Yumyeong woke from sleep again in the late afternoon.
His head felt unbelievably refreshed. Except for the back of his school uniform shirt being slightly damp from sweating on the hot floor heating, his body felt light as if he had never been sick at all.
Yumyeong checked the clock first and realized that classes hadn’t ended yet. There was exactly about 20 minutes left of the last period.
“Wow… This is crazy.”
He couldn’t believe he’d slept all day. Then again, while he had good stamina, he’d always gotten severely sick once he caught a cold since childhood.
As Yumyeong sat up pushing the blanket aside, something tumbled down from near his chest. However, he didn’t immediately notice it tangled with the blanket as he hurriedly lowered his feet to the floor and put on his shoes.
“Teacher, I’m fine now. I’ll go back to the classroom.”
“Really? You don’t need to go to the hospital?”
“I’m completely fine.”
“Kids’ recovery ability is really terrifying. But you still need to be careful with your ankle for a while. If you keep twisting it, it’ll become habitual.”
“Yes, yes, I’ll be careful.”
Giving only that answer, Yumyeong lightly ran toward the classroom. The school nurse clicked her tongue.
When the school nurse pulled back the curtain to tidy the bed, she belatedly discovered a school uniform jacket left on the bed. It was obvious that the scatterbrained Shin Yumyeong had hastily taken it off and left it behind.
“Yumyeong, you left your jacket…!”
She hurriedly pushed open the door and shouted into the hallway, and Yumyeong, who had already gotten quite far away, looked back this way.
“My jacket?”
“This!”
The school nurse waved what clearly appeared to be a winter uniform jacket. Yumyeong approached the nurse’s office again, puzzled.
“Eh, that’s probably not mine.”
“Really?”
“Let me see. I’ll check whose name it is. Uh…”
The front pocket of the jacket he received had the three characters ‘Ryu Hakyoung’ embroidered on it.
“See, it’s not yours. Someone must have left it. They’ll probably come looking for it later.”
“Give it to me. He’s in my class.”
Yumyeong took the jacket and returned to the classroom.
Since class was in full swing, he tried to quietly open the back door and enter, but the moment the door creaked open, everyone in the classroom was already looking at him. Yumyeong awkwardly cleared his throat and sat down in his seat at the very end of the third row.
“Shin Yumyeong, I heard you were sick, are you better now?”
“Yes, I’m fine now.”
“You’re not faking it, are you? Your face looks so smooth, like you just had a good sleep.”
“Teacher!”
When Yumyeong protested indignantly, the kids in the class giggled. Making a tearful face, Yumyeong made eye contact with Hanju. And unexpectedly, he also made eye contact with Heeun. Among all those kids, only one person, Hakyoung, stubbornly showed his back.
“Hey, you left this behind.”
After class ended, Yumyeong tossed the uniform jacket onto Hakyoung’s back with a thud, as he sat there in just his shirt. Hakyoung, who had been sitting at his desk with his upper body slightly bent, slowly raised himself and looked this way. Thanks to that, the jacket that had been lightly draped on his angular shoulders slipped and almost fell. Hakyoung caught it with his hand and silently looked at the jacket.
“Can’t you be more careful instead of dropping things everywhere? Well, I guess you’d find it since your name is on it… But uniforms are pretty expensive. Treasure your belongings.”
“…”
Despite the scolding, Hakyoung didn’t respond and slowly put on his clothes. Then he opened his mouth toward Yumyeong, who was about to turn around.
“Your ankle.”
“Huh?”
“Aren’t you going to the hospital?”
At Hakyoung’s words, Yumyeong unconsciously squinted his eyes and grinned. Thinking that the blunt guy was worrying about him in his own way made him feel good for no reason.
“See, you feel sorry, right? Hey. You were so cold-hearted yesterday. I was limping behind you but your steps were so fast I couldn’t catch up. And the road was pitch dark! Geez, some crazy bastard ran into the mountains and I followed you worried you might meet a wild boar.”
In reality, he had followed to beat up Ryu Hakyoung in the deep forest, and it was he who had hidden his injured ankle, yet Yumyeong arbitrarily embellished the story and made it all Hakyoung’s fault. Even so, Hakyoung didn’t refute. He just lowered his eyes and spoke quietly.
“Go to the hospital.”
“I don’t need to. This will heal quickly.”
“Go before it closes. If you go now, you won’t be late.”
“Mm…”
Yumyeong, who had been grinning down at Hakyoung, suddenly placed his hand on his shoulder and spoke in a low voice.
“Hey, if you’re sorry, hospital fees.”
At those words, Hakyoung’s pupils wavered faintly. Even with a face mixed with confusion and doubt, Hakyoung took out his wallet. Yumyeong kept his hand on Hakyoung’s shoulder until he fully pulled out his wallet, and as soon as the wallet opened, he immediately pulled out bills with his own hand.
“One, two… Right. One hundred thousand won is enough.”
Watching Yumyeong extort cash right before his eyes, Hakyoung had already returned to his usual expression. As he put his wallet back, Hakyoung spoke quietly.
