Chapter 154 – 26. One Fine Day in October (1)
It was a morning like no other.
When you open your eyes, you can see sky blue hair and milky skin.
It looks like he is breathing quietly, as if he is still wandering in the land of dreams.
After feeling the soft skin to the fullest and hugging it lightly, I got up from the bed.
When I came out to the living room, Hayul, who got up first, greeted me.
She is wearing a white shirt with a mug in her hand.
As if she wasn’t wearing a pair of undergarments, pink bumps peeked out through the thin fabric.
“Are you up early? Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Uh, thank you.”
She was handed a warm mug of freshly brewed black coffee.
Perhaps because it is the time when autumn is in full swing, the steam rising up is exceptionally cozy.
Unlike me, Ha-yul, who has flame-type abilities, always maintains a moderately warm body temperature.
That’s why you can wear just one shirt without any problems in the morning air, which is getting a little chilly.
“Didn’t you say you would stop by on the way today and go to school together?”
“I wonder if it will always be like that in the future. Given the situation these days, we can’t leave Juha alone. Please understand.”
“Yeah, I have a big heart! Of course you can understand such a thing. Would you like to come and check it out? How spacious it is…”
Hayul puts the mug she was holding down on her table and spreads her arms.
Her unspoken eyes were shooting at me asking for a quick hug.
He hurriedly approached her and hugged her in order to appease her jealousy of Ha-yul, whom she had become accustomed to.
“Yes, yes, yes…”
Her body, about a handful smaller than mine, fits completely into her arms.
Regardless of my will, her heart beats faster at the strange sensation of her skin touching with a thin piece of clothing in between.
She closed her eyes and felt Ha Yul’s sweet body odor to the fullest.
Knowing that there would be no more peaceful mornings the moment the brief peace, like the eye of a storm, was shattered, she wanted to enjoy this moment for as long as possible.
“Who is Seol-ah? Is she still sleeping?”
“Uh, I guess I’ll wake up around noon. I’ll have to stay at home anyway, but I think I can just let her sleep some more.”
Senior Seol-ah doesn’t go to school anymore.
To be precise, she was denied going to school for the time being by the academy.
It is a fact that I only recently learned about, but it seems that she has recently been stigmatized as a dangerous person by the government due to an accident in which her ability was manifested early when her senior was young.
She didn’t show it, but the senior seemed hurt quite a bit.
Her face, which was originally expressionless, seemed to have hardened more recently.
Even late at night, when she entangled her body and shared her thoughts, she was able to realize that even though she let out her moan full of pleasure, there was always a hint of lethargy in it.
‘Jihoo… What should I do…? I don’t know, I really don’t know…’
When she showed her weak side, which was not like her senior, her heart seemed to thump and sink.
Her mind was complicated.
So many different changes have taken place in the short bird that the moon changes.
Of course, the fact that Seol-ah became unemployed by half force was an important event, but there were also many major events that were much bigger than that and could affect her future development.
For example, with the consent of her master, she confided her secrets to other heroines.
Juha herself didn’t seem too happy to reveal that she was half-man, half-horse, but she had no choice but to prepare for what would happen next.
Even if Sagna originally knew, it took a lot of effort to tell people who were not directly involved in the past incident, such as Ha-yul, Seol-ah, or Jeong Ye-won, about Juha’s identity and convince them.
Still, the reason he could never give up was to protect Juha, who was most easily exposed to danger, from as many angles as possible.
“Let’s skip breakfast and go quickly. If we go to school on time, I think people will flock to see the monkeys again like last time.”
“Okay. My watch over there on the table.”
She received an antique-looking pocket watch from Ha Yul and pressed the button on the top of her hand twice.
The hands of the clock advance toward the number two with a click— a mechanical sound.
It was only then that her hazy mind seemed to clear up a little.
Distortion Watch.
When Sanya handed it over, I didn’t mention the name, so I gave it my own.
