Chapter 320: Rock-paper-scissors
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 320: Rock-paper-scissors
One thing that surprised me...
Out of the three of us suddenly engaged in a high-speed chase through our peaceful campus...
I was the fastest.
"I—I’m counting on you!"
Ahn Hyun-ho wheezed, collapsing onto the pavement.
I wondered if he was actually okay, considering he played soccer during the sports festival yet had zero stamina now.
But I, a man forged through the fires of sex, was rapidly closing the gap between myself and the voyeur.
I didn't hesitate for a second. The more I ran, the more power surged into my legs. I didn't feel tired at all.
I’m losing it.
My head felt hot. Even though I realized I was getting worked up, I had no intention of stopping.
It meant I was absolutely, blindingly livid.
The words of Detective Baek Ho-hwan kept echoing in my mind.
—Sigh, we’ve been getting a lot of reports about cases like this lately.
—Specifically, composite photos of college students have been circulating—.
Composite photos.
There was no way these bastards were taking pictures of Choi I-seo just for fun, and they certainly weren't doing it to make her look prettier in Photoshop.
Their intentions were blatantly malicious.
That was why I couldn't hold back.
"You son of a bitch!"
Even if they weren't real, the thought of them making those kinds of photos of I-seo and sharing them among themselves made my blood boil.
If it had been summer, I might have collapsed from a heatstroke of pure rage.
Regardless.
My eyes never left the guy's back.
The moment the distance closed enough for my hand to reach his shoulder—
Grab!
Realizing he couldn't escape, the guy stopped dead in his tracks and swung a fist straight at me.
Thwack!
A direct hit.
My head snapped back, and a sharp, stinging pain flared up.
"What the—?"
"They're fighting!"
Since we were still on campus, I could hear the surrounding students starting to spectate.
Normally, since I’m not much of a fighter, I would have tried to stall for time or shouted for help.
But I had a burning desire to beat this specific bastard to death myself. I swung my own fist, awkward as it was.
Crack!
I aimed for his face, but the punch grazed him. However, it clipped the bridge of his nose, and blood came spurting out.
"Ah, shit—!"
The guy instinctively touched his nose and stared at the blood on his fingers.
I didn't miss the opening and swung again.
I’d learned this from being on the receiving end so often: hitting the stomach is much more effective than hitting the face.
Thud!
I buried my fist into his gut, mimicking a move I’d seen somewhere. It was a lucky punch, but I felt the impact resonate through my arm the moment it landed.
A clean hit to the solar plexus.
"Heugh... Gasp!"
The guy doubled over, his breathing turning into a ragged wheeze. At the same time, he dropped the phone he’d been clutching.
I snatched it up immediately.
Because he’d been running while taking photos, the phone was unlocked, and I could easily check the gallery.
"You motherfucker..."
There were countless photos of Choi I-seo.
As I scrolled down, I saw Lee Seo-ah from the Department of Theatre and Film, along with several girls I didn't recognize.
There were even blurry shots of Oh Yun-ji and Popo arriving at school together.
With a trembling finger, I pressed down on the KakaoTalk app.
At the very top was an open chat room with about a hundred members.
It was a name I recognized.
"Heugh! You... son of a... bitch...!"
The guy clutched his stomach and cursed at me.
I shoved the phone into my pocket, grabbed him by the hair, and drove my knee into his face.
CRACK!
"AAAAARGH!"
A perfect strike.
The scene was getting brutal enough that people started screaming and rushing over to break us up.
But before they could reach us, I continued to rain down a barrage of punches, pummeling him mercilessly.
Thwack! Bam!
"You pieces of trash! I’m going to find every single one of you and kill you all!"
"W-what did I even do?!"
As people began to pull me away, the guy started shouting, trying to play the victim.
"Fuck! Of course I ran because you were chasing me! I’m going to sue you for this!"
"Shut up, you prick! Did you enjoy taking photos of girls to make deepfakes and distribute them?!"
The crowd began to murmur.
The guy’s eyes flickered with a hint of 'How did he know?' but he gritted his teeth and fired back.
"Bullshit! I was just taking pictures of the scenery! And what deepfakes? How would I even know how to do that? Don't try to frame me as a voyeur!"
"Fine. Go ahead and say that at the police station."
I pulled his phone out again and showed him the chat room.
"You think I don't know anything? You joined this room through an open chat link shared on the Gahyeon University Bamboo Forest during the break."
"......!"
"Did they tell you to go take pictures of girls? I did some digging into cases like this, and apparently, there’s a ranking system. If you provide 'source material,' they raise your rank so you can see the more hardcore stuff, right?"
"No, that’s—"
Stunned by how much I knew, he started stammering, unable to find words.
The people around us seemed to have figured out who the real villain was by now.
I could hear the faint sound of someone calling the police.
"Take a good look."
There were about a hundred people in that open chat room. Every single one of them used a nickname, making them hard to identify—just a bunch of anonymous cowards gathered for the same disgusting purpose, not even knowing who each other were.
"I’m going to kill every last one of you."
After all, I was quite used to hunting down people like them.
* * *
It would have been great if that had been the end of it.
But catching that one guy didn't mean everything was over.
To be honest, nothing had ended.
In fact, the situation was heading in a rather unfavorable direction.
In my dorm room.
Yoo Ah-rin showed me a short video on social media.
"Wow, look at this. Kim Woo-jin, you're blowing up."
I couldn't move my hands, so I just tilted my head to look. It was a video of me catching that criminal earlier.
—Take a good look.
—I’m going to kill every last one of you.
