After the classes of the 4th grade passed, it was 2:40 PM.
As the class hours gradually increased to match our age, my sighs deepened.
Anyway, the homeroom teacher’s words to be careful on the way back.
In my school bag, there were home announcements that nine out of ten of them could be thrown away.
I sent Siyeon, who no longer had any reluctance to return alone, back home and began my duties as the cleaning monitor.
Holding a broom and dustpan in each hand, I swept the classroom from front to back, picking up visible trash and gathering even small dust into the dustpan.
Dust that stubbornly refused to go into the dustpan from the end, I simply flicked it under the lockers.
Man, this is frustrating since it doesn’t go in easily.
“Why can’t we have a vacuum cleaner in every classroom?”
As I repeated this thought silently and continued my grumbling brooming.
Well, of course, it would save costs to send a few elementary school students every day to hold a dustpan and broom after school, sweeping up rather than buying even one vacuum cleaner at several hundred each.
“Thinking about it, is this really reasonable?”
Upon further consideration, I could imagine even the principal doing the same thing.
No matter how small a vacuum cleaner is, if it breaks or gets damaged due to students’ antics, that would be a problem.
With the current prices, isn’t even a handheld vacuum cleaner expensive? How much would that cost if there’s one in every classroom?
The notion that school is a small society holds nothing but truth.
It shouldn’t have to resemble the fact that people are cheaper than machines.
After finishing up the cleaning, a student eager to go home quickly discreetly went to the staff room and called the homeroom teacher.
The student who wanted to go home quickly was me.
When I reached the homeroom teacher’s desk in the staff room, I called out to the teacher.
“I’ve finished cleaning.”
“Oh, really? Shall we go check?”
Time for a classroom cleaning inspection.
Since class was over, it wasn’t particularly meaningful, but it was a way to gauge the homeroom teacher’s mood that day.
Most male homeroom teachers are pretty easygoing.
Unless it’s an absolute disaster, as long as there are no large trash piles or great clouds of dust, I could get a thumbs up and have my smartphone, held hostage, returned.
The issue was with the female homeroom teacher on a bad day.
Maybe her stocks crashed or something, but on those days, she meticulously checks every nook and cranny of dust that usually slides by without a problem.
Of all days, why did it have to be today, when I was the cleaning monitor?
“Look at this corner; there’s so much dust here.”
I immediately thought this wasn’t going to be an easy pass.
With her arms crossed, she forced out one piece of dust from underneath the teacher’s desk, where students’ desks overlapped, using her shoes, which made it difficult to get to with the broom.
“Damn it.”
The other kids also wore expressions as if they had eaten poop and trudged to the back of the classroom to grab the broom and dustpan.
Even after that, the homeroom teacher pointed out at least five more spots.
Only after coercively making the obedient kids bend down multiple times to sweep the floor did she finally say a few words.
“You must clean thoroughly, even the dust in the corners. If you leave the classroom dust, it all ends up in your mouths.”
“Is she just in a bad mood today?”
After muttering my unexpressed grievances internally, I got my hostage smartphone back and packed up my bag to leave the classroom.
It had only been about ten minutes since school ended, but the way home was eerily quiet.
Yet, despite being somewhat… No, quite far away from school, the snack shop was booming.
Seeing that Pichu Pork Cutlet was 2,500 won, being aware of the old price of 500 won naturally made my stomach grumble at the comparison.
After quickly passing the snack shop, I arrived home.
It felt like the distance had significantly decreased compared to the apartment I had to leave behind due to redevelopment.
“I’m back…”
“Shh.”
As I opened the door to our house, what greeted me in front was a doll clinging like a scene from a horror movie.
“Crap, you scared me.”
I instinctively jolted and grabbed the doll’s face with an iron grip.
Holding onto something naturally tightened my grip.
My heart raced, like a kid watching a thrilling scene from a horror movie.
“AAAAAH…!”
“Feeling bored again, huh?”
After swallowing my startled voice and calming myself, I casually asked the bear cub, Gomteng, who had prepared an unexpected surprise.
This little guy had gotten creatively crafty in the way he pulled pranks in recent years.
Not long ago, he was complaining about not getting any leftover delivery food…
And today, he decided to stage a horror movie.
Struggling to free his face from my grasp, he started mumbling a late explanation.
“I-I’m sorry! Both of you were sleeping…!”
“Oh, is that so?”
