Chapter 3
Chapter 3
-------------------------------------------------
Translator : M.N 1391
Chapter: 3
-------------------------------------------------
A child who had gone through something this serious was far too calm.
Whenever he saw him acting naïve and clueless about the world, he thought, “Ah, a kid is still a kid,” but whenever he felt this kind of dissonance, he began to wonder, baselessly, whether even that innocence was just an act.
But there was no reason to dig into such suspicions.
It was nothing more than ungrounded speculation.
Clearing away those pointless thoughts, Attorney Han focused on what Kyung-wan had said about the civil suit.
In truth, that was the real problem.
In civil cases, one cannot be assigned a public defender.
His assessment that the plaintiffs would likely give up before the second trial was also based on the civil suit.
It was unjust, but what they sought was not justice.
They simply wanted to vent their resentment on Kyung-wan.
For people like them, it was easy to torment a boy who had nothing and no father.
Of course, right now Kyung-wan was a minor and had no responsibility to pay damages, but in one year he would be an adult.
Once that happened, they could strongly argue “capacity for responsibility,” giving them plenty of room to sue.
And because there was even precedent stating, “Whether one is a juvenile must be judged based on one’s status at the time of the factual judgment,” it would not be easy to win.
But once matters reached that point, it wasn’t about whether he could win or not.
The litigation costs alone would dry Kyung-wan to death.
A socio-economic murder was entirely possible.
If that happened, this poor boy would become a credit delinquent, unable to blossom, rotting at the very bottom of society.
Attorney Han found that heartbreaking.
So he squeezed his brain to find a way.
“There are two methods.”
“Two methods?”
Feeling satisfied at the boy’s surprised reaction, he raised his fingers one by one.
“One, they have a short memory and forget this incident quickly, or they decide to be merciful. And two, you counterattack.”
“The first one’s impossible. Those guys are persistent.”
At Kyung-wan’s reply, Attorney Han nodded.
These were kids who not only bullied him at school but even followed him home.
And when he met their parents, he saw firsthand that beans grow where beans are planted and red beans grow where red beans are planted, there was no way they’d forget this or show mercy.
Which was why they needed a counterattack.
Victory would not be easy, but that wasn’t what Attorney Han was aiming for.
He wanted to show them that this side was not easy prey, that they also had fangs capable of drawing blood.
If they filed assault charges, this side could file charges for school violence and bullying.
He wasn’t aiming for victory; he was aiming to force a settlement and end this cycle of grudges.
As Kyung-wan nodded at the plan, he calmly said:
“But it’s still a civil case. I have no money.”
Without legal knowledge, he would need to hire a lawyer.
Attorney Han knew that well.
Everything he had said so far was leading to the next suggestion.
“I’ll teach you.”
“You will?”
“Yes. You can work part-time at my office and learn as you go.”
Even without a law license, someone with legal knowledge could defend themselves.
For penniless Kyung-wan, it was an excellent method.
Kyung-wan stared at him with a strange expression.
Feeling uneasy under that gaze, Attorney Han asked:
“Why?”
“You’re a much better person than I thought.”
“Ahem! I only suggested a plan that benefits both of us. You gain the ability to defend yourself, and I get to hire a part-timer cheaply.”
The boy’s extreme calmness, even cleverness, also played a part.
If he weren’t smart enough to make Attorney Han think “What a waste of talent,” he wouldn’t have made such an offer.
“So what will you do?”
Attorney Han asked again.
He expected the boy to accept, but that expectation shattered when the boy, after a moment of thought, spoke:
“I won’t.”
“Alright, goo, wait, what? Why?”
“In the end, your plan means I should learn law and protect myself, right?”
“Well… yes.”
“But then I’d be burdening you.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“You’re a public defender. You don’t even make good money. I can’t do that to you. I can study law on my own at libraries or on the internet these days.”
Attorney Han inwardly admired the boy’s independence and self-reliance, yet he couldn’t help being worried.
Law was not something one could learn easily alone.
“It’ll be hard studying by yourself…”
“If I don’t know something, I’ll ask you. If you give me free advice then, I’d be really grateful.”
“That’s fine. I have plenty of time.”
Whether he knew or not that a lawyer with “plenty of time” essentially meant an incompetent one, Attorney Han simply laughed heartily and encouraged the boy who had chosen the harder road.
Thus, the assault case concluded.
A short while later, Attorney Han informed him that the prosecutor had given up on appealing to the second trial.
But the aftermath remained.
He was expelled from school, had almost no money, and by next month he would be kicked out of his home.
So what?
That was the question Kyung-wan came to after assessing his situation.
Then he remembered Attorney Han’s kindness.
If he relied on that kindness, his situation could be much better, so why didn’t he?
His rational mind scolded him for refusing such help.
But then his moral mind countered: someone like him shouldn’t cling to a kind person like Attorney Han.
And what did “someone like him” mean?
In simple terms, a guy who lived recklessly.
A person who lived however the wind blew.
Someone like that, sticking next to someone like Attorney Han, would be nothing more than a parasite.
