Gender Equality
"Gyaaah!!!"
A raw, guttural scream tore through the air as Han Ho-cheol's body toppled backward. Spit and blood scattered through the air in the same instant. Sadly, it wasn't quite enough to send his teeth flying like popcorn — but there was no mistaking how hard that blow had landed. It had slammed dead-center into his face, after all. It had to hurt like hell.
"Hmm~ refreshing."
A cool, bracing satisfaction washed through me as I watched Ho-cheol roll around on the ground. To me, right now, that tumbling spectacle was a porno, and the groans bursting out of him were a kind of symphony. In that instant, I understood. That's right. This was... sex! Anything that delivered this much pleasure couldn't possibly be anything else. It felt like the grime caked inside my chest was being washed clean. Yeah — a bastard who casually drops dead-mom insults deserves to get hit. And his face just happened to be sitting right there, perfectly punchable. This was entirely his own fault.
"Ghh... uugghh...!"
"Hey, Han Ho-cheol!"
"Are you okay?!"
A few of the girls who'd been holding the atmosphere around the tumbling Han Ho-cheol hurried over. They looked pretty shaken — they clearly hadn't expected me to throw a punch out of nowhere. But they still hadn't broken the encirclement, which told me they had no intention of letting me walk.
Doesn't look like I'm getting out of here anytime soon.
Even if I made a break for it, they'd catch me just as fast as last time. So I decided to try something else. While their attention was split, I quietly pulled out my phone. I was going to text Lee Eun-byul. Given how things had gone, she needed to know.
Hmm...
What should I even say? After a moment of thought, I decided to just snap a picture of my face and send it. My cheek was still swollen red thanks to that bastard, so nothing would communicate the current situation better.
The replies came in just seconds after I sent it. Panic was dripping off every word. Violence hadn't been part of the scenario she'd been briefed on, so of course she was freaking out. I didn't bother answering. I just closed the chat. Leaving her hanging would convey the urgency better.
With that done, I looked back up. Han Ho-cheol was still writhing in pain, and the others were fussing around him. I couldn't help myself.
"Tsk tsk. Ho-cheol, you little gayboy. You gonna throw a tantrum over one punch?"
This world, huh?! You have any idea how rough it is out there?! There's way more bitter shit waiting in our world than one measly punch to the face!! A real man needs to grow up strong. Spend your whole life as a hothouse flower and sooner or later a real storm is going to flatten you. He needed to get tougher. Grow stronger, Han Ho-cheol. Stand firm, Han Ho-cheol.
"Ghh...! You crazy son of a bitch!!"
I was still snickering to myself when he glared at me with a venomous look. All that irritation he'd been stacking up to the breaking point had flipped into full-blown rage the moment my dainty little jab connected. He dropped all pretense of reason and screamed.
"Hey! Fuck that bastard up!!"
"What? You said we were gonna move somewhere else first..."
"We don't need that anymore, just wreck him!!"
I let out an inward sigh.
Haaah.
This is exactly why I'd been trying to sit still. The second I threw the first punch, things were bound to get uglier. The girls standing around like a folding screen would definitely jump in. That's why I'd figured I'd just endure a little humiliation and wait it out — regular insults I could take. But fuck, that guy doesn't know when to quit. I could've let ordinary trash talk slide. But when he starts stabbing at my sore spots without mercy, letting that go would make me a complete sucker.
I tamped down the anger rising in my gut and looked forward again. Throwing that one punch had at least taken the edge off the adrenaline. I'd already crossed the line. Time to think about a way out. First, I took stock of the situation and what I had to work with, firing questions at myself one by one. Was I stronger than them? No. Did I outnumber them? No. Well then, did I have some insanely badass martial arts technique? No.
"Haha."
A laugh slipped out. I'm fucked. A situation stacked infinitely against me. But I wasn't particularly worried. All I needed to do was stall for time. And just because I didn't have any advantages didn't mean I was completely outmatched. I'd already confirmed it earlier — I was relatively weaker, sure, but I wasn't getting completely steamrolled. They had the numbers, but a numbers advantage doesn't always come into play. And even if I didn't have some legendary martial art, I had the cheap tricks I'd picked up surviving this world, plus a bit of sports technique I'd learned briefly as a high school freshman. That would be enough. With that, five little thugs like these were well within my range.
I forced my pounding heart to settle and cooled my head as much as I could. As I steeled myself, a voice came from the other side.
"Hold on, haah... hey, you said we were just here to set the mood."
It was the woman in the neon hot pants I'd seen first. The shorts were so short you could just barely see that fold of flesh where thigh met ass... but that wasn't the important part right now. What mattered was that she was hesitating to step in. From the sound of it, they'd just come along to provide atmosphere, and now that things had escalated like this, they looked pretty uncomfortable. And if all five of them jumped me at once like Ho-cheol wanted, it would look pretty pathetic. Hell, I'd feel my pride take a hit too if five guys were ganging up on one girl. And sure enough, the vibe around them was strongly reluctant.
Huh?
A possibility flashed through my mind. This was information I could use. Play it right, and I might be able to break the one-versus-many setup entirely. So I opened my mouth.
"Don't tell me all five of you are gonna jump one guy?"
I loaded my voice with mockery, deliberately trying to provoke them. The implication was clear: don't you people have any pride? A few of them flinched at the corners of their eyes. I didn't stop there.
"Nah, no way you'd gang up on me with zero shame. You're not a bunch of cowards."