This watch, which has an unwritten performance of ‘spreading a distortion field that destroys all surrounding magic except the owner’, has unintentionally become a necessity for Seo Ju-ha.
…Because the law to hunt out demons was finally passed a few days ago.
They had already walked too far to cool down their resentment towards the demons.
That’s why people wanted to freely express their disgust, even if it meant restricting and suppressing the basic rights of the majority of Awakeners.
In the end, society accepted the opinion of the majority and filled the chains on the awakened people who were a quantitative minority.
“Oh, before we leave, there are apples in the refrigerator, so let’s take one of them. I think I bought a bottle of yogurt the other day to take care of you… Take a look.”
“Um… I found it. Should I take it with me?”
“If you want to eat.”
It was easy to become a spectacle of the general public while eating breakfast leisurely.
They surround the magic power meter installed at the main gate of the academy and spread groundless rumors every time a measurement is made.
Until last week, the eyes that had been looking at the awakened people with half envy and half fear suddenly changed to those of a person seeking provocative gossip.
I could see why the saying that humans are scarier than monsters came about.
“You’ve got everything…? Shall we start soon?”
“Yeah, Juha seems to be getting ready to go out too. It would be perfect if we go and pick it up by now.”
We left the house carefully so as not to wake Seol-ah.
As soon as I came out into the narrow street, a cool breeze brushed my cheeks.
The air was colder today.
“Let’s hold hands.”
“Huh? Uh, uh…”
You show a lot of jealousy, but at times like this, you become cute again.
When she first holds out her hand, he coyly wiggles her fingers and interlocks them.
Hayul’s hand was still warm.
“I came home late yesterday. Did anything happen in the evening?”
“I just did something… Someone else came from the place where I was dealing with that monster or something, so I pretended not to be there and stayed still. I don’t think there was anything else besides that.”
“If I send a text message saying I’ll be late in the future, do it that way. It’ll be a headache if I see your face and get caught up in it.”
“Yeah, actually I didn’t like them either.”
He added that and smiled brightly.
It was fortunate.
No matter how cold the winter, she will remain a flame.
I don’t think you need to worry.
After talking about this and that, I was already in front of Juha’s house.
Juha, wearing a uniform and coat, probably had come out beforehand, waving his hand and welcoming us.
“Goodbye Jihoo! Hello Hayul too!”
“You’re full of energy today.”
“Hehe… It’s nice to see you from the morning.”
For the time being, I always planned to go to school with the three of us like this.
If it wasn’t for the distortion field of the clock, the half-human, half-horse race would inevitably get caught in the measuring device.
In fact, if you dare to think of another method, there is a way to bypass the front gate with an ability such as ‘Shadow Movement’… But if that is repeated eventually, it will be caught.
The process of measuring magic power itself was simply checking the amount of magic power surrounding the essence, so there was no problem, but as always, the public eye was a problem.
What if a troublesome, persistent person found Juha’s face on the way home from school?
What if someone you didn’t see when you went to school sees you coming out of the academy and reports it right away?
I don’t want to imagine the end of such a terrible family, but you can know that the end won’t be very good.
“Did you meet the professor well yesterday? You seem very tired these days. Are you okay?”
Joo-ha threw the hwadu first, as if the situation of walking without saying anything was awkward.
However, the reaction of Ha Yul, who was listening quietly by the side, was unusual.
“Did you go out to see the professor yesterday?”
“Uh… Didn’t I tell you?”
“Hey, Jihoo Lee…”
I guess I forgot to tell you.
There is a strange feeling of heat in Hayul’s hand, which is holding my arm tightly.
It’s just halfway between hot and warm, a temperature that’s a bit ambiguous to say it’s hot, but it’s a temperature that doesn’t seem to be fine even if you keep touching it… It was a needlessly perfect temperature control.
“Sorry, sorry! Ah, ugh…”
“I was worried because you didn’t say what you were going to do, you idiot.”
Ha Yul sticks out her lips and glares at me with affectionate eyes.
