Do You Want to Get Beaten?
After roughly chasing Park Jin-ah away, I drove while calling my sister through my Bluetooth earphones. Maybe because it was quitting time, she picked up right away.
“Hello?”
“Hey, sis, it’s me. Something came up and I need a little help.”
My sister let out a long, heavy sigh at my words.
“...Haah. What is it this time? You’re not making me do the lawyer cosplay again, are you?”
“As expected from the owner of such a brilliant mind—your senses are sharp as ever! Attorney Seon Dal-rae!”
“You little fucking idiot!”
Her satisfyingly explosive reaction made a laugh slip out of me.
“Whoa, whoa, calm down. I’m not asking for anything crazy. Just do it like last time.”
“...Stand next to you striking poses, record everything, and spout legal nonsense every now and then?”
“Exactly as expected from the greatest intellect of our time, Attorney Seon Dal-rae! You get straight to the point!”
My playful tone must have lit a fuse, because my sister unleashed a rapid-fire barrage of curses. Then she let out an even deeper sigh than before.
“...So what’s the situation?”
I explained everything—exactly what kind of person the girl named Gaeul was and what kind of crisis she was facing right now.
“You really are something...”
My sister drew out her words before continuing.
“So where do I need to go?”
As expected, my sister was easy.
“You need to head to Nada Middle School, but you don’t have to go there yourself.”
“Huh? Then how are you going to pull off the fake lawyer bit? It’ll be hard to fool anyone over the phone.”
She was right. A phone call alone wouldn’t have enough impact. Of course my sister needed to be right next to me.
“Sis. It’s quitting time, right? You’re in front of the main building?”
“Yeah, I just stepped out the front gate. ...Hey, you can’t be serious?”
I spotted her standing right by the crosswalk. I parked the car with a sharp brake, rolled down the window, and called out.
“Get in!”
Door-to-door service, delivered.
While Gaeul was in the middle of training, she suddenly received a phone call. She apologized to the trainer for not silencing it and tried to get back to practice. But the moment she hung up, the phone rang again. A wave of anxiety washed over her.
She asked the trainer for permission, stepped into the hallway, and answered.
“Is this the older sister of student Yu Gahyeon?”
It seemed to be Gahyeon’s homeroom teacher. Even though Gaeul had dropped out of high school, she knew—both from experience and observation—that a homeroom teacher calling a guardian was rarely for good news. She steadied her trembling voice as best she could.
“...Yes. This is Yu Gaeul, Gahyeon’s older sister.”
“Student Yu Gahyeon has assaulted another student. We need a guardian to come in immediately.”
“...Ah.”
Gaeul felt as if she were plunging off a cliff.
“Neither of his parents are answering their phones. Can you reach them?”
Gahyeon’s homeroom teacher demanded contact with the parents as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They had probably tried the father and mother first. Gaeul’s mother had cut all ties with her, Gahyeon, and their father, so she wouldn’t pick up. And knowing how her father usually answered calls, he was likely holed up at a gambling den. There was no one else. Only Gaeul.
So she answered.
“I’m Gahyeon’s guardian.”
The homeroom teacher sounded flustered.
“If you’re his older sister, that makes you a minor, doesn’t it? This really seems like a situation that requires an adult.”
Adult. A word Yu Gaeul had heard until she was sick of it. People always demanded maturity from her. And she had tried to live up to it—enduring what she wanted, giving up, looking the other way. People would praise her for it. You’ve grown up. You’re an adult now. They used those words like compliments.
But the moment a real crisis hit, they didn’t want Yu Gaeul. They wanted an adult. One who didn’t endure or give up.
Gaeul told the teacher, “They won’t answer. There are no adults.”
“Haah… what are we supposed to do? Is there really no other guardian? An uncle? A grandfather?”
“I am!”
The irritation in the teacher’s voice made suppressed emotions surge inside Gaeul. But she knew that kind of outburst was exactly what a child would do, so she forced herself to calm down and spoke as steadily as she could.
“I’m Gahyeon’s guardian.”
Just saying those words took every ounce of strength she had.
“Please tell me where I need to go.”
The homeroom teacher sighed softly and gave her the location.
“But you really must contact an actual adult!”
After hanging up, Gaeul asked the trainer for permission and left the building. She hesitated over taking a taxi but headed for the subway to save money. The train was packed with adults in sharp suits, each carrying cakes, department store shopping bags, or gifts.
