When you enter the club room, the first thing you notice is the smell of snacks. Then, when you turn your head, you're faced with the monster village, which takes up an entire wall.
The monster village that we had created and hosted since the beginning of our school life almost perfectly mimicked the Augran mountain in its entirety.
During our junior years, we focused on making an overall copy of the mountain and filled the monsters in accordingly. However, after some time had passed, Cory and my magics became more intricate and we were able to create a complete replica of the mountain instead of just an overall copy of it.
When Cory and I went to the Augran mountain last time, we did a wide scan of the mountains. The scan spell, which read the shape of an object and remembered it, was something that our club had created. It took an incredibly large amount of magic and a complicated circle. We spent a lot of time preparing for it.
When I laid out the formation of the circle and the formulae, Cory increased the area of the circle and poured in his magic. And with that, we were able to get a perfect mold of the Augran mountain. The strange area where black magic seemed to flow had been placed via my magic.
When we returned with the scan of the mountain and recreated our model with it, the monster villages seemed to burst with activity. The blue monster that had attacked Cory appeared, and other strong high-level monsters also appeared.
But there was something interesting happening in the monster villages these days.
I dressed up a small doll with wine-colored clothes and placed it in front of the aggressive monster from before.
The fingernail-sized monster didn't rip the doll apart. It growled for a moment, nudged the doll a few times with its nose, then began to play with it.
It was a completely different reaction compared to when it had reacted to the clothes and had torn it into shreds.
I thought that was strange and attempted something dangerous–I put my finger near the monster. The monster seemed surprised at my massive finger before hesitating and then playing around with my fingernail.
Thinking back, I had read once in an empire history book that there had been a time before the empire when humans lived in harmony with the monsters.
But after the empire had been established, the monsters had come down to attack people. That was pretty weird, right?
I turned my eyes back to the Augran mountain model. Within the model, I focused most in the area where the black magic felt the strongest. That place was extremely suspicious. That specific location near the top of the mountain. It seemed like the magic it was exuding seemed slightly less aggressive, though. The black magic from that area seemed a lot less erratic.
I felt like I needed to hurry up and look at the change for myself.
But for now, I wanted to relax for a bit.
It was nice, being busy. I wanted to take my mind off the scene that I had scene back then. Moving around like this allowed me to escape my memories, even for a while.
I stared at the monster that was currently licking my finger. It seemed like it suddenly felt itchy, because it suddenly started rubbing its back on my fingernail.
I continued to stare at the quite peaceful little monster, not a single thought running through my mind.
I was just staring at the monster when my sight began to grow hazy from tears.
Nothing special had happened.
Everything had just turned hazy before it seemed to shift. The tears that had collected around my eyes just grew big enough to drip, drip onto the ground, one at a time.
The tears that had come in ones ended up becoming dozens, and seeing the tears streaming down my face made me realize that I was crying.
"Ugh, this is so annoying… What is this…"
The tears just kept coming. I didn't know what to do, because this wasn't something that I had planned for at all. I wasn't even that sad–why was I crying?
When I stared down, I saw the monster in my hand flinching as one of my tears hit it. I stared at the monster trying to escape my tears and forced myself to laugh loudly.
Maybe it was a side-effect of the laughter, but my heart hurt even more. I began to sob.
I tried not to focus on my thoughts.
I tried, but I must've suddenly remembered things about my siblings. I was sad about the hope that I had clung to even as I died, and I was sorry that Se-yoo had to see my dead body.
The hopes and dreams that I couldn't accomplish echoed in my heart, and I hated how I had left without being able to protect my siblings.
I didn't want to hear myself crying. I tried as hard as I could to be quiet.
I bit my lips as the tears kept falling. Wow, I've been a mess since yesterday. I told myself how lame I was, but I couldn't stop crying.
After I had witnessed my own death, I tried my best to gain my usual energy. But my emotions were burrowed miles underground, and it was so low that it was about to hit the Earth's core.
I felt like I cried a lot more these days. I felt like I was growing younger. I was so much more mature in my past life. In my past life, I never shed a single tear except for when my parents had died.
In that life, I couldn't show my weak points as the oldest daughter, as the sole breadwinner of the family. I had suppressed my emotions as I lived.
But when I came here, I felt like I became a whiny, weak kid after receiving the love and care of so many people. It was hard for me to stay cold and calculating. Even if I had never thought of myself as either of those things, that is.
I was a little scared to see how those kids had changed after I died. I wanted to go back and fix everything to how it should be, but I knew that was just me being hot-headed. Moreover, it was probably impossible to begin with.
If I just tinkered with magic here and there, there was a way for me to return to my past life. Like the book said, it was possible in theory. I could attempt that, couldn't I? I shook my head. I couldn't mess with the unspoken rules of magic circles just because of my selfishness.
I needed to give up and let go of the past. No matter how scared, how guilty, how sad, how despairing it made me fell. But the more I tried to suppress it, the more I tried to hide it, the situation became harder to bear. Was it because I kept ruminating over the subject because I tried to suppress it?
