Ch 221
Became a swordsmanship instructor at the academy
Chapter 221
Lee Ji-sung froze solid.
The fact that my memories had returned was like a death sentence to him.
"I-I don't know what you're talking about, but if you beat up our son like that..."
"Aren't you curious about why Chan-seong had to lie in a vegetative state for two years?"
"What does that have to do with what's happening now!"
I thought she had roughly caught on, but apparently not?
No, she's probably just thinking of brushing it off.
"Ah, you must already know, so naturally you wouldn't be curious."
Se-jin properly retorts with sarcasm.
"Look here, Miss Se-jin, what do you mean by that?"
"Hunter Se-jin?"
The vice principal and Choi Seo-ra look confused.
"Excuse me, Hunter Se-jin, may I speak?"
I can't just leave everything to Se-jin.
"Will you be okay?"
"Yes. I was continuously subjected to violence and bullying by Ji-sung during my middle school years. And on the day I became a vegetative patient, Lee Ji-sung called me aside."
"What nonsense are you talking about right now!"
"Ma'am, I'd appreciate it if you didn't interrupt Chan-seong's words."
"I was assaulted by Ji-sung and fell down the stairs."
"This is ridiculous, it's slander! That was so long ago, and now that you can't handle the consequences of beating up our son, you're trying to grab onto anything..."
"Is that really so? All the related content is in these documents here. I investigated at the request of Teacher Kang Shin-hyeok."
Our Se-jin could really become an actress with acting like that.
The vice principal immediately took out the documents and spread out the contents.
Actually, it wasn't Se-jin who did it but me, so I know all the contents too.
The confession recording of the now-retired teacher who deleted and covered up the CCTV footage from the scene, all the evidence proving that Hwasin Group sent money to the teacher.
"Miss Se-jin, is all of this true?"
"Yes. I had a hard time investigating because instead of giving money directly to the teacher, they sent money to people around him and got their children jobs and such, working around it. Oh, and there's one more thing..."
As she speaks, Se-jin takes out another document.
"What's this now?"
"This is something I happened to discover while investigating this incident, and since it's also related to a Hunter School student, I brought it."
What Se-jin took out this time is Do-hyun's case file.
Evidence materials that deliberately caused Do-hyun's family to collapse.
Of course, I helped Do-hyun later, but originally Hwasin Group was the culprit.
"A student named Do-hyun was also a student who was bullied during middle school, just like Chan-seong."
"What is this again... I don't know anything about this."
"It seems you weren't involved in this matter, ma'am. Then are you admitting that you exerted pressure to cover up Chan-seong's incident?"
Lee Ji-sung's mother became speechless, and everyone looked at Lee Ji-sung.
He too hung his head low and couldn't say anything.
"Silence is affirmation. How about we take these materials to court—no, first to the media?"
The situation was completely reversed.
Lee Ji-sung, this bastard, school life must have been really fun and enjoyable for you all this time, right?
Everything was going your way.
But that time is over.
From now on, hell begins.
***
"Teacher, are you really okay? Ji-an told me you were called in this morning."
"Don't worry. It was resolved well."
The punishment I received for gleefully beating up Lee Ji-sung was 20 hours of school community service.
This is practically getting off scot-free.
Honestly, school community service was decided because they couldn't give no punishment at all for appearances.
Normally, when you get school community service, you don't attend classes and do menial tasks like cleaning bathrooms, but my case is different.
I attend all classes and do school community service for about two hours each day for 20 days after classes end, but I don't actually do things like cleaning.
It would have been even better if they had made me skip classes too, but this part is a bit disappointing.
I briefly summarized and explained the incident to Eunseo, who looked worried.
"I thought he seemed unpleasant from first impression, but he really was a bad guy."
Since I've decided not to cling to the original work anymore, I feel the same way as Eunseo.
Honestly, I only understood and accommodated him because he was the protagonist, but if that weren't the case, I wouldn't have tolerated it either.
"So is he expelled?"
"No."
"What? Shouldn't he go to prison for something like that? Even if you're not really Min Chan-seong, he should be punished for doing such things, right?"
Eunseo is right.
Normally, expulsion and criminal punishment would be appropriate.
But if we hand him over to the police, will he be properly punished?
There's a saying that South Korea is the Republic of Hwasin, meaning Hwasin people are embedded everywhere—police, prosecutors, courts.
Even if Se-jin and the vice principal step forward, it would be difficult to ensure proper punishment.
Most importantly, both Min Chan-seong and Lee Ji-sung were second-year middle school students at the time.
Since Lee Ji-sung's birthday is in December, he was a juvenile offender.
Of course, we could still punish Lee Ji-sung's mother and the middle school teacher who covered up the incident, but it's uncertain whether Lee Ji-sung would be properly punished, and even more so for his mother.
In the first place, the Min Chan-seong incident wasn't even committed by the current Lee Ji-sung who possessed the body.
Cornered, Lee Ji-sung's mother offered a large sum in damages and said she would transfer Lee Ji-sung to another school.
But Lee Ji-sung opposed it.
He didn't oppose both things—what he opposed was the transfer.
For him, knowing the original work, he probably thought it would be beneficial to stay at the school even if his image became completely terrible.
He had already secured one Internal Energy manual, but the opportunities Do-hyun gets aren't just the Internal Energy manual.
There are other opportunities too, and since he's only a first-year now, he probably thought he could somehow clean up his image.
Actually, Lee Ji-sung is currently in the finals of the martial arts tournament.
Although he only fought up to the second round of the martial arts tournament preliminaries, following his first match, he won the second preliminary round with an overwhelming skill difference, and his opponent forfeited the final third round.
