The Second Provision (4)

Leaving the whispering students behind, I sat down beside Merhen.

"Th-thank..."

"Are you having that strange packed lunch again today?"

"... Pardon?"

"You know. The one with nothing but a single whole potato in it. Is that what you're eating?"

Merhen's face flushed bright red.

"H-how do you know about that...?"

"I saw it. By chance."

Even though there was a dining hall, she always hid away to eat. So I had followed her to take a look. Watching her choke down nothing but a whole potato had been rather pitiful.

"Have lunch with me today. My treat."

"No, I'm fine..."

"Tsk. You need a proper meal to keep going. Just come with me."

After a brief spell of flustered stammering, she quietly followed me to the dining hall. Among the menu boards were numerous food models.

"Pick something. At least five silver."

One silver felt roughly equivalent to ten thousand won. Fortunately, this Kern fellow had plenty of money. Not that it would matter if he didn't. I could turn the junk in my inventory into silver and gold just by selling it.

Perhaps because the clientele was mainly nobles, the meal prices grew downright frightening toward the upper end. Even so, few nobles chose the cheaper dishes. It was a sort of expense for keeping up appearances.

"I-I'm really fine..."

"You like meat, right? How about that, then?"

I pointed to a model of beef stew packed with large chunks of meat.

GULP

I heard her swallow.

Just as I thought. I'd met very few people who disliked meat, and Merhen was no exception.

I placed the order. After a short wait, the stew arrived, packed with as much meat as the model. I'd also made sure she got plenty of vegetables for her health.

"Go ahead."

I took the first spoonful. A mellow, rich, meaty flavor filled my mouth.

'This is good.'

After watching me, Merhen began hurriedly spooning up her own stew. The happy smile on her face suggested it suited her tastes. Well, this had to be a hundred times better than a whole potato. As we were nearly finished, I asked her a question.

"Is life at the academy very hard for you?"

SLURP!

"P-pardon?"

"I asked if it's hard."

"I-I'm fine."

"You don't look fine to me."

"..."

She fell silent, staring down at her stew. Then she raised her head and asked,

"Is this why you helped me?"

"What do you mean by 'this'?"

"... What you're doing to me right now, Lord Kern. Buying me food like you're giving a beggar charity, so you can mock me?"

"I'm not mocking you."

"... Then why are you asking me that?"

Her eyes had grown so gloomy that their brightness as she ate her stew moments ago might never have existed.

"If I say I'm struggling, will anything actually change?"

"Yes. A great deal will."

"No. It won't. I'm still just a half-baked failure who can't even get the sponsorship everyone else gets."

Sponsorship, huh. I'd heard that sponsorship was a thriving practice among the academy's students. Generally, the higher their noble parents' rank and the greater their own talent, the more money they received.

By that measure, Merhen had nothing to attract a sponsor. A commoner and a half-baked mage. Sponsoring her would be no different from throwing money into the street.

"You do everything by halves."

"... What did you say?"

"You neither hold your head high with pride nor abandon it completely. You haven't given up on being a mage, but you aren't burning with passion for it, either."

"..."

"Whatever else I might not know, there's one thing I'm certain of. Someone who commits to nothing ends up becoming nothing."

Merhen clenched her lips before asking, "What do you know about me...?"

"If you'd abandoned your pride, you'd have asked me to help because you were struggling. If you meant to keep it, you wouldn't have accepted the meal in the first place."

She looked utterly at a loss for words, but I continued.

"If you'd given up on becoming a mage, you'd have left already or looked for another line of work. If you were truly passionate, you'd have risked your life trying to manifest magic. But you haven't done any of those things."

It was typical behavior for someone her age, really. Doing everything by halves. In other words, she couldn't choose a goal and focus on it.

"... That's a steep price to pay for a single meal."

"No. If anything, I'm paying you."

Kim Minwoo spoke with a serious expression.

"You've halfheartedly tried to keep up appearances and buried yourself in debt. You let people push you around without doing anything decisive, and you cling halfheartedly to your dream. Has any of that made your life better than before?"

"Then what am I supposed to do?! I'm just a talentless commoner, a half-baked failure! Fight back against nobles? Give up on the academy I worked so hard to enter?"

"If I were you, I'd have either manifested magic by now or died trying. And I'd have fought those nobles long ago."

"Ha. Easy for you to say."

"You have to do it precisely because it isn't easy. Why do you just let them walk all over you? Because you're a commoner? Because you have no talent? Those are all excuses."

"I told you. I can't cast a single spell."

"You can still fight, can't you?"

Merhen was struck speechless.

"Would those bitches kill you if you fought back? Would they get themselves expelled just to destroy one commoner? No. Not if they're sane. At worst, they'd break a few of your limbs."

"..."

"Don't you think it's better to be a crazy bitch who loses her shit and lashes out than an idiot who just takes it?"

"You're a noble too. You know perfectly well. If I resist, my family will be in danger—"

Kim Minwoo gave a short laugh.

"Is that really why you did nothing? Not just because you were scared?"

"... Why are you so sure? What if that's really the reason?"

"If you really were holding back for your family's sake, you wouldn't be living like such an idiot in the first place. People like that have a fierce look in their eyes. You'd have risked your life to manifest magic."

Merhen bit her lip.

The truth was, Kim Minwoo knew. Expecting that degree of initiative from a girl Merhen's age was asking an awful lot.

'So what?'

