The Returnee Wants to Live Comfortably

Even Tong-Tong Could Sing Better Than You

When Eunseol opened her eyes, after having momentarily lost consciousness, she found herself in the infirmary.

The first thing Eunseol did after regaining her senses was to recall her memories right before she collapsed.

'What was I doing?'

How did things get to this point?

She clearly remembered standing in front of the teacher's desk to introduce herself.

She also recalled her homeroom teacher, who had an elephant trunk, wiggling it while making a joke.

'Ah...!'

At the same time, she remembered exactly why she fainted.

It was the shock from the bad memories that surfaced the moment she saw that swinging elephant trunk.

'Why did I...!'

Even she couldn't understand herself.

How could just remembering that incident make her head go numb and her consciousness fade?

It felt as if she'd been hypnotized at that moment. Maybe she really lacked resistance to such things.

On top of that, the timing couldn't have been worse.

Of all times, why did she have to faint right when she was introducing herself for the first time at school?

'I totally blew it.'

Eunseol was so embarrassed that she buried her face in the bed covers.

Her chance to appeal to the other kids with her introduction had been wasted by fainting.

With an impression like that right from the start, she wondered how the other kids would see her.

Of course, there were still opportunities left, since school life had just started.

But for Eunseol, who wanted to escape being an outsider, this was anything but ordinary.

It felt like standing on a big stage and collapsing while singing—a disastrous debut for a singer.

"What's this?"

She noticed there was a red stain on the blanket she'd buried her face in.

It was a pure white cover, so it couldn't have had a mark like this at the start.

Carefully, Eunseol touched her own face.

Sure enough, when she felt her nose, she found the same red stain on her hand.

"Don't tell me... I had a nosebleed too?"

Maybe the shock had been that overwhelming.

But contrary to that, her body felt perfectly fine.

It was strange to be so energetic after just passing out.

"Oh, you're awake?"

A student pulled open the curtain around the bed.

The student had crimson hair and garnet-colored eyes, with horns indicating she was a Mutamit.

"I heard some noise, so I decided to check in. Do you think you can walk?"

The name tag pinned to her shirt read 'Kwon Sang-ah', and she extended her hand to Eunseol.

Eunseol remembered—this was definitely a classmate.

She accepted the hand, listened to a few tips from the infirmary teacher, and stepped outside.

As they headed back to the classroom, Sang-ah looked Eunseol over and said,

"Thank goodness. It didn't seem serious enough to call an ambulance."

"Yeah."

"But why did you suddenly faint? Have you always had poor health or something?"

"No... Not really..."

When Eunseol answered weakly, Sang-ah perked up her ears and used her acute hearing.

After molting previously, her senses had sharpened so much that she could clearly pick up even the sounds inside people's bodies.

Judging by the sound of Eunseol's heartbeat, she seemed perfectly healthy.

In fact, Eunseol herself was walking so well, it was hard to believe she'd fainted.

"I really don't see any problems."

"How long was I out?"

"Around forty minutes?"

"That's shorter than I thought."

"The infirmary teacher also said it was probably just temporary, so I stayed behind in case you needed help when you woke up."

Eunseol had recovered so well, Sang-ah hadn't needed to support her at all.

But Eunseol was deeply moved, inside, by Sang-ah's willingness to stay in the infirmary for her.

Among all the classmates she didn't yet know, Sang-ah alone seemed likely to become her friend.

"Your name is Sang-ah?"

"That's right, Kwon Sang-ah. Can I call you Eunseol?"

"Yeah, Baek Eunseol. Let's... get along from now on, Sang-ah."

"Likewise."

At last, she'd managed to hold a normal conversation with someone new.

Normally, even just facing people made her heart pound and her breath short, but not this time.

It felt natural—as if meeting a friend in her everyday life.

Or, more precisely, as if she was meeting a kindred spirit, there was an instinctive sense of kinship.

'Thankfully, she doesn't seem like a bad person.'

Sang-ah continued to observe Eunseol closely.

Personally, she wasn't that worried about Eunseol—it was something Seongjin had asked her to do.

Seongjin, after learning which class Sang-ah was assigned to, had asked her to look after Eunseol, who was in the same class.

That was why, when Eunseol collapsed, Sang-ah had volunteered to help and stayed in the infirmary until she woke up.

'But what exactly is her relationship with Seongjin?'

Since this was Sang-ah's first time meeting Eunseol, she was curious.

Was Eunseol, like Ah-rin, another childhood friend?

Anyway, the more people Sang-ah could get close to, the better.

"By the way, Sang-ah, do you like paintings?"

"Paintings?"

At Eunseol's sudden question, Sang-ah thought for a moment before answering.

"If you mean paintings, I can only really think of comics I used to read hiding in my room."

"Comics... I like comics too! That one with the monster-catching balls—what was it again?"

"Pokémon?"

"Yeah, pokémon. I used to watch it a lot."

"But that's not really a comic; it's a game or an anime."

"Huh? It wasn't a comic?"

"...."

The new information rattled Eunseol's brain.

With Sang-ah's deadpan expression, Eunseol's thoughts spun even faster.

It'd be obvious if she kept pretending to know.

How should she recover from this?

"Right! It wasn't a comic, was it? I just forgot...?"

"...."

"So, what was there? Anything actually called a comic...?"

She'd started by mentioning 'paintings', but the conversation had been derailed into 'comics'.

Watching Eunseol flounder, Sang-ah sighed inwardly.

Unable to stick to her chosen topic, getting swayed by whatever the other person brought up—she was the very picture of a late bloomer, shut in her room until recently.