If he wins the martial arts tournament and then the WHCU, his image would be somewhat cleaned up, and it wouldn't be too difficult if he used other future information.
But would that really be easy?
The future has already gone completely off track, and while I know this, he doesn't.
The original work he knows is different from the original work I know.
Anyway, the knife handle was placed in my hands, and after pretending to think for a moment, I accepted his apology.
Actually, even in the original work, the vegetative patient incident is revealed in the third year causing problems, but it's resolved well by providing compensation and moving on.
Of course, I've vowed not to cling to the original work anymore.
Therefore, I didn't make that decision to prevent the original work from being twisted, but accepted his apology because of Eunseo.
While my assault incident has mostly buried Eunseo's defeat within the school, it's not the same outside.
Last year's WHCU winner was defeated and eliminated in the first preliminary round by a first-year student, and that first-year happens to be the third generation of Hwasin Group, so reporters competed to write articles about it.
If Lee Ji-sung leaves the school, a rematch with Eunseo would be difficult, and if she can't overcome the current situation, it could become trauma for Eunseo.
In the first place, who was the reason I beat up Lee Ji-sung?
"Teacher?"
"As I said before, revenge should be done with your own hands, right?"
"Yes. I'll work harder."
I hope Eunseo directly defeats him and eliminates her trauma.
I can easily prevent his image laundering too.
Well, there's an old saying about keeping your enemies close.
"Good, then shall we try once more?"
***
"That bastard Lee Ji-sung really was complete trash."
"Wait, and he's been pretending to be friendly with Do-hyun and Chan-seong all this time? Totally disgusting."
"Chan-seong is really magnanimous. How could he forgive that?"
"They said he was a juvenile offender at the time, so he couldn't be punished."
As soon as I entered the cafeteria, the murmuring sounds made me feel like I was going crazy.
Why did things turn out like this?
At first, I thought it was completely ruined, but fortunately when Min Chan-seong said he would accept the apology, I thought things were going well somehow, that it was fortunate.
Fortunate my ass... it was a completely wrong judgment.
Both the fact that I made Min Chan-seong a vegetative patient and that I orchestrated Do-hyun's family's downfall became known throughout the school.
The one who spread the rumors was obviously Min Chan-seong.
That bastard Min Chan-seong. Acting like he's being generous by accepting the apology in front, then sneakily spreading rumors behind the scenes.
Due to the closed nature of Hunter School, rumors spread instantly, and I became the scum of the century.
Not just the students in my class—no, the entire school—but even the teachers look at me like I'm an insect and ignore me regularly.
I even received an expulsion notice from the student council.
What did I do so wrong?
The Min Chan-seong incident wasn't even something I did, and with Kim Do-hyun, even when I tried to be nice to him, he was stubborn, so I had no choice.
I worked so hard to clean up my delinquent image all this time, but everything became completely worthless.
Should I have just transferred schools like my mother said?
Sigh... No, I can't do that.
The center of this novel I possessed into is 1st Hunter School.
I can't just blame myself like this.
Even though things are completely ruined, there's still a chance to reverse the situation.
My image is ruined, but the information and abilities I have aren't ruined.
In the first place, in the original work I saw, Lee Ji-sung gets properly educated by Kim Do-hyun and is kicked out of school.
But I remained at school.
Moreover, while the internal public opinion is completely ruined, external public opinion isn't.
If I win the martial arts tournament and then win the WHCU, it will surely be somewhat cleaned up.
Besides that, I still have future information through the original work.
This world was never kind to me from the beginning.
Even as a chaebol third generation, I was an unparalleled delinquent... That's right, my current situation is just one more trial added to that unkind beginning.
It's a bit disappointing that nearly a year's worth of effort has all gone to waste, but it doesn't matter.
As long as I know the future, time is on my side.
I will never give up.
***
After eating lunch and returning home, as I enter the front door, something feels strange.
Nothing seems particularly different from before I left... Just as I think I might be mistaken, I sense human presence from inside.
I immediately draw up magic to prepare and open the shoe cabinet to activate the trap, but there's no response.
They disabled the traps I set up?
I don't know who it is, but they're definitely not just a simple thief or robber.
"You're here?"
I was startled for a moment.
It was a voice so familiar to my ears.
But this voice is...
I quickly went inside, and my expectation was correct.
"Boss? It's really been a long time. You should have contacted me in advance."
"Would you have answered if I contacted you?"
"Of course I would have answered. How did you know to come here?"
"Even if this isn't Italy, it's still Europe, isn't it? Then it can't escape my eyes."
As expected... Boss knew about it too?
"I see. Have you been well?"
"Me? I'm always doing well. You seem to be quite busy though."
"Ah, did you wait long? I'm sorry. I usually don't go out much, but today I happened to have a lunch appointment..."
"Well, you know I'm not talking about today, don't you?"
...As expected, he came knowing everything.
"I'm sorry for not telling you in advance."
"You don't need to tell me. You've already retired. I approved it, so do you think I have dementia or something?"
"N-no. What are you saying. Then what brings you here...?"
"You already noticed, so why are you pretending not to know like that?"
"Haha..."
"It's not like you embezzled from the organization and disappeared—you officially retired, so intervening like this shouldn't be done in principle, but I found out about what you're currently planning."
"..."
"Guilt, the reason I came here today is because of our old friendship. Not as a boss, but as your friend."
"All preparations are already complete."
"I know. But if you want to stop, you can stop, can't you?"
"I'm really sorry, but I can't do that."