A Growing Unease
The narrow aisle beside our table.
That was the path where students who had finished eating came and went to dump their leftovers.
I felt someone suddenly approaching.
Before my eyes could even turn that way—
"Ah!"
Thud—!
A blunt voice rang out.
Right after, bright red kimchi jjigae broth spilled all over Baek Haeun's tray.
Splattered droplets soaked the hem of her pristine school blouse and skirt.
Startled, Haeun gasped and jerked her head up.
Her eyes met Choi Jia's, who stood there holding an empty tray and looking down at our table.
"Sorry? My bad."
It wasn't an apology.
It was a deliberate, public humiliation performed in front of hundreds of students.
Jia sneered and was about to turn away without a second thought.
Bang—!!
"Hey. What the hell do you think you're doing?"
With a crash loud enough to dent the stainless-steel table, Kang Minjae shot up from his seat across from us.
"..Wh-what.."
Caught off guard by Minjae's sudden aggression, Choi Jia's confident stride faltered.
She tried to hide her surprise and whipped her head around.
"You just dumped that shit all over someone's food and you're acting like it's nothing?"
"I-I said it was an accident! And what does this have to do with you? It's none of your business."
"Ha.. Unbelievable. You really think you can get away with anything, huh?"
Minjae lifted his chin, his face hardening into something menacing as he spoke one deliberate word at a time.
"Just because your brother looks out for you, you think you can do whatever the hell you want? If you're gonna act like this, go do it somewhere else. Know when to stop.. Ha.. Don't ruin everyone's appetite, you crazy bitch."
For a moment, the bustling cafeteria fell into a suffocating silence, as if someone had poured ice water over the entire room.
"You…!"
Jia's face flushed a violent red, ready to burst.
Her lips trembled with shame and rage as she tried to retort, but when the large soccer club guys behind Minjae all stood up and glared at her, her bravado crumbled instantly.
"I… I didn't even start it…"
In the end, Jia muttered a weak, resentful excuse and scurried toward the exit, clutching her tray tightly.
"Whew. What's wrong with her lately? Haeun, you okay?"
Minjae dropped his threatening aura in an instant and returned to his usual friendly, reliable expression as he looked down at Haeun.
"Want me to get you another tray? The broth got all over everything."
"Ah… No, it's fine…!"
Haeun waved both hands frantically, bowing her head in embarrassment.
In her wide, frightened rabbit-like eyes, a faint trace of relief toward the boy who had protected her flickered through.
"I-I already finished eating, I'm full…! Th-thank you for helping, Minjae."
"Come on, it's nothing between friends. You should wipe that off quickly.."
Minjae scratched his head awkwardly and grinned.
He looked exactly like the dependable white knight from some shonen manga.
Watching that nauseatingly wholesome, artificial scene of youthful drama unfold, I lifted my spoon with a blank expression and sipped the broth.
The liquid sliding down my throat tasted especially fishy today.
'…Things don't always go exactly the way I want, do they?'
My cold gaze landed on Kang Minjae's shoulder as he smiled at Haeun.
In her world, there should only be room for me.
Yet this clueless bastard kept forcing his way in like the protagonist.
Even the moment where I was supposed to score points by wiping up the spilled broth had been completely stolen by him.
'Kang Minjae. Don't cross the line.'
Swallowing the murderous intent that dripped from my thoughts, I continued eating in silence as if nothing had happened.
That guy was a variable in my plan.
My mind began turning coldly, calculating how to get rid of that smug social butterfly.
***
After school.
In the now-empty classroom where students had drained away like the tide, Haeun and I were cleaning up the ruined election posters to reattach them.
"Woojin~"
At that moment, a familiar voice thick with nasal tone came from the back door.
It was Kim Doeun, holding a thick math workbook just like yesterday.
The difference this time was that Baek Haeun stood right beside me, gripping the sleeve of my uniform with an anxious look in her eyes.
Doeun's gaze flicked coldly toward Haeun, who was practically glued to my side, before she forced a smile at me.
"We were supposed to study math again today. Do you have time now?"
"Ah, sorry."
I slightly furrowed my brows as if troubled and gave her my most harmless smile.
"I'm a bit busy today. I promised to help Haeun put up new posters since hers got torn. Let's do math next time."
My gentle yet firm refusal cut her off cleanly.
In an instant, the sweet smile on Doeun's face hardened.
I could clearly see her fingers gripping the workbook turn white from the pressure.
"Oh… Okay. I get it. If you're busy, there's nothing we can do."
Doeun nodded reluctantly and turned away.
"…Baek Haeun. Seriously, so annoying."
