The Clever School Life of a Sabaeja (5)
“Wh-what? Bullshit? A whole bumper crop of it?”
Oh Seora turned, dumbfounded by the words that had burrowed straight into her ears. The male student who filled her vision was—
Ha Taewoong?
Her only purpose for coming to the cafeteria was Park Jiwoong. This was free time she could spend tormenting him. Midterms for the second semester were already looming, and the stress had piled up until she felt ready to snap. If she didn’t vent it in scraps, she would lose her mind. Park Jiwoong had at least served as a convenient trash bin for dumping all that pressure.
So she had slipped into the familiar routine today without even needing to check her surroundings. No one in the school was as easy a target as Park Jiwoong. Only the Sabaeja existed as emotional dumpsters, convenient outlets for stress. The boys, especially, had decent durability. The girls usually quit before finishing their first semester under nothing more than cold indifference. Jiwoong was both soft and tough enough to make the perfect trash bin for her feelings. The longer he endured, the stronger her urge grew to break him completely.
On top of that, his grades were solid. Without a scrap of private tutoring he still held onto the upper ranks. Oh Seora’s father was a Gangnam real-estate tycoon; she lacked nothing material. To her, Jiwoong was an automatic object of contempt. The other students treated her like new money behind her back—she could feel it even when no one said it aloud. Behind his glasses, Jiwoong’s eyes always looked indifferent. The stubborn way he swallowed every insult didn’t impress her; it only looked pathetic. He was a weed that kept lifting its head no matter how hard you stomped it flat.
Lately the constant harassment had finally begun to show results. Cracks were visible in his mental armor. A little more pressure and he would raise both hands and drop out. And right at that critical moment, Ha Taewoong had barged in. She had focused so hard on Jiwoong that she had completely forgotten Taewoong existed.
“Ugly Trio~ Nice to see you all together like this.”
“……!!”
“U-Ugly?”
“Hey! Ha Taewoong!!”
Oh Seora’s clingy shadows, Yang Mijin and Kim Minji, flared their eyes and shouted.
“Don’t you three ever look in a mirror? You can resurface the faces all you want, but that giant heads and those stubby legs aren’t going anywhere.”
Ha Taewoong answered from his seat with an unpleasant smile.
The three girls’ faces flushed scarlet. Everyone already knew the truth; no one had ever dared to say it out loud. All three had begged their parents early and entered the world of plastic-surgery beauties. Pure parental genetics alone could never have made them pretty. Thankfully modern surgery delivered better results than expected—even the impossible could be made beautiful now. The problem, exactly as Taewoong had pointed out, was the oversized heads and short legs. They had desperately wanted limb-lengthening surgery too, but the risk was too high and their parents refused. Somehow Taewoong had zeroed in on that exact sore spot and twisted the knife.
“Hey! Fuck, Ha Taewoong!!”
“This son of a bitch talking shit!”
“You low-rent Sabaeja bastard! You wanna die?!”
The three of them poured out abuse without waiting for turns. Their eyes alone looked ready to tear him to shreds.
“That psycho-bitch personality can’t be fixed with surgery either, huh? Shame. Tsk.”
Taewoong finally crossed the line. Even the girls’ collective swearing didn’t make him blink.
“You……. Do you even know who we are?”
Oh Seora, leader of the trio, dropped her voice. A cold, frost-like aura settled in her eyes.
“I know perfectly well. Class 1 of Year 2, Oh Seora. And her two little leeches.”
“What are you supposed to be? Why are you sticking your nose in? You think I’m easy?”
“Yeah. Fucking easy.”
“What??”
Steam practically shot out of Oh Seora’s scalp.
This crazy bastard!
Today Ha Taewoong had definitely taken something. She had eyed him a few times before—not out of interest, simply because his model-level height and looks were hard to miss. The fact that he was a Sabaeja had been a mild disappointment. With a different background he would already have been the school’s most popular guy. What stood out was that his presence felt slightly different from the other Sabaeja. From Oh Seora’s perspective he carried the air of a higher-tier species. Because she couldn’t quite pin him down, she had found him unsettling and settled on Park Jiwoong instead. Taewoong had been claimed by Oh Gwangjun.
And today that whole arrangement had exploded. The same Taewoong who had taken just as much abuse from Gwangjun as Jiwoong had… had stomped Gwangjun flat. The rumors were true. Now he was stepping into Jiwoong’s business. The atmosphere was nothing like usual.
Why are the peasants acting up all of a sudden!! Did they swallow rat poison or what?
Oh Seora’s rage climbed higher. One Park Jiwoong was manageable. The moment Taewoong interfered, the mood twisted strangely.
“Is Oh Seora getting roasted right now?”
“Ha Taewoong’s going way too far today, isn’t he?”
Whispers rose. With no third-years present, the mixed gazes of every first- and second-year in the cafeteria locked onto one spot.
“Don’t tell me you actually think Jiwoong and I are bottom-feeders? That idea of yours is completely wrong.”
“……!!”
“It’s vulgar.”
Ha Taewoong had cut straight through to the core of her thoughts. Her heart hammered wildly.
I can’t back down like this!
