Chapter 52 – Even If My Body Grew Smaller, My Mind Is The Same!

The mood.

The mood was an invisible psychological atmosphere of sorts which formed through intimacy, connection, and people’s personalities.

It did not change in an instant. If the mood between people suddenly changed, it meant something happened between them.

Just like how there was an awkward mood between a male and female employee who disappeared after a company dinner.

The fact that there was a mood change between people meant that an incident had taken place.

Huh…?

Hayeon dealt with the cannibals whose skin looked like it melted away.

She used her ability to make the white moonflower float in the air.

She wanted to quickly return to where Sijoon was.

The smaller Sijoon made her recall memories of the past and he was so cute she wanted to bite him.

Sijoon had been adored a lot for how absolutely cute he looked when he was young. He could even be mistaken as a girl.

Seeing him like that now made him even cuter.

Hayeon wanted to capture that appearance of his in her memory a little more.

“Hehe… I’m going to coddle Sijoon…”

He was so cute to the point it made her drool.

It had been so long since she saw Sijoon’s younger self so she was full of expectation.

Unlike Seolha, her motive wasn’t his adolescent appearance. It was because she liked Sijoon that she also liked his younger appearance.

Hayeon liked him no matter what he looked like, and she had never forgotten about his kidnapping ever since it happened. 

And so, Hayeon, who became slightly smaller, dashed her way towards Sijoon.

How much younger had he become?

How long would that appearance last?

She was thinking that without a single worry. 

As soon as she arrived, she saw Sijoon, who grew even smaller and yelled, “Sijoon! I’m back…!”

Seolha did not show any signs of surprise, like she knew Hayeon was coming.

Sijoon looked at the flower while welcoming Hayeon.

But there was a subtle air in between them.

The mood.

It was a very subtle mood.

The cold glint that Seolha had in her eyes when she looked at Sijoon had vanished, and she was looking at him a bit fondly.

And Sijoon was slightly awkward while looking at Seolha.

Could this be a woman’s intuition?

Or the intuition of a childhood friend?

Hayeon was convinced that something had happened between them for this kind of mood to form.

What did Seolha do to Sijoon?

Or what did Sijoon do to Seolha?

Hayeon had such thoughts as her insides boiled.

Sijoon, who vowed he wouldn’t cheat, broke his promise in just a day,

She barely managed to contain her anger as she asked him, “The mood between you two has changed a bit…?”

Hayeon sounded sure of it, which made Sijoon fluster.

 *** 

What should I do…?

Hayeon was positive that something happened between us. On top of that, this was the very next day after I promised her I wouldn’t cheat.

I recalled the past when I didn’t keep my promise with her.

“…Why didn’t you keep your promise?“

Back then, I was a middle school student.

I did not attend elementary school so it was my first time going to school.

Hayeon said there could be mean kids, so she told me if someone picked on me, to remember the kid’s name and tell it to her.

“You have to, okay? You must! It’s a promise!”

Among the people I knew, Hayeon hated broken promises the most.

I wondered if she got her personality because I always broke promises first.

It was a hassle, but I had no choice but to reply with an okay.

And up until the beginning of the semester, I uncharacteristically kept that promise faithfully.

But after school during detention cleaning, when I didn’t tell her about the conversation I had with the girl who cleaned with me, Hayeon, who watched that happen, got angry that I broke our promise.

“Han Sijoon. Are you breaking your promise too…?”

Hayeon, who didn’t have that strong of a mentality, spilled tears as she questioned me.

The situation was too serious to say that she was sulking, but ambiguous to say that she was mad.

I remembered the times of how hard it was to placate her and broke into a cold sweat since I broke my promise with her.

 “W…What are you talking about? Nothing happened.”

“…Sijoon. You’ve gotten better at lying.”

Hayeon smirked as if to say I shouldn’t lie.

She saw through my lies, but having faith in me, she turned the interrogation to Seolha.

“Lee Seolha. What did you do to Sijoon?”

Was I excluded from the list of suspects?

In actuality, I didn’t do anything to Seolha, so I didn’t cheat on her.

I had just opened my mouth and the food was handed to me.

Seolha’s lip twitched as if she wanted to say something instinctively. But she maintained her reason to the best of her ability as she said, “…Nothing happened though.”

“…Really? Then why does Sijoon’s arms have your smell? Isn’t that weird?”

“…Yeah, that’s interesting, isn’t it?”

There’s nothing I need to say to you at all.

