The Scent of Lavender Bridging Past and Present
I had burned through my high school years on basketball, and I was good enough to have taken a bronze medal at the Busan-wide high school tournament back in the day.
Hmm... the skill gap is pretty noticeable.
Even the middle-aged uncles playing loose and lazy were no match for me.
After the game was over—
"Whoa, Chanhyuk. I've never even seen you play basketball before. How the hell are you this good??"
Compliments always felt good. I reined in my shoulders, which were itching to puff up on their own, and replied.
"Come on, quit it. It's not that big a deal."
After that, the way my friends looked at me changed.
I wonder how they'd react if I showed off my actual assets, too.
Not that I could touch any of it yet. Suddenly, I felt depressed.
Once we were done hanging out, everyone headed home in their separate directions, and the next morning my desk was abuzz with noise.
"Hey, hey! You're Chanhyuk, right? I came from Class 4 of second year—wanna join our basketball team?"
Is this guy a street peddler or something?
"Not interested, and you're being loud. People are trying to sleep."
Apparently the video Dajeong posted on FaceBook yesterday had drawn the vultures in.
Like I'm going to get dragged off anywhere.
"Come on, pleeeease!! Just think about it one more time, and if you change your mind, come find us in Class 4 of second year!"
And with that, the peddler retreated.
"Whyyy~ just give it a try, you're crazy good at basketball!! ...Ow!!"
I gave Dajeong a light smack on the crown of her head as I said,
"Hey, it's because you went and posted that video on FaceBook. Now the peddlers keep swarming."
It wasn't even a hard hit, but she rubbed her head and whined anyway.
"Why'd you hit me!! Ugh... I only posted it because you looked cool, okay?"
With that, Dajeong went back to her own seat, and my second year of middle school seemed to be cruising along smoothly... or so I thought.
"KYAAAAAAAAAK!!!!"
Shit, shit, shit—what is this??
I checked my Bitcoin, and my holdings, which had climbed to a total of 700 billion won, had crashed down to 200 billion.
So I went digging for the cause...
"What?? Shit—a hack??"
Bitcoin is an asset with no physical form. Before my regression, the single most important thing underpinning its value had been security.
So you're telling me Mount Gox—the Japanese company that monopolized 70 to 80 percent of global Bitcoin trading volume at the time—got hacked??
"850,000 coins, no less..."
Those lunatics had siphoned off 750,000 of them straight from their customers' wallets. Trust in Bitcoin cratered, and that was how this crash had come to pass.
"Shit. Was it always like this? Wasn't it just supposed to keep going up??"
Fighting back the anxiety of not knowing what the future would hold, I worked to pull my head together fast.
How did I manage to recover so quickly, you ask?
"Shit, I can't cash out anyway. If I die, I'm dying with everything still in my name."
Well... I'd already swallowed the hook.
There had been a major incident, but time kept flowing all the same.
I became a third-year middle schooler, and changes began stirring around me as well.
"Hey, Kim Daehyun! Hurry up and come here!"
"Yeah, okay!!"
Hearing the aegyo drip from Kim Daehyun's voice made me want to gag.
"Ugh. Hey. If you're gonna flaunt it, go do it somewhere private."
The result of the four of us hanging out together so often was that Kim Se-ah and Kim Daehyun had started dating, and now the flaunting was nonstop.
Kim Se-ah asked me,
"Hey, Dajeong's not even trying to hide how much she likes you. When are you two gonna get together?"
I knew. I'd have to be an idiot not to.
But the Kim Da-Jeong of my previous life and the Kim Da-Jeong of now kept overlapping in my mind, and so I kept avoiding it.
"Hey!! What are you guys talking about??"
As Kim Da-Jeong came running over to us, the image of her from my previous life flashed across my eyes.
After we'd broken up because of all my idiotic behavior, I ran into her again as an adult, while wandering the bar streets near Pusan National University with my old middle school friends.
Kim Da-Jeong had been smoking a cigarette in an alley off the bar street, and my eyes had snagged on her and refused to let go.
She's beautiful...
I didn't even have the courage to walk up to her. I'd thought I'd dressed up for the occasion, but my pathetic loser uniform of a ratty sweater and jeans only embarrassed me.
Whew... it's all in the past anyway. Something that's already been erased.
They say people can change in an instant, don't they?
I said to Kim Da-Jeong,
"Hey, Kim Da-Jeong."
Maybe she was happy to hear her name called, because she smiled as she looked up at me.
"Hmm?? What's up??"
"Date me."
"..."
I'd said it so casually that only a few people in the class seemed to have caught it, glancing over at us like they might have misheard.
"WHAAAAAAT????!!"
Hmm... that voice is a bit loud, though?
"D... date you?? Did I hear that right??"
"Do I look like someone who jokes about this?"
Her deliberation didn't take long. She began walking toward me, and the closer she got, the stronger the scent of lavender grew.
