First Day of the New Semester
"Hey, you. What's your deal? Lookin' away on the first day already?"
"Ack, go easy on him. Guess he trusted his face a little too much and put some strength into his shoulders, huh~"
It wasn't hard to figure out what the two boys blocking his path were after. The swaggering posturing that tried so hard to look threatening. The oddly aggressive tone. Even the leg they'd naturally planted in his way. Every detail pointed to a single conclusion.
Don't tell me... I'm being picked on?
The fighter's eyes swept over the pair from head to toe, instinct taking over. Their muscles sagged like deflated balloons, their frames crooked and asymmetrical, and their weight was pitched dangerously off-balance from slouching — a structure that would collapse at the slightest touch. For all their bluster, they showed none of the minimal awareness needed to defend even the most obvious incoming attack.
For a moment, he genuinely couldn't tell whether they were serious. They looked so utterly harmless that he couldn't even muster any anger.
"Well... I'm the new kid. Everyone's probably just staring because of that."
Kang Han-ul offered an awkward smile and spoke carefully. Having reincarnated into a school violence world, he'd been through his fair share of confrontations — and every single one had been resolved without incident thanks to the overwhelming power built through training with his father. But the results had always been the same: the end of any hope of an ordinary school life. He absolutely, absolutely could not startle these guys.
"Ha... this little shit's laughing? What, is that funny? I talk to you and it's funny?"
Thump, thump.
Hearing his answer, the delinquent wore the expression of a predator that had just found its prey and began prodding Han-ul's chest with his palm.
Wait... is he about to shove me? Or is this just to piss me off? Damn it, I have no idea how I'm supposed to react here.
"Aw, don't be so hard on him. Our new friend here looks fine enough, but I guess he's just a little slow on the uptake."
The other one kept chiming in with a slimy smile plastered across his face. A sidekick character drawn straight out of a comic panel. It hit him all over again — this really was a school violence world. Escape as naturally as possible. That was the plan.
"Ehh, I mean, maybe I am."
"Hah? You little—!"
Unfazed, Kang Han-ul brushed past the two and scanned the room for a decent seat. He did his best to ignore the stares boring into him from every direction. Apparently the open confrontation had drawn attention from the very start... which was a bad sign. Excessive interest always invited noise and trouble, and he'd lived plenty of the loud, attention-hogging life in his past life — more than enough for one lifetime. What he wanted was a quiet, ordinary school life where he simply blended in with everyone else. So just sit down quietly, don't cause any more of a scene, and—
"When someone's TALKING to you, you damn well LISTEN!!"
CRASH!
The thoroughly heated-up delinquent kicked Kang Han-ul's desk clean over. An unexpected, sudden situation — and Han-ul's body reacted on pure instinct.
Snatch!
A palm shot out like lightning and clamped down hard on the delinquent's leg in an instant. And then—
SLAM!!
"Kheugh!?"
A second-year high schooler's body, already physically indistinguishable from a grown adult. That massive frame rose into the air as lightly as flowing water, then came crashing down toward the floor without mercy. There was zero wasted motion anywhere in the sequence. Talent chosen by the gods, and a training regimen so brutal it would make the devil himself click his tongue — the two together had produced movement that bordered on perfection.
...Ah. I screwed up.
Unfortunately, though, there was exactly one person in that room capable of appreciating what that movement had actually been.
"Whoa, whoa! You okay? Thank god it wasn't your head..."
"I... uuuugh..."
Kang Han-ul rushed to check on the delinquent he'd just flung onto the classroom floor. Thankfully he'd landed on a safe part of his body, and because Han-ul had managed to pull his strength at the last second, he didn't seem badly hurt. By the standards of this world's absurdly resilient humans, it was a minor injury — nothing that would keep him from getting right back up.
The problem was everything else.
"W-wait, what just happened? What was that huge noise?!"
"Hey, is he dead?!"
"What kind of person drops like a rag doll..."
"The hot guy did that?"
Attention that paled in comparison to anything a minute ago. This was the absolute worst-case scenario he'd tried so desperately to avoid.
"You f...cking son of a...!!"
Park Tae-min, the class delinquent who'd planned to establish dominance over his new class on day one, wriggled weakly on the floor, his eyes half-glazed. How on earth had it come to this? He'd thought his luck was good. His new class had been full of nothing but pathetic model students and sycophants scrambling to latch onto him. If he got off on the right foot, he could reign as the class's one and only predator for the entire year. And then this tall stranger had shown up — the perfect example to make. A flashy face so unmistakable no one in the same grade could possibly not know him, a towering frame, and a vaguely awkward expression on top. Clearly a transfer student. Fresh off a transfer, so there was no way he had connections or backing inside the school. Perfect as a sandbag and plaything to cement his own position. That was how it was supposed to go, anyway.
