I have no idea. Whatever, I’ve decided to stop thinking about complicated things.
After distributing flyers until my wrist ached, my whole body felt sticky and humid. I wanted to shower as soon as possible.
On my way home, I pulled the cap I’d put in my bag down low over my head. I’d also worn a polo shirt in a style I don’t usually wear so people who knew me wouldn’t recognize Yeon Cheonguk. My house was about 20 minutes away from the subway station.
After walking for a while, I entered a narrow, deteriorating alley. A tilted telephone pole, a detached house that had been empty so long it was nearly abandoned, and bumpy cement walls—I crossed through them and entered the yard of a row house.
I’d secretly pocketed several dozen flyers earlier, thinking I’d inflate the distribution numbers a bit. I was taking the flyers out of my bag to throw them in the trash when it happened.
“Oh-ho, Cheonguk-ssi, you live here?”
An unfamiliar voice called Yeon Cheonguk’s name from behind.
When I turned around, the guy who was supposedly Kim Yuyoung’s new boyfriend—the one I’d briefly run into yesterday—was walking toward me from a distance.
Seeing him again today, he had a particularly slimy impression. It seemed like he’d been hiding some distance away, waiting for Yeon Cheonguk to come home. Two more guys in the same school uniform had been loitering at the end of the alley before disappearing. From the looks of it, he and his friends had been tailing me since yesterday to find out where I lived, preparing to give me a hard time.
“I was on my way back from visiting a friend’s house and saw a familiar face, so I thought I’d say hi. So, what’s with the flyers?”
“……”
A friend’s house, how nice. At this late hour, skipping evening self-study—did he think no one would know he came to mess with Yeon Cheonguk?
“So you live here… oh-ho…. Wow, haha… I see.”
The guy barely suppressed a burst of laughter. He kept glancing back and forth between the old building with no maintenance whatsoever and Yeon Cheonguk.
In that instant, it felt like blood was surging backward through my chest.
He was deceiving Yeon Cheonguk with lies that didn’t even sound like lies, not missing a single reaction, testing me with obvious mockery.
Before earning the nickname Jo Seongmo of Seolyun High, Yeon Cheonguk had been famous by the nicknames Sloth and Snorlax, so the guy must have thought I was the clueless type who couldn’t handle this kind of humiliation. From his superior position, he felt immensely proud of having thoroughly insulted Yeon Cheonguk to his heart’s content.
With Kim Yuyoung between us, he was probably feeling smug about winning. His face was overflowing with joy at the thought that he’d personally witnessed family circumstances that were below average and far worse than his own, and that he’d even caught me at a weak point. His smirking face was full of the leisure of a victor.
Yeon Cheonguk took a couple steps toward him and spat out a curse.
“You fucking bastard.”
As the guy pointed at himself going “Me…? Me?” I pressed my body right up against his.
“Where’s your house?”
Faced with unexpected aggression, the guy’s expression stiffened slightly. With a dumbfounded look, confused about how to set his attitude and whether his opponent was strong or weak, he answered.
“○○○○ Apartment.”
“Oh, that apartment’s fucked. Even though you’re short and ugly and unpopular, I guess you can still date if you drop that apartment name.”
“Ha…!”
Though he still had some composure left, the guy was shaken by the unexpected reaction. His cheeks twitched as he began thinking up insulting words. Yeon Cheonguk didn’t give him any breathing room and immediately continued with questions.
“What are your parents’ names?”
“…What the fuck are you on about?”
“Your poor parents, what are they going to do. Living with such a pitiful soul who’s willing to stalk someone just to badmouth his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.”
“……What, what?”
“A pathetic soul like that should just jerk off and live alone.”
Yeon Cheonguk looked at him with pity, then took off his cap. As he swept his hair back, he continued mocking him.
“You want to look good? Want to be a super cool prince for her? Then manage your face and work on some self-improvement. Hey, I guarantee you, even if I tell not just your girlfriend but the whole world what shitty alley I live in, Yeon Cheonguk will be more popular than you.”
“……”
“I don’t even know who you are. You have zero presence. What was your name again?”
“……”
“You wasted your effort, you moron.”
By the time he finished that verbal assault, the guy’s face was close to tears.
