Did he make it by looking at the circuits of the magical girls?
I shrugged my shoulders at James.
I don’t really want to admit it in front of him, but honestly, I felt a bit relieved.
Because I didn’t want to be alone where the fighting was.
At least having someone to curse with, I wouldn’t be lonely.
Hayoon said that if needed, her parents could give her a ride in the car.
Of course, that didn’t mean they would give her a ride directly.
Her parents didn’t have much time to spend on such things.
In the Galactic Federation, countless countries from countless planets are members.
Each planet has different day standards, and within each planet, different countries have different times.
For a multinational corporation, always having to calculate time differences far more complex than global timekeeping was extremely tiring.
The Federation officials arriving on Earth naturally didn’t have day and night.
Basically, they matched our time, but to present a good image, it was better for them to match ours first.
Therefore, Hayoon almost always woke up alone at home.
She had a housekeeper and a driver, though.
She personally brought her bowl to the table, poured cereal, added some milk, and munched on it.
Yes. Those people were working, but for some reason, Hayoon didn’t want to receive help.
Since childhood, she vaguely thought, “Jieun would live like this.” If Jieun heard, she might scoff.
Maybe she wouldn’t handle mornings with cereal like this.
But still, when she looked at Jieun, she wanted to be like that.
Jieun was a child who always seemed unafraid and handled everything on her own.
She liked walking together every morning.
Taking the bus side by side with her shoulder.
So, today again, Hayoon took the bus instead of taking the car.
After taking it several times, she thought maybe Jieun would suddenly stand beside her one day.
Actually, she thought that everything she had been dreaming so far was just a nightmare, and if Hayoon talked about that, Jieun might laugh and say,
“What are you talking about?”
Such a thing might happen.
But, time was passing by indifferently.
The cold winter was passing, and spring was coming.
Jieun did not appear again.
“Hayoon, hi.”
And there, children appeared that Hayoon didn’t know well.
She never thought they were bad, but she didn’t think it was good either.
Children who never appeared when Jieun was around, after Jieun disappeared, started appearing competitively as if targeting that place.
“Hi.”
She greeted while forcing a smile.
Blossom, who had beaten so many people, ordinary people, and sent them to the hospital several times, couldn’t get irritated even once by her classmates’ words.
Jieun had been knocked down by that fist several times.
She responded appropriately to the chatter next to her.
Most of it was boring stories that Hayoon didn’t know well.
“How’s your father? How’s your mother? Why are they so eager to talk about their parents?”
And as expected, when listening, at the end of those stories, the ‘parents’ end up confronting Hayoon’s parents.
They’re trying to change their thinking.
They know that thinking this way, just because Jieun was stuck between people they thought were evil, is extremely shallow.
But, still, because they knew.
Eventually, they realized that the people there simply had no other options.
They tried to change things because they understood that those people were “doing legitimate work.”
After talking with Ji-hye, things became even more confusing.
If corporations are evil, then the money that comes from them must also be the result of evil acts.
So, how should good deeds done with that money be perceived?
It could be different if it were money laundering, but at least the money Jieun earned was used purely for operating the orphanage without being siphoned off elsewhere.
Thanks to that money, the children never lacked clothes, food, or even plenty of snacks.
Whenever parts of the building were damaged, they could be reliably repaired, allowing the orphanage children to live in the best possible environment.
No matter how much money the government provides, there are always aspects that need to be compromised.
Noir Corporation’s grants helped ensure that there were no areas that had to be given up.
If all of that were denied, corporate donations would become unnecessary among all donations worldwide.
All of Jieun’s activities, where she took hits from Hayoon without receiving any significant compensation for the sake of donations, would lose their meaning.
That’s all.
Ji-hye resented Hayoon.
After knowing all of that, it would probably be impossible not to resent Hayoon.
Until now, she had fled several times.
In fact, she might still be doing so even at this moment.
If she hadn’t been so close to Jieun, could she have had these thoughts knowing that Jieun was among the combatants?
No.
If Jieun hadn’t been there, she probably wouldn’t have even realized it herself.
She hadn’t even considered recognizing them.
Once she started investigating, it felt like everything she hadn’t thought about would spill out.
“Eh?”
“Hayoon.”
“We need to get off here.”
Lost in thought, Hayoon almost missed her stop.
After getting off, she realized that the person who had spoken to her was Iris-Jo-ah.
“Jo-ah.”
Jo-ah seemed like she wanted to say something to Hayoon and opened her mouth.
“If you keep spacing out like that, you’ll be late.”
And she said that.
However, seeing that she paused before speaking, it was clear that she wanted to say something else.
Hayoon nodded and followed behind Jo-ah.
It was only after entering the school that she realized she hadn’t greeted Jo-ah.
She also realized that she was seeing Jo-ah take the bus to school for the first time.
But before she could ask anything, Jo-ah had already entered her class.
During lunchtime, the children inevitably talked to Hayoon.
Hayoon didn’t like it much.
No matter how well she acted in front of them, most of the children who spoke to her were those who had testified unfavorably against Jieun.
It seemed that these children thought that the magical girls were completely antagonistic towards Jieun.
It was unavoidable.
They couldn’t reveal that she was a fake terrorist to the outside world.
This happened because they blindly trusted limited information.
While she was half-heartedly nodding along to various stories, she heard a voice say,
“Isn’t that kid shameless?”
Hayoon suddenly stopped using her chopsticks.
When she looked up, she made eye contact with the child who had said that.
The child had completely misread Hayoon’s expression.
“I knew that kid was that kind of kid.”
“That kind of kid?”
The child seemed excited by Hayoon’s calm voice.
For a little over a month, Hayoon had been forcing a smile and nodding along to trivial stories in front of these children, leading them to believe that she had completely sided with them.
“Why? Every time you tried to make friends, you popped up out of nowhere and interrupted. Wasn’t that frustrating? You must have thought it would be beneficial for you.”
Hayoon thought for a moment and slightly lifted the corner of her mouth.
She didn’t intend to agree, but she just wanted to hear the child out until the end.
Why did she even think that way?
Looking back, it was strange.
She knew that Jieun had no intention of making more friends, but how could these children repeat the same things after Jieun disappeared?
“You were giving us signals like that.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Some children nodded in agreement without picking up on the nuance.
A few others turned pale.
If it were about Hayoon, they froze with that forced smile.
“I was giving you signals like that.”
Only after Hayoon said that did the children realize they had made a mistake.
“Can you tell me more about that story?”
Unfazed by their reactions, Hayoon asked.