“Ah, damn it. Crazy.”
But a moment later, Yuwon, who had been fiddling with his phone, suddenly clicked his tongue and muttered a rough curse. The classroom had been so quiet that everyone’s gazes instantly converged on him.
However, he paid no attention to those stares and urgently got to his feet, striding over to call out to Hwan.
“Lee Hwan.”
“What.”
Why are you calling me and making a fuss?
His expression was exactly that unpleasant, and his tone was sarcastic. In truth, there was no way Hwan’s response could come out gently given the circumstances. Still unable to collect himself, Hwan looked ready to properly go at it with Yuwon if he picked a fight at this moment.
However, Yuwon asked urgently, as if he had no time to care about Hwan’s attitude.
“Did you know that Huiseo is graduating early?”
“…What?”
What the hell are you talking about?
At the completely unexpected story that came out of his mouth, Hwan froze with his eyes wide open. So Yuwon immediately couldn’t help but let out an incredulous laugh. There was no need to wait for any other words from Hwan. That dumbfounded expression itself was already the answer.
This guy clearly had no idea either.
He cherished him so much, and yet Huiseo’s graduating early without even telling Lee Hwan?
It was hard to believe, but it wasn’t an absurd story since it came from a teacher he had recruited in advance. Apparently the faculty office had been turned upside down by Huiseo’s bombshell announcement. It seemed he hadn’t been preparing for it in advance either, but had impulsively decided on it because of this recent incident.
No, is this something you decide impulsively overnight? This wasn’t just anything—it involved his future. So why so recklessly…
Absurd, Yuwon ground his molars and muttered.
“Jeong Huiseo. He’s really something.”
Why did I even transfer schools here?
While he himself had been eagerly looking forward to leaving the palace, he never dreamed that Huiseo would leave in such a way that made even innocent him feel like he’d been cast aside. He’d known from the start that Huiseo was extraordinary, but to make him—of all people—feel like a dog chasing chickens abandoned overnight, the back of his head tingled.
The area beneath Yuwon’s eyes trembled.
***
Early graduation wasn’t an unfamiliar topic to Huiseo.
From elementary school to middle school, and until now. As long as it wasn’t a graduation year, the topic had consistently come up every time the year changed and they moved up a grade. He hadn’t deliberately prepared for it, but he was more or less qualified.
He’d always been first in the entire school so his grades were no problem, and he had everything from IQ tests to awards from various national-level academic competitions. However, since the most important person—Huiseo himself—never set his mind to it, things always fizzled out.
The reason he repeatedly refused to graduate early was, without question, because of Hwan.
To stay by Hwan’s side and protect him. To help him from close by.
To add a bit more selfishness to it, he wanted to share school life memories with him.
But through this incident, Huiseo finally came to realize something. That justification had now disappeared. The moment he realized that far from helping from the sidelines, he had actually become the cause of Hwan making the wrong judgment, Huiseo lost his footing.
He could no longer stand by his side.
However, Huiseo wasn’t the type to just sink down below as things were. Having grasped the situation, Huiseo turned around faster than anyone and ran unhesitatingly in a different direction. It was so resolute that Hwan, who had been by his side just moments ago, felt not just hurt but heartbroken. All the times he’d called Huiseo heartless until now felt like child’s play in comparison.
Huiseo’s realistic—no, cold—appearance made Hwan tremble even more with fear.
His own footing was just as precarious, but Hwan had been prepared to hold Huiseo up and endure even if it meant carrying him. Even if it would ultimately be a path that collapsed both of them together, it didn’t matter as long as they were together. At least that’s how Hwan felt.
But before he could even express such resolve, Huiseo had already run far away and was no longer visible.
It felt hollow and frightening.
‘So you let go of my hand this easily.’
Yuwon, standing beside him, seemed to be ceaselessly trying to contact Huiseo as if dumbfounded, but Hwan couldn’t even muster the courage to contact Huiseo. He was too afraid to confirm how far away Huiseo had gone, so he could barely even open his eyes.
‘Let’s stop this now.’
Afraid he might finally hear words of farewell, his hand clutching his phone was trembling.
To continue a bit more about Huiseo’s impulsive decision, the truth was that deciding on early graduation at this time was absurd. To put it simply, it was too late.