Everything had passed a long time ago. I wanted to forget it, but it was so hard. I was so lame.
I breathed in and out as I tried to calm myself. It was just when I had turned around to grab a napkin.
Just then, it just had to be then, someone entered the room.
I heard the sound of the door opening, and I could hear the familiar dragging footsteps of the person entering. I didn't even need to check to know that the person who had just walked in was Cory. Moreover, Cory was the only other person who would come in to begin with.
It would've been great if I was asleep on the couch with my back facing him, but I was facing near the door so I ended up meeting Cory's gaze.
I panicked. Cory's eyes grew wide and I became even more embarrassed at his reaction. Why was it? I cursed my horrible timing.
Warm green eyes looked towards me. I rolled my eyes to avoid his gaze.
"…..uh, this is."
A brief silence passed through the club room. My brain fumbled around for an excuse.
At that moment, I noticed the onion blanket next to me. Cory had used this blanket to wrap up all of his magic items from home to bring to the club room.
I stared intently at the onion blanket before looking up and wiping away a tear.
"Ugh, my eyes are all teary."
A single tear made its way down my face in a slow, smooth motion. The tear moved so slowly that I felt more embarrassed.
It was an excuse that I had rushed to make up. It sounded stupid, even to me.
I berated myself in my head as I wiped the tear off of my face. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't face Cory. I stared at the ground.
Footsteps sounded once again. The footsteps grew louder until they stopped right in front of me. I looked up to face Cory, who was right in front of me.
Cory didn't smile like he usually did at my excuses, nor did he look angry. Cory, who had walked over to the monster village that I was sitting in front of, stared at my face before holding up his hand.
Cory wiped under my eye with his thumb. His finger felt cool.
"I don't like onions either."
"….."
"It can happen."
Cory had a gentle smile on his face. His voice was soothingly quiet. Cory was probably the only one who would play along with my stupid excuses. My tears stopped while I sniffed. Cory continued to play along.
"Shoo."
How dare you make Shushu cry?
Then, he carelessly threw the blanket onto the sofa.
When I told him that that was enough and thanked him with a smirk, Cory seemed like even he found his actions embarrassing. He rolled his eyes slightly before roughly messing with his hair.
Cory trudged towards me and leaned on a nearby wall. He still had an apple that he had from lunch in his hand, but he kept touching it. After a few more strokes of the apple in his hand, Cory began to speak.
"Wanna lean?"
Cory tapped his shoulder as he asked. He pulled up his hair into a ponytail so it wouldn't be in the way.
Cory was always a comforting person. He never stepped out of line or jumped at an opportunity. He never dug for questions, never forced an answer, and always knew the line that I wanted to keep and followed it. This was the same, ever since we were younger.
I smiled and put my head on his shoulder.
Cory seemed to think that I would actually do it, so his eyes grew slightly wide. Then, he rested his own head on mine.
Cory glanced at the onion blanket before speaking.
"It's okay to cry."
He said, after a brief silence.
Without looking at me, who was facing down on his shoulder, he just quietly said it out loud, almost as if he was saying it to me. But I knew that he was also directing his words to me.
"And you can be miserable for whatever reason."
Cory's low, husky voice carried such kind, caring words.
"If you're embarrassed, you can hold in your tears. But on the flip side, there's no reason why you can't cry."
He fished out all of the candy and chocolate wrappers in my pocket and threw them in the trash for me.
"No matter how much of a fuss you make, there's nobody here who would look down on you."
I pulled my head back up while listening to Cory's words. When I looked at him, he also turned his head to face me.
Even though I hadn't told him my current situation, I felt incredibly comforted by him. I didn't want to talk about my situation, so his actions felt comforting.
I felt like this had happened before. When I first met Cory, so before I thought we were close and I was still scared of his face, there had been a time when I had felt down, just like this. Even then, he had comforted me with carelessly kind, comforting words.
In response to Cory's words, I felt like I wanted to get it twisted. For no apparent reason.
I twisted my short, sad limbs left and right and physically twisted and contorted my body as much as I could.
With my limbs all in a tangled mess, I glanced at Cory.
"What a liar."
Cory burst into loud laughter at my response.
Cory fixed his posture into a proper sitting position as he muttered a 'You're pretty incredible,' laughter embedded here and there.
As he was fixing his posture, Cory suddenly glanced at my ear.
His eyes focused on the orange piercing that he had gifted me a long time ago.
"You're still wearing what I gave you."
"….you said to keep wearing it as much as I can."
"I did, didn't I."
Our slightly relaxed conversation felt nice. I leaned on the wall and lazily responded to Cory's words.
"But what kind of time magic is in this piercing?"
I had gotten this a long time ago, but I still had no idea what kind of magic this held. The reason behind this was that Cory had locked the piercing so that I couldn't dig through it to see what it was. This lock was so strong that I needed a lot of magic to unlock it.
Cory scratched his cheek at my question.