Looks Like We Got Ganked (2)
The girls who'd cooked up the scheme were sentenced to write reflection essays and serve four hours of school community service.
While they sat in the faculty office grinding out their essays, Jin Gyeo-wool rinsed off in the staff shower room with the hurried help of Kim Seongyeong, who'd come running the moment she heard.
Changed into her PE uniform, she returned to the office, where her homeroom teacher Kim Seongyeong asked,
"Are you all right? You're not hurt anywhere?"
"I'm fine. Perfectly fine."
"You scared me half to death… honestly."
Kim Seongyeong couldn't quite meet Gyeo-wool's eyes, her gaze skittering this way and that. Gyeo-wool kept sniffing at her own collar, as if the kimchi smell still clung to the back of her neck.
If I tell her I suspected her first the moment I heard, she'll be so disappointed…
But as a teacher responsible for every single student, Kim Seongyeong knew full well that the thought had been wrong. And once you know something is wrong, you correct it.
"I'm sorry, Gyeo-wool. When I first heard what happened… I wondered if you'd caused trouble again. I'm sorry. Let me apologize properly."
Hearing that, Gyeo-wool actually smiled, as if relieved.
"I'm grateful you're telling me now, at least."
Having no one believe you is miserable. But what cut Jin Gyeo-wool deeper still was the brand stamped on her: psycho. No matter what she did, anyone who knew her past questioned her motives.
"I'm truly sorry. I won't think that way again. You've been trying so hard to change, and I failed to trust you. I'm sorry."
Kim Seongyeong stood abruptly and bowed at a full ninety degrees — the kind of genuine educator's gesture a teacher almost never shows a student.
"The truth is, Yeong-bin's been telling me all along. That you've changed. That you've been trying to reach out first, trying to settle your past."
She'd only been looking out for him because he seemed like a decent, pitiful kid — but Gyeo-wool figured it had helped her image anyway, and nodded.
"It can't be helped. It's all my karma."
The words that left her mouth, though, struck Kim Seongyeong as something a person who'd already lived fifty years might say. Or someone who'd already tasted death and no longer clung much to life. Put simply: the air of someone who'd attained enlightenment.
She really must have figured something out…
Kim Seongyeong decided then and there that she ought to actively help rehabilitate the girl's image. Now that she knew Gyeo-wool was fundamentally a good person, she couldn't just sit back and watch as her homeroom teacher.
"Gyeo-wool. Can I ask you something?"
"Yes?"
"For the rest of the semester — instead of temporary vice president, would you try being the real vice class president?"
With Lee Yeong-bin and Kim Seongyeong backing her, plus the friends who'd transferred in, it might just work. Operation: Rebuild Jin Gyeo-wool's Image.
Of course, it didn't sound particularly appealing to Gyeo-wool herself.
I need to practice…
The team was coming together. Practice was the only path forward now. She had no bandwidth left for anything else. Even ramming into those scheming girls earlier had been born of impatience — a need to cut down on anything that wasn't the game.
Gyeo-wool chose her words carefully.
"I appreciate the offer, but I'd like to decline. There's something more urgent I need to focus on right now."
"…But Yeong-bin will help you. It wouldn't be that hard."
"No… still. This is… how do I even put this."
If a girl said she wanted to become a pro gamer, how would her homeroom teacher react? Laugh at the dream? Pressure her to change her mind?
But as she'd already said — Gyeo-wool had no time left to hesitate. She had no idea what would happen when Memory Erosion hit 100%, or when she might get kicked out of this borrowed body. All she knew was that every second of the present had to be spent as carefully as possible.
As if vomiting up every long-buried, time-worn feeling at once, she locked eyes with Kim Seongyeong and declared,
"I'm going to be a pro gamer. I don't have enough time to practice as it is. That's why I didn't want to be vice president either."
Kim Seongyeong froze. A student from years ago flashed through her mind — a boy who'd left her behind.
"I'm dropping out of school."
A quiet boy who'd always kept to his seat. Never flashy, never the center of attention. But the moment he touched a game, his eyes lit up — bright enough that even his friends had to acknowledge him. Plum. Lee Do-jin.
Seeing that same look overlaid on Jin Gyeo-wool, Kim Seongyeong swallowed hard without meaning to.
"…I see. How long have you been thinking about this?"
Gyeo-wool fished through the stories Hon Gyeo-wool had told her and said it had been a few years. Lee Do-jin had left school around the middle of his second year, too.
