Chapter 143. < Rooftop. (2) >
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Translator: thursdays Editor: Yahiko PR: LightBrin
‘Who is it?’
I couldn’t understand.
‘Who is stirring things up on Kim Yul’s behalf?!’
Kim Yul had no close family. He pretty much had none at all. Kim Yul’s bullying started before he made friends, so there was no one who would help him. I didn’t choose Kim Yul as a scapegoat for nothing!
‘I need to talk to Kim Yul. He has to know something. Whatever it is.’
I rushed to the back of the school. Kim Yul would be taking care of the animals in the school farm now. I knew every hour of Kim Yul’s schedule. As expected, I saw Kim Yul’s back as he fed the chickens.
‘That’s right. This is where you should be.’
He was a guy who barely fed his self-esteem by feeding animals that were weaker than him. That was how I understood Kim Yul’s obsession with the farm. In the end, humans were also beasts, and weaker beasts served the strong.
[Your immersion rate is currently 100%.]
The school was the same as the farm. It was a slightly larger cage, and in this place, I was a stronger beast than Kim Yul.
“Hey! Kim Yul!” I growled. “What did you do?!”
Kim Yul did not turn around. He didn’t even respond. He continued to pass out the animal feed like he didn’t hear my voice.
‘Ha. Is he ignoring me now?’
Unbelievable. I walked over and grabbed Kim Yul’s shoulder roughly.
“Hey, asshole. When someone says your name, you have to…!”
When Kim Yul looked back at me, something fell out. They were earphones. He had been wearing earphones. Classical music bellowed from the earphones that fell to his shoulders.
“……”
Our eyes met.
I was stunned.
Tears welled up in Kim Yul’s black eyes.
“What…”
For a moment, I was speechless.
I don’t know why I was speechless, either. Was it because this was the first time I was seeing Kim Yul cry? Maybe. Kim Yul had never shed any tears, no matter how much he was bullied. That aspect of him excited the customers’ sadism further.
But it wasn’t just for that reason.
‘Who is it?’
It felt unfamiliar.
‘Who is this bastard?’
Kim Yul’s eyes seemed too unfamiliar. His gaze was distant, looking past me, not at me. Kim Yul silently cried as I held his shoulder. Even his tears seemed to fall somewhere other than the ground.
“You…”
“It’s beautiful.”
Kim Yul opened his mouth.
“What?”
“The song. The music I’m listening to. A deaf man composed this music.”
Da da da dum—[1]
Sound spilled from the earphones. It was a rhythm I’d heard a lot before. But I was just wondering how this panhandler got the MP3.
“I am thinking of the humiliation and curses this deaf man must have suffered in his life. Wouldn’t people have insulted him by calling him a cripple? Wouldn’t they have jeered and laughed at him?”
“What are you yammering about, you…?”
“It’s sad. Scars are eternal. A person from hundreds of years ago had suffered, bearing insults in his life. It must have been the same a thousand years ago. It will be the same in a thousand years.”
Had this bastard gone crazy?
“Nothing in the world is beautiful in itself. Only those who are wounded see beauty. Only those whose lives have been ruined feel grateful to see another’s life that has not yet been ruined. Tears are shed by those who endure even to the point of ruin.”
Kim Yul’s gaze was affixed on the air.
“If there is someone who believes the whole world is beautiful, he must certainly have had his whole world ruined. Only those who live in hell would praise the world. I think that this deaf man’s cursed life resulted in his song.”
“Where did you pick up such retarded thoughts… Hey, you. What did you do?”
I grabbed Kim Yul by his collar. Squeeze! Kim Yul dropped the feed bag as I shook him. Yellow feed spilled from the bag that fell to the ground.
“What did you do to my customers, you recycling son of a bitch?!”
“……”
Finally, Kim Yul looked at me.
“I did nothing, Death King.”
“Death… What?”
“I’m only looking at what I had discarded.”
Kim Yul arrogantly grabbed my wrist. Dumbfounded, I tried to shake off his grip.
I couldn’t even budge.
‘Huh?’
Then, Kim Yul simply pulled my hand off his collar.