"Hey, Park Tae-min. What are you doing? You not getting up?"
"Khk... leave him. Looks like he's too embarrassed to stand."
"Seriously, what's with all that squirming? Is he a cockroach or what?"
Naked mockery poured down from the very people who wouldn't meet his eyes moments ago. The suppressed prey were tearing strips off a wounded predator. They, too, had realized the truth — that Park Tae-min was no longer the law of this class.
"Hey, hey, get up already! The teacher's coming soon!"
"Ggh... ugh!!"
Swallowing his boiling rage, Park Tae-min had no choice but to limp back to his seat with the sidekick supporting him. A single fall. That was all it took for Park Tae-min to plummet from sole predator to public prey — at least, for this moment. And so the storm of a transfer student who'd just caused a seismic shift in the classroom's hierarchy from day one...
...I'm so, so screwed.
...was silently screaming inside over the spectacular trainwreck his school life had become before it even started.
Damn it, this is exactly why I was being so careful! The sensation from that final training session in Russia was still painfully vivid. Even though his body had come back to an ordinary school, his unconscious instincts and movements hadn't escaped his father's grip. Kang Han-ul sighed quietly and covered his face. Even so, his senses — honed to the absolute limit — kept registering every single stare pouring in from all directions. It felt like dozens of insects crawling across his skin, a sensation he'd known countless times even before his reincarnation.
I'm sick of this. Genuinely.
How long was he supposed to keep collecting looks like these? He used to be able to enjoy this kind of attention. He was even stronger now than in his past life... and yet the stronger he got, the lonelier he seemed to feel. Just as he was about to sink into that gloom on the very first day of the new semester—
"Um... hi? I don't think I've seen you before — were you in first year? Are you a transfer student?"
One gaze, unlike all the familiar ones he'd endured, snagged on his senses. Not fear. Not wariness. Not admiration. Just... a person looking at another person — a gentle look that was hard to put into words.
"I'm, uh, Kim Seo-yul. And you?"
An average height of around 174 centimeters, an average build, thick glasses, and unremarkable black hair. The boy had an overall gentle impression, and he smiled awkwardly as he looked at Han-ul, as if the act of striking up a conversation weren't something he did often.
"Oh... I'm Kang Han-ul. I just transferred in this year."
For a moment he was flustered by the unexpected encounter — then, dazed by the novelty of someone simply talking to him like a normal person, he gathered himself and spoke.
"Ah... so you really are a transfer student."
But it seemed the boy who'd approached him wasn't all that comfortable with conversations either. When the answer came back, he actually looked a little flustered himself, rolling his eyes this way and that before needlessly rubbing the back of his neck and continuing.
"So, um... you looked like you were having a rough time just now. I-I mean, I might've just been imagining it..!"
Even after saying it, the boy glanced nervously at Han-ul's face, unsure of himself. There was none of the fear or guardedness he'd felt from the other students looking at him moments ago. Just — there was a transfer student who looked like he was struggling at a new school, so he said something. That was it. It seemed to be a reason that amounted to nothing more than that.
"I looked like I was having a rough time? Me?"
Still, hearing that "nothing" of a reason, Han-ul couldn't help but be taken aback. It was a fair point. He was in a genuinely difficult situation right now, and he desperately needed someone's help and goodwill — he couldn't deny that. What he couldn't understand, though...
"...Considering I did that?"
Han-ul said, side-eyeing Park Tae-min, who was barely propped upright over his desk. To anyone watching, it looked like he had unilaterally beaten the guy down. He'd appeared to have thoroughly established dominance over the boy — and in reality, though he hadn't intended it, that's exactly what had happened. Even by his own assessment, claiming to be the victim here would take some serious shamelessness. And yet Seo-yul thought he looked like he was struggling?
"Well... you, um — you reflexively pulled your strength before you threw him. And before that, you were clearly trying not to fight at all."
'!!'
...You saw that? A regular person?
Stunned by observational skills beyond anything he'd imagined, Han-ul swept his eyes over the boy's body once more. Still no trace of training anywhere. If anything, he looked even less athletic than the average person — the quintessential twenty-first-century South Korean schoolboy's physique. His naturally thin, slight frame wasn't built for fighting, either. So... was he simply gifted with unusually sharp eyes?
And just as Kang Han-ul was starting to regard Kim Seo-yul with a flicker of genuine interest—
Yank.
Someone grabbed Seo-yul by the shoulder and pulled him back, smoothly taking over his spot.
"Yo, you're the transfer student, right?"
Three boys and two girls now blocked his view. Their uniforms were altered just enough to skirt the dress code, and their hair, accessories — everything — had been carefully styled. Kids squarely in the "party crowd" category. The boy who'd shoved Kim Seo-yul aside gave Han-ul's shoulder a familiar little tap and said:
"What was that earlier? Park Tae-min went flying like a dog, I swear."
