Teach Me Too!
Teach me too!
Jingle!
The second Kim Hyeonji stepped out of the library and back into the shopping district, she walked straight into a convenience store. How did I know that?
Because I had been tailing her the entire way. Getting so deep into my high-school-boy cosplay that I ended up stalking an actual high-school girl…
But I didn’t have a choice. Any father with a daughter would have followed Kim Hyeonji right then and there.
Think about it. Harin was cute as a kitten, never picky about side dishes, and practically invisible at school. Her only real flaw was leaving cigarette packs on her bed. And now someone who shared two-thirds of her simple school-home-library route was carrying the exact same brand?
I’d smoked before, but Marlboro Red was the kind of hyper-masculine cigarette that even guys on a freighter would call outdated.
No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t believe two people at Cheonji High School were smoking that brand.
Which meant the owner of those cigarettes was almost certainly Kim Hyeonji.
Jingle!
Fortunately, Kim Hyeonji finished her shopping with unusual speed for a modern teenager and stepped back out. At the same moment, my tailing operation hit a wall.
Thud.
Because she planted herself right under the convenience-store parasol like she owned the place. And as if that weren’t enough, she cracked open the ice-cold Asahi Super Dry she’d just pulled from the fridge with a sharp pssht.
“You’re… actually going to drink that?”
The words slipped out before I could stop them. Not exactly something a guy currently committing the crime of stalking should say, but as an “adult” I simply couldn’t let it slide.
“That’s why I bought it.”
Kim Hyeonji answered without a shred of concern, glancing at me with pure indifference. It wasn’t that I was some civic-minded old fogey who lectured every student who smoked or drank.
“I mean… sure, you can drink, but you’re still in your school uniform.”
“So?”
“What do you mean ‘so’? More importantly, how the hell did you even buy that?”
For a second the words “Teach me too!” almost left my mouth. There were times I’d gotten turned down even after flashing my ID, so what kind of skill was this girl using to buy alcohol in full uniform like it was nothing?
“They just gave it to me.”
“There’s no way they just gave it to you. Even if the clerk was blind, the ID scanner would—”
Fwoosh!
Kim Hyeonji clearly didn’t want to hear any more. She lit a cigarette right then and there. White smoke rose from a fresh stick of Marlboro Red.
She’d even bought the beer and cigarettes as a set. And some convenience-store part-timer had just handed them over like professional ethics were optional?
Was Eom Chaewon pulling a second job at a convenience store on her day off or something?
Thud…
In the end I sat down across from her. The moment Kim Hyeonji exhaled a long stream of smoke, her brow tightened slightly.
“You know me?”
“Of course. You’re Kim Hyeonji, third year.”
“And you’re still doing this even though you know?”
She was the real deal—the kind of girl who could take down three other girls who’d merely grabbed her hair in the blink of an eye. The so-called Queen of the Street.
And now some guy whose presence was so negligible he might as well not exist was boldly requesting a seat at her table. Of course she was annoyed. Not that it mattered. In front of a thirty-something man like me, every high-school girl was equal.
“I just transferred, so I don’t know much about the school yet. Don’t you remember me? We ran into each other by the wall the day before yesterday.”
“That bastard from back then? Didn’t Cheolgu tell you about me?”
“Cheolgu…? Who’s that supposed to be?”
“The bastard who was chasing me that day.”
“Ah, that teacher? He didn’t say a word. Wait—his name is actually Cheolgu?”
“Who the hell has a name like Cheolgu? That’s just what I call him.”
“…”
It was my late father’s name. I’d asked if it was really Cheolgu, so why was she talking like the name itself was impossible?
Gulp, gulp… Haaah~
Kim Hyeonji paid me no mind, washing down cigarette smoke with beer and no side dish in sight. What kind of life had this girl lived to radiate such seasoned vibes before she was even twenty?
“Ah! Actually, I came to give you this.”
I pulled out the cigarette pack I’d found at the library and set it on the table. Kim Hyeonji’s eyebrows twitched ever so slightly.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Behind the library.”
“You saw?”
“Yeah. It was insane. If I ever ranked the most shocking moments of my life, that one’s easily top ten.”
“What are the other nine?”
“They exist.”
You really did put on a manga-worthy performance, but all kinds of crazy things happen on a freighter. First place was permanently locked as “my own brother impregnating my first love,” of course.
“If you’re done looking, get lost.”
I’d even returned a high-school girl’s lifeblood—her cigarettes—and she didn’t offer a single word of thanks. Kids these days. I’d seen it enough times not to care.
“Mind if I bum one? I’ve been walking nonstop from the library and could use a breather.”
“…”
Kim Hyeonji looked me up and down with mild suspicion, then slid the pack toward me.
Fwoosh!
I needed to keep the conversation going somehow, so I broke my own taboo and lit up. It felt like watching a carefully built tower collapse, but this was a sacrifice for my daughter’s safety…
“Cough…”
Three months without a cigarette, and my body rejected it immediately. All it did was deepen Kim Hyeonji’s suspicion.
“You don’t look like you know how to smoke.”
“Cough… N-no. I quit about three months ago, that’s all. Couldn’t hold out any longer.”
Puff… puff… I barely let the smoke past my lips, treating it more like chewing gum than actual smoking. Kim Hyeonji’s mouth twitched like she found it funny.
“Still looks like you don’t know how.”
“Everyone enjoys tobacco differently. More importantly—aren’t cigarettes ridiculously expensive? Forty-five hundred won? How are regular people like us supposed to live? It didn’t used to be like this…”
“It’s always been that price.”
“…”
If I told her it used to cost half that and you could smoke indoors, she’d probably faint. More importantly, I’d almost slipped again.
I was so busy thinking about sharing a cigarette with a girl for the first time in my life that I forgot the crucial detail. Just because I wasn’t wearing a uniform didn’t mean I’d dropped the high-school-boy act.
