The Fate I Rewrote
I had been chafing under the anxiety and pressure of time that simply refused to keep moving — and then, in that very instant of stillness, I saw it.
Park Ha-eun was dragging Oh Seunghyun away from me, trying to put distance between us, no matter how much she told him to shut his endless, flapping mouth.
And there, far away in the air, was a small object flying toward us.
"Whoa—!"
The voice of the one who had thrown it, no doubt — thick with panic.
The small object struck the craft box sitting above Park Ha-eun's head, and with a sharp crack, I watched the glass shatter and come raining down.
In that moment, everything stopped.
Did I breathe? I might have. I might not have.
While Ha-eun and Oh Seunghyun stood frozen, staring upward in shock, I clenched my teeth and ran toward the glittering glass shards falling through the air.
I have no idea what was going through my head as I ran.
When I came back to myself, I had shoved Oh Seunghyun aside and was cradling Park Ha-eun's face in my hands.
The moment I felt the softness against my palms, something burst — and with that sound, everything that had been frozen snapped back into motion.
"Whoa. What the hell."
"Shouldn't we get a teacher?"
"That's gotta hurt like hell. Jeez…."
My ears, which had been stuffed full of dead silence, suddenly cleared as if I'd surfaced from underwater, and the sounds around me came flooding back.
I stayed quiet, still caught in that frozen moment, breathing shallowly — and felt something wrapped in my arms trembling.
"Y-Yeonjae. What… what just happened?"
"Hold on."
Park Ha-eun was shaking, but she still tried to push my hands away to assess the situation — so I stopped her.
I couldn't be sure it was over yet.
Behind Oh Seunghyun, who was still half-crouched on the floor in shock, I could see our homeroom teacher running toward us, her face twisted into a fierce scowl.
She'd been sprinting over without any idea what had happened, but the moment she saw my hand — blood pouring out of it in streams — she looked utterly horrified.
That cracking sound I'd heard — that must have been glass embedding itself in my skin.
It was only after we'd moved to the infirmary inside the museum that I finally let go of Park Ha-eun's face.
The second she saw my hand, she burst into tears.
To be fair, the glass had gone in fairly deep, and there was quite a lot of blood. To a kid who wasn't used to the sight of it, it must have looked gruesome.
The one mercy was that aside from the back of my hand, I had almost no other injuries. The craft box wasn't all that big to begin with, and both Park Ha-eun and I had been wearing long sleeves and long pants — that helped too.
"Are you okay? No — of course you're not okay…. I'm sorry. It's all because of me…."
Even though my hand was already wrapped snugly in bandages, with no more blood showing, Park Ha-eun kept crying.
She couldn't bring herself to even touch my hand, flinching every time she got close. I watched her hesitant fingers for a moment, then lifted my eyes to her face.
Her cheeks were flushed from gasping and sobbing, but they were completely unmarked. Not a single scratch.
"…Haha."
"…? Why are you laughing?"
The sound had slipped out of me before I knew it, and Park Ha-eun looked up, her rabbit-red eyes going wide.
No matter how I tried to hold it in, the absurd little laughter kept bubbling up.
I changed it. The fate.
That godforsaken misfortune.
"I'm really glad. Haha."
"…You're saying you're GLAD? Right now?!"
Park Ha-eun, her face blazing red, gave my back a light smack.
Ouch. Her hand was sharper than I'd expected, actually.
I touched the spot where it stung and deliberately let out an "ow," and Park Ha-eun muttered that I shouldn't be faking being hurt even as she reached over and soothed the spot she'd hit.
Her cheeks had gone pink — maybe out of sheer embarrassment at how shameless I was being.
***
Park Ha-eun stole a glance at Lee Yeonjae.
The corners of his mouth were curved upward in a faint smile, and it sat there quite beautifully.
'…He really is handsome.'
