# Chapter 6
The sound was clearly leaking from inside the storage room. Yumyeong felt somewhat reluctant to approach and stopped briefly in front of it.
But after a few seconds, he made up his mind, took a deep breath, and flung the door open.
“What the…”
Yumyeong muttered in a deflated voice. Inside was a classmate, sitting with his face drenched in tears, covering his mouth as he tried to swallow his sobs.
“I thought you were a ghost.”
The classmate looked up at Yumyeong with startled eyes. He was so surprised that his tears stopped abruptly.
“H-how…”
“I came to clean bird poop off my shoes, but geez…”
Yumyeong looked around the empty laundry room with annoyance.
“Why are you here like this?”
The classmate didn’t answer the question. Instead, he hung his head low and began to sob again very quietly. That made Yumyeong’s chest feel very tight. No one could feel comfortable hearing such a sound—not crying outright but swallowing it.
“Hey. If you’re going to cry, cry properly. A man shouldn’t…”
Yumyeong chided him while trying to help him up.
“Hey? Get up.”
“Ugh… No.”
But the guy, who appeared much smaller than Yumyeong, wouldn’t budge with just moderate force. He tensed his legs and stood his ground.
“Ah, I’m not… I don’t want to go.”
“Hurry up and go to your room to sleep.”
“I can’t go…”
“If you don’t go to your room, are you planning to sleep here?”
“That’s fine with me.”
“You’re a stubborn one.”
Yumyeong put the classmate down as if he had no choice. The staggering guy fell back onto the storage room floor. Yumyeong looked down at him for a while, but he didn’t move an inch from there.
“Fine, sleep here then.”
That’s some strange preference. Muttering to himself, Yumyeong approached the basin and began to wash his sneakers.
He clumsily soaked the sneakers in water. At first, he just wanted to wipe the bird droppings off the tip, but water splashed and wet the inside too.
“Ah, this is bad.”
It was a mess. Worried that the soaked sneakers wouldn’t dry by tomorrow, Yumyeong pondered in front of the washing machine and approached the storage room again.
When he flung the door open, the classmate was still sitting there. Like a Dormitory fairy.
“Hey. Have you ever washed sneakers?”
“Huh?”
The gloomy-faced classmate looked up with a dumbfounded expression.
“Can I put these in the spin dryer?”
“…Probably not.”
“Huh, really? How do I dry them then? It feels gross to step on wet shoes.”
“Then… try drying them with a hairdryer.”
The classmate reluctantly gave an answer with a bewildered face. As soon as Yumyeong heard the word ‘hairdryer,’ his eyes widened, and a momentary smile appeared.
“Oh, I should do that.”
Happily about to leave, Yumyeong suddenly turned around and poked his head back into the storage room.
“Hey, you’re smart.”
Then he went off humming a tune to clean up. The soapy water with excess detergent from the basin splashed everywhere, creating a flood on the floor. Pretending to push it toward the drain with his slippers, Yumyeong turned around.
“Friend! Go to your room and sleep soon too!”
Yumyeong gave a big goodbye to the Dormitory fairy and left the laundry room. Just as he was about to return to his room upstairs, dangling one sneaker from his fingertips—
At the staircase landing, Yumyeong coincidentally encountered a group of students.
“That bastard… where the hell is he hiding… doesn’t he know it’s useless to run away… stupid bastard.”
Words caught in the sudden commotion grabbed Yumyeong’s ears. The moment his eyes met with the rough-talking guy, Yumyeong felt a chill. Somehow, it didn’t feel good. His bright eyes, pretending to climb half a floor up, followed the back of their heads.
‘Just as I thought.’
Shortly after, Yumyeong stood firmly in front of the laundry room door he had just left. The group of students he had just passed were filling the space in front of the storage room, unaware that he was watching them.
“Filthy bastard. You must have enjoyed it all this time?”
“…”
“You perverted freak.”
The act of several people surrounding one person and hurling insults felt so violent that Yumyeong felt as if he himself was being humiliated. What disturbed him most was the sound of his classmate trying to hold back tears. The pitiful crying—not properly released but swallowed—was unbearable.
“Disgusting bastard. Do you really want to get beaten up?”
Yumyeong’s eyebrows twitched at the vile threat.
Of course, perverts can be disgusting. But it was strange that their hearts didn’t move even as someone was crying like that. They clearly lacked empathy.
Yumyeong slowly approached and quietly stood behind the group. Not sensing his presence, they continued hurling insults and threats toward the storage room.
“If you have any conscience, get out of the dormitory, huh?”
“You probably kept peeping at us while we changed clothes, creepy.”
