48 . School Reopens (6)
If a female student secretly slipped into a male student’s dorm late at night and people started spreading stories about it, it would only create pointless gossip, but neither Flame nor Baek Yuseol was the sort to care about that.
“What is it?”
As Flame squeezed her way into his room, Baek Yuseol asked with a face worn down by exhaustion.
Flop.
“Waaah~”
Throwing herself onto his bed, Flame flailed all four limbs.
“So this is an S-Class bed?”
“You’re in S-Class too.”
“I share a dorm with the kids from F-Class, remember? Don’t tell me you didn’t know that either.”
“How would I know?”
“Well, I’ve borrowed beds a few times when I went to hang out in A-Class or D-Class dorms, but this really is the best. I’ve never tried an S-Class bed before.”
Baek Yuseol rummaged through the porridge Flame had brought. Quite a lot of students had come by to visit him, and compared to the homemade dishes some of the girls had brought, what Flame had shown up with was cheap instant porridge from a convenience store.
“…What?”
“There’s usually no chance to get into S-Class dorms. The girls all have equally horrible personalities, and going into the guys’ dorms is asking for trouble. And anyway, up through A-Class they still use double rooms, but S-Class gets single rooms, right?”
“And I’m not asking for trouble?”
He had no appetite and nothing in particular appealed to him, but porridge at least seemed manageable, so Baek Yuseol put it into the microwave in his room.
…However, he didn’t know how to use it.
Unlike the microwaves of the modern twenty-first century, the machines of Aether World had their buttons replaced with magic circles and runes, so the controls were fairly complicated.
Of course, for the ordinary people of Aether, magic circles were as familiar as buttons were to modern people, but for Baek Yuseol, it was a completely different story.
He had never eaten anything in the dorm in the first place, so he had never learned how to use it.
‘The Jikbakguri Glasses…’
He belatedly started fumbling in his pocket, but Flame came up beside him and pressed the magic circles with her finger, turning it on for him instead.
“By the way, Ahjussi, where are you hurting?”
“Mm.”
“Why are you sick?”
“I went through some stuff recently.”
“Hm~ Is it something related to that Starcloud Merchants’ Guild issue?”
After returning to Stella, Flame had belatedly seen the article saying that the chairman of the Starcloud company had gone missing and then made a dramatic return. Baek Yuseol’s name had been written in huge letters as being involved, so there was no way she could have missed it.
“Who knows. It’s a little different from that.”
“…Really?”
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The microwave chimed.
Baek Yuseol took the porridge out and began eating it slowly with a plastic spoon. Flame lay there with one leg crossed over the other, then noticed the pile of bread and snacks stacked on the table and stretched out her foot to tap them.
“You’re not going to eat the Cotton Cookie?”
“You eat it.”
“Thaaanks.”
When Flame hooked the candy box with her toes and pulled it toward herself, Baek Yuseol stared at her with an incredulous expression. Then, as if remembering that this was just how she was, he lowered his head again and resumed eating the porridge.
“But you know.”
With a candy in her mouth, she spoke in a gentle voice to Baek Yuseol, who was quietly spooning up porridge.
“Don’t you think you’ve been pushing yourself too hard lately?”
“…What do you mean.”
“It’s just, um… Ahjussi, you didn’t spend even once during the entire summer vacation just staying still and resting at Stella.”
The moment summer break began, he had left for somewhere. Then, as soon as the Seventh Main Tower ghost story incident broke out inside Stella, he had immediately returned and resolved it, only to head right off again to Adolevit.
As if getting involved in the struggle for the throne wasn’t enough, he had stopped the disaster that erupted on the coast of Leviang, and after that had run straight to the Hawol Plains and even solved the Starcloud chairman disappearance case…
An ordinary student would already be whining from the burden of merely juggling vacation homework and studying, yet he had been involving himself in massive incidents all across the world, so how could he possibly not be exhausted?
And on top of that—
‘What I know probably isn’t even all of it…’
Just looking at that time-travel incident from before proved that much.
If she hadn’t been given the chance to interfere with the past together with Eizel, she would have gone her whole life without ever knowing what Baek Yuseol had done.
There were probably plenty of incidents she didn’t know about too—things Baek Yuseol had experienced while running all over the world…
“If you keep burning through your strength in such a hurry, you might really burn out and collapse later.”
It felt embarrassing to suddenly speak so seriously, so she threw it out like a light joke and gave an awkward little smile. Baek Yuseol stopped moving his spoon.
“…What, why, what.”
Feeling inexplicably awkward, Flame snapped back, and Baek Yuseol let out a small laugh.
“It’s just… originally, that wasn’t supposed to be your line.”
“Huh?”
Baek Yuseol had played Aether World Online. He knew of the existence of the character Flame.
Back then, countless male protagonists got tangled up with her, and incident after incident kept occurring, but Flame always tried to solve every one of them alone, without help from anyone.
And the lines those male protagonists had all commonly said to “the character Flame” back then were so similar to what the real Flame had just said now that it left him feeling strangely unsettled.
‘Come to think of it, I really have been living a busy life.’
Back when he lived on Earth, he had never really thrown himself wholeheartedly into anything. He thought of himself as an ordinary lazy person.
If the Baek Yuseol from those days could see the current him desperately struggling for the sake of something, what would he think?
“You’re right.”
After dryly tossing those words out, Baek Yuseol started eating his porridge again. Licking her candy-sticky lips with her tongue, Flame spoke as though in passing.
“Next time… if something happens, I’ll help a little too. Okay? Stop doing everything alone.”
At her words, Baek Yuseol merely smiled.
She couldn’t tell whether that smile meant yes or no, and that only made Flame feel more frustrated inside.
