CH 18

Cory still looked shocked. I thought I understood the situation a bit more.

Cory was a magic geek. I had completely overlooked that he would be interested in this area. I had only assumed that the only people interested would be those who wanted to figure out the secrets of the underworld and force me to work for them.

I just nodded, slightly embarrassed. When I nodded, Cory’s expression hardened and he furiously walked out of the club room.

As soon as the door closed, I heard a loud crash. A girl screamed. It was quite a ruckus.

Cory returned a long time after he had left. His face when he had returned was calm as usual. The shock on his face was wiped clear and he was back to normal. The piercing I had gifted him earlier was in his ear. But it looked like he had just pierced it: blood was still flowing down his ear. His face was still calm, though.

Cory sat on the sofa, refusing to look my way. He didn’t even lay down–a sign of incredible respet from his part. Cory put his hands together and then mumbled.

“I must’ve spent my entire life’s worth of luck. Maybe I’m going to die now.”

“What?”

When I responded, Cory just said it was nothing and shook his head.

Cory just looked at me ever so often without speaking. He spent a long time just thinking about something, then said that he was going to sleep and laid down on the sofa. Then, he quickly fell asleep.

When he woke up from his nap, he blocked me on my way out as we were heading out to our afternoon classes. Then, he stared a hole into my face and opened his mouth to speak.

“Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

When I shot him a suspicious look, Cory just said, “Give me you hand,” and put his hand out. I gave him my hand.

Cory grabbed my hand, shook it a few times, then looked at his own hand.

“Yay.”

Cory looked like he was in high spirits. He gave me a ton of his snacks, candy, and chocolate to hold in my arms and headed over to his classroom.

“Shuraina, I’m so jealous of you.”

“Why would you be jealous?”

I was yawning loudly and working on my history notes during break. Rose, who was famous for being loud and talkative in the yellow class, came up to me. Rose had a bun on the top of her head and a huge red ribbon attached to it. She was a very vibrant character. I was surprised at her bun as I responded.

“That Cory is talking to you.”

Rose, who was famous for being a chatterbox, seemed to have difficulty finding conversation partners have her friends had left her one by one.

“He just looks like of scary; he’s actually a really friendly kid.”

“Cory is friendly?”

Rose looked surprised for a moment, then she wrinkled her face. I could feel a weird sense of envy and anger at her expression.

“What, you’re showing off because he likes you?”

“What do you mean, he likes me. I’m not a pet. If you’re jealous of me being friends with him, go talk to him yourself.”

Rose stared at me as if I was strange at my words.

“Shushu, Cory is really popular. People just can’t approach him because of how scary he looks. In the beginning, there were as many people vying for his attention as the prince.”

Rose’s face went red with anger. It looked like there was a bit of shame as well.

“I, I tried talking to him once but I was ignored, too. Anyway, people probably stopped approaching him because he wouldn’t respond to anybody and just had a sort of angry look on his face. He’s incredibly powerful magically, and he’s at the top of his magic class. Do you know just how many people want to be close to him? Cory is the one pushing them away. And now he looks like he’s been studying too hard, with those dark circles…….. Sigh. Now he just looks too scary to approach.”

Cory’s dark circles really were very dark. It’s true that he looked scarier because of it. He gave off a vibe of a gangster student who had flunked a grade. I knew he had a scary face, but I had never known that he was the one pushing people away. Cory, it wasn’t that you just didn’t have friends? You were popular all along? What a betrayal. I couldn’t agree with Rose’s statements. I thought it was just Cory’s embarrassed face being misunderstood.

“Shushu, let’s go to our club.”

Oh, speak of the devil. Cory was waiting outside of my classroom. He looked at me and nodded his face towards the door, telling me to come out. Rose blushed and turned away from Cory when he arrived. I didn’t realize it until Rose said it, but I did recall a lot of girls having the same reaction when they saw Cory. Excited yet afraid.

I remembered once again that my friend was one of the male main characters in a novel. I completely forgot about that because of your dark circles, glasses, and your exhausted self. Sorry, Cory.

“Rose, do you want some hints to get closer to Cory?”

Rose seemed extremely interested by that statement. Rose leaned in so she was the only one who could hear what I had to say. I was slightly taken aback at how close she shifted herself over, then tugged at her ear gently. It was the perfect distance to whisper.

Puff~

I huffed a warm breath of air into her ear.

I could hear Rose cursing at me from behind, but I just scratched at the mosquito bite on my arm.

I didn’t know any hints or opportunities to get closer to Cory. I just became friends with him by spending time with him. If we shared similar feelings, we became friends. If I took the time to worry about each and every thing about friendships, my head would burn up so fast that I would lose all my hair.

I headed out of class with Cory, who was still waiting for me outside.

“Shushu, I heard that you were going to go monster subjugating for your practical exams?”