“A-anyway, how do you even afford them? That’s not pocket change for a student.”
There was a reason I’d gone to the trouble of tailing Kim Hyeonji just to ask this. As a professional smoker, I simply couldn’t picture Harin lighting up herself.
Which meant Uncle’s theory was probably right—she was being bullied. She was skimming her allowance to buy cigarettes as tribute for Kim Hyeonji, then eating tear-soaked cup noodles for dinner at the convenience store.
“I just buy them.”
“You just buy them? Do you get a lot of allowance? Or is there someone who buys them for you with their own money—”
“I just buy them.”
“…”
Kim Hyeonji crushed her cigarette into the ashtray with a sharp hiss, as if the question wasn’t even worth answering. Not your average girl. She wasn’t going to spill anything easily.
“Who the hell are you?”
Another fatal question. But I wasn’t some amateur—I’d had days to prepare for this.
“Just call me Teemo.”
“You a foreigner?”
“As if. It’s a nickname. At my old school, whenever we ran five-man queues I was always locked as top-lane Teemo, so the guys started calling me that.”
“LoL? People still play that?”
“Uh… it was a school out in the sticks. Culture spreads a little slower than in Seoul, I guess?”
Completely owned. Truth was, I knew jack about League of Legends.
I was a StarCraft kid. Every Friday night my brother and I used to sit in front of the TV and watch the Star League. That was our hobby—right up until he impregnation-attacked Yu Jiyeon, anyway.
By the time I boarded ships, the whole scene had flipped. The new guys talked about it nonstop, so I figured modern kids would still get the reference.
Turns out even that was ancient history to the real young ones. This was exactly what Eom Chaewon meant by middle-aged managers forcing outdated memes to look young.
“When did you transfer?”
“Started at the beginning of the school year. So I don’t know Seoul geography very well, and I’m pretty clueless about school politics… Think you could fill me in?”
“Why would I?”
“Well… from what I’ve seen so far, you’re basically my only friend.”
“Who said I was your friend?”
“Please be my friend.”
“…”
What do you call a guy who suddenly shows up, returns a forgotten cigarette pack, and then begs to be friends? I knew how ridiculous it sounded, but if I wanted any information out of Kim Hyeonji I had no other choice.
“Ha…”
Kim Hyeonji laughed. The kind of sneer that could curdle your mood on the spot.
“Depends on how you act.”
“…?”
She wasn’t shutting me down completely. True to her title as queen of Cheonji High, she left me with one cool, looking-down-from-above line and took another swig of beer.
I’d noticed it before—the sharp T-zone, the high bridge of her nose, the clean line that continued down her neck. It was no ordinary face.
Every time her throat moved, I swallowed dry spit without meaning to. She really looked delicious—
Shake, shake!
What the hell was I thinking? Sharing a cigarette didn’t magically make the other person not a high-school girl.
“Delicious” only applied to the beer. Her drinking form was so elegant that saliva had pooled on its own.
“Ah, want something to eat with it?”
“You buying?”
“Even one can of beer on an empty stomach is a bad habit. It’ll wreck your stomach later.”
“I’m almost done anyway.”
“Then we can just get another can.”
“…?”
Honestly, my own beer was nearly empty too. I still hadn’t dug up the information I needed—I couldn’t let her leave yet.
So I walked straight into the convenience store, grabbed a pack of beef jerky and two cans of Kirin Ichiban, and came back out. The moment I set them on the table, Kim Hyeonji’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“How’d you buy those?”
“They just gave them to me.”
“There’s no way they just gave them to you.”
“…?”
You said they just gave them to you. Of course they hadn’t actually just given them to me.
The clerk had looked me up and down several times with an expression that screamed “what kind of crazy bastard is this,” so I’d silently handed over my ID.
Kim Hyeonji still couldn’t believe I’d bought alcohol the same way she had. Before she could start interrogating me, I cracked both cans open and tore into the jerky bag.
“Then let’s toast to becoming friends.”
“I never said I’d be your friend.”
Clink~
I held my can out anyway. Then I gulped it down while watching her reaction.
Ahh… that hit the spot. Come to think of it, between watching Harin’s mood and everything else, I’d barely touched alcohol either, not just cigarettes.
Aunt always told me to avoid anything uneducational while raising a kid, so I’d been holding back.
But look at me now. Sure, it was just canned beer and jerky at a convenience-store table, but sharing a drink alone with a girl this pretty? I was clearly a lucky man—
Shake, shake!
What the hell had I been thinking for the last few minutes? She was a high-school student. Worse, she was a senior at the same school my daughter attended.
Even if this was an investigation, buying alcohol for a minor was already a crime. And on top of that I was congratulating myself on the nice drinking atmosphere? Where the hell had I picked up such a rotten habit?
“D-do you know Kang Harin, by any chance?”
I jumped straight to the point to erase my own sins. Kim Hyeonji froze with the beer can still in her hand.
“Who?”
“Kang Harin, second year. Cat-eyed girl with the upturned corners, about 164 centimeters…”
“I know her.”
“…?”
Got you, you little—! I’d finally gotten a confession straight from Kim Hyeonji herself.
Harin had transferred at the very end of last year’s second semester. Only two weeks into the new school year, even her homeroom teacher Eunju still hadn’t fully figured her out.
Yet a chronic truant like you knew her? That was basically a confession that she was using Harin as a cigarette-fetching shuttle.
You little brat—how dare you extort my precious daughter’s money and crush her spirit? Kim Hyeonji, of course, said something completely off-topic.
“You into her?”
“Into her? What are you talking about? More importantly, how the hell do you even know—”
“Give it up. She’s got a boyfriend.”
“…?”
My daughter has a what now?