A Sabaeja's Clever School Life (1)
At Cheonghwa High School, a Sabaeja belonged to the Shudra slave caste.
The Constitution of the Republic of Korea clearly stated that no one shall suffer discrimination based on social status. That provision, however, did not apply here. A caste system existed in plain sight.
The children of chaebol families sat at the Brahmin tier. The Kshatriya class belonged to the offspring of politicians, generals, and high-ranking civil servants. Vaishya-level kids came from the homes of mid-sized company presidents, ordinary judges, prosecutors, accountants, and doctors.
I was an untouchable who could never set foot in their world.
"My soul was so pure back then. Heh."
Today's me sneered at the pure version of myself from those days.
I had been naive enough to believe that doing well in school and studying hard, the way I had in middle school, would make me friends. I had simply assumed we could mingle without restraint. On top of that, Cheonghwa High was coed and strong in the arts and athletics—the perfect environment for a boy from an all-boys middle school with solid grades to spin fantasies.
Reality was a complete bust.
It did not take long for me to learn, bone-deep, that my fantasy would never become real. In the early days after enrollment, my height and looks made me a decent conversation partner for a while. The moment word spread that I was a Sabaeja, the atmosphere flipped. Classmates I had naively thought of as friends avoided me as if I had never existed. No exaggeration—the second the Sabaeja label stuck, I became a complete outcast.
The teachers were no different. A handful aside, they all treated me with distant indifference. Decent grades were the only reason it stayed that mild. Without academic performance to prop me up, I never would have lasted until graduation.
Even knowing that, I still worked up the courage a few times and tried to reach out. Every attempt earned me the treatment of a ghost. The cold shoulder from my father's side of the family had forged a steel mentality that somehow kept me standing.
In my life before regression, I had not a single friend in high school. Those three years were wallpapered over with dark history and trauma.
"Grandma! This time I'm going to live it differently!"
School in that period had slowly strangled me. Without my parents' attention, I never would have made it through. Second year. Five of us Sabaeja had entered together, including me. By second year only two remained. I was called a stubborn freak and stuck it out all the way to the diploma.
That high-school stretch had stayed with me as a complex. It felt as though Grandma had sent me back to this exact point so I could heal that past myself.
"Even looking at it now, that natural grass is insane. Facilities like this in the middle of Gangnam? Seriously?"
Standing at the front gate, the golf practice range sat off to the right. In the center rose the old main building, three stories high. To the left stood the five-story structure everyone called the new wing. There was an underground swimming pool built to international competition standards. Above ground: the third-year cafeteria, a two-story indoor gym that doubled as the grand auditorium, third-year classrooms on the third floor, study halls, and the important club rooms. Behind the main building, a two-story arts center sat with old-world elegance.
The sheer presence of an autonomous private high school that had claimed a chunk of expensive Gangnam land. People said the land rights alone were worth over a trillion won. On top of that, the foundation even ran a riding stable out in Yongin.
In the past I had never enjoyed a scrap of this grandeur. Unlike me, who had grown up as an ordinary kid, these people had been drilling the basics of horseback riding, swimming, and golf since childhood. I had spent every day with my head down, staring only at the floor map.
The situation now was very different. First of all, my shoulders were squared. Feeling the soft, cushioned give of the elastic seats, I headed for the classroom.
"Yeah. Money really is everything."
Every year Cheonghwa poured enormous sums into improving the school environment. From the outside the buildings were draped in ivy. Inside they kept the antique atmosphere while overhauling the facilities into something cutting-edge. System air-conditioners, heaters, and air purifiers ran as standard. Unofficial parent groups also funneled in whatever funding was needed.
"Looking at it now, the rich kids all had luxury slippers too."
The shoe lockers for second-years just inside the main entrance held not a single pair of Nike or Adidas. Luxury shoes and slippers dominated every slot. Brands ordinary people never even got to look at made up the vast majority. The only stationery-store three-stripe slippers belonged to me.
Even so.
"Nana~♫"
A hum rose on its own. In the past I had needed a deep breath before I could even step into the classroom. Now I felt no such need.
Thump-thump.
