After the 4th grade classes passed, it was 2:40 PM.
With class times gradually increasing according to age, the depth of my sighs deepened as well.
Anyway, the homeroom teacher’s words to return home carefully.
Inside my school bag, nine out of ten were notices that would simply be thrown away.
I send Shiyeon back home, now comfortable with going back alone, and begin my duties as the cleaning duty.
Holding a broom and a dustpan in each hand, I sweep the classroom vigorously, gathering the larger pieces of trash and collecting small dust into the dustpan.
Dust that wouldn’t easily go into the dustpan is just flicked under the lockers.
This stuff really doesn’t go in easily, and it’s frustrating.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice if every classroom had a vacuum cleaner?’
I mutter this useless thought inside my head, continuing to sweep grumpily.
Well, of course, having a vacuum cleaner in every classroom at the cost of hundreds would be more expensive than just taking a few elementary school kids each day after school to wield brooms and dustpans to clean up.
‘Thinking about it, is this reasonable?’
Thinking carefully, I feel like if I were the principal, I would have done the same.
Even if it’s a small vacuum cleaner, if it breaks or is damaged by the kids’ antics, that would be troublesome.
Considering the current prices, even a handheld vacuum cleaner isn’t cheap, and if you think about having one in every classroom, how much would that all be?
It’s not wrong to say that a school is a small society.
We don’t have to resemble anything in terms of machines being cheaper than people.
After finishing up the cleaning, a student eager to go home quickly goes to the staff room and calls for the homeroom teacher.
The student eager to go home, that’s me.
I go to the homeroom teacher’s seat in the staff room and call out to her.
“I finished cleaning.”
“Okay, shall I check?”
A classroom cleaning inspection.
Although it doesn’t hold much significance now that classes are over, it is a means to gauge the homeroom teacher’s mood for the day.
Most male homeroom teachers are fine.
As long as it’s not a total disaster, as long as there’s no large trash or piles of dust, I can receive my smartphone back, which has been taken hostage.
The problem is with the female homeroom teacher on bad days.
Did her stocks tank or something? I’m not sure what bothers her so much, but on days like this, she meticulously inspects even the dust in the corners that usually get overlooked.
Of all days for this to happen, it didn’t need to be the day I had cleaning duty.
“Look here, there’s so much dust in this corner.”
At that moment, I thought it wouldn’t be easy to brush this off.
With arms crossed, the homeroom teacher is forcing the dust out from under the teacher’s desk, which overlaps with the students’ desks, using the tip of her shoes to push out what the broom couldn’t reach.
‘Dammit.’
Not just me, but the other kids also had expressions like they had eaten poop, grumbling as they walked to the back of the classroom to grab the broom and dustpan.
After that, the homeroom teacher points out at least five more places.
Only after bending the backs of the obedient students repeatedly to sweep the floor does she finally say a few words.
“You have to clean thoroughly in the corners; if you leave dust in the classroom, it’ll all go into your mouths.”
‘She’s just in a bad mood today.’
After uttering this frustration I couldn’t express, I took my smartphone hostage back and left the classroom, packing my bag.
It had only been about ten minutes past the end of school, but the way home was empty.
Even so, the snack shop was bustling, even if it was quite a distance from school.
Seeing that the fried pork cutlet costs 2500 won, anyone who knows the old price of 500 won feels their stomach fill up without even trying.
I quickly arrived home after passing the snack shop.
The distance felt significantly decreased compared to the apartment we had to leave due to redevelopment.
“I’m back…”
“Shh.”
As soon as I opened the door, what I saw in front of me looked like a scene from a horror movie, with a doll stuck there.
“Ah, crap, you scared me!”
Without realizing it, I jumped, grabbing the doll’s face with an iron grip.
With something gripped, strength naturally entered my hands.
Like a kid who just saw a scene from a horror movie, my heart raced.
“Grrr…!”
“Are you bored again?”
After swallowing my surprised voice and calming down, I casually asked the Gomtaengi, who had prepared an unexpected surprise.
This guy has creatively changed how he messes with me over the past few years.
Not too long ago, he was whining about not leaving leftovers from delivery food…
And today, he resorted to horror movie tactics.
The guy struggling to get free from my grip began to explain his late reasoning.