Even if all the other graduation requirements happened to be ready, the senior year performance evaluations and exams hadn’t been conducted at all until now. But as ridiculous as it was, Huiseo insisted that he could finish everything within the remaining time before the break and demanded they at least let him try.
‘No, this isn’t normally allowed… but the problem is it seems like he’d actually pull it off if we let him.’
It was difficult, but at Huiseo’s level, it seemed like they could exceptionally push through somehow. However, the more important problem was that not only had the early university application period already ended, but even the college entrance exam had already finished.
In other words, even if he forced himself to graduate this year, he couldn’t go straight to university.
It was impossible unless another exceptional door opened for him. But our country—of all things—how sensitive is it about university admissions? There was no way that would be easy. Even for Huiseo, such a method had to be considered difficult.
‘Then wouldn’t that mean an entire year just flies away for nothing?’
There was no way he didn’t know about such a situation, yet Huiseo insisted like this because it seemed to mean he didn’t care at all.
No, that was actually the case. Now Huiseo wanted to find more diverse and active paths of learning than what he could learn at school. It had been these recent days when he’d keenly felt the limits of himself just sitting still and reading books.
That was the situation, but from Hwan and Yuwon’s perspective, Huiseo’s decision couldn’t help but make them think, ‘Did he hate it that much?’
‘Did he want to run away that badly?’
They couldn’t help but feel deflated and frustrated.
However, in Yuwon’s case, he soon thought even this was an opportunity.
If Huiseo really thought that way, it could actually have become a more advantageous situation for him. He could open a new path for Huiseo to spend that misaligned year productively. If it were him, if it were his Myeongwoon Group.
If things went well with Huiseo, who had belatedly grasped reality, it seemed he could reverse the unfavorable situation in one shot.
But there was no such thing for Hwan.
So no other way to escape from frustration came to mind easily. As time passed, he only felt more acutely that he’d been abandoned, sinking deeper and deeper. His resentment only grew toward Huiseo, who had run out as if punishing him, as if finally abandoning him, without a single word. Even if it was pathetic, it couldn’t be helped.
This was his reality.
‘…What else can I possibly do?’
Hwan’s eyes darkened.
***
Before long, the fact that Huiseo had left the palace was plastered all over the news.
It was merely the prince’s friend who had been staying together in the palace returning to his own home, yet astonishingly, the entire nation came to know about it. However, to the continuing question of “He couldn’t live without it before, so why suddenly?”—there was no one who could answer.
First of all, what had happened between Hwan and Yuwon had occurred in a secluded place away from the classroom during class time, so no one except the parties involved knew the circumstances. The fact that Huiseo had immediately separated the two and left early also played a big part.
The next day Yuwon had come with a flashy bandage on, but upon hearing about Huiseo’s early graduation, he immediately removed it and acted like nothing was wrong. Also, after that it would be something that would continue quietly just between lawyers.
And even that seemed likely to end without much trouble.
Apparently Yuwon, deflated as Huiseo had evaporated and disappeared, seemed to think there wasn’t much to gain from dragging this matter out. With a mountain of things to prepare ahead, he had no interest or motivation for past matters. Thinking it would only make him look bad to Huiseo later, he roughly settled it as if it never happened.
So there was even less possibility of it leaking outside.
The media, sensing an issue, requested interviews with the royal family several times, but the royal family consistently remained silent on related matters.
Under continuing pressure, they finally briefly stated it was a “personal matter,” but few people readily believed such an answer. The public, with their curiosity heightened, imagined all sorts of things. Hwan and Huiseo fought. No, they didn’t. Or he went away temporarily to study. They broke up completely. People chattered eagerly here and there.
Rumors were rampant but there was no information being conveyed, so people became even more anxious and uneasy.
Specifically, the people of HwanHui’s Garden.
For them, the fact that Huiseo had left the palace was truly shocking news like a bolt from the blue. To exaggerate a bit, even their will to live dropped. They had run together for years all the way here just watching the kids be lovey-dovey.
They had been watching the children with the feeling of raising them year by year, and it wasn’t far off when they would become adults, so they had been deeply moved. But this ordeal that suddenly struck was truly unexpected.
After struggling in a flood of content that rivaled any idol, they didn’t know how to accept this sudden famine.