"Hey, watch your mouth. It was hilarious, sure."
"But you're actually a transfer student? Where'd you come from?"
Starting with that boy's question, the queries came pouring in without a pause. Kim Seo-yul, so abruptly elbowed out, now stood somewhere behind the group. Even so, he showed no anger and didn't push back at all — if anything, he seemed used to this kind of thing, quietly adjusting only his glasses.
"...Long story. I came from somewhere pretty far away."
"Oh, for real? That's why we've never seen you."
"Hey, you on Insta? What's your handle?"
One of the girls casually pulled out her phone. And it was then that Kim Seo-yul, still standing at the back, spoke up carefully.
"Um, about what we were saying before—"
"Seo-yul, hold on a sec."
One of the boys flicked a hand out without even turning around. A gesture that plainly said wait just a moment. Kim Seo-yul's words died right there.
"Anyway, what sport did you actually do? Was that judo earlier?"
"Pfft~ if it were judo he'd have grabbed the collar. It wasn't that, right? Aikido?"
"This guy's just throwing stuff out there."
The conversation carried on as if nothing had happened. Kim Seo-yul opened his mouth for a moment, then quietly closed it. Seeing that, one of the girls snickered.
"Seo-yul's really chatty today."
"Right? What's gotten into him?"
"Guess he got excited over the new kid."
Words tossed out like a light joke. Nobody laughed all that hard. A few just curled the corners of their mouths, and Kim Seo-yul, too, laughed along awkwardly. That was the end of it. The attention swung right back to Han-ul.
"Anyway, Han-ul, have lunch with us."
"Yeah. It's your first day here — tons you won't know. We'll show you around."
"We'll introduce you to the others, too."
As if the fact that Kim Seo-yul and Kang Han-ul had been talking to each other simply didn't matter. Han-ul regarded the group for a moment. Then he shifted his gaze to Kim Seo-yul, standing quietly beyond them.
"Excuse me."
"Hm?"
"I was in the middle of talking to him."
His eyes swept over them once more. A faint smile played at the corner of his mouth. His pupils gazed at them clearly, without a trace of hostility or threat. That alone was enough to make his position known.
"Uh... oh, was he? Guess we interrupted, then..."
"W-we'll do lunch some other time!"
The boys, who'd had their arms slung over his shoulders, hastily backed off. The right to speak that they'd grabbed as a matter of course, every single day, had been trampled just as matter-of-factly. And yet what they felt wasn't anger, or even bewilderment. It was wrongness. A primal, instinctive alarm telling them they had to end this conversation right now and walk away.
"H-here, this is my Insta. You gotta follow me, okay?"
"M-me too! You'll follow me too, right? Right?"
The girls, too, handed over their contacts with half-fluttering charm — and then, unable to shake that sudden sense of unease, slipped away as well. Han-ul watched their retreating backs and let out a small sigh.
......Kids like that really are everywhere, huh.
He'd seen them dozens of times in his past life, too. People who naturally drew their own lines, decided who was above and who was below, and took the whole arrangement for granted. He had no intention of playing along with that just because he wanted to get along quietly — and all the less so when the person they'd shoved aside was the one who'd uniquely read his feelings and been the first to talk to him. And so, the moment their group completely vanished from his sight, Kim Seo-yul hesitated slightly and opened his mouth again.
"That wasn't... judo, was it."
"...Hm?"
Not a word of thanks for taking his side. Not an apology for dragging him into trouble. Just pure, honest curiosity about the movement he'd witnessed moments ago.
"I mean, it was definitely grappling... but it wasn't wrestling-style leg penetration or clinch body-locking, and it didn't flow into ground positioning after the takedown the way jiu-jitsu does. You caught the kicking leg as-is, broke the support axis first, then used that momentum to lift the whole upper body along with it. At first, seeing a kick catch go straight into a throw, I figured it was sambo, but it was a little different from a standard sambo takedown, too... honestly, the way you yanked his center out from under him in that instant even felt a bit like ssireum. Except that lifting his entire axis while holding just one leg, with no belt to grip — that doesn't add up either. No, actually, the ending was even stranger. You'd already launched him, but then you released your force to kill his rotation and changed where he landed."
What on earth did he just watch?
The moment he met those pure, passionate eyes, Kang Han-ul knew it instinctively: he and this guy were going to get along very, very well.
"You... really love martial arts, huh."
"Haha... a little?"
What Han-ul didn't realize at the time — that the "Haewon High School" he was entering was the primary stage of the original story's opening arc. That the soft-featured boy standing before him was one of the "monsters" featured on Shorts. That he was the protagonist of Meritocracy.