"Alright, let's start the first game~~"
The announcer, Guseul, brimmed with excitement, her voice filling the hall.
Her voice was so powerful that the students who had been distracted suddenly paid attention to her.
"Staaarting now!"
Oooooh-
Joy and applause erupted. Rhythmic background music played, setting the mood.
The sound system was so good that it made you want to dance.
"Team 8, fighting!"
Guseul giggled at the bold cheers from some team members and stretched her hand towards Team 8, holding the script in her other hand.
"Hehe~ Great cheering! 100 points extra for Team 8!"
Wowwww!
Team 8 clapped and cheered. Other teams began shouting their own cheers in response.
"Team 2 ooo!"
"Team 4, fighting!!!"
"Ah, that's so typical! It would be better if the cheers were louder~"
A chuckle escaped at her playful remark.
Though not a professional, she seemed like an experienced entertainer.
After each cheer, the atmosphere grew more heated.
"We should try to get some points in this game, right!"
"It's a matter of snacks and drinks. Everyone, shout louder! Louder!"
The mood, starting to ride this wave, was too lively to cool down.
'The problem is… how to solve this.'
A movie question. Obviously, it was not my major.
The only movies I had watched were old ones shown for free in the hospital room and 'Go, go. Freakyure vs Tree Ranger' with Cheondo, who loved children's cartoons to the bone.
"Anyone good with movies?"
"Umm… I've only seen popular ones. Not confident."
"What about Dallae?"
Startled when her name was called, Jin Dallae trembled.
Trying to steady her quivering lips, she weakly shook her head.
"I'll try my best…"
"You two are our hope. Sansuyu and I have no idea."
I openly admitted my lack of confidence.
Sooyoung, surprised by my words, came closer and whispered.
"...Are you okay?"
"Okay?"
"Is it really okay for you to talk casually with Sansuyu?"
She seemed more shocked about my talking to Sansuyu than my lack of movie knowledge.
'I thought she was glancing at Sansuyu. So, she was thinking about that.'
At El Academy, especially the Korean branch, Sansuyu was known for being aloof and not allowing anyone close.
She probably wouldn't have even talked to a commoner like me.
I had never even thought of approaching her with that mindset.
"Why can't I talk to her if I can talk to you?"
"I'm just a minor noble… Are you really okay with that?"
"We're close. And I don't care about that."
It seemed a bit strange now that I thought about it.
Normally, nobles tried to impress high-ranking nobles, but that wasn't the case with Sansuyu.
Even Dallae, in a similar situation, easily made friends.
I had to change this somehow.
That's why I put Sansuyu on my team.
I grabbed the cheek of Sansuyu, who was sitting next to me.
Her cheeks stretched like sticky rice cake, always a delight to touch.
"…What are you doing?"
Sooyoung, watching us, turned pale and couldn't even close her mouth.
Her white face looked worried about me, and she seemed terrified, as if she might be the next victim.
'If she wants to make friends that much, I should help.'
I kept playing with Sansuyu's squishy cheeks.
Sansuyu had trouble making friends because the students had such a strong image of her.
"We should cheer, too."
"Huh?"
"On three, we'll shout 'Team 10, fighting!' loudly."
"Do we have to cheer?"
"Just do it together."
"...Together. Okay, I'll try."
Nodding.
With a somewhat uncertain expression, Sansuyu brought her delicate hands together and raised them to her mouth.
It seemed she thought she could manage it since she wasn't alone.
But, of course, I wasn't going to shout properly.
3, 2, 1.
"Team 10, fight-!"
Hearing Sansuyu's high-pitched voice for the first time,
Her unexpectedly cute voice pierced through the students' noise and stuck out like a rabbit's ear from a hole.
-Eh?
Everyone turned their heads to see the soft voice as if they were watching a tender rabbit.
"Teeing…?"
Her voice fell as she sensed something was off. Sansuyu's gaze focused entirely on me.
The rabbit, sensing the gaze, jumped back into its hole in surprise.
Betrayal colored her earnest face.
"Siheon."
"Sorry."
"You said we'd do it together."
"Really sorry."
"… I'm mad."
Her lips pouted as she gently tapped my shoulder.
That seemed like a big step forward for Sansuyu.
But since she didn't look bad now, I decided to just leave her be.
Turning to look at Sooyoung, she was giving me a bewildered smile.
"How's that?"
"…Tell me later how you became friends."
I would tell her, many times, together with Sansuyu.
If it was for making friends for her, I would die a hundred times for it.
"Team 10, fighting!!!"
Then, a loud voice erupted from right beside us.
An earnest cheer, delivered with all the force of the belly, reached all the way to the end.
Guseul burst into laughter, gesturing towards us.
"Puhaha. Team 10~! Give them 100 points extra!"
"Hey, that's too biased!"
"If you shout like that, you get points, pffft. I'm not taking objections."
Boos rained down, but they weren't genuinely meant.
Sansuyu's chick-like voice silenced everyone, and Jin Dallae followed up, unexpectedly earning us a portion of the points.
But why all of a sudden?
Looking at Dallae, she was rubbing her heart with her eyes tightly shut.
"… It's good to have many points."
"Ye, yeah. Well done."
Was it my imagination, or did the corners of her mouth rise for a moment?
As time passed, the movie quiz began.
The first to pop up was an acronym quiz.
-TRLD
As soon as the consonants were revealed, someone from the front raised their hand first.
"Correct! Tree Land!"
Guseul, forming a large circle with her hands, shouted loudly.
