Cha-heun looked up, certain he must have misheard the word that had just reached his ears — but his homeroom teacher, Ji Seok-hwan, said it without the slightest hesitation.
“From what I’ve been hearing, Cha-heun, you’ve got quite the colorful reputation going around. Hm? Going around stuck to that Baek Yu-gyeong, is what they’re saying.”
“That’s —”
“So if you go around acting cheap like that, hm? Have you even thought about how that makes you look?”
Ji Seok-hwan kept talking as he repeatedly jabbed and prodded at Cha-heun’s upper body with the corner of a sheet of paper. In that moment, the words registering properly in Cha-heun’s mind made his thoughts crystal clear.
Don’t hit a teacher. Don’t hit a teacher….
For the sake of Seo Cha-heun’s future, assaulting a public official was not an option. Cha-heun forced down the rage that had him on the verge of knocking someone flat, and let out a suppressed breath.
…I genuinely don’t understand.
Even if any of that were true — a teacher speaking like this? The situation was simply beyond belief.
Without realizing it, Cha-heun let out another sigh, his expression crumpled.
“Oh? You’re going to sigh in front of your teacher now?”
“…Sorry.”
Bear with it. I have to bear with it.
Despite having no religious beliefs whatsoever, Cha-heun mentally began reciting sutras, trying to steady his mind and body.
“Cha-heun, get yourself together. Do you know how bad your reputation’s gotten lately? Skipping school, running around with boys. What, did you come to school just to meet guys?”
Your reputation is probably worse than mine, sir.
Meaning: your face. Of course Cha-heun knew he shouldn’t resort to personal attacks, but to endure this somehow, he started tearing into the man in his head only. He’d come to the conclusion that this wasn’t someone you could reason with, so he was firing back however he liked — internally. If he didn’t do at least this much, he had a feeling his fist would fly by the time lunch was over.
No matter how you dress it up as discipline, talking like that in real life would get you obliterated. Actually, even if you weren’t a teacher, saying something like that would just be the end of you, sir.
Cha-heun dropped his gaze with glassy, dead-fish eyes and quietly endured the teacher’s words. If he ever returned to his original body and went on to work as a teacher himself, was this the kind of person he’d have as a colleague? He couldn’t wrap his mind around reality at all.
I will never be like that. …Assuming I survive long enough.
Through it all, Ji Seok-hwan’s nagging, dressed up as concern, continued without pause.
“Even among the teachers —”
“Are you aware that kind of talk is considered a problem these days?”
For a moment Cha-heun wondered if he’d finally snapped and talked back to a teacher — but thankfully, that wasn’t his own voice. Someone came up beside him and draped an arm around his shoulders, pressing close.
“Baek Yu-gyeong?”
He didn’t even need to look up — the flustered crack in the teacher’s voice made it clear enough that the voice and the arm around his shoulder both belonged to Baek Yu-gyeong. When Cha-heun glanced over through half-lidded eyes, Yu-gyeong was wearing his usual radiant expression, eyes curved into crescents as he flashed a bright smile.
“And I do wonder how someone can be so short-sighted. If I said that I like hyung, mm —”
Only then grasping the situation, Cha-heun slapped a hand over Yu-gyeong’s mouth in a flash. Then turned to Ji Seok-hwan and bowed his head repeatedly.
“I’m so sorry, sir! We’ll get going! I’m so sorry!”
He practically dragged Yu-gyeong out of the teachers’ office with him.
Thanks to you, what he was saying became reality.
He’d managed somehow to get Baek Yu-gyeong out of the teachers’ office, but the grim new reality that resulted had Cha-heun’s face pulling into a grimace on its own.
Going around with a guy, he said. The moment you stepped in, it became nonfiction.
Come to think of it, 90% of that rumor was your fault, wasn’t it. The other 10% was the fault of those idiots who confessed.
More than that, what was actually weighing on him —
“…Baek Yu-gyeong, what were you thinking, picking a fight with a teacher like that.”
Yu-gyeong’s tone back there had clearly carried every intention of going head-to-head with Ji Seok-hwan. If what Baek Ha-gyeong had said a few days ago wasn’t made up, it seemed like he had a bad relationship with his father — and Cha-heun worried that this kind of thing getting back home would only make Yu-gyeong fall further out of favor.
…Teachers like that go straight to the parents… He’s a minor, so he can’t afford to cause trouble and end up on his father’s bad side — honestly, this kid doesn’t think things through.
Worrying over it, Cha-heun studied Baek Yu-gyeong’s face — and then let out a sigh as Yu-gyeong blinked back at him, looking completely unaware of the gravity of the situation. Still, at least the kid’s expression was brighter than he’d expected. Small mercies.
“Nothing good comes from getting on a teacher’s bad side at school. Understood?”
“…What am I supposed to do about it.”
“Why, is there something else bothering you?”
“…I spent the weekend thinking about it, and I think I actually really like you, hyung.”
He wasn’t even pretending to listen — he’d clearly retreated into his own little world and was off thinking about something else entirely.
At this point Cha-heun’s head was beginning to ache. He pressed his fingers to his forehead and exhaled slowly. Being around this kid made sighs come pouring out of him.
“Right, so — up until now, when you said you liked me, that was a joke?”
“…….”
Without answering, Yu-gyeong averted his eyes. Staring blankly out the hallway window, he looked like he’d sunk into fairly deep thought.
He genuinely can’t answer. What is going on?
This was a hard person to get a read on.
From the beginning Cha-heun had suspected as much, but he couldn’t even begin to imagine why Yu-gyeong would bother pretending to like him.
…Judging by the fact that he follows me around asking to date, he does register me as a romantic prospect… but up until now, it wasn’t genuine?
