A Team
A thundering rush of footsteps...
I might have been free of Teacher Eunju for the moment, but that was when the real problem started. Nearly a thousand students had poured out all at once, packing the grounds into a solid mass of bodies, and I had no idea how I was supposed to pick that girl Eunju out of the crowd.
Worse, if I ran into Harin in the middle of this chaos, everything would be finished. Left with no other option, I started walking toward the side opposite the cafeteria everyone else was stampeding for.
“...?”
And then something unbelievable happened.
A single girl sat alone under the shade of a tree. She seemed to have completely forgotten it was lunchtime, staring blankly into empty air, lost deep in thought.
She had enormous eyes. Exaggerating only a little, they looked big enough to cover half her face, the way they do in pure-love comics.
Pale, porcelain skin, and between the soft curls of her hair the tips of her ears peeked out just enough that she looked less like a person and more like an elf.
But the way she pressed her lips together—those lips that stuck out like a baby chick’s—was pure high-school girl.
A faint sense of recognition stirred. If my memory wasn’t failing me, this was the exact student Teacher Eunju had been counseling earlier.
More than that, the name tag reading Park Eunju left no room for doubt.
I had only been trying to avoid Harin by heading the opposite direction from the cafeteria, and by pure luck I had walked straight into Target Number One.
There were exactly two people in this school who had zero interest in lunch. One was me. The other was this kid.
Well—technically I wasn’t a student here at all.
Tap-tap-tap!
I darted over to her. When a person suddenly appeared in front of her, she lifted her head with mildly startled eyes.
“Hi. You’re a second-year...”
Which class was it again? Teacher Eunju had told me to dig up information on her, yet she hadn’t even bothered to mention which class the girl was in?
No—wait. Eunju was in Teacher Eunju’s class, and Teacher Eunju was Harin’s homeroom teacher.
Which meant this girl was in the same class as Harin...
“...?”
Except I didn’t actually know which class Harin was in either. At this point it almost felt natural that no one respected me as a father.
“You’re second-year Park Eunju, right?”
“Yes. Who... are you?”
“Me? I’m...”
I had managed to start a conversation, but I still had no answer ready for that question. Honestly, I never would.
I didn’t even belong to this school—what was the point of lying? Fortunately, she defined me first.
“A Team?”
“A Team? Y-yeah, that’s right! How’d you know?”
What the hell was A Team all of a sudden? But if she was going to label me for me, I might as well ride the current. Eunju lifted a finger and pointed at the left side of my chest.
“No name tag... In our school, the only people who walk around without name tags are A Team...”
“O-oh, is that so? Hadn’t even thought of that.”
Just what kind of group was A Team that going without a name tag was considered normal? Curiosity flared, but that wasn’t the important thing right now.
“So why is A Team... I’m not planning on joining, you know.”
“Ah! I’m not here to recruit you. It’s, uh... Do you know second-year Kang Harin?”
Since my name no longer mattered, I went straight to asking about Harin. At the mention of her name, Eunju tilted her head in mild confusion.
“Kang Harin from our class? I know her, but...”
“Has anything been going on with her lately? Grades dropping hard, going up to the roof alone looking depressed, hanging out with bad company...”
“We’re not really close, so I don’t know much. And I only transferred recently, so I don’t know a lot about her anyway.”
“...”
That was it? If she shut it down that cleanly, I couldn’t even ask follow-ups.
“Why are you suddenly asking about Harin, though?”
“Huh? Well, that’s...”
The reverse question made the sky spin. Answering it would inevitably circle back to “who am I,” and I had zero preparation for that.
“Why aren’t you running for vice president?”
So I changed the subject without thinking. Teacher Eunju had asked me to dig into that too, so it wasn’t exactly off-mission.
“How... do you know about that?”
Eunju’s eyes widened slightly, caught off guard. Fair question.
The only reason I knew was because Teacher Eunju had told me. And I had promised not to breathe a word about Teacher Eunju herself.
“Well... I’m A Team, right? Is there anything A Team doesn’t know?”
In the end I had to hide behind that A Team I didn’t even understand. And she accepted it at face value.
“I guess... It just didn’t feel like something that suited me.”
“But you were class president until last year, weren’t you? All your friends expected you to run. Then you suddenly say you’re not doing anything, and everyone’s worried sick.”
