Rewind time a few minutes.
The Schale building was now close enough to see with the naked eye.
The journey there had been smooth. The students followed the Teacher's command well, and it helped that Kenji offered assistance at the right moments. Of course, he could have been more proactive in clearing the path, but Kenji didn't. Anyway, the protagonist who should resolve this situation was the Teacher, so there was no reason to step forward and make a fuss.
Besides, wasn't he already receiving enough attention? Kenji felt the three gazes fixed on him and broke into a cold sweat. He had intended to attract a certain level of attention and even put on a performance for it, but even so, those three gazes were too blatant. It was a look as if looking at a captured enemy prisoner. If gazes had physical force, his body would have been pierced long ago.
'It's unfair, though.'
He could understand. A man of unknown origin who suddenly appeared. A cult leader revered by mysterious figures cloaked entirely in black. A monster who tore apart a tank barehanded, etc. Kenji recalled descriptions that reminded him of himself and nodded inwardly. Honestly, he would have been suspicious even in the opposite case.
But unlike the other three, Ha-yul showed no particular wariness. A fellow countryman met in a strange place was that special to her. Moreover, what if that place wasn't just a foreign country, but an entirely different world? That joy couldn't help but be doubled.
"Do you know the meat restaurant next to Seoul Station? It's really good there!"
"I haven't really been outside Incheon much. So even Seoul... it's right next door, but I haven't been anywhere in particular."
"Me too! I haven't been anywhere other than Seoul either. Do people from Busan really walk around the streets using their dialect?"
"......Isn't that obvious?"
"That figures, right?"
Ha-yul smiled brightly and nodded. Kenji gave her a look as if finding it absurd, then chuckled and adjusted his mask's position. Yuuka, Chinatsu, Hasumi, and Suzumi couldn't follow their conversation and maintained silence.
But soon, a conversation containing content the four could understand began.
"How long has it been since you came to Kivotos?"
"A few years."
When Kenji first opened his eyes in the Trinity alleyway, he didn't know his exact physical age. He roughly estimated it to be around 5 years old, but maybe it was more, maybe less. But anyway, he started his life in Kivotos at the surface age of 5, and now he was about a year away from adulthood.
"......Huh? Then your current age is..."
Of course, Ha-yul didn't know his circumstances. She expected an answer of a few days to a few months at most, but a far more distant time had sprung from his mouth. How should she take this? She even wondered if the face behind that mask might be a moderately aged middle-aged man.
But contrary to such concerns, Kenji's age was younger than hers.
"Nineteen years old."
"Nineteen?"
"Yes."
Honestly.
He felt a little guilty. When he was still on Earth, his age was in his late twenties. He couldn't remember the exact age anymore, but he vaguely remembered he hadn't hit thirty yet and was close to it.
And adding the 14 years he lived here to that age, he's at least in his early forties.
Of course, it was a meaningless calculation. Isn't there a saying that the mind follows the body? Following that, Kenji didn't bother calculating his age by addition. Like protagonists in novels who experience reincarnation and don't care about age, he also didn't pay much attention to age.
He's just 19 here.
That's all there is to it.
But.
"Then I'm the older one?"
"......"
"Can I speak casually?"
Hearing those words, it felt like the Confucian spirit within his heart was awakening.
Kenji forced himself to suppress the urge to smack Ha-yul's head and smiled.
Even he thought it was excellent patience.
"Then shall I call you 'unnie'?"
Kenji thumped Ha-yul on the crown of her head.
In the end, he couldn't hold back.
Only Ha-yul and Kenji entered the Schale building. The other three decided to keep watch outside, and Rin was scheduled to arrive a little later.
Perhaps because it hadn't been used for a long time, no lights were on in the Schale building. It looked as if there was a power outage. At least sunlight poured through the windows so it wasn't dark, but as they went downstairs, the windows decreased, making the staircase dim. It felt like stepping into a scene from a horror movie.
Kenji didn't feel particularly frightened. Having lived in Arius, he frequently visited places darker than this, so darkness meant nothing to him now. The fact that many of the commissions he solved involved supernatural phenomena also helped.
Surprisingly, ghosts existed in this world. Encounters were extremely rare, but they existed. Kenji had encountered them a few times himself. But those he recognized as such... physical means worked, and when he beat them up, they attained enlightenment on their own. Whether to call that destruction or enlightenment, he didn't know, but anyway.
