Ch.92Chapter 16. Intimacy (1)

Regret was unavoidable, but for now, I needed to focus on fixing the situation.

Somehow it felt like my attempts to fix things were actually creating more problems, but if I didn’t create those problems, nothing would get fixed. It was a circular dilemma.

As soon as we woke up in the morning, we turned on the radio.

Someone always sat beside it, listening to the content day and night. We couldn’t afford to miss any news.

It wasn’t particularly difficult. James and Cherry were busy modifying the building’s interior structure. They could just listen to the radio while working.

We tended to the fields, checked if the meat had spoiled, and measured how much it had grown.

Our daily routine was established. These magical girls weren’t the type to do nothing just because they had nothing specific to do.

As the weather warmed up, we cleared the weeds growing around us and removed large stones and trash from the paths.

We didn’t go so far as to clean up inside completely collapsed abandoned houses, but at least we wouldn’t trip over stones while wandering around at night.

Even the house we were staying in was starting to look like a place where “people could actually live.”

We patched up broken parts of the walls with magic and equipment, and cleaned away the dust to make everything neat. We couldn’t paint it because we didn’t have any paint.

With five out of six people working so diligently, how could I just sit around doing nothing?

So I ended up doing various tasks with Hayun.

“Haah.”

A drop of sweat rolled down Hayun’s nape as she straightened her back after bending over to work, taking a moment to catch her breath.

Her face glistened with reflected sunlight.

And I found myself thinking she looked pretty.

“…”

Well, regardless of my thoughts, Hayun is pretty. She was described as an incredible beauty in the webtoon, and in reality, she was the most popular among the magical girls.

There were quite a few merchandise items like bromides and such. I’m not sure if they’re still being produced and sold now.

If production had stopped, would the prices go up or down? I had a few items I’d received directly from Hayun stored in the orphanage warehouse.

I kept them there because Jihye would probably burst out laughing if I hung them in my room… Well, at least they weren’t damaged during the recent attack.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Noticing my blank stare, Hayun asked with a smile.

“Nothing, it’s nothing.”

The person I sleep pressed against every night in the same tent.

No, even if it weren’t in a tent, I felt like Hayun would be that way. There was already a precedent.

I don’t know why she does it. To be honest, it makes me agonize every night.

She probably sticks close because she thinks of me as a close friend.

But even between close friends of the same gender, do they really stick that close while sleeping?

Suddenly, I remembered what Hayun had said about “yuri.”

In this world too, the genre “yuri” is called “yuri.” Of course I checked. It’s not like I don’t have any hobbies in this world, and I occasionally read web novels and webtoons.

I doubt Hayun would know about such content. She doesn’t have much knowledge in that area.

“…”

So, it probably doesn’t mean anything.

I’ve already made things worse by overthinking on my own before, so there’s no reason to misunderstand now.

She’s just a character in a webtoon within a webtoon world.

As I shook my head at that thought, Hayun tilted her head curiously.

I decided to forcibly redirect my thoughts.

Fortunately, I had something else to think about. Something that evoked complicated emotions, not just thoughts.

…I wonder how Jihye is doing.

Every time I think of Jihye’s face, I regret. Would it have been better to bring her along?

But Jihye is surely attending school properly. Forcibly bringing someone like her wouldn’t help her future.

It might seem a bit inappropriate to compare, but the magical girls do have a foundation.

Though Rose said not to worry about her, what she said wasn’t entirely wrong.

In this world, there are “people who can only fail once” and “people who can fail multiple times.” And the number of failures increases with wealth.

Jihye, living in an orphanage, is a “person who can only fail once.”

Someone who, if they fail and fall once, will never be able to get up again.

The same goes for me.

On the other hand—

No, that’s not right.

I shook my head again.

No matter what, it’s wrong to speak that way about the magical girls who came to help me.

That’s just self-serving rationalization. Who in the world would want to quit school and be stuck in this remote place?

Iris, Rose, Delphinium, Dalia.

And Hayun—

“Jieun?”

At Hayun’s voice, I turned my gaze back to her.

In the end, my thoughts returned to Hayun.

“Is something wrong?”

What could be wrong?

We’re all living together here; there’s no way I could hide anything if something were wrong.

“No, nothing’s wrong.”

“If you’re too tired, should we go inside and rest? It’s starting to get hot, isn’t it?”

It’s not that hot yet. It’s still mid-April.

“Let’s finish what we’re doing first.”

I said that and bent my waist.

Right. Let’s do what we need to do.

That way, I won’t get lost in thought.

—In the end, that day passed normally.

The government said they would conduct an audit, but the exact schedule hadn’t been set. We had no idea how long it might be delayed.

*

That night.

