseol snatched Eizel’s notebook up as though he didn’t have even a shred of pride to his name.
“Thanks!”
“Ah, oh?”
She had never expected him to react so intensely, and Eizel found herself a little flustered too.
“I’ll take this favor to the grave.”
“No, there’s no need to go that far……”
He might have been a bit overly thankful, but still, the fact that she had been able to help Baek Yuseol somehow made Eizel feel proud.
Compared to all that he had done for her, this was something incredibly small.
But if she continued paying him back little by little like this, staying by his side……
someday……
Someday?
Suddenly, it felt as though the speed of her own thoughts had accelerated too much, and Eizel quickly cut them off.
She felt strangely unsettled.
The first day back at Stella was leisurely.
Other magic schools supposedly shoved their students through a hellish schedule from the very first day of school, but Stella was the sort of place that gave people real free time when it decided to be relaxed.
And so most students went off to each subject class only to finish the orientation quickly and come right back, which made S-Class particularly crowded that day.
Of course, partway through, Flame got bored and stormed out of her seat, going around the neighboring classes shouting, “Looking for soccer players! Just need you and we’re good to go!”
But that was only a very minor detail.
Since giving him the vacation homework had given her a reason to stay close to Baek Yuseol, Eizel kept tailing him everywhere except during the times when their classes split apart.
But apparently even those times apart felt regrettable, because she finally went ahead and asked.
“…You want me to tell you my class schedule?”
Baek Yuseol looked stunned when Eizel, seated across from him, nodded as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
“What for? So you can follow me around?”
“Yes.”
“What’s with you. Are you interested in me?”
Just like in the first semester, he tossed the question out as a joke—
but just like last time, Eizel answered without a trace of embarrassment.
“That could be the case, couldn’t it?”
“……Huh?”
“Would that be a problem?”
“No, well, not exactly…… But didn’t you say before that you didn’t have the leisure for that?”
At that, she touched her lips lightly and thought for a moment before smiling brightly.
“I’ve gained a little leisure now. Thanks to someone.”
“Well that’s…… Whoever that someone is, this has suddenly gotten awkward……”
Baek Yuseol was genuinely troubled.
Later—say, maybe in three years—Eizel would undoubtedly grow into both an outstanding mage and one of the top beauties in the world.
But for now, she was still a high school student.
He couldn’t see her as anything other than a kid, so if Eizel really was approaching him with those intentions……
that would be very troublesome indeed.
‘……Am I getting ahead of myself?’
No, think again.
He had asked whether she was interested, not whether she liked him.
Since Eizel was so hopeless when it came to romance, maybe she had simply taken it in a more ordinary sense and answered like that.
‘Yeah, that’s probably it.’
Even in the original game, Eizel didn’t start falling for the male leads until second year. Until then, the main pattern had been that the male leads obsessed one-sidedly over Eizel.
And besides, there had been none of those events like in the original that would tease or stir Eizel’s emotions, so it was safe to say nothing like that was happening now.
“Whew, you scared me for no reason.”
“Yes?”
“It’s nothing.”
Whatever her intentions were, the fact remained that he had received emergency homework help from her, so he figured he could call it even by treating her to a meal in proper Korean fashion.
“We don’t have anything to do today anyway, so want to grab dinner?”
“What? Isn’t it still a little early for club activities?”
“Not that. I just mean let’s eat. It’s not like we only ever eat as part of club activities. Oppa’s got money, so I’ll buy you whatever you want.”
At that, Eizel simply stared blankly at Baek Yuseol for a moment, then hurriedly nodded up and down.
“O-okay.”
“Then dinner is pork gukbap.”
“……You said you’d buy me what I wanted?”
“You’ll like this.”
“I’ve never even heard of that food……”
“I’m sure of it.”
Eizel wore a sullen expression, but then a strange thought came to her.
‘……What if I really do like this bizarre dish called pork gukbap?’
It felt odd.
Baek Yuseol was so certain she would like a food she herself had never even known existed.
Why did he know her secret?
‘I’ve been watching you all along.’
Suddenly, a certain spring day came back to her.
The words Baek Yuseol had spoken to her then, with Stella bathed in sunset behind him.
At the time, she hadn’t understood them.
But now, she felt as though she could vaguely grasp their meaning.
‘A regressor, and a time traveler.’
Baek Yuseol was a man who moved freely through time and had deeply influenced his own past.
If such a person said, I’ve been watching you, could those possibly be ordinary words?
Of course not.
He must have encountered countless different versions of me across countless different times.
Perhaps……
perhaps he knew me even better than I knew myself.
“……All right. Let’s go eat that weird thing called pork gukbap or whatever it is.”
So now, she decided not to doubt Baek Yuseol’s words.
Even that suspicious dish whose name alone sounded like some grotesque food—
she felt she could trust that she might like it.
Because Baek Yuseol had said so.
“Oh, wise choice.”
Apparently pleased that Eizel had agreed more readily than expected, Baek Yuseol flashed his white teeth and led her out toward Arcanium.
……And the instant she put pork gukbap into her mouth for the first time, Eizel regretted it.
“It tastes bad……”
“Huh? Back where I lived, everyone in town praised it to the skies.”
“That may be true for the people in your town…….”
Much too late, she realized that the only reason Baek Yuseol had been so certain she would like it was because he himself liked it so absurdly much.
“What’s with that. How can this taste bad? Put some pepper on it and take a proper bite.”
“No thanks. I’ll eat it my own way.”
After getting up from her seat for a moment, Eizel went over to the kitchen, brought back several seasonings, and somehow adjusted the soup to suit her own taste, turning it into something cleaner and clearer.
Lifting the soup, which had now become at least passable, and drinking it carefully, Eizel looked at Baek Yuseol sitting across from her.
There was certainly no elegance or refinement at all in the way he shoveled food into his mouth so greedily.
And yet, for some reason……
she kept wanting to look at him.
[Read only on MugenCodex.]
