The Seed of Inferiority
"Well, well~ if it isn't the genius actor himself!"
"Keep your voice down."
I did my best to ignore the heat creeping up my face and answered flatly. Of course, the moment Noh Bihyuk piped up with "Whoa, your ears are literally turning red! You embarrassed? Pfft—Park Ha, look at his ears," my composure crumbled on the spot.
Park Haeun, who had been smacking Noh Bihyuk on the back and telling him to quit showing off, took one look at my ears and started laughing too.
"Yeonjae, it's just your ears that are red. Do ears really turn red when you're embarrassed?"
"I don't know…. But could you please, please keep it down."
I'd been in the classroom for all of a few minutes, and I was already drained. The entire walk to school, the other kids had stared at me so hard I half wondered if my face was going to spring a leak.
I figured Noh Bihyuk was teasing me with that 'genius actor' nonsense because he'd picked it up from somewhere, and it turned out Actor Lee Jeonghyeon had posted something on his social media.
The photo posted alongside it showed Actor Lee Jeonghyeon carrying me in his arms as he made the rounds of the film set. It had been taken from a distance, so my face wasn't clearly visible, but there was no mistaking the way Lee Jeonghyeon was beaming down at me.
Yesterday he'd asked if it was okay to put the picture up, and I'd told him to go ahead without a second thought. If I'd known Noh Bihyuk would get this insufferable about it, I would have said no.
"Wow, my best friend's showing up on frickin' superstar Lee Jeonghyeon's feed… That's unreal. My friend from elementary school turns out to be a genius actor?"
"Noh Bihyuk, knock it off."
"Lee Yeonjae, you only use my full name when you're mad, don't you? Please stop doing it — acting like that shames me, okay?"
Noh Bihyuk let out an exaggerated "Aww~" and turned on the aegyo.
Park Haeun and I grimaced and looked away in perfect unison. Haeun even muttered a small curse under her breath.
"Ugh, seriously… Noh Bi, if you're going to do that, at least give me a warning first. So I can brace myself."
"Hey, what can I say? I've got a face made for it."
"Good grief…."
When Noh Bihyuk tried the aegyo a second time, Park Haeun whipped her head away with impressive speed, stood up, and marched straight back to her own seat.
Come to think of it, she's no pushover herself. Up until last year I'd honestly assumed she was just a shy kid.
"Lee Yeonjae, do you really hate my aegyo that much? A face like this going to waste — isn't that a loss for humanity?"
Noh Bihyuk turned around with a wistful look on his face, but I stood up without granting him a reply.
Coolly ignoring his wounded expression, I slid my key into the locker lock and turned it.
Then, just before pulling the door open, something from yesterday floated back to me.
"Bihyuk, open this for me, would you?"
"Huh? Why?"
"Just because. Please."
"Mm~ Okay! Bihyukie's got it covered."
Noh Bihyuk, who had been sitting there all dejected, hurried over at my call, puzzled but quick about it.
The kid goes overboard with the jokes, but he's a good kid at heart. Honestly, his looks aren't bad either. He jokes about it like it's nothing, but he's fully aware of it himself.
It would have been stranger, after all, if a boy who'd received three confessions in less than two weeks into the new semester had no idea how well-favored he was.
"Watch your hands."
"…? Sure."
The moment Noh Bihyuk opened the locker with a face full of questions, the door swung wide and the contents came spilling out. Tissues, scraps of paper, trash — the whole cascade seemed to fall in slow motion.
I stared intently at the gap in the door, and the instant something glinting caught my eye, I thrust out my hand.
"What's that? A marble?"
"Yeah. Whoa, it's heavy."
I picked up the sphere that had dropped onto the jacket I'd wound around my hand ahead of time. It was no ordinary marble — it was made of metal and had real heft to it. Palm-sized, too.
If I hadn't remembered what Mist told me and opened that thing without a care, it would've landed square on my foot. That's a bruised bone at minimum.
"Geez, are you okay? You didn't get hurt?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
First misfortune of the day, successfully blocked. I answered Park Haeun's worried question while mentally running back through the incidents still to come. I made a note to change where I kept my locker key — and felt Noh Bihyuk beside me sneaking glances my way.
"Are you just going to leave it? If you let it go, he's going to keep this up."
"Do you know who did it?"
"Hey, just because I sometimes pretend to be oblivious doesn't mean I actually am."
He looked at me like I'd said something absurd, so I laughed and told him I hadn't meant it that way.
"Well, there's no proof either way."
"True enough. Give me a shout if you need a hand. So how'd you know anyway? Did you see it beforehand?"
I gave Noh Bihyuk a vague answer as he turned the iron ball over in his hand, then glanced subtly to the side.
The moment my head turned, his eyes met mine as if he'd been waiting for exactly that. A boy with a nasty little smile hung on his lips was staring straight at me.
"Wow… what drama is he filming? Striking his dramatic villain pose all by himself over there."
"Pfft—!"
The laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.
It was the genuine admiration in Noh Bihyuk's tone that made it funnier. I could feel the glare boring into me intensifying, but there was no stuffing a laugh back in once it had escaped.
Staring at me isn't going to put holes in me… what a waste of effort.
I held Oh Seunghyun's gaze for a moment, still laughing, then turned my back on him. Time to get my textbook out, I supposed.
Oh Seunghyun clenched his teeth as he watched Lee Yeonjae turn away, wearing something almost like a smirk.
He had waited the entire time, wondering when the guy would finally open his locker — and Lee Yeonjae had sidestepped the trap with the unhurried ease of someone who'd known about it all along. Watching Park Haeun rush over with a face full of concern for someone who hadn't been hurt at all made his stomach churn with stress.
