Waiting at the School Gate
Skipping school on a whim and hanging around outside a girls’ high school was the sort of thing only complete weirdos did. But with our young lady so ridiculously busy with her violin lessons and everything else, the only way to pick her up was to wait by the gates and snatch her the moment she appeared.
No matter how many strange men there were in the world, no one would mistake someone as outstandingly handsome as me for a pervert. I might have been poor, but my natural good looks were like a wild rose blooming even in poverty…
“Ugh, what am I even thinking?”
I smacked myself upside the head and checked my watch. It was a cheap digital model, but at least it kept accurate time—4:20. And that was when it happened.
“What the hell are you doing?! You bastard! Huh?!”
Maybe because I’d been loitering near the school gate too long, a security guard appeared, glaring and yelling at me. I’d expected something like this if I hung around the entrance long enough, but this was still over the line. Calling a complete stranger “bastard” right off the bat? For all he knew I could have been a parent or a relative!
“Ah—uh, well…”
“You goddamn pervert piece of shit! Who the hell do you think you are, hanging around here?! Get the hell out of here! No—wait. You son of a bitch, you’re gonna get a taste of jail food. Don’t you move! I’m calling the cops!”
The guard kept glaring as he actually pulled out his phone. Ugh. At this rate I really might end up in a holding cell. But I hadn’t done anything wrong. Running away with my tail between my legs when I was innocent went against both my pride and my reason.
“….”
Still, I was a little worried. If word got out that I’d cut class to loiter outside a girls’ high school, things would get complicated. They wouldn’t actually arrest me as a pervert… right? I was spinning through every worst-case scenario when I heard it.
“Heehee. Uheheheheh…”
A strange sound made me turn around. Standing there was a middle-aged man wearing binoculars, the crotch of his baggy military-style pants bulging obscenely. One of his hands was shoved right inside them.
“Urgh.”
I’d heard the rumors that perverts often showed up outside this school, but I’d figured they were jokes. This wasn’t some manga—what kind of actual pervert would do that? And yet here one was, in the flesh! The sheer absurdity of it left me speechless. The real problem was that this guy—completely unconcerned whether anyone was watching—kept peeping into the school grounds through his binoculars while fiddling with himself… until he finally couldn’t hold back and started pulling his pants down.
“That’s enough, you bastard!”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I charged forward and delivered a clean front kick straight to the center. Without any clothing for protection it should have been dangerous, but the pure white sneakers I’d bought at the market were soft and cheap, so it would be fine.
Of course, no man is fine after taking a front kick dead-center. The military-pants pervert let out a strangled groan and crumpled forward. I stomped once on his head for good measure, then turned back around.
Ding-dong-ding-dong.
Ah—finally, the dismissal bell. I kicked the pervert aside, rolling him out of the way, and headed back toward the gate. That was when it happened.
Vrooooom…
A rather impressive car—an Audi, maybe?—slid in from the intersection with elegant smoothness and came to a stop right in front of the school gate.
“Whoa. Guess rich neighborhoods really are different.”
I thought that as I watched. Then the door opened and a familiar face stepped out. Slightly faded sports-style hair, an earring, sharp eyes that looked down on everything in the world as if it were beneath him, and clothes that had to be Armani or something equally expensive.
Anyway, everything on him was ridiculously pricey—bracelets on his wrist, a necklace that looked just as costly. The young master who appeared was so refined that the things he was wearing alone could probably keep my family fed for an entire year.
This was Yoon Jun-hyeok. Technically he was my cousin on my father’s side—or more precisely, the son of my father’s wife’s younger brother? Either way, he and I were not the sort of people who could comfortably call each other “cousin.”
“Hmph! What do you want, you whore’s brat?”
Sure enough, he looked at me with pure contempt. And his words were just as vicious.
“W-what about you then, hyung?”
“Don’t call me hyung. You and I have nothing to do with each other. And what’s with that doll?”
“….”
If we have nothing to do with each other, why are you even asking?! Thoroughly irritated, I hid the doll behind my back. But Yoon Jun-hyeok wasn’t stupid. He had to know exactly why I was here.