Yumyeong moved close behind one of the snickering guys. Then, blowing air against his ear, he whispered softly:
“Let’s prevent self-obsession and restore a healthy life.”
“What nonsense… Hey, who the hell!”
The guy who turned around with a frown was startled to discover an unfamiliar face. Recognizing it was Yumyeong, he became so flustered that his face turned an unsightly red.
“Mind your own business?”
“Yeah. Leave while I’m asking nicely.”
Spit flew from the excited guys. Yumyeong stepped back with his arms crossed, not hiding his disgusted expression.
“But by the looks of it, no one wants to see you guys either?”
At Yumyeong’s provocation, one of the guys lunged forward with a fist. The movement was so slow and clumsy that Yumyeong avoided it just by slightly moving his head. But there were three opponents. Another guy charged in recklessly from the opposite direction of where he tilted his head. The fist flying directly toward his face seemed too late to dodge. Yumyeong blocked the incoming fist with his arm. Before he could even feel the stinging from the bone collision, he reflexively threw his right fist. It was an instinctual action, not a rational one.
Smack!
There was a sound like bones being crushed, and momentary silence fell around them. Yumyeong quickly shook his numbing knuckles and hastily said:
“That was self-defense, right? Dormitory fairy. They threw the first punch?”
“Dormitory fairy?”
The classmate sitting in the storage room muttered his newly given nickname with a bewildered face.
And at that moment,
“Yumyeong!”
The Dormitory fairy screamed. Instantly, Yumyeong felt a stinging pain at the back of his head.
“Ugh…”
It was such an intense impact that his vision briefly cut out. Staggering and slowly turning around, he saw one guy breathing heavily, holding a basin. He had clearly struck his head with it. It was an utterly despicable act.
“You bastard. My brain is all I have…”
Yumyeong charged at them with crazed eyes.
“You’ll pay if you’ve killed my brain cells!”
‘One more fight means suspension’—a small warning light flickered faintly in his mind, but it was already too late for reason to function. He was the type to repay an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The guys were big but had vile personalities and utterly pathetic fighting skills. After all, this was a nationwide private high school where everyone had likely spent their lives sitting at desks rather than exercising—a natural outcome. Yumyeong blocked their visibly slow punches, grabbed their collars and threw them. He avoided flying mops and forcefully pushed back those who crudely charged with their bodies.
He tried not to directly hit them until the end, but the guys cowardly attacked with tools. Eventually, Yumyeong used the fists he had been avoiding and beat them with all his might. The sounds of smack! crack! echoed vividly in the air.
After just one or two hits, the trio muttered fearfully about loose teeth and broken noses, and finally fled in a hurry. As they headed for the door, they slipped one by one on the soapy water Yumyeong had spilled earlier, gloriously banging their heads on the floor as a bonus.
Seeing them neatly collapsed on the floor, Yumyeong’s reason returned. His complexion gradually turned pale.
“This is bad. I’m dead if I fight again.”
Yumyeong wiped the sweat from the bridge of his nose with the back of his reddened hand. His slender fingers with prominent bones looked so white and delicate that they didn’t seem like they had just engaged in a three-against-one fight.
“Dormitory fairy! Be my witness!”
Yumyeong urgently shouted toward the storage room.
“Huh?”
“Say they ganged up on me three-to-one and beat me down so I couldn’t move.”
But anyone could see it was the trio who were groaning in pain. Yumyeong hadn’t taken a single hit except for the solid blow to the head with the basin earlier. The Dormitory fairy expressed reluctance with an expression that seemed to really want to help Yumyeong, but found it impossible.
“N-no one would believe that?”
“With these things, the one who insists to the end wins. If you witness for me, I’ll ignore your secret.”
“W-what secret?”
“That you… like guys.”
At that moment, Yumyeong thought the Dormitory fairy’s gaze was strange. He seemed to be looking at him, but more like past his shoulder to somewhere further away.
Sensing something, Yumyeong quickly turned his head. Unexpectedly, someone was standing guard-like at the laundry room door.
It was the transfer student.
“Of all people…”
Yumyeong clicked his tongue in annoyance. He had clearly seen it.
The transfer student was looking inside with a coldly frozen face.
“Did you fight?”
The transfer student’s calm voice echoed in the laundry room. Yumyeong firmly denied it, shaking his head vigorously.
“No? I was the one who got beaten up one-sidedly.”
The transfer student’s eyes narrowed. His face showed complete disbelief. The look in his eyes was contemptuous, as if saying, ‘Keep up your fighting habit.’ Yumyeong clenched his fists.
