The Scent of My First Kiss Was Cheap Vanilla Ice Cream
Here's what happened.
Daehyun and I had gone to the school store to grab my favorite dumplings. I asked him to nuke the frozen ones in the microwave while I went to the vending machine for drinks. That was all. Somewhere in between, a senior Daehyun happened to cross paths with decided to pick a fight with him, and he was loud enough that even I, over at the vending machine, caught every word.
"Hey, why the hell are you glaring at me?"
Drink in hand, I walked over to him.
"Did Daehyun do something wrong?"
The senior looked at me—and flinched.
Shit... is this guy actually a high schooler?
But too many eyes were on him now, and backing down was no longer an option.
"Hey, you think it's okay to glare at your senior when he walks past?"
It was such utter nonsense that all I could manage was a sigh.
"Hoo..."
Catching me sighing right in his face, the senior went scarlet and blew his top.
"You little shit! You're sighing while your senior is talking to you?!"
Why did I keep getting dragged into such annoying shit?
"Senior, let's settle it after school."
After delivering that notice, I took Daehyun and left.
"Whoa, whoa. Wasn't that going a bit too far?"
Unlike the worried Daehyun—
"I'm nobody's punching bag. Why would I just let it slide?"
I was completely at ease. They were nothing more than high schoolers, after all.
Daehyun grumbled that this kind of thing had better be a one-time deal, and we headed off to our respective classrooms, where Dajeong and Seah, having heard the rumors, came looking for me.
"Chanhyuk! What the hell is going on?!"
I was grateful for the concern, but the situation had gotten so damn annoying that my anger toward that senior kept piling up.
"Thanks for worrying, but I'll handle it. You know me, right?"
My friends had gotten close enough to visit the gym where I trained, and the master had bragged to them that I was good enough to go pro and succeed, so nobody feared that I—someone who trained like a maniac—would get beaten to a pulp. Still, as friends, as a girlfriend, they worried.
But they trusted me. Chanhyuk was always mature, always good at cleaning up problems the moment they appeared.
"Okay, got it. Just in case, should I secretly tail you?"
I figured she was planning to call the police if things went south.
"It's fine. I'll sort it out and text you."
And so dismissal time rolled around, and I told Daehyun:
"Hey, you head home first."
Had I been watching too many noir films or something?
"Hey! Aren't we friends, though? If we die, we die together!"
Ah, the burning passion of youth.
"Hey, having you there would just get in the way. Anyone follows me home, and I'm darting straight to the police station."
With that, I walked up to the seniors waiting in front of the school gate.
"Excuse me. I came alone, so let's head over there."
The way I talked must have scraped their pride raw, because they hurled curses at me—but when I ignored them and started toward the spot I'd pointed out, they belatedly came chasing after.
"Hey, fuck. Why didn't you bring that bastard with you?"
So. Damn. Annoying, this whole thing.
Oblivious to the fact that I was swallowing my temper, they only fanned it higher.
"You think we won't beat the crap out of that bastard next time we see him?"
They seemed dead set on getting under my skin, one way or another.
"Excuse me—so, do you actually want to fight?"
Seeing me speak politely, I suppose they took it for fear.
Most of the delinquents back then were all talk—posturing, hyping the mood, rarely laying a hand on anyone.
"You cocky little shit. Feeling confident, are you?"
Trusting in the four friends he'd brought along, he moved to kick me in the shin—
I dodged the kick with ease, seized him by the throat, and slammed him hard against the wall.
THUD!
"Ghhhuuurk! Kh... kgh!"
His head had cracked against the wall, and writhing against the white-hot pain, the bastard struggled in vain—he couldn't break free of my grip.
I spoke in a voice cold enough to freeze the air.
"Hey, you fucking piece of shit. You should've quit while I was still treating you like a senior."
Was it the memories of my basketball team days from high school, before the regression?
I've always made an effort to respect my elders, even if they were only a year older than me.
But the moment I see someone who doesn't act their age, my anger starts climbing all the way to the crown of my head.
The young punks beside him, who'd been strutting around with their swagger on full display, had no idea what to do with a situation that had exploded out of nowhere. Puff up the bravado all you want—at the end of the day, they were still just kids.
I let go of the bastard's collar, stepped up to the one standing beside him, and asked:
"Hey. You want to keep going?"
I stared down at him like I was scanning him from on high, and his eyes started darting away.
"Well, that's..."
"Hey."
At my voice—low and heavy, like it echoed from the depths of a cave—his body began to tremble.
"When a person is talking to you, you look them in the eye."
At those words, I could see the tears welling up in his eyes too.
