Calm Before the Storm.
Calm Before the Storm.
As Da-yeon and I stepped outside, I saw Kim Tae-oh waiting for us.
Kim Tae-oh greeted Da-yeon and me.
"I have something to talk to Da-yeon about, so could you hang back a bit?"
Kim Tae-oh, who had been weighing the mission to guard Da-yeon against my request, nodded after a moment.
When I saw the way Da-yeon's expression stiffened at Kim Tae-oh's reaction...
Sure enough, Da-yeon was more on edge than I'd thought.
Just to buy a little time, as soon as Tae-oh was out of earshot, I spoke to Da-yeon.
"Da-yeon..."
"Yeah?"
"I... I only have you, Da-yeon..."
Da-yeon looked at me, startled.
"I only have you too, Si-yoon!"
"No, it just seems like... Tae-oh is more important to you than I am..."
"That's not true!"
I puffed out my cheeks, clamped my mouth shut, and avoided her gaze. Da-yeon fretted helplessly.
"I really... I only have you, Da-yeon... I could give up everyone but my dad for you..."
Da-yeon ducked her head for a moment, trying to look up into my face.
"...I'm sorry... Si-yoon..."
"No, you've had a huge crush on him forever..."
"...Yeah."
"But... I honestly didn't do anything to you... You were the one who was bad, Da-yeon."
Da-yeon's face turned apologetic, as if she'd just realized exactly what she'd done wrong.
"This is a secret, but... a while back, Kim Tae-oh seemed like he liked me, so..."
I delivered my coup de grâce.
"I told him it was disgusting... I told him not to look at me..."
"Ah..."
"What can I do... to make you not hate me?"
"No!!! Why would I hate you, Si-yoon?! There's no way I ever would!"
I went in for the kill and made myself perfectly clear.
"I'll try to be even more blunt with Tae-oh... the way I talk to Ji-hoon."
"No... Si-yoon..."
Da-yeon caught hold of my arm, looking pitiful.
When I made the faintest move to shake off her hand, she grabbed on tight and looked up at me.
"I'm sorry. It's just hard for me to bear the thought that you might hate me..."
Da-yeon finally started to get choked up.
"I'm sorry... I only have you too... I was the one being awful..."
Seeing Da-yeon sniffling, I felt a pang of guilt and immediately pulled her into a tight hug.
In the end, Da-yeon burst into tears.
"Why are you the one who's awful...? Kim Tae-oh is the awful one, unfairly bewitching our Da-yeon..."
"Yeah... Tae-oh was the awful one..."
I barely managed to stifle the laughter bubbling up inside me at how adorable Da-yeon was.
We arrived at school, and Park Ji-hoon stared at me.
"What are you looking at?"
"Whoa... you seriously get prettier by the day... Do you live in a whole different world from the rest of us?"
"Go search up my mom."
"What's her name?"
I told Park Ji-hoon my mom's name. He looked her up on his phone and was horrified.
"...Seriously?"
"Pretty, right?"
"Whoa... your mom is insane. Ah, I'm drooling... That's legendary, you know?"
The fucker was crossing the line more and more, so I planted a leg kick into him.
"Agh!"
"Just fuck off and die, you son of a bitch. Making cracks about my mom? Are you seriously disrespecting the dead, you psycho?!"
As Park Ji-hoon toppled, I grabbed him by the collar and started driving my fist into his face, but Da-yeon hurriedly held me back.
"Si-yoon, hold on!!! He probably didn't mean it in a bad way!!!"
Ji-hoon had blocked every one of my fists with his arms, so his face was completely unharmed.
My own hand hurt worse than he did.
Looking at this situation where I was the only one in pain, something surged up inside me, and I started rummaging through my bag for a weapon.
Park Ji-hoon must have spotted me doing it, because he bolted fast.
"Sorrryyyyyy!!!"
Park Ji-hoon's voice echoed as it faded into the distance across the school field.
Another uneventful school day came to an end.
Da-yeon and I walked home together.
Maybe because of what had happened that morning, Da-yeon was showing me even more affection than usual.
"Si-yoon! Are you going to the art academy today?!"
"Hmm... Dad's probably home dating Ji-eun... Hm."
"Really?! Your dad? No way, you're lying!"
"You're right, that was a lie. He said he's working on an album."
"Aha~ So are you going to the art academy?"
"Hmm... no, want to go swimming for a change?"
"Oh, yay!"
Since we were heading in the same direction as Park Ji-hoon, Kim Tae-oh and Park Ji-hoon were trailing along behind us.
Right then, a pack of kids appeared from up ahead, looking like they had been waiting for us.
I glanced up at Park Ji-hoon behind me and said,
"...? Friends of yours?"
"You're saying that even though you know I don't have any friends, right?"
Kim Tae-oh had already pulled his hands out of his pockets and was walking ahead of us.
As we kept walking forward just in case, sure enough, the kids blocked the path.
At a glance, there were over twenty of them, and most were wearing the yellow name tags that meant third year.
