“Haa.”
Seo Juhan put his phone down on the desk and sighed. Then he looked down at the teacher’s planner spread out in front of him.
The facts recorded as <May 28, 11:27 PM, L Convenience Store Inwang Intersection Branch, Dongpyeong Police Box, Officer Lee Changhun> had neat handwriting.
The consultation notes he’d just written below became increasingly messy and illegible. The word <cigarette> had black pen circles scribbled all over it.
Seo Juhan mulled over the conversation he’d just had with a stern expression.
Though he’d never met face-to-face, the voice’s owner seemed quite cultured. Even though Seo Juhan, who wasn’t eloquent, abruptly reported his son’s misconduct as soon as the call connected, the parent didn’t take a defensive attitude.
Even at the homeroom teacher’s inadequate response, they warmly and steadfastly continued what they had to say. It was a passage that explained why Kim Gichan could be so recklessly optimistic.
But even so, it was absurd.
Please take good care of him?
Completely incomprehensible.
How can this reaction come out? Your kid got caught trying to buy cigarettes.
What’s more, the person in question was a thug propping up the bottom ranks nationwide. Yet how can you laugh while talking with the homeroom teacher? Aren’t you worried?
Or maybe this guy is also rich like Go Un……
He even thought whether it was really their biological child, but from what was said, it didn’t seem like an adoptive mother. Seo Juhan could be more certain of that than anyone.
Is it because they came from your own belly that you protect them?
It was absurd. Not only was he born lacking, but was this trash who wasted the most important period also their own child?
Even such a good-for-nothing as their own child……
As their own child……
Seo Juhan’s complexion suddenly darkened as he continued his thoughts.
His downcast eyes faced the scrawled writing without focus.
Seo Juhan found Yangseong School students disgusting. He despised them as livestock that consumed feed without doing anything.
He looked down on them as a tribe who would live their whole lives sucking others’ blood or doing manual labor. He cursed them as difficult-to-handle nuclear waste that was of no help to society whatsoever.
And only now did he realize.
He realized where that excessive, blind disillusionment came from.
It was a word too shameful to even mention.
“……”
Dazed, Seo Juhan sat blankly in place.
Since he was with other teachers in the staff room during their free period, the surroundings were noisy. He could hear mouse clicking sounds from beyond the partition. The crisp typing sounds also didn’t cease.
At a distant table, a meeting with teachers from other departments who’d come from different staff rooms was in full swing. Various voices rushed into his eardrums.
A bitter wind blew through his punctured chest. It was achingly cold. He felt like he’d been thrown naked into the cold.
“……”
He could no longer bear the loneliness in the crowd. Seo Juhan finally sprang up from his seat. He gripped his phone and left the staff room as if fleeing.
He quickened his steps to shake off the image lingering before his eyes.
It was an afterimage from his childhood days when he couldn’t confess his mother’s absence to anyone.
It was the grief of the time when not having a mother became a weakness.
It was a time when his existence felt like baggage and he wanted to disappear.
But the more he tried to shake it off, the more his self-loathing grew. It spun round and round like a Möbius strip. It was the same principle as counting sheep making you less sleepy the more you count.
Seo Juhan, who’d been going down the stairs with narrow steps, suddenly stopped.
Bright sunlight suddenly shone at his feet.
Standing on the landing, he turned his gaze beyond the window.
The annex located in the distance was visible. It was an even more dilapidated building than the main building renovated 10 years ago. Because it was at the shaded foot of the mountain, it was gloomy even in the bright afternoon. It was so dirty and shabby that even ghosts would hesitate to visit.
There.
Having decided on his destination, Seo Juhan started walking again.
He desperately wanted to be alone.
Coming outside the main building, sunlight poured directly down. Midday was now hot like midsummer. It was muggy enough to sweat even standing still.
Seo Juhan walked while creating shade on his forehead with his arm. Hot heat rose from the black asphalt floor. In the distance, it even seemed like heat haze was rising.
The old-fashioned building surrounded by reddish-brown bricks drew near. Juhan looked up at the annex that wouldn’t be strange to be demolished at any time.
Perhaps because of the intermittent showers, dirty water streaked down the painted walls. The window frames were heavily rusted from accumulated grime.
It was a white elephant that made people gloomy just looking at it. It was obvious that ordinary people would avoid it.
It was what Seo Juhan wanted.
He carefully pushed the central entrance door.
Creak.
The door, which he wondered if it would even open, opened surprisingly easily beyond expectation.
Unlike outside, a cool chill lingered. It seemed to be because the mountain ridge blocked the sun.
The dim corridor was dirty enough to deserve the name abandoned school.
The classroom window frames and doors revealed rough wood as is. The walls had faded paint peeling raggedly. The floor was littered with all kinds of trash and large dust clumps.
“Ugh……”
There were even old lockers with tattered doors and desks with mismatched legs blocking the path.
Seo Juhan squeezed through the narrow gaps like a crab. It was like getting through a defensive outpost.
He barely reached the stairs and went up to the second floor. Only then did he feel a bit of breathing room.
His rushed steps that had been fleeing also became leisurely. Seo Juhan walked while scanning inside the classrooms through the corridor windows.
Whether it was a science lab, miscellaneous items were messily scattered on the lab tables. No matter where he looked, there were no traces of people. Only skinny rats seemed to roam the upper floors.
He liked that very much.
The peace and quiet he’d been desperately seeking arrived. It felt completely alone. Like floating alone in the vast universe. It was that kind of sensation that had become one with the self at some point.
Seo Juhan became immersed in familiar solitude.
That fragile freedom shattered as soon as he opened the bathroom door.
Seo Juhan immediately reflexively covered his mouth and nose while scrunching his brow. But it was already too late. An acrid, stuffy smell rushed into his nose.
“Oh, math teacher?”
One guy with a familiar face said while holding a cigarette in his teeth. He was one of the students in the class he taught, but he couldn’t remember the name. The three or four standing next to him were also crookedly chomping on cancer sticks.
Inside the bathroom, hazy cigarette smoke filled it densely like a fire scene. Overlooking the torn no-smoking sticker on the door was the mistake.
It wasn’t only Seo Juhan who needed his own time.
“Hello.”
The guys also seemed aware that Juhan in front of them was a teacher, as they stealthily hid their cigarettes behind their backs.
“……Yeah. Right.”
Garbled pronunciation came from his blocked mouth.
A sense of duty as a teacher to reform delinquent students reflexively came over him. But the fatigue of knowing that talking to adults with no room for rehabilitation would be pointless was greater.
“……It’s bad for your lungs, so smoke in moderation.”
“Yep.”
The guys answered solidly like gangsters.
“Get to class before you get marked absent.”
Around the black slippers with sports brands on them, countless cigarette butts were visible. Syringes of questionable use were also scattered like trash.
Seo Juhan immediately turned his back in disgust at not wanting to exchange even one more word. The bathroom door closed behind him.
The wooden corridor floor made creaking sounds. He debated whether to wander more in search of refuge or retrace his futile steps.
Let’s just go up to the top floor.
Since the third floor was the top, there was nowhere higher to go anyway.