“A Team is worried about me? I don’t think I’m that famous...”
“We keep tabs on the next vice-president candidates at least. So what’s the real reason? Family against it?”
“They probably don’t even know this is happening.”
“Burnout, then? Want a sabbatical year to rest?”
“I’ve never worked hard enough to burn out.”
“Then what is it? Did the running mate you planned to go with stab you in the back?”
“...”
Eunju’s mouth closed. She even turned her gaze away. But when she did that, the only conclusion I could reach was that I’d hit the bullseye.
“Is that it? The running mate you agreed to run with turned you down?”
I sat down beside her without realizing it. Eunju just stared into empty space and gave no answer.
“So that’s it. The senior who was supposed to be your running mate decided to go with someone else instead.”
“It’s not really like that.”
“Then why? Why the sudden change of heart?”
“Do I have to answer even that to A Team?”
“...”
Only then did she turn her head and ask. A faint crease appeared between her once-gentle brows, proof that the conversation was starting to make her uncomfortable.
“No, I was just...”
Had I been prying too hard? Teacher Eunju had asked me to, sure, but I had zero obligation to deliver.
If she didn’t know much about Harin, the normal move was to back off here. But then I thought about it.
I was a thirty-something man cosplaying as a high-school boy. Watching a kid sink into worry made the latent old-man instincts inside me stir awake.
“Then just find a new running mate and run.”
“Is a running mate something you can just pick up that easily?”
“What I’m saying is, it’s a shame to give up over something like that.”
“Something... like that?”
Contempt flickered in Eunju’s eyes before I noticed. But I had already entered lecture mode and kept talking however I pleased.
“Isn’t it? Think about the benefits this career move would bring you. The trust you’d gain at school, the line you could put on your personal statement. Doesn’t that feel wasteful? You’ll definitely regret it later. Once you hit thirty, you’ll be beating the ground wondering why you quit over something so trivial!”
Kids these days. Did she think no one else had ever been through this?
I knew exactly what it felt like—getting backstabbed young, panicking, balls shaking, wanting to destroy yourself just to get revenge. I’d done that too.
But it was all stupid. Look at what one wrong decision in a single moment did to my life.
As an “adult,” I simply couldn’t stand by and watch...
“I never planned to run with that kind of thinking in the first place.”
“...”
Eunju left those words behind and stood up. She brushed off her uniform skirt hard, as if she wanted to scrub the entire unpleasant conversation from her memory.
“I’ll be going, then.”
Then she bowed politely—even to an unwelcome guest—and bent at the waist. For a second I wondered what the hell I had just done.
What had I been saying while holding a kid in place? This was exactly the same as back then.
When I told my homeroom teacher I’d gotten into Marine High, he had used the exact same logic.
He listed every school I could still apply to, then itemized everything I would miss out on in the future.
Even the doctrine of persuasion was identical. You’ll regret it when you’re older, he’d said. As someone who’s already lived it, trust me.
Of course I hadn’t listened. Back then I believed my reason for giving up on school was perfectly rational.
And now I was forcing the exact same thing on her.
I hadn’t cared what meaning was wrapped inside “my running mate stabbed me in the back.” I just listed objective facts and delivered a long sermon like I was imparting great wisdom.
That teacher’s age back then was probably almost the same as mine now. So... had I finally become an adult?
I had become the adult I’d always dreamed of being. So why didn’t I feel even a little happy about it?
Then a thought suddenly struck me.
If I had known then what I know now, would I have made a completely different decision?
“You’re right. Don’t run.”
“...?”
Just before Eunju disappeared from view, the honest words slipped out of me. She caught the muttered line and turned around.
“What did you say?”
“I said don’t run. I was thinking about it too lightly. Everyone has their own circumstances, and I overlooked that. Sure, someday you might regret making the wrong call over something small. But to the you of right now, that reason is more important than anything else, isn’t it?”
“...”
Just like me. Looking back now, only a complete lunatic would have done what I did.
But back then Yu Jiyeon had been my entire world, and having her stolen by my own blood family hurt more than anything.
Even if I had known then what I know now, could I have held back that impulse? Could I really claim that with confidence?
I still don’t know the answer. Because I’m still not sure whether I’m a real adult.
