A Shift in the Food Chain
Fuck. I ended up in the same class as Yang Jeong-won again.
I didn't expect much from school, but if there was one thing I had hoped for, it was to avoid him. Yet, here we were, sharing the same classroom. Strangely enough, a part of me felt relieved. If it had been a new bully, it would have taken forever to figure out his quirks. Skipping that adjustment period wasn't half bad. Since my role as the class bread shuttle was already set in stone, it was better to work with someone I knew. Besides, Jeong-won always kept me in his thoughts, didn't he? Thinking about it that way put my mind at ease.
With that comforting thought, I looked over at him. Jeong-won was staring back, wearing a bizarre expression. What was his deal? Usually, this was the part where he would summon me with a crooked finger, toss some cash onto the floor, and bark, "Go buy me some bread." But he wasn't doing any of that. Why? Had he finally tuned into the delicate, sensitive whispers of his own conscience? Had he decided to retire from his ill-suited life as an iljin and demote himself to a run-of-the-mill punk? I was curious, but I didn't ask. Asking questions was unbecoming of a proper shuttle.
"What are you staring at, you crazy bastard?"
"Huh?"
Lost in thought, I must have been gawk at him for way too long. Spending my winter break doing things out of the ordinary had apparently made me act out of character. This, too, was a severe breach of shuttle etiquette. I opened my mouth to apologize immediately, but—
"What, you think you're hot shit now just because you grew a few inches? You piece of trash."
Jeong-won reacted with pure hostility. Come to think of it, were we about the same height now? The last time I measured myself at the boxing gym, I was 180 centimeters. Wasn't Jeong-won around 182? Of course, I hadn't just gotten taller; all that training had packed on a decent amount of muscle. I even had a faint, albeit blurry, outline of a six-pack on my abs. Still, a shuttle is a shuttle. I walked over to him to apologize. Ah, so he wasn't 182 after all. He was exactly 180. Our eyes met at the exact same level.
"Hey, you want to fucking die?"
Jeong-won swung his fist, just like he always did. But when you flare your shoulder that wide open before throwing a punch, it's incredibly obvious where it's going. Without thinking, I slipped the punch.
Honestly, I should have just let him hit me. That would have kept things simple—a few bruises, and it would be over. But a body trained to react does so on pure instinct. As the fist flew toward me, my feet automatically found their stance. I slipped under the blow with a smooth weave and threw a jab.
Thud.
My left jab connected lightly with his face. Flustered and enraged, Jeong-won began swinging wildly. I told you, when your shoulders are that open, I can see your punches coming from a mile away. I slipped his wild swing effortlessly and threw a quick one-two.
Ah, seriously, it's not like I wanted to hit him. Muscle memory is a terrifying thing. It's basically a conditioned reflex. Punch comes in, slip, throw a one-two. I had drilled this exact sequence for three hours a day, six days a week, for six months. The moment a fist flies toward my face, my body automatically dodges and fires back. It wasn't my choice. It was a reflex. A pure, unadulterated reflex.
I was doing my absolute best to fulfill my duties as a shuttle, but I couldn't help it if my body moved on its own. Sure, I had resolved to escape this shuttle life eventually, but my deadline was high school graduation. Doing it on the very first day of the semester was way too early. This was definitely not part of the plan.
But wait... this is actually pretty thrilling. It feels completely different from hitting a heavy bag or focus mitts. The impact feels solid. The feedback is amazing. And watching Jeong-won huff and puff in frustration is surprisingly entertaining.
But seriously... had I really spent years getting beaten up by such pathetic punches? Was I actually trembling in fear because of this? Had I really gone through school letting myself get thrashed by punches that anyone could easily dodge after just three months of boxing classes?
I felt a sudden urge to teach Jeong-won a lesson. If he wanted to be a proper iljin, learning some boxing wouldn't hurt. And to learn, he needed to understand what boxing truly was, right? I was still a novice myself, but I was more than qualified to teach a scrub like him. Besides, experience is the best teacher. Experiencing it firsthand would be much faster than me explaining it to him.
