The Loner on the First Day of School
Opening Day.
The day when the students who had spent summer vacation free from classes were dragged back into school once more.
Of course, there were always a few who came through the gates smiling, laughing with their friends as if they had something to celebrate.
But most of them wore the same gloomy expressions you’d expect from office workers on a Monday morning.
Some students had been used to sleeping in just the day before, and they were still half-asleep, their minds drifting somewhere between dreams and waking.
Only after they sat at their desks and looked at the miserable faces of the classmates beside them did it finally hit home: vacation was over.
And as for me, I couldn’t deny that I felt a fair amount of regret that break had come to an end.
School lessons were painfully dull, after all, and starting today I’d have to spend a huge chunk of my day sitting in a classroom again.
If I had even one friend in my class, it would have been a little less tedious, but I’d already completely wrecked my social life at the beginning of last semester...
Still, today was the opening ceremony, which meant the only consolation was that I’d be going home after just three hours.
Before the ceremony started, the free period was filled with students clustering together in little groups, chattering away.
They talked about everything from how disappointing it was that vacation had ended to what they’d done over the break.
Since they’d gone a month without seeing one another, they must have had plenty to say.
And considering there were girls who had changed their hairstyles over the break, and boys who had shot up in height, there probably wasn’t enough time in the world to catch up on everything.
...
But before long, I noticed that the atmosphere in our class was a little different from last semester.
Boys and girls were sitting together now, awkwardly trading updates, and it looked almost as if they were trying to bury old grudges and repair their relationships.
Maybe the anger had cooled off because they hadn’t seen each other during vacation, and maybe the relief of meeting again after so long was helping smooth things over.
Last semester, the second class I belonged to had split into boys versus girls over trivial nonsense.
For the entire semester.
Because of that, our class had become infamous as the least united one in the whole school.
The situation had been so bad that by the end of the term, even our homeroom teacher had practically given up.
But from my perspective, having already failed miserably at forming friendships from the beginning of last semester, it had actually been welcome news.
After all, for a loner like me to enjoy any kind of stable school life, the rest of the class had to be too busy fighting with each other to pay me any attention...
It seemed the age when an outsider could bask in freedom while the class was split cleanly in two was coming to an end.
Still, oddly enough, I might not have much to worry about.
The delinquent in our class who had been testing the waters to see whether he could use me as a lunch errand boy was still just another punk’s lackey, and the misunderstanding about me that had spread at the start of the term had already been cleared up to some extent.
In other words, even if the boys and girls in our class patched things up now, there was no real reason for them to come after me while I was minding my own business.
But it was also an undeniable fact that the more united the class became, the greater the danger would be once I ended up in their crosshairs.
It was a depressing thought, but there was no choice except to be a little more careful with my words and actions than I had been when the class was divided.
...
And yet, when we returned to the classroom after the short opening ceremony in the auditorium, the students in our class were suddenly buzzing about cars.
"Did you see that foreign car parked in the school lot? I looked it up because it looked so weird, and the price was almost as much as a house."
"Isn’t it the one from the rich girl in the class next door? The one named Han Sia?"
"Hmm... I thought so at first too, but the car Han Sia comes to school in looks a little different."
"Still, as far as I know, there aren’t any other rich kids at this school besides Han Sia’s family... so maybe it’s just their second car."
Our neighborhood wasn’t the kind of place where rich people lived.
This was a typical bedroom town on the outskirts of the capital region, lined with apartment complexes that were much cheaper than anything you’d find in Seoul proper.
So the students who had grown up here hadn’t had many chances to see expensive foreign cars up close, which was probably why they were so interested in the unfamiliar one parked in the school lot.
But the conversation about the foreign car that had just started among my classmates didn’t last long.
The reason was that when our homeroom teacher came into the room, he was leading two unfamiliar students with him.
"All right. Quiet down, everyone. First of all, thanks for putting up with the opening ceremony. Before you head home, I’ve got a few things to tell you, so listen up for a minute."
One of the two students who came in with the homeroom teacher was someone I somehow recognized.
That student was... Song Changwon.
Before I regressed, he had been a lab mate in graduate school, but after my regression, he was only an acquaintance I’d spent about a week with in a gifted education program.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t transferred to our school before I regressed... so why was he here now?
As I tilted my head, staring at him and wondering what was going on, he looked back in my direction and gave a small wave with a slight lift of his lips.
...So he remembered me too. I’d have to ask him for details later, if I got the chance.
The other student, aside from Song Changwon, was a beautiful girl with ash-gray hair.
According to the homeroom teacher’s introduction, her name was Lee Narin.
Just looking at her gave off a slightly hard-to-approach feeling, thanks to her neat updo and her somewhat cool expression...
