ORAS | Chapter 1.1

“Hey! Kwon Wooyoung! That bastard here? They say he slept with Lee Jihye?”

Wooyoung, who had been dozing off with his head buried in his desk, shifted at the loud commotion. Nam Kihyuk, rushing in urgently, shook Wooyoung’s back wildly.

“Kwon Woooyoung! Did you sleep with Lee Jihye, you son of a bitch?!”

Wooyoung, dragged out of sleep against his will, groggily opened his eyes. He squinted tightly, forcing his eyelids open, and his blurry vision wobbled as it tried to focus.

“Ah… what the hell is this bullshit. Again.”

He had only dozed off for a bit during lunch break, but his voice came out thick and heavy with sleep. With his half-open eyes, he slowly scanned his surroundings. The guys at the back of the classroom, who had been gathered in a noisy group, were snickering loudly.

“Hey, hey, hey, look at this guy pretending he doesn’t know anything. Kim Minjae said he saw the two of them going into Lee Jihye’s house at night!”

“Shit, Kwon Wooyoung, you fucking player. Acting like you’re not interested in girls, but you’re hooking up with them like crazy. Respect?”

Eighteen. You’d think he’d be immune to rumors by now, like a balloon that’s slowly swelling up. But to the guys who had nothing better to do with their school life, spreading gossip and tearing others apart was the best way to pass time. Of course, whether it was true didn’t matter.

“Must be nice.”

In the midst of the noise, Ko Taeseong murmured quietly. Leaning loosely against a locker, he flicked the basketball with his lips, making a dull thunk-thunk sound.

“I want to sleep with Wooyoung too.”

His voice was soft, laced with laughter.

“Ah, fuck!”

“You crazy bastard!”

At just one throwaway comment, the guys around them burst into exaggerated laughter. They threw crude words into the air and laughed giddily, having the time of their lives.

“Our Wooyoung… he’s fucking huge.”

Thunk, thunk. The basketball bounced slowly off the floor, making a dull thud. Taeseong pushed himself off the locker and slowly walked toward Wooyoung, who was sitting in his chair.

Seeing Taeseong speak nonsense with such a calm face, Wooyoung let out a hollow laugh.

“Ha… what the hell, I just walked her home, that’s all.”

With eyes still heavy from sleep, he lifted his lips in a tired smirk and pressed his palm against the corner of his eyes.

Wooyoung’s high school was split into separate classes for boys and girls. Occasionally, while walking through the halls, some girls would approach him, and she had been one of them. They happened to run into each other after school, and their paths just happened to align. She was struggling with a heavy load of books and art supplies, so he simply walked her home.

“Walk me home too.”

Standing in front of Wooyoung, Taeseong tossed the basketball lightly. Wooyoung caught it without thinking and chuckled. Amid the surrounding noise, it felt like only the two of them remained.

“Get in line, you psycho.”

With a snap of his wrist, Wooyoung sent the ball flying lightly, aiming straight at Taeseong’s abdomen. Thud. Taeseong caught it with ease, smiling and tilting his chin. His half-lidded eyes and the mole near his eye seemed to shine more lazily today.

“Yes, oppa.”

Holding the basketball, Taeseong plopped down beside Wooyoung, leaning his back against him. As Wooyoung glanced at him from below, he let out a short laugh. For someone so large and rowdy, his clinginess made him seem like a fox spirit.

“Kwon Wooyoung.”

When his name was called, Wooyoung looked down. He saw Taeseong’s thick lips moving. Suddenly, the space between them felt uncomfortably close. Wooyoung instinctively turned his gaze toward the window.

“Did you really do it?”

Taeseong’s voice came sluggishly, and Wooyoung lowered his gaze again. He stared at the dark pupils of Taeseong’s eyes and narrowed his own slightly. The faint smile at the corner of Taeseong’s lips, as always, made it impossible to guess what he was thinking.

Such a fox.

A breeze slipped through the window, bringing with it the fresh scent of summer. For a moment, a soft fabric softener scent lingered in the air. It was Taeseong’s scent.

Wooyoung turned his head back again. His gaze fixed quietly on the fluttering green leaves outside the window, and after a moment, he opened his lips.

“No.”

I want to sleep with you instead.

***

Kwon Wooyoung’s grandmother lived in a small rural house with an herbal medicine shop attached, located in Unil-dong. It was a place she had been living in for decades, long before he was born. Unil-dong, once known as an undeveloped prime land area, had completed its redevelopment around the time Wooyoung entered kindergarten, after many years of planning.

The Kwon family, well-known in Unil-dong since their ancestors’ time, had received an enormous compensation due to the farmland his grandmother inherited. Yet, even after the money was deposited into their bank account, Wooyoung’s family still stayed in the old, worn-out rural house. The sign of the small, insignificant herbal medicine shop was never taken down.

Wooyoung’s mother had returned to Unil-dong while still unmarried, after becoming pregnant. She and his grandmother fought endlessly over the issue of the compensation that had been pushed forward.

The never-ending quarrels spiraled like a Möbius strip. Young Wooyoung lived through those days, waking and sleeping to the sound of sharp shouts and tears.

