DMH Ch13

There was not a bit of fiction in the cover of the book that Chief Kim had handed over. It was a high school, but its size was similar to that of a prestigious American university. If you were to compare it to his previous school, Oham High School, that school was about the size of this school’s parking lot.

“That’s why they think differently from others.”

Wan wandered down the empty hallway, gazing out the window. The window frames weren’t rusted, and there were no stained curtains. The unobstructed view revealed a playground covered in soft grass. Turning his head to the left, he could see classrooms where students were