Among the kids wearing the white name tags for second years, one was the kid who had confessed to me that day while we were resting in the classroom.
And there were two first-years: a kid named Chan-hyeok, who had supposedly been testing Park Ji-hoon lately, and Kang Hoon from our class.
A kid with a yellow name tag stepped forward, looking past Tae-oh at the rest of us.
"Damn, they're pretty as hell."
"Don't come any closer."
"Don't come? You're talking pretty casual to me. What, you frontin' 'cause the girls are watching? Huh?"
The kid who seemed to be the ringleader, hanging in the back, spoke up.
"That bastard is the one, right? The guy Jeong-hun was totally spooked by and told us not to mess with. Whoa, look at the size of him. You seriously fourteen?"
They were probably talking about Park Ji-hoon...
Jeong-hun, from what I remembered, was the kid who'd been sitting arrogantly next to the student council president.
The one who'd flinched when he saw Ji-hoon.
There were too many eyes watching, so Park Ji-hoon put a hand on Kim Tae-oh's shoulder and said,
"You take Da-yeon and Si-yoon and get out of here~"
Kim Tae-oh grabbed Park Ji-hoon's wrist, lowered his hand back down, and smirked.
"You don't have a reason to fight them. I'll handle this. It won't take long... Look after Da-yeon for a bit."
A kid who was even taller and more built than Park Ji-hoon.
Before you even got to questioning whether Park Ji-hoon was fourteen, you had to wonder if that guy over there wasn't actually an adult. He was that suspiciously big.
As Kim Tae-oh walked over to the kid who looked like the ringleader, the kid said,
"What are you doing? Why are you coming alone?"
I heard those words from a distance and, expecting a spectacular show, threw an arm around Da-yeon's shoulders.
The scene probably looked like a delinquent student bullying gentle, soft-hearted Da-yeon, but I didn't pay that any mind.
"Da-yeon, you gonna watch?"
"Uh-huh... It's scary, but I'm okay."
Maybe from having watched Kim Tae-oh and Park Ji-hoon fight before, Da-yeon seemed to have built up a tolerance.
When we followed without a fuss, the kids led us into an alleyway.
It was a true blind spot—there were no CCTV cameras, and it would be hard even to tell we'd gone in there.
What was funny in the middle of all this was that even in this situation, Da-yeon's bodyguards were watching from somewhere out of sight.
Why they weren't stepping in was simple when you thought about the future.
If Tae-oh, who was right beside Da-yeon, beat down the twenty-three people in front of him all by himself, who would dare mess with us next time?
In that sense, I was looking forward to what an entertaining spectacle it would be to witness the one-against-twenty-three brawl of Kim Tae-oh—the one they called the little monster of HSW—live.
If Park Ji-hoon stepped in, he'd give that big bruiser of a kid a knuckle sandwich right on the crown of his head.
And that big bruiser would probably collapse foaming at the mouth...
I could already see the other kids freaking out and running away at the sight of it.
Park Ji-hoon must have been thinking the same thing, because he pulled something out of his bag.
It was popcorn.
'Look at this fucker, completely prepared...'
"Hey, you're the only one eating?"
"Of course I brought two."
"Oh..."
As the three of us stood in the back, wolfing down mouthful after mouthful of popcorn, one of the kids piped up, his tone oozing displeasure.
"What are you pigs stuffing your faces with...?"
Kim Tae-oh blocked the big bruiser kid who was coming toward us.
The moment the kid laid a hand on Kim Tae-oh's shoulder, Kim Tae-oh twisted his arm.
As the kid's head bowed in pain, Tae-oh drove a knee kick into his chin, and the kid crumpled to the ground, out cold.
""Oooh...""
Park Ji-hoon and I stuffed the popcorn into our mouths with renewed fervor. Da-yeon nibbled at hers, too, glancing sidelong at us every now and then.
And then the real fight began.
Kim Tae-oh, who placed great emphasis on practical combat, was clean and fast in every single movement.
Each motion was a practical one, with nothing wasted.
Even so, he was no match for Park Ji-hoon yet...
But regardless of that, he was undeniably impressive, and Park Ji-hoon and I watched him with shining eyes.
Tae-oh was literally flying.
Like a fish in water, Tae-oh moved with a flourish, a faint smile on his face.
After getting the crap beaten out of him by Park Ji-hoon, the bastard finally seemed to be having fun for the first time in a while among all these kids who crumpled the second you hit them.
Kim Tae-oh dispatched most of them with a left jab that hit like a stun gun, followed by a crisp straight to each reeling opponent.
Then he would grab a kid's clothes as the kid toppled headfirst, lowering him slowly to the ground.
He was simply subduing them—no one ended up with a split face or serious injury.
The twenty kids were laid out groaning on the ground, even though hardly any time had passed at all.
If you got hit like that, you'd be hard-pressed to even find a bruise anywhere.
Only three people were left standing, aside from our group.