The lavender I had smelled in the past came back to me. It felt as though that fragrance were bridging the past and the present.
In a whisper so soft I could barely hear it—
"Chanhyuk. Please take good care of me from now on."
She answered my confession in a murmur meant only for my ears.
And just like that, our past and our present were finally joined.
"Chanhyuk, you're an absolute chad??"
Word of my confession to Dajeong had apparently reached Kim Se-ah, and Kim Daehyun was needling me from the sidelines too.
Our classmates, meanwhile, took it all in stride:
"About time you two got together."
"Hmm... it was about time, yeah."
"Hey, hey, Chanhyuk. Se-ah's birthday's coming up—what should I get her?"
"It's Kim Se-ah's birthday??"
Apparently Kim Se-ah's birthday was just around the corner.
"Ugh, damn it, I barely have any money... Maybe I'll just grab whatever at OlivO?"
Hold on a second.
"Hey. If you're buying a birthday present, you're taking me with you. No exceptions."
I couldn't let a close friend of mine repeat the same black stain on history that I had.
And so we went to OlivO together, where I executed Kim Daehyun in the name of justice as he reached for a discounted mud pack, and made him buy perfume instead.
And with that, the matter was settled.
But misfortune was closing in on me...
Honestly, I just found the love of my life—why is this happening to me...
Bitcoin kept tumbling.
So from 200 billion, I'm down to roughly 140 billion?
Then again, it would've been stranger if it hadn't gone under.
So this is what they meant when they said trading Bitcoin ruins your life. Even when I tried not to think about it, my eyes kept drifting back.
Still, the shock was less severe than the first crash, and I was able to steady my emotions that much faster.
How did I get through this crisis the first time around, before the regression?
That thought crossed my mind too.
Then, at school—
"Chanhyuk, what high school are you going to??"
In my previous life, my grades had been mediocre and I'd had no real plans for the future, so I'd ended up at a vocational track high school.
"Where do you want to go?"
She thought for a moment, then smiled at me and said,
"Me?? Wherever YOU go!!!"
Looking at that smile, guilt wrapped itself around me.
But I would no longer let it bind me. Those things have been erased now—they exist only in my memory.
And so the season for choosing our future paths arrived.
"Kim Daehyun, at this rate you're not making it into a general academic track, are you?"
Clutching his head and groaning in agony, Daehyun turned on me as if to lay the blame at my feet.
"Seriously! If I'd hung out with you all the time, of course my grades would be shot too!!!??"
"Hey, you're the only one with bad grades here."
I struck right at his blind spot.
His scores were borderline even for the general track. With luck, a coed school; without it, he was headed for an all-boys school.
"Are you going to a science high school??"
Is this guy insane?
I was never built for a science high school. I had gone to a vocational track school in my previous life too, but I'd studied hard there, gotten into a decent university, and applied myself—so middle school coursework was nothing to me.
"I'm just going to some reasonable place and living reasonably."
"Hey, hey, hey—get out of my sight. I can't stand the sight of you right now."
I understood the stress, so I figured I'd give him some space.
"Once we've all turned in our applications, let's go out and have some fun."
In the end, all four of us worked toward getting into the same school, and thanks to an enormous stroke of luck, we all managed to enroll at the same one.
"Whoa~~ Chanhyuk, you just keep getting taller, don't you? Aren't you over 190cm by now??"
Before my regression, I'd measured around 190cm in my first year of high school, so I figured I was about the same now.
"Hmm... seems like it, yeah?"
Finding a school uniform this time had been a real struggle. Between my height and my muscles—not that I carried much fat—nothing off the rack fit right, so I'd had no choice but to buy oversized uniforms and get them tailored.
"The uniform suits you too, you know."
Dajeong was so delighted by the compliment that she spent the whole day bouncing around,
"Alright!! Come on, let's go!!"
And so our high school life began.
The high school I would attend separated the boys and the girls. Tall and big-built as I was, I took the seat at the very back of the classroom—and started to spot a few loose, sleazy characters among the boys.
Hmm... there won't be another Kim Daehyun Mark 3 in here, will there?
I didn't want to get dragged into any annoying drama, so the worry nagged at me a little—but of everyone who'd laid eyes on me, not a single one in this class seemed bold enough to keep up that kind of attitude.
Well, anyone who tried would have to be an idiot.
Fortunately, no such annoying situation ever materialized.
After that, I started talking with my new classmates and grew close with them fast, and to my eyes, our class had no delinquent troublemakers or any of that garbage whatsoever.
Because the boys and girls were in separate classes, and because Daehyun had been sorted into a different room than the rest of us, we all bunched together every break, hit the school store together, and each of the couples got to enjoy their dates.
And then, an incident broke out.
"Hey, you little shit. What the hell are you staring at?"
Is Daehyun a community bulletin board or something?