She locked eyes with him and bit down hard on her lip. She would never let anyone say she had lost to a mere Sabaeja. If rumors spread the way they had with Oh Gwangjun, her position would become far more awkward. She might even find it hard to keep attending this school.
“Ha Taewoong……. I’m warning you—if you want a diploma at all, stay out of this from this second on!”
She forced her voice to stay as calm as possible. But then—
“Seora. Don’t.”
“……!!”
The very phrase she despised more than anything came out of Ha Taewoong’s mouth.
“Son of a bitch!”
Her eyes flipped in an instant.
WHACK!
Before anyone could blink she had cracked him across the cheek with everything she had.
“Huh!”
“Sh-she hit him?”
No one had expected Oh Seora’s full-force slap. In a heartbeat the entire cafeteria was drowning in shock. Broad daylight, violence right in front of the student body—this was the first such incident since Cheonghwa High opened its doors.
“Jiwoong.”
The slapped Ha Taewoong called Park Jiwoong’s name. His eyes were smiling, yet the light in them was cold and sharp as ice.
“W-what?”
Jiwoong answered half in a daze.
“Are you going to just take it?”
“……??”
“I’m not.”
Quietly, Taewoong rose from his seat. Oh Seora, who had struck the seated boy, stood around 160 centimeters. Now the standing Taewoong looked down at her as they faced each other.
“I don’t hit women. But……. beasts are the exception.”
The words were barely finished.
WHAAAAACK!
CRASH!
“Aaaaaaagh!”
“S-Seora!!”
The instant Taewoong’s palm met Oh Seora’s cheek she staggered several steps and slammed hard into the neighboring table. Just one blow.
“…….”
The cafeteria sank into silence. Immediately afterward Taewoong swept an indifferent gaze across the students. Most of them avoided his eyes and turned their heads away.
“Jiwoong.”
“……. Yeah.”
“You want to live your whole life as a pushover?”
“……. No.”
“Then bite.”
“……??”
“If the other side acts like a dog, you bite too! Don’t endure it—clamp down on their throat and tear!”
Taewoong’s voice was the declaration of open war. Neither loud nor soft, it landed heavy and solid inside Park Jiwoong’s chest.
“Hic……. Waaaaaah!”
Oh Seora, sprawled on the floor after the slap, burst into childish wails. A clear handprint was visible on the cheek she tried to cover with both hands.
“Especially the rude dogs—you bite those ones even harder!”
Taewoong fired the advice at Jiwoong while staring Oh Seora down.
“…….”
The cafeteria remained deathly still. Only the kitchen side still moved; the noise of cooking kept the staff from noticing what was happening outside. Every student who had been watching now had Taewoong’s will-laden warning driven into their ears like a blade.
“Friend.”
Taewoong looked straight at Park Jiwoong and called him that.
And then—
“In this life, try being a proper prosecutor for once.”
A remark that had nothing to do with the present moment.
“If you keep going like this you’ll just end up a thug.”
“…….”
At that exact second—
“Heh!”
A snicker burst out from among the onlookers. The sound that shattered the silence. Every gaze swung toward the source.
Unintentionally, the board had grown far too large. A brief lunchtime incident had ballooned without any plan. All I had wanted was to be a model cafeteria kid who simply ate his meal. The environment refused to allow it. Watching Park Jiwoong take the abuse, I had stepped in. The danger level of the colors he was radiating left me no choice. Death-black crimson and bright navy blue mixed together, splitting his entire body in half. The colors kept swirling into each other; I couldn’t just sit and watch.
He was the only remaining Sabaeja classmate in the school. That alone was not the whole reason. Roughly a year before I returned to this point in time, something had happened that shook the entire nation. An enormous case that turned the Republic of Korea upside down. The bizarre murders and solicitation of murder carried out by an MZ-generation gang boss. He had opened coin-and-stock leading rooms and raked in enormous criminal profits. Once arrested, that same MZ gang boss had brutally murdered a provincial chief prosecutor, high-ranking police officers, and the boss of a rival Seoul-based organization. What made the story even bigger was the chain of disappearances and deaths among people who had attended Cheonghwa High during the exact same years as the gang boss. It wasn’t one or two people that could be written off as coincidence—more than a dozen. The MZ gang boss was named a person of interest, yet no evidence ever turned up. He ran a large scrapyard; the circumstantial case was strong, but the proof stayed missing. Tips claimed the organization used hydrochloric acid, caustic soda, and scrapyard machinery to erase every trace, but nothing was ever found. The betrayal of a subordinate the boss had trusted finally cracked the case open. Without that man requesting protection from the prosecution and turning on his boss, the crimes would never have come to light. The murders and physical evidence had been cleaned up that perfectly.
And the protagonist of that entire affair—the future MZ gang boss—was the same Park Jiwoong currently being tormented by Oh Seora and her hangers-on right in front of me.
“Heh!”
I was in the middle of saving a future murderer. At such a critical moment, a laugh had to go and ruin the mood. From the sound of it, the person had tried hard to hold it in. But the dead-quiet air of the cafeteria made the snicker ring out with perfect clarity. I turned my head toward the source of the laughter. One person sitting by the wide windows.
“Kang Ari……”