I had a dream.
It was a dream about my childhood memories.
It was a memory from the time when I suddenly lost everything and only just remembered that I had come to this world.
At that time, I was very confused.
For someone who had lived in an adult’s body, the body of a five-year-old was so small, and there was nothing I could do
Even if I knew something, I couldn’t speak it.
I could tell that I was in an orphanage, but that was all.
I couldn’t remember what had happened.
I didn’t know what kind of world this was.
I didn’t even know who the people around me were.
Being with the other children was a struggle.
They were still so young.
As someone with an adult’s mind, it was very difficult to fit in.
Children spoke their own language. I had to follow along, pretending to be a child for years.
How many years?
I had gone through childhood myself, but almost no memories of that time remained.
What should I think at what moment to seem normal?
How could I mix in and live a normal life?
Even the way the teachers looked at me scared me.
Whenever I accidentally displayed traces of my old self, they would stare at me with strange expressions.
Some even suspected I might be a genius.
But I merely possessed memories of things I had already learned.
Sometimes, they looked at me with a gaze filled with expectation, and other times, with the look of someone seeing something unusual.
By instinct, or perhaps because I unconsciously showed it, the children slowly began to keep their distance.
I was afraid.
The reason I snuck out of the orphanage to avoid the teachers was probably for that reason.
No one thought a young child could unlock a high-up lock and go outside.
I didn’t go out with any purpose in mind.
Even now, I live without any particular goal, so I had no goal then either.
I couldn’t use the excuse of being young because I didn’t perceive myself that way.
Shivering in the cold, my nose running, I walked around.
It was a familiar world.
It wasn’t much different from the world I remembered.
Perhaps, at that time, I just wanted to confirm it.
In this world where I had been born by chance, I wanted to see if I could live properly, if I could live normally.
It was a time before space travel became commonplace.
So, the world was still ordinary.
I don’t really remember if I felt relieved or not.
Probably, half of me felt relieved, and half of me felt empty.
Even though I was reborn, life didn’t seem easy.
I had merely been born again in a country I already knew from my previous world.
I wasn’t yet at an age to be called a proper adult, but realizing that everything I had experienced before was gone left me feeling empty.
The fear hadn’t completely disappeared—that much was clear in my memory.
I had lost everything I once had.
Not that I had ever been someone who possessed much to begin with.
The shock hit me late.
My vision went dark.
Passersby glanced at me, puzzled.
Their expressions asked why such a young child was outside alone.
It seemed I wasn’t as mentally strong as most protagonists of reincarnation stories.
Perhaps it was the side effect of being in a child’s body.
I found it hard to hold back my tears.
Standing alone by the roadside, sniffling like I was about to cry at any moment, I must have looked strange and out of place to those walking by.
“Why are you crying?”
A voice spoke to me.
When I turned my gaze, I saw a girl with striking pink hair.
Her neatly trimmed bob cut barely had a single strand out of place, as if someone had just styled it for her.
Her clothes were just as impeccable.
The coat she wore was clearly not cheap.
But she didn’t seem to be aware of it.
She didn’t pay any attention to my oversized, stretched-out clothes or my worn-out sneakers.
She only stared intently at my face.
She, too, was alone.
“I…”
I opened my mouth to answer but quickly shut it again.
Relying on a five-year-old? That was ridiculous.
My rationality told me so.
But despite that, a single tear slipped from my eye.
Was it relief at finding someone who cared?
Or was it because she was just a child, meaning I had no real reason to worry?
Once the tears started, it was hard to stop.
Without knowing anything, the girl came over and hugged me.
“It’s okay.”
She whispered that into my ear, not knowing what was okay or why it was okay.
“It will be okay.”
I felt comforted by her childish voice, and I felt pathetic.
Maybe, that was the first time I cried so much after being born into this world.
And since then, I haven’t cried that much again.
That’s all I remember from that day.
I don’t really recall what happened after.
Did her parents come and take me to the police station?
Or did the police approach me themselves?
Either way, we parted ways.
And for years, I didn’t know her name was Hayoon.
*
The next time I saw her was on the first day of elementary school.
I recognized her immediately by her bright pink hair, but she didn’t seem to recognize me.
“Hello.”
The child, who had coincidentally sat in front of me, turned and said,
“My name is Hayoon. Lee Hayoon.”
Her voice was unusually mature for an elementary student.
The name Hayoon and the pink hair—
Even then, I didn’t realize she was the protagonist of a certain webtoon.
By then, I had learned that people’s hair could be all sorts of colors.
Of course, in this country, most people had black hair, and I was one of the ‘most’ people.
I wasn’t special in any place, or, in a way, I had grown up in an environment more deprived than the average child.
On the other hand, Hayoon, with her noticeable appearance, excelling at both sports and studies, and having a great personality, was admired by many children.