And if he tried to live properly just for Attorney Han’s sake, life would become exhausting.
That was the nature of compatibility.
Good people should be around other good people.
And someone who didn’t try to live diligently could never be considered good.
What he had said to Attorney Han was simply lip service to create distance.
“Great world, isn’t it.”
Looking around at the world, Kyung-wan quickly decided his path.
A homeless person.
Homeless shelters provided free food, no one bothered them, and for someone like him, with no desire to live grandly and content to drift, it was the perfect occupation(?).
The timing was right.
He’d been expelled, and soon he’d be forced out of his room.
And if he became homeless, Kim In-gyu and Park Tae-jin would no longer bother trying to mess with him.
From their perspective, he would have fallen completely into the gutter.
Kyung-wan began sorting his belongings.
He first packed his clothes.
A homeless person needed plenty of clothing to withstand the night dew.
Summer would be hot, but in winter he could freeze to death.
He packed his small amount of cash as emergency funds and walked around searching for a suitable place.
Somewhere not too far from the free meal center, sheltering him from wind and rain and night dew, and out of people’s sight.
He had plenty of time now that he’d been expelled.
He lived in the metropolitan area, but on the outskirts, in a neighborhood where development had been delayed for various reasons.
Because the economy was bad, even the small development projects or corporate buildings that had been planned were canceled, leaving behind abandoned factory buildings.
Some farmland had been converted for development and then abandoned again, leaving empty agricultural warehouses.
If he searched well, he could surely find a place to avoid the night dew.
And if not, with his simple handiwork skills, honed by infinite reincarnation, building a small space to lie down wouldn’t be hard.
After several days of searching, he found an abandoned factory near a high school.
The spacious factory wasn’t exactly cozy, wind blew straight through, but it was better than bare ground.
He had hoped there might be a container used as a temporary office, but unfortunately, there wasn’t.
He began moving his necessities between his house and the abandoned factory.
Clothes, blankets, bedding, vinyl sheets to block cold wind, and so on.
But then,
“Stop! Please let go!”
“Oh. She’s pretty feisty.”
“She’s struggling. Hold her properly.”
At the sudden commotion, Kyung-wan frowned.
A woman begging and screaming, and men laughing and mocking her.
He immediately understood the situation.
When he checked with his own eyes, he saw four high school students.
One of them, a girl, was being held down on top of the blanket he had placed there, her clothes being stripped.
Kyung-wan could not tolerate it.
“Hey… kids?”
“Who the hell are you?!”
“That’s where I sleep…”
“So what?!”
One of the boys, smirking wickedly as he watched his friends assault the girl, raised his voice threateningly.
Kyung-wan replied:
“Get lost.”
Just imagining sleeping on a blanket defiled by these scumbags made him feel disgusted already.
Naturally, such an answer provoked the teenage criminals.
“You wanna die?”
The boy who’d said “So what?” stomped toward him.
Kyung-wan didn’t flinch.
To the boy, that looked like he was frozen in fear.
So he confidently swung his fist.
But Kyung-wan wasn’t frozen at all.
He slapped the incoming fist to the side, grabbed the boy’s sleeve, and yanked hard.
“Oh!”
Losing balance, the boy yelled in shock.
Kyung-wan grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, rotated 270 degrees around his own body using the boy as momentum, then hooked the boy’s leg, breaking his balance completely, and shouted as he slammed forward with all of the boy’s inertia:
“Bloody Face Bobsleigh~!”
Across the rough concrete floor of the abandoned factory, the boy’s face slid.
No, was scraped away.
The boy’s arms alone couldn’t withstand the weight of his own body plus Kyung-wan’s force.
A red skid mark was drawn across the dusty concrete floor.
“!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The teenage rapist who had charged him trembled violently, unable even to scream from the horrific pain of his face being shredded, and passed out.
Blood pooled beside his unmoving face.
Seeing this, the boys who had held the girl’s arms and pinned her down quickly pulled up their pants and stood.
“Wh-, what the hell is that bastard?!”
“Do you want me to answer?”
At Kyung-wan’s eerie tone, one of them shouted:
“What are you, you bastard?!”
“A person.”
“You think we’re asking because we don’t know that, you bastard?! Hyeong-gi! Hyeong-gi!”
Oh? They’re calling me a person?
How nice.
In his past life, he’d been called a monster so much that being called a human felt refreshing.
They had no idea what he was thinking and just assumed he was mocking them.
They shouted curses and tried to wake their friend.
But their accomplice gave no response.
They didn’t even know if he was dead or alive.
“Shit! You’re dead!”
Despite seeing their friend fall instantly, the remaining two still felt confident because they had numbers.
They spat curses and charged.
Kyung-wan lowered his stance.
He bent his knees slightly to center his weight, spreading his legs shoulder-width apart, a balanced position from which he could move anywhere instantly.
“Die, you bastard!”
They rushed together, but before taking them both on, Kyung-wan dashed toward the one on the right.
The boy swung a punch, but it cut through empty air.
Kyung-wan approached faster and closer than the boy expected, pressing in tightly and wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck.