110) Chapter 17. What Should I Do? (5)
It’s a very difficult matter.
What’s difficult, you ask?
Getting a friend to stop being mad.
Even if I don’t look like it now, up until elementary school I actually had quite a lot of friends.
Well—more precisely, it was closer to “friends of friends,” or “my sister’s friends,” but still, the kids around Soi treated me like a friend.
The problem was that the kids around me almost never got mad at me.
Do you know what it feels like to be doted on by elementary schoolers?
There’s no way to describe it.
It’s not that it feels bad, but it’s also not something you can genuinely enjoy. It makes you wonder if it’s okay to exist like this as a human being.
But you can’t suddenly get mad at them when they’re complimenting you with good intentions. And besides, they were elementary schoolers. You can’t get mad at an elementary schooler for something like that, right?
So I didn’t say anything and just quietly endured it, and before I knew it, I had become “a very gentle and cute kid” among them.
And gentle kids don’t really have many reasons to make anyone angry. Usually, the one who gets mad at someone who didn’t do anything is the weird one.
Because of that, I never had a reason to reconcile with anyone, and so I never learned how to soothe someone who’s angry at me.
If I had to name someone, Soi and Chae‑yi would fall into that category sometimes, but even they would calm down the moment they saw my face.
They’d get mad during the day and then crawl into my bed at night.
…….
No, phrasing it like that makes it sound weird, but when I say they came into my bed, I mean literally just that. Nothing more. They just stuck to me and slept.
……Right?
I didn’t… accidentally touch them somewhere weird in my sleep, did I? I believe I didn’t. If I had, Soi and Chae‑yi wouldn’t keep coming to sleep with me every night.
“……”
Anyway.
For now, Hyeonji is mad.
Her face is a little less red than before, but the blush is still there, and she won’t look at me directly.
What am I supposed to do?
What do I say to make her calm down?
Of course, I already apologized. I said sorry outright.
But anger doesn’t just disappear because someone says sorry once.
Yeah, I get it.
Even I know that Soi and Chae‑yi sometimes bury their faces in my chest because they like how it feels, but that’s just teasing. We’re all girls, right? Obviously guys would never do that to each other, but in light novels and stuff it happens all the time.
I don’t know if this world resembles a harem webnovel, or if harem webnovels took inspiration from real girls, but either way, that’s how things are here.
If it weren’t, Soi and Chae‑yi wouldn’t do that to me. If they saw me as a sexual target, how could they shove their faces into my chest?
But everyone has different boundaries.
Some people are stricter about that kind of thing. Especially when it’s same‑sex contact.
And besides, I did read the early parts of the story pretty consistently, so I know why Hyeonji is mad.
The author insisted on “realism” or whatever and added a heroine with lots of sexual experience, but not all heroines were like that.
Realistically speaking, Hyeonji is pretty enough that having had a boyfriend in middle school wouldn’t be strange.
But giving her the “discipline committee” trait while making her conservative only toward the protagonist and not toward an ex-boyfriend must’ve felt weird to the author.
So Hyeonji ended up being a girl with absolutely no sexual experience—someone whose mind goes completely blank when those topics come up, unable to say anything.
She nags at us because we’re all girls and she doesn’t think it’s real sexual behavior. If a boy were involved, her face would turn bright red and she wouldn’t be able to say a word.
“H‑Hyeonji?”
I carefully tried speaking to her.
“Um… sorry.”
“……”
At my words, only the tips of Hyeonji’s ears turned red as she poked at her side dishes with her chopsticks.
That seems like the opposite of what I wanted.
Should I just leave her alone until the embarrassment fades?
“Hey, it was an accident. Why are you making such a big deal out of it?”
But a girl nearby, completely unaware of my feelings, said that.
Right.
The girl whose name I still can’t remember followed us all the way to lunch and is now trying to shield me with comments like that.
“And it’s not like a boy did it. You’re all girls. Is it really something to get that mad about? She said she’s sorry.”
Th‑That also seems like the opposite of helpful.
Cold sweat trickled down my forehead.
Looking at Hyeonji’s face, she seems more embarrassed than angry. She’s probably angry too, but she’s so embarrassed that she can’t calm down.
“Um, don’t you have your own friends to eat with?”
Soi finally spoke up, unable to watch anymore.
But her words only made me sweat harder.
Soi…
No matter how annoyed you are, isn’t that a bit too harsh?
Sure, once you’re in college, eating alone becomes normal.
But in your teens, eating alone is a huge deal. It’s the age where going to lunch alone feels like death.
“Huh? Of course I do. I have lots of friends in my class.”
Right?
I let out a small sigh of relief.
If she really ate alone, the atmosphere would’ve gotten awkward.
Imagine if she said that to Nam Jinwoo.
…Just imagining it makes me dizzy.
“But today I wanted to talk to you guys for a bit. I also wanted to say thank you.”
“……”
Soi closed her mouth at the girl’s pure, innocent expression.
She looked like she had nothing to say.
“Didn’t your friends say anything?”
When Chae‑yi asked in Soi’s place, the girl shrugged.
“They told me not to suddenly approach you. When I asked why, they said you get scared of people. Isn’t that weird? You’re not a squirrel.”
I don’t get scared of people.
Well, I do get scared when someone talks to me first, but it’s not like I have some phobia where I’m scared of convenience store clerks or anything.
Though if it’s a restaurant I’ve never been to, I do prefer places with kiosks.
“You’re talking just fine now, so what’s there to worry about?”
“……”
Soi and Chae‑yi looked like they had a lot they wanted to say, but they held back.
“Oh, right. I like visiting other dorm rooms. Can I visit yours too? You all live in the same room, right? You’re always together.”
“Uh… we do live in the same room.”
“Then I’ll bring something tasty next time and visit.”
Is that… okay?
Well, I guess there’s no reason it wouldn’t be.
I was already confused because she kept saying things that didn’t match my common sense, and then her gaze shifted to Nam Jinwoo.
Before I could stop her, she spoke without hesitation.
“But I was surprised. I think the rumors are exaggerated, but you did seem a bit timid. But you even walk around with a boy.”
“……Huh?”
“Why? You two were holding hands the whole time, right? Stuck together. You’re more forward than I thought.”
Crack.
Uh.
I think I heard something strange.
Did something break?
But when I looked around, nothing seemed broken. It must’ve come from either Soi or Chae‑yi.
Meanwhile, Jinwoo’s face was red enough to explode.
Things were so urgent earlier that I didn’t notice, but yeah—holding hands with someone of the opposite sex can definitely be interpreted that way.
Since I realized Jinwoo is a girl, I stopped thinking about it entirely, but since she’s dressed as a boy, everyone else sees her as male.
“T‑That’s not it.”
Jinwoo squeezed out the courage to protest.
“Huh? It’s not?”
“No.”
Finally, Hyeonji spoke, sounding a little calmer.
“It’s related to Nam Jinwoo’s ability. Accepting someone’s power and mimicking it.”
“Oh, really?”
“Y‑Yeah. That time too… it was because of his ability.”
“Ah~ I see.”
Only then did the girl nod in understanding.
And then she went back to eating.
Wait, that’s it?
Shouldn’t she say something like “Sorry for misunderstanding”? Or at least try to smooth things over? Or is that just how kids this age talk?
Maybe. Maybe the kids around me are just more careful because of my condition.
“But.”
Before I could fully accept that, the girl suddenly spoke again.
“His ability is kind of like a succubus. Taking someone else’s power and making it his own.”
“Pfft.”
Jinwoo, who had been drinking water to calm down, ended up spraying it out.
Yeah, I figured that would happen.
If someone suddenly said that…