School Violence Scandal
I’m translating the chapter directly into the required HTML structure, and I’m treating the article, post, and notice blocks as styled in-universe content rather than plain prose.CHAPTER_TITLE: School Bullying Scandal
Friday had come around again.
Ah. Today’s the day episode 11 airs, right?
The law student wrapped up her studying in a burst of last-minute speed. Then she went to the convenience store, bought a can of beer, and waited for episode 11 with near-religious solemnity.
The rankings announcement... I’m nervous. One hour left.
Episode 11 was set to air the third ranking ceremony. The law student cracked open the beer and, while waiting for the broadcast to begin, replayed the fancam of Neoul that had appeared in the so-called Wednesday Music.
No, he’s improved at dancing too, but how did his singing get even better from there?
What was more astonishing was that his looks had somehow improved as well.
I need that black half-tied hairstyle preserved forever...
It felt like just yesterday that he had been a scruffy whale. Now he seemed even more handsome, and his hair looked strangely softer, too.
Gal Neoul, smash the earth. Conquer the world.
The beer tasted especially good while she indulged in fangirling nonsense.
The stage the Barrier Reef Team had shown in episode 10 was, quite simply, the best. It was good enough that they could have debuted exactly as they were. Seeing it on a music show screen made it feel even more undeniable.
It was better not to compare too openly, but the Barrier Reef Team’s stage was far superior to the stages of some of the rookie idol groups that had debuted this year.
If the Barrier Reef Team ever debuted, it looked as though they could chew up the competing groups of their generation without mercy.
“Unni...! Unni!”
Then her younger sibling’s voice, sharp with panic, rang out from the next room. The sibling came crashing in and thrust a smartphone toward her.
“D-did you see this...?”
It was a screenshot of a post uploaded to an anonymous site.
The initials in the title were obviously aimed at Gal Neoul. The law student straightened in her seat and began reading the post. Her heart pounded hard, fast, and unevenly.
According to the post, the anonymous writer was a former classmate of Gal Neoul’s, and in their first year of high school, Neoul had led the bullying and even used violence against the writer.
It had started with light harassment, the writer said, but it had grown worse and worse, until every day before transferring schools had felt like hell.
The writer had suffered until now, and could no longer stand by while people supported Gal Neoul without knowing his true nature.
“Neoul... was a school bullying perpetrator...?”
The law student felt as if her blood had gone cold all at once. Her heart was racing, but her fingertips turned numb and icy, as though the circulation had stopped.
“Let’s wait for now. We don’t know yet whether it’s true.”
“B-but if it is?”
What do you mean, what would we do? The answer was simple: send him off the way one sent off a beloved old flame who had gone to prison. Things that made the time she had loved and supported him feel shameful were worthy of life imprisonment, no, the death penalty. The world needed to be shown that it was not so easy to take lightly.
The law student tried to stay calm, but she could not quite bring herself to say the words.
“Let’s wait first.”
There was still a chance it could be false. Anonymous boards were full of people who posted lies. There would be no harm in criticizing him once it was confirmed.
The law student checked the screenshot again. It was already spreading on social media in real time.
“Do we have the original post? Let’s save it as a PDF just in case.”
“Ah, right. I’ll check.”
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the original post had not yet been deleted.
Neoul had finished practice and was on his way to wash up when the main writer called him away. By the time he came back, he had already heard the news that he had become a school bullying perpetrator.
He stood in the room for a moment, looking blankly bewildered.
“Why... What happened...?”
Yeo Do-bin asked. Neoul had stopped just inside the doorway, and the rest of the team were looking at him in puzzlement as well. Neoul, unable to hide his confusion, said, “There is... a post claiming that I committed school violence in the past.”
“What...? What did you just say?”
Baek Yuri, who had just come out after washing up, was towel-drying his hair when his expression twisted in disbelief. Baek Gi-yeom, Yeo Do-bin, and Lee Gal-chae all stared at Neoul with grave faces.
Baek Gi-yeom asked, “Is it true? Or not? Just tell me that much.”
“It is not.”
“Then that’s that. What did the production team say? Did you report it? Did you check the uploader’s IP address?”
“The IP address... what is that?”
He didn’t know that?
Baek Gi-yeom’s expression hardened even further. Lee Gal-chae, curled up on the bed and watching the exchange, spoke up.
“Neoul-hyung, if you don’t even know that much, how are you supposed to survive this cruel world?”
Then he glanced around and lowered his voice.
“The dorm cameras aren’t on right now, are they?”
“No. They’re not.”
At Baek Gi-yeom’s answer, Lee Gal-chae took out the smartphone he had hidden away.
“Then let’s check it first. What exactly did they write.”
“Gal-chae, didn’t you hand in your phone...?”
Yeo Do-bin said in surprise, climbing down from the bunk bed. Lee Gal-chae turned on the phone he had kept switched off and began searching as he spoke.
“Please keep this a secret.”
Baek Gi-yeom asked, “You didn’t leak our filming content, did you?”
“No.”
“Then it’s fine.”
Lee Gal-chae followed the link that had been posted on social media. It led to an anonymous community site.
The team gathered around him, crowding in close.
[Photo]
A photo of Neoul, apparently taken head-on while he was in a school uniform, had been attached beneath an image file labeled with the name Gal Neoul.
Neoul stared at it with his eyes wide open.
After reading the post, Lee Gal-chae blinked as though bewildered.
“...If that’s a lie, then it’s truly vicious.”