“Still trailing after Yeong-eun? I warned you never to show your face in front of her again.”
“Warned me? And what happens if I ignore it? You gonna hit me?”
I shot back, half in disbelief. I knew Yoon Jun-hyeok looked like he had a nasty temper and could probably fight, but he was still human-level. What kind of threat did he think would work on someone who’d already left human-level behind? Yet he only sneered.
“Still haven’t learned your lesson. Well, maybe it’s better if you don’t know. Go ahead—loiter around all you want for a hundred days. You or your father—”
He muttered that much before the school gate opened and a flood of high-school girls poured out, cutting the conversation short.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
I felt a little bad for thinking it, but watching the girls spill out of the open gate somehow made me picture the herds of animals Tarzan used to summon. Why was that? While I was stuck on that pointless question, someone suddenly burst out of the crowd.
“Uwaaaaaah!”
It was Yeong-eun! I shot to my feet in surprise at the sight of her long black hair streaming behind her as she charged forward like a gale. Yoon Jun-hyeok, who had been leaning against the Audi smoking, also stood up the moment he spotted her.
How to put it… hair long enough to reach her waist, a ribbon loosely tying the ends so they fluttered, a blazer two-piece uniform, and a black necktie that streamed behind her as she ran. If someone slapped the caption “charging high-school girl warrior” on her, it would have fit perfectly. Ugh. She was my little sister, but she really was a beauty.
“What are both of you doing hanging around the school gate?! The whole neighborhood’s going to talk! Do you know how embarrassing this is for me?!”
She roared as she closed in, landed a solid hit on my body, spun around, and kicked Yoon Jun-hyeok hard in the shin. Honestly it didn’t hurt me much, but watching him drop the cigarette he’d been holding in his mouth from the pain, I made a show of clutching my stomach and grimacing. Somehow it felt like that was the only way to keep things fair.
“But Yeong-eun, doesn’t what you’re doing right now look even more embarrassing?”
When I asked that, she just snorted, opened the car door, took the Pooh doll from my hands, tossed it inside, and pointed at the back seat.
“Get in, oppa.”
“…Are you planning to drive?”
“Of course not. Our oppa’s going to drive, obviously!”
“….”
Yoon Jun-hyeok and I looked at each other. The same guy who had been glaring and spitting insults at me just moments earlier let out a low groan and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Ugh. Damn it.”
I had no choice but to get into the back. The second I did, Yoon Jun-hyeok made no effort to hide how much he hated it, but he kept quiet—probably for the sake of the girl he wouldn’t hurt even if she were placed in his eye.
“So both of you came to celebrate my birthday? Hmm?”
Yeong-eun looked back and forth between us as she asked.
“…That’s right.”
“I came because I was worried that bastard might show up.”
Yoon Jun-hyeok found something to pick a fight about every single chance he got. People from that side of the family openly called me a whore’s brat and trash, and as angry as it made me, there was nothing I could do about it.
It wasn’t like Father had suddenly gone off to Russia for some grand romance. He’d probably paid for a woman and gotten thoroughly burned. I thought the same thing myself, so objectively speaking, “whore’s brat” wasn’t entirely baseless. Of course, even if it had an objective basis, it was still an unbearable insult!
And he was still looking at me like I was some kind of insect! Still… no matter what, I couldn’t fight in front of Yeong-eun.
“Then I guess I can cancel today’s violin lesson, right?”
“…Do whatever you want.”
Was this what the saying “strange bedfellows” was for? That was the thought that crossed my mind as I sat in the car Yoon Jun-hyeok was driving.
“Alright, so where do you want to go?”
“First I want to catch up on some movies. How about this one?”
She pulled out a movie pamphlet from somewhere. It was a recently released action film—the kind that made you wonder if tickets would even be available. But when we actually got to the theater, we somehow managed to score seats for a late showing.
The problem was that once the movie ended, the last trains and buses would be gone. There was zero chance that dog of a human Yoon Jun-hyeok would drive me home, and walking from here was nowhere near a short distance. Still, I couldn’t exactly say no.
