Became a Swordsman Genius in a Pretty Girl Game

377. An Ordinary Man (5)

“Ah… This kinda thing, please, tell me beforehand… Seriously, I don’t know how I’m supposed to react…”

When I said that while crying, the party members paused for a moment,

then burst into laughter and celebrated each other.

“Kyah, we succeeded in making Jin Yuha cry.”

“Right? I really didn’t think it would work…”

“Hah, so, can we take off these ridiculous headbands now?”

“J-Jin Yuha-nim, c-could you possibly cry in three stages for us…?”

“Sophiah, you’ve been watching too many broadcasts…”

“Worth the effort.”

“Whoa… It’s the first time seeing a man cry like this, but, because the instructor-nim is crying…”

To the party members’ teasing words, I forced a laugh and replied,

“Really, thank you… everyone. When did you even prepare all this?”

It was a gift that truly touched my heart more than any other present.

Lee Yuri stepped forward. The usual swagger was gone, her hands clenched tight.

“Hoo- Jin Yuha…”

She bit her lip, seemingly choosing her words, before slowly opening her mouth.

“…It doesn’t matter to us what kind of person you are. Just be Jin Yuha. You’ve always been there, watching over us, leading us… because you were there, we were able to get this far. So…”

Lee Yuri’s voice trembled.

“S-so! I-if it gets hard sometimes, it’s, it’s okay to lean on m-me?”

Other party members shot glares at Lee Yuri as she stammered out the embarrassing words.

“…Even putting Lee Yuri-ssi first in the video was like that…”

“Not ‘we’, but ‘me’… Is she using her sub-leader power to pull this off?”

“Yuri, junior. Isn’t it a bit unfair to say that at this moment? Right?”

“That’s just cheating.”

Lee Yuri’s face went bright red.

The night deepened.

The cake was nearly gone, and the candles were going out one by one.

But our conversation seemed to have no end.

“…Honestly, I thought Senior Gaeul was so mature when I first met her…”

“Mature senior…? Yuri, junior, does that mean you don’t think so now?”

“…”

“Look me in the eyes! Tell me while looking at my eyes!”

Stories from our first gate clear.

First meeting, first impressions of each other.

The fear when we first took down a demon.

The mishaps at the swimsuit festival.

We had so many stories piled up between us.

But, everyone was either nodding off, exhausted from preparing for today, or had their eyes closed.

“Eun-in…”

I lifted Ichika, who was trying to stay awake until the very end, carried her to her room, tucked her into bed, and came back out.

And then, the balcony of the party room.

A figure caught my eye.

It was Shin Sehee.

I went out onto the balcony, arms crossed, and stared intently at her.

As if asking if she had something to say to me.

Shin Sehee, looking like she was hiding something, gave an awkward smile and rolled her eyes.

Shin Sehee knew all my secrets, yet,

she’d only sent me the message, ‘Even if the party members are a bit odd, try to blend in as naturally as possible.’

She hadn’t said a single thing about this.

“Well, um…”

Shin Sehee hesitated, scratching her cheek.

“At first, I just wanted to blend in, you know, not look awkward to the other party members… that kind of feeling… you know?”

“Hmm?”

“But you know, as I was doing it. Something about, putting on a surprise event for Jinyuha-ssi, felt good too······. I also wanted to see Jinyuha-ssi’s face all surprised, not knowing anything like this today······. So, I kind of got a little serious about it······.”

Shin Sehee, tapping the floor with her toe and mumbling, looked like a kid caught doing something wrong, making excuses.

It was so cute, I couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh.

“Jinyuha-ssi, it was dangerous today, right?”

Noticing that I wasn’t angry, Shin Sehee brazenly changed the subject.

Knowing that, I naturally played along with her.

“Yeah, I almost spilled everything.”

I scratched my head and agreed.

That it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are to us. That you just being Jinyu is enough.

Honestly, I was caught up in the moment and was almost about to blurt out that I’m a game transmigrator, that I’m not from this world, right there in front of the party members.

“You held it in well. If you’d said something like that there, the mood would’ve gotten weird.”

Actually, it wasn’t that I held it in.

The moment I heard those words,

I had this strong conviction that maybe it would be better to just spill everything here.

But, there was one person who wasn’t here.

That person kept nagging at my mind, so I couldn’t bring myself to reveal it.

Baek Seolhee.

The video definitely showed my figure from the Master’s point of view. Which meant, she was one of the people who helped prepare this event yesterday.

But the Master wasn’t here today.

“Where did Master go?”

Shin Se-hee tilted her head, answering my question.

“Well? I can’t exactly manage their schedule… They were with us until morning. And then, just vanished at some point.”

“…Is that so?”

‘Hmm, maybe they got busy with the Mind Extermination Task Force…?’

I felt relieved I hadn’t messed up today, but a part of me was also disappointed.

* * *

“What…?”

“I want to know about the sense of responsibility and burden felt as a hero.”

Velvet Hunter Academy Chairman’s Office.

Lina stared at Baek Seol-hee’s blunt face, who had suddenly barged in asking about a hero’s burden, with an astonished look.

“…What in the world are you talking about. Explain yourself.”

“Um, well—”

Baek Seol-hee had been with them until early morning, and a thought suddenly occurred to her, prompting her to abruptly leave.

Sophia’s interpretation of Jin Yuha’s subconscious.

The aspects of self-deprecation and burden contained within it.