No—judging by the fact that he wasn’t giving her a clear yes, it was probably closer to a no.
Why?
Was there perhaps some reason he wasn’t allowed to accept her help?
‘…Is it because of our relationship before the regression?’
The Baek Yuseol from some other timeline she didn’t know must have gone through countless incidents with “another Flame.”
It was something she didn’t even want to think about, but maybe in that process…
Had I gotten badly hurt, or even died?
Or if not that, had something I got involved in driven an incident to the worst possible ending?
If it wasn’t something like that, there would be no reason at all for him to reject every offer of help and keep acting alone.
…Probably.
Flame wanted to believe that was the reason.
It had been one week since the start of term.
The point when practical training would begin in earnest.
Even Baek Yuseol, who had spent the first week shamelessly killing time lying in a dormitory bed, had to start attending class again.
‘I’m tired enough to die…’
Even after thoroughly resting for an entire week, the fatigue still hadn’t gone away. It wasn’t just because he had engraved a subspace into his heart; it was also because he had gone through so much over the entire summer break.
He had been running nonstop without even realizing how tired he was, and only now that all the tension had suddenly drained away did the accumulated fatigue finally hit him.
“From this point on, you will be training to locate the hideouts of dark magic users.”
Addressing the S-Class students gathered in the Stella Dome, which had been transformed into a dense forest thick with trees, Instructor Lee Hanwol explained,
“Dark magic users hide themselves throughout the world and create hideouts so that we mages cannot find them. If they hide themselves, then naturally, we must train ourselves to find them.”
Among the required subjects taught in the first semester, there had been one called Psychology of Dark Magic Users.
Why do dark magic users behave as they do?
How should they be fought?
Where do they hide?
They had spent half a year studying those countless theories. Now it was finally time to start putting them into practice.
“Elsewhere within this area, students from other classes are also in the middle of training to locate the hideouts of dark magic users. But since you are S-Class, there would be no meaning in giving you the same training.”
Class A and above had always received specialized education distinct from the lower classes, and S-Class had always received especially difficult instruction on top of even that.
This time was no exception.
“You will be searching for a slightly more special kind of dark magic user hideout.”
Just as mages were divided into attributes such as lightning-type, flame-type, and curse-type, there also existed countless sects among dark magic users.
Among them were those who had been rejected by the world of mages and had been driven down the path of black magic…
Representative examples included black magicians, necromancers, witches, and cursecasters.
Unlike ordinary dark magic users who made direct contracts with the Reverse World, those people had merely accepted black mana; they had no direct connection to the Reverse World itself.
For that reason, they were extremely irregular existences, shunned by both the magic world and dark magic users alike.
“It is known that witches are completely extinct, and necromancers too have mostly disappeared into hiding, so there is no pressing need to train for them. However, twelve years ago, a witch’s hideout—one that had supposedly vanished completely—was discovered, causing an uproar in society.”
Twelve years ago meant the students standing here had only been five years old, but it was such a famous incident that everyone nodded.
Witches might have been few in number, but they were extraordinarily dangerous beings. Ordinary mages couldn’t even face them, to the point that special hunting teams had once existed solely for witch hunts.
And yet witches had vanished from the world decades ago, and it had been believed that things were safe now…
So for a witch’s residence to suddenly be discovered—
“Thus, the world of magic reached a conclusion. A very small number of witches must, without a doubt, still be alive somewhere in the world, concealing themselves.”
That was why magic schools still did not omit witches from the curriculum.
Because no one knew when, where, or how someone might come face-to-face with one.
“F-Class through A-Class are known to be forming teams. However, you will act individually, and your target will not be an ordinary dark magic user’s lair, but the hideout of a special dark magic user.”
As expected, Lee Hanwol hadn’t brought up that earlier story for no reason. Anyone could have guessed that, being S-Class, they would be searching for a special dark magic user hideout.
“The results of this training will be reflected in your practical assessment grade, so do your best. That is all.”
The moment he finished speaking, Lee Hanwol’s form blurred and disappeared.
In an instant, silence fell over the forest.
The S-Class students glanced briefly at one another, then scattered in all directions without exchanging a single word.
Ma Yuseong swept an interested gaze over the forest, then chased after Hae Wonryang, who had set off first.
Eizel and Hong Biyeon met each other’s eyes, flinched in surprise at the same time, looked away, and entered the forest in opposite directions.
Pung Harang stayed behind until the very end, observing the students’ routes. There was no benefit in overlapping paths, and he intended to remember the locations of the students who looked fastest so he could decide on his own search line.
As he did, he glanced in the direction where Flame was standing.
She seemed burdened by some concern, unable to step forward easily, simply standing there and staring into the woods.
Then she trotted over to Baek Yuseol, who was standing there absentmindedly yawning, and whispered something in his ear.
He tried not to pay attention.
He had to survey the terrain, sense traces of mana, think of the best possible place a dark magic user might hide, and analyze the positions and routes of the S-Class cadets—
He had to find the dark magic user hideout faster than anyone else…
“…Really?”
Baek Yuseol’s voice.
“Heheh. I’m telling you, it’s true.”
Flame’s excited voice.
Soon the two of them disappeared into the forest together, and Pung Harang, who had focused all his attention in that direction, finally gave in and began walking after them.
‘…This direction is the most efficient one. I’m going this way because I can definitely find a dark magic user’s hideout here. There are only seven routes you can enter through anyway, and I just happened to choose the same direction as them with a one-in-seven probability.’
Repeating that self-suggestion over and over in his mind, Pung Harang quietly but quickly walked after the place Baek Yuseol and Flame had gone.
He had absolutely no understanding of why he was doing that.