After Doeun's footsteps faded completely, we stepped into the hallway to remove the shredded posters and put up new ones.
Just as we stuffed the ruined poster scraps into a trash bag and Haeun carefully tried to attach a fresh one—
"Wow, that's pretty bad…? Want me to say something to the teachers?"
The sound of clicking heels that had been approaching lightly from the end of the hallway stopped beside us, followed by a bold, lively voice cutting in.
When Haeun and I both turned our heads, we saw a girl with blonde hair tied in pigtails standing there with one hand on her hip, looking like a doll.
She wore our school uniform, but her skirt was dangerously short, and the luxury cardigan draped over her shoulders made the outfit look more like a flashy stage costume than a school uniform.
"…Who are you?"
I asked flatly, slightly narrowing my eyes.
The girl's jaw dropped.
"Wh-what..? You… You don't know me?!"
She pointed at her own chest with a finger, looking utterly shocked.
"You really don't know me?! I appear on TV sometimes! Don't you know Nyan Rave, the group that's blowing up right now? I'm Han Sera from that group!"
…Nyan Rave? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
Haeun and I exchanged blank looks and tilted our heads.
I barely watched TV to begin with, and Haeun had been mentally shattered from recent school violence and isolation.
Neither of us had any spare energy to care about the entertainment industry or trends.
Our genuinely clueless reactions made Sera's face turn tomato-red before she dramatically collapsed onto the hallway floor.
"Ah, seriously..! How can people like this even exist..? This is so annoying…! Ah..! I'm so pissed!!"
Sera pointed accusingly and shouted at the top of her lungs.
"Instead of going home like total losers and playing 'Nyanbolux' or whatever, go watch some TV!!"
Still huffing and puffing with a flushed face, the girl stormed off down the hallway without looking back.
Haeun stared blankly at the trail left by the storm that had appeared and vanished, then tugged lightly at my sleeve and asked cautiously.
"Woojin… So, who was that just now…?"
I tossed a piece of peeled tape into the air and shrugged indifferently.
"No idea. Nyanbolux… I don't play stuff like that."
First Kang Minjae, then Kim Doeun, and now some random idol wannabe whose name I didn't even know.
The path to perfectly isolating Baek Haeun and molding her to my liking seemed like it was going to be far more troublesome than I had expected.
It was shaping up to be an exhausting afternoon.
***
A lazy weekend morning.
My room, with its blackout curtains drawn, was still as dark as deep night.
The peace of my sweet late sleep, buried under the blanket up to my head, was shattered by the sound of the door bursting open.
"Oppa. It's the weekend. What are you doing? Nothing?"
Lee Suah.
That damn little sister had barged into my room again first thing in the morning.
I frowned deeply under the covers and mumbled in a sleep-roughened voice.
"Ugh… Too much trouble. I'm sleeping all day, so… don't bother me. I said so."
At my firm declaration, Suah went quiet for a moment.
Just as I was about to take another deep breath, thinking she had given up and left—
"You thought I'd say 'Okay, got it~'?! Then I'll just have to wake you up more!!"
Click—!
Along with Suah's irritating cry, the fluorescent light in the room exploded to life.
The intense glare stabbing at my eyes made me reflexively kick off the blanket and sit up.
"Ah, seriously, I told you not to! Do you want to die?!"
"Bleh! Hurry up and get up to eat!"
Suah giggled and slammed the door shut before fleeing to the living room.
I spat out a string of curses into the air, rubbed my eyes, and turned the light switch off again.
"Haa… Seriously, why is she like that? So annoying first thing in the morning."
Darkness settled over the bed once more.
But the sleep that had fled was not coming back.
Irritated, I ran a hand through my messy hair and pulled my smartphone out from under the pillow.
With nothing else to do, I figured I might as well read the web novel I had been enjoying lately.
As I scrolled and focused on the screen, a sly, intrigued smile slowly spread across my lips.
[…You haven't come to see me lately. Did you… meet another girl?]
[Ahaha…! No, relax. That was just… you know… a joke.]
It was a passage where the yandere heroine in the novel subtly revealed her obsession and madness toward the protagonist.
'Haa… This is the taste~!'
The feeling of begging and obsessing.
I tapped the screen while picturing Haeun's face.
Even though Kang Minjae had been hanging around yesterday, if I kept pushing and pulling a little more, Baek Haeun would eventually become just like the heroine in this novel.
Yes, she would turn into exactly the girl I wanted.
I was deeply immersed in that thrilling fantasy when—
Ding-dong—
The doorbell rang from the living room.
Without taking my eyes off the phone, I shouted toward the door.
