The Sabaeja's Wise School Life (2)
"Huh!"
"Uh..."
"Crazy!"
They all flinched at the soft, low register of my reply. It was the natural reaction of classmates who already knew Oh Gwangjun's nature well enough—everyone agreed the guy was pure trash. Facing him with anything but submission was bound to leave them stunned.
"You little shit? Puhahahahahahaha!"
True to form, the psycho answered at once. His voice spiked into a high, shrill pitch, and murder glittered thick in his eyes. Oh Gwangjun wasn't the only one; this school had no soft targets at all—except for sabaeja like me. To them, people in my position were nothing more than tools for dumping their piled-up stress. Gwangjun had made me his personal stress toy. And today that toy had given him an unexpected answer. It must have felt like taking a sucker punch out of nowhere. He had to be boiling over.
The easy punching bag who had never once talked back had finally barked.
"Hey! Sabaeja!"
"Oh Gwangjun. You know that word is banned on campus, right?"
"Banned? Fuck that, you bastard. I don't know shit about it."
"Friend. 'Fuck that' counts as verbal abuse too."
"Friend? The hell do you think you are, saying that to me?"
"Your father's a chief prosecutor at the Eastern District Prosecutors' Office... You shouldn't be doing this. Discrimination is illegal under the Constitution and every statute on the books."
I remonstrated gently, kindly, complete with a soft little smile. The old fisherman casting his bait—that was me right now.
"Illegal? You looking to die? Getting too comfortable around here, huh? Your liver's swollen."
Perfect. The line had been taken.
"Threats aren't allowed either. My liver's fine. Unlike you, I don't drink or smoke."
"Shut your mouth, you crazy bastard!!"
Smack!
The curse and the sudden, meaty slap landed on my cheek together. The sound cracked clean and sharp through the room.
Yes!
He'd bitten.
"..."
The classroom went dead silent in an instant. I'd taken the hit sitting down, completely open. My cheek stung from the force, but real pain? None. Compared to special-forces resistance-to-interrogation training, this was nothing. Winter survival drills in the mountains when the temperature dropped below minus twenty—that had been pure hell. Chewing raw grass roots and the occasional snake we'd dug out of the dirt just to stay alive. Next to that, a slap was cute.
This bastard had been one of the reasons I'd endured those days in the first place. Humiliation? I'd tasted worse in university, in the military, in corporate life. The day the company I'd given everything to treated me like surplus and cut me loose. The moment my girlfriend dumped me without warning. All of it worse.
"In a sacred school... you just used violence?"
I asked it with the corner of my mouth curling up just enough for Gwangjun alone to see. Even to my own ears the voice came out cold. I rubbed my cheek as if it hurt a great deal and looked straight at him.
He flinched. The eyes that met mine wavered. Already carrying a dark aura in high school—but still just a punk kid. Time for the reckoning.
I slipped my hand under the desk and stopped the recording. This much evidence was plenty.
Then I stood.
I am one hundred eighty-seven centimeters. Oh Gwangjun is a mere one hundred seventy. My face sat a full head above his. In the past, a creature like this had terrified me. Meeting him again now...
"You must've been raised on premium formula. Growing up this short, shouldn't you file a complaint? Or is it just bad genes?"
"W-what did you say?"
"Going deaf already at your age? Ah—so that's why you never learned manners."
"This son of a bitch has lost his mind!!"
Whoosh!
A boxer's jab—fast, no question. But against me...
Smack!
I slipped the punch and returned one of my own in the same motion. A big open palm, no holding back.
Thud-crash!
The slap spun him. He staggered and went sprawling across the classroom floor. My body wasn't trained yet, but it was young. The striking techniques I'd acquired as a special-forces veteran still worked just fine. Five clear weak points stood out on Gwangjun's frame. I could have dropped him permanently with a single clean hit if I'd wanted.
A clueless brat playing tough.
"Heh..."
A cold snort escaped me. All those years of taking one-sided beatings from trash like this—that black history was finished. I would never let it replay in my life again.
"...Gwangjun got hit?"
"Didn't he say he boxed?"
"Ha Taewoong... yeah, he's actually crazy."
Whispers rippled through the classroom. Cheonghwa High was a school where the discipline ran blood-red. Most of the students came from households that never wanted for anything. They kept a careful eye on social status and rarely crossed certain lines—except with sabaeja. They never joined the bullying themselves, but they looked the other way whenever a sabaeja was in trouble, and that was complicity enough. Sabaeja existed for one purpose only: stress relief for everyone else.
