I Don’t Want to be an Ojakgyo (48)

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I arrived at my afternoon swordsmanship classes earlier than usual. I was planning on running a few laps around the hall to warm myself up. I took the medicine that Yves gave me for my height and changed into my training uniform. I also grabbed a towel for my sweat.

When I arrived at the training hall, there was one other person who was already there.

That person looked like they had arrived before me.

I had ran to the cafeteria to grab an anchovy sandwich as soon as class ended. If this person had arrived before me, it meant that they had skipped lunch to come here.

The person had lined up a few chairs together and was lying down on top of it, kind of like a makeshift bed. His face was covered by a uniform shirt, so I couldn’t tell who it was.

Was it Hylli?

Seeing all of the memory devices strewn by their side, it looked like it was Hylli. They looked similar in size, too.

Anyway, what was Hylli doing over here without even eating lunch?

I approached Hylli, who seemed deep asleep, and started to speak to him.

“Are you sleeping after you ate your lunch?”

When I removed the shirt off of their face, I saw a familiar face. The person lying down wasn’t Hylli: it was Swan.

Swan, who I had assumed had been asleep, had been awake the whole time. He went stiff with his eyes slightly open. Even though I had taken his shirt and had spoken to him, Swan still seemingly refused to look at me. Instead, he looked incredibly off-put and grabbed his shirt from my hand and put it back on his face.

“I thought you were Hylli. I apologize for my rudeness.”

I thought Swan was angry, so I decided to apologize first.

We weren’t even close, so of course he didn’t like how I grabbed his belongings like that. It looked like he didn’t even like me to begin with. Oh, or maybe he didn’t remember me at all.

As soon as I said those words, Swan rushed to get up. As he did, he quietly muttered, “…..rudeness?” to himself.

Thump thump thump!

Swan, who still had his face covered with his shirt, had tried to stand up and had fallen instead. When I looked at him again, he pretended to fall asleep where he had tripped. It looked like he had fallen head first, too. Ouch, that must’ve hurt.

I stared at his strange sleeping form and gave him one of the anchovy sandwiches I had been planning on eating. He would probably need the energy to train later on.

“Eat this and sleep.”

With that statement, I resumed running laps around the hall.

But just eating one sandwich wasn’t cutting it for my stomach, and I soon grew hungry again. It looked like I would need to go back and get more sandwiches for later.

When I headed out of the hall, there was a loud clatter, as if somebody had kicked a chair.

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I always made sure to do some stretches for my height after eating dinner. Originally, I stretched with Cory and Hylli, but Hestia had said that she wanted to do it with me so I was stretching with Hestia these days.

Hestia usually went walking around campus after school, so it wasn’t too strange for her to add stretching to her daily repertoire. We generally just walked until we saw a place where we could stretch, then held each other as we stretched.

Today, we decided to stretch near the school building. The two of us were faced away from a building. We could see some students still in the school building through the windows.

As we stretched, Hestia suddenly began to speak to me.

“Shushu, has Swanhaden ever said anything to you?”

Hestia looked slightly nervous as she asked me that.

What did she mean, did Swanhaden say anything to me? Why would Swan, who was busy running away from me at any moment talk to me?

I shook my head at the question.

“Not yet, why?”

At my words, Hestia sighed in relief with an expression that looked like it was saying, “How pathetic.”

Hestia’s behavior seemed off these days.

Her whining and sticking by me was the same as usual, but she occasionally had moments when she would make expressions that I wouldn’t be able to understand.

Until now, Hestia always gave me looks that said, “I don’t know what’s happening, so you have to tell me everything from start to finish,” not anything filled with darker intentions like right now.

Hestia was always like that. She always looked like she was nice and gullible and completely innocent, but on the other hand, she felt like she was hiding something.

But still, I didn’t have any intentions of figuring out Hestia’s true thoughts. Hestia seemed to want me to see her like an innocent, immature younger sister. I was going to wait until Hestia herself showed me her true thoughts on her own

When I looked at Hestia, she just smiled sweetly once again.

Well, that could also be her true personality. I didn’t know.

Before I started my starfish jump, I looked around to see if anybody was looking. It was a slightly embarrassing exercise, that was why. I was supposed to jump and spread my arms and legs wide, but it was quite….unsightly.

This starfish jump was apparently good for growing taller.

Apparently, twenty jumps a day would make a difference. But I was strong enough, so I did fifty a day. It was kind of embarrassing, but I decided to let go of my shame for my future self.

I began to jump as hard as I could and shouted for extra strength. Hestia laughed, asking what I was doing. I frowned

“I said not to laugh.”

Hestia apologized but didn’t stop laughing.

Hestia didn’t jump with me. I told her to get messed up with me, but she said that she was already tall enough and refused. I was slightly irritated but what could I do? It was my inferior genetics that were at fault. I blamed my short father and jumped as much as I could.