As time passed, I felt more and more that our worlds were different.
If I stayed silent, the other children wouldn’t approach me.
I figured it was because of Hayoon.
When I sat next to her, children with a gloomy personality like mine would be overshadowed by Hayoon’s brightness.
Of course, they wouldn’t notice me.
I wasn’t unhappy about that.
If I had enjoyed being noticed by others, I wouldn’t have been such a dark person.
But.
Hayoon treated me as a friend.
To be honest, among friends, she was my “closest friend.”
If I had to pick the friend Hayoon spent the most time with, it would be me; if I had to choose the person she walked with the longest, it would be me; and if she needed someone to go somewhere with, it would be me.
So, I was happy.
And at the same time, I felt a complicated emotion.
Because I was always by her side,
I knew very well how others saw her.
And, I too was one of those people who viewed Hayoon in that way.
I wanted to be someone special.
But no matter how hard I tried,
I could only be a supporting character in Hayoon’s world.
No matter how much Hayoon treated me like her closest friend and made me feel special,
I still felt like I didn’t belong in that position.
I was just the lucky person who sat behind Hayoon.
I was just the lucky one who talked to her first at school, and that’s why we ended up hanging out together.
The reason I could only be that friend to Hayoon was simply because she chose me.
I…
I liked Hayoon.
As a friend, and as a person.
She’s kind, good at studying, good at sports, beautiful, and she pays attention to the smallest details.
I’m nothing like that.
It wasn’t until later, when the Galactic Federation made contact with Earth, that I realized Hayoon was the main character.
It was then that I finally understood I was nothing more than a supporting character.
No matter how hard I tried, I was just an extra who appeared next to the protagonist.
A nameless character, one of the background figures who appears in ordinary scenes in a webtoon without ever getting a name.
That was all.
Yes, I’ve always felt inferior to Hayoon.
Always.
I liked her.
But I was jealous of her.
I envy everything around her.
I always struggle to keep up with her, but every time I take a step, she’s already ahead, smiling and waving from far ahead.
I don’t even realize I’ve fallen behind until it’s too late.
No, maybe it’s because our starting points were different.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Hayoon wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Even if she had started in the same place as me, I know that Hayoon would have used all of her talents to make everyone around her happy.
I knew.
I knew that.
And still, whenever I looked at Hayoon, I couldn’t stop thinking these thoughts.
Why?
I’m right here, beside her.
I even knew the contents of that webtoon.
Maybe, I know more about this world than the magical girls do.
And yet, there’s nothing I can do.
The reason is all within me.
Even if I blame others, that criticism always comes back to me.
As a friend, I like her.
Just as much as she sees me as her close friend, I also see Hayoon as my closest friend.
She’s one of the few friends I have.
I want to be in a special place for her.
I don’t want to be just the friend who sat in the back; but the one person she couldn’t do without.
That’s why I wanted to win.
Even just once.
Maybe that’s why I became a combatant a year earlier than Hayoon.
…
But in the end, Hayoon found out.
Would she pity me?
I hope not.
Rather—
*
“Hayoon.”
Hayoon had been staying by Jieun’s side, who hadn’t woken up for days.
She still went to school, but as soon as classes were over, she went straight to the hospital.
Since Jieun had collapsed, she couldn’t focus on anything else.
It wasn’t surprising.
To Hayon, Jieun’s existence was never something trivial.
“…”
“Really not going to say anything?”
It was the voice of Happy Rose— Seohee.
She was a year ahead of Hayoon in school.
She had also started being a magical girl about a year before Hayoon.
However, she wasn’t the leader.
There was no formal hierarchy among the magical girls.
When needed, Hayoon was the nominal leader, but that was because of Hayoon’s versatile magic and, most of all, her friendliness with all the magical girls.
Dahlia and Iris were rivals, and Delphinium and Dahlia didn’t get along very well either.
Iris found Seohee’s straightforward personality a bit abrasive, while Seohee often disagreed or opposed Iris’s plans.
Hayoon, though, had no special conflicts with any of them.
That was why, when Blossom was at the center, the magical girls could work together without falling apart.
But now, even that was beginning to crack.
“…”
I know it sounds strange.
It was Seohee who delivered the punch directly to Jieun’s head, but before that, Hayoon had been fighting desperately against Jieun.
Delphinium poured magic into Jieun, and Iris shot at Jieun, who was receiving the magic.
So, what happened wasn’t exactly fair.
What Seohee did was just something that happened too suddenly right in front of Hayoon.
The sound of gauntlets and helmets clashing.
The vivid sound of something breaking.
First aid had already been administered.
The reason Jieun was lying down was due to an unidentified cause.
It couldn’t be said that Rose, or rather Seohee, was the problem.
Hayoon wiped her face with her hand.
Dark shadows had formed under her eyes.
