Just because a transfer student had arrived did not mean the teachers could openly grant her favors to help her adjust. Put another way, as long as it was not open, they could grant her a certain amount of convenience.
The fact that espers’ abilities were growing stronger with each passing day was information anyone who was in the know already knew.
For that reason, teachers who had to take charge of a student with powerful abilities usually would not accept the role unless they had a strong sense of duty, and so they generally did not make accommodations for other students.
But in the case of Lao Ha, who had transferred in this time, the circumstances were very different.
Lao Ha claimed to be from China, and her complexion and way of speaking were close enough to what one might call Chinese, but when most of the teachers at the school saw the official seal of the Lao family stamped on the documents she had submitted during the transfer process, they understood that her claim to be Chinese was no mere claim.
And they also understood that if she truly was the heir of the Lao family, then the people at this school would have to accommodate her to some extent so as not to get on her bad side.
The “Lao” family. It was a newly risen family that had begun to grow in power after espers appeared, but perhaps because it came from a country with an already enormous population, the Lao family had an unusually large number of powerful espers compared to famous esper families in other countries.
Having many powerful espers meant that the family’s authority was that much stronger.
There was no way a school would have teachers with powerful supernatural abilities, and even if it did, they would only be teachers who were weak by esper standards. If they treated the heir of the Lao family poorly, then the moment the Lao family sent even a single person, not only the teachers but all the students could be wiped out.
The nation strictly prohibited murder using supernatural abilities, but no one, including the teachers at this school, believed it would truly be able to stop even a murder committed by the heir of a famous family from another country.
Moreover, when she entered the teachers’ office, the gonryongpo she was wearing was a garment of considerable significance even in modern China, where old customs had largely disappeared, and not just anyone could wear it. There was a high chance that her claim to be an heir was no mere claim either.
Against this backdrop, the transfer student’s group was formed after much agonized deliberation by the teachers.
Yu Inna, the most popular girl; Kim Haneul, the most popular boy; Erika, the genius no one could catch up to academically; and Kim Daseul, who was rumored to have connections everywhere.
The reason these four were immediately assigned to the transfer student as her group project team was also a favor granted to her. A favor to help her adjust to school life. Or perhaps it would be fair to call it flattery.
If they continued granting favors, the students might begin to suspect the existence of such “favors,” so continuing to do so would be difficult. But doing it once or twice was easy enough.
For instance, arranging things so that the history project group would also be the same members who would go around together on the school trip at the end of May.
The teachers, who hoped that by doing such activities together, the transfer student would grow close to the school’s popular figures and blend into life here, were, for better or worse, unaware.
They did not know that because of the seat dispute on the first day, the transfer student had started off by getting on the bad side of one of the school’s popular figures, nor that a girl who regarded the transfer student as a potential romantic rival was among the very people they had paired with her.
None of the teachers could have known that the transfer student would cause trouble from her very first day, so this was an accident no one could have predicted. Nor could anyone predict what outcome that accident and the teachers’ consideration would bring about.
—Yes, even the one with insight.
Even the protagonist of this world.
And even Lao Ha, who had transferred here.
***
Time flew by in an instant, and two weeks passed. I had managed to recover this body’s supernatural ability—its blessing—and the transfer student was still isolated just like at the beginning. I still had not managed to tell Inna that the target Kim Haneul was trying to capture was none other than Yu Inna herself.
Yes, even though it felt as if I had done nothing at all, time shot forward like an arrow and did not return. During that time, it was not as if I had studied hard in preparation for the possibility that I might have to keep living in this world. In the pop quiz I took that week, I had been defeated by the other students.
“Are you… still really sick?”
I still could not forget the humiliation of Inna saying that while placing the back of her hand against my forehead. I could sense that another emotion was faintly mixed into Inna’s concern, but whatever that other emotion was, the fact that I had been defeated intellectually by people younger than me was undeniable.
Back then, while I could not believe the reality of the pop quiz results I had received here, I had no choice but to accept them. A score that shattered my heart, which had been as firm as a fortress gate. A score I could never accept.
