Audition (2)
Audition (2)
When I got to school, Joo Do-hyeon was sitting there quietly.
Maybe because he'd taken so much grief from Ji-hoon in the meantime, Joo Do-hyeon was keeping as quiet as a mouse at school.
Lately I didn't even see his bodyguards anymore—it looked like he'd fired all his personal security.
Well, they were useless anyway, so...
The reasons he hadn't transferred schools after all that were probably several, but the biggest one had to be his pride.
In a small country like the Republic of Korea, one of the super-massive corporations that practically dominated the national economy would never permit one of its scions to be the first to tuck tail and run over something like this.
Pretty damn boomer thinking, but I get it to some degree.
Especially since all the kids around us were scions of major and mid-sized companies—he'd definitely feel the pressure from that...
Back in the day, I once attended a party for the children of the chaebol families, the kind you started going to at fourteen.
People who could sway public opinion, like Dad.
Put simply, it was a party attended by the children of the household-name celebrities, too, so I went at Lee Jin-seok's urging.
A good number of the brats I ran into there were faces I'd seen back in elementary school.
I mean, how many chaebol families can there really be in this tiny country?
I also saw Jeong-yeon for the first time in a while back then—he'd gone abroad and come back looking a lot more manly.
Jeong-yeon knows my personality well, so he let it show that he still liked me, but that was as far as it went.
He's nineteen now, and apparently next year he'll get to enjoy the second party.
They say the main event is the second party, where the scions who've become adults attend—I was kind of curious to see how grown-up chaebol heirs party.
The party I went to had extremely tight security right from the entrance, with bodyguards packed everywhere around it.
Maybe because S Company has its own security personnel in Korea, most of the bodyguards were divided between S Company and Hanseong.
Of course, if you counted only the visible bodyguards, HSW's firepower was overwhelmingly dominant.
At the party, an orchestra played and a famous idol performed.
Not just parties like that—afterward, through business conversations, while carrying out executive training and business initiatives inside the company, I'd naturally end up reconnecting with the chaebol scions one way or another.
So you could say that a super-major corporation's scion tucking tail would tarnish the company's image.
That's why Joo Do-hyeon couldn't dodge it, even while taking that kind of humiliation.
The sight of him sitting there crumpled up by himself might look pitiful to other people.
If you ask me why I leave that bastard alone, given my personality...
Because the more cards you hold, the better.
If we ever bring down S Company,
Joo Do-hyeon, who's terrified of Park Ji-hoon, would make a nice hidden ace for us.
With finals over and break just around the corner, the days dragged by even slower.
I flopped my face down onto my desk, and Da-yeon flopped down just like me.
"Si-yoon~ you bored?"
"Yeah? Yeah. Wanna hurry up and shoot the drama already~"
"Drama? What drama?"
"I'm shooting My Love Was a Gumiho this time~"
"Seriously?!"
Da-yeon was looking at me with round eyes, her cheek squished against her book.
For a second I thought about tugging her cheek, but instead I just stared at her wordlessly, and Da-yeon reached out and touched mine instead.
"It's squishy."
"It's springy."
"Yeah, springy."
Da-yeon casually wrapped her arm around my waist, then pulled the pink-gold knuckles out of my pocket.
She fiddled with them, even tried them on her own fingers.
Even though they were custom-made for my small hands, they seemed to fit Da-yeon's hands to some degree.
"Why do you carry these around?"
"They're pretty."
"Yeah... they are pretty."
Honestly, for a pair of knuckles, they were decorated so well that they were seriously, seriously pretty.
Back in the day, knuckles were only usable if you had the grip strength to back them up.
Because if your grip loosened while wearing knuckles, it was easy to break your fingers.
But these pink-gold knuckles even had silicone fitted to my fingers for impact absorption.
Knuckles with that black silicone inside the pink—that's what made them attractive.
Oh Tae-hyeon left behind one hell of a nice gift.
If the knuckles didn't have those pointy parts like cat claws, I'd have used them when I punched Park Ji-hoon.
When Da-yeon squeezed the knuckles tight, it clashed with her image in a way that was pretty damn attractive.
While Da-yeon was messing with the knuckles, Kim Tae-oh spoke up from behind us to stop her.
"Those are dangerous, so maybe give them back..."
"It's fine, I'm just looking 'cause they're pretty~"
With finals over, the peaceful daily grind kept rolling, and before I knew it, the first end-of-term ceremony of high school had come.
It was an ordinary ceremony, not much different from any other school.
The other kids were clearly happy about the break too, their faces all lit up.
Da-yeon, Tae-oh, and I headed straight to the amateur arena the moment the ceremony ended.
We'd come to watch once before, but as expected, Park Ji-hoon's matches just didn't spark any interest for me.
Like casually stepping on a passing ant without a thought, the KO was called within ten seconds.