"Are you planning to drop out?"
"No. I don't have any plans like that yet."
"Really?"
"Yes."
Laying out an objective assessment of her current skill distribution, Gyeo-wool walked Kim Seongyeong through her entire future roadmap in detail. Climb the Korean server rankings. Join a pro team. Since that path might not be smooth, she'd build an amateur squad, aim for tournament placements, and if the chance came — even take a shot at a world amateur championship.
Even Lee Do-jin, burning with the same fire to go pro, had never laid out a future this meticulously designed.
The way she's talking… this isn't just empty talk…
Just that morning, Lee Yeong-bin had mentioned that Gyeo-wool had gone to a PC bang with some classmates. Kim Seongyeong didn't know much about League of Council, so the details had gone over her head — but Yeong-bin had specifically said she was good.
"So for now you'll keep attending school… but no after-school programs or anything like that. Because you need to practice?"
"Yes. Exactly."
Looking at the resolve blazing in the girl's face, Kim Seongyeong felt her own heart start to burn.
Do-jin had eyes just like that.
Lee Do-jin was doing well as a pro, sure — but that didn't mean Kim Seongyeong was steeped in the pro gaming scene. She checked in on her former student now and then, but her own life was far too busy for deeper interest. The social duty of being a teacher. At home, a mother to one child and a wife to one man. Kim Seongyeong was just another mom scrambling to hold her own life together.
"All right. I understand. We'll drop the vice president idea."
"Thank you for understanding."
Then was there some other way to help Jin Gyeo-wool?
Lee Do-jin had sailed through his school years without incident — but Gyeo-wool was carrying a whole stack of problems that could land her in gossip. If her image wasn't cleaned up properly now, the day her name got famous the hastily stitched seams would burst wide open. A few bows of the head might smooth things over today, but by then it would be too late. She might even need astronomical sums for media damage control.
If Gyeo-wool's carefully designed future was going to stay free of stains, this was the only golden window.
"Ah… wait."
In that moment, the conviction Kim Seongyeong had held since her first day as a teacher — to treat every student fairly — flared bright. A good idea struck her, and she turned to Gyeo-wool.
"What if we held a school tournament?"
"A tournament?"
"Yeah. A League of Council intramural tournament."
That alone would do more than enough for Gyeo-wool's image rehabilitation. If she had any confidence in her skill, she'd jump at the chance without a second thought.
"I'll figure out prize money somehow — even if I have to dig into my own pocket. And I'll handle persuading the other teachers and the school."
It was Kim Seongyeong's confession for having failed to trust Gyeo-wool. A penance for abandoning the principle she'd sworn to uphold.
"Well? Interested at all?"
Gyeo-wool thought it was a pretty solid plan herself. Wasn't this the perfect chance to scrub away the bad impression of Jin Gyeo-wool that had soaked through the whole school? Bae Do-hyun had watched more than a few times, during his own washed-up streamer days, how a pro with a messy past still got hyped the second they played well. The strategy made perfect sense.
"That's not a bad idea."
But if Kim Seongyeong was planning to spend her own money, Gyeo-wool wanted to stop her. She had allowance money piling up with nowhere to spend it, after all. She'd always been wondering what to do with it — and the perfect event had just walked right up to her.
"If you're really going to do this, I'll cover the prize money myself."
"What? No, you don't need to do that."
But a homeroom teacher would know Gyeo-wool came from money, wouldn't she? Thinking that, Gyeo-wool caught Kim Seongyeong's wrist and shook her head.
"I'll use my money. I'm the one who put fear into those kids. So I think I should be the one to do this. Besides — your salary and my allowance are probably about the same."
"H-huuh."
Kim Seongyeong winced as if she'd taken a hit to the bone. Being a public servant came with various benefits, sure, but the number on her pay stub was definitely hovering around two million won. Gyeo-wool was only a second-year high schooler, but there was zero room to doubt her claim. Her mother was the head of a globally recognized asset management firm. The kind of money Kim Seongyeong would need a decade of grinding to touch, Min Cheong-ha earned every few months — and kept multiplying.
"W-well… all right. Putting your allowance to better use than my pitiful little salary… isn't such a bad idea… I suppose."
Of course, Gyeo-wool had no idea her offhand remark had just body-slammed Kim Seongyeong. She was spending what had been given to Hon Gyeo-wool as she pleased, so none of it registered as anything special.