Hearing Gomteng’s voice, which sounded somewhat like an excuse, my previously tense expression relaxed a bit.
Shifting my gaze from the bear cub I was grasping to the inside of the room, the atmosphere indeed felt quieter than usual.
Holding onto Gomteng’s face, I waved my arm and headed further into the room.
“…”
Lying on the floor were two people with their bedding sprawled out.
Siyeon, sleeping on the couch in her clothes from when she left the house, and Ji-eun, who was using Siyeon as a pillow, had her arms resting on Siyeon’s belly.
Even if Ji-eun was swamped with public service work, she could be excused, but what about Siyeon?
“Well, she probably just got tired…”
“Phew.”
After confirming the two in the room, I gradually released the strength from my fingers that had been tightly gripping the bear cub’s face.
I heard Gomteng sighing in relief, and by 3 PM, I was dropping my school bag as usual, taking off my socks, and tossing them into the laundry basket.
Coincidentally, Siyeon wasn’t sitting in front of the computer, so I turned it on amidst the silence to kill some time.
The cooling fan started whirring, and the case noise hummed.
Even when I turned on the computer, the mouse pointer circled around the desktop, unsure of what to do.
The only thing I could do was a game I had played comfortably back in second grade.
“…I have no clue.”
It had been about two years since I last played, and both the items I used and the dungeons I ran had all changed.
When I asked in chat in a gathering of people, I found out that the items attached to my current character were all outdated.
In the end, I fiddled around with dungeons I had attempted even two years ago and shut down the game.
I realized I truly couldn’t play online computer games anymore.
Thus, I started using the computer as just a big smartphone.
I had nothing but complaints in my mind about Siyeon.
“Hmmm…”
Following my train of thought, I stumbled upon the Magical Girl gallery for the first time in a while.
It seemed that neither Siyeon nor I had been active recently, so there were hardly any new posts about us.
I casually searched for both our Magical Girl names, and there were hardly any recent posts, just ones from the past suspecting if we had already retired.
There were even conspiracy theories popping up that I had been forced to quit due to making inappropriate comments at a press conference.
Aside from that, a few die-hard fans were shouting about when they would get to see Sun and Moon again.
Without any news about ourselves, it was just boring gallery browsing.
The mouse pointer, having lost its direction again, spun around the screen.
Shooting games were never really my thing, and following along in online RPGs was just a hassle.
Eventually, as I reached for my smartphone to play the game I had been doing…
I noticed a program Siyeon had installed to play smartphone games on the computer.
“I had no intention of saying this to Siyeon…”
I double-clicked to run the program.
Feeling a bit of self-loathing as I found myself doing the very thing I had previously deemed ridiculous.
“Ah, so this is what happens when there’s nothing to do.”
I logged out of Siyeon’s connected account and logged into mine.
There were more smartphone games available on the computer than I had expected.
Among them were the roguelike games I had given up on due to the unfriendly smartphone controls.
Since I was quite confident with the computer controls, I decided to comfortably install the game I had previously passed over when I looked at the app.
This was probably around the same time.
The elementary school boys in my class, whom I thought I could never relate to.
Among them, I started being able to communicate with the boys.
“Whoa, you play that game too?!”
“Oh? Yeah.”
The very next day at school.
A few boys approached me, clicking away on their smartphones, starting to show interest.
Surprised by the boys’ reactions, I paused the game and looked at their faces brightening up.
Thus began the roguelike game that had commenced on the computer.
Despite the uncomfortable smartphone controls, with a desire to see it through, I installed it on my phone and started pouring hours into it.
Once I found a fun pastime after being bored with everything, I suddenly became passionately tied to a single game.
“What characters are there?”
“There are all kinds.”
“Really?”
The only thing that set me apart from the other kids was my spending power.
For characters that required cash to unlock, I’d simply throw down several ten-thousand-won bills with no hesitation.
However, for parents who frowned upon spending money on games, gift cards were like what?
They were lucky enough if their parents didn’t install monitoring apps.
With no restrictions from my parents, owning every character, I quickly became the envy of the boys.
My site has received a lot of DMCA notices, lol. From now on, I will update the MTL on https://darkmtl.com/.
The site is fast and lightweight because there are no ads yet. However, the theme is different from Cybor-TL, so take some time to familiarize yourself.
Support me by donating at least $10, and you'll have the right to request any novel from Novelpia (excluding 19+ content) using a newly developed tool.