Choking back his sobs, he said to me:
"I'm sorry... we went way too far..."
And with that, the matter was settled, and I took my leave.
Before regressing, I would have shuddered in fear at a situation like this, big frame or not. Nothing in the world could have made me feel more vividly just how completely different the me of now was.
Good thing I started training.
The prepared know no fear.
"Hello? Dajeong, what are you up to?"
As promised, I called her. She'd been so worried about me she'd insisted on meeting in person, but one look at me without a single hair out of place seemed to set her mind at ease.
"Dajeong, it's not even that late. Let's hit a cafe."
And so we stepped into a room cafe near Pusan National University. In my past life I'd hated anything that felt confining—but this room cafe happens to be one of the most meaningful places in the world to me.
"Whoa~ how do you even know about a place like this?! What are you getting?!"
Because this was where Dajeong and I had shared our first kiss, in the life before regression.
"How long have we been dating now?"
she asked, puffing up at me.
"You don't even know the day we got together?!"
I smiled a little and said:
"Of course I know. March 2nd."
Only then did she break into a grin and chide me playfully:
"Then why'd you ask if you already knew?!"
Then our drinks arrived, and I found myself gazing at the green tea latte set down in front of me.
In my previous life, I'd ordered a green tea latte every single time I came to this room cafe—and the reason was simple. It was the cheapest thing on the menu.
I took a bite of the ice cream perched on top of the latte and thought to myself:
Sweet.
It was cheap ice cream, but to me it tasted extraordinary. Maybe it was the memories.
"Dajeong."
I called her name, quiet and steady, and she looked up at me.
"Hm?? What is it?"
Had the seriousness and the heat in my eyes reached her, too? A flush of pink began creeping up Dajeong's cheeks.
I pressed every ounce of sincerity into the words:
"I love you."
Once my words reached her, we drifted closer and closer—and when the first kiss finally ended, the scent lingering in our mouths was cheap vanilla. We tucked that scent away in a corner of our hearts, where it stayed.
From then on, Dajeong chattered away at me like a sparrow.
"We've been dating for over a year now~ and you show zero signs of ever making a move, so I honestly thought you didn't even see me as a woman!"
Truthfully, my conscience was clear on this one—keeping my hands off her was the only natural option.
Not that Dajeong had any idea why.
After talking with Dajeong and walking her home, I headed back to my place.
Huh?
Which meant the Bitcoin I was holding had reached a grand total of 600 billion won. I already knew Bitcoin had been recovering after its big slump. But with a rally this explosive, my anxiety flew off into the distance.
"Whew... calm down. The domestic exchanges open soon—that's when I cash out."
With that plan settled, time flowed on to the end of my second year of high school. The season for cashing out was drawing near. The delightful news along the way was that my Bitcoin had mooned even harder—soaring more than twentyfold, all the way up to
"Bitcoin is a god..."
From what I dug up, Bitcoin could, at this point, be traded even by minors. I could have started cashing out as early as the beginning of 2017, but with the price climbing like a lunatic, I couldn't bring myself to do it.
So of my nine wallets—one main wallet plus eight others—I decided to fully liquidate only the single one holding 8,000 BTC.
The reason I chose to sell it that way was simple. Once Bitcoin hit 100 million won per coin, a single wallet's 8,000 coins—800 billion won—moving into my account would, in the very same breath, tip off the entire market. And what if I siphoned off just a sliver of the Bitcoin from those wallets and wired it to my account? That would be as good as announcing that every one of those wallets belonged to me, and it would render the whole point of splitting them into eight meaningless.
The market was swelling like a fever dream, so instead of staggering my sells across three to six months, I resolved to unload everything within a short window.
And so, in December 2017, my cash-out operation began, and the money stamped into my account came to
Nearly 130 billion won.
Unable to truly grasp it, I stared blankly at my banking app, then went back over the plans I had for the future, one by one.
Morning came, and I met up with my friends during break. At the sight of me grinning ear to ear, Daehyun asked:
"Hey, Chanhyuk. Why do you look so damn happy?? Did you win the lottery or something??"
To which Seah replied,
"Hey, how's he supposed to buy a lottery ticket? He's not even an adult??"
Hm... Daehyun's instincts are pretty sharp.
"Just in a good mood. Snacks are on me today. Whatever you want, I'm buying all of it."
Maybe it was because they'd so rarely seen me this cheerful?
Dajeong rejoiced right along with me.
"Ehhh~~ what is it, what is it!! Tell me too!!"
And so we headed to the school store, and I swiped my card, and—
"Kid, you got another card on you?"
My account had been frozen.