Anyway, I was feeling quite tired because I had moved all day. I had run during training, after all.

My legs kept losing their strength from earlier.

I’d done around 27, so I had finished slightly more than half. I didn’t think I could keep going. But I wanted to fill my goal of fifty jumps so I kept jumping.

I felt my legs slowly losing strength, but I kept jumping.

Maybe it was because I had went past my limits, I jumped wrong.

Crack!

“Shushu! Are you alright?!”

I stayed there, on the floor, staring at the sky. I was supposed to land on my feet, but my feet had lost strength so I had landed on my ankle.

“Just because I wanted to get a little taller!”

I felt aggrieved and in pain. I felt tears forming in my eyes. But I couldn’t give up my dreams of getting taller.

I wasn’t showing it, but I was in too much pain and was too embarrassed and couldn’t stand up.

Clatter clatter

Right as I fell, I heard a sound coming from inside of the school building. I looked towards where the sound came from. I wanted to see if anything was going on.

That was when it happened.

Someone suddenly fell from the sky.

I was laying down and staring at the sky, so I was able to see it clearly.

Bright silver hair blew gently in the wind. Today, he was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt instead of a black turtleneck. His pale exposed arms had remnants of scars. His scars were haphazardly wrapped in bandages because of his short sleeves.

The child, who had jumped from the third floor of the building, had covered his face with two shirts, wound tightly around his face. The child, who I assumed was Swan, gently landed on his feet. Landing like that without even seeing where he landed, those were some insane skills.

Swan, face completely covered by shirts, began to walk towards me.

“Swan! You bastard! My shirt!”

A boy from the third floor was covering his bare skin as much as possible as he yelled from the third floor, looking for him.

But Swan pretended to not hear the poor boy and walked to where I was.

Without even looking at me, Swan kneeled slightly to meet my gaze.

Then, he spread his hand towards where I was.

“…….hand me your injured ankle.”

He seemed to know where I was, because his hand position was pretty precise. Thinking about it, it seemed that he had spread his hand towards me for me to put my ankle on.

I, of course, refused. I was wondering what in the world this was all about.

“It’s okay. I’ll get better from something like this in an instant.”

When I said that, Swan went still for a moment before starting a heal for my entire body.

My entire body, not just my ankle, felt like it was recovering in an instant.

After Swan had finished his heal, he unwrapped the bandages on his arms and wrapped it on my ankle. Of course, he wasn’t able to see it so the wrapping was very messy.

“Be careful.”

With those words, Swan handed me five bottles of a white potion. It looked similar to what Yves had before, but it was a higher quality version of it. I had, somehow, gained five top tier healing potions. I blankly stared at Swan.

Swan stood up from his kneeling position, then tried to leave like his work was done.

When Swan began to move, I could see Hestia coming over with medicine and bandages. Hestia looked from Swan, then to me, back and forth, before her expression stiffened and she ran towards me to check how I was doing.

Hestia worriedly fretted over me, asking if I was okay over and over. I told her that I was okay. She sighed in relief and stood back up, telling me that she would put the medicine back. Then, she shifted her gaze from me to Swan. Swan seemed to notice Hestia; he stopped walking.

Hestia tapped Swan’s shoulder lightly and spoke, voice incredibly quiet.

“You’re being real annoying.”
“You too.”

Swan smiled ruefully and responded to Hestia’s words, then kept walking forward, eyes still covered. He bumped into a tree.

The naked boy who had watched from the third floor began to laugh at Swan. Swan slightly lowered the shirt covering his face, then threw his shoe at the boy. It hit.

---

Swan was being super suspicious. It felt like he was ignoring me, but it also felt like he wasn’t ignoring me.

I put down the five top-tier potions on my desk and began to think. The potion was a bluish white, and whenever the light hit it, it shined like a jewel with multiple colors. I tapped the potion bottles with my nails.

Then, I came to a conclusion. After seeing Swan and his rotten personality until now, this had to be…..

“A new type of bullying.”

He must be planning on extorting money for the potions that he had given me later on.

Swan, I didn’t see you like that. You were a loan shark?

Let’s be on guard, Shushu.

---

“He’s being really suspicious recently.”

Hylli looked at Swan, then spoke to me mid-duel.

I was practicing my downward swings today, but tilted my head in confusion at Hylli’s words. Hylli watched as Swan bullied other students from our class from further away.

Hylli looked at Swan. I followed his gaze to look at Swan.

Swan smiled gleefully as he attacked the other students.

“He didn’t smile like that before. He was a crazy bastard who always looked bored when he bullied other people. It’s scarier now that he’s smiling these days.”

I nodded at Hylli’s words. I also didn’t realize he was Swan when I first saw him, after all.