"Suah! Sounds like a delivery. Open the door for me!"
"Ah, damn it! Oppa, go yourself!"
I heard Suah grumbling from the living room, followed by the sound of the front door opening.
"I'll just leave the package here… Huh?"
Suah's voice from the entrance wavered strangely.
The moment when she should have been taking the box was instead met with dead silence outside.
A few seconds later, Suah's startled shout echoed across the living room.
"O-Oppa!! Come out! Haeun unnie is here?!"
'…What?'
My finger, which had been tapping the screen, froze mid-motion.
Baek Haeun?
On a weekend morning?
I tossed the phone onto the bed and rushed out of my room.
Beyond Suah standing in the doorway, I could see Haeun waiting cautiously outside.
Instead of her usual neat school uniform, she wore soft pastel casual clothes, her hands neatly clasped in front of her as she looked toward me.
"Um… Is Woojin here…?"
Her voice was careful, almost fragile.
"Huh…? Ah, yeah. Haeun."
I blinked as I approached the entrance.
My hair was a mess, and I was wearing wrinkled gray sweatpants and a stretched-out t-shirt.
I was completely unprepared, not having showered or changed.
I had never once expected Haeun to visit my house on a weekend morning.
"What's up? I just woke up, so… uh, I haven't even washed my face. I'm still in my pajamas."
When I asked while awkwardly scratching the back of my head, Haeun avoided my gaze and fidgeted with her cheek.
"Ah… Well…"
Her large eyes wavered uneasily toward the floor.
"I just… wondered if you were doing anything this weekend…"
"Huh? Me?"
I looked back and forth between Suah and Haeun, confused.
"I don't really have any plans today. I was just going to relax at home."
The moment my answer left my mouth, Haeun's hunched shoulders relaxed slightly, and a strange spark of life appeared in her eyes.
She bit her lower lip, then mustered her courage and looked straight up at me.
"Oh… Really? Then……"
Her hands gripped the hem of her skirt tightly.
"Today, do you want to… go see a movie with me? How about it…?"
"……Huh?"
A movie?
Just the two of us?
At the unexpected suggestion that came out of Haeun's mouth, I let out a stupid sound and froze.
The calculator in my head began spinning wildly.
'Haeun is… asking me out on a movie date first?'
Until now, she had only hidden behind me, trembling with anxiety.
Yet after only a few days of isolation, she had come all the way to my house on a weekend morning to ask me out?
'Hmm… Honestly, at this timing…'
In a normal training process, this would have been the moment to coldly reject her.
By pushing her away with something like 'I'm too tired to watch a movie today,' I could make her anxious and heighten her blind dependence even further—that had been my original plan.
But in that split second, an unpleasant face flashed through my mind.
Kang Minjae, who had cheerfully handed Haeun sausages in the cafeteria yesterday and played the black knight by throwing soda at Choi Jia.
'…Judging by what that bastard's been doing…'
If I pushed her away here and she was left alone, what if she ran into that meddlesome guy by bad luck? There was a chance some stray dog might snatch away the pet I had worked so hard to break.
"Haa…"
I swallowed a short sigh internally and forced a gentle smile onto my face.
"Uh, yeah. Let's do that, Haeun."
"…Really?!"
At my acceptance, Haeun's face bloomed brightly like cherry blossoms.
I could see her anxiety-filled eyes filling with an almost terrifying amount of relief and joy.
"Yeah. I'll go change and come right out. Wait just a second!"
I closed the front door and hurried toward the bathroom.
Click.
After shutting the bathroom door, I stood in front of the mirror above the sink and stared at my own reflection, furrowing my brows.
'More importantly, why is she suddenly acting like this?'
Even if her mental state had been shattered and she had started depending on me, I hadn't expected her to accelerate this fast.
Even back when she had been badly hurt and cried in secret… even when she had been on the verge of making an extreme choice… she had never pursued me this aggressively.
'Hmm… Something feels off.'
The emotional trajectory of the girl I had believed was perfectly under my control was plummeting toward me at a much steeper and deeper speed than I had anticipated.
It was as if some massive switch I didn't know about had been flipped inside her heart.
'Well, whatever.'
I turned on the faucet and vigorously washed my face with the cold water pouring out.
'Anyway, this is the timing where I need to give her the carrot. If she's coming to me first, there's no downside for me.'
As I roughly wiped the water from my face with a towel, an arrogant smile returned to my lips in the mirror.
"Yeah. Everything's going according to my plan, Lee Woojin."
Whispering quietly to my reflection, I stepped out of the bathroom.
Completely unaware that this blind obsession would eventually strangle me.