TRPM 311

Woo Ji-min looked confused as she stared at Lee Ha-eun, and someone spoke to Ji-min.

“Is she confused because Ha-eun’s magic power is strong?”
“Huh…? Ah, Ji-min.”

It was Director Shin Han-ji who had brought Ji-min to this pool. She had been quite a distance away a moment ago—how had she gotten all the way here so quickly?

(Of course, for Director Shin Han-ji, that distance would be no problem.)

Rather than wonder that she’d arrived so fast, I should be wondering why she wasn’t where she had been and instead came here. When I had been checking her location earlier, Shin Han-ji had sighed as if annoyed. Why would she suddenly come all this way…?

“Ha-eun is a student I teach personally. I even infused magic into Ha-eun’s body myself.”
“…?”
“…?”

Both Ha-eun and I couldn’t hide our bewilderment at Director Shin’s words. Why tell such a lie…?

“Oh, is that so? Well, of course—there’s no way such a young student could be that strong.”

Woo Ji-min believed Director Shin’s words without question.

…Now that I think about it—

[Ji-min’s simple like you see. Once she believes something, she believes it completely.]
[You’re not going to correct that misunderstanding?]
[No. It’s fun, right?]

When Ji-min had once mistaken me for being weaker than her, Director Shin hadn’t bothered to correct her. If anything, she seemed to encourage Ji-min to keep believing the misconception. It looks like she even limited Ji-min’s access to information—like on the Internet—so that Ji-min still doesn’t know I’m strong.

And why she told that lie now…

‘Could it be she wants to hide Ha-eun’s strength too?’

Not only my strength, but Ha-eun’s strength as well—maybe Shin Han-ji wants it kept secret. Everyone else knows that Ha-eun and I are incredibly strong, but Ji-min is the only one who doesn’t. Director Shin likely wants to create that situation.

Why? Well…

‘She probably wants to laugh at her friend Ji-min believing the mistake.’

It’s hard to justify keeping the truth hidden for political or financial reasons.

“That makes sense.”
“Um… yes.”

Ha-eun, having grasped the situation roughly, awkwardly went along with Director Shin’s lie. Everyone else nearby kept quiet too. They’d all decided to go along to tease Ji-min.

‘One of them could at least tell the truth…’

Well, since I didn’t plan to reveal the truth, it’s no surprise others didn’t either.

After that day’s meeting with Ha-eun, I spent time with her. Thanks to Shin Han-ji taking Ji-min away, Ji-min wasn’t around. It wasn’t that Ha-eun and I spent time alone—we didn’t.

‘Ha-eun seemed ready to treat it like a date with me, since things worked out well…’

Originally Ha-eun had just stepped out of the water because she felt seasick while playing with others. Naturally there were other people nearby, so spending time alone wasn’t possible.

‘Nothing much happened after that.’

I rested near the booths where other Awakened who didn’t enjoy water games gathered, while the others had fun in the pool.

Oh—there was one thing.

‘I think I met Kang Ga-ram’s parents?’

Kang Ga-ram’s parents, whom I’d never seen before, were at the pool this time, so I got to meet them—though only enough to recognize their faces.

“Geon-woo! Focus!”
“Ah, yes.”

Lost in thought, Ji-min’s voice snapped me back. Today was the day after the pool trip. I was at the Seoul Awakened Academy’s shooting range, learning how to shoot from Ji-min. Ji-min, resurrected in my doll body, needs my shooting skill to improve so that her own shooting improves too, so she was diligently teaching me.

‘…Shooting is harder than I thought…’

It wasn’t difficult to fire a gun and hit a target. Controlling my body is easy for me, trained in martial arts. Keeping my arm steady and aiming at the target wasn’t hard. But—

“Don’t try to forcefully stop the recoil. That’s bad for your body.”

After a shot, my arm moved from the recoil, and bringing the gun back to aim at the target was difficult. Well, that itself wasn’t hard, but reducing the time it took was the hard part. More than anything, Ji-min kept telling me not to forcefully control the recoil.

‘Isn’t this amount of recoil something I can just take with my body?’

The gun’s recoil wasn’t that strong to begin with. Thinking that, I looked at Ji-min—

“If you try to forcibly restrain the recoil while you’re still growing, your joints could suffer. So don’t force it.”

…That’s why I wasn’t allowed to forcefully hold down the recoil. It sounds absurd, but there is some reasoning behind it.

