Freyr, there’s a land in the Elankaya Mountains that only the Golden-Eyed know.
_ _
I told you once during the entrance exams. Do you rember?
** The night air tasted like alcohol.
The night market was festive and bright with lights, returning to life from its downhill journey after the havoc of the Black Death. Festivities marking the end of the first sester were centered around the students of Tilette Academy.
Mid-June. It was about ti for sumr but the night air was rather chilly.
The ground was adequately dry and the sky was clear without a speck of cloud. The variable stars speckled the black canvas like white dots, adding to the highlight of this district.
Yeah.
It was the perfect night to plan sothing big.
I leisurely crossed the marketplace and felt drunk just from walking these streets.
When I entered the pub, a bunch of students were gathered in their own groups and clinking beer mugs.
“Hey, we’re here, over here!”
Amongst them, I saw rather familiar faces. Right, it wouldn’t do for the brat to be absent from a drinking party. I sat down next to Freyr and ordered a 500 mL beer.
The cool and refreshing taste of a barely drink.
I didn’t enjoy drinking nor was I good at it, but this was an exception. There was a sweetness to the beer as it went down with the paired at dish.
I could feel my cheeks gradually turning red. This body was just as weak to alcohol as my old one.
Starting to hiccup, I looked around and spotted the transmigrator glaring at from a different table.
Good, all cards were gathered.
“So, what are you guys planning to do during the break?”
I threw my friends a topic.
“Go back ho, obviously. Accommodations are too expensive here!”
“Sa, I’ll be going and helping out my parents.”
The students with family hos in rural areas all had similar thoughts. Understandably, since there wasn’t a reason to stay at school if you weren’t going to take sumr classes.
“What about you? Aren’t you going back to your hotown?”
“I do want to.”
“Where’s your place?”
Co to think of it, I didn’t actually know where the owner of this body originated from. Did the original Aether even have parents or siblings in the first place? If that was the case, then that was its own problem.
“She’s Golden-Eyed so probably not from the Empire.”
“Then a transfer like Horde?”
“... Sothing like that?”
Since I ca entirely from another world.
“What country did you grow up in? Kaurelia? Or where the beastkin live?”
“She would’ve lived in the Elankaya Mountains being a Golden-Eyed and all. Co to think of it, was there a country over there, too?”
One by one, they tilted their heads in question. The Elankayas were a massive terrain encompassing the Empire, the country of beastkin, and the Demonic Lands so one’s nationality depended on which area they lived.
If the original Aether had lived in the land controlled by the beastkin, then she would’ve been a citizen of the Beastkin Confederation. But if she’d been in no-man’s land where the Magic Beasts road, then she’d have been stateless.
“Where is it if not the Empire?”
“It must be the beastkin nation, no?”
“It could be Kaurelia.”
“Or there may be a city-state there that we don’t know about!”
“Like an ancient polis?”
Everyone seed to be getting drunk because they started getting outright curious about my origins. It was almost ti. I poked Freyr who had been drinking like a fish.
She let out a weird ‘uwah’ sound. After blinking a bit, she lifted her head.
Alright, I’ll do it. The brat nodded carelessly and detached the mug from her mouth.
“Daehanminguk.”
Four syllables.
Everyone’s gazes zood in on Freyr. The brat moved her throat and finished off the rest of her beer.
“Daehan... what?”
“Aether told once a long ti ago that she was from sowhere called Daehanminguk.”
It wasn’t weird for Freyr to know my original nationality.
I’d told her offhandedly during entrance exams, not thinking much of it at the ti, but it had actually laid the groundwork for this mont. As soon as Freyr spoke, I glanced over at the other table.
Verl, who had been drinking fine from his glass, started choking and beating his chest. His friends thought he’d swallowed so mixed liquor wrong and laughed at him.
“Is that a country established by the Golden-Eyed?”
“It must be!”
Our friends looked at once more, to which I shrugged my shoulders.
Since there wasn’t anything more to say, the topic naturally moved onto sothing else. Because this was a table full of girls, they mostly talked about things like dating and costics. The only thing I could do in the anti was respond to what the others were saying.
Ti passed quick as we sat there chatting away. It was already after midnight, late enough to be considered early morning.
My head was fuzzy since I hadn’t drunk this much in a while, but I knew my limits so I didn’t black out at least. The others also began losing it one by one.
“Urgh.”