At this very moment the short-sold coins that would multiply were in the middle of battle! I only had to wait one month. When that day came, not a single kid in this school would be richer than me. Quiet confidence wrapped around my whole body.
Clack, clack.
I stopped in front of the classroom. Even the corridor floors had recently been replaced with marble.
"My body remembers everything."
Like a formula burned into memory, my footsteps found the classroom with perfect accuracy. And then I faced it.
"Class 2-3…."
A tangle of love and hate suddenly lifted its head. All the time I had stamped into this space in the past. Painful, exhausting memories rose one after another, fresh as ever.
I stepped through the open back door and met the classroom scenery again. Twenty students. A large learning TV and electronic blackboard. And the ergonomic desks and chairs they had spent a fortune replacing at the same time. Every new term the school provided desks and chairs fitted to each student's body for maximum study efficiency. Of course every classroom came standard with an air purifier and a system heater-cooler.
"What did you do over the weekend?"
"What do you think? Ten-hour intensive with Teacher Choi Hyunseok."
"What?! The number-one Korean language guy, Teacher Choi?"
"Yeah."
"Whoa! I heard he's impossible to book. How'd you manage that?"
"You know how my mom is. Relentless."
"I'm so jealous…."
"We're doing it again this Saturday. Want to join?"
"I can come too?"
"Well… if you really want…."
"Minju! I love you~"
Two girls were in the middle of a push-and-pull. Gangnam's top-tier Korean instructor, Teacher Choi Hyunseok—I knew the name. A famous Gangnam star tutor who supposedly raked in tens of billions a year.
Kang Minju was bragging while pretending not to. A fox-faced beauty whose short hair suited her perfectly. Her grandfather had served as director of a general hospital; her father currently ran a plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam. Rumors said they raked in money with a rake. Of course she had been one of the kids who used to treat me like dirt.
Even now, the moment our eyes met as I stepped through the back door, she immediately looked away. Thanks to her father's surgical help while she was still growing, her face had been refined into the classic plastic-surgery beauty—and an utterly punchable one. That Kang Minju radiated a pale pink aura. A color that suited a fox exactly.
I went to my seat and sat down. In a classroom this obsessed with grades, the least popular spot of all: the very back by the window.
Number-one tutors? I wasn't jealous in the slightest. As long as there was no chain reaction from the butterfly effect, I could keep the grades I wanted this time too. I already knew every question that would appear not only on the second-year exams but on every test still ahead. The CSAT? Heh heh heh. No need to even say it. I could not merely predict the future—I could declare it. Opportunity and privilege at the same time. Absolute free lunch.
"Minju, me too!!"
"Any seats left?"
Kids sitting midway down the neighboring row rushed over. Everyone was staking their lives on the college entrance exam a year away. Their parents' expectations, matching the size of the investment, were enormous. Looking at an atmosphere like this, you could see that the upper class did not maintain itself for free. People were quick to sneer "silver spoon," but these kids ground themselves pretty hard too. I never once heard that any of them had gone to sleep before midnight. If they were still taking number-one private lessons on weekends, the picture was obvious. Games? Celebrities? Fan culture? The kids I had known here in the past had nothing to do with any of that.
"Hmm…. I'll have to talk it over with my mom."
I could already see the seeds. A high-schooler already playing politics. Every single move Kang Minju made was calculated. This was a strategy her mother had drawn up. Minju's mother was a reasonably well-known mid-tier actress; most of the drama characters she played were sharp-eyed, unpleasant upper-class housewives. The parents of Oh Yunseo, the girl Minju had first offered a hand to, were high-ranking civil servants—mother a director at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, father a director-level official at the Ministry of Economy and Finance. The kids asking to join afterward came from no small houses either.
Kang Minju scanned the classmates who had rushed her. She was checking whether the specific kids her mother had mentioned were the ones attaching themselves. The fox act was polished. In the past I had never been able to read the current at all. Of course I could now. The experience of a veteran was online.
Zing.
Our eyes met again for a second. I let out a soft snort and gave her a slight smile without looking away.
"……!!"