"Anyway — can I leave persuading the teachers to you?"
The most important question was still whether the school would even allow an event like this. Holding a gaming tournament — the thing parents hated most — at a place of learning, at a school sitting in every parent's address book, was never going to be simple.
"Don't worry. I've got a good idea."
She had no money — but she was an adult, and adults had methods of their own. Kim Seongyeong comforted herself with a bitter little smile and thought of one particular man's name.
I don't know if Do-jin will have the time… but I should at least ask, right?
It was mid-season, so carving out a free day would be hard — but for the future of a junior who wore the same eyes he once had, Lee Do-jin couldn't just refuse outright… could he?
One way or another, this event was a critical turning point for Jin Gyeo-wool. Having seen the resolve burning in those eyes, Kim Seongyeong could no longer approach this lightly.
Things were starting to get interesting.
Gyeo-wool hummed her way back to the classroom, ignored the stares pouring in from every direction, and dropped into her seat.
"Ugh. Gyeo-wool's hair still smells like kimchi."
"Did you even wash properly? You half-assed it, didn't you."
Probably because it was cafeteria kimchi broth. Maybe they'd used some sketchy kimchi. Gyeo-wool paid her friends' grumbling zero mind and fired off a KakaoTalk message to Choi Do-yun.
Whether the tournament would actually happen was still up in the air. But if she put on a dominant showing at whatever tournament did get held — if she burned her skill into everyone's memory — that alone would make the whole event a massive success. And if anyone was still hesitant about teaming up with Jin Gyeo-wool, showing them the tournament footage would help. It was only a school tournament, sure — but overwhelming strength always shines through.
It was still lunch period, and he was probably hanging out with friends — no reply came from Choi Do-yun.
Instead, the insurance-fraud trio who'd tried to frame Gyeo-wool earlier shuffled over, looking awkward.
"…Hey."
They hadn't even eaten lunch, stuck writing reflection essays until now, and with their vicious gaslighting fully exposed, it was basically a done deal that the class would treat them like garbage from here on out. Their voices came out small, almost swallowed.
Gyeo-wool, waiting on Do-yun's reply while browsing Recon news, didn't catch the tiny sound. Cha Ga-eul, working through a practice workbook, noticed them and tapped Gyeo-wool's desk to get her attention.
"Ah. You three."
The insurance-fraud squad bowed their heads with faces that looked ready to cry. Having to lower their heads in front of the psycho pushover they'd written off — and having tanked themselves straight to the bottom of the class hierarchy with their own stupid stunt — must have been humiliating. And per Kim Seongyeong's orders, they had to apologize loud enough for the whole class to hear, which doubled the shame.
"We're sorry! We bumped into you on purpose and tried to twist the facts to make it look like you did it. B-but we really never meant to leave you looking like that. We're truly sorry…!"
The insurance-fraud squad's backs, already bent at about forty-five degrees, snapped down to a full ninety.
If Gyeo-wool had been the magnanimous type, she might have said "as long as you understand" and sent the three of them packing. But he was a cunning man. The moment it hit him that they'd cooked this up precisely because they were skilled at gaslighting and spinning narratives, a brilliantly nasty scheme bloomed in his mind.
Forgiving them clean and walking away? Where was the fun in that. If you got ganked, you handed over the next wave and the other lane's tempo too — that was the law of the War Council, the stage of League of Council. Empty your pockets and get out of here, you bastards.
"You haven't eaten lunch, right? Want to hit the school store?"
"Uh… huh?"
"I'll forgive you. But from now on, whenever I say let's go to the store, you don't refuse. That's my condition. Simple, right?"
Among the Thirty-Six Stratagems, there was one called Shùn shǒu qiān yáng — Take the Sheep in Passing. Literally: grab whatever sheep happens to be within reach. Broaden your vision, spot the small nearby advantages, and put them to use.
If she dragged the insurance-fraud squad around under the pretense of forgiveness, they'd go around spreading word of Jin Gyeo-wool's changed self all on their own. A genuine two-birds-one-stone play.
Gyeo-wool smiled, pleased with the scheme she'd cooked up herself — but watching from a distance, Choi Go-yun felt a cold thread of dread coil through his chest.
She made more slaves again…!
That was right. Inside Hwasong High School and beyond it, Jin Gyeo-wool's slave legion was steadily expanding its ranks.