As his loyal shuttle, I did my absolute best to educate him.
Slip, one-two. Backstep. Slip again, one-two, hook. Backstep. Slip once more, and—
Wait, why are you on the floor? Get up. Come on, get up. It's too early to pass out.
"Fuck..."
The moment he regained consciousness, the first word out of his mouth was a curse. Yang Jeong-won had finally woken up after being knocked cold. The physical pain was bad enough, but the sheer humiliation was unbearable. He was mortified. He had no idea how he was supposed to walk back into the classroom.
Getting beaten to a pulp by Gong In-bae? In the classroom? On the very first day of school? The new kids who didn't know him would think he was a total pushover. He had only targeted In-bae because the guy had shown up looking taller, and he wanted to beat him down early to establish dominance. It was supposed to be an easy way to set the classroom hierarchy without any major fuss. Instead, he was the one who got thrashed. And he hadn't just lost—he had been knocked flat on his back, sprawling like a starfish.
He was absolutely furious. Humiliated. But what infuriated him even more was that he couldn't think of a single way to beat that son of a bitch. None of his punches had connected. He had a devastating right hook—a single clean hit from him was supposed to be an instant KO. But he couldn't touch him. Unable to bring himself to enter the classroom, Jeong-won could only pace back and forth in the hallway.
What the... Why is he so tall?
Kwon Ju-a had also ended up in the same class. Sitting in the very front row, she had been glancing around to see who her new classmates were when Gong In-bae walked through the door. Had he always been that tall? His build had completely changed, and his school uniform fit him perfectly now. He actually looked... kind of handsome. Even the look in his eyes seemed different.
She had visited In-bae's house a few times after that day. But no matter when she went, the house was always empty. Whenever she visited, Ju-a would slip into the quiet, deserted yard and sit on the wooden platform where they had eaten ramen. Sitting there, looking down at the sprawling city of Seoul, always brought her a strange sense of peace. It made all her heavy worries feel trivial. Although those burdens would weigh on her shoulders the moment she stepped back down the hill, she loved that she could forget them, even if only for a brief moment. It would have been nice if she could have eaten some ramen and had a cup of coffee, though. Feeling a bit guilty, she had bought a pack of ramen and left it on the platform before leaving.
In any case, In-bae, whom she hadn't seen once during the entire break, had returned looking like a completely different person. And immediately, he had gotten into a fight with Yang Jeong-won. She had expected In-bae to get brutally beaten, but the boy she saw today was someone else entirely.
He dodged effortlessly—swoosh, swoosh—and struck back—bam, bam! He dodged again—swoosh, swoosh—and struck back—bam, bam! After just a couple of exchanges, Jeong-won collapsed. No, he was completely knocked out. When Jeong-won finally returned from the nurse's office, he kept his head buried low, too ashamed to look anyone in the eye.
Meanwhile, I was clutching my head, tearing at my hair in frustration. I should have held back. I really should have. Damn that stupid conditioned reflex.
Jeong-won was down. The next steps were as clear as day. In dramas, movies, and web novels, the sequence of events was always identical. Jeong-won, humiliated by me, would go recruit the strongest guy in our grade. Once I took down the grade leader, he'd bring in the school's top dog. If I beat the school's top dog, he'd call in the leader of a local school alliance. And if that failed, he'd drag in some neighborhood gangster, claiming the guy was his "uncle." If I got lucky and beat that guy too, I'd eventually have to go meet the big boss. In some shady, underground room salon. In a quiet, closed-off bar, the boss would pour me a glass of expensive whiskey and say:
"I hear you're pretty good with your fists. Work under me, and I'll overlook all the trouble you've caused."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then you'll have to leave behind an arm or a leg."
"No. I think I'll be taking your right Achilles tendon instead."
With those words, I would slide the whiskey glass toward the boss, stand up, and headbutt the massive bodyguard standing behind me to incapacitate him. Then, as the rest of the gangsters burst through the door, I would weave past their punches and counter with a one-two and a hook...