Park Ji-hoon was the type who only ever produced KO victories with decisive strikes, rather than TKOs where the referee stops it for being one-sided—and that was the case in MMA, too.
Especially today, it wasn't even an amateur bout exclusively for seventeen-to-nineteen-year-olds—adults were included—and yet nothing changed.
He'd slip out of the way, plant a light overhand hook using that trademark long reach of his, and it was over.
As if demonstrating firsthand that even a graze meant death, most people grazed by Park Ji-hoon's punch had their legs buckle and collapsed.
To the people watching the match to scout Park Ji-hoon, he showed nothing but overwhelming striking.
Most of them, feeling that enormous wall, had started giving up.
"Wow... Ji-hoon is crazy good."
Da-yeon and I were watching the match with our faces thoroughly covered.
Da-yeon's face had gotten pretty well known now that we were in high school, so we had to hide as much as possible.
"Is he cool?"
"Nope, he's ugly."
As expected of Da-yeon, her likes and dislikes were absolutely unambiguous.
People were staring at Park Ji-hoon's body, his top stripped off.
There were also people scribbling something down.
Honestly, inside the octagon, Park Ji-hoon looked like an impregnable fortress with no visible weakness.
And the strong title favorite who appeared in the final.
A guy who had never lost a single match so far.
This was his last amateur match, they said, and next time we'd be seeing him on the pro stage.
Kim Tae-oh and I watched the opponent with our eyes sparkling.
A physique that was a little lacking but still decent, and a core that definitely looked good.
The match started, and the guy who tried a leg kick to test Park Ji-hoon got flustered.
Normally, if you take a leg kick, you're supposed to waver at least a little.
But Park Ji-hoon, who was always getting hit by me, must have toughened up—he didn't even flinch, as though the other man had kicked a pillar.
And then that smirk as he drove a leg kick right back at him.
After taking Park Ji-hoon's leg kick, the guy spun half a turn in the air.
The opponent must have blown out his knee joint, because for the first time in a Park Ji-hoon match, a TKO was declared.
That guy was going to need a pretty long recovery time.
And so, the one who'd been a title favorite had his pro debut pushed back because of this match.
Well... even UMM ranked fighter Oh Jeong-su loses when he spars with Ji-hoon now, so...
Ji-hoon, having received his small prize money and trophy, looked really impressive not shedding a single drop of sweat.
At home, wearing nothing but panties and one of Dad's t-shirts, I made Dad sigh.
"Could you...put on some clothes?"
"It's hot, why."
"Then I'll make it cold for you."
Dad cranked the AC temperature way down.
"What, it's basically a dress anyway. Can't I be comfortable at home?"
I snatched the remote from Dad and set it back to 24 degrees.
"If you drop it that low, it pumps out a ton of greenhouse gases. So the polar bears were dying because of you, huh."
"Do you have to take it that far...! Can't you just... behave a little more modestly?"
"Dad, look at your lower half, would you?"
"......"
Dad was also just in his underwear, like me.
I pulled a yogurt out of the fridge and lay back down on the sofa.
"Dad, we've got a big problem..."
"What?"
"My height... I think it stopped."
"That's just right. What're you gonna do, get even taller?"
"...?"
"Sorry..."
My height had hit 161 centimeters and stayed there no matter how much time passed.
No, I mean...you gotta be at least 165... This is, like, short even by short standards.
I'm even a full 8 centimeters shorter than Da-yeon...
I stuck my lips into the empty yogurt bottle, sucked the air out to suction it in place, and watched TV like that.
Time passed, and Dad glanced at me, freaked out, and yanked the yogurt bottle off.
"Si-yoon!"
Pop!
Feeling this weird heaviness in my lips, I switched my phone to selfie mode—
my lips had swollen up like they'd been through cupping therapy, making me look like a fish.
"Gah!"
Dad took one look at me, clutched his stomach, and collapsed.
"Hahahahahaha!!! Ack, look at you, what the hell!"
"......"
If I were explaining it a bit dramatically, my lips felt... floppy.
As I stood there flubbering my lips, Dad pointed at me with his finger and laughed his ass off.
With my lips blown up comically thick like Angelina Jolie's, I made an "ooh~" face and took a picture.
When I turned the camera on, Dad had somehow appeared next to me and was taking pictures too.
The very first selfies I ever took were meant to be pictures to give Mom, to comfort Dad when he was struggling.
But now it had become a habit and I took them often.
Dad touched my lips and still kept laughing at me.
"Can you stop now?"
"Sorry... pfft..."
I got up, set the yogurt bottle aside, and feeling Dad's gaze on my back, I stuck my butt out with an exaggerated "boop."
The position made the shirt I was wearing ride up, and my butt was definitely exposed.
The room went quiet after all the laughing...
I turned around, and before I knew it, Dad was holding the dust-covered rod.