Yeon Cheonguk confidently opened the common entrance door. The door was crooked and the hinges weren’t oiled, so it made a noisy racket. With the feeling of kicking that guy’s head in, I slammed the door shut with a bang.
As I climbed the stairs, I thought: Maybe I’m not a coward like the hyung who works at the comic book cafe said.
The next day, as usual, I covered my face with a cap and wore a shirt I don’t often wear as I headed to school. Before reaching the main street, I took off the t-shirt and cap.
Since I’d had that confrontation yesterday with that guy whose name I couldn’t remember, I had to look around more carefully than usual.
Yeon Cheonguk, who had been relieved that nothing special happened on the way to school, clenched his fist at the sight across from the school gate.
Colorful flyers were plastered on the gate pillars.
“○○ Adult Night, Private Rooms Available, Booking Success Rate Guaranteed.”
That’s when I realized something had gone wrong. Moreover, Hakju, who usually doesn’t come out for morning supervision, was standing firmly in front of the school gate.
“30 strikes with the paddle for disrupting public morals. Who’s the bastard who scattered these around the school?”
Hakju was overdramatizing, saying this kind of prank was the first since the school’s founding.
Someone had scattered the adult entertainment flyers that Yeon Cheonguk had distributed yesterday throughout the school hallways. Even a passing dog would know whose doing this was. Yeon Cheonguk let out a deep sigh.
Honestly, my heart was fluttering a bit with worry about getting caught, but Hakju showed no particular interest in Yeon Cheonguk, who passed by with a half-asleep expression and earphones in.
“Snorlax! Have you seen this before?”
“I just saw it now.”
When I gave a halfhearted answer, he let me through the gate without suspicion. After that, Yeon Cheonguk turned off his interest in the chaos.
Anyway, if I stayed quiet, it would be dismissed as the work of some immature male student with too much mischief in him and that would be that. It was entertaining to watch the school urge self-reporting at every morning and closing assembly and even convene teacher meetings to establish discipline among the students.
……Suddenly I wondered what Hwang Jegu would be thinking after seeing those flyers too.
He knows that Yeon Cheonguk occasionally distributes flyers in a few places around the Dongdaemun shopping district. He might have thought of Yeon Cheonguk after seeing the nasty prank that made such a commotion at school.
He might also have wondered who did this and why. He might have been curious about what this was all about, since there was no way Yeon Cheonguk would self-destruct like this.
However, no third-year student opened the back door of the classroom looking for Yeon Cheonguk.
‘Ah well, he wouldn’t have time to care. He’s a busy person.’
Despite the homeroom teacher and Hakju searching the school all morning, Yeon Cheonguk played dumb. As always, he maintained his ignorance and slept soundly with his head on his desk.
It seemed like the guy’s petty revenge had ended with this much, and Yeon Cheonguk had other busy matters. After school, he’d be taking his first vocal lesson. The day was full of anticipation and tension. It should be the right choice—though he felt frustrated, finishing things well was the priority for now.
If it had ended there, it would have been a happy ending for everyone.
But a man’s inferiority complex is as brutal as frost in midsummer, and it often ruins things.
He was leaving school with half worry, half anticipation. He’d arranged to meet the juice shop owner at the subway station entrance near school and go to the agency together. With plenty of time left, he moved leisurely. As he descended the stairs, he looked at the scenery, fanned himself, tried turning on his broken MP3 player again, and blew dust off his shoe locker.
A group of male students running through one side of the hallway stopped one by one. Looking at their name tag colors, they were second-years. The guy standing at the very back spotted Yeon Cheonguk and hurried over.
“Excuse me… are you third-year Yeon Cheonguk sunbae-nim?”
“Why?”
“Um, the grade supervisor said to come to the counseling room….”
They must have been running around the school looking for Yeon Cheonguk after receiving an errand from Hakju. Fear showed on the faces of the little kids who trailed off and read the room.
Hearing Hakju’s name from their mouths, Yeon Cheonguk had an intuition.
The flyers.
As expected. When he slid open the door to the counseling room, Hakju was waiting with a club as big as a baseball bat.
A telephone sat in front of Hakju. From his attitude of standing with arms crossed as if he knew everything, it seemed he’d finished all his confirmation.
“Cheonguk, I didn’t think you’d do something like this. You distribute flyers for adult entertainment establishments?”