‘The guns Awakened people use aren’t the same as the ones police or soldiers use.’

The pistol I was holding weighed over ten kilograms. Because the bullets were large, the recoil was harsher than an ordinary pistol; a civilian firing such a gun might not just break a wrist—they could crush it.

‘Supposedly the one I’m holding is a training model, so it’s lighter than the ones used in the field, right?’

The ones used in actual operations are said to be such that even an Awakened person who isn’t an Aura user might feel stiff after shooting. So—

‘No wonder Ji-min would worry, thinking I’m weak.’

Of course, it doesn’t affect me much. This level of recoil doesn’t burden my arm at all; and even if the recoil could strain my arm, I could recover by accelerating my metabolism. And more than that—

‘I can control the growth phase to some extent.’

I can stimulate the growth plates through my inner energy. In theory I can prevent the plates from closing—so the bones don’t harden and activity doesn’t decrease.

‘That said, I’m not going to increase my height more than necessary.’

I plan to keep my height similar to what it was before the regression. Forcibly increasing height would just ruin body balance—and I’m not particularly short.

“Okay, let’s stretch.”
“…Yes.”

Ji-min, unaware of all that, made me do light stretches to calm muscles shocked by the shooting.

“…Kuh…!”
“Hey, hey. Focus on shooting.”

Even though some cadets training at the range during vacation couldn’t hide their laughter, Ji-min didn’t notice.

“Those guys… ah, Geon-woo, don’t worry too much. You only picked up a gun recently, so it’s natural you try to force the recoil.”

She seemed to think those cadets were laughing at my shooting skill. How deluded can someone be…?

“Sigh…”
“Um… it’s okay! Geon-woo, this is only your second time shooting, right? Considering that, you’re doing amazingly well! You’re shooting better than those people, right?”

Seeing me sigh, Ji-min, trying to comfort me, moved to block the laughing cadets from my view. So—those cadets were laughing at you, not me.

‘…Still, it’s pretty funny.’

Thinking that, I sat down on a chair by the shooting lane. Ji-min always sat down to rest properly after I fired once and finished stretching before putting me back to shoot again.

Bang!

While I rested, she went to my lane and fired.

‘She’s really skilled.’

The training pistol she held wasn’t the type used for competitions. Competition pistols focus solely on accuracy, but this gun emphasized the power of the fired bullet. Since regular bullets can’t kill monsters—

‘That pistol itself isn’t made with accuracy in mind.’

So it’s normal for shots to stray a little from the center. But—

‘How does she keep the deviation to less than 0.1 millimeters?’

When I fired, I aimed for the precise center, but I still missed by up to five millimeters. That margin is due to the gun’s lack of precision. Yet Ji-min controlled even that tiny deviation.

‘She seems to feel something like the gun’s center of gravity and adjust the gun slightly according to that…’

That’s instinctual. She’s going beyond just sensing the gun’s remaining bullets, feeling the constantly changing center of gravity, and calculating which way a bullet will minutely veer.

‘Like Yeon Mi-rae and I instinctively searching for better sword paths when we swing a sword.’

Thinking that, I could understand Ji-min’s ability.

‘Of course reproducing that—well, even I couldn’t do it.’

Even I, who can imitate through martial arts not only aura but also magic, psychic powers, and shamanic techniques, couldn’t replicate that.

“……”
“……”

Not only I, but the other cadets at the range looked at Ji-min with admiration. They would have learned more about shooting than I had, so they probably perceived even more from watching her.

“Isn’t she going to teach us shooting starting the second semester?”
“Can we learn that?”
“I think that would be extremely difficult to master…”

Still—

“You could at least pick up some know-how, right?”

The cadets murmured with bright eyes. They were studious ones.

‘By the way… as far as I know…’

There aren’t many Awakened who use guns as their main weapon. While there are exceptions like Ji-min, at the academy level, people rarely choose guns as their primary weapon. Guns have clear limits.

‘Usually, instead of enhancing each bullet with aura, magic, or psychokinesis, it’s far more efficient to either coat their own body with aura, apply magic to the enemy, or strengthen themselves with psychic powers.’

A speed-type like Ji-min would more often accelerate her body, an arrow, or a thrown spear, rather than accelerating a tiny bullet. So why were the cadets practicing pistol shooting at this range?

The reason is simple.

‘A gun is always a secondary weapon. It’s equipment used as a last resort when your primary weapon breaks or you run out of energy.’