But... why was nobody coming? Shouldn't the grade leader have shown up by now? That was the proper order of things. Or at least the school's top dog? Why was everyone just leaving me alone? Yang Jeong-won, shouldn't you at least be trying to pick another fight with me? Why are you avoiding my gaze? Why is everyone acting like this? Don't do this to me. It's making me even more anxious.
Fortunately, even after knocking Jeong-won out, nobody came looking for trouble. It only took that one fight. After I laid him out, my life changed completely. No one treated me like a shuttle anymore. They didn't exactly treat me like a friend either, but I was no longer the punching bag they could push around whenever they pleased. My goal of escaping the shuttle life before graduation had been achieved way ahead of schedule.
Simply escaping that role transformed my entire school experience. Having been a shuttle since elementary school, I had never imagined school could be like this. I no longer had to constantly watch my back for sudden slaps to the head, nor did I have to endure endless streams of verbal abuse. I could actually enjoy my recess periods in peace. No one shoved me "just for fun" as they walked past. Some kids even started striking up casual conversations with me. Before, they used to look at me like I was some kind of insect. Thanks to that, I was enjoying a peaceful school life. To think I would ever experience something like this... it was absolute heaven.
Once school let out, I headed straight for the supermarket. My daily routine was simple: go to school in the morning, stop by supermarkets and shopping malls after class to check for new arrivals or items that would sell well on Danggeun Market, slip the good stuff into my Inventory, head to the boxing gym, and then go home. It was a simple yet highly efficient routine.
Speaking of efficiency, there had been a change regarding my Inventory. It wasn't an upgrade like last time, but rather a shift in how I utilized it. Although the Inventory had expanded after the last upgrade, the system had switched to counting items by quantity. Because of this, certain items actually took up more space than they did when the system measured by volume. For example, Yang Jeong-won's gold necklace was still sitting in my Inventory, occupying an entire slot. While I could stack up to ten identical items in a single slot, I didn't own any other gold jewelry. Consequently, that tiny necklace was hogging a whole slot all by itself. Since it was stolen, I was too paranoid to leave it lying around outside. It felt like a massive waste of space, so I started brainstorming other ways to optimize it.
The solution turned out to be surprisingly simple: packaging.
I realized this while storing beef in my Inventory. I noticed that the system registered a 300-gram pack of beef and a 1-kilogram pack of beef exactly the same—as a single item.
For instance, if I put in one pack of beef, it displayed as:
If I added another pack, it became:
Regardless of the weight or volume, the system recognized one pack as one item. So, what would happen if I put two packs into a single plastic bag and stored it? I tested it immediately. The bag vanished into thin air, and the display read:
As long as it was bundled inside a bag, the system recognized it as a single item, regardless of the contents or quantity. In other words, no matter how many packs were inside, it was just "one bundle of beef."
Yes! Jackpot!
This changed everything. I had to completely overhaul how I used my Inventory. I needed to start packing things. Previously, I had stored beef in the exact packaging it came in from the supermarket. Now, I bundled beef, salt, ssamjang, lettuce, and even cold noodles into a single package before storing it. When I did that, it still registered as:
Once this trick succeeded, my diet became infinitely more diverse. I didn't have to eat nothing but beef day in and day out. Raw fish, pork belly, fried chicken—as long as they were packaged together, they could share the exact same slot as the beef. That slot was no longer just for beef. It had become:
I didn't stop there. I began sorting and packing all my other belongings the same way. I needed a lot of bags. This method was a complete game-changer. I no longer had to store items strictly by category. I could pack a wide variety of goods together to my heart's content. I gathered all sorts of bags—suitcases, hiking backpacks, pouches, you name it—each suited for a different purpose. Ready-to-eat meals went into simple plastic bags, while items meant for resale were carefully organized and packed separately. In one of the hiking backpacks, I packed my most valuable possessions, just in case. It was my emergency bag, containing my cash and the stolen gold necklace. Aside from those, there wasn't much else of importance in my life.
I spent my days lifting goods from supermarkets, organizing them neatly into my Inventory, and studying English. And just like that, my senior year of high school was passing by.