One winter night, when the white snow had piled up thickly, she suddenly disappeared. Likely, she had taken most of the compensation money that his grandmother had received.

What was left behind was only the grandmother, Wooyoung, the herbal medicine shop, and the old rural house.

When the sun rose, light spread over the hills of Unil-dong. Through the window, the beautiful blue Han River could be seen, and the ‘Riverpark Castle,’ a luxury housing complex, stood proudly. It was a newly built neighborhood where only the wealthy elite with power and prestige could live. The demand was so high that even paying extra would not guarantee a place.

Because of this, young Wooyoung despised the people who lived there. Development, compensation, Riverpark… The old house had no soundproofing, so he heard those words day and night. Naturally, all his resentment was directed towards that place.

I hate it all.

Around the age of ten, Wooyoung was fierce and short-tempered. He didn’t even understand what words like ‘house,’ ‘apartment,’ ‘monthly rent,’ ‘jeonse,’ or ‘lease’ meant, but he was still the subject of ridicule among his classmates. He was the only one who didn’t live in Riverpark Castle, so he was always the center of attention.

“What did you just say?”

“You’re the beggar from that herbal medicine shop, right? My mom said so! Ugh!”

“Do you want to die, beggar?”

But his innate strength of character wasn’t weak enough to be broken by such things. He paid back the taunts with a tightly clenched fist.

Whenever Wooyoung rolled up his sleeves, even the boys who had been mocking him would shut up, as if their mouths were sealed. It was probably because he was physically bigger than most of his peers. Occasionally, he would help kids in similar situations, and it would end the same way—after a few punches, everything would settle down.

For that reason, there was never any bullying in Wooyoung’s class. Whenever he couldn’t hold in his anger and fought, shedding a little blood, his grandmother would rub some strange-smelling medicine on him in a room that had been heated with a hot stove.

She was taciturn, but she always soothed him with warm hands. Even in the silence, Wooyoung could vaguely tell that she was comforting him.

So, nothing else really mattered. He believed he was a hundred times better off than those kids who had to be drilled with academy lessons, private tutoring, and endlessly fussed at until they fell asleep.

A warm grandmother and a peaceful home.

That was enough for elementary school Wooyoung.

However, out of nowhere, a problem suddenly arose. For art homework, he was asked to draw the car his father drove. This was a difficult task for Wooyoung. He didn’t have a father. So, of course, there was no car that his nonexistent father drove.

Feeling frustrated, Wooyoung sulked and hid in the playground after school. He knew that if he went home in this mood, he would only end up taking it out on his innocent grandmother. He was annoyed. He didn’t want to do anything. He sat on the swing, kicking the dirt for a long time, when suddenly, a voice called out to him.

“Wooyoung.”

He looked up at the voice. There, in front of him, stood a child he had never seen before.

“What?”

Wooyoung, who had lifted his gaze, nonchalantly turned his head again. He didn’t care whether this unfamiliar kid knew his name or not. His mind was tangled with nothing but the dark, messy scribbles of the car drawing for his homework.

“Do you want to do the art homework together?”

“……”

“My dad doesn’t have a car either.”

“……”

“But there are lots of pictures of cars at home. I even have a model car.”

Wooyoung, who had stopped swinging, slowly lifted his head.

The boy in front of him appeared much smaller, with a frail build, pale skin, and shaded eyelashes. Beneath his thin double eyelids, a tiny mole rested.

It was around twilight when the orange glow of the sunset bathed the playground. The boy’s face seemed to be tinted with the warm hue of the fading light. Unlike the boys he usually fought with in class, the boy had a delicate and pretty face.

Without realizing it, Wooyoung lowered his gaze, feeling a strange urge to not refuse him as he usually would. Perhaps it was because he felt a sense of kinship, realizing the boy was in a similar situation.

“Who are you?”

Wooyoung kicked the ground roughly as he asked, his feet stomping. The rusty swing creaked loudly in response. The boy’s thick lips curled into a soft, subtle smile at Wooyoung’s question.

“I’m Taeseong. Ko Taeseong. We’re in the same class.”

“……”

“I was in the same class in first grade and third grade too.”

The boy’s gentle voice, different from the loud, brash voices of his classmates, piqued Wooyoung’s curiosity. The fact that the boy’s dad didn’t have a car also caught his interest.

Perhaps that was why. For the first time, he found himself following a stranger—an unfamiliar boy—without hesitation.

Wooyoung followed him, not suspecting anything. Ko Taeseong. He swallowed the round letters of his name as he trudged along behind him, with heavy, awkward steps.

The feeling of visiting a friend’s house for the first time was strangely exciting and made his heart race. So, as he passed through the narrow alleys, when the luxurious gates of Riverpark Castle appeared in front of him, a wave of betrayal rushed over him that he couldn’t quite handle with his young mind.

“Damn… Are you kidding me?”

Wooyoung stared at the gates, his face flushed with anger. But Ko Taeseong, who had stopped and turned around, had a calm expression on his face.

“What?”

“Why doesn’t your dad have a car if you live here?”

The thought that he had been tricked made Wooyoung want to curse, but he barely managed to restrain himself, clenching his fists tightly. He was furious but didn’t want to hurt the delicate face in front of him.