NOVEL NEXT Chapter 95
“Ah… Nooo…! I don’t want to!”
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Haru’s piercing scream echoed through Na-me’s door.
For a moment, silence returned.
As the door creaked open, a pouting Haru emerged with a frown.
“Why do I have to be the pig…! I wanted to be a bear or a cat too…”
“Well, you lost at rock-paper-scissors.”
“Can I switch with you now, Haru?”
“No… It’s fine… Na-me looks best in cat pajamas anyway…”
To try to soothe her, Na-me grabbed Haru’s sleeve and said,
“Look, your pajamas have these cute little things! If you put your hand in here, you’ll have animal paws.”
“Yeah, but they’re just pig’s feet…”
“Haru, it’s okay. You’re still plenty cute.”
“What about NoName? What about me?”
At Na-me’s compliment, Haru flapped her sleeves.
Yuna pestered Na-me for praise too, but her wish went unfulfilled.
Na-me spread a blanket in the living room and seated the two girls.
“What do you want to do first? Jenga? Hally-Gally? Or Pirate Roulette?”
This was Na-me’s secret weapon to help the feuding kids make peace.
The young girls looked shy, as if they felt awkward being at someone else’s house.
“Then let’s start with Jenga. Is that okay?”
“Yeah!”
“I like it.”
With everyone’s agreement, a tower of wooden blocks was built.
“How about the loser gets a flick on the forehead?”
“Of course!”
“I can hit really hard, so Na-name, you can’t do anything like when we played air games. You’ll regret it.”
Na-me, however, wasn’t willing to just give up easily. She was the first to remove a block and place it on top.
“Now it’s your turn, Haru.”
“Did you know? I heard a tip on how to do well in Jenga; you have to find the center of gravity. Look, this part is slightly sticking out, so the block above it isn’t pushing down.”
Even though no one was particularly paying attention, Haru rambled on.
Haru bravely reached for the Jenga block, but when it didn’t come out easily, her face showed her embarrassment.
“If you touch it once, there’s no backing out!”
Yuna quickly stopped Haru’s hand from moving to the other blocks.
“What kind of rule is that?”
“That was the original rule, right? Is this your first time playing, Lee Ha-ru?”
“Okay, let’s not fight. Since Haru didn’t know, let’s give her a pass just this once. Is that okay?”
“Ugh… what… fine.”
Na-me barely managed to stop the sparks flying between them right from the start.
As they played, unconsciously building a bond, Na-me imagined Haru apologizing beautifully to Yuna.
“Ah!”
CRASH!
The precarious tower toppled before Haru could react, causing strange noises to escape her.
“Go ahead and hit me.”
Haru rolled her bangs back, exposing her pale forehead.
Seeing Na-me just pretend to hit her, Yuna said,
“That’s not how you do it! Watch closely.”
With too much force, Yuna’s fingers trembled.
Surprisingly, it was Na-me who felt more tense than Haru.
‘Please don’t hit too hard.’
“OW!”
But Na-me’s wish was humorously dashed as Haru’s forehead turned red.
‘Please don’t get mad, Lee Ha-ru. We’re here to make peace!’
“You… just wait until you lose.”
Na-me’s dreams of a peaceful pajama party crumbled.
*
“Seee…”
“Huff…”
The two girls groaned, clutching their foreheads and growling at one another.
The score was tied at 5 to 5 to 0.
In the meantime, Na-me managed to survive without ever knocking the tower down.
The girls silently began to rebuild the tower.
But the emotions behind that silence were anything but calm. The current situation felt like the eye of a storm.
As the atmosphere settled, while they quietly progressed with the game, Haru expressed a doubt.
“Something feels off, doesn’t it?”
“What now?”
Yuna replied lethargically to Haru’s statement.
“How come Na-me has never knocked it down?”
Na-me flinched as she pulled out a block.
Yuna also stroked her chin, pondering the reasonable question.
SWISH!
Na-me successfully extracted a block without toppling the tower.
Yet the tower continued wobbling sideways but didn’t fall.
“It’s your turn, Yuna.”
“Wait a second.”
Yuna stood up and positioned herself behind Na-me.
She hadn’t noticed it while seated, but from above, it was clear.
This tower should have collapsed by now, it wobbled way too much.
“What’s up?”
“Na-me, can you close your eyes for a second?”
Yuna covered Na-me’s eyes with her hands.
WOBBLE!
The vibrations intensified.
CRASH!
Seeing the tower collapse, Yuna shrieked.
“See, you were using your aura! Na-me, that’s cheating!”
“What? Is that really true?”
Yuna and Haru, who had received five slaps each, began interrogating Na-me.
Could Na-me really have left extra aura in the empty space while extracting blocks? That was impossible.
But Na-me shocked them with another statement.
“We have a rule that allows to use aura in our area.”
Underneath the still-standing tower, Na-me demonstrated her skill by pulling three blocks from the second to the bottom layer simultaneously.
Blocks from the 3rd to the 7th layers were all floating in mid-air.
While Na-me brazenly pushed things forward,
“No way such a rule exists!”
the girls shouted in unison, unable to accept it.
In the end, Na-me had no choice but to receive ten more flicks, alternating between the two giggling girls as she clutched her now-hot forehead.
“Why are my hands burning like this…”
*
After spending too much time on Jenga, dinner time came quickly.
After sealing all of Na-me’s aura, her savior from punishment was none other than Professor Cheon Kyu-jin.