This all happened in an instant.
Confused, I reached out my hand again, but whack! Kim Yul slapped away my wrist. The path twisted. My hand veered off-course and whipped through the air without my control. In the blink of an eye, my hand collided with nothing but air.
“…Huh?”
I stared blankly at Kim Yul.
“It’s a shame.”
Kim Yul nonchalantly picked up the feed bag.
“[Kim Yul] is angry. What Kim Yul wants is not physical violence but a revenge far greater, to be exact. And [I]… I think I want to fulfill Kim Yul’s desire.”
“Y-you. What have you done? What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Kim Yul wants you to go through everything he has gone through. Revenge means throwing your opponent into the depths of hell that you have fallen into. That is what [Kim Yul] thinks.”
Kim Yul.
No.
“[I] agree with that opinion.”
A stranger was looking at me.
“Wait, Kim Yul’s killer. The day is ending, and the path is long. It’s so long. I will see you again after that.”
Kim Yul leisurely walked away, still holding the feed bag.
“Hey! Hey! Stand right there! Don’t…!”
That was when my pants pocket buzzed. My cell phone received a text. One of my customers must have seen the missed call and responded. Glancing toward Kim Yul, I quickly checked my phone.
+
Never contact me again.
If you do, I’ll kill you.
+
I was floored. Confused, I called the customer who sent the text. But even after multiple calls, there was no answer.
My body trembled.
‘What the hell…’
The situation did not change the following day.
‘What is going on?’
Rather, it became worse.
“E-Eunseo.”
As I entered the classroom, one of my friends approached me hesitantly. He was someone who had appeared in the [Kim Yul game] dozens of times. He was quite popular with customers because he was good at hitting people. This friend secretly enjoyed this, absorbed in his popularity.
“What?”
“Th-there’s a note I was asked to deliver to you.”
My friend seemed really terrified.
“That bad?”
“Here… S-sorry.”
He put the note on my desk and stepped back like he was fleeing. I furrowed my brows and unfolded the note.
Some handwritten words were on the page.
[Hwang Eunseo lives in a dump. The indoor shoes and the school uniforms are all recyclable. The only trash that can’t be recycled is Hwang Eunseo.]
“……”
The only reason I didn’t react right away was because it was too ridiculous.
“Ha.”
I faked a laugh and looked at my friend.
“What is this? A joke?”
Flinch. He cowered behind the other students.
I was already stressed all night because my customers were acting like shit, but with this so-called friend acting like this too, I was seething with rage.
“Did Recycling put you up to this? Hey. Hey. Look at me. Fucking look at me. There are things that you can’t do even as a friend. Yeah? Did Kim Yul make you give me this note?”
The friend couldn’t say anything. He was still wearing the terrified expression on his face. When I was about to confront him because of the absurdity, another classmate of ours approached my desk.
“Hwang Eunseo…”
“What?”
“Sorry. Take this.”
The classmate threw down another note at my desk. Instinctively, I grabbed the note and read it.
[I feel so bad for the underclassmen at our school. They have to call Hwang Eunseo their sunbae. Have you ever thought about how they feel? Doesn’t it hurt your conscience?]
My head went blank.
Taking advantage of that opportunity, three more classmates left notes on my desk. Like the previous two, they had also been actively involved in the ‘Kim Yul game.’
[Hwang Eunseo is really filthy. How can you be even dirtier than the math teacher?]
What was this?
[Wow! There are students who don’t wash their uniforms!]
Why were they doing this to me?
[You smell really bad. Seriously, you reek.]
What happened yesterday?
Something happened, but I was the only one oblivious.
Something made all my customers turn their backs on me. Not only that, but my friends were blackmailed into putting on this weird show.
‘Calm down.’
My heart was pounding like crazy.
‘Calm down. Let’s think about this calmly. Did Kim Yul do this? No. There’s no way. He was a little weird yesterday, but it isn’t him. Then, who? Who did this?’
It was then.
“Hwang Eunseo!”
The homeroom teacher stuck his head into the classroom from the door. All of the students turned to look at him. He looked around the classroom, saw me, then beckoned.
