The Preliminary Classmates' Gathering
Ring leaders, delinquent bullies, school violence, social outcasts… That kind of thing peaks in middle school.
Once kids hit high school, individualism takes over and cliques don't form as easily.
On top of that, the great gate of college admissions looms ahead, so most people don't bother with anyone else's business.
"They say the president wants us to rough up some first-year kid."
"He hasn't even enrolled yet and he's already on the president's radar?"
"Not the president — the Chairman's."
"Whoa. What the hell did this guy do to get all the way up to the Chairman?"
At Seorim Arts High, where college isn't a given, the clique culture still lingers.
Mostly it's the second-years who form packs and roam the halls like middle school bullies.
The third-years barely show up, since they're busy debuting or hunting down other paths.
"Must've rubbed the Chairman the wrong way somehow."
Oh Seok-tae, the unofficial boss of the second-years, is Kang Ji-hoon's loyal lapdog.
Standing under Kang Ji-hoon, who has the Chairman covering his back, means plenty of perks trickling down.
"How about we thaw him out a little and bring him in? Keep him on a leash for good."
"Nice. Make him spar with me first. Kekeke."
An aspiring rapper, Oh Seok-tae is the problem child of the Practical Music Department.
He's got real talent for rap, but his short fuse is wired straight to his fists, making him an object of terror among his classmates and juniors.
Lately he's been learning MMA and blabbing everywhere that if the rapper thing doesn't work out, he'll go pro in fighting instead.
"Which department's this kid from?"
"Performing Arts. His name is… here it is. Byun Ha-jin."
At the sound of that name, someone behind them let out a sharp gasp.
"What's wrong?"
"Hayeon Middle School… Byun Ha-jin?"
"How would I know where the kid went to school? If it's that name, I guess it's him."
"That guy… he was like, the top dog in middle school?"
"What?"
"Well, not exactly top dog, but in a way he kind of was… Ugh, damn it, how do I even explain this? Anyway, nobody who went up against him ever won."
"What are you talking about? Explain. Now."
"He's insanely good-looking, see. Everyone just stared at him, so these punks who liked to mess around behind his back got sick of it and picked a fight with him. They all got destroyed. So every time a school year rolled over, there was nobody left to fight. No one above him — so obviously, top dog."
"And?"
"He said he wasn't going to play gang boss and just washed his hands of it. Thanks to that, Hayeon Middle didn't have a single top dog until he graduated. Nobody could stand above that punk, so… I mean, absurd, right?"
Oh Seok-tae and the rest of them all wore expressions of pure disbelief.
"You're telling me nobody beat that guy in three whole years? How good could a fight possibly be?"
"This is just what I heard, but there's a pretty famous MMA gym near Hayeon Middle. Supposedly he's been going there since elementary school. If he kept it up, he'd have seven years in by middle school — enough to run the whole school, sure."
Counting middle school, that'd be ten years of martial arts.
A genuine veteran — no comparison to Oh Seok-tae and his measly one year.
"Then why would a guy like that come to an arts high school? Performing Arts means he wants to be an actor, right?"
"He was an actor until kindergarten. He was even in a movie."
"……."
Adding it all up: a kid who was a celebrity until kindergarten, trained in martial arts for ten years, conquered an entire middle school, and was — on top of all that — drop-dead gorgeous, had gotten himself marked by the Chairman before even setting foot on campus.
"Goddamn it, what the hell is this kid?"
My ears suddenly itched, so I scratched them.
"Is someone talking about me?"
Before enrolling, I figured I should learn a bit more about the school and the Chairman, so I searched the internet.
The Chairman's corruption hadn't been dragged into the open yet, but I figured the arts-high community sites and anonymous boards would be crawling with rumors if I dug around.
Students had been forcibly mobilized for the Chairman's and his wife's private gatherings.
School facilities like the rooftop and the underground parking garage had been illegally renovated.
Performances had been forced through over the students' objections, with the profits skimmed off the top.
The costs generated by those performances had been dumped on the students' own pockets.
And beyond embezzling tuition and donation money, the Chairman and his wife had racked up quite an impressive catalog of misdeeds.
Even with rumors like these floating around, he'd buried the corruption for years — I had to click my tongue at how capable the man was.
The Chairman gets ousted in 2019, huh. So even after I graduated, he lasted another three years. In this life, I'll tear him down within one. Just you wait.
While rummaging around here and there, I also learned that the student council president was Kang Ji-hoon.
So I'm tangled up with that little weasel again.
In my past life, he debuted as a member of the boy group Black TNT before even graduating.
If the butterfly effect hadn't touched anything, he'd be prepping for debut right about now.
No sane person would sit back and watch a Chairman like that for two years while holding the student council presidency.
If he enrolls and latches onto the Chairman, I'll be taking them both down together.
He'll probably be trailing after him around school too.
Guys without real ability love to lord it over people from above and order others around.
In my past life, I saw it on film sets, and I caught glimpses of it at broadcasting stations when I was little.
If it was visible even to a passing kid like me, it must have been far worse behind the scenes.