This was about the time I was wrapping up our Augran Mountain model.

Cory sat next to me, sitting backwards on a chair with his head and arms leaning on the back of the chair. I paused my work and looked at him. Sleepy green eyes were watching me. I paused for a moment and nodded.

This was what our swordsmanship teacher had told us yesterday during class. Time had quickly passed, and we were already at the end of the semester. Vacation was right at our fingertips. Exam time had arrived. Like our morning classes, we also had exams for our afternoon classes.

Unlike our morning classes, however, our afternoon classes had practical exams.

Because of that, the swordsmanship classes also had a practical exam. Our subject was ‘monster subjugation’. We had to go to the lower areas of the Augran Mountains and fight low-level demons and monsters.

It might have sounded dangerous, but our professors and swordsmanship teachers were also participating, and our very rich school ensured our safety, so it would have been even weirder if it was dangerous.

Anyway, how did Cory know about our practical exams? Did the prince tell him?

“The magic classes are participating too.”

Oh, is that so? I nodded at Cory.

“Then we’ll see each other there too.”

“Well, yeah.”

Cory smiled when he heard that we would see each other again.

Anyway, a thought just popped up in my head. When I had first seen Cory, his smile was one of the scariest things I had ever seen, but the smile I saw just now was quite good. His sharp eyes softened and looked kind, and were pleasant and kind of sensual.

Cory was currently in the middle of his first and second year1 of middle school based off the Korean education system, so he was still tiny.

He was just slightly taller than me. He was just about my size, too.

Anyway, without that scary expression, his face was awe-worthy. I didn’t realize it, but his face was on par with the prince. I didn’t have any kind of evil intentions–this was just a fact. He was young, but he already had a sensual look to him. Was this kind of information in the novel? I tried to remember. There could have been, but I didn’t know.

Cory pointed at the Augran Mountain model with his finger and asked.

“Our club project has some kind of connection with our practical exam, right?”

I nodded at his question. I had known for a while now that our exam would be monster subjugation. So I had chosen a project that had a bit of relation to it.

But what I was planning on doing with it was still a secret. Why was it a secret? Because what I was planning on doing was completely unreasonable. But it wasn’t something completely illogical.

“I don’t know what it is, but don’t push yourself too hard. The demons these days are pretty violent.”

Saying this, Cory stroked my head once and stood up from his chair. I looked at Cory’s retreating back. On some days, Cory just let his hair down, but he had his hair up in a ponytail today.

His hair was haphazardly pulled up, and a lot of hair had already escaped his ponytail and was disheveled. The hair that had escaped was around his neck.

Cory picked up a pair of glasses that were on the floor. It seemed like it was dusty: he wiped it on his collared shirt and put on his glasses.

There probably wasn’t a single person other than Cory who threw their glasses around like that. I was just surprised that he had never broken or lost his glasses before, knowing his personality.

With his glasses on, Cory took out a few thick magic books from the shelf. Then, he brought the books back and sat back down on the chair he had vacated earlier.

He quietly opened up an attack magic book and read as I finished working on our club project. He was flipping the pages carelessly with his chin on the table. I wasn’t sure if he was actually reading or not, but his eyes seemed to be reading down the pages.

But to know that Cory was popular. You backstabber, I’m so jealous of you. In my life, the only times I found myself popular was when my friends’ puppies were around.

I watched Cory with jealous eyes, then promised myself I would stop feeling jealous of him. I had seen my reflection on the window.

Shushu, you have to admit. You already lost based on your face. My dead eyes already gave me a big fat fail. I thought about the times in my life when I had been dumped by my crushes. I remembered what my first crush had told me.

‘My father used to sell fish a while back, and I feel like your eyes kind of resemble the eyes on dead fish. Whenever I see you, I remember the fish and I don’t really like that. Sorry.’

I couldn’t not be hurt after that statement. I also had short hair as a child, so I had been dumped a few times because the other party thought I was a boy.

Cory seemed to feel my stare, so he just shifted the book slightly and looked at me, chin still on the desk. His green eyes seemed to chase me.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No, I was just thinking how cool you are.”

Hearing my words, Cory’s expression shifted into one of surprise. He also seemed to stiffen up slightly. He didn’t react at my compliment, so I tilted my head slightly. Cory just put the book down completely and put his entire face on the desk to hide.

I was a bit taken aback by Cory’s response. What, did he suddenly fall asleep?

Thankfully, Cory wasn’t just out of battery. With his face still down, Cory replied with a voice as small as an ant’s.

“…..Give me a break.”

“What do you mean?”

He sat up and hid his face with his hands. I could see his green eyes peek through his fingers. With a small voice, he continued to speak.

“I barely got back to acting normal.”

T/N

1: Korean elementary schools are from grades 1 through 6. There are three years of middle school, then three years of high school.