The silver lining was that I wasn’t human. Running was faster than the subway, which was a relief. But if anyone saw me sprinting around like that at night, I’d probably end up in a zoo—or on a dissection table.
In the end we watched the movie, though I barely remembered what it was about. I’d been too busy trading barbs with Yoon Jun-hyeok across Yeong-eun the entire time. Dinner afterward was the same story.
The one bright spot was that Yoon Jun-hyeok paid for everything. The guy was so rich that banknotes were supposedly bursting out of his wallet under their own pressure, so treating us was nothing to him. Hell, going to a regular theater and eating at a nearby restaurant was probably the equivalent of “slumming it” for people like him.
Still, even if money was flying out of his wallet hard enough to punch holes in walls or slice through bamboo, owing anything to Yoon Jun-hyeok was genuinely irritating. Ah, humanity…
But when I thought about it, starting tomorrow I had to go back to making a living, while this bastard had been born to the right parents and got to cruise around as a college student in a luxury car doing nothing. If I let pride force me to pay in a situation like this… I’d lose to sheer volume of money.
So I ate well without spending a single won and parted ways with them.
Vroooooom!
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a car faded away. Night had fallen; neon signs and streetlights blazed everywhere, but night was still night. Looking up, I could see the sky stained a hazy black.
Ah, damn it. This wasn’t how I’d planned to spend the day, and having to sit face-to-face with that unpleasant Yoon Jun-hyeok had left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Whenever I tried to go home after saying goodbye to Yeong-eun, my shoulders always felt heavy. Seeing my little sister living well as a rich young lady made me wonder if my continued appearances in front of her were actually doing her more harm than good.
Yeong-eun completely regarded Yoon Jun-hyeok as her older brother, and she never even asked how Father was doing. From her perspective, I could understand why Father was unforgivable. He’d gone and made someone like me, gotten our innocent mother killed, ruined the business, and left us dirt-poor…
But still—we’d been a family, hadn’t we?
“Alright then. Have the trains stopped running already?”
I checked my watch. If I was lucky, I might just make the last train. That was when it happened.
Vrooooom.
A bike appeared with a high, sharp engine note. One person sat on top of it.
“…My god.”
I recognized who it was and my eyes went wide in disbelief. The rider wore a black racing suit and a thick helmet.
That bastard—the one who had broken my leg last time! It was Han Se-gun!
“I figured that body of yours was a little strange, but look at you—good as new.”
He spoke while looking at me. Fair enough. The compound fracture I’d taken should have left me dead if left untreated, yet here I was walking around just fine. He must have figured out exactly what I was by now.
“H-Han Se-gun?”
“Yeah, Odd Eye.”
He called me that like a black panther sizing up its prey. Ugh. That sticky, clinging voice made my skin crawl. For a second I felt like I understood how people felt when a pervert cornered them.
“Ugh!”
I twisted my body to the side and scanned my surroundings. An empty bottle someone had left on top of a traffic signal controller caught my eye; I kicked it straight at Han Se-gun and bolted backward. But in that same instant I heard the whistle of wind behind me.
“Shit!”
I ducked on pure reflex—and the bottle shattered with a sharp crack. It was the same cola bottle I’d just kicked at him! He’d caught it mid-air and thrown it right back…
“This is ridiculous!”
I immediately launched myself into the gap between buildings. Plenty of air-conditioner outdoor units were mounted on the walls, so after a few triangular leaps left and right I shot up onto the rooftop in no time.
“Hah… hah…”
It wasn’t that I was out of strength—I was just so scared my body wouldn’t put power into anything. Still, there was no way he’d ride a bike up here. He didn’t have the skill to climb something like this either…
Vrooooooom!
“No way?!”
The roar of a bike engine made me whip around toward the wall. And what did I see?
Braaaaap!
A motorcycle was climbing the wall! The Han Se-gun riding it snagged something long and wire-like and wrapped it around his arm. From the look of it, he’d hooked some kind of wire onto the building’s exterior and was using the bike to run straight up the wall.