Is there some kind of event?
Gaeul checked the calendar on her cheap smartphone. Only then did she realize tomorrow was Children’s Day.
...Ah.
One man was on the phone with his family, his voice overflowing with love. A woman was scolding what appeared to be her husband—apparently he’d bought the wrong present for the kids. And there was a father and daughter walking hand in hand with pure affection.
The sight made Gaeul’s nose sting. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.
At that moment, Seon Taeyang came to mind.
I’ll become the adult for a kid like you.
The strange man who called her a kid and declared himself her adult. The man who closed the distance between them so bewilderingly fast. The man whose words sounded like bravado but who kept every single one. The man who felt utterly reliable.
With trembling hands, Gaeul lifted her phone and called him. It connected almost immediately.
“Hey, Gaeul. What’s going on?”
“...”
Just hearing his voice made the emotions she’d been holding back rise in her throat. But she didn’t want to show that side to Seon Taeyang.
“Gaeul?”
“...Manager Seon.”
“Yeah, Gaeul. Speak comfortably. Do you need my help with something?”
His voice was unbearably kind.
“...I need your help.”
Because it was him, she could say the words she hadn’t spoken since she was a little girl.
“Please help me.”
“Don’t you see this face?”
A woman in her mid-forties wearing a black fur coat shouted loud enough to echo through the entire teachers’ office.
“Blood is running down my child’s face like this—do you really think this half-hearted response is appropriate?”
The teacher standing beside her broke into a nervous sweat, desperately trying to calm her down.
“Oh dear, Dae-su’s mother, please calm down. It’s just a fight between children, so...”
“Between children?”
The woman snorted with open mockery.
“Ha… It’s exactly because teachers have this lukewarm attitude that things have escalated this far.”
The middle-aged woman made a show of slamming her luxury-logo bag onto the desk.
“This is clearly an act of violence.”
Her sagging cheeks jiggled with every word.
“Shouldn’t we be discussing proper compensation first? We need to consider the aftereffects, the psychological trauma—everything.”
She kept pressuring the teacher as if more money would magically appear the harder she pushed. Gaeul might as well not have existed. The woman’s poodle-like jiggling cheeks, her thick caked-on makeup, her oily glistening forehead—Gaeul found all of it repulsive.
“I’ll pay.”
Gaeul didn’t hold back.
“How much do you want?”
Only then did the woman finally look at her.
“Hah… Little girl. Do I look like I’m here begging for money to you?”
Gaeul thought she did. To her, this middle-aged woman was no different from a thug using her victim status as a weapon to extort cash. A proper parent would have rushed their injured child to the hospital immediately. Instead, this woman was parading her son’s wounds like evidence for everyone to see. She was like a driver exaggerating a dent to squeeze every last penny from an insurance claim. Her intentions looked utterly ugly no matter how you sliced it.
From experience, Gaeul knew that bowing her head and apologizing to people like this was the fastest way to lower the demanded price. But she didn’t want to. Not in front of her little brother Gahyeon. She refused to show him her lowering her head before an adult like this. She hadn’t struggled so hard to become an adult just to do that.
So Gaeul lifted her chin and spoke clearly.
“You’re doing this because you want money, aren’t you? I’ll give it to you. So let’s just end it here.”
“Um, Gahyeon’s older sister! Please calm down first...”
The middle-aged woman twisted her face into something demonic.
“This ill-bred little bitch...”
She clenched her fist so tightly it seemed like it might crack.
“Forget it. I have nothing to say to a brat like you. Go get your parents.”
“...”
If she could have reached their parents, Gaeul wouldn’t have come here alone. The middle-aged woman, the homeroom teacher, and Gaeul all knew that.
“Why aren’t you answering? Is it because you come from such a worthless family?”
“Dae-su’s mother, please calm down a little.”
But the woman ignored the teacher and kept firing sharp words as if she’d found the perfect target.
“There must be someone who gave birth to you and that thing, right? …Aha, were you abandoned?”
Gaeul saw Gahyeon’s anxious face watching her. His eyes were filled with pity, guilt, regret—and sympathy.
That hurt far more than the woman’s vulgar shouting or the teacher’s subtle disdain. Tears blurred her vision. One more word and they would spill over.
“Gaeul has never been abandoned. I’d appreciate it if you watched your language.”
At that moment, a familiar voice came from behind her.
“If you don’t want to get beaten like a son, that is.”
It was Seon Taeyang.