I walked in a different direction than usual.

Toward the forest.

More precisely, toward our water source.

Whenever I wander around the village, Hayun always follows me immediately. Then I can’t help but think about Hayun.

It’s not like I had anything specific to focus on instead, but still.

Sometimes I just want to spend time alone without thinking about anything.

…I can’t tell Hayun that. I’ve already said too much to her.

“So here you are.”

As I was leaning against a tree, listening to the trickling sound of water, a voice suddenly spoke.

“Iris.”

“Didn’t I tell you to call me Ju-a?”

“…What is it?”

“Hayun is worried.”

Her speech pattern was unusual no matter when I heard it. A speech pattern that felt foreign in Korean.

“Because I disappeared?”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes.

“Did you two fight?”

“No, nothing like that.”

She must have noticed from my expression that I felt awkward about being with Hayun.

No, actually, it’s not awkward.

At this point?

We’ve already seen too much of each other. Besides, emotions also consume energy. It’s harder to constantly dislike someone than to like them.

Especially if that person is someone you already liked.

I still feel jealousy and inferiority. But those feelings aren’t as strong as they were at first.

They can’t be.

Seeing how Hayun actively tries to keep me by her side, even giving me a name as a magical girl.

Besides, I feel that in battle, I’m no longer completely outmatched by Hayun.

If we fought, she would probably win, but still.

So while inferiority and jealousy remain—

…what I feel more now is guilt.

Guilt as the person who made bad choices from the beginning and brought things to this point.

“If you didn’t fight, there’s no reason for you to run away here.”

“It’s… nothing important.”

“Nothing important, yet you ran away?”

She’s more persistent than I expected.

But I suppose that’s like Iris. Even when I was a Combatant, I clashed with Iris constantly.

Iris used to dislike me.

It made sense for her to dislike someone who kept trying to punch her in the face. Plus, I pointed out her underwear and such.

Looking at her expression now, it doesn’t seem like she only has negative feelings.

Maybe it’s because she had her underwear pointed out in return last time.

When I didn’t answer, Iris took a spot against a nearby tree.

She leaned against it like me.

The distance between us wasn’t that close. Just about that much.

“Why don’t you come closer? We’ve even bathed together?”

Seeing her prim expression somehow made me want to provoke her.

“Hmph.”

But Iris immediately snorted and ignored my words.

It’s a bit disappointing that she’s acting this way now when she used to get flustered by every word during combat situations.

“This is ridiculous.”

“What I said?”

“What you said is ridiculous, but I don’t understand why you’re speaking with that attitude. Don’t you exercise a bit more caution in front of others?”

“…Do I?”

I think I might have.

Though we didn’t talk that often before.

Actually, my relationship with Hayun has changed in many ways. Before, I never found it difficult to speak to Hayun first.

I was a Combatant, but I planned to quit after becoming a college student.

And I thought if I could just avoid being discovered by Hayun until then, things would work out fine.

Even if we fought, I couldn’t defeat a magical girl anyway. Even the one time I achieved my goal as a “Combatant,” I never broke their arms or anything.

So I must have thought I was justified.

After being discovered, and after everything got complicated and led to this point, and after realizing that all these complications were because of my existence, I became uncomfortable.

…That’s strange.

Iris was also part of that complicated story.

So why can I talk to Iris like this?

“…Do I seem easy to deal with?”

“Shall I kill you?”

“It’s been a while since I heard that.”

I stared at Iris.

In terms of our relationship, Iris was actually the one who acted uncomfortable around me.

After seeing my true face as a Combatant, she seemed to think she’d done something wrong and stopped talking to me.

“Haven’t you been avoiding me like I made you uncomfortable? If anything, I find your attitude strange.”

“…Ugh.”

Iris closed her mouth at my words.

After a moment of silence, Iris looked at me with slightly raised eyes and carefully opened her mouth.

“Was I offensive?”

“You can say things like that too?”

“…”

“You’re not saying you’ll kill me this time.”

“Would you like me to?”

“Well, if you’re not really going to kill me, it’s up to you whether you say it or not.”

After thinking for a moment, I said:

“But that comment about me seeming easy to deal with might be true.”

Iris glared at me.

“No, I mean. You were incredibly emotional when fighting me. You were never an easy opponent. I never won against you. But… the other girls rarely showed such emotions toward a single Combatant. Usually, they just neutralized them with one punch like dealing with numerous minions and went about their business.”

Iris, who would spot me from a distance and fly straight at me to deal with me… she wasn’t easy to face back then.

Honestly, she was scary.

But at the same time, she was less scary than the other magical girls. Iris was the only one who would walk through the air or recognize me from a distance.

“How did you recognize me? I mentioned this before, but I even changed helmets.”

