Subjugating the Bully Girl (4)
Morning came, and Dong-hyun stepped out of the shower with the solemn air of a man who had just performed a ritual purification.
"Alright... Let's do this."
Today was the day of reckoning.
A week of nonstop training had raised his overall stats. Seven days wasn't long, but the intensity of those days had been something else entirely.
Strength, Agility, and Resistance had each gone up by one. Stamina and Endurance had climbed by two. Better still, the Frailty and Two Left Feet traits had vanished. The training seemed to have burned Frailty out of him, and those awkward, dance-like movements he'd been practicing at the mineral spring had apparently purged the clumsiness as well.
He hadn't become some overwhelming powerhouse, but he was at least in a condition where he could protect himself.
He changed into clothes that were neat but easy to move in, and set out for school.
The noisy classroom fell silent the instant Dong-hyun walked in.
During the week he'd been gone, Kim Tae-yang and his crew had been seething, hunting for any sign of Sun-woo, and the atmosphere in the room had turned ugly. Now that Sun-woo had finally shown his face after a full week, everyone could feel the powder keg about to blow.
In that silence, a pair of eyes burned into him.
Kim Tae-yang. Having his phone stolen by a loser had left him looking like a fool, and he'd been grinding his teeth over it ever since.
"So you showed up. You're dead today."
Tae-yang sneered at him. But there was a thread of tension in his voice that hadn't been there the first time he'd dealt with Sun-woo. Getting hit back by the weakling he'd always stomped on had snapped him wide awake.
Someone else had been waiting just as hungrily: Yang Se-hyeok. He stepped forward first at Tae-yang's words. After that massive frame of his had been completely knocked out by a single punch from Sun-woo, he'd become a laughingstock. He'd claimed he'd just let his guard down, but the fact remained that one shot from Sun-woo had put him out cold. There was no explaining that away.
He'd been dying for Sun-woo to come back. And now the man himself had appeared.
Se-hyeok started walking toward him, and every eye in the classroom locked onto the two of them. But it was Dong-hyun who closed the distance first, throwing a punch before Se-hyeok could even get close.
First strike wins!
That was the very first thing Cirian had taught him.
Se-hyeok had been approaching with a confident stride, and he never saw it coming. Dong-hyun's left fist slammed into his jaw, and the straight that followed sent him crumpling forward. A clean, textbook straight — the first technique Cirian had drilled into him, the kind of punch that, if you weren't formally trained and you ate it clean, would put you down in a single shot.
Leaving Se-hyeok on the floor, Dong-hyun walked toward Kim Tae-yang.
"Wh-what the hell."
The nightmare from a week ago came flooding back.
"Hey. Come with me."
Dong-hyun spoke to Tae-yang, his voice quiet and cold.
"Have you lost your goddamn mind? Guh—!"
Tae-yang tried to sound tough, desperate not to show how rattled he was. Dong-hyun didn't wait. He kicked Tae-yang square in the chest while the guy was still sitting down. Tae-yang flew backward in his chair and tumbled across the floor in an undignified heap.
Only then did the two guys flanking Tae-yang rush him.
Dong-hyun slapped the first one across the face with an open palm. The guy clutched his face, the blow around his eye socket so hard he could barely open his eyes. In that same instant the second guy's punch came flying, and Dong-hyun stepped inside it, driving a short uppercut up from under the guy's chest.
Crack!
Two teeth went flying. The guy dropped. Without pausing, Dong-hyun threw a hook into the temple of the one still clutching his face and put him down too. Then he walked over to Tae-yang, who was still on the floor, and planted his foot on the guy's throat.
"Gaaah!"
The truth was that even with the video, he couldn't actually get these chaebol heirs punished through official channels. And more than that, he had to break them himself.
"You're insane! When my dad finds out, you're finished!"
Kim Se-bin shrieked from the side, losing it completely.
Dong-hyun didn't hold back just because she was a girl. He drove his fist straight into her screaming face.
"Aaaagh!!"
Se-bin, who had never been hit in her life, rolled across the floor. The pain was one thing, but being punched and sent sprawling in front of the entire class was a humiliation she'd never tasted.