What on earth was the motive behind his behavior? Baek Yu-gyeong’s words and actions didn’t line up at all, and it made no sense.
Just as Cha-heun’s own thoughts were starting to go a little deeper, Yu-gyeong’s gaze — which had been fixed on the clear blue sky beyond the rain-washed window — slowly drifted back toward him.
“…Hyung, I know this isn’t the right moment to say this.”
Cha-heun let out a dry, sardonic laugh.
“I’m curious when exactly you’ve ever waited for the right moment.”
“…If we got married —”
“Sure, at this point I’m fairly confident that nothing you say will shock me anymore, so feel free to say whatever you want.”
“…The thought of you coming home to me as my bride —”
“Yeah, yeah, go right ahead and say whatever you like.”
Cha-heun waved him off and kept walking forward, then stopped when he noticed the sound of footsteps behind him had gone quiet.
He turned around to find Yu-gyeong’s brow furrowed. That pretty face was set in a slight frown, the cream-colored eyes trained on Cha-heun with unusual seriousness.
…What, is this something serious?
Just as Cha-heun was about to study his expression with some concern, Baek Yu-gyeong closed the distance in one step, wrapped his arms around Cha-heun’s waist, pressed their lower bodies flush together, and murmured against his ear.
“I think I’m a little worked up. What do I do.”
“For god’s sake.”
He’d thought he’d felt something brush near his stomach just now. Cha-heun hastily shoved Yu-gyeong off and walked away like he was fleeing.
“Hyuuung, you have to take responsibility. Is it okay to just run off like this?”
“It’s your body — you take care of it yourself!”
“But I’m offering it to you, hyung?”
“I said I don’t want it!”
The fact that this was happening right in the middle of a hallway full of students was making his head spin. He shot a desperate look at someone nearby hoping they’d intervene — the kids made eye contact with him and immediately turned beet red, snapping their heads the other way. A few of them were even clapping.
What the hell. Someone please stop him.
This world is not normal.
And Baek Yu-gyeong is even less so.
Seowol High School had three gymnasiums in total. It was a well-funded, large private school — and it wasn’t just academic high-achievers who made up the numbers, apparently sporting scholarship students had quite a solid presence too. Among the clubs, kendo was particularly outstanding, and so the kendo club reportedly had the entire second gymnasium to themselves. The third gymnasium belonged to the volleyball club, or something that used a ball — he’d heard something along those lines.
I can play a bit of volleyball myself~
But in the body of Seo Cha-heun, sports seemed entirely out of the question.
Regardless, he had evening self-study today, but after what he’d heard at lunch he was too wound up to just sit still and follow the rules. Cha-heun left his bag in the classroom and followed Kang I-hyeon to watch the after-school kendo practice. For one thing, he at least needed to look like he was still on school grounds, and watching sports clubs train was fun enough just to do.
“Why do you look like you’ve been losing more and more weight lately.”
Kang I-hyeon looked at Cha-heun sprawled across the second-floor bleacher seats in the gymnasium and tossed him a drink and a cream bun.
…Barley tea.
The pale color of the barley tea somehow reminded him of Baek Yu-gyeong, with his similar coloring. Cha-heun sighed, thinking of how Yu-gyeong had tailed after him on those long legs of his shortly after, whining and pestering until Cha-heun had ended up surrendering his phone number to him.
Persistent pest.
Starting from that declaration of I think I actually really like you, it seemed like Yu-gyeong had decided to make a full-time project out of being an annoyance.
Cha-heun had first scribbled down a random number, but then Yu-gyeong threatened that if it was wrong, he’d show up waiting at the classroom door every morning and send notes instead of texts — and at that nonsense, Cha-heun had just typed his real number in.
“…Just… walking a dog, kind of…. Pain in the neck, but… doing it….”
The problem was there was no responsibility, no obligation — and yet he was being forced to do it anyway. Was this what it felt like to be selected as someone’s personal butler?
Cha-heun suddenly felt a flare of irritation and cracked open the barley tea, draining it in one go.
“You got a dog? What breed?”
“…Border collie… retriever type….”
“…Type…? Oh, a mixed breed?”
Kang I-hyeon gave him a curious look, then sat down beside him and tore into the cream bun, shoving it into his own mouth.
Cha-heun glanced at him for a moment, thinking that was supposed to be for him, then placidly went back to his barley tea. Given how worked up he was inside, he genuinely wanted water more than a cream bun right now.
“…Then it must run all the time — why isn’t it… building muscle, just losing weight….”
“……”
Certainly, if it had been an actual dog he was walking, he’d be building muscle and losing fat — but he was walking a person, so all he was losing was his mental health. As he sat there just wetting his throat, something else was set on his knee. He looked over at Kang I-hyeon in puzzlement, and I-hyeon, casually swallowing the last of the cream bun in one bite, said:
“Oh right, you don’t like sweet things. I forgot for a second. Even when you came to my place, you only ate the plain snacks. That tofu chip thing.”
I didn’t even like your mom’s tofu chips.
Kang I-hyeon mentioned that his mom had lately gotten into health food and was making all sorts of things, the exasperation clear in his voice, then dug another snack out of his bag and tossed it over. Cha-heun tore open the red bean bun and let out a small laugh.
“Oh. And that kid officially put in his resignation from the club. Today’s his last day.”
“Huh? Who?”
“That kid. The one you were interested in before.”
Interested in?
Cha-heun paused mid-tear on the red bean bun and looked toward where I-hyeon was pointing.
Oh, that Student Disciplinary Committee kid.
The boy he’d seen before — the one with seriously impressive kendo skills. The boy who was just as strikingly handsome as Baek Yu-gyeong, the sub-male lead.
The boy looked like he’d just finished practice, polishing his men as he sorted through his bogu equipment.