Lee Yeonjae was a celebrity at school — there wasn't a single student who didn't know him. The first reason for his fame was his face, the second was his face, and lastly, there was his face.
Even now, she couldn't forget the moment she first saw him. It was the elementary school entrance ceremony.
'Who's that?'
'Is he a child actor?'
He'd captivated every gaze in an auditorium packed with nearly a thousand people — did that need any further explanation? Amid the noisy chatter of kids who had only just shaken off their kindergarten days, he sat alone and quiet, composed as some dignified scholar, and it was a striking thing to see. Everyone stared at Lee Yeonjae. Lee Yeonjae, for his part, kept his eyes fixed only on the book in his hands.
There had even been a time when Park Ha-eun's close friend got placed in the same class as him, and Ha-eun had been jealous.
But that jealousy had evaporated in less than a month.
And small wonder — what made Lee Yeonjae every bit as famous as his looks was his misfortune.
On the very first day of first grade, Lee Yeonjae had simply kept reading his book, unbothered by all the eyes on him. That blunt, closed-off demeanor radiated a firm keep away, and yet some kids had worked up the courage to approach him anyway.
The problem was that the kids loitering nearby started getting hurt, day after day.
'Bad things happen to you if you stand next to Lee Yeonjae.'
It didn't take long for that ridiculous whisper among the kids to start sounding believable. On the days Lee Yeonjae was on milk duty, the milk cartons would somehow all be burst open; every piece of chalk he raised to write an answer on the board snapped in his fingers.
Because he came back injured no matter what he was asked to do, the teachers gradually stopped calling on him.
And through it all — through the bleeding and the scraped skin and the accidents — Lee Yeonjae's expression never changed. Serene. Detached. That very expression gave some kids the creeps, to the point that they were genuinely afraid of him.
Years of rumors like that were more than enough to make Park Ha-eun uneasy. So when she found herself in the same class as Lee Yeonjae in fifth grade, she'd been on edge — though in truth, nothing major had happened in the past six months.
Still, learning that he was her field trip partner wasn't something she could brush off lightly.
She'd come to school with her feelings in a tangle, and when Lee Yeonjae stepped up beside her, she couldn't even look at him properly.
And then he said, "Ha-eun." The shock of hearing Lee Yeonjae's voice up close… only someone who'd lived through it could understand.
His voice was lower than she'd imagined, and his eyes carried a calm she could never find in boys their age. Despite that blunt expression, the way he spoke was gentle.
His gaze, which clung to her anxiously every time she moved, was almost tender.
She knew, of course, how ridiculous it was — and yet for a split second she'd actually thought, Wait. Does he like me?
So really, it was close to impossible not to blush at the sight of Lee Yeonjae, hand wrapped snugly in bandages, smiling and saying that he was just glad she hadn't been hurt.
'He's smiling… I've never seen him smile before.'
The rigid expression muscles that had been locked in place for years coming apart, those thick lashes trembling — it was an intense thing to witness. Those black eyes that all her friends called frightening now looked softer than any shade of brown she'd ever seen.
A wave of awkwardness washed over her, and Park Ha-eun apologized all over again.
"It must hurt a lot. I'm really sorry. It's my fault."
"You're not the one who got me hurt, so don't apologize. And I'm seriously fine. I've been hurt a lot worse than this before."
The way he soothed her was so soft, so kind. That pointlessly gentle voice made her face feel hot, and she hurriedly changed the subject.
"Are you thirsty? I'll go get us something to drink. Is there anything you want?"
"Anything's fine. Just bring whatever you feel like."
"…Okay."
Park Ha-eun barely managed to tear her eyes away from that softly smiling face.
'Why does he keep smiling like that… it's making my head spin.'
Was he always like this? Seriously, a kid who looks like that and is gentle on top of it — shouldn't he be getting abducted somewhere?
Even as she grumbled internally, her honest eyes kept drifting back toward Lee Yeonjae.