What if I’ve only gone numb, and I’m just mistaking that for sharper reason?
“Earlier you told me to run.”
“I was under the illusion that saying that made me sound adult. But thinking about it, no. And more than anything, I was student council president once—and it completely sucked.”
“When... did you do that?”
“In high school.”
“You’re in high school right now.”
“...”
Even for a first-time high-school-boy cosplay, the slip-ups were coming too fast. I hurriedly corrected myself.
“I mean... I experienced it so thoroughly in middle school that I swore I’d never do it again in high school. Why don’t you ever listen to people all the way through?”
“Why did you regret it?”
“It sounds cliché, but it was the gap between ideals and reality. I thought I could change the world. Turns out I didn’t have the ability, and the world didn’t even want me to.”
“What were you trying to change?”
“...”
Why was she suddenly interested in my story? But looking into those transparent eyes that could only be called pure, the words kept coming.
“Bad customs, I guess. Or just completely irrational nonsense. Like bolting over like a bullet to bow so hard you nearly cough up a lung the second you spot a senior from afar. Or washing laundry by hand in freezing water in the middle of winter even though there’s a perfectly good washing machine. Meaningless rules. Traditions that were nothing but a waste of time. Humiliating language and merciless beatings. You know the type.”
“There are still... schools like that?”
Eunju tilted her head, unable to understand. Of course—I’d only gone back about fifteen years, so she didn’t need to be that scared.
“Anyway, I wanted to get rid of all that. I thought not just me but everyone would want the same thing. But they didn’t.”
“People opposed you?”
“Yeah. I thought I was Che Guevara fighting oppression and liberating the people. But it was exactly fifty-fifty. Some people felt the legitimacy of defending tradition; others agreed with me and wanted to smash the old ways. Want to know the really funny part? Later even I admitted I was wrong. I convinced myself that those useless-looking old rules actually had their own reasons.”
Park Changsu aiming a gun at the back of a brand-new deckhand on his first voyage was definitely a madman. But how desperate must he have been to even think of pointing a gun?
The sea is a dangerous place. To survive somewhere a ten-meter wave can swallow you in the blink of an eye, you have to become the kind of person who can handle it.
So in the end I accepted it. The anachronistic treatment I’d suffered had been a kind of preparation process for surviving as a seaman.
Without realizing it, I had become one of those ordinary adults who romanticize the past with “Back in my day...”
“You don’t know that.”
Eunju shook her head. Denying knowledge I had personally acquired over more than a decade of years...
“Even if you’re older than me, you’ve only lived one more year. It might look like nothing’s changed, but something definitely has. In about fifteen more years, when you’re a real adult, you might finally see how much you actually changed.”
“...”
Sorry, but I was speaking from exactly that fifteen-years-later point of view. Yet for some reason...
Right now I didn’t want to use those fifteen years as authority to crush her opinion.
“Yeah, you might be right. In fifteen years I’ll check whether what I did actually meant anything.”
I had tried to scold a kid who seemed to be going down the wrong path, only to realize how immature I still was. In that sense, today’s meeting had been more than worth it.
“Are you really okay with that?”
But Eunju still had something left to say. She lifted her head with a firm expression and looked straight into my eyes.
“Okay with what?”
“I’m asking if it’s okay for me to get rid of A Team.”
A resolve stronger than anything I’d seen yet settled into her kind eyes. I’d only known her for a few minutes, but I had enough experience to recognize when someone was showing the will of a lifetime.
“Ah...”
She must have thought it was a mistake, though. Realizing too late how serious she’d been, she gave a bitter little smile.
Conveying your true feelings isn’t easy. Especially not to a complete stranger of unknown identity you met today.
But she had found the courage. So I would give her the one single truth I had for today.
“Who cares? Honestly, I’m not a big fan of A Team either.”
I didn’t even know what A Team was, so whether it disappeared or not made no difference to me. Eunju looked a little surprised and briefly averted her gaze.
Then she bowed silently... bent at the waist, and left me completely.
In the end I had fulfilled Teacher Eunju’s request. Of course I had no obligation to report the quest’s ending. And even if I did, Teacher Eunju would never succeed in changing her mind.
“...?”
Wait a second—I still hadn’t found out a single thing about Harin.