Ha-yul also wasn't the timid type like Kenji, so she immediately took out her smartphone and turned on the flashlight. Bright light poured from the back of her smartphone, and the darkness covering the stairs instantly melted away. She peeked her head over the staircase railing to check the basement, then turned to Kenji and asked.
"Shall we go?"
He nodded. Thus, the two began to slowly descend the stairs.
Lonely footsteps hovered around the two. Kenji was vigilant of the surroundings, and Ha-yul illuminated the descending stairs with her smartphone light. Doing so, she grew oddly bored. Since they had achieved the goal of reaching the building and all dangers were gone, she thought it might be okay to relax a bit.
So she looked back at Kenji and spoke in a playful voice.
"Is there a reason you wear a mask?"
"Ah, you mean this?"
Though it was a sudden question, Kenji wasn't flustered and tapped the mask covering his face with his finger.
"I wear it due to personal circumstances. Nothing particularly special."
"Then can you show me?"
"If you promise not to tell anyone."
"Sure! I won't tell anyone!"
Ha-yul answered, nodding vigorously. Kenji chuckled, then neatly erased the Fear that had formed his mask. Then his bare face was revealed. Ha-yul saw his appearance and widened her eyes.
"......You're handsome?"
As she said. Kenji was handsome. Subjectively, that was the case, and objectively, too. Her guess that he wore a mask because his face was a complex was beautifully off the mark. Ha-yul stared into Kenji's deep black eyes and nodded.
"It's quite unexpected. I didn't think such a face was behind the mask."
"Is that a compliment?"
"Of course!"
Ha-yul smiled brightly. Kenji smiled back at her and went down the stairs.
"The name I said I'd tell you later, I'll just tell you now. Please don't tell anyone this either. It would get a bit troublesome if it got out..."
"Okay, got it."
"It's Park Si-woo. My name."
"Si-woo... That's a name that seems like it'd get picked on by girls, huh?"
Kenji flinched. Ha-yul smiled slyly and poked Kenji's side with her elbow.
"What's with that reaction? Did I hit a sore spot?"
"......A bit... I was picked on. It might still be an ongoing thing, I think."
Kenji answered in a sighing voice. Ha-yul patted his shoulder with a compassionate expression as if she understood. Of course, she was a simpleton who had never even held a man's hand in her life, but the probability of Kenji noticing that was zero.
The two slowly entered the destination.
A giant office placed underground. It was dark and hard to see, but dark-adapted eyes vaguely captured the surroundings in their vision. Ha-yul pointed her smartphone here and there, checking if she could turn on the lights, and Kenji narrowed his eyes and sensed presences.
One. His own.
One. Ha-yul's.
And one. A stranger's.
The moment he recognized it, Kenji pulled Ha-yul into an embrace. It happened in an instant. Ha-yul screamed kyahk in Kenji's arms, and Kenji glared at the place where the presence was felt with a murderous gaze. Fear condensed in his fist.
"Hmm... I can't figure out what this thing is at all. If it's like this, even if I try to break it..."
Then, a familiar voice was heard. Kenji frowned and uttered the owner's name.
"......Kosaka?"
"Oh my...?"
Wakamo's crimson gaze turned toward Kenji. Ha-yul, who didn't understand the current situation, blinked her eyes, and Kenji and Wakamo's gazes clashed in the air.
It was an exchange of glances they had done many times. But this time, one thing was different from before. Wakamo, as always, was wearing her gorgeous fox mask, but Kenji was not.
Bare face.
It was the first time Wakamo had seen his face. She was curious, but didn't attach much meaning to it. A face that didn't matter whether she knew it or not.
For a moment, Wakamo said nothing, her mouth hanging open, heh-, and stared at Kenji's face.
In that brief moment. After a time that had passed, mere seconds later.
Suddenly, Wakamo jumped up from her spot and began to babble.
"N, no. This, that, th-th-that's not it..."
"Why are you here?"
"Ny, nyes?!"
At Kenji's question, Wakamo bit her tongue. Her face flushed red with shame, but it wasn't noticeable because of the mask. Kenji subtly prepared for combat and moved his lips.
"Was your objective here?"
The conversation he had with Wakamo just minutes ago came to mind. It was clearly about not letting their objectives overlap, but Wakamo went a step further, saying she had no intention of backing down if their objectives did overlap.