Whether it ruined her mood or not, Kang Minju lit dual fuses in her eyes. In the past I would have dropped my gaze at once. No—I never even raised my head to begin with. But the Ha Taewoong of right now was not the cowed boy from back then.
That little fox act of yours!
I see every bit of it!
I loaded the meaning into my gaze and pinned it on Kang Minju.
"Hmph!"
She snorted and turned her head away. Fine. You're so great.
"Hi."
"You're early today?"
In the meantime classmates drifted in one by one, exchanging greetings. The air in the classroom at arrival time was nothing like a normal ordinary high school. Common slang or casual swearing never appeared. Games and otaku hobbies were outside their interest. The baseline was waving a hand, wearing a cultured fake smile, and pretending to be close. Of course I was the exception in every domain. No one even met my eyes. They greeted their own kind, sat down to study, or chatted with kids on their own level.
Inside the classroom scenery of special people, I was isolated like a lonely island.
"Taewoong, you really lived a decent life."
A space that still lived as trauma. To survive I had thrown myself into studying like a madman. After university I had thrashed around trying to forget high school. I had even enlisted as if fleeing the trauma. At the training center I volunteered for special forces. A head surgery could have gotten me an exemption, but I used a trick and entered as an active-duty soldier instead. Special-ops training tempered both body and mind. The brutal military years let me shake free of the trauma to a certain degree.
And now, somehow, I was back at the very center of that trauma—high school. A cold smile touched my lips as I surveyed the classroom with an objective eye.
The one billion won Grandma had given me! Without that money, even returning would have changed nothing. In that case this would have been a disaster, not an opportunity. But now there were far more things worth trying.
Rattle.
Just then the closed front door of the classroom opened. The time was 8:20. Still too early for the homeroom teacher.
"Hi."
A guy appeared with a short sports cut and a black backpack slung over one shoulder. Height around 170. Small but lean and quick. With a compact head that looked as hard as a river stone, the guy was Oh Gwangjun. The arrogant smile on his lips was exactly the same then and now. That fearless, cocky expression that said nothing in the world scared him. A dark aura poured off Oh Gwangjun.
"Welcome back, Gwangjun."
"Have a good holiday?"
"Me? Always fine. Hahaha."
He let out a hearty laugh and walked toward my side. Then our eyes met. He grinned, a slimy curl of the lips.
Haa, that laugh!
I remembered it as clearly as if it had been yesterday. The demon spawn who had locked me inside dark trauma!
Here we were again. Unlike the classmates who treated me like a transparent man, he took a different approach. The only one who always made a point of acknowledging me once.
Flash.
Our gazes collided again. I did not look away. In every memory of the past I had always kept my head down, solving workbooks so I would never meet anyone's eyes. This morning I did not do that.
Clack, clack.
Oh Gwangjun closed right in. His seat was right next to mine.
"Lost your fear or what? Rested nice and hard on Children's Day, huh? Heh heh heh."
Demon spawn! The smiling bastard was truly vicious. He locked his gaze on my eyes and did not move. I met both of his eyes straight on with a calm stare. Under the desk my hand quietly activated the recording function on my phone.
"Yeah. It was way too long…."
Oh Gwangjun, whom I had never expected to face again. More than a decade had passed since graduation.
"Ha Taewoong, did you take something today?"
"Is he crazy?"
The kids already in the classroom muttered among themselves, startled by my unexpected reaction. Officially, Cheonghwa High had no school gangs. Instead it had a rigid class society. Oh Gwangjun's family sat somewhere between the Vaishya and Kshatriya tiers. This bastard's father had been posted as a chief prosecutor at the Eastern District Prosecutors' Office after time in the provinces. A Seoul District Prosecutors' Office chief whose bite was starting to carry weight even among other prosecutors. Naturally the son had squared his shoulders right along with him. He was especially practiced at picking out Sabaeja like me to torment.
Thud.
He shoved the desk with his thigh and stood right up against me. And then—
"Lower your eyes, you bastard!"
He bellowed at me for staring straight back without flinching. No matter how strict the school rules were, a Sabaeja was always the exception.
I snorted once more without looking away. And then—
"You lower yours, you bastard~"