Watching the ringleader kid, who was utterly horrified by the situation, made the popcorn in my mouth taste that much sweeter.
"Hang in there~ You can win~ Whoever's winning, that's our side~"
Kim Tae-oh looked at me and smirked, then looked back at the big bruiser kid.
"If you don't intend to fight, we'll be going now."
"....."
Park Ji-hoon, as if inspired by Tae-oh's movements, was off to the side practicing by himself.
"So at this part, you plant your right foot like this, right? Oh-ho... And then right after that, you shoot the left hand...!"
What a complete idiot...
After that day, the kid named Kang Hoon stopped coming to school.
Watching Park Ji-hoon, who'd been grinding his teeth in anticipation, look disappointed about it was more entertaining than I'd expected, too.
The weekend came, and it seemed Dad had heard through Lee Jin-seok about Ji-hoon beating Tae-oh and how he'd also beaten a bodyguard.
Even when Ji-hoon came to pick me up and I went out with him, Dad no longer tried to stop us from going places.
He did, however, lay down some explicit rules for Ji-hoon.
First, be home by seven, no exceptions.
Second, under no circumstances was Si-yoon to take off her hat and mask anywhere.
Third, take a photo every two hours and report your location.
And as for the last one... if Park Ji-hoon ever did anything bad to me, Dad had said—half-serious, half-joking—that he'd use a nail clipper to tear his nipples off.
I was sitting in Ji-hoon's gym.
We were there so we could go to the PC bang together once he finished training.
Ji-hoon seemed to have reached his natural height range; after hitting around 180 centimeters, he'd stopped shooting up and was growing more slowly.
Sipping the coffee I'd bought at a café, I watched Park Ji-hoon inside the cage, acting as a sparring partner for the fighters.
The gym owner had come up beside me before I knew it.
"What do you think of Ji-hoon?"
I'd been looking at my phone. I glanced up to try to figure out the exact intent behind the question, and the owner smiled.
"What do you think of him as a guy? Ji-hoon's definitely going places. You should lock him down before he gets famous~"
"Hmm... No matter how famous he gets, I don't think Ji-hoon could ever be too good for me, though...?"
The UMC was the arena where only the best fighters on the planet gathered, they said.
Even if Ji-hoon became a big shot there who raked in an obscene amount of fight money, under the competition rules that let him fight four times a year, if I just drew paintings all year long, I'd bring in more money.
And more than anything...
That was pocket change compared to my dad's music royalties and rental income.
Granted, my dad lived so unpretentiously...
But even spending just one percent of what he earned would be an eye-watering amount.
"...I see..."
The gym owner looked at Ji-hoon with sparkling eyes.
"I'm looking forward to it... Ji-hoon stepping into the UMC when he's twenty..."
"But isn't it true Ji-hoon's not really interested in competing?"
"Well... that's also... true..."
The person Ji-hoon was currently sparring with was a middleweight UMC fighter, Oh Jeong-su.
He wasn't being pushed back at all, and Oh Jeong-su looked at Ji-hoon, unable to hide his bewilderment.
Of course, if the two of them fought seriously, Ji-hoon would still lose for now.
Taking a kick from Ji-hoon, Oh Jeong-su was flabbergasted all over again.
"Whoa... this kid's a genuine monster... You sure you're fourteen?"
"Ahaha... Thank you."
As I sipped my sweet coffee and watched, Park Ji-hoon's eyes met mine.
He pointed at me, as if to say, "Watch this."
His style seemed to have shifted to focus on striking, because his speed had noticeably increased.
He was probably trying to compare his punching speed to mine, but he had to feel it himself—he was still slower than me in plenty of ways.
Even so, Ji-hoon had made incredible progress.
I let myself imagine for a moment.
If the Jae-hyeong I'd known in the past were to fight the Park Ji-hoon of now...
Physically, he was still lacking in many ways, but his technique was overwhelming.
In that case... if he fought the old Park Gi barehanded...?
It seemed entirely doable.
The weight behind Ji-hoon's stylish punches was brutal, after all.
If I let even one of those punches land clean on my fragile body, I'd start going numb and lose for sure.
And here was Park Ji-hoon, still a welterweight, going toe-to-toe with a UMC middleweight pro from a league packed with monsters.
He wasn't even at an age where his muscles were fully developed, yet he wasn't losing in a contest of strength...
If Ji-hoon, aiming for the heavyweight division, bulked up his physique... there'd be nothing more to say.
Ji-hoon's training ended, and we headed to a PC bang.
At the PC bang, Park Ji-hoon was watching Oh Jeong-su's match, as if curious to see how far his own strength measured up.
Oh Jeong-su was in the middle of a ranking title defense.
He was fighting the number seven ranked middleweight.
Park Ji-hoon seemed pretty serious about it. He was laser-focused, his face stern, so I spoke up.
"You've got me right next to you, and you're looking at a different goal? Beat me first~"
Park Ji-hoon glanced at me for a second and smirked.
"You're right..."