Chapter 15
After the wind died down, Yeonwoo, rubbing his numb cheeks, blinked slowly. As the stinging in his eyes subsided, he could see Kang Chahun holding the remnants of the mana ball with his disheveled hair.
Good heavens. What are you going to do with that expression?
When Yeonwoo’s eyes met Chahun’s vacant face, he let out a small laugh before quickly sitting down.
Now he understood. During his military academy days, whenever he burst mana balls with a pop, pop, his classmate would hold his stomach laughing next to him. Now he understood why. So that’s what my face looked like.
As Yeonwoo laughed almost like sobbing, he heard a cracking sound of ice breaking and looked up. Chahun had frozen the remnants of the mana ball and was glaring at Yeonwoo with a stiff expression.
That expression brought back memories. Whenever his classmate laughed like that, Yeonwoo would contemplate whether to kill him or let him live. Chahun was probably thinking the exact same thoughts now.
“Were you mocking me too?”
Chahun spat out each syllable and threw away the debris in his hand. He roughly ran his fingers through his hair, gave Yeonwoo a cold stare, and then turned to walk away with large strides.
Mocking? Just because I laughed a little.
Yeonwoo followed and grabbed him. Though Chahun didn’t shake him off, ice crystals were gently floating up around him. Seeing the ice crystals that looked ready to attack through the hand holding his training uniform, Yeonwoo touched his mouth. After confirming there was no trace of a smile left, he raised his head to meet Chahun’s eyes.
“I’m sorry. Esper Kang Chahun’s face looked so helpless, no, I mean, the situation was funny so I laughed, but I wasn’t mocking you.”
Yeonwoo placed a mana ball in Chahun’s hand and lowered his eyelashes.
“I wasn’t making fun of you either.”
“Then why?”
At the cold voice, Yeonwoo bit the tip of his tongue.
Now I kind of understand how he speaks. If I wasn’t making fun of him, then he’s asking why the mana ball burst.
“Just now, it happened because Esper Kang Chahun forced in more mana than the mana ball could handle.”
Yeonwoo poured mana into the mana ball Chahun was holding.
“This amount is enough.”
As Chahun alternately looked with suspicious eyes between the faintly glowing mana ball and Yeonwoo, he moved his fingertips. The greenish mana wrapping around the mana ball gently brushed against Chahun’s fingers before scattering into the air.
“This.”
Chahun urgently held out the mana ball. His stiff lips looked like they were about to burst out with “It wasn’t me.”
“It’s supposed to be like this.”
Yeonwoo took the mana ball, filled it with mana again, and handed it back to Chahun. Chahun carefully received the mana ball with his fingertips, watched the dispersing mana, and then tensed his eyes.
The mana ball, which had been trembling slightly, burst with a bang!
Just before it burst, Yeonwoo reached out to cover Chahun’s eyes. When the wind subsided, he picked up the rolling mana ball and handed it to Chahun.
“Filling a mana ball is harder than you might think. You don’t pour in mana to completely fill the mana ball.”
At Yeonwoo’s words, Chahun bit his lip. He seemed frustrated that things weren’t going as he thought. Well, you can’t fill your stomach with the first spoonful.
Chahun, clutching an armful of mana balls, settled in a corner and crouched with his back turned. Yeonwoo tried to focus on training and ignore him, but he couldn’t concentrate. His attention was scattered everywhere he looked. Swallowing a sigh, Yeonwoo grabbed whatever training tools were messily strewn about and moved them. I was planning to practice my abilities anyway! This isn’t cleaning, it’s practice. As he muttered to himself, he noticed dawn breaking on one side of the training ground.
What’s that?
When he turned his head to look, Chahun was turning his body toward Yeonwoo. As he turned more toward him, the training ground gradually brightened. The mana ball in Chahun’s hand was glowing brightly with a sky-blue light.
I guess someone of S-class can fill their stomach with the first spoonful after all.
Chahun, who had been staring down at the glowing mana ball for a long time, kept pouring in more mana whenever the light dimmed. Seeing something amazing once or twice is fine, but with continuous sparkling from one side, it was starting to hurt his eyes.
When Yeonwoo clapped lightly to signal both “that’s enough” and “congratulations on your success,” Chahun’s body flinched.
“Did you see?”
As if I couldn’t have. Didn’t you turn your body so I would see?
When Yeonwoo nodded, Chahun glared at him while hiding the mana ball behind his back. He wasn’t asking why Yeonwoo was looking; he was just embarrassed. Taking a charitable interpretation, Yeonwoo continued his “practice disguised as cleaning” when a hand came and took away the mana ball in front of him.
“Here.”
What was the point of filling it with mana and handing it over? Yeonwoo looked at the sky-blue sparkling mana ball and then at Chahun. His cheeks were flushed red, and his black pupils, looking at the mana ball, were tinted sky-blue and sparkling. Chahun, with his lips curved up refreshingly, was holding out the mana ball as if offering something very precious.
“Thank you.”
When Yeonwoo took it, the sky-blue mana swirled between his fingers before creating a vortex and being absorbed into his palm.
Yeonwoo looked down at his palm that had absorbed the mana. Did he see it wrong? As he rubbed his palm, still holding warm heat, his body was lightly shaken.
“What do you do with this?”