…Whether conveying how she viewed her disciple and the perspective she had,

Would be helpful for the disciple, she agreed.

But, she felt it wasn’t a fundamental solution.

However, the responsibility and burden of being a hero were emotions too distant for her.

She had spent her entire life operating in the shadows, out of the public eye.

That’s why, the person who’d know best, or so it seemed.

I’d come to find Lina.

No matter what anyone said, Maze, Lina was the most famous hero before Utopia,

a figure burdened with the expectations and weight of countless people.

*

“…So, this Jin Yuha in the video. That brat said those words?”

Lina, of course, had been diligently watching Utopia’s raid broadcasts, so it was a familiar scene.

The battle footage was natural; even Lina herself had been on edge, cheering him on at the time.

But, there was editing so cunning even she was almost fooled?

Now that she focused, she could indeed sense subtly misaligned, awkward parts.

“Yes. Is it possible to restore the entire audio?”

Lina shook her head at Baek Seolhui’s question.

“No, if it was live, maybe, but not from a recording. It’s mixed too cleverly. Hmm, in the first place, was this really mana interference? It feels too artificial –”

“Rather than that, tell me how you can help my disciple.”

Before Lina could drift into another topic, Baek Seolhui immediately brought the conversation back.

Lina paused, organizing her thoughts.

‘…That Jin Yuha felt pressure? He didn’t seem like the type.’

The memory of that day was as clear as if it were yesterday for Lina.

The unofficial meeting.

Those brats who called themselves her disciples were pulling off absurd schemes, riding on her reputation and glory.

But, because they were ones she had given her heart to, she was only filled with betrayal, unable to say a word.

That’s when Jin Yuha stepped forward.

After punishing them, just enough not to kill them, in her place.

– Lina is not someone who would be hurt by the likes of you lot. You trashy b*tches.

And the subsequent handling was even more thorough.

Each of them was assigned a watchful eye to prevent them from scheming behind the scenes, and they were made to compensate and atone for their misdeeds themselves.

And the words Jin Yuha had said on the way back to the academy were deeply etched in her mind.

– The Headmaster is also just like me, you know. It’s just a common occurrence. Getting backstabbed by people you trusted. Getting betrayed, getting hurt.

Ah.

For a moment, Lina unknowingly made a ‘d’oh’ expression.

At that time, Lina was so overwhelmed just trying to process the situation in front of her that she had forgotten an important fact.

Jin Yuha had said she was ‘just like’ her, a normal person.

That meant that Jin Yuha was also just a completely ordinary person who gets hurt by others and feels burdened.

The whole world is watching her, and she struggles behind the scenes to somehow meet their expectations.

How could she forget that feeling?

For the one at the very top, solitude is the hero’s fate.

She, too, had more than a few times a day.

Wanted to just give up this Headmaster position and leave without a second thought.

But, she knew that if she really left this place, the world would break down immediately, so she sighed and sat back down in the academy.

Jin Yuha must have felt the same.

No, maybe even more so than herself.

Unlike herself, who had no direct comparisons in the past,

Jinyuha had to inherit and surpass the name of ‘Maje.’

And what kind of person was Maje?

A hero of the world.

The founder of magic.

The greatest being in history.

A living legend, said to be insurmountable by anyone.

It couldn’t have been easy for her to claim to be a hero of a new era while bearing such a heavy name.

They would throw Maje’s great achievements in Jinyuha’s face, compare them in every instance, and belittle her.

It was a truly difficult, cruel, thorny path.

‘Am I still making mistakes, even after making such a huge one?’

She bit her lip at her own dullness.

“…A misjudgment, indeed.”

Lina glanced at Baek Seolhui, who stood before her, looking uneasy.

‘It’d be best to explain everything to Seolhui too.’

…After all, they share the same position of ‘teacher’, in a way.

Well, she didn’t have any memories of directly teaching Jinyuha anything though.

But he is her successor, and

considering they are both affiliated with the academy, wouldn’t it be okay to see them all as her students?

So, Jin Yuha is no different.

Rina, having made up her mind, nodded.

“Seolhui, I’ll tell you about what happened at the unofficial meeting.”

“…The unofficial meeting, you mean the one with the chairman’s–”

“Those guys are now outcasts, stripped of their discipleship. Don’t speak of them like that.”

“Uh…”

Baek Seolhui nodded, and Rina recounted the story.

The moment at that meeting where Jin Yuha, whom she had accompanied, revealed right in front of them the underhanded things they had been doing all along.

The day Jin Yuha stepped in to punish them when Rina, feeling betrayed, was about to lose it.

‘Definitely…like a disciple…’

It was a cathartic story.

But, something.

Listening to the story, Baek Seolhui felt a strange, grating sensation.

It was like, how should she put it.

Like when Director Rina talks about Jin Yuha, it’s as if she’s talking about ‘her own disciple’…

“So, I, who’ve lived my whole life as a ‘normal’ hero, can understand it. That feeling of burden he carries. Anyway, even if it was to stop me from losing it, to suddenly embrace me there, wasn’t it incredibly presumptuous?”

“…So what’s your point then?”

Her tone somehow boastful, a sharp, blunt voice burst out of Baek Seolhui’s mouth.

But Rina, oblivious, replied innocently.

“We should start by sharing his burden, shouldn’t we?”

And then Lina’s gaze shifted to Baek Seolhui.

“Seolhui, isn’t it time you came out into the light, too?”

“…The light?”