From that day on, Siyeon’s smartphone life opened wide.
Still, due to the nature of the internet, it couldn’t be opened too wide, and fundamentally, it required a popular messenger app for staying in touch.
A basic store from which various games could be downloaded.
With just this much, it should be enough to hang out with friends who have smartphones.
Nonetheless, it was concerning that some search engines often exposed malicious headlines.
Anyway, at the moment, I had no interest in news…
“It’s dangerous, so put your smartphone in your pocket while walking.”
Sure enough, after smartphones started becoming popular, bad habits began to emerge.
Playing games while walking became standard, with the smartphone screen almost glued to my face.
Even at home, I was sprawled on the bed, attached to the charger.
I indeed pointed out the bad habits whenever they appeared, but if correcting them were so easy, they wouldn’t be called habits.
I heard there are many households having conflicts with children due to smartphones these days…
I understood why those middle-aged aunties appeared on YouTube, urging parents to delay buying smartphones for their kids.
But was it maybe a slightly different feeling than the resentment caused by authority figures pushing down on you?
Unlike the countless households I often heard complaining, Siyeon always followed along obediently without uttering a single “I don’t want to.”
‘Hmm…’
With Siyeon beside me, I couldn’t break the rules first.
I might have pulled out and checked my smartphone for a moment while waiting at the crosswalk, but doing so daily with someone I spent most of the day with wasn’t that easy.
Regardless of my will, my fingers fidgeted uneasily.
Actually, was I more addicted to my smartphone than Siyeon?
I didn’t have any posts registered in the community, and the messenger was empty except for conversations with Siyeon.
The only messages were card payment notifications or advertising texts from unknown sources.
Clearly, I had no reason to look at my smartphone.
The kicking of my slippers started getting stronger as I shifted on the ground.
The sound of air bursting from the empty space in my pocket attracted unnecessary attention.
Well, the attention I was getting was just from elementary students who didn’t care about grade levels.
Or perhaps it was just a few parents from the Green Mothers’ Association endlessly opening and closing their flags at a crosswalk without a signal early in the morning.
Wearing clean, white slippers, I headed toward the classroom.
As fall deepened, my classmates were starting to wear thicker clothes.
There were kids who looked forced into heavy coats like they were someone else’s child.
If they dressed like that in early fall, what would they do in mid-winter?
‘Noodle tube…’
Ignoring other people’s kids, I stared at the timetable stuck on the blackboard and muttered the first letters in my mind: Korean, Math, Integration, Ethics.
Regardless of the subject, these hours felt entirely out of sync with my mental age, making it hard to concentrate.
Four hours that felt the most meaningless in the world passed, and finally, lunchtime where I could feel some significance came.
Just like middle school students smoking in the back of the school, coming to lunch was pretty much the same thing.
I couldn’t just ditch mandatory education.
After that relatively meaningful lunchtime ended.
Waiting for the torment known as the fifth period to end.
“Okay, kids, I’m going to hand out the piggy banks and the home report,”
‘Here we go again.’
With the homeroom teacher’s brief notification, she handed out an exasperatingly ugly, rounded piggy bank and the home report.
It was outright extortion from school dressed up as a donation.
They say you don’t have to put in a single coin, but very few students actually do that.
Something murky mixed with the humid darkness, much like kids’ picnic lunchboxes.
A competition among parents driven by the desire to show off their wealth disguised as donations.
Of course, there are wise parents who don’t fall for such tricks.
With a “What the heck? I’m busy trying to survive myself; what donation?” attitude.
Even with good intentions for donating, less than one percent of the contributions actually goes to families in need.
It’s far better to find that struggling person and slip them cash directly. Money gathered through some organization usually just goes to operating funds.
Naturally, the school isn’t exempt from that category.
Even though I thought charity organizations like the Love Fruits and Christmas Seal were a thing of the past after their scandals came to light, some places were still doing them.
Determined to not give a single penny, I confirmed I wasn’t on cleaning duty and took Siyeon by the hand on our way back home.
“Achoo—!”
‘Huh?’
Siyeon’s short cough upon arriving home.
And from that day on, a little anomaly began.
News regarding the disease started to spread late across TVs and various news sources.
The disease that started in China had already crossed into the country.
With the crazed idiots wandering around and spreading the disease, everything was going down the drain uncontrollably.