At the time, it was a conversation he half-listened to and let go. But who knew it would become foreshadowing. Kenji forced down a rising sigh and clenched his fist. It was dark, so Wakamo couldn't see it. But that didn't matter. Her gaze, from the moment it met Kenji's until now, had been fixed on his face.
"N, no! This isn't my objective!"
"......? Then why are you here?"
"N, no... th-that's not it..."
Wakamo continued to trail off, then began hurriedly exiting the building. She was so fast that Kenji couldn't catch her. She definitely seemed slower than that weird phantom thief-conceptual prisoner, but the feat she just showed was such that you'd believe it was supersonic speed.
"S, sorryyy!!!"
Her voice echoed from the staircase. Ha-yul still didn't understand what had happened, and Kenji let out a hollow laugh as if finding it absurd and released Ha-yul from his embrace.
She rotated her stiff wrist and asked in a small voice.
"What was that just now...?"
"......Seems a stray dog wandered in by mistake. Don't mind it."
"You can't call a person a dog."
"Ah, yes."
Kenji answered carelessly, then strode over to the spot where Wakamo had been standing.
It wasn't a particularly special spot. It seemed she was looking for something here and got caught.
He let out a deep sigh and recreated and put on a mask over his face. It was because calm footsteps were heard from the corridor side.
-Squeak.
Around the corner, a girl with dark blue hair and glasses peeked her head out. The moment Ha-yul confirmed that face, she showed a happy expression.
"Rin!"
"Yes. Teacher. More importantly, I just saw a woman who looked like the 'Calamity Fox' running out of the building... Did something happen here by any chance?"
"No, nothing happened."
"Is that so... Hmm..."
Rin trailed off as if suspicious, but soon shook her head. Anyway, the Calamity Fox wasn't important right now. She turned her gaze from Ha-yul and stared at Kenji.
"Are you the man the Student Council President spoke of?"
"What did she tell you?"
"A helper for the Teacher. Black hair and eyes, and a person you'd know was the one the moment you saw him, she said."
"Do I meet the conditions?"
"Yes, seeing you in person, I can tell."
Rin nodded slightly, then approached Kenji and gave a slight bow.
"First, thank you for your help. Thanks to you, we saved a lot of time."
"It was a promise."
"Thank you for keeping that promise. And according to the Student Council President, you said you would help us from now on as well. Is that true?"
"Yes."
"That's a relief. What should I call you? In the world, you go by names like Tenma or Cult Leader—"
"Just call me Kenji. When I'm not in front of you, call me differently."
Kenji cut off Rin's words. Rin blinked for a moment, then smiled faintly and answered.
"Understood, Mr. Kenji."
"I think it's better to drop the 'Mr.' honorific too. Since I'm joining your workplace, I can't receive honorifics from my superior."
"Then you speak casually too, Mr. Kenji. Then I'll also drop the title."
"Alright."
"Good, Kenji."
A rapidly progressing conversation. Ha-yul, unable to join the conversation, puffed her cheeks slightly and grumbled.
"Should I leave? I'll come in if you call me later."
"A, ahem! My apologies, Teacher. It's my first time meeting someone the Student Council President personally informed me about, so I just... I'm sorry if you were offended."
"No, I was just joking too."
Ha-yul said, smiling brightly. Rin let out a deep sigh of relief and handed the Teacher a tablet PC she had brought from somewhere. It was the item called the Shittim Chest. Rin explained to Ha-yul that they would use it to regain control of the Shittim Chest.
Kenji watched the two from a slightly distant spot.
'Regaining control of the Shittim Chest.'
That's probably the tutorial in the original work. And when that ends, the main story will properly begin, right. With a strangely complicated feeling, Kenji stared at Ha-yul entering the password into the Shittim Chest. Noticing his gaze, Ha-yul looked at him briefly and gave a knowing smile. Kenji also slightly raised the corners of his mouth beneath his mask.
"......Finally, it begins."
Kenji muttered to himself and leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling.
Perhaps they had regained control of the Chest at some point, as the ceiling lights all turned on at once.
It was a bright light.
A light that drives out the thickly settled darkness. A light turned on by a single gesture of the Teacher.
'Please.'
May the Teacher also be like that light.
He merely wished for it in his heart.
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