She basically said to which Hayeon’s eyebrow twitched at her strong defense.

She looked like she was holding back her anger.

It felt like the night before a storm with the coldness hovering in the air just before a fight broke out.

I decided to prevent the fight in the best way possible in this situation.

“Hayeon. Why don’t we clear the gate first?”

“…You. Just wait later.”

Hayeon said, then turned her attention to the white flower she brought.

In the meantime, Seolha expressed her regret as she mouthed to me, “Noona will see you later.”

Yeah.

I’ll have to see you later.

It didn’t seem like Hayeon saw what Seolha did, she silently shoved the white flower at me.

It was a moonflower with the power of white moonlight.

By destroying this, the gate would be cleared.

Before anyone could get hurt due to the delay, I decided to destroy the white flower.

I-It’s…freaking heavy…

I took out the training pistol that the academy provided from my waist.

It was mandatory for cadets to carry weapons for self-defense when they went out since who knows what could happen.

Episode 2 is over now.

I grabbed the pistol with both of my shaky hands and shot a bullet imbued with mana at the flower.

Bang!

The gunshot echoed throughout the ruined city, and I could hear the cannibals who heard that sound running toward us.

But they were creatures whose existence vanished without the moonlight.

After decades of barely surviving by consuming people so that they would not get younger, they began to crumble into ashes.

I held zero sympathy for those cannibals.

If you were born as a human, you should live as one.

How could beings that consumed humans live as one?

Although they did eat people in order to prolong their lives, that was not what human beings did.

It’s much better to prolong your life by picking up girls.

Even so, I was a man with common morals, unlike those cannibals.

“Look at that! Sijoon! The moon is breaking apart!”

Hayeon hugged my smaller body from behind as she pointed to the sky.

There, the moon, which had been boring down at us, was breaking apart into two pieces.

Hayeon and I watched it as we appreciated the world’s end from within the gate.

“Hayeon.”

“What?”

“I just wanted to call you.”

The moon broke apart, losing its shape as it disappeared.

If I didn’t act and move properly, V. AGE’s world was also going to collapse just like this.

I thought about that as I captured the destroyed world with my eyes.

 ***

On TV, a beautiful announcer was explaining the incident pertaining to the A-Rank gate. 

–Yesterday, the gate outbreak in Jeonju Hanok Village caused social anxiety to increase dramatically…

When Jeonju Hanok Village with a gate emergence rate of 0% experienced a gate crisis, society was engulfed with anxiety.

There were voices of concern pointing out that a gate could emerge in the cities that they lived in.

While it was fortunate there were no fatalities, was it a good thing that there were no deaths among those who got swept up in the gate?

Because I cleared the gate relatively quickly, students only suffered minor injuries to the cannibal attacks or had side effects of getting younger.

The voices of anxiety were not as loud as I expected.

As for the villains… I think we’re okay for now.

One of the reasons why I found episode 2 important was the emergence of villains. Villains grew by feeding on the citizens’ worries, which set the stage to further empower them.

If 60 students at the academy died in episode 2, a large number of Named villains would appear in the next episode.

It went the way Black Dawn wanted to for their scenario.

I was relieved to prevent such a situation from happening.

Well, it should be okay for now.

I pressed the power button on the remote control with my hand which had grown smaller.

I had less strength, so I had to apply more than usual.

“Haa…”

When will my body return to normal?

The academy also decided that we could not train with our bodies like this, so they gave students a short break until their bodies returned to normal.

“Han Sijoon, Yoo Hayeon, Lee Seolha. Thank you. Thanks to you three, we were able to minimize the damages.”

As for us, who minimized the damages by clearing the gate, we were granted appropriate gratitude and compensation.

It was a very good development.

But I wasn’t in that great of a mood.

In the dorm room where I laid down on the bed and looked to the side, I saw Hana‘s reddening face.

She was desperately trying to hold back her laughter.

“P…Pfft…”

“Don’t laugh…”

Hana had been grinning like she couldn’t contain herself ever since she saw the smaller me.

She looked at me and smiled.

“Sijoon is smaller than me! Hehe! You’re like a rabbit!”

That’s right.

My body had reversed to that of an elementary school student, and I was smaller than Hana.

She was staring at me while saying that I was like a rabbit.

 “Haha…”

Is this a dream or reality?

Even though my body was smaller, my mind remained the same.

After the field trip was over, I was in a state where I was smaller than Ban Hana.

That was how I started my academy dorm life while my body was returning to normal.