Why is she even bothering with someone like Lee Yeonjae?
Oh Seunghyun genuinely wished Park Haeun would curate the people she kept around her. It had bothered him whenever he caught her chatting with Noh Bihyuk too, but since they'd known each other since kindergarten, he'd let it slide. But Lee Yeonjae? Of all people, Lee Yeonjae at her side?
Oh Seunghyun's mind drifted back to a day at the academy a year ago — the day Park Haeun had brought up Lee Yeonjae first.
"I got put in the same class as Lee Yeonjae this time."
"Lee Yeonjae?"
"Yeah. Weren't you in his class last year? What's he like?"
Watching Park Haeun ask with eyes that sparkled, Oh Seunghyun had pulled a sour expression. As someone who'd shared a classroom with Lee Yeonjae from first grade through fourth, it bothered him to hear the girl he liked talk about Lee Yeonjae of all people. There were also things he'd heard from his older brother, who attended a different school.
"Honestly. He's… something else. Best not to talk to him if you can help it. The rumors and all."
"Oh, the thing about people getting hurt around Lee Yeonjae? I mean, I've heard that too… but does that actually make sense in the real world?"
She's not some drama protagonist. When Park Haeun laughed it off as nonsense, something in him bristled. He'd never particularly thought one way or the other about Lee Yeonjae, but the fact that he couldn't, even as a lie, call an face like that ugly got under his skin all the more.
That low-grade restlessness was why Oh Seunghyun had let the words slip out of his mouth.
"Whatever. Someone died because of him."
"What?"
"My brother told me — he goes to a different school. Said the kid got his adoption dissolved. And at the place he was adopted into—"
"Hey. Stop right there. I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."
"Why??"
He'd been speaking carefully, voice lowered — and then Park Haeun's face twisted all at once and she shot to her feet. Startled, he grabbed her arm, and after a brief hesitation she sighed and sat back down.
"Haah… Things like that — true or not, you don't just say them out loud about people."
"It's not made up. My hyung is close with the second son of the family that adopted him. He heard it directly."
"That's not the point. No — actually, you're right, it's my fault for bringing up someone who wasn't even there. Anyway, don't repeat any of this to the other kids."
Park Haeun had stood up with an uncomfortable look on her face. And of course the academy teacher had walked in right at that moment, leaving no opening to say anything more.
After that, Oh Seunghyun tried talking to her plenty of times, but for some reason she always seemed distant with him, and it honestly stung.
She's keeping me at arm's length over some talk about Lee Yeonjae?
No — what had he even done? If she'd been pushing him away for tormenting Lee Yeonjae, fine, he could understand that. All he'd done was repeat something he'd heard, and suddenly he was the one being shut out?
Separate from the hurt and the irritation, his feelings for Park Haeun hadn't changed one bit. It annoyed him that she still looked so pretty to him — and every time it did, he found subtle ways to make Lee Yeonjae's life harder. He'd have kids "accidentally" throw a ball at him; he'd spirit his textbook away. Even without any of that, Lee Yeonjae was a kid who got hurt every single day anyway, so no one ever suspected a thing — Lee Yeonjae himself just wandered around without much thought about it.
He'd never gone so far as to genuinely cross the line.
It was true that he'd been furious seeing Park Haeun hanging around Lee Yeonjae during the field trip, but he truly hadn't intended to cause an accident that big.
'Acting like you do is the worst thing about you. Stop pretending you know me.'
That day, without ever managing a proper confession, Oh Seunghyun heard the words he least wanted to hear from the girl he liked.
In sixth grade, he'd finally gotten his wish — the same class as Park Haeun. But Noh Bihyuk and Lee Yeonjae, the two of them grating on his nerves at a single glance, had come along with her.
Noh Bihyuk, who couldn't be bothered to give anyone else the time of day, clung to Lee Yeonjae like he'd been slathered in glue. It felt as if the entire world was staging a hidden-camera prank at his expense.
What in the world was Lee Yeonjae?
His swelling inferiority complex hit its peak with the news that Lee Yeonjae had appeared in a drama. He hadn't wanted to watch, but it gnawed at him too much and he caved in the end — and seeing Lee Yeonjae shining even beside that Lee Jeonghyeon ate him up inside.
What enraged him even more was the simple fact that, no matter how much it burned, he could not bring himself to say, 'Lee Yeonjae is actually hideous.'
Lee Yeonjae had been that good-looking from the day he enrolled — enough to be the talk of the school. Even Noh Bihyuk, who was already sweeping up business cards from entertainment agencies, looked faintly ordinary standing next to him.
The reason no one had paid that face any attention all this time was simple: accidents happened around him too many times to count. An unsettling something that couldn't be hidden. An ominous something that kept people from getting close.
Those were the words that pointed at Lee Yeonjae — not nonsense like "genius actor."
Oh Seunghyun glared at Lee Yeonjae as the boy gathered his textbook without a care in the world and settled into his seat.
'Since when did he start looking that relaxed?'
Part of it was surely Park Haeun going around defending Lee Yeonjae to the other kids — but setting that aside, the accidents that actually happened around him really had thinned out. The rumor that you'd get hurt standing near Lee Yeonjae had once been rampant, yet now the whole class looked at him with nothing but curiosity in their eyes.
Nobody gave the old rumors a second thought anymore. Why on earth had it turned out this way? If it was because the accidents had stopped, then—
'…Then if the accidents start up again, would everything go back to how it was?'
Oh Seunghyun had the thought without meaning to.
It was the beginning of an inferiority so wretched it would shove his own life into a bottomless pit — one that, from that point on, he would no longer be able to stop himself.