“I’m giving it to lessen my guilt.”
“Funny. I just extorted money from you.”
“Do you want to live like a thug that badly?”
“Why don’t you go snitch to the school that there’s a thug here?”
Yumyeong was now shameless. At one point, he had worried that Hakyoung might report to the school about the scene where he beat up other friends in the laundry room, but now he was openly telling him to go ahead and tell.
This was a change even Yumyeong himself was unaware of. He had come to believe that Hakyoung wouldn’t do that.
“Ha…”
Hakyoung, holding his head, muttered with an expression that his head was throbbing.
“You’re too shameless.”
“I know.”
“Insensitive, surprisingly vulgar in some aspects, and cowardly.”
“What?”
He’s spouting all kinds of abuse just because he was robbed of a hundred thousand won. Even though he’s rich, he’s pettier than expected, Yumyeong thought as he twitched his eyebrows.
“You throw punches anywhere and don’t hesitate to hurl verbal abuse to put others down. How did you end up with this kind of personality? Someone like you is really the worst.”
“Now that I’ve been listening…”
“How could someone like you…”
Hot breath flowed soundlessly from Hakyoung’s dry lips. His face looked truly agonized for a moment, so Yumyeong unconsciously lowered his face. But the hair falling over his high nose bridge covered his face, making it hard to see.
“Someone like me what?”
“Someone like you…”
Hakyoung buried his face in both hands, trailing off.
“Me what?”
“…”
“Huh? What about me?”
A strange stubbornness arose, and Yumyeong tilted his face and persistently asked.
Hakyoung, who had been silent, finally mumbled from behind his covering hands as if murmuring.
“Did you… come to like Lee Sunmin?”
Yumyeong quietly stared at Hakyoung’s face while holding the bills.
Hakyoung’s smooth cheek, as he lowered his hands and sighed, was somehow pale. Only his lips, tightly pressed as if suppressing something inside, were flushed with blood.
This calm face that usually showed no emotion at all would suddenly reveal emotions in unexpected moments like just now. Like yesterday when he ran through the back mountain like a wild boar.
The amplitude of those emotions was so extremely large that there was no middle ground. This fluctuating emotional expression of Hakyoung’s felt very alien to Yumyeong.
However, he soon dismissed it casually, thinking that’s just how love is. Because love can turn a person into a madman in an instant. Hakyoung was probably properly caught by that curse.
Anyway, Yumyeong shook off the slight sympathy and clicked his tongue.
“What do you want me to do about it? I’m overflowing with charm.”
At those words, Hakyoung’s lips twitched.
“I never asked you to like me, so is it my responsibility if someone else falls for me?”
As if he couldn’t listen anymore, Hakyoung clenched his fist tightly. Seeing the veins on his wrist stand out below his shirt sleeve, Yumyeong thought about shutting up, but teasing Hakyoung was so fun. Thinking he was getting revenge for everything he’d endured until now, he even felt a bit of pleasure.
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Why should I feel sorry about emotions someone else started on their own?”
“The person who likes you didn’t want it to be that way either.”
“You’re not Sunmin, so how would you know?”
“…”
At Yumyeong’s question, Hakyoung looked at him with a complicated expression. A brief silence flowed between the two. Feeling awkward with the gaze that just watched without speaking, Yumyeong started spouting anything again.
“By the way, that’s what’s strange. Is Sunmin into ugly guys like me?”
“…”
“He really has no eye for people either. How did he get hooked on an ugly face like mine… It’s really unfortunate for your handsome face standing at the opposite end from me. You should’ve worked hard to become ugly too.”
As he continued chattering, Hakyoung lowered his head as if fed up and pressed his forehead.
“Please just shut up and go to the hospital.”
“I’ll take care of that myself, so don’t butt in.”
Yumyeong grinned and refreshingly stretched.
“Hey, should I ask for you?”
“…?”
Hakyoung looked this way with wary eyes.
“Sunmin. How he came to like me.”
“No, don’t ask.”
Seeing his face immediately turn serious, Yumyeong burst into laughter. Because that anxious and nervous face was clearly sincere to anyone watching. It was a face going crazy at the thought of him being associated with Sunmin.
“Hahahaha!”
As Yumyeong laughed heartily, Hakyoung clenched and unclenched his fist as if he wanted to hit him right now. It was praiseworthy that even in this situation, he was trying to restrain his emotions. Yumyeong stopped his stifled laughter and patted Hakyoung’s shoulder.
“Hey, the more I see you, the funnier you are.”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
At those words, Hakyoung had an expression that said he didn’t understand. He seemed to suspect that Yumyeong, who was laughing with tears hanging from his eyes even though he hadn’t said anything funny, might be crazy. Once he caught on to his inner thoughts, it was fun to see right through his mind as if there was an answer sheet placed on that expressionless face. When all was said and done, Ryu Hakyoung was also nothing more than the same age as him.
Ah, that was fun teasing him.
Yumyeong decided to stop there and tried to leave the classroom with a refreshed feeling as he turned around. However, before he could take even a few steps, something flew at his back.
