Kneel! (4)
Click. Hiss.
"Huuuu……."
"Ahh. Hangover cigarettes taste so damn sweet~"
"Man, how hard did we go this weekend?"
"Don't even start. Thought I was gonna die."
"Heh. Still, the results were solid, right?"
"True. We killed it. Hahaha."
The three physical education specialty students of Cheonghwa High School. Once again, they had gathered in the PE storage room to smoke.
They had spent the weekend in high style. Minors though they were, money, power, and connections had gotten them into a Gangnam club. Upperclassmen from Cheonghwa High had stepped up for them.
Club Pentagon was a place even the precinct cops couldn't touch. As long as the money kept flowing, you could live like a king inside. Book a private room, order a champagne set worth millions of won, and the rest ran itself. Everything followed a polished manual.
The club owner and the officers in charge of the precinct were on intimate terms. Whenever a crackdown period approached, word always came early so the right people could look the other way. Behind that curtain, the children of the upper class got an early taste of capitalism and pure pleasure.
"You guys going to Canada again this time?"
"I'm losing my mind. What the hell is there to do in that stiff, boring maple-leaf country?"
"Hahaha. Go stare at some waterfalls."
"The coach is a total hard-ass. Just thinking about my lungs getting shredded makes me want to cry."
"We're headed to Pennsylvania this time."
"Watch your bones. Clash with those guys and you'll be limping for months."
"Heh. Don't worry. I'm a premium human resource, so I start on the bench."
"Hahaha. Exactly. Where else are they gonna find talent like us? The second we enroll, they roll out fresh turf across the whole field."
"I'm living that bench life~"
The three of them were preparing for college admissions through rugby and hockey. Not a single one of them worried about their future path or the competition ahead. As athletic specialty students aiming for Yeonguk University, the gates were wide open for them.
Even if your skill was there, without money you were finished. After admission you still had to pour cash into overseas training camps and the like. Not that any of them needed to burn themselves out chasing gold medals in hockey or rugby. It was simply one more admissions track designed for the not-so-bright sons of wealthy houses.
Rattle.
The door to the PE storage room opened. All three pairs of eyes snapped toward it. At this hour, no ordinary student would dare set foot in the specialty athletes' private prep room. Most of the third-year specialty seniors were out competing right now. Who would be reckless enough to barge in when they weren't supposed to be disturbed…?
"Oh!"
"……."
The three faces visibly stiffened as they fixed on the entrance.
Click. Hiss.
A figure stepped into the PE storage room, lighter flame kissing the cigarette between his lips.
"J-Jeongho."
All three tensed at once, without needing to look at each other. Unlike their own middling upper-class standing, Lee Jeongho was a diamond-spoon member of the Oyang Group family. Students from the top one hundred conglomerates—and especially those from the absolute highest houses—smoked openly in their own club rooms. Rumor even said drinking was allowed inside the Management Research Association room. Lee Jeongho spent most of his time there. He almost never showed his face in a shabby place like this PE storage room.
And yet……
"Not even moles, and you're still hiding down here……."
He took a deep drag, exhaled, and looked the three of them over with open contempt. Cigarette dangling from his lips, Lee Jeongho looked nothing like a fellow student.
"……."
Had it been any ordinary kid, they would have snapped back. But this was Lee Jeongho. As if by prior agreement, all three averted their eyes from his gaze.
"I've got a question."
"……??"
The great Lee Jeongho was actually asking them something. How flattering.
"Ha Taewoong from Class 3, Year 2! What the hell kind of bastard is he?"
"Ha Taewoong?"
"You mean the sabaeja Ha Taewoong?"
"What? Sa-sabaeja??"
At their reply, Lee Jeongho's face twisted without restraint.
"How dare…… a mere sabaeja……. Grit."
He clearly recalled Ha Taewoong, the one who had ignored him at the golf course over the weekend. Now that he knew the real identity, his teeth ground together.
"That son of a bitch……. I'll kill him!"
Why is the principal suddenly getting involved?
For a moment Lee Jangyong was thoroughly flustered. Among the dozens of teachers, those who taught the core subjects—Korean, English, math—held real influence. The non-core subject teachers had almost none. Classical Chinese was the most representative of those powerless subjects. In a school as hierarchical as Cheonghwa High, non-core teachers simply had no room to raise their heads.
Yet here was Kim Changyong, a Classical Chinese teacher, roaring like a lion in front of a math teacher. And he had even dragged the principal into it—someone with whom he normally had no personal connection.
"Why is the principal being brought up?! The one who told me to dig into that sabaeja bastard's cheating was the head of academic affairs!"
Lee Jangyong spat the words out, saliva flying. His pride was on the line. No one at Cheonghwa High ever stood up for a sabaeja student.
The principal? Once he learns about this mess, he should be thanking me. Heh heh heh.
The current principal only wanted to finish his term quietly and retire. He would never want to get tangled up in anything involving the parent association president.
"Do you have proof? Proof that our Taewoong committed academic dishonesty!"
"Heh heh. Of course I do."
"What is it?"
"In the entire history of Cheonghwa, no student who was fifth in the class has ever suddenly scored a perfect mark. That is the proof!"
"What did you just say?"
It was a stretch, yet not entirely wrong. Lee Jangyong's assertion was not baseless. Since the school's founding, not a single current student—sabaeja or otherwise—had ever achieved a perfect score. Even confirmed geniuses were not allowed perfect marks; that was Cheonghwa's pride. And now a mere sabaeja, not even a regular student, had scored perfect?