“It’s dinner time, right?”
At the perfect moment, the now-arrived chicken, along with Cheon Kyu-jin’s homemade beef tortillas and strawberry canapés piled with cream cheese, presented before them.
“Wow, chicken!”
As the packaging was opened, the sweet and savory aroma of the chicken seasoning wafted out.
Kids were more ecstatic over chicken than the foods they’d have to pay dearly for outside.
“Do rich people eat chicken too?”
“They eat it all the time, right?”
Haru answered defiantly to Yuna’s question.
In fact, she loved chicken so much that she ordered it once a week.
With each bite, Yuna and Haru’s cheeks puffed up, gray bones awkwardly sticking out from their tiny lips.
Unlike ordinary TV shows, the young ones were engrossed in a creator’s dance videos on the tablet Haru had brought.
“That sister is so pretty. She dances amazingly.”
“I think Na-me will get prettier as she grows up?”
“Isn’t that a given? Still, I wish Na-me would stay small forever.”
“Me too, me too.”
For the first time, both girls agreed on something.
Since there was no other common point apart from Na-me, the conversation flowed back to her.
“Have you ever lifted Na-me?”
Yuna casually tossed out a question, piquing Haru’s curiosity.
“How?”
“Grab her by the armpits like this.”
“Ugh! Hey, that tickles! But really, did you lift her like that?”
“Yeah! She’s so light; it doesn’t even take any effort.”
Yuna claimed she had spun Na-me around once.
“But when did you become close with Na-me? When she first came, you just introduced yourself and then disappeared.”
“That time… we weren’t friends yet… so it was possible.”
“And also, during group activities, you yelled insults at Yoon Si-hoo and Na-me.”
“That was…”
Haru hit the nail on the head.
However, their conversation was interrupted when Professor Cheon came over to clear the empty plates.
“Was dinner delicious?”
“Yes, it was!”
“It was better than what our chef uncle serves us at home!”
“I’m glad you enjoyed my first-time cooking. After eating, let’s watch a movie; I even set up a projector in Na-me’s room. Have you decided which movie to watch?”
“No! This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“But where did Na-me go?”
Even after looking around, Na-me was nowhere to be found.
Having been too immersed in the videos to notice, Yuna and Haru were oblivious to how long she had been gone.
They even checked the bathroom to wash their oily hands, but Na-me was not there either.
The only place left was her master bedroom.
“Hey, can we go in?”
“Maybe she’s tired from waking up early and is asleep? Just go in quietly and check.”
“Open it gently, gently.”
“I can tell without you saying so.”
With Professor Cheon’s permission, Yuna carefully opened Na-me’s door and entered.
In the dark, light barely crept in through the one and only heavily shaded curtain.
As she partially opened the door, the bright light from the living room illuminated one side of Na-me’s room.
An expensive-looking, large capsule stood out prominently.
On the opposite side, Na-me’s bed was visible.
Even though the bed was relatively large for a young child, Na-me curled up like a shrimp in a corner, sleeping lightly.
“Looks like she’s asleep…”
“What should we do?”
The sun had just begun to set, yet the host of the pajama party was the first to fall asleep, creating an awkward situation.
“Umm…”
Na-me fidgeted without covering herself with a blanket, causing the girls to flinch in surprise.
With a gulp, they heard Na-me mumble something.
“She must be sleep talking. How adorably cute…!”
“What is she saying?”
With each step the girls carefully moved closer to Na-me, trying not to make noise.
“Eal… Ras… Mbeun… Sew… Tr… Urrh…”
To an ordinary person, Na-me’s sleep talk would have been incomprehensible.
But at the same time, Yuna and Haru looked at each other with exclamation marks over their heads.
Those were the rune words they had drilled into their heads like poetic mantra for an entire year at the academy.
‘El, Ras, Mabeon, Sutra, Arhen.’
The voice was unmistakably familiar.
Eventually, unable to hold back her laughter, Haru covered her mouth, snorting with amusement.
“She’s reciting runes in her sleep…!”
What would Na-me’s reaction be if she found out? Haru couldn’t suppress her excitement.
“Wow, is this how far you have to go to become first place?”
“Seo Yu-na, just give up on being number one. You might beat Yoon Si-hoo, but you’ll never beat NoName, hee hee.”
That phrase seemed familiar, as if she had heard it sometime before, but Yuna felt no offense from Haru’s words.
They were both eager to see just how far Na-me could recite the runes, so they listened intently to her mumblings.
“Suh-rt… r…”
Now one more syllable added, bringing it to five. Schiatris was the rune controlling Lorentz symmetry in a magic circle.
Having already folded all ten of Yuna’s fingers, she had recited approximately up to the 20th rune.
And then, Na-me’s mouth went silent.
“Should we wake her up now?”
“Ah, I wanted to see more…!”
“That would be rude to Na-me!”
“What if just five more minutes?”
While debating on when to wake the deeply sleeping girl up, Na-me started sleep talking again.
“Leaf… So sleepy… I want to sleep…”
She was already asleep, yet she murmured about wanting to sleep again.
“Cresselium… I’m so tired… But I can’t sleep…”
Na-me’s hands instinctively clenched. The bed sheet crinkled tightly within her grasp.
“Yandell-virk… My head hurts… No…”
Her voice became more distinct. Na-me’s head was getting soaked in cold sweat.
“It’s hard…”
“I… feel like I’m going to die…”
“Help me…”
“■■-nim, please…”