"Ding-dong-deng! The first question was indeed easy, right? The passionate love~ The intense passion! The romantic musical movie Tree Land!"
Musical sounds from a famous musical flowed from the large speakers, seemingly familiar.
"Ah darn, I knew it."
Seeing Sooyoung slap her knee it must be really famous.
Of course, I didn't know. How could I?
The people of this world all have such quirky naming senses that it's utterly unpredictable to me.
Why would a romance musical movie involve a tree? These people really need to get hit by a tree to stop using it in titles.
'At least I've seen one.'
With that thought, I focused all my attention.
The following questions were similar.
"Correct! Good Wood, Bad Wood, Strange Wood!"
It started with a story about three trees.
"Disney Mermaid Tree!"
No one would have thought of a hybrid of human, tree, and fish.
"I want to eat your Pitcher!"
Now, they were even talking about eating the digestive organ of a carnivorous plant.
"Kekeke, this is crazy."
Maybe watching Freakyure would be better.
The Tree Rangers, the enemies in the show, were impressively categorized by tree types, and their transformations looked grand.
Even that Pitcher-something movie Guseul mentioned was so moving she pretended to wipe away tears. It's insane.
Now I understand why Cheondo's taste is limited to that genre.
"But still…"
Surprisingly, Kim Sooyoung and Jin Dallae were doing well.
They said they only knew the famous ones, but perhaps because the questions were about famous movies, they answered them correctly with ease.
"Kind Woodman!"
"Ding dong daeng!"
Thanks to Dallae's consecutive correct answers, our score was now 400 points.
With many teams participating, 400 points were enough to tie for second place.
Considering the first place had 500 points, we could easily take first place if we got the last question right.
"Now, the final question! This one's tough, I bet? Pffft… It's a bit racy~"
Guseul smirked mischievously, prompting laughter around her.
The last question, an adult movie, didn't pose a big problem.
"This time, it's worth 300 points!"
Flash.
The consonants displayed on the screen were quite long.
I couldn't make them out, and the students, who had been confidently answering earlier, all clammed up.
-ㄱ ㄴㅈㅇ ㄴㅁㅃㄹ : ㅈㅊㅂ ㅅㄱㅅㄱ
In the middle, there was obviously a tree.
I was sure about this one. How many times did you have to get hit to understand?
"A tree… what is it?"
Even Suyeong, our ace and the sane one, was stumped by this question.
It made no sense for twenty-year-olds, instead of AV actresses, to remember the titles of raunchy old films.
"Ah~~ too hard? Here's a picture!"
-Beep.
The screen showed a suggestive silhouette of a woman and a man.
A nine-tailed whip and rope were visible in the corner of the poster.
'If Hwangdo were here, she'd have guessed it right away.'
I recalled Hwangdo, who was well-versed in underground culture.
I wanted to ask, but it pricked my conscience. What to do?
"…Ah."
Just then, a soft exclamation came from beside me.
Sooyoung, who usually wouldn't notice, caught it.
"Dallae, do you know?"
"No, I don't?! I don't know??"
Jin Dallae reacted violently, vigorously shaking her head.
Sooyoung and I briefly locked eyes, noticing Dallae's slightly red ears.
'... Let's pretend we don't know.'
Somehow, without speaking, we understood each other.
Even after the photo was shown, no one could guess the answer.
"Ah~ too bad. I'll reveal the answer in 10 seconds."
The countdown began.
As the numbers decreased, Dallae next to me couldn't sit still.
Her face, dripping with guilt, suggested it was okay not to answer this one. It's normal for girls to play coy sometimes.
"...Siheon, if we get this right, do we win the prize?"
"Likely."
As I answered her question, Sansuyu hummed and looked forward.
At that moment, her words seemed to flip a switch.
Slowly, a hand went up, making Guseul exclaim in surprise.
"…Correct."
All eyes turned to us. Dallae's flushed face was quite a sight.
…Did you really have to go that far?
The shame exchanged for 300 points was not small.
But Jin Dallae,
The true competitor of this era emerged.
"That Man's Tree Root… The Assault on the Bachelor's Room."
The paragraph was exact, the title perfect.
Impressive. Bold.
As Guseul pressed the remote, the last hint, 'whip,' popped up.
"Cor, pfft… correct."
Guseul's laughter-filled voice barely echoed through the auditorium.
I was really glad the auditorium windows were curtained.
That way, Dallae's bright red face wasn't visible from afar.
"…Thanks. And be strong."
"Please, forget about it…"
I would forget.
…I had known about Dallae's tastes for a long time anyway.
"So Dallae has that kind of taste."
At Sooyoung's straightforward declaration, Jin Dallae ended up covering her face with both hands.
It became one more gossip topic among the students.
-Crackle, sizzle.
The spirit of the earth and the soul of mana resided in an ancient tree that had withstood time's test.
Once called a World Tree by someone, it was waking after a very long slumber, stirring to consciousness.
[....]
It had been burned once and had faced death.
Of course, it was as good as dead even then.
The power it possessed could not change reality.
It might rule the absolute concept of time, but now it was less than half of what it used to be.
The tree, barely maintaining consciousness, tried to connect with other World Trees but, finding no response, eventually gave up.
[...Opening my eyes means I have been resurrected.]
The World Tree of Time.
Without a physical body, the tree that barely kept its soul alive began slowly spreading its magic under its rotten roots.
[Tree King….]
It was uncertain whether it had been resurrected or moved on to the next phase.
But what it had to do was clear.
...To ensure that he never deviated from the path.
Having engraved this vow upon dying, the tree once again instilled it within itself.