Once practical evaluations and performance assessments were factored in, the final grade would drop sharply. Even so, a perfect written-exam score was something that had to be corrected without fail.
"Hey! You little fraud. Get out here right now!"
Lee Jangyong jabbed a finger at Ha Taewoong again. Every pair of eyes in the class was locked on him. Not long ago a PE teacher had treated Taewoong the exact same way and vanished from the school overnight. The scene overlapping with that memory was almost perfect.
"Teacher. Don't you think your words are going too far?"
At that moment a cold, composed girl's voice cut quietly through the classroom. Lee Jangyong looked toward the speaker.
"……!!"
Their eyes met and he flinched hard.
Why is Lee Hyoju…?
A situation he could not comprehend was unfolding. Lee Hyoju of the Oyang Group royal family—the top student who never involved herself in other people's affairs—was intervening on behalf of a sabaeja. A chill ran down Lee Jangyong's spine.
If the perfect scorer had been Lee Hyoju herself, he would never have dared rampage like this. The parent association president wouldn't have been able to find fault either. No matter how notorious Lee Jangyong was as a math teacher inside Cheonghwa, there were clear limits when dealing with a conglomerate family.
"Taewoong's cheating……. Do you have concrete evidence?"
Short, but it cut straight to the core. Lee Jangyong chewed his lip. The board was already set. Backing down now would destroy a math teacher's authority completely.
"Of course I do! You think I'd be acting like this without evidence?"
Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, Lee Jangyong's crafty eyes gleamed sharply. He still had no idea that a reaper was closing the distance on him, second by second, intent on taking him down.
"And what exactly is that evidence? I'm curious too~"
From the back seat, Ha Taewoong spoke with an even more leisurely air.
That insolent little bastard!
His attitude was nothing like the other sabaeja students. Even when they had done nothing wrong, they usually shrank into themselves like criminals. Ha Taewoong was different. The mocking look, the arrogant tone—they scraped at Lee Jangyong's temper and stoked his rage. He wanted to charge forward right now, slap the boy across the face, knock him down, and stomp him.
A worthless sabaeja looking him straight in the eye and challenging his authority—this was an attack on teacher authority itself.
"Get out here! You son of a bitch!!"
Too many student eyes were watching for him to use actual violence. Even a core-subject teacher would be finished the moment word of physical assault spread; he would be buried in the education field overnight.
"Teacher Lee!!"
Kim Changyong, who had been watching, raised his voice to intervene.
"……."
The atmosphere in the classroom turned murderous. Students who had never witnessed anything like this could only stare in shock.
"What is it?"
"What's going on?"
The noise spilled into the neighboring classrooms and students began to gather. Cheonghwa High was normally a place of quiet, disciplined silence. Yet here was an unfamiliar racket continuing from Monday morning. The students, for once, grew as excited as kids from any ordinary high school.
"A sabaeja and Math Thug got into it."
"Math Thug? Why?"
Lee Jangyong was known among the students as "Math Thug." The hallway was already packed with onlookers.
"What on earth is everyone doing!"
Student council officers who happened to be making their rounds appeared. With the third-year officers mostly absent, these second-years were the real power on campus.
"Right now…… Math Thug—I mean, Teacher Lee Jangyong—is interrogating a cheater."
A second-year girl carefully filled in the details for Han Yubin, the Ice Witch of Discipline.
As head of the student council's discipline department, Han Yubin stood in a completely different position from the ordinary students. Granddaughter of a former Prosecutor General and daughter of a high-court senior judge, she came from an elite legal family. The refined manners of an old, established house were etched into her bones; she remained perfectly composed.
"A cheater? Who?"
"The sabaeja, Ha Taewoong."
"Ha Taewoong?"
The image that rose in Han Yubin's mind was that of an insolent sabaeja—Ha Taewoong, the student who had challenged her authority in the cafeteria. He had been so brazenly confident that she hadn't been able to do a thing at the time. His aura had been so unusual it had made even her flinch. She had tried hard to forget that unpleasant memory.
And now another incident involving him had exploded.
"What kind of cheating?"
Han Yubin hid her curiosity and asked again.
"Ha Taewoong…… supposedly got a perfect score in every subject."
"What……? A p-perfect score??"
Han Yubin was deeply shaken inside. Among all the high schools in South Korea, Cheonghwa's written exams ranked first in difficulty. Even the infamous "hell" CSAT questions were considered easy by comparison. A perfect score at Cheonghwa?
Han Yubin herself had missed several questions on this exam. Math, in particular, had cost her points during the written solutions. Some of those problems were simply beyond high-school level. And yet Ha Taewoong had scored perfect?
"What kind of bullshit is that! How could a mere sabaeja—!"
Yang Jihun, the student council officer from her own class who always trailed after Han Yubin, exploded. Sparks practically flew from his eyes. He himself had barely scraped an average of ninety on this exam—middle of the class at best.
All sabaeja bastards are trash!!
Consumed by an extreme sense of superiority, Yang Jihun burned with fury down to his bones. That crazy sabaeja who had insulted him in the cafeteria—Ha Taewoong—had finally been properly caught by Math Thug today.
"Make way!"
At a single word from Han Yubin, the packed hallway parted like the Red Sea. She strode past them and entered Class 3 of Year 2 through the rear door. Then she looked back and forth between Teacher Lee Jangyong and Ha Taewoong.
"Then prove it. And you, Teacher—you'll prove it together with me."
Ha Taewoong proposed it to Lee Jangyong in a perfectly casual voice.
"W-what did you say??"