“Come with me.”
“Me…?”
“What, is there another Hwang Eunseo in our class? You’re not in trouble, so hurry and follow. Ah! Class President! Take the kids’ phones and bring them to me.”
Hesitantly, I followed the homeroom teacher out. My surroundings were eerily quiet as I left.
The air felt loaded.
It was as if all of my classmates knew why I was called, like they had no doubts about why the homeroom teacher would single me out. The only ones unaffected were the nerds who had been studying their notes since the morning.
“Hwang Eunseo.”
The teachers’ office.
“Yes…?”
“Did you do something bad? You haven’t, right?” my homeroom teacher asked calmly.
He was speaking like it didn’t matter. In the office, students in their uniforms walked around to pick up prints. Teachers were organizing the handouts before their first class.
“What?”
“I’m asking if you did something bad. Does nothing come to mind?”
“No…”
My heart raced.
“I don’t think so?”
“Hmm.”
My homeroom teacher scratched his head.
“Hey, Hwang Eunseo. Don’t blab about this, okay?”
“Okay…”
“Listen to this.”
My homeroom teacher handed me an earbud. I took it. The earphones were connected to the homeroom teacher’s computer. Click. When he clicked his mouth, I heard recorded voices through the earphones.
-Hey, don’t start hitting yet! Just make him kneel!
-Huh? A lot of people contributed this time. We’ll use a lottery to decide the concept from the five requests we received for today.
The back of my neck was cold.
-Ah, the person chosen today is the Queen. Congratulations, Queen. What are you all doing? Clap for her, clap.
-Whoaa!
My voice.
And the voices of my friends who had just tossed me the notes.
-Let’s look at Queen’s request. Hey, she also gave us a budget. 100 thousand won. She said this is for our meals and told us not to be hungry. And for our popular star, we’ll mix jjajangmyeon and jjamppong and…[2]
Click.
The homeroom teacher stopped the recording.
“Did you hear the voices just now?”
“Yes.”
“I received this recording in my mail yesterday. The sound quality isn’t good, but it kind of sounds like your and some other kids’ voices. So I just called you in to ask. Hwang Eunseo, is this you?”
“It isn’t.”
I tried to look bewildered.
“Also, a queen? What kind of play is this?”
“Who knows? I listened to it from start to finish, and it’s really weird. Anyway, it gives off a bad vibe. The mail said that it was something [for Hwang Eunseo from Grade 2, Class 5 to hear], so I wondered if it was a joke between you kids…”
Shit. So this was it. This was how the other kids were threatened.
Fortunately, our homeroom teacher was a moron. He thought that this could be a prank even after listening to the recording. Well, it was only because he was such an idiot that he didn’t know what was happening in class. That was lucky for me.
‘Nothing can be done with just this recording. It’s just a blank shot.’
Maybe one of my ‘friends’ or a customer captured the voice recording and was messing around with it. If that person had anything more conclusive than the recording, there was no reason for them not to send it to the homeroom teacher…
‘The problem is that everyone is scared of the dud shot. Damn.’
The homeroom teacher looked up at me.
“You really didn’t plan this prank with your buddies?”
“No. Um, but can I really not talk to anyone about this?”
“No. Never say a word. Anyway, it’s fine since you say it’s nothing. Go back to class.”
“Yes.”
I quietly left the teacher.
‘Dammit, dammit, dammit!’
Scrape.
When I opened the door to the teachers’ office, I ran into someone on the other side.
“……”
It was the class president. The class president was holding a blue plastic collection box, having collected the cell phones from our class.
“Oh. Sorry.”
The class president spoke with the same facial expression as usual, with his nerdy face, and stepped a little out of my way. I’d normally have said thank you, but I had no mind to do it now. I just briefly met his eyes and went out into the hallway.
‘I don’t know which bastard copied it, but I’ll make them pay today! Son of a bitch, treating me lightly. This goes beyond a joke. How could you do something like this to a classmate?!’
Scrape.
The sound of the door closing behind me quietly echoed in the hall.