"......"
In this situation, I had to use my sixth hidden card.
Commonly known as "playing dumb."
"Why? Why are you holding that?"
"You—I know when you're playing dumb. Bet you definitely felt the cold air on your butt, right?"
"...Oh no, I've been caught~"
I bolted into my room fast and locked the door.
Dad wasn't reacting as much as usual today.
So I gripped the door tight with both hands, and the moment I relaxed my strength, I heard a click...
And the door swung open.
Creeeeeak...
"......"
Dad stood there, holding the rod in one hand and the master key in the other, wearing a sinister grin.
"Hoo-hoo-hoo... can't run away now, can you...?"
"D-Dad? You know I'm a high schooler, right? About to be an adult soon?"
"Right, which means it's exactly the right time to teach you with the rod of love that high schoolers shouldn't do things like that..."
"Ahahaha... I-I obviously know that too!"
Dad put the rod down and sighed.
"Hahh... How could I hit a high schooler... right?"
"Of course!"
"I'm confiscating your wallet."
"......Dad?"
"Uh-huh. Wallet confiscated for one month."
"...Ugh, that's too long~ What d'you mean one month, that's time I could've grown another 0.5 centimeters."
When Dad picked the rod back up, I put my hand on the drawer next to me.
"Just hit me instead. Not the wallet."
"Oh... so the wallet's more important, I guess?"
Dad suddenly shut the door, ran off, and grabbed my wallet from outside, confiscating it then and there.
I dropped straight to my knees.
"Royal Father... I humbly submit that laying hands on a grown maiden's purse is... most improper..."
"Hoh, were you not the one who tested me first...?"
"Seeing Royal Father's acting improve by the day brings this maiden great joy."
I tried to leap up and snatch the wallet Dad was holding over his head, but Dad jumped at the same time.
In basketball, they said height was a talent in itself.
Even though my jumping power was far higher, I couldn't overcome the difference in height.
"Give it!!!"
"What if I don't wanna?!"
"That's crazy!!! Hurry up and give it back!"
"What if I don't wanna? What if I don't wanna~?"
"You still don't lay a hand on someone's wallet!!!"
I hooked my legs right over Dad's hips and climbed up.
I almost bent his finger back, but that seemed like too much, so I bit it.
"Aack!!! It hurts!!! Si-yoon!!! It hurts!!!"
Even in the middle of that, Dad held onto my waist so I wouldn't fall.
In the end, I snatched the wallet from Dad's hand and climbed down.
I hid the wallet behind my back, gripping it tightly, and Dad reached out his hand.
"Hand it over."
"No."
"I know you're taking cards out behind your back. If you don't want to regret it, hand it over."
Maybe it was from living together for seventeen years, but Dad deduced my actions with pinpoint accuracy.
Even so, I couldn't let Dad find out about the black card Lee Jin-seok had given me.
Dad still didn't know the black card existed even now...
I quickly yanked out just the black card, shoved it into my panties, and then gave Dad the wallet.
Dad took the wallet from me, checked the contents, and said,
"Bring me the black card."
I was horrified on the inside.
How the hell did Dad know about it...
But the longer I took to think, the more suspicious Dad would get, so I spoke up fast.
"...Wh-What's that?"
"You do know I can tell you're already lying just from your expression, right?"
"C'mon, where would I have something like that~"
"Da-yeon told me."
"......"
An ambush I never saw coming...
Come to think of it, I'd told everyone else it was a total secret, but I'd never said that to Da-yeon...
"Bring it."
"Uh... I don't have it."
Dad spun me around, lifted the hem of my top, and spotted the rectangular shape in my butt crack.
"...You don't have it? Confiscation extended by one week."
"Dad!!!"
Dad held out his hand like he wanted me to pull it out myself.
But I'm not the kind of person who just obeys quietly.
"Why don't you pull it out yourself then!"
"If I'm the one who pulls it out, that adds one more month?"
"......"
I plunged into the gravest dilemma of my life, and while I hesitated, Dad tugged at my panties and snatched the card from where I'd hidden it.
"Ah..."
"What? Thought I couldn't do it? Confiscated for 67 days."
I saw the look on Dad's face that said he really would do exactly that, and I grasped the seriousness of the situation.
"Dad!!! I was wrong!!!"
"You know Dad keeps his word when it comes to a promise, right? I'm gonna have to get a safe for the house."
"That's nuts!"
Dad closed my door and left, then got dressed and headed somewhere.
A few hours later, Dad came back, dragging a safe and wearing a triumphant grin.
A dial safe...
In the end, he set the safe up in his own room, put my wallet inside, and locked it.
"......"
"Said your goodbyes to the wallet?"
I put on the sulkiest face I could manage and stomped into my room.
From today onward... I resolved to begin a war against Dad with absolutely no quarter given.