Stalking Seo Ji-on
Ta-ra-ra-rang~ Ta-rarang~ Ta-rarang-
It was an early morning on the way to school.
From somewhere, the theme music of a melodramatic movie began to drift through the air.
The source was Choi Seo-dan, who was trailing a few steps behind me.
I whipped my head around to look at her, and she promptly ducked behind a streetlight too thin to hide even half of her.
"Kkiruruk, kkiyut? (That girl's weird. Why's she doing that?)"
"...Yeah. Why is she doing that?"
It had been a while since Bong-gu had come along with me.
He'd only been allowed after promising, over and over, that he would stay quietly in my bag.
Absolute ban on talking in front of people.
Ban on using his powers.
Ban on wandering off alone.
I'd recited a long list of prohibitions, but the fellow had only nodded with a confident grin on his face.
Apparently he was a honey badger perfectly capable of keeping promises of that caliber.
He did look slightly rattled when I told him that if he caused trouble, I wouldn't give him any crop leaves for a while—but he promised anyway.
Get through today without a single problem!
And here I was, having just barely talked Seo Bong-gu into behaving, while the real trouble was being caused by an entirely different fellow.
Choi Seo-dan seemed to be following me from a distance, observing something with great attention.
Don't tell me she found out Bong-gu can talk?
Hm... no. If that were it, she'd have come up and asked me directly, not watched from all the way back there.
Every time I glanced back, she crouched down and slipped behind some obstacle at the side of the road.
What on earth was she doing?
By the time we reached the school gate in that state, I finally turned and asked her.
"Hey. What have you been doing this whole time?"
"!!"
Her face said: How did you know?
"Well, it's not exactly hard to notice."
"!!!"
This time, a floating question mark of how did you know THAT? hovered over her head.
Good grief. Why am I even bothering to talk to a kid like this?
Shaking my head, I walked into the school.
I had no idea what she wanted, but maybe I'd just leave her be for now.
Kids that age want to try everything, after all.
Detective games included.
It looked like Choi Seo-dan's antics were going to last a while.
...Why is she so energetic from the crack of dawn?
Choi Seo-dan hurried after Seo Ji-on as he entered the classroom.
At the earliest hour of the morning, she had woken up, thrown on her uniform, and headed straight for the neighborhood of Seo Ji-on's house.
All in the name of what she called reconnaissance.
Why, exactly, had she decided to shadow Seo Ji-on?
It had all started one day when Lee Dae-kyung showed up completely, impossibly cured.
"How did your stutter just disappear out of nowhere?"
"Hmm... it was thanks to the potatoes Ji-on gave me?"
"Potatoes? The ones we planted together?"
"Yeah. I think they were the same seed stock."
A strange sense of déjà vu washed over her.
Come to think of it, her grandfather's illness had only been cured after he ate the sweet potatoes that Seo Ji-on had grown.
Her father, too, had said his chronically tired eyes cleared up after eating the carrots Ji-on and her grandfather had raised together.
What on earth is that guy...?
Why is it that everything that guy grows turns out special?
And so began her project: Shadowing Seo Ji-on's entire daily schedule, from its most primitive of questions.
Steel her resolve, she did—and got up before dawn.
Her grandfather had been saying lately that he needed less sleep and was waking earlier in the mornings—5 a.m., to be exact.
She set her own waking to match.
"Heh heh, I took a short stroll up the road a little while ago, and there was Ji-on jogging along. Youth, I tell you—"
Choi Seo-dan, still drowning in leftover drowsiness, snapped wide awake at those words.
He's already out running?
The house he was staying in now was close to theirs, sure—but it was still a good twenty-minute walk away.
Which meant he'd started his day well before five a.m.
Choi Seo-dan scrambled into her uniform and rushed out the door.
"Seo-dan? Where do you think you're going?"
"School."
She gave her grandfather a rough answer and jammed her feet into her shoes.
Choi Tae-seok checked the clock.
It wasn't even six yet, was it?
"You're going this early?"
"Yep—heading out!"
"...Seo-dan! Choi Seo-dan!"