I wasn’t sure whether she was nervous standing in front of a bunch of students she’d never met before, or whether she was simply the kind of person who didn’t show much expression to begin with.
Either way, her blank face, with little emotion showing through, only made her seem even harder to talk to.
"Changwon and Narin already know each other, so it’d probably be best if they stayed together until they’ve had time to settle into the class, right? Until we change seats, you can use the empty desks over there."
After finishing the brief introduction of the transfer students, the homeroom teacher guided them to the vacant seats.
Then he handed out the usual packets of school documents and notices meant for each household at the start of a new term.
With that done, he left the classroom, telling the students to take good care of the transfer students and help them settle in.
...
And about three seconds after the homeroom teacher left the room, the students in Class Two swarmed over to the transfer students without hesitation and started talking to them.
Part of it was probably because the new boy and girl already knew each other, which made the whole situation unusual, but the bigger reason was likely that Song Changwon and Lee Narin were both strikingly good-looking.
Seeing the transfer students draw such intense attention from the class on their very first day, it looked like they wouldn’t have to worry about ending up on the fringes of class life like I had.
As for me, there was something I wanted to ask Song Changwon... but the timing didn’t seem right.
It wasn’t urgent anyway, and starting tomorrow we’d be taking the same classes together.
So I decided to put off asking why he’d transferred here until later.
With that settled in my mind, I left the classroom, leaving behind the classmates who had gathered around the transfer students and were already chattering noisily.
***- Song Changwon’s POV
The moment the homeroom teacher left the classroom, the dog hair started swarming around us.
I understood the curiosity that came with having transfer students, but by the time you were in high school, shouldn’t you at least have learned how to be considerate of other people?
Especially if you were the type with nothing to recommend you, not money and not family background.
Of course, there was nothing inherently wrong with being interested in transfer students.
When a new person joins a group, it’s natural to take an interest, and you need information if you want to figure out how to deal with them.
But these students here didn’t seem to understand that they weren’t the only ones sizing people up; the other side could be sizing them up too.
"Wow... Changwon, you’re really handsome... do you have a girlfriend?"
"Yeah! I was curious about that too! Even if you do, I was wondering what would happen if transferring here made you farther apart... hehe! Was that too obvious of me?"
"..."
Haa. Attention from uneducated girls was always so unreasonable and annoying.
Because they were girls, they probably wouldn’t come right out and confess, but if they kept circling around me and pestering me in that half-baked way, I could already feel a headache coming on.
What exactly do you have to put in your head to throw yourself at a guy you’ve known for five minutes?
You haven’t even spoken a single word to him, and you’re already falling for his looks?
Fine. Human feelings are hard to control, so something like that can definitely happen.
But if a woman without wealth or background actually acted on those feelings, she’d look incredibly cheap. Too embarrassing to be seen with, honestly.
And naturally, women like that were the ones who’d turn around and paint me as the villain after I rejected them, making everything complicated.
Sure, I could always crush the problem the way I usually did, with the power of a conglomerate family, but if I kept bothering the adults in my family over petty nonsense like this, it would put me in an awkward position too!
...This is exactly why I don’t talk to dog hair.
Of course, there were some low-grade trash bastards from families that were sort of decent, who would handle a situation like this by saying things like, "Just sleep with them a few times and toss them aside. They probably want that anyway, right?"
But that kind of thinking was for vermin who’d blow through their family fortune in one generation and end up as dog hair themselves.
As a member of a chaebol family, I couldn’t possibly smear my family’s name over something this trivial.
Which meant this was exactly the moment for the assistant my father had assigned to me to do her job.
...
Hey, Lee Narin. Time to work. How long are you planning to stand there spacing out?
While taking in the girls’ attention around me with a suitably composed expression, I sent a glance to the gray-haired girl in the seat beside mine.
Then Lee Narin, who had mostly been drawing the attention of the boys, gestured lightly to draw the girls’ eyes as well, and said in a blank voice, "Changwon and I are dating. So I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from showing any further interest."
Her voice carried little emotion, but paired with that cool expression, it sounded like a perfect warning.
And perhaps because of that, the students were fooled by Lee Narin’s clumsy acting.
"Ah... so the two of you really were dating... I had a feeling when a handsome boy and girl transferred into the class together, but it was true?"
"Since when have you been dating? Did you meet at your old school? Now I’ve got so many things I want to ask!"
Her acting was a total failure, but it was still a nice move. Thanks to that, I wouldn’t have to worry about girls.
"Rather than just sitting here, how about we throw a little welcome party for the transfer students? It’s the opening ceremony, so school got out early, and everyone should have time, right?"
After that, Class Two started talking about getting to know each other better by having lunch together or going to a karaoke room.
Honestly, I was thinking, Spending time with these dog hair bastards is a waste...
"Sure. I’m free today too, so that sounds fine."
But I didn’t let that show