She forced her reluctant feet to turn and stepped outside the infirmary — and ran straight into an unexpected nuisance.
"What do you want?"
"…What's with that reaction?"
Oh Seunghyun's face swam into view.
Ugh. Of all the timing — right after I saw something nice.
When Oh Seunghyun fidgeted with an oddly sheepish look, Park Ha-eun frowned at the sheer aggravation of it.
"Spit it out."
"Well, I, uh… wanted to say sorry."
"…? Why would you be sorry?"
What Oh Seunghyun said next was stunning.
He explained that the baseball one of his lackeys had thrown was never supposed to hit the glass craft box. The original plan, he claimed, had just been to whip it past Lee Yeonjae close enough to scare him — the kid who threw it simply couldn't control his strength. That was the nonsense that came out of Oh Seunghyun's mouth.
"So you ordered it. Why?"
"Why do you need to know? I like y—"
"Okay, shut up for a second. Not here."
Park Ha-eun ignored his slightly reddened face and moved them away from the doorway first.
"Oh Seunghyun. You don't need to explain why you did it. I'm not curious."
"…"
"Did you at least apologize to Yeonjae?"
"To Yeon… jae? Why would I?"
Oh Seunghyun was so brazen it went past shameless and came out the other side looking almost angry.
Park Ha-eun gave a hollow laugh and sneered at him.
"'Why would I~?' Wow, unbelievable. A person got hurt because of you, and that's what you have to say?"
"I told you, I never meant for him to get hurt! And I'm saying it blew up like this because of him!"
"What kind of crap are you yelling about now."
"No, seriously! Look, I know I'm not blameless either, but honestly, none of this would've gotten this big if it weren't for him. You've heard all the weird stuff that happens around him — you know it's true!"
Oh Seunghyun blustered on, looking equal parts wronged and furious. He was the perfect illustration of the farting culprit crying "Fire!"
"Fine. Let's say that's true. Then what about the other day, when you made off with Yeonjae's textbook? Was that his fault too?"
"What? Why would I ever do someth—"
"Right. Of course you wouldn't. You just had your friends do it for you, same as this time."
"…"
"Acting like you do is honestly the worst. Don't ever pretend you know me again."
Park Ha-eun walked away, leaving Oh Seunghyun speechless behind her. She was heading for the vending machine she'd spotted earlier when a deflated voice drifted after her.
"…Still. Don't hang around him. I'm only saying that because I've been in his class for four years and seen a lot."
Yep. More garbage that wasn't worth engaging with, right down to the last word.
***
At the vending machine, Park Ha-eun ran into her homeroom teacher — and received an apology.
The teacher said she'd been on edge ever since the traffic accident three weeks ago, that she'd assumed as long as Lee Yeonjae wasn't stuck to someone, nothing would happen, and that she was sorry he'd gotten tangled up in a mess for no reason.
That was the tone of someone who had already decided, with full conviction, that the cause of this whole incident was Lee Yeonjae.
Park Ha-eun had plenty she wanted to say, but the person in front of her was a teacher, so she swallowed it all and offered only one reply: "This didn't happen because of Yeonjae. If it weren't for Yeonjae, I'd be the one who got hurt."
Her teacher mumbled an awkward noncommittal response and drifted away.
Wow. You could've at least bought me a drink before leaving.
"Ugh, he saved me, and what is with these reactions?"
Lee Yeonjae himself was perfectly calm — it was only her, standing beside him, who was about to burst a blood vessel.
He was gentle but indifferent. Even to the rude words and leering stares aimed at him. Even to the garbage Oh Seunghyun had spouted right before the accident, Lee Yeonjae had responded with nothing but his usual blank, unbothered eyes.
"It's not like any of this would've happened if it weren't for Oh Seunghyun in the first place…."
And now the other kids would spread the rumor that Lee Yeonjae did his Lee Yeonjae thing again.
Wait. Hold on.
'…Is this how all of his rumors got started?'