"Hey, turn the sound off. It's embarrassing."
"What's there to be embarrassed about? The comments are saying you look cool as hell. It even leaked that you're the youngest son of Uju Group."
"Sigh... thanks to that, all those bastards in the chat room are going to run for cover."
That was the problem.
Because I’d made such a scene, the news was bound to reach the members of that chat room.
Detective Baek Ho-hwan, who had arrived on the scene, specifically explained that spreading the video could hinder the investigation.
And yet, seeing it uploaded to SNS anyway made me realize how relentless people could be.
"Ah, I really want to leave a comment saying this guy is mine."
Yoo Ah-rin hummed, leaning her head on my shoulder. It was obvious she was trying to cheer me up because I looked so serious.
"Can't you see who's actually taking care of you right now?"
Choi I-seo, who was sitting in front of me on a pulled-up chair, grumbled.
Because of my amateurish punching, I’d actually hurt my hands, and she was currently applying ointment to them.
"You overdid it. You could have just asked people for help."
"Your photos were the most frequent. How could I just stand by and watch after seeing that?"
"......"
"Those bastards... I’m going to catch them all. If they did anything weird with your photos, they won't be able to live in Korea anymore."
Hearing my words, Choi I-seo bit her lip and stole a glance at Yoo Ah-rin.
"Ha, that's so fucking sexy."
Yoo Ah-rin was still watching the video of me fighting, though she’d turned the volume down.
"Ah-rin, let's talk for a second."
"Huh? Why?"
I-seo dragged Yoo Ah-rin into the bathroom.
In my dorm room, that was the only place where they could have a private conversation.
The room fell silent.
I thought back to the chat room I’d seen earlier.
Before the police arrived, I’d had the guy's phone, so I’d memorized what I could and even took photos of the nickname list.
When I scrolled up in the chat, I saw that they were already sharing hundreds of deepfake photos of girls from other schools.
If you paid money and your rank went up, you could even request edits of specific individuals.
They even had edited videos of female idols, claiming they could make videos if they had enough source material.
Sick bastards.
Even if you didn't have money, there was a way to raise your rank.
They called them 'quests.'
Basically, providing high-quality source material.
The guy who seemed to be the admin of the open chat room even designated specific targets to be photographed.
The list started with Choi I-seo, the English Department representative, followed by Seo Ye-rin, who was starting to make a name for herself as an actress, and Yoo Ah-rin, whose Neutube channel was blowing up.
It didn't stop with those three. Yun-ji was on there, as was Bae Ji-hye, active under the name Popo.
The names of countless women were listed.
They know too much.
Not just the girls at our school; the targets for quests given to others were described in far too much detail.
Moreover, there was one thing that kept bothering me—
Clatter!
"Woo-jin-ah!"
The door burst open, and Seo Ye-rin came charging at me.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed and was immediately engulfed in her flying tackle-hug.
"Are you okay?! You're not hurt, are you? Waaaaah! If I’d been there, I would have beaten that guy to death myself!"
She’d said she was busy with filming, but I guess she ran over the moment she heard the news.
"I'm fine. I landed way more hits."
"That bad man!"
It was actually a relief that Seo Ye-rin was busy. Since she couldn't come to school often, she was less likely to be photographed.
If she had been around, she probably would have been their top priority.
As I hugged Ye-rin back, feeling her lush warmth—
Creak.
The bathroom door opened, and the other two stepped out.
Choi I-seo looked like she was in mourning, while Yoo Ah-rin was grinning ear to ear.
"Ugh, seriously. Why are you here?"
The moment I-seo spotted Seo Ye-rin, she scowled in annoyance.
"What do you mean why?! A video of my man fighting is all over SNS, you think I’m just going to sit still?!"
"Sigh... he's not 'your man' today. We just decided."
Seo Ye-rin hugged me even tighter, demanding to know what she meant.
Determined not to let go, she listened as Yoo Ah-rin shrugged and replied.
"We just settled it with rock-paper-scissors in there. I’m sleeping over here tonight."
Wait, what?
"What?! Why would you decide that when I’m not here?!"
"Because you were late."
"Noooo! I’m sleeping over too!"
Seo Ye-rin was cute when she acted like a child. But there was something I wanted to clarify.
"You decided that in the bathroom?"
"Yeah. But don't get the wrong idea. It wasn't my suggestion."
Yoo Ah-rin pointed at Choi I-seo, who had turned her head away in embarrassment.
"She suggested it first. She asked if I could back off because she wanted to be with you today."
"...Why?"
I was surprised because I-seo wasn't the type to make requests like that.
Did my brain just freeze?
When I asked with a blank expression, Yoo Ah-rin answered with a smirk.
"Shit, because you were sexy as hell today."
"......"
"Even the well-behaved Choi I-seo wanted to fuck you so bad she asked to be left alone with you."
"I—I didn't say I wanted to 'fuck' him!"
I-seo shouted in a panic.
"But it's true you asked me to leave because you wanted to do it, right?"
When I asked for confirmation, I-seo avoided my gaze again but gave a tiny, slight nod.
I was actually a little touched.
"No, no, no! I’m the one who’s going to eat him up! It doesn't count because I wasn't here! Do it again! Do rock-paper-scissors again!"
"Bullshit! You're late, so get lost!"
"Ahem. Ah-rin, put your hand out."
Seo Ye-rin and Choi I-seo both held out their hands for rock-paper-scissors.
Seeing that, Yoo Ah-rin’s jaw dropped as she glared at I-seo in shock.
"Wow, you're shamelessly persistent, aren't you?!"