Chapter 196
Da-eun voiced her frustration.
“Seriously, does this even make sense?!”
“And what are you going to do if it doesn’t?”
Yuki replied curtly.
“So, what exactly can you do about it?”
“…Yuki, are you a T? How can you say something like that!”
“Kana, I’m so sad….”
Da-eun said this as she subtly tried to lean on me.
Slide—
“…!”
When I avoided her and moved away, Da-eun looked at me with a face full of shock.
“Kana…!”
Her cry was as heartfelt as a distressed heroine in a movie.
Of course, I wasn’t swayed by something like that.
Instead of me, who remained utterly indifferent, Yuki curled her lips into a crooked smirk.
“That’s karma.”
“…Have I done something so bad that you’d call it karma?”
“Do you realize you’ve said, ‘Does this even make sense?!’ more than ten times already? And let me add that you’ve said, ‘The world’s gone crazy!’ more than five times. If no one’s reacting, maybe you should take the hint and stop.”
“Is that my fault? On the contrary, shouldn’t someone react at least once since I’ve said it that many times?!”
“They did respond at first, but you kept repeating yourself, so that’s why. Kana probably thinks the same as me.”
“…Kana, is that true?”
“Don’t mind me. You two have fun.”
Seriously, don’t drag me into this mess.
I turned my body, making it abundantly clear I had no interest in their drama.
“Kana seems a little out of it today. Is it because of the rain?”
“She’s always like this in the morning. Yuki, you don’t know how cute Kana looks when she’s half-asleep after just waking up, do you? …Oh wait, now you do.”
“I’ll admit Kana is cute when she’s still groggy, but she’s been awake for quite a while now.”
“Maybe she got sleepy again? Kids tend to get drowsy often.”
“…Hmm, that makes sense.”
“Like hell it does.”
I told them not to mind me, and now they’re whispering about me like this.
They just don’t listen, do they?
“Anyway, this is a problem. Plane tickets aside, we might not even be able to leave today.”
Da-eun muttered in a deliberately serious tone.
“Yuki, are you okay? Do you have any plans or schedules?”
“Not really. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind just living here.”
“No. That’s definitely not happening.”
Da-eun let out a deep sigh this time.
“I feel bad….”
“What for now?”
“If I hadn’t suggested this trip, none of this would have happened.”
“You didn’t know this would happen, so there’s no reason to feel guilty.”
“And I’m the one who first suggested we go on this trip.”
Yuki added, and I chimed in.
“All of us….”
I was just stating the obvious, yet for some reason, Da-eun’s eyes began to well up with tears.
No, saying “for some reason” is wrong.
Da-eun always does this.
“I thought you didn’t like me… but I was wrong…. Sob…! I’m so touched…!”
“Yeah, now I don’t like you.”
“Same.”
“…That’s so mean! Just a second ago, it was such an emotional moment! Why did you suddenly go cold?!”
“That’s your karma.”
“Yeah.”
Having someone who gets you is great.
They’ll say what you’re thinking without you even having to speak.
Back when I was a captain, this kind of thing happened often.
My subordinates would speak up or act before I could.
“I’ll handle this.”
“Huh?”
“There’s no need for someone of your rank to handle something so trivial. So please, just stay put… no, I mean, rest comfortably.”
“I think solving it quickly would make resting easier.”
“…I wasn’t going to say this, but when you get involved, cleaning up after you is even harder. You break everything….”
“….”
“…Sigh. So please, just stay still. Just stay still. Okay?”
“…Fine.”
“…Hmm.”
Even Aeron had said things like that to me, so I just sat in my chair and watched quietly.
It feels slightly different from now, but overall, it’s not that different, so whatever.
While I was reminiscing, Da-eun put down her phone, which she’d been fiddling with.
“Just in case, I extended our stay at the pension. It’s really lucky this is the off-season….”
“What if it doesn’t stop tomorrow either?”
“Hey, don’t say something so ominous! Don’t you know words can come true?!”
“I’m half-Japanese, so I wouldn’t know.”
“…Don’t mess with me! If you’re going to say that, at least say it in Japanese.”
“Is this Korean? I don’t know.”
“….”
Da-eun was rendered speechless by Yuki’s trump card.
Or maybe it wasn’t speechlessness but sheer disbelief.
Turning away from their bickering, I looked outside the window.
The rain, heavier than yesterday, lashed against the glass.
“….”
It wasn’t a prediction, more like a gut feeling.
For some reason, I couldn’t shake the thought that this rain wouldn’t stop for a long time.
***
Shoooosh—!
“It’s just pouring now. Really pouring.”
Da-eun spoke, sounding fed up.
She didn’t even bother to look outside anymore, as if she’d given up on the idea that the rain would stop.
Just as I vaguely felt, the rain hadn’t stopped by evening.
