The Ghost from High School
From childhood, Yeong-jun's life had been a world apart from any real contact with girls. More precisely, he had never even managed ordinary human relationships.
His school years had kept him locked at the absolute bottom of the classroom food chain.
"Hey, Kim Yeong-jun. Go buy some bread from the snack shop. Keep the change."
"Ah, fuck. He reeks if you get near him. Wash yourself once in a while, will you?"
The class iljin turned Yeong-jun into their personal punching bag whenever the mood struck. Baseless mockery, open contempt, and casual violence tossed his way for pure amusement. Curling up in the corner of the classroom and enduring their laughter had been his everyday reality.
Each time, Yeong-jun bit his lip and repeated the same words inside his head. Even when misery and injustice made tears prick at his eyes, what else could he do?
Study. Study like a madman and succeed no matter what.
Those swaggering thugs who threw their weight around now would eventually kneel before money and power once they stepped into the real world.
If he clawed his way to genuine success through bone-grinding effort and stood somewhere those pieces of trash could never even look up to, then this kind of nightmare humiliation would never happen again.
So I have to endure it for now. Grit my teeth, keep studying, and prove myself with my own effort. That's the only way.
Of course, it was never that easy to stay calm.
"You fucking study every single day?"
"Hey, look at Yeong-jun reading alone again. So boring."
Bang! A desk was kicked. His pencil case hit the floor. Pencils scattered everywhere. Yeong-jun said nothing. He simply bent down and picked them up one by one. Nearby, girls giggled. That laughter dug deeper into his chest than any fist.
What do girls like that think of someone like me?
Just the thought made his face burn. Girls he had never even spoken to properly. Merely watching them from afar made his heart feel ready to burst. Yet he lacked the courage to approach them—he was too afraid even to meet their eyes.
It was not only the fists that crushed him. While the male iljin battered his body, the female iljin who clustered around them carved up his mind.
"Hey, Kim Yeong-jun. Where do you think you're looking? Eyes down. Ugh, seriously, you make me sick."
"Leave him. He's going to live like a pathetic loser forever anyway. Hey, doesn't even the sound of him breathing creep you out? Total extreme hate. Kya-hah!"
Some tore into his pride with open disgust.
"Hey, Yeong-jun. You finished the homework again, right? Mind showing us?"
"Wow, true study bug. But why is your handwriting so messy? Hands shaking? How pitiful."
Others used him with sly precision. He hated the second type more. It was not simply because of the fake confession pranks they had pulled on him years earlier.
The worst of them all, though, were the two iljin girls named Min-ju and Ji-eun.
Whenever Min-ju tormented him, Ji-eun would chime in from the side.
"Min-ju, stop it. Yeong-jun looks like he's about to cry. Can't you see the tears behind his glasses?"
Yet Yeong-jun only hung his head lower. He never fought back. Under the desk his tightly clenched fists simply trembled.
Ugly.
Smelly.
Probably never even held a girl's hand.
Words that dug straight into his heart. Every time he heard them, Yeong-jun repeated the same vow inside.
Later…
The hunger to live better than them. Far better.
Later I'll succeed for sure. I'll live so much better than you. Make lots of money, drive a nice car, walk around with pretty girls, and look down on you the same way you're looking down on me right now.
While those empty-headed girls wasted their lives scraping the bottom, he would stand tall and successful. And someday he would laugh in their faces. That quiet desire always burned in one corner of his chest.
Because of it, Yeong-jun's life became a merciless hamster wheel.
Wake up, wash his face, eat, head to school. The moment classes ended he went straight to the academy. When the academy finished he returned home and sat in his study room. He never crawled into bed before two in the morning. When the alarm rang, the same day began again.
He kept an English vocabulary book in his hand even while chewing food. Even the short walk to the bathroom felt too precious to waste, so he ran math formulas through his head.
There were no weekends. No friends, no romance, no outings. Only sitting at a desk solving problems, solving more problems, taking mock exams, and organizing error notebooks.
What meaning does any of this even have?
Sometimes, in the dead of a completely exhausted night, that thought slipped through. Staring at the faint moonlight outside the window, Yeong-jun gave a self-mocking smile.
Is living like this really the right way?
But every time, he remembered the jeers of the iljin girls who had mocked him.
No. It has to mean something. It must.
And so, on the day of the college entrance exam, Yeong-jun took the test with quiet resolve. On the day the results were released he sat in front of the monitor, checked his scores, and quietly clenched his fist.
Accepted — Korea University School of Medicine
A place so famous that the mere name made people stir. Yeong-jun had walked in with his head held high.
Now I live in a completely different league!
He started dressing neatly. He worked out and built his body. He even underwent vision correction surgery and finally took off his glasses. From that point on, no one anywhere called him a jjintta.