“It is a lie,” came the answer.
“And this photo. It was taken in high school, but the face is exactly the same now. It hasn’t changed at all.”
At Lee Gal-chae’s words, Baek Gi-yeom examined the photo more closely and frowned.
“This looks edited.”
“Not looks like. It is edited.”
Baek Yuri confirmed it with a click of his tongue.
“Gal-chae-ssi. Can I borrow your phone for a second?”
“Here.”
Baek Yuri captured the screen and copied the link address to save it. Then he checked how to post on the site and how to register as a member, and said, “It’s anonymous, but you can’t post unless you sign up. Since you have to enter an email address when registering, it shouldn’t be hard to track. Let’s report it to the police first.”
“A-and let’s contact President Won Hasin first. Neoul...!”
Yeo Do-bin added. Baek Yuri and Baek Gi-yeom both nodded. Lee Gal-chae wondered why the name Won Hasin had come up at all.
Amid the team’s grim atmosphere, Neoul’s eyes shifted left and right before he said, “But, um... I do not think you need worry so much.”
“R-really...?”
“Why? Did the production team say they’d take legal action to protect the contestants?”
“They probably will, but that isn’t why...”
Neoul shook his head.
“I have never attended school.”
Kim Ji-rok checked his smartphone in secret under the covers. He kept alternating between watching the spread of the good-guy image he had built up through his volunteer work bathing dogs and the spread of the rumor that Gal Neoul was a school bully, and he smirked.
The official Idol Travel homepage was paralyzed by posts demanding confirmation of the facts or calling for Gal Neoul’s removal.
Kim Ji-rok checked the messages he had exchanged a little earlier with his friend.
[Hey. Post it now. I’ll transfer two hundred right away.]
[Scumbag: Okey.]
[Delete the texts we exchanged after you confirm the transfer.]
[Scumbag: yeah]
With that, the public images of Kim Ji-rok and Gal Neoul were completely reversed.
Nothing had even been confirmed yet, and nobody had told them to do it, but people were swept up in a sense of justice that demanded a school bully be socially buried, so they kept sharing the post without pause.
Some of them were simply the sort of people who wanted Gal Neoul to fail for no reason at all. Others enjoyed watching anyone’s downfall, whether it was Neoul or someone else.
Because Kim Ji-rok and Gal Neoul had initially been framed as rivals, the more Gal Neoul was attacked, the more the image of “good guy” got layered onto Kim Ji-rok instead.
Hah. This really does make me feel better.
It felt as if the accumulated blockage of all his irritation had been flushed away in one go.
I won.
A laugh burst out of him before he could stop it.
He was relieved there were so many stupid, foolish people in the world. More than half the information floating around online was probably false, and yet they believed it all without question and cursed at him.
Sometimes people insisted that truth was a lie, and other times they believed with absolute certainty that a lie was the truth.
How could this be so easy?
Haha.
People hiding behind anonymity had put Gal Neoul on the chopping block and hacked away at him to their heart’s content. Kim Ji-rok enjoyed watching Neoul’s fall with satisfaction.
But a little later, an announcement appeared on the official Idol Travel homepage and the MuTube community.
CASE NO:[Case Number]
VICTIM:[Name / Unidentified]
LOCATION:[Location]
TIME:[Date/Time]
Hello, this is the production team of Idol Travel.
First, we regret that unpleasant news concerning one of our program’s contestants has spread so widely.
Because this is a sensitive matter related to private life, we determined that it was proper to confirm the contestant’s wishes regarding disclosure before making any public statement. We ask for your generous understanding that this announcement took some time.
Contestant Gal Neoul has no record of ever enrolling in or attending school due to health issues. This was already confirmed by the production team when he joined the program.
Since the contestant was unable to attend even elementary school, the school violence allegations regarding Gal Neoul are clearly false.
If the spread of false information continues, damaging the contestant’s reputation and causing mental harm, the production team will respond actively in order to protect him.
Thank you.
“Fuck.”
The curse flew out of Kim Ji-rok’s mouth without his meaning to say it. For a moment, he nearly hurled the smartphone across the room.
He never attended school...?
“Ji-rok-hyung? What’s wrong?”
“Shut up.”
“...?!“
His teammate blinked in shock at the harsh tone. Kim Ji-rok grimaced, realizing his slip, and hurriedly covered it up.
“Ah, sorry. Nothing. I’m just using the bathroom.”
He did not have the mental space to have a calm conversation with anyone right now. Kim Ji-rok went into the bathroom, turned on the faucet at the sink, and bit his lip.
“Ha... this is bullshit.”
In a country that prided itself on education and had one of the lowest illiteracy rates in the world, how the hell did that even make sense? Could an uneducated person exist in the twenty-first century?
A health problem kept him from school? Was he sick? But could a sick bastard really be that huge and that muscular? He looked like he had phenomenal nutrition, for fuck’s sake.
Wow, uneducated... no wonder the bastard was rude and looked like he’d never been taught anything.
The betrayal and the absurdity made his teeth ache.
When not a single ordinary graduation photo had circulated, he should have been investigating why there wasn’t one instead of forging images. He hadn’t been thorough enough.
Under the post his friend had uploaded, comments mocking the writer began to pile up.
Kim Ji-rok ground his teeth and sent a message to his friend.
[Hey. What are you doing? Why hasn’t the post been deleted yet? I told you to delete it five minutes after uploading. Delete it.]
[Scumbag: Too much trouble.]
That bastard...!