Her parents disapproved of her being here.
It was probably the first time she had ignored her parents’ words and acted on her own.
“Hayoon.”
“I know.”
Hayoon murmured, exhausted.
Seohee silently came up to Hayoon and placed her hand on her back.
“We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Seohee said.
“We didn’t set off the explosives. In fact, it was because we were delayed fighting that such an incident happened. Of course, that kid didn’t know either. If she had known, she wouldn’t have been there. Probably, no one knew.”
It was a rational explanation.
But behind those words, it implied that, in the end, the combatants were the ones who caused the problem.
The fighting had delayed everything.
Especially toward the end, Jieun’s fierce resistance and her strange rampage had made things worse.
“The people we’ve fought until now…”
Hayoon murmured.
“Could something like this happen?”
“… No, it wouldn’t.”
Seohee answered.
But it didn’t sound as confident as she intended.
“We controlled our power, didn’t we? And those people also used circuits to fight. So, there shouldn’t have been any major problems up until now.”
Still, in that statement, there was an underlying implication that, even if not this serious, they had likely hurt someone.
“It wasn’t our fault.”
Seohee repeated, emphasizing it again as she looked at Hayoon’s expression.
“…It was for justice.”
For justice.
For the first time—strangely, for the first time—Hayoon wondered if the combatants were just ordinary people.
Until now, she had always thought of them as professional hired personnel or even thugs.
Never had she thought that the people in the suits might actually be ‘ordinary people.’
No one had ever told her that.
Hayoon had just assumed it herself.
How could I have imagined that the being inside could be my best friend?
…Unless.
Could it be that Jieun…?
Hayoon shook her head violently.
No, it can’t be.
There must be some reason.
There must have been an unavoidable reason for her actions in that place.
“Ah.”
As Hayoon closed her mouth and fell into thought, she heard a slightly surprised voice from behind her.
Turning her head, she saw a girl who had been visiting consistently for the past few days, just like Hayoon.
Her name was Ji-hye.
She had already met her once before.
Without hesitation, Ji-hye stood next to Jieun and approached Hayoon without any reservation.
“Ah, excuse me—”
Perhaps it was because there were two magical girls inside the room, but Ji-hye seemed a bit flustered.
“Sorry. I’ll step aside.”
“No, no. If you’re in the middle of something important, feel free to continue…”
“No, it’s not something that needs to be discussed here.”
Rose said this and lightly tapped Hayoon’s back before leaving the hospital room.
Hayoon hesitated a moment longer and then got up from her seat.
“Ah, if you want to stay longer, don’t mind me.”
At Ji-hye’s words, Hayoon, who was heading toward the hospital door, paused for a moment.
…It was a natural thing to say.
As if it was obvious for Ji-hye to be here.
What is their relationship?
Hayoon had no idea who Ji-hye really was until now.
Looking back, Jieun was always the one who listened, not the one who spoke.
When Hayoon tried to recall, she realized she didn’t know anything about Jieun’s personal life.
She wanted to ask right now—since when had they known each other? How had they known each other?
But ‘Hayoon’ stopped her from doing that.
The Hayoon who was loved by everyone.
The perfect Hayoon, who did everything well.
That name prevented her from asking such questions honestly.
Moreover…
She turned her gaze.
Jieun was still asleep, her eyes closed.
Right.
Besides, such questions only matter if Jieun tells her herself.
If Jieun doesn’t want to share, what’s the point in hearing it from someone else?
Ji-hye was holding some snacks in her hand.
But Jieun couldn’t even eat them.
Or maybe Ji-hye had brought them for herself?
As Hayoon thought this, she blinked in surprise.
But even then, it wasn’t something Hayoon could say anything about.
At least Ji-hye wasn’t the type to hurt Jieun.
Even if it had been an unavoidable situation, that fact didn’t change.
With these thoughts, Hayoon didn’t want to be around Ji-hye any longer.
However, she couldn’t chase Ji-hye away.
That was also stopped by ‘Hayoon’.
“…Please take good care of Jieun.”
“Yeah. Leave it to me.”
Eventually, she stepped back and added those words unnecessarily.
Ji-hye accepted them so naturally, as though she already knew what she needed to do.
She was a good kid.
She probably had her own time, but she still came to visit Jieun.
But for some reason, Hayoon couldn’t look at Ji-hye in a good light.
To hide her confusion, Hayoon quickly turned around and hurried out of the room.
She walked down the hallway quickly, heading toward the stairs.
Once she confirmed that there was no one around, she wiped her face with her hand.
What should I do? What should I do?
How am I supposed to handle this?
Hayoon couldn’t figure it out.
Every time Hayoon was in a situation like this, Jieun always provided a clear answer.
She would even help her run away if necessary.
Thinking of that, Hayoon became even sadder.