Medical school was harsher than high school had ever been. But the pain was familiar to Yeong-jun. He even enjoyed the environment. He stayed up all night reading anatomy textbooks, raised his hand first during practicals, and steadily worked through research papers.
Perhaps that was why his classmates called him a monster.
Even among the national geniuses gathered in medical school, Yeong-jun stood out through sheer stubborn grit. Thanks to that, he succeeded in claiming a place in the most fiercely competitive specialties among medical students—Pi-An-Seong.
And among those, he earned his specialist certification in plastic surgery.
And now.
In the very heart of Gangnam, Seoul, on the most glamorous boulevard infamous for its crushing rents, he had succeeded in hanging his own sign on the finest floor of a prime building.
Yeong-jun Plastic Surgery
On the day he first hung that sign, he stared up at it for a long time.
The jjintta Kim Yeong-jun who once trembled before the iljin no longer existed. From this day forward there was only a confident plastic surgery specialist.
From the very first month of opening, the appointment book was packed solid. Word of mouth spread through social media, and even celebrity managers began to appear. Yeong-jun treated every single patient with genuine care.
It was an extremely busy life. Still, it felt good.
At seven in the morning he opened his eyes in a Gangnam apartment.
Around eight he drove his Porsche sports car to the clinic.
He left the hospital late every evening, yet the money in his account piled up like a snowball.
Thanks to that, Yeong-jun Plastic Surgery became one of the most successful clinics even in Gangnam. The number of specialists grew to five. Consultation rooms and operating theaters stayed fully booked. The staff smiled and said, "All thanks to the Director," and Yeong-jun simply nodded in quiet acknowledgment.
Today was an afternoon no different from any other.
"Director, the three o'clock patient has arrived."
Yeong-jun flipped through the chart and nodded.
"Name is… Choi Min-ju?"
His hand paused for a fraction of a second at the name that felt both familiar and strange. Then he shook his head. It had to be a coincidence—someone with the same name.
The consultation room door opened and a woman walked in. In that instant Yeong-jun felt as though time itself had stopped. Long straight hair, sophisticated makeup, a luxury handbag swinging from her arm.
The moment he saw her face, an old memory crawled up from a dark corner of his mind.
Choi Min-ju.
The iljin girl who had crushed him mentally from elementary school, through middle school, all the way to high school.
"How pitiful~"
"Four-eyes."
"Have you ever even dated a girl?"
The things she had said still lived in his memory.
Min-ju closed the door behind her, sat down, and immediately spoke in a bright voice.
"Hello, Doctor. I just came for some Botox and Ulthera today. And maybe a little work on the jawline…"
Her words cut off mid-sentence.
She stared straight at Yeong-jun's face. Her eyes narrowed. She tilted her head slightly. Then the corner of her mouth slowly curled upward.
"…Huh?"
A strange light flickered in Min-ju's eyes. A small, disbelieving laugh slipped out.
"…Jjintta?"
The single word left Yeong-jun unable to speak. He could only look at her with calm eyes.
Now certain, Min-ju leaned back in the chair, lifted one corner of her mouth, and grinned. It was the exact same smile she had worn while mocking him in the classroom years ago.
"Wow, it really is the jjintta? Yeong-jun. When I saw the name I thought maybe… Wait, you're the director here?"
She covered her mouth with one hand and let out a soft laugh—genuinely surprised.
"Running into a jjintta here of all places? Unbelievable… But damn, jjintta, you actually made it? Became a doctor? And a plastic surgery director at that?"
Min-ju looked him up and down and kept laughing. The Porsche key on the desk, the expensive surgical gown, even his current confident appearance—all of it seemed to amuse her.
"Wow, this is hilarious. Back then you did nothing but study… and you actually made it all the way here? Impressive, jjintta."
For a moment Yeong-jun felt as if he could not breathe. Memories of the past flashed like lightning and closed around his throat. His fingertips trembled slightly.
He forced himself to keep his voice steady. He tried to stand tall with the dignity of a specialist.
"…Do you know me?"
He asked with the most expressionless face he could manage, pretending not to recognize her.
That's right. I'm the director now. This woman is just another patient.
He told himself that as he spoke, yet his voice came out smaller and stiffer than he intended. His gaze could not quite meet Min-ju's eyes and drifted downward of its own accord.
It was PTSD.
The trauma he had believed he had buried for years roared back to life the instant she said the word "jjintta." His heart hammered. Cold sweat dampened his palms.
Seeing that, Min-ju's smile grew even darker.
"Pfft."
She gave a soft laugh and crossed her legs. Then she stared straight at him with the eyes of someone who had just rediscovered a long-lost toy.
"Ah, I knew it. I figured as much."
Min-ju slowly leaned forward and added in a low, almost whispering voice,
"You're my toy, after all. You."