To make matters worse, just before, a family that traveled to China was in Siyeon’s class.
As a result, it was told that Siyeon herself caught the disease.
Fast forward to the present.
“Cough, cough.”
I kept coughing, feeling something stuck in my throat, but my voice was hoarse and dizziness was only increasing.
The issue wasn’t just Siyeon.
Naturally, given that I had spent more time in the same space as Siyeon than at school, I couldn’t escape the infection either.
Who would’ve known?
That what kills magical girls isn’t the monsters but instead, the crazy idiots born with common sense thrown in the trash, spreading the disease everywhere.
‘Ugh… damn.’
Putting my hand on my forehead as if it would break, I cursed inwardly and gently pulled off the blanket that Siyeon had covered herself with while shivering.
“Siyeon, you shouldn’t cover yourself with that blanket…”
When you have a fever, keeping your body excessively warm only prolongs the illness.
With high fever accompanied by chills, you need to wipe down with lukewarm water.
In this dizzy haze, feeling like we were both going to die, I finally muttered the transformation spell.
“Sun.”
With the transformation, the feelings of headache and dizziness vanished in an instant.
Even if my recovery slowed down a bit, it was crucial to have at least one person who could move well.
“Miss Mari, here’s the wet towel…”
“Oh, thanks.”
Unlike usual, even the mascots didn’t act like themselves and helped to bring wet towels as they saw us struggling.
I stuck a thermometer that looked like a phone into Siyeon’s ear while she lay there, hitting the measurement button.
Beep! The thermometer displayed 38.9 degrees on the screen.
“Release.”
I then undid the transformation and quickly pressed the thermometer against my ear, jittering with dizziness and heat.
Clack! The button clicked, and beep! The machine chimed in.
This one read 39.2 degrees; if anything, I was worse off than Siyeon.
“Sun.”
Reciting the transformation spell again, I shook off the headache and fever.
For now, it was essential for at least one of us to recover.
Given that Siyeon was more fragile and susceptible to colds than I was, I had to keep my wits about me.
If I got sick, eating well and resting was the top priority.
In terms of easily consumable, easily digestible food…
When you’re sick, it’s porridge. That formula popped into my mind, and I tossed my smartphone to Gomteng.
“Gomteng, order some porridge through the delivery app.”
“Yes, what should I order?”
“Just plain white porridge is the best, but for now, let’s go with beef vegetable porridge.”
Siyeon was trembling in just her underwear, and I could only wipe her body with the damp lukewarm towel, my heart aching.
As if reacting to the gentle touch of the towel, her trembling body seemed pitiable.
“Mari, I’m cold…”
“But you have to bear it.”
Still recalling memories of feeling sick, I only covered her as far down as her feet with the blanket.
I partly closed the door that was left open for ventilation.
After transferring the delivered porridge to another bowl, I managed to get Siyeon to sit up and eat a little before having her take some headache medicine available at the nearby pharmacy.
With the unexpected plague, hospitals were overflowing with appointments no matter who you called.
Even if we made it to the hospital, they said there was no proper solution, so instead of catching another bug from all those sick people, I chose to trust our immune systems.
Adding to the chaos were panic buying making masks scarce; it was a mess.
After much effort, Siyeon managed to overcome the heat and fell asleep.
“Release.”
I undid my transformation and force-fed a whole bowl of porridge to my half-conscious body.
After swallowing a headache pill akin to Siyeon, I decided to take a short nap on the floor.
With no one else to seek help from but each other.
The only person in my contacts was a civil servant who had once given me a business card during the Sokcho days, along with the one whose calls were invariably restricted.
If we tell them we’re sick, they’ll probably report it to the Minister, right…? I left a message saying I thought we might have caught that troublesome disease and then closed my eyes.
…
At that moment, when I was just barely managing to sleep due to the medication.
Bang! Bang! Bang! The sound of a heavy iron door being knocked made me reluctantly open my eyes and check my smartphone.
The curtains were fully drawn, so I couldn’t see any outside light.
It was three-thirty in the morning.
Moreover, with restricted caller ID and a familiar number, I checked a few missed calls.
It was an impossible time for someone to come over, but that urgent knocking made me barely manage to rise.
“Who… is it?”
“Oh, you’re awake! I called you, but you didn’t pick up… Are you okay?”
The voice from outside was that of the public official uncle, one of the two who left countless missed calls on my smartphone.
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