And now he's even wearing the badge of student council president, so… well, I don't need to look to know how that story goes.
I was in the middle of these thoughts when my phone rang.
It was Pyo Min-ji, whose number I'd exchanged at the audition hall.
"Congratulations on passing!"
"Oh, uh… thanks."
How did she know?
Weren't the results only visible to the applicant themselves?
"How did it go for you?"
"Me? I got rejected."
She said it so casually that it threw me off balance.
"Oh, I… see. So you got rejected. Are you okay, though? I don't exactly feel like celebrating right now."
If she'd failed, she'd have no choice but to look into supplemental admissions or settle for a regular high school.
"I got into the Video Production Department. I only mentioned it to see how you'd react, and here you are actually worrying about me. Hehehe."
Seorim Arts High allows multiple applications.
So that's why she was so relaxed even after "failing."
"Which brings me to — we're having a preliminary classmates' gathering. You're coming too."
"A preliminary classmates' gathering?"
"Yep. I'll send the time and place over text. Be there."
And with that, she hung up.
Shouldn't you at least ask if I'm free before hanging up?
It felt like I was being dragged along, so when her text arrived, I planned to reply: Sorry, I'm busy that day, can't make it.
I figured she should learn that a man has to play hard to get at least once.
But the last line of the text with the time and place… left me speechless.
At some point, she'd learned exactly where Yujin's meltdown button was, too.
It felt like I'd just been handed an offer I couldn't refuse.
Two days later —
The place Min-ji had picked was a café with a nice atmosphere.
I climbed to the second floor and spotted her waving from a corner table.
Beside her, Yujin sat with her arms crossed, visibly fuming.
Across the table, a boy I didn't recognize was hammering away at a tablet screen.
"Yujin, you came too."
"Hmph."
A Siberian north wind blew through.
"She said she'd confess to you if you didn't come."
This girl keeps choosing the words most likely to cause a disaster.
"From now on, explain what kind of gathering it is, who's coming, when, where, and finally confirm attendance — politely. Do that, and I'll show up on my own. No threats required."
"Boo, no fun."
"Why?"
"Because making it impossible to say no is way more entertaining. I like stories like that better."
"Real life isn't a story. If you try to turn meeting people into a narrative, I'm not coming to the next one. I'm not an extra in your storytelling."
"Whoa, that line was so cool. Hold on, let me write that down."
Yujin and I made identical faces of disbelief, while the boy across the table remained lost in his tablet.
But what has he been staring at so hard this whole time?
Min-ji walked over to the boy and yanked the earphones out of his ears.
"Someone's standing right in front of you — the least you could do is look up, you music demon!"
"Huh? Oh, uhh… s-sorry."
Only then did he look up at me.
His face seemed familiar somehow.
"This is Kim Bum-joon — he got into the Practical Music Department. My childhood friend."
"Ah, hey. Nice to meet you."
I was right — I did recognize that face.
Before my regression, he'd been a top-tier singer-songwriter who lived at the very peak of the music charts.
A singer beloved for a vocal range that leapt across octaves, a voice that melted straight into your ears, and his signature vibrato and rich, low register.
He had a "healing song" for every season, and they reversed up the charts so often that a running joke claimed you could listen to nothing but Kim Bum-joon all year round.
In other words, a hit-making machine with some seriously long-lasting masterpieces.
Before my regression, we'd never crossed paths — and yet here we were, connected like this.
Was this another connection that Future Sight had arranged for me?
"When a melody pops into his head, he has to tap it out on an instrument no matter who's in front of him. Ugh, that music demon."
"Look who's talking. Turn a song into a story, and that's you exactly."
"How did you know?"
"Are you going to keep going off topic? Tell us why you called this meeting!"
In the end, Yujin exploded.
"First of all, this is a social gathering of geniuses. That's why I only invited the geniuses I personally selected."
"Geniuses?"
"That's right. Ha-jin, you're a genius of acting. Yujin's a genius of dance. I'm a genius of storytelling. And Bum-joon's a genius of music."
"I get that we're all pretty good, but calling ourselves geniuses is… a bit much, don't you think? Seorim Arts High has plenty of kids who'd swear they're the best around."
"Doesn't matter. We're only calling each other geniuses within our little group. Parading it around outside would be tacky, but treating each other as geniuses does wonders for your self-esteem — I read that somewhere. We're just sharing positive energy among ourselves. Who's going to complain about that?"
Ugh, that silver tongue of hers… but honestly, the more I listened, the more sense it made.
Forget novelist — Min-ji could probably succeed as a cult leader.
"Next item. And this is the really important one… we have to save a school that, from the moment we enroll, will be rotting away from the inside."
"What are you talking about? Why would we need to save the school?"
Yujin knew nothing about the Chairman's corruption.
"The Chairman's… corruption, you mean?"
"Oh, so you already know about it, Ha-jin."
"There were rumors going around the community sites and anonymous boards, so I looked into it. No sources, though, so I can't be sure it's true."
"It's mostly true. If anything, the reality might be worse."
For the first time, Min-ji's expression turned serious.