They said grades were inevitably cruel. I had not understood the lesson all that well, but the very fact that I had received such a low score was proof that the world was brutal.
86 points.
For someone with a mind beyond the heavens like me to receive not a three-digit number, but a two-digit one—and one that began with an 8, no less. I had no room to follow the student council around and take requests at the level of volunteer work.
Even if one’s dream lay in a field unrelated to studying, there was a reason everyone studied. It was so they could survive in some other way, even if their dream could not be achieved.
I had to study even in preparation for the possibility that I might fall in love with someone, end up remaining in this world because of it, and eventually graduate. But that did not mean I could just leave alone the queen who would bring about a bad ending.
A way to avoid a bad ending while also effectively studying to overcome my shocking grades. That, too, was within the [requests].
A request that read: [Looking for a second-year senior to tutor me. I can pay a lot, so I’d like someone pretty and also the most capable among the second-years. Even if you can’t teach me well, I won’t ask for a refund or anything.]
The word “pretty,” usually used to describe a woman; the person with the best grades among the second-years, who had scored perfect marks; and someone who could see and carry out a request submitted to the student council.
In truth, that request was practically pointing at either me or the student council president, but the student council president was too busy to take on requests.
If they had known that from the start, then the request had ultimately been directed at me. I had no choice but to accept this request, even though I had no idea what intent might be hidden behind it. What I needed was not to learn something new all over again.
I needed a trigger to remind me of the things I had forgotten. Teaching someone else while recalling what I had learned before was also a good method.
And so what I began was a tutoring part-time job. I was not a university student who could freely set aside spare time,
so from my current position, I guessed that the reason someone a year below me would ask for tutoring was because they were someone connected to “me” to some extent. I went there tense, wondering if perhaps it was a request from someone connected to the queen of the school.
Part of that thought was mistaken, though. It was true that the request had been made by someone connected to me, but the client was not someone connected to the queen.
[So what’s next?]
Because the woman I had met at that coffee shop, the non-capturable heroine who said she was my junior, was waiting in front of a three-story house in a form smaller than when I had met her then.
Had she said that she had been tall back when we met at the coffee shop because she had been amplifying her body itself with augmentation? The height that had reached 180 centimeters had shrunk to 160 centimeters when I met her again, and the two melons that had made it impossible for me not to look up at her had been reduced to the size of apples.
Even so, the hair like strands of seaweed dragging along the floor, which made her impossible to forget, and her hollow eyes had not changed, so I could immediately accept that this girl was indeed the Kana I had met back then.
“It’s simple. Trigonometric inequalities aren’t that different from solving trigonometric equations.”
The tutoring that began like that was still continuing smoothly even now, a week later.
There was the difficulty that my student could not speak and had to write in a sketchbook, but in a lesson that lasted about an hour and a half, if Kana slowed down our progress because of her own issues, that was her fault, not mine.
The girl in front of me nodded vigorously and, at the same time, picked up a cookie from the table and stuffed it into my mouth. A crisp, savory-tasting cookie.
Since Kana kept interfering like this and preventing the lesson from progressing, I could not move through the material all that quickly.
The work of reviving my memories related to studying was also proceeding slowly, so even if she did not interfere, the pace would probably have been slow.
I did not think I had learned trigonometric functions in my first year, but since middle school lasted that much longer here, the curriculum itself was probably several years ahead of what I knew.
…Or perhaps she had realized the situation I was in, barely managing to teach the lesson, and was deliberately interfering to keep the lesson from moving forward.
[Unni, there’s something I’m curious about. Where are you going for the school trip?]
She had spoken casually to me before, but from the moment she started receiving tutoring, she wrote politely in her sketchbook. With only a one-year age difference, and since they were just words written in a sketchbook, I would not have cared at all if she spoke casually, but Kana did not listen when I told her it was fine.
…Nor did she listen when I told her not to call me unni.
“I don’t know. I’m not interested.”
One of the most important events in school life.
The school trip.
I had only just realized that it would be starting soon after hearing about it from this girl a moment ago.
“Anyway, let’s continue the lesson.”