“…”

After staying silent for a while, Iris finally spoke.

“There are ways to recognize people.”

But she didn’t seem inclined to explain what those ways were.

I decided to let it go.

We stood there in silence for a while.

“Do you dislike it?”

“Huh? What?”

“Becoming a magical girl.”

Responding with a slightly dumbfounded voice to Iris’s sudden question, she asked me seriously.

“You’ve been like this ever since you heard about it. Do you dislike it that much?”

“What about you all? Are you okay with it?”

I stared at Iris as I spoke.

“With what?”

“Me becoming a magical girl.”

“Weren’t you already a magical girl for several months, regardless of whether you ‘became’ one or not?”

I’m surprised she thought about it that way.

Of course, the atmosphere had become a bit more friendly as we lived together. I think that’s because they felt sorry for me.

But at the same time, I thought Iris was more rigid about the concept of justice than Hayun.

In the webtoon, Iris didn’t get along well with the other magical girls besides Hayun, partly because of her uncompromising personality.

That’s why she constantly clashed with Dalia, who didn’t specialize in any one area and just maintained her position adequately.

Though the Iris and Dalia I saw directly didn’t show such open conflicts.

It’s probably awkward to fight in this special situation. After all, as magical girls, they’re both decent people.

“That’s different from this. This is…”

“What matters is your will, isn’t it?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know how you define a magical girl. But even those of us who were already magical girls weren’t chosen by some god or anything.”

“…”

“We were just fighters affiliated with the Federation. We needed hope to fight, but what we did wasn’t anything more than that.”

I blinked.

Is she feeling guilty now?

Though she didn’t show it outwardly, perhaps she’s been having doubts about her activities since she started refusing the Federation’s orders.

“No one would oppose it now. We’ve already fought together multiple times, you use magic, and you’re even a girl who transforms.”

“…Well, that’s technically accurate.”

“Besides, the justice the Federation spoke of has essentially collapsed now.”

“…”

I stared at Iris for a while.

“Iris.”

“I told you to call me Ju-a.”

Iris responded irritably to my words.

“But I’m already used to calling you Iris.”

“You called me by my name until just recently, and now you say you’re used to calling me Iris? What kind of logic is that?”

She spoke as if it was absurd.

“You called me by my name when we were dealing with the bomb.”

“…”

I closed my mouth.

I tried to say one thing but ended up hearing more than ten in return.

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

Then I nodded and said:

“Alright, Ju-a.”

“What is it?”

Her sulky expression was very like Ju-a.

Come to think of it, we’ve already fought together risking our lives. There’s no reason to go back to using nicknames now.

Usually, people use nicknames when they become closer, but anyway.

“Have you ever said that in front of the others?”

“Could I?”

I looked at Ju-a with astonishment as she asked this as if it were obvious.

“But you tell me? How long have we known each other?”

It hasn’t even been half a year yet.

“Well…”

About to answer, Ju-a’s expression became a bit strange.

She seemed to be thinking, “That’s right.”

“Maybe it’s precisely because we haven’t known each other long that I could say it.”

She continued slowly.

“…There are things you can’t say to people you’ve known for a long time and know well.”

“Ah, I think I understand that.”

I nodded as I spoke.

For some reason, Ju-a looked at my face with an expression that suggested she was getting angry. Why?

“Ah, I see. And I think I understand one more thing.”

As I stared at Ju-a, who was speaking with her chin raised, she twisted the corner of her lips upward, just like when she met me as a Combatant, and said:

“It’s because you seem easy to deal with. Can’t you say such things to someone who seems easy to deal with?”

“That would have been much better without the lame excuse at the end.”

“Lame!?”

Ju-a shouted at my words.

And I smiled a little at her face.

Somehow, that face looked like the Iris I had seen before.

Well, she is the same person.

But I hadn’t seen it recently.

“Let’s go back.”

“Wait, what did you mean by ‘lame’ just now?”

“Come to think of it, you seem to keep imitating me. Last time, you pointed at my skirt and repeated what I had said.”

“That was just returning what you did to me! And you really were only wearing panties under there!”

“…Since I was really only wearing panties, shouldn’t you have refrained from saying anything? That’s sexual harassment.”

“Sexual harassment!? Don’t you remember what you did!?”

“Hey, keep it down. We’re hiding here; what if someone hears us?”

“But you started it first…!”

It was strange.

This was the first time I’d talked with Iris ‘this way.’

Yet somehow, it didn’t feel unfamiliar.

…Well, maybe it’s because she’s the ‘Iris’ I had in mind.

Though I’m not exactly sure what kind of Iris I had in mind.

Maybe it’s because she resembles a Chihuahua? That might be why she feels familiar.