Leaving her flustered grandfather behind her, Choi Seo-dan marched straight to—where else—the front of Seo Ji-on's house.
More precisely, to a corner tucked right up against the fence, perfect for hiding behind.
H-he's coming.
She spotted Seo Ji-on running toward her from far down the road.
His face was flushed bright red; he'd clearly been at it a while.
It was already 6:40.
He must have been running for nearly two hours.
Back home, Seo Ji-on sat down to breakfast, by the sound of it.
Through the window, over the fence, drifted the sounds of the Ji-on family eating their morning meal.
Choi Seo-dan swallowed hard.
Maybe it was because she'd gotten up so early, but she was starving.
Grrrowl, grrrrrowl-
Oh no!
She clutched her stomach and crouched down even lower.
Then, with a clatter, the front door opened again.
Seo Ji-on was stepping outside.
He vanished around the corner of the alley in an instant.
Choi Seo-dan scrambled up to follow him—and that was when it happened.
"Oh my, isn't that Seo-dan?"
Kim Mi-suk, Seo Ji-on's mother, who had come out to see her son off, noticed the girl and struck up a conversation.
"Good morning."
"What brings you out at this hour, sweetheart? Have you had breakfast?"
"No, not yet..."
Choi Seo-dan shuffled her feet anxiously.
At this rate, she was going to lose Seo Ji-on.
Watching her fidget, Mrs. Kim ducked briskly back inside and reappeared holding something.
"You have to eat breakfast before you go, dear. Our Ji-on must have gone to bed past midnight last night, but he still insists on getting up early and never skips his morning meal."
She held out some dried sweet potato strips wrapped in a clear plastic bag.
"Oh... thank you."
"There you go. Run along now."
Bowing to Mrs. Kim, Choi Seo-dan turned on her heel and set off after Seo Ji-on again.
It didn't take long to spot him once more.
He was boarding a bus.
"B-bus driver!!"
Choi Seo-dan sprinted for all she was worth, terrified of missing it.
She made it—barely.
It being still early, the bus was nearly empty.
She took an awkward seat in the back corner.
Up front, Seo Ji-on was muttering something into his bag.
What's he saying? Don't tell me... he's memorizing English vocabulary?
Chewing on the sweet potato strips, Choi Seo-dan kept up her surveillance from her seat.
What else would a student mumble to himself on a bus? English words, no question about it.
He's squeezing study time out of the scraps of a bus ride? Seriously?
In reality, he was just chattering away at Bong-gu inside his bag—but Choi Seo-dan, knowing none of this, saw only a boy diligently reciting English vocabulary.
Ruthless little workhorse.
Gulp- Having finished every last strip in the bag, Choi Seo-dan pressed the stop button.
How absorbed could a person be, that they forgot to ring the bell even when their stop arrived?
Seo Ji-on got off the bus, and Choi Seo-dan belatedly scrambled off after him.
Once in the classroom, she took a seat deliberately far away from him.
By sheer coincidence, it happened to be Lee Dae-kyung's seat.
"Uh, Seo-dan? That's my seat."
"Oh, sorry. Just for today, let's swap."
"Won't the teacher get on to us?"
"I'll take responsibility."
Coming from the granddaughter of a corporate titan who had never once received a proper scolding from a schoolteacher, that was enough for Lee Dae-kyung, and he nodded and moved to Choi Seo-dan's seat instead.
The seat right next to Seo Ji-on.
"Dae-kyung, why are you over here?"
"Uh, Seo-dan asked to switch seats."
"...That girl's acting weird today."
"Just leave her be. She'll get bored of it soon."
Choi Seo-dan frowned at their hushed exchange, which she couldn't quite make out.
What are they saying about me?
Diiing-dong-daaang-dong
Even after the class bell rang, Choi Seo-dan's eyes stayed fixed not on the blackboard but on Seo Ji-on.
...He's not even dozing off in class. Is he not tired?
She felt half-dead from fatigue after waking just a little early one day, yet Seo Ji-on looked fresh as a spring morning.
He raised his hand to answer the teacher's questions, took notes without pause, and even as he read aloud, his eyes were perfectly clear and bright.