'At least...'

She was grateful that punks like Michael Kang, who'd been arrested before, weren't in the school.

If they had been, Eunseol would definitely have become their prey.

She owed it to Seongjin for turning the second campus into such a pleasant environment.

"Let's drop the comic talk. I don't really watch them these days."

"Y-yeah?"

"If you're really interested in art, maybe you should try joining the art club?"

"There's an art club?"

"It's a club activity. If you want, you can join."

She chose to be considerate—after all, Eunseol's interest was in paintings, not comics.

But just as she tried to change topics, Eunseol stared intently at Sang-ah's face.

"But Sang-ah, you... I feel like I've seen you somewhere before."

"Where?"

"Um... I think on my phone... That's it!"

Eunseol's clueless face lit up in an instant.

Having recalled Sang-ah's face, Eunseol spoke animatedly for the first time.

"That berserk girl who's popular on VueTube! That's you, right?"

"...."

"She's still appearing. Recently, there's this new trend with a gluttonous girl."

Eunseol, thinking she'd finally found a topic to talk about, began to chatter away with relief.

Oblivious to how Sang-ah's expression was changing.

"And the mix of that gluttonous girl and berserk girl—"

"Hey."

"Huh?"

Eunseol abruptly stopped.

At the instant she saw Sang-ah's expression, she realized stopping was the right choice.

Sang-ah's face, twisted ominously, looked as if she would 'go berserk' at any moment.

"If you mention that berserk girl or gluttonous girl one more time, you're seriously dead."

"...."

"Okay! Get it!"

"Yes, understood!"

Like a frightened recruit on her first day at boot camp, Eunseol hurriedly replied.

Making friends, indeed, wasn't easy.

****

The Sura guild in China was so massive that it boasted quite a few departments.

Surrounded by enemies at all times, the organization invested heavily in intelligence gathering.

Sometimes they would recruit lost thugs and use them as informants.

But their primary method was eavesdropping.

"Any findings?"

"No, nothing yet."

Lately, there was an unusually high number of Sura guild members assigned to eavesdropping.

That's because they'd succeeded in installing a bug in the Hand chairman's office—that is, inside the lair of their biggest enemy, the World.

The person who'd set it up was Sura, who had enrolled in Hand—essentially enemy territory.

However, Sura herself would have no idea that the 'gift' she brought for the chairman contained a spy spell.

"Wait, we're getting something!"

"Where?"

This was a truly rare chance.

The spell only allowed for a single opportunity to eavesdrop.

—Shining~ Shining~ Shining~ Oh! You are my eternal love!

Huh?

—Snow Light, shining like a star! At your whisper, my heart pounds!

What's this?

—Oh! My heart, which I can't control, BURNING HEART at your touch!

The entire group was left speechless by the singing they heard from the bug.

Just from the lyrics, it was clearly a very familiar idol song.

"Isn't this an idol song?"

"Yeah, it's the new song 'Burning Light' from Eight Diva."

Even the members of the Sura guild in China knew the song well.

They, too, downloaded Korean songs onto their phones to listen to in their spare time.

But the singing was just too odd.

"Why is it some man's voice? It's creepy."

"Wait... could this be the chairman's voice?"

"What?"

A senior guild member burst out laughing at that.

"Haha! Don't be ridiculous. No way the chairman of Hand would sing an idol song. That'd be undignified."

Baffled, they kept listening.

But it was only a male voice singing along with the idol song the whole time.

His voice was such a poor match compared to the original that they felt embarrassed to compare the two.

Listening to it was positively nauseating.

And then—

"Eavesdropping's over."

"What? That's it?"

To avoid detection, the spell only activated for a short hour, then shut down for twelve hours.

If it wasn't triggered, it left no aura.

Particularly with their target being the Hand chairman, they couldn't afford to let their guard down.

Which meant, they had now only heard a man singing along with idol songs for an hour.

"What the hell did we just listen to?"

Thanks to this, the Sura guild had discovered the Hand chairman's secret.

That is, the distinguished chairman's unusual hobby.

.

.

"Oh! With my arrow, I shoot your heart! You're forever my servant! I'll seduce you..."

"Vern. Eavesdropping's over."

"Your heart will be mine forever! You'll become my eternal bat at my side—"

"You crazy bastard!"

"Yes!!"

I shouted at Vern, who had kept singing along with idol songs.

Startled, Vern recoiled.

He had been using the bugged bracelet—infused with the spy spell—as a microphone.

It was hard to express just how awful his singing sounded.

"S-sorry. I just got so immersed..."

"Yeah, yeah, you did well. Your voice is totally fine after singing for an hour straight?"

"Yes! I could yell to the ends of the sky without any trouble."

"And yet my ears are ruined from your dreadful singing."

"Well, that's..."

Why do you look so dejected?

Even Tong-Tong could sing better than you.

"I never knew you had a hobby like this."

"Haha, living so long on Earth changed me a lot."

Vern used to only listen to violin music, but now he'd become an idol otaku.

How did Earth's culture mess him up this badly?

"That's why the Sura guild needs to know. Just how great K-idols are..."

That was why he sang so much.

He was already crazy, but living on Earth had made him even crazier.

"By the way, I have something to tell the Demon King."

I had almost forgotten, thanks to that eavesdropping spell.

The reason Vern had called me into the chairman's office.

"It's about Heaven and Earth Society, which was once the origin of the Sura guild."

-------------= Clacky's Corner -------------=

I feel pity for Eunsol, she got trauma of elephants.

【ദ്ദി(⩌ᴗ⩌)】