The Strongest, but the Genre Is Magical Girl

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After having a hurried lunch, I enjoyed the amusement park tour with Siyeon.

Honestly, I had a bias about amusement parks being somewhat childish.

But that perception quickly vanished when I realized how much there was to enjoy, given the scale of the place.

Besides that, if I got tired of standing in line, there was plenty of time to sit and rest in the well-maintained gardens.

Well, there were still plenty of people bustling around no matter where you went.

Dinner was… not so much a dinner as it was a nonstop binge while we were there.

After a frenzied eating spree at the amusement park, I started walking towards the main gate, trying to digest the food, and suddenly it was 9 PM.

Under the pitch-black sky, students gathered closely at the main gate of the amusement park.

“Yawn.”

Thanks to the bright lights, we could see each other’s faces, but I let out a prolonged yawn in the now dimmer interior of the amusement park’s entrance.

It had been a long 10-hour journey at the amusement park.

No matter where I sat, it felt like I wasn’t really resting, and even at night, the people in the park kept it noisy.

On the first day of the math trip, even my middle school energy was struggling to manage it all.

After boarding the bus, we arrived at the accommodation in less than 10 minutes.

As I entered, my sleepy eyes just wanted to get to bed as quickly as possible.

In the midst of extreme fatigue that made me feel like I might fall asleep standing up, we were assigned randomly to rooms.

One room for every three to four people.

Though the school usually tries to avoid gender discrimination…

But in a world where Confucian ideals run deep, the accommodation rooms were strictly divided—boys with boys, girls with girls.

After that, our teacher’s brief words of advice followed.

“I just want to remind you, this isn’t an old-fashioned dormitory, it’s a hotel!”

The teacher stressed it, emphasizing that it was not some remote hotel arranged by the school.

“If you cause a ruckus at night or get caught drinking something you snuck in, I’ll really just call your parents to take you home, got it? Don’t stay up too late.”

“Yes—”

With a short response, Siyeon went to the room with three others.

I was assigned to a room with Seo Hyun and three others.

Though we’d been split without mercy, it didn’t really matter since there wasn’t much we could do once we reached our accommodation.

As soon as I got to the room, I placed my heavy bag against the wall.

I quickly unzipped it to pull out my change of clothes, towel, and toiletries, then addressed the others.

“I’m going to wash up. Anyone else need to use the bathroom?”

“Huh? You’re going to bed without staying up?”

Seo Hyun, looking surprised, asked if I was really going to sleep right away, and I nodded.

With drooping eyelids, I managed to squeeze out a few words.

“Uh, I’m so tired.”

A typical trait of a math trip nerd.

When night falls, they just drop off to sleep without any questions asked.

I wasn’t oblivious to that fact, but I couldn’t hold out without sleeping.

In crowded places, I always felt my energy being drained.

Perhaps it was because of the deep weariness and drowsiness etched onto my face?

Once I confirmed my intentions, Seo Hyun turned to the other friends in the room packing their things.

“Are you going to use the bathroom?”

“No?”

“What about you?”

“Not really….”

“Alright then.”

Having secured permission from Seo Hyun and the others, I felt relieved to push open the bathroom door.

“Then I’m going in.”

For the time being, no one else was thinking about using the bathroom.

With my change of clothes, towel, and toiletries in hand, I slipped into the bathroom wearing my plastic slippers.

As soon as I stepped into the bathroom, a bright white bathtub came into view.

I felt a strong desire to fill it with hot water and soak comfortably, but with four of us needing to use it, I thought it was polite to wash up quickly.

So, I stripped off my clothes and turned the faucet left, cranking it up.

After lightly washing my body with body wash, I wrapped my towel around my well-dried hair and stepped out with a hairdryer.

The two who were there with Seo Hyun seemed eager to stay up all night, as they plugged everything into every outlet available in the room.

One friend had brought along a power strip and even a game console charger.

“Wow…”

I couldn’t help but marvel at their thorough preparations.

After all, middle school students probably didn’t have experiences of staying up late on a school night, stuck under their parents’ watch.

Did they feel some sort of adult fantasy in staying up all night?

They would inevitably have to face that reality at some point.

Thinking that, I hopped onto the power strip and switched on the hairdryer.