Their life-stress index had never been low. Private tutoring worth a fortune started before they could even hold a spoon; by middle school they had already finished the high-school curriculum. Aside from the few who prepped for college with student records and GPAs, most of them aimed straight at the national exam. The educational environment they enjoyed was a concrete wall that sabaeja could never even dream of climbing.
But Ha Taewoong had been different. He had a natural head for studying, and a stubborn streak that refused to break. Even while being bullied, ostracized, or quietly iced out, he hung on. Never top of the class, yet always solidly inside the top five. Looks didn't hurt either—handsome face, the tall frame girls liked. At any ordinary high school he would have flown. He might have been the most popular kid across every grade. But Cheonghwa was a training academy for the children of Korea's upper crust. And now the sabaeja Ha Taewoong—someone who was supposed to spend his life scraping the bottom and doing menial work—had just backhanded Oh Gwangjun across the face. It was rebellion on a scale that should never have been allowed to happen.
It had taken place right in front of Class 2-3. The students who saw it with their own eyes froze solid.
"What the hell just happened?"
"Oh Gwangjun actually got hit???"
"Insane."
Kids from the neighboring classes poured in, drawn by the sudden screams and the shocking news. Everyone was equally rattled by the unprecedented scene.
"You dare..."
Still on the floor, Gwangjun glared up at Taewoong. He himself looked dazed, half in shock. A sabaeja no better than a pig or a dog had actually swung on him—an ambush he had never imagined possible. The insolent attitude had already been enough to piss him off. He'd only meant to dole out a light lesson. Instead the resistance had been far too strong. Getting countered was pure humiliation. All the boxing skill he'd polished meant nothing; the strike had been so fast he was down the moment it landed. There had been real power in Taewoong's palm. It looked like a casual slap, but the technique behind it was something else entirely.
He looked at Taewoong again. Something had changed since before the holiday. Every morning Taewoong had been convenient for blowing off steam. This attitude was brand new. The quiet little punk who used to keep his head down and solve worksheets without a peep was gone. Today he sat with his shoulders squared. The gaze he turned on Gwangjun was arrogant, openly hostile. Things had gone badly off the rails. Word that he'd been wrecked by a mere sabaeja would spread in minutes. Walking the halls with his head up after this would be nearly impossible.
"You bastard... I'm going to kill you!!"
He ground his teeth, clenched his fist, and started to push himself up off the classroom floor—
Thud!
A heavy, crushing blow drove into his gut.
"Gyaaaaah!"
"Aah!"
The girls' screams erupted. Violence like this was never tolerated on campus. It was the first school-violence scene any of them had witnessed since enrollment. Greenhouse flowers, raised with infinite care—upper-class kids thoroughly accustomed to the role of perpetrator and completely unacquainted with the role of victim. Now they were watching one of their own get wrecked by a worthless sabaeja. By the pitiful bear that had always kept its head down and never once provoked anyone.
"Urgh... ugh..."
Gwangjun curled around his stomach, body twisting. His guts felt wrenched inside out.
Splash.
A moment later the toast and fruit he'd eaten for breakfast sprayed across the classroom floor.
"...Eugh!"
"D-disgusting..."
The girls who had been screaming twisted their faces away in disgust. A moment of pure humiliation that made him want to crawl into a rat hole. Gwangjun still couldn't believe his own situation. He wanted something—anything—in his hand so he could beat Taewoong to death right now and end it. But...
Crunch.
After heaving up every last scrap, Gwangjun toppled onto his side. That was when the cheap rubber-slipper smell hit one side of his face.
Gnh!
He couldn't move his head. Terror drilled straight into his brain. Ha Taewoong—this bastard was a thug. With a foot planted on the side of his face he couldn't see Taewoong's expression, but killing intent was pouring clearly through the sole of that slipper. The gut-deep fear that his skull was about to be stomped flat and crushed settled over him.
"Your father is a chief prosecutor who upholds justice, isn't he? So how does it make any sense for you to talk about killing someone?"
Taewoong's voice, laced with mockery, burrowed into his ear. Everything Gwangjun himself had done to Taewoong in the past flickered across his mind. With the slipper still grinding into his face, he squeezed his eyes shut. The pathetic outcast Ha Taewoong. Completely defeated by that very guy. The shame waiting for him from this moment on made his teeth chatter.
Only the strong survived here. Cheonghwa High lived by the law of the jungle, and it lived by it strictly. The rumors were already racing through the school.
And right on cue—
"What do you think you're doing? In a sacred classroom??"