"I don't go easy on girls. Watch your mouth."
Se-bin nodded frantically. She'd spent her whole life standing over other people. Being on the receiving end was a first.
"You remember that warehouse from before? Follow me there. Let's finish this. Or we can do it right here, if you'd rather."
"F-fine."
Kim Tae-yang, who had nothing going for him except his family name, folded. Maybe he just wanted to get out of this situation. The moment he agreed, Dong-hyun took his foot off Tae-yang's chest and walked back to his own desk.
The three guys Dong-hyun had beaten were carried to the nurse's office, and the classroom settled back into a silence as if nothing had happened. Tae-yang sat there grinding his teeth, but he didn't make another move.
Even during class, Tae-yang kept fidgeting with his phone. Using a phone during a university lecture was against the rules, but everyone already knew who Tae-yang's family was, so the professors looked the other way.
He wasn't calling his parents. He was contacting Han Su-yeon.
Han Su-yeon was the top dog at this university. You might wonder what kind of university even had a "top dog," but this was that kind of world. She was a woman, but she was the ace of Hankuk University's athletic department and a reigning women's martial arts champion. In truth, she had no interest in the whole delinquent scene. She just hung around Kim Tae-yang a little.
Her sponsor was the Hansung Group — Tae-yang's family company — and tagging along with him made life easier in all sorts of ways. That was the extent of it.
Tae-yang asked her for help. Even as a chaebol heir, running home to tattle that he'd gotten beaten up as a college student would have been too humiliating to live down. Su-yeon found it annoying, but she'd taken plenty of favors from him, so she said fine.
Tae-yang didn't stop there. He also reached out to the older guys he ran with. He trusted Su-yeon, but this time he intended to crush Choi Sun-woo so thoroughly the guy would never crawl back up again.
Dong-hyun wasn't sitting around waiting for them to get ready, either. He'd packed a weapon in his bag, just in case they brought more people than he expected or things went sideways. But he was fairly certain they wouldn't go that far. The whole reason Tae-yang had targeted Sun-woo in the first place was to earn his family's approval. He wasn't about to call in the family's full power just to take down one guy.
And then there was Han Su-yeon.
She'd never laid a hand on Sun-woo herself, but her presence alone was enough to make his knees go weak. She had that kind of charisma. Han Su-yeon had been a thorough bystander — and that, more than anything, had been what made it so miserable for Sun-woo.
According to Dong-hyun's inherited memories, Han Su-yeon and Choi Sun-woo had been close since middle school. Their mothers had been friends, so the two of them had grown up around each other. They'd even stuck together at first after getting into the same university. Then Sun-woo became Kim Tae-yang's target, and she put distance between them.
Maybe that was the practical choice. But the betrayal Sun-woo had felt in that moment came through to Dong-hyun as if it were his own. At the very least, the Han Su-yeon that Sun-woo had known was someone capable. If she'd stood by him, she could have protected him.
Instead, she'd attached herself to Kim Tae-yang. Her own future got a lot more comfortable. And because of that choice, Choi Sun-woo's life had plunged straight into the abyss.
When class ended, Dong-hyun packed up and headed for the warehouse — the same warehouse where the old Sun-woo had been put through hell. For Sun-woo, it was a place of nightmares. For Dong-hyun, it was the start of a new opportunity.
The warehouse was empty. But Dong-hyun knew they would come. He waited, unhurried.
He was stretching, taking his time, when people started filing in from outside. His targets — Kim Tae-yang, Han Su-yeon, and Kim Se-bin — walked in, followed by four more guys. They had some size on them. They looked like they actually knew how to fight.
The numbers coming through the door were exactly what Dong-hyun had expected. If he used everything Cirian had taught him, he could handle them.
The problem was Han Su-yeon, standing behind them. Based on Sun-woo's memories, her movement was on another level. But he had no choice. To break her, he had to beat her with skill. There was no other way.
Kim Tae-yang wore a confident look — whether he was counting on the numbers he'd brought or on Han Su-yeon, it was hard to say.
The time for the showdown had come.