The hairdryer’s loud noise filled the air as my hair danced in the heat.

After a good while of drying, I checked my hair, making sure it was all dry, running my fingers through it.

I returned the hairdryer to the bathroom wall, neatly folded the towel and clothes I had worn, and put them into a ziplock bag in my bag to separate them.

While I was at it, I pulled out the eye mask and earplugs I had brought just in case.

“Hey, Mari, if you’re going to sleep, can you turn off the lights…?”

Seo Hyun was considering turning off the lights because she thought I might not be able to sleep if it was bright.

She saw the eye mask in my hand and seemed momentarily at a loss for words, impressed by my thorough preparation.

“Ah, you’ve got an eye mask.”

“I’ve got earplugs too.”

As if to say it wouldn’t matter if it got noisy, I proudly presented a small pair of earplugs.

The eye mask fitted snugly on my forehead, and the fluffy earplugs went into my ears.

Seo Hyun seemed taken aback, as if she didn’t expect anyone to take sleep so seriously.

Did one really have to go that far just to sleep?

…She looked puzzled but managed to smile and waved, wishing me a good night.

“Ah, okay… good night.”

“Good night.”

Pulling the eye mask down to cover my eyes, I nestled into the smooth, wrinkle-free sheets.

In the darkness, I could hear faint noises and feel the comfortable embrace of the bed.

Even with the earplugs in, I could still hear some gaming sounds and conversations seeping through.

“Are you really sleeping?”

“I’m feeling a bit sleepy too.”

“C’mon, you’ll last until three, right?”

Through the noise blocked by the earplugs, I stifled a laugh at the muffled conversation I could hear.

In just a few years, these nights of staying up late might be something they’d miss.

With a smirk, I fell asleep quickly—exhausted from the day.

As the day broke, my consciousness revived with the alarm I had set for 7 AM.

With four people in the room, the alarm was set off four times over.

I wondered if one of my earplugs had fallen out during sleep because the alarm was blaring clearly in just one ear.

In the dark room, with the lights still off and the curtains drawn, I reached out towards the alarm sound, grabbing my smartphone.

Swiping away the red button on the screen, the alarm finally silenced.

There were still three other alarms ringing away.

I had no idea how late they had stayed up, but the three still remained in dreamland.

I glanced over and saw Seo Hyun sleeping next to me.

Surely she would turn off her alarm and wake up soon. I decided to go to the bathroom first to do a quick wash and brush my teeth.

After five minutes in the bathroom, the alarm kept ringing without a pause.

The three alarms were still blaring with their own volume.

Finally, after I had washed my hands, I reached for the light switch.

Click! The dark room was immediately flooded with light.

The expressions of my sleeping friends, who looked ready to fall asleep again at any moment, scrunched up as if they’d bitten into a lemon.

“Wake up, you slackers!”

Seeing the three who looked utterly lethargic, I raised my voice to wake them up.

I felt like I was now responsible for waking Siyeon, who had suddenly turned into three people.

As I knocked on the door, the teacher peeked into the room.

“Mari is awake? You all need to be at the dining hall by 20 minutes!”

“Yes….”

After that draining morning response, I sighed deeply as I watched the three still rolling around in bed.

They say the early bird catches the worm, but it seems that adults are sometimes wrong too.

Let’s change that proverb to “The early bird suffers.”

Somehow, I managed to get the three of them awake.

“What time did you guys even sleep?”

The three yawning students and I headed towards the dining hall, and I asked them what time they had stayed up until…

“Uh, around two-thirty?”

“No way… I held out till three.”

“Really? Didn’t we go to bed at two?”

It felt like some old riddle puzzle, with the three all giving different answers.

Breakfast was a hotel buffet.

Considering how thoroughly I had exhausted myself into sleep by 10 PM, I was in the best condition imaginable.

With my foggy mind, I displayed an appetite I couldn’t have imagined, gorging on sushi, fried chicken, fried rice, sweet and sour pork, and various other delicacies.

After having gone without snacks during the night, I was ready to fill my stomach to the brim.

“Enjoy your meal—”

“Sure—”

With the teacher joining us in the same space, we all had breakfast together.

Yeah, that’s what memories and trips are all about, right?