Should I also tell him not to grab and shake people? Yeonwoo looked down at Chahun’s fingers gripping his training uniform before turning his gaze to look at the glowing mana ball.
“You said you train with this. What is it for?”
Doesn’t Zone A do mana adaptation training? Oh right, he doesn’t have a team yet. Nodding his head, Yeonwoo filled the mana ball with mana, handed it to Chahun, and explained.
In spaces covered with Adder’s mana, like dungeons or danger zones, all bodily senses get mixed up. For example, it feels like smelling with your arms. The senses return over time, but if you encounter a monster before that, confusion arises as you can’t distinguish whether the person next to you is a team member or a monster. So, you need to familiarize yourself with what kind of mana your team members have beforehand and train not to attack them.
When understanding between team members improves through mana adaptation training, you can anticipate what the others will do without explicit communication. This means that even in situations where a strategy fails or can’t be formulated, you can perfectly coordinate with team members. That’s why mana adaptation training is the first thing done when forming a team.
After finishing his explanation, Yeonwoo observed Chahun, who had been playing with the mana ball and eventually burst another one. He seems fine. I was bedridden for days after bursting a mana ball. S-class really does have a larger mana core.
Despite having burst five mana balls already, Chahun’s face remained perfectly normal. Not even a single drop of cold sweat was visible.
Seeing that Chahun seemed intent on continuing until he exhausted himself, Yeonwoo, looking at his nest of mana balls, yawned deeply. Does physical stamina also correlate with rank?
“Why did you come so late?”
The next morning, catching a flying mana ball, Yeonwoo looked at the clock. It was still before sunrise. With barely enough strength to turn his head, Yeonwoo just shifted his gaze to look at Chahun.
I took a nap in the break room, but what about him? Is his stamina exceptional too because he’s S-class?
“You seem to do this every morning, so I found them for you. Oh, is it okay if I call you Hyung?”
You’re already calling me that?
Yeonwoo looked at the pins on the floor, then raised his eyes with a displeased look to see Chahun. Did he eat something wrong? Well, aside from the form of address, what does he mean by “found them”? At those words, Yeonwoo looked around and buried his face in his hands.
The Training Director just kept repeating the same words and giving penalty points while the training ground was becoming more and more like a war zone. Finally, a big fight broke out last night. People were yelling about cleaning up, saying they’d do it, demanding no one come in while they were cleaning, and then asking if this was what they called “cleaning”…
Yeonwoo’s face turned pale seeing how all the training tools had been swept up and stuffed into one place. It’s impressive he found anything there. Forcibly turning his gaze, Yeonwoo looked at Chahun, who was gesturing to him.
At first, he had growled at anyone who dared come near him, but now Chahun was holding a mana ball and patting the floor.
“Why is this like this?”
As soon as Yeonwoo sat down, Chahun bombarded him with questions. Realizing that one mana ball could generate so many questions, Yeonwoo picked up a mana ball with a tired expression.
“Wait. First, the mana ball freezes because Esper Kang Chahun is unknowingly using his ability. The mana ball only accepts pure mana.”
At those words, Chahun glared at the mana ball.
With a crackling sound, ice spikes rose sharply over the glowing mana ball.
“I don’t see the difference.”
Yeonwoo, alternately looking at the mana ball and Chahun’s nest, held out his hand, and Chahun promptly placed the mana ball on it.
“No, your hand.”
At those words, Chahun withdrew the mana ball and extended his hand. The warm, cozy feeling that Yeonwoo had experienced before brought back the drowsiness he had barely pushed away.
“What are you doing?”
Yeonwoo, blinking his eyelashes drowsily, carefully put down Chahun’s hand, which had turned red from lack of blood flow. At that gesture, Chahun furrowed his brow as much as he could.
“What is it?”
“No, I just, since you’re an ice-type, I thought your hands would be cold, but they’re not, so I was surprised…”
At the absurd excuse that tumbled out in a fluster, Chahun muttered “Is that so?” and relaxed his brow.
“Do all ice-types have cold hands?”
Yeonwoo frantically searched his memory as Chahun asked while looking down at his own hand. There was an ice-type among his military academy classmates… Was their hand cold?
“Not all of them are like that, and there can be differences before and after awakening, depending on the person.”
At Yeonwoo’s words, Chahun, who had been kneading his hand, furrowed his brow again.
“I don’t know if there’s a difference from before. In summer, my friends did say not to stick to them because it was hot…”
Chahun trailed off and closed his mouth. Judging by his increasingly dark expression, he seemed to be recalling the day of his awakening. The experience of awakening on a hot summer day during an exam, thinking “I wish I had a glass of ice water,” didn’t seem to be a good memory.
“People who exercise tend to have higher base body temperatures, so maybe that’s why.”
At those words, Chahun raised just his eyes to look at Yeonwoo.
“How do you know?”
“What?”
“That I exercised.”
I read it in a book.
Avoiding his gaze, Yeonwoo stared at the floor. As Yeonhwa grew, her dreams became longer. Exhausted from drawing, Yeonhwa organized all her dreams into writing and made them into books.
People who discovered they appeared in books written by Yeonhwa showed various reactions, but the conclusion was the same. Everyone wanted to read those books.
The end was the same for those who got their hands on the books after much persuasion. They tried to change the future according to their tastes, only to be hit by the boomerang of causality.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