“N-no! Both of you were sleeping…!”
“Oh, really?”
Hearing the excuse from Gomtaengi in response to my question, I loosened my stiff expression a bit.
Turning my gaze from the Gomtaengi I was holding in front of me to the inside of the room, I definitely felt a quieter atmosphere than usual.
Waving my arms while still holding the Gomtaengi’s face, I directed my gaze deeper into the room.
“…”
Lying flat on the floor with bedding, there were two people.
Shiyeon, who had fallen asleep in her clothes from when she left the house, and Jiun, who was using Shiyeon as a pillow, with her arms crossed on her stomach.
It’s understandable for Jiun, who works as a civil servant and is chased by work, but why is Shiyeon?
‘Well, she must just have been tired….’
“Sigh.”
After confirming the two inside the room, I slowly released the tension in my fingers that were gripping the Gomtaengi’s face.
I could hear Gomtaengi’s sigh of relief, and at 3 PM, like any other day, I took off my socks and tossed them into the laundry basket while putting my school bag down.
At that moment, Shiyeon wasn’t even sitting in front of the computer, so I turned it on to alleviate the silence.
The noise of the buzzing main unit was accompanied by the sound of the cooling fan.
However, even after turning on the computer, my mouse pointer spun aimlessly on the desktop, unsure of what to do.
The only thing I had from back then was a game I had gotten used to in second grade.
‘…I don’t know anything.’
Even that, having not played it for about two years, the items I use and the dungeons I visit had all changed.
When I asked in the chat in places where people gathered, I was told that all the items attached to my current character were obsolete.
Eventually, I played a couple of rounds in a dungeon I had aimed for two years ago before shutting off the game.
I realized I really couldn’t play online computer games anymore.
So, I began to use the computer like a big smartphone.
I wasn’t really going to resent Shiyeon in my heart.
‘Hmm….’
In a stream of consciousness, I stumbled upon the Magical Girl gallery after a long time.
Both Shiyeon and I hadn’t been active lately, so there was hardly anything posted about us.
When I casually searched for our Magical Girl names, I found almost nothing recent and some old posts questioning if we had already retired.
There was a growing conspiracy theory that we were forced to retire due to inappropriate comments during a press conference.
Aside from that, a few die-hard fans were just shouting about when they could see Sun and Mun again.
With no news of our own, it wasn’t fun browsing the gallery.
Once again, my mouse pointer spun aimlessly on the screen.
Shooting games were never really my preference, and following along in online RPG games felt tedious.
Ultimately, just as I was about to grab my smartphone and continue playing the game I usually played, I caught sight of the program Shiyeon had installed to play mobile games on the computer.
‘What did I just internally say to Shiyeon….’
I double-clicked to run the program.
Looking at myself acting out the behavior I once thought made no sense, I felt a pang of self-loathing.
This is how it becomes when there’s nothing decent to do.
I logged out of Shiyeon’s connected account and accessed my own account.
There surprisingly were quite a few smartphone games I could play on the computer.
Among them were those roguelike games that I had given up on because I didn’t like the smartphone controls.
Since I was quite confident in my computer controls unlike with the smartphone, I calmly installed the game I previously overlooked in the app.
I think it was around this time.
I began to communicate with some boys from my class, whom I thought I would never connect with.
“Wow, you play that game too?!”
“Uh? Yeah.”
The very next day at school.
A few boys came up to me in the morning, intrigued by the game I was playing on my smartphone.
Surprised by the boys’ reactions, I paused the game and directed my gaze at those boys looking excited.
Eventually, I ended up starting a roguelike game on the computer.
Despite the inconvenient smartphone controls, I intended to dive in with determination to install it on my smartphone and immerse myself for a whole day.
Once I grabbed something fun in a world where everything felt boring, an unexpected surge of enthusiasm kept me glued to one game endlessly.
“What characters do you have?”
“I have them all.”
“Really?”
The significant difference between me and the boys was my spending power.
For characters that required money to unlock, I casually spent a few thousand won and unlocked all of them in one go.
However, parents who were against spending money on games would barely know what a gift card was.
Just being able to avoid having parental control apps installed and monitored was already a huge relief.
In that situation, without any parental restrictions, I had all the characters, which made me an instant envy among the boys.