However, there came a moment when the eyes of the model student, Seo Ji-on—clouded not with clarity, but with something utterly unhinged.
Diiing-dong-daaang-dong
The moment the lunch bell rang, he seized Lee Dae-kyung by the nape of the neck and hauled him up out of his seat.
"Gahk—! Ji-on, I can walk there on my own!"
"You're too slow. We have to hurry."
Choi Seo-dan chased after Seo Ji-on as he powered ahead at an incredible pace.
She was practically running, and she still struggled to keep up.
He wasn't using any magic—so why was he so fast?
When he reached the cafeteria, he sat down at a table with a tray holding nearly twice as much food as anyone else's.
The menu: spaghetti with meatballs, dinner rolls, cream of mushroom soup, and pickles.
"All of that fits?"
"Of course."
That one answer to Lee Dae-kyung was the last sound Seo Ji-on made.
He tore off a piece of the dinner roll and dipped it gently into the soup. One bite.
Then another bite, this one twirled through the spaghetti sauce, as if methodically breaking down every last note of the tomato flavor—he ate with unhurried, almost ceremonial calm.
Once the bread was gone, he cleared the soup, then the spaghetti, and finally munched on the pickles with his eyes closed, savoring something profound in every crunch.
Choi Seo-dan watched, half-hypnotized, before shaking her head.
It's just cafeteria food. How does he make that face, have those reactions?
It was like watching a beautifully shot food film. As if a second personality had taken over.
So different from how he gracefully led the club or listened attentively to the teachers.
This was a man serious about his food.
He's literally just eating. Why is he taking it this seriously?
And it wasn't just today.
Not a single meal went by without Seo Ji-on offering up his rapturous appreciation.
Is it really that good?
Choi Seo-dan turned her attention to her own tray.
The taste? Nothing to write home about. Standard cafeteria fare.
"Wait... where—"
When she looked up again, Seo Ji-on and Lee Dae-kyung had vanished from the cafeteria.
"Where did they go!"
She jumped up from her seat in a panic.
It wasn't until after school that she managed to pick up Seo Ji-on's trail again.
Classes over, she had rushed out the school gate after him—and that was when Seo Ji-on suddenly popped up.
"Hey, what took you so long?"
"Huh? Oh, uh."
Flustered, Choi Seo-dan fell into step beside him without quite meaning to.
"So it's straight to your grandfather's place, right?"
"That's right."
"Check the carrot field, then go look at your field again?"
"That's the plan."
"Then let's hit your field first, then the carrots. I'm coming along."
"...You too?"
Seo Ji-on gave her a puzzled look.
"Why, can't I?"
"No, it's not that you can't. It's just going to be rough."
"Hmph, rough is nothing. As if I'd complain about helping!"
Choi Seo-dan crossed her arms and let out a disdainful little snort.
Seo Ji-on's expression turned strange.
Brows knitted—and yet his mouth curved into a smile.
"Fine, then. You asked for it. No taking it back."
And a short while later.
Choi Seo-dan found herself wanting to reach back in time and twist her own flippant mouth shut.
I-I'm dying...!
It was absolute torture.
How on earth did he do this every single day?
When the work finally wrapped and she stepped away to the bathroom for a moment, she came back to find her grandfather and Seo Ji-on chatting warmly in the living room.
"Ah, these are the documents? They said it would take three days, but this was incredibly fast."
"Isn't it? I imagine this managing director had to work hard for it. Give them a read and get back to them quickly, you hear?"
"Haha, of course."
Choi Seo-dan, looking infinitely more disheveled than she had that morning, glared at Seo Ji-on with wide, bloodshot eyes.
All she'd done was get up early and follow him around for one day—and she was completely spent.
Exercise, school, farming, more farming. That was literally the whole of it.
What made it different? She couldn't figure it out.
In the end, she had failed to uncover whatever it was that made him special.
"...Seo-dan, what's wrong with you?"
Seo Ji-on, blissfully unaware of her circumstances, asked with a perfectly fresh face.
"None of your business!!"