The student council president’s two eyes that had been holding me for a moment folded roundly.
“Well, I am acting as the representative for this side. We’ve caused Hayoung sunbae a lot of trouble, and that student said he was too scared to come apologize to the sunbaes alone.”
“……”
“That’s why we came together like this. There’s no other meaning, so please rest assured.”
No other meaning. Rest assured. Those were words aimed at me and Cha Jeoh, and on the other hand, they also meant he knew we were putting up walls against him.
Soon the student council president held out what he’d brought toward me. Large-sized paper was rolled up like a scroll and trapped in his grip.
“This is the map I promised. Since the incident was what it was, I couldn’t deliver it in time, right?”
Though reeking of displeasure, Cha Jeoh reluctantly reached out his hand. Separate from his bad mood, it seemed he intended to receive the map that was no different from compensation for the past situation.
But before Cha Jeoh could grab that map, the student council president suddenly lifted the map and avoided his touch. Cha Jeoh’s fingertips that didn’t even graze the map hovered in the air.
“What?”
“Hayoung sunbae should receive it directly. I made a deal with Hayoung sunbae, not with you, sunbae.”
Cha Jeoh’s face crumpled even more irritably. Then as he acted like he would immediately rise from his seat, I grabbed his wrist to restrain him.
I knew well the fact that Cha Jeoh was excessively strong. But even so, it would be better to avoid conflict with the student council president who had no proper information if possible.
Even at my feeble touch that barely applied force, Cha Jeoh obediently followed me and calmed his emotions. However, his two eyes were still glaring at the student council president.
After looking at Cha Jeoh, I slowly moved my hand and grasped the end of the rolled-up map. I was about to bring the map to my side right away but stopped, and I furrowed my brow slightly.
The map didn’t move. There was no way the map would be holding itself in the air by its own will, so the student council president must be deliberately exerting force to hold onto the map. When I rolled my eyes to look at the student council president’s hand, then met his face, he smiled calmly.
“Ah, sorry. Without realizing it.”
As if those words in a tone of it being a mistake were the truth, only then did the map slip smoothly from the student council president’s grip. However, just before I completely received the freed map, his hand that suddenly stepped forward brushed my fingers.
In an instant, an unpleasant sensation like a sting rang through my body. Starting from the fingertips that had touched the student council president even briefly, it flowed along my blood vessels, climbing up my hand, arm, shoulder, and sweeping from my head to the tips of my toes.
Through narrowed eyes like a reflex, I examined the student council president’s hand that had already left me. It was keeping distance from me as if it knew nothing, but there was something that couldn’t be hidden because it was my eyes, not someone else’s.
Red thread the color of blood. The form of the ability the student council president had used while targeting me and Cha Woodan in turn, which I’d seen in the warehouse the other day, was connecting his hand and mine again.
Through close contact, from an even nearer place…
Once I roughly grasped the situation, instinctive fear bloomed and brushed past before my eyes. This time, I might fall victim to the student council president’s mental-type ability without even a chance to avoid it.
‘The stronger the mental strength, the more difficult it is to use the ability, he said.’
Cha Woodan had said that. Moreover, since I was vividly feeling that the student council president was using his ability on me, I held hope that I could endure it more easily, couldn’t I?
But making the tension accompanied by vivid anxiety meaningless.
‘…What?’
The unfamiliar ability rummaging through my insides soon subsided of its own accord. It was an instant where I couldn’t even get a chance to attempt anything particularly different. As if he’d chosen the wrong target for his ability from the beginning.
Even in the midst of that, thanks to acutely raising my senses, I didn’t miss noticing what the student council president’s ability had targeted in me.
‘Emotions.’
The ticklish sensation gently stimulating the lump lodged deep in my chest was vivid. I couldn’t know exactly which fragment of emotion, or what method he’d tried to stimulate. However, with this, I’d obtained major information about the mental-type ability the student council president had awakened.
The ability the student council president awakened focused on selecting and stimulating specific emotions among those the target possessed. Poking and tormenting what they’d been enduring alone for no reason, ultimately inducing it to explode in an impulsive and violent form.
Belatedly rolling my eyes, I looked up at the student council president. As expected, he couldn’t hide his subtly hardened expression and was capturing me in a gaze tangled with doubt and irritation.