My head was hanging in there but the body wasn’t holding up.
Under the guise of grabbing the leftover beer from the adjacent table, I nodded towards Verl. Then when our eyes t, I nodded even harder.
It didn’t seem like this kid was that quick at catching onto things. He got up at last after I gave him a look.
“... I’m going to catch so fresh air.”
“Sa.”
Flailing my arms like I wasn’t in control of my faculties, I nudged Verl in the back. The alcohol drenched tables on either side let out different exclamations. Clearing my thoughts, I pushed the transmigrator again like I was chasing him out.
And so, Verl and I stood in a dark alleyway and had a smoke, the bitter scent seeping into the lungs. Whether it was due to drinking, the outdoor air felt a bit chillier.
“You....”
“Doesn’t your mouth feel empty?”
Swaying from drunkenness, I leaned against the wall then dug through the pockets of my robe. I pulled out two candies wrapped in silver plastic.
“Which one do you want?”
One was red candy and the other was blue.
“.......”
Verl narrowed his eyes as if contemplating then took the candy that looked strawberry-flavored.
“I’m heading in first.”
It could be a different kind of challenge from here on. With a deep breath, I returned to my seat.
And as expected, the girls who’d probably been making weird assumptions whistled as soon as they saw , their already red faces reddening even more.
“What’s this, what’s happening between you two?”
“There’ve been rumors that you guys have a thing. Is it true?”
This was sothing I had to deal with. I grabbed my throbbing temporal and shook my head.
“Ah, I’m so jealous! I want to et a guy like that, too!”
“What, elves should marry other elves.”
“I’m just saying!”
Again with the dating talk. It had nothing to do with as I promised undying love to Halli Galli’s1 ‘Fundantals of Physics’ but they were apparently on fire from the alcohol in them and used as the subject of their gossip.
I protested, knowing that this wasn’t going to be easy.
“Says who? We weren’t even that close?”
“Oh, so you’re going to feign ignorance? Haven’t there been a few things happening with him lately?”
What.
“Were you not even aware of the rumors going around the school? You’ve been hanging out together every break!”
“Buhllshiet.”
“Ahaha! She’s slurring!”
“Hey, stop putting up walls and accept it already. You’ve been sneaking glances at him since a couple weeks ago, no?”
Uh, no, reading his expressions is sothing I’ve done from ti to ti.
“And most importantly, you stuck right next to him while walking down the hallways after being comnded by the chairman.”
Wow, soone caught that, eh.
“The hell you sayin’, I maintained an appropriate distance.”
“So you’re admitting that you were close together!”
My ears were going to fall off from all the squealing and clapping. The only ones not reacting with them were Freyr and Lotte. Lotte scolded about no dating in the school like she was a part of the Student Council and Freyr just continued sipping on her drink with half-mast eyes as if the alcohol had broken through her blood-brain barrier.
“Isn’t this the perfect set-up for a romance novel? The handso top elf student and the only Golden-Eyed in the state as the second place! There might be a big one coming from the literature club eventually.”
Their continued misunderstanding was killing but this, too, shall pass. After a ti of perseverance, Verl re-entered. I then went back outside after an appropriate wait to clear my head so.
It was nice hearing the sound of soles against the ground. I slipped back into the alleyway where we’d smoked earlier and checked the floor.
[내일]2
[동아리]3
I took another stick from inside my robe and lit it. A whitish haze rose up in front of my eyes..
Tap tap–I flicked off the ashes and watched the stars in the sky with a faint smile. As I stared absentmindedly, the mana grass was almost done.
I put out the stub completely by rubbing it out. The Korean letters that had been scratched into the dirt lost their shape and beca unrecognizable along with the ashes of mana grass.
“Who wants to go for round twoooooo!”
“... You an this wasn’t?”
“I think I’m gonna throw up.......”
I didn’t know when they’d paid but my friends were now tumbling out of the pub. Popping the blue candy into my mouth, the one leftover after giving one to Verl, I joined the group with Lotte and Freyr.
It was the kind of dawn that had craving hangover soup4.
**SYSTEM : The probability of the world ending is currently 55%. Footnotes
1. Koreans' nickna for Halliday, likely after the ga2. Tomorrow3. Club4. A kind of soup eaten to beat one's hangover. Usually made of beef broth and contains vegetables and at. Can be spicy. (And it's delicious even when you're not hungover.)
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