Far from letting up, it had grown even heavier, making me worry that it might cause flooding.
According to Da-eun, the news was already calling it an “unprecedented weather anomaly.”
They were saying that this much rain, without any prior detection, was practically impossible.
“There’s something called Murphy’s Law, you know. If you wash your car, it rains. If you go grocery shopping, the store is closed. Maybe this is the same thing? The world’s malice wanted to screw us over so badly that it even defied the impossible.”
“Is that what it is?”
“I’m just saying. But doesn’t it sound a little convincing? Kana, you’ve had experiences like that, haven’t you? Where you put in a lot of effort, but it ended up being for nothing.”
“Not exactly rare. That’s just life.”
“Uh… I wasn’t expecting such a profound answer….”
She seemed flustered by my unexpectedly serious response after all her complaining earlier.
How was I supposed to match her rhythm?
“Thanks, but Kana, you don’t have to adjust to me. I like you just the way you are!”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Wow… That cooled off fast. No matter how you look at it, your tone shift is way too quick!”
Her voice carried laughter for a moment, but then her face turned serious again.
“Is this because of global warming? At this rate, we’ll be doomed by extreme weather before dimensional creatures wipe us out.”
“But isn’t the climate supposed to be slowly returning to normal?”
“Yeah, that’s what they say…. But being in a situation like this makes me wonder if that’s really true.”
“Hmm. That’s fair.”
For once, Yuki agreed with Da-eun.
“But are you okay? I mean, with your schedule.”
“Yeah. I always leave some buffer time when I plan trips, just in case something like this happens. I am a little worried about my stream, though….”
Well, what can you do?
“They’re saying the weather’s so bad they can’t even fly planes.”
“Want me to tell you a good idea?”
“No thanks. I doubt it’d help anyway.”
That’s when it happened.
Crackle—
“Huh? What’s going on? Why is it doing that?”
The TV, which we’d left on to kill time and get updates, suddenly lost its signal.
Instead of the clear voice of the anchor, unpleasant static filled the air, drawing everyone’s attention to the screen.
A flustered Da-eun tried turning it off and back on, but it wouldn’t budge.
The TV stubbornly displayed the words “No Signal.”
“Wow, could this seriously be because of the rain?”
“It’s likely.”
“This is insane. Really insane. Do you think calls don’t work either?”
Da-eun brought her phone to her ear.
After a moment of stillness, she slowly lowered her phone with a blank expression.
“…No calls. No internet either. Sure, it’s been raining a lot, but in this day and age? What is this, the 80s or something?”
“…Yeah, seriously.”
Even Yuki was frowning, which was rare for her.
Not even yesterday morning, when she came back soaked from the rain, had she looked like this.
Faced with an obvious abnormality, even Yuki’s nerves of steel couldn’t stay completely calm.
“…No internet either?”
And I wasn’t any different, despite having watched the situation unfold without much thought until now.
Even though this pension was almost too spacious for the three of us, indoors was still indoors.
Being stuck like this, there was nothing to do.
What could we do here? Take a stroll around the pension? Sightsee?
Even the board games Da-eun brought had long since lost their appeal, leaving phones and TV as our only means of entertainment—and now, those were gone too.
…Well, it couldn’t be helped.
I guess it was my turn.
Slide.
“Whoa, Kana. Nope. No way. Be good and sit back down.”
“….”
I sat back down, having gotten up with much fanfare.
I was only holding back because I thought it through logically—not because Da-eun stopped me.
Definitely not.
“Should I be glad that Kana has adapted to Earth so well, or worried because she’s adapted too well…?”
“Isn’t it closer to the former?”
“That’d be nice, but sometimes I worry Kana is getting too influenced by the internet.”
“You sound like a mom worried about her teenage kid.”
“That’s such a pointless concern.”
I’m not a kid, after all.
When I said that, Da-eun looked at me with an even more complicated expression.
“Hearing that makes me even less reassured. …Would it be wrong to ask to see your phone history?”
“Teenagers are way more particular than that. What if Kana refuses to talk to you ever again after you say that? Could you handle it?”
“…Ugh. Just thinking about it makes me…!”
“You two know I’m sitting right here, don’t you?”
They were talking about me as if I weren’t even there.
Buzz.
As I shook my head, I suddenly felt a faint vibration in the phone I was holding.
“…?”
Was it a notification?
Casually glancing at the screen, I tilted my head.
“Da-eun.”
“Hm?”
“Didn’t you say calls weren’t working?”
“Yeah. They’re not.”
Da-eun tapped her phone, only to have the same result as before.
“Why? What’s up?”
“What’s up….”
If I had to call it something, it was something.
But I had no idea what it was.
Shrugging at Da-eun, I looked back at my screen.
Glowing on the screen was an incoming call icon, along with four distinct characters: ‘Edel.’
—
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