Ha-yul is also cute when he gets angry.
“Sorry, Ha Yul… I should have told you instead.”
“No! Why are you apologizing, he did everything wrong.”
“I’ll remember and tell you from now on… Huh? Let go of your anger just once.”
“It’s okay, so do well in the future.”
When he begged for forgiveness, his expression relaxed a little.
…It wasn’t really intentional, but somehow things got twisted.
Lately, I haven’t had time to meet Siana because she’s been so busy, so I barely had time last night until last night, but I think I forgot to tell Ha Yul because I was contacted in such a hurry.
“Everyone is here. Uh… But there are more people than I thought.”
In front of the main gate, more people than yesterday surrounded the entrance in a circle. I thought I went to school early, but after hearing rumors, I wonder if it was more crowded.
No, at least they didn’t look like ordinary people, judging from the cameras, small recorders, and all sorts of equipment.
“Reporters…? Why do reporters come here?”
“Could someone be caught?”
Baek-gak said he was not with them, so rather than standing still, I approached a reporter with a benign appearance who was standing nearby and asked a question.
Fortunately, he answered me kindly even as he constantly glanced at me to see who was entering the front door, to see if he was not that picky type of person.
“I heard that a student single-handedly wiped out the Demons unit last night? It seems that they were trying to raid a facility near the academy, but they happened to be passing by and found camouflaged Demons and wiped them out. That’s right… How did the Demons detect the detector? Regardless of whether or not they passed, it is possible for a student alone to defeat more than 10 demons.”
“Have you ever come up with an impression?”
“Well… First of all, there are eyewitness accounts of him holding a long sword with gray hair. Oh, there were also reports that he exploded by blowing something like wind from his hand. But are you a student here too? If you hear me say something, let me know. “
“I don’t have a lot of friends, so I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s rude to you guys to surround the front door like this, but what?”
Journalists are rare in this day and age.
I hurriedly greeted the reporter and returned to where Hayul and Juha were waiting.
I said I don’t know, but in fact I can roughly guess who did it.
‘Goryushin, it’s you.’
Gray hair, long sword held tightly.
The explosion from the hand is probably the ability replicated after defeating Xian.
But to defeat more than 10 demons alone.
Idiots, with the exception of Ellis, would inevitably exceed the average Awakener in combat ability, but did the defeat in the last raid actually promote Ryu Shin-yi’s growth?
Considering the scale of the enemies Goryushin defeated, it seems that he is much stronger now than Goryushin in the original work around this time.
“What’s the deal?”
“One of the academy students must have stopped the demons from attacking last night.
Ha Yul and Ju Ha nodded in agreement.
We walked straight through the crowd of reporters to right in front of the front door.
An appropriately sized container resembling a spaceship’s vacuum chamber was blocking the original entrance.
“Here’s the clock.”
“Thank you… Jihoo.”
Before entering the chamber, I handed the pocket watch to Juha.
As the rule is for one person to enter at a time, there is an unavoidable gap like this for a while.
Juha took the watch, put it in his arms, opened the chamber door, and went inside.
Naturally.
Take a step.
Fool the meter with the distortion field, fool the supervisor with the gait.
Beep-!
[This is normal.]
Juha made a relieved expression from the other side of the glass-blocked chamber at the insipid passing sound.
After Ha Yul and I all passed, Ju Ha carefully took out the watch and handed it over.
“Phew… I’m glad. I’m afraid I’ll get caught every time I pass by.”
“Sagna gave it to you, so don’t worry too much. Take a deep breath and calm down.”
“Ugh… I’m sorry I kept bothering you.”
Fortunately, Zhu Ha calmed down quickly.
Thanks to Hayul warming up the chilly air around us, we were able to enter the campus without shivering from the autumn wind.
Such a precarious daily life continues today.
I’m still not sure what awaits me at the end of this peace.
We just quietly live in a world like a powder keg on the verge of an explosion.
Until the wick burns out.