He had no reason to make allowances for that. Helping Merhen? That was actually far too easy. Shower her with sponsorship money, coddle her, stop all the bullying, become her friend and spend time with her. That was all it would take. It was a very easy road.

But would a great reward await him for doing something any random fool could do? Gate Hunter, at least, wasn't that unreasonable a game. You got as much as you worked for. That was the rule of this world.

The easy road or the hard road. Kim Minwoo was a gamer who chose the latter whenever remotely possible. This time was no different.

Coddling her wouldn't change anything fundamental. Even if he did all that, once he disappeared...

'Her happiness would vanish like sea foam.'

For Merhen to truly change, she ultimately had to change herself, rather than rely on someone else. She needed to build her own self-esteem, think for herself, and take initiative. That was how she could become truly happy.

To change her at the roots, he first had to shake her to her core. That was why he was being so harsh.

"Let's just look at your situation. Are you really in a position to weigh every little consideration? I don't think so."

"... Thank you for the meal. I'll be going now."

Merhen shot to her feet and left the dining hall. He made no effort to stop her. He had raised the initial question. Now it was time to watch what happened next.

* * *

Merhen strode away. She was biting her lip so hard it was on the verge of bleeding.

Kern. What an incredibly rude man. But what truly infuriated her was her own pathetic inability to offer even one proper rebuttal.

When had her life gone so wrong? When she'd been born a commoner instead of a noble? When she'd taken the aptitude test in her village? When she'd failed to manifest magic and fallen into the abyss? When she'd begun taking on debt and overextending herself to preserve her flimsy pride?

She didn't know. One thing was certain: her life had somehow become so tangled that, like a tightly knotted ball of thread, she couldn't even begin to unravel it.

["You do everything by halves."]

Kern's words stabbed into her heart like a dagger. He was right. She truly was neither one thing nor the other. She was nothing more or less than a commoner girl who'd gotten lucky. A stupid girl who'd crumbled in an instant upon discovering that her good fortune was an illusion.

Had she worked herself to death? No. All she'd done was attend the same classes as everyone else and struggle away in the library. That counted as effort, perhaps, but it certainly didn't warrant the words "to death."

["Not just because you were scared?"]

Yes, she'd been scared. Her family? Born the fifth child, she'd been pushed aside for the others and never even properly treated as their child. They'd treated her as nothing more than something to sell.

Her tenant-farmer father had been desperate to sell her off to an elderly noble. Her mother had been no different. If she hadn't taken that aptitude test, Merhen would already be some potbellied nobleman's concubine.

She'd endured it for her family? Merhen smiled bitterly.

'You stupid bitch.'

Honestly, she'd just blurted it out. She wanted to insist that she wasn't such a pathetic bitch. That she'd had reasons of her own. Faced with Kern, who seemed to see straight through her, she'd felt compelled to make even that flimsy excuse.

She'd already known she was at rock bottom. Today, she'd simply been forced to face that fact again. So why did her heart sting so much? She couldn't understand it at all.

That was when she heard it.

"Hey, failure."

A familiar voice came from somewhere nearby. She whirled around and saw a familiar face. Dolores. And her entourage of noble girls. The five girls began approaching her. Dolores, in particular, had a crazed look in her eyes.

"If you can't use magic, just quietly fuck off. You're this close to being expelled, so now you've decided to wag your tail at a man and latch onto him? Huh?"

"Oh, my lady. You know how it is. You can't change lowborn blood."

"Exactly. She must be hoping to land a man and turn her life around, but he's notorious, isn't he? We all know how this ends."

The noble girls pretended to restrain Dolores while slyly backing up her words.

Dolores came right up to Merhen and jabbed her finger hard into her chest. Each jab sent Merhen stumbling helplessly backward.

Of all times to run into them, it had to be when she already felt like absolute shit. Truly, nothing was going right today. Everything pissed her off. Dolores in front of her, and all those idiotic noble bitches squealing beside her.

'What am I putting up with this for?'

Just as that woman said, she couldn't use magic and would soon have to get out of here anyway. Was her miserable life really so precious? Once she left the academy, all that awaited her was a life in the gutter.

When she really thought about it, there wasn't a single reason to endure this. No. If she kept taking it until she was expelled, she felt certain she would regret it for the rest of her life.

"You lowborn bitch. What are you going to do about my hair? Should I have your entire family killed? Huh? All I have to do is tell Daddy—"

"... Do it."

"... What?"

"If you're going to do it, do it. Just kill them all, you fucking bitch!"

Merhen seized a fistful of Dolores's newly shortened hair.

She began shaking her hand wildly, veins bulging. Dolores's head whipped about like an inflatable doll's.

"Aaagh!"

"My lady!"

"Has this crazy bitch lost her mind?! Let go!"

Every girl present was a mage. Yet not one of them thought to use magic. For one thing, none of them had expected Merhen, who had been quiet as a mouse for so long, to suddenly pull something this unhinged. For another, casting magic on others outside class was prohibited. The noble girls had grown thoroughly accustomed to that rule.

In the end, they resorted to what came most naturally: their hands. They grabbed Merhen's head, neck, shoulders, and arms, pinching and twisting.

Ignoring them, Merhen kept her grip fixed solely on Dolores's hair and clung to her with desperate tenacity.

"Die, you fucking bitch!"

"Let go! Aaaagh!"

The six girls tangled together in a vicious brawl. Within moments, students and professors began flocking to the commotion.