Hoping someone would take the bait, I put on an infinitely confident front that didn't match the situation at all. I faked a leisurely ease, as if I could take trash like them any day of the week. And honestly, right now my anger was bigger than my fear, so the attitude wasn't entirely fake.
"Or what, are you all such weaklings you can't even beat me one-on-one?"
Provocation is a beautiful thing. It overheats the other person's brain until they can't think straight. You scratch their pride and they throw efficient judgment right out the window. Just like right now.
"Our friend here sure has a way of pissing people off."
A woman who'd bristled at my words stepped forward. Yellow-dyed hair in a bun, the kind of girl who looked like she could throw down. I remembered her — she'd been snickering the whole time Ho-cheol was throwing his little hissy fit beside me. She'd looked like she was thoroughly enjoying the part where I got slapped. Small chest, too, which had honestly been grating on my nerves since earlier. She was one of the ones who'd been getting under my skin. She looked at her friends and said,
"Hey, stay out of this. I'll finish him myself."
She put on a full display of swagger as she waved her friends back. I cheered internally.
Got her.
Just like that, I'd created a one-on-one. The remaining four were back to being wallpaper. That alone was a massive gain for me. Stalling would be easier, and one person I could handle no problem.
"You're so dead! You have no idea how good Yu-ju is in a fight!"
As we stood facing each other, gayboy Ho-cheol shouted from the side like a little kid. So her name was Yu-ju. Not particularly important information. I called out to him in a cold voice.
"Hey."
"...?"
"You shut up and sit down. I'm not done hitting you yet."
My anger still hadn't cooled. He'd tried to frame me, I'd gotten slapped, and on top of that I'd had to sit through every kind of bullshit coming out of his mouth. One punch wasn't nearly enough to settle that debt. I was going to pay him back properly — enough that he'd regret this for a long, long time. I tapped my flushed cheek and said,
"Keep that right cheek nice and ready for me."
"Th-that son of a..."
He flinched at that. I couldn't help but smirk. Pretty funny. The guy who'd been trying to threaten and intimidate me was shrinking back from a little sentence like that. He'd clearly never heard a warning like this before. His guts were way too thin.
"Eyes over here. You should be looking in front of you."
A voice came from in front of me again. The voice of that Yu-ju chick, or whatever her name was. I turned my head and looked forward — she was already winding up a punch. Her shoulder rose hard, and her fist came steadily closer.
"......"
I watched it happen, eyes wide open. I knew how stupid it was to close your eyes in a fight. You have to see the attack coming if you want any chance of responding. So I made a conscious effort to keep my eyes open and locked my gaze on her movements. And in my head, I mapped out my response, drawing a hard line between what I could do and what I couldn't. First, I sorted out the things I couldn't do.
...I can't dodge this.
Dodging or blocking every incoming attack is the domain of professionals — people who've trained their bodies to the limit and honed their reflexes in daily life. A fist is faster and sharper than you'd think. You need to be at that level just to slip an attack. But I wasn't that. I was just a pathetic shut-in artist, and the only exercise I'd ever done was the brief stuff regular students pick up over summer break. A punch like that, I wouldn't just fail to dodge — I probably couldn't even block it properly. The fist would be on me before I could even get my hands up. That was the physical capability of an average person. Most people get hit without even seeing it coming. And even if they do see it, they still can't dodge.
But.
I couldn't block it properly, but I could block it sloppily. I couldn't dodge the attack, but I could at least protect my vital spots. That much, even an ordinary guy like me could manage. If the best option is off the table, take the second-best. If even the second-best is gone, take the least-worst. That was how I'd lived my life, and at the very least, it was the best set of choices I knew. She was supposed to be good at fighting?
So fucking what.
Street fights come down to guts and durability in the end. I'd been getting into scrapes since forever just because of how my eyes looked, so I was confident I had at least those two things going for me.
Thwack! Before I knew it, her fist had flown in and buried itself in my shoulder. It had been aimed at my face. I'd twisted my body and taken it on the shoulder instead.
"Ugh."
A stinging numbness wrapped around my shoulder and my face twisted on its own. She really was strong — that punch had some real sting to it. She sneered at the sight.
"Pfft, a guy who can't even block properly thinks he's gonna do something?"
I ignored her and stepped in closer. Thud! Thud! A fist came flying each time, but I ate them with my body and kept pushing forward.
"Hey, try talking shit like before! Come on, say something!"
All the while, I was lining up my finishing move. I fought to keep my eyes from squeezing shut and scanned every part of her body. She was swinging wildly, like she was having the time of her life. Defense didn't even exist for her. She was all offense. I had no intention of flailing my arms around like she was. Land a clean hit on a vital spot and taking one person out of commission is nothing. I held down the rage boiling up inside me and gathered power into my right fist.
Just one hit.
The solar plexus, if I could manage it. One of the easiest vital points to shut a person down with — a place that, if you land it clean, cuts off their breathing instantly. Right now my fist was a bamboo spear. A butcher of lungs. The moment I closed the distance, I swung.
A fastball packed all the way through! The punch that came driving up from below immediately defied gravity and headed straight for the center of her chest.
THWUMP!! With a dull impact, my fist rolled right into the exact underside of her ribcage. I felt her chest cave inward with zero resistance. At the same time, a breath burst out from deep inside her lungs.
"Guhhk?!"
Spit flew. Her pupils went perfectly round. And at the same time, her body started collapsing from the knees up. Ghk, ghk — she trembled, trying to force out a breath that wouldn't come. I savored the sight and delivered one last line, nice and pleasant.
"Guess our little lesbian Yu-ju really is a weakling."
"......"
The eyes of everyone around us trembled.