“……”
Without avoiding the student council president’s two eyes, I fiddled with the map.
The other day in the warehouse, the student council president had shown an attitude as if predicting what would happen in the auditorium. And the incident that occurred in the auditorium that day had happened when several of the injured who hadn’t received timely treatment couldn’t control their anger and caused a disturbance.
‘…It was strange from the beginning.’
When the fire door leading to the second floor had opened, I was suddenly pointed at as a murderer in the student council room. Since Lee Gojun and I weren’t people who were acquainted with them, I could at least intellectually understand such indiscriminately exclusionary behavior. But they had even forced trumped-up charges onto the twins who occupied a large portion of the monster extermination.
Since there had been so many casualties, and wondering how many sane people would remain in this ruined world, I’d passed over their impulsive abuse thinking ‘that’s how it is.’ Because I’d more or less accepted that burning emotional line and lost hatred and resentment.
However, if in fact all of that had been manipulated by one person’s ability.
I’d heard that using an ability on multiple people at once, especially a mental-type ability that was quite burdensome to the caster, wasn’t an easy task. But there was no need to use the ability on multiple people at once, in one moment, was there?
‘Because no matter how strong someone’s mental strength is, if they’re frequently exposed to persistent and tenacious intrusion, that defense wall is bound to fail to function properly.’
He’d been steadily building it up from before. To completely control the survivors on the lower floors and place them under him.
Then how widely had that ability spread within Hanul High now?
“Hayoung sunbae? Is there something on my face?”
The student council president shamelessly expressed doubt and tilted his head. Reflecting him with a dry gaze, I opened my mouth softly.
“You did it.”
I didn’t add any further explanation. There was no need to add one.
The student council president, who had opened his two eyes widely for a moment, soon pulled up the corners of his mouth.
“Did what?”
“Anything.”
Watching the student council president’s smile gradually deepen, I continued speaking.
“Why?”
It wasn’t resentment, lamentation, or anything that could be called contempt. Those who would have been used by the student council president and manipulated in his grasp weren’t especially close to me, and even if they were victims, I too was a victim harmed by them. So this was just lukewarm puzzlement, and a question arising from the purpose of wanting to completely understand the person called the student council president.
The student council president seemed to fall into deep contemplation. Staring at one point in the air, fidgeting unable to keep his hands still, opening and closing his mouth several times, he belatedly gave an answer.
“Because there are too many.”
“……”
“I hate things that are swarming and noisy. They’re not even cockroaches, but they’re disgusting.”
They won’t be helpful even if they remain anyway.
The student council president who muttered without hesitation produced a bright smile.
“Then I’ll be going, sunbae. Rest well.”
The student council president who substituted a greeting with eye contact to me, and then to Cha Jeoh, turned his back. Watching that back moving away with light steps, I even forgot the fact that I should close my eyes. Fortunately, thanks to Cha Jeoh covering my eyes with good timing, no mishap occurred.
Soon at the sound of the door closing, even as Cha Jeoh carefully withdrew his touch from me, he didn’t hide his fierce expression.
“Isn’t he a crazy bastard?”
Right, the student council president was definitely a crazy bastard. Me and the twins, and Lee Gojun too belonged to the crazy category, but we were different in texture from him.
The student council president enjoyed selfish slaughter and was intoxicated by it. Whether he didn’t bother to hide it or judged it was okay to reveal it to us, I didn’t know, but it was felt vividly enough that I couldn’t not know even if I wanted to.
Swallowing my breath, I put down the map I’d been holding as if tossing it onto the bed. Then I rubbed and wiped my fingertips that had brushed against the student council president vigorously on my clothes.
Cha Jeoh, who had been watching me after revealing disgust then stopping, suddenly reached out his hand. After gauging the situation for a moment, he carefully pulled my hand that didn’t refuse and began to gently wipe it with the fabric of the gym uniform he was wearing.
Of course, such actions wouldn’t have much effect on cleanliness and disinfection.
“Are you okay?”
Unlike when toward the student council president, a persistently melted voice dug into my ear. At that, I slowly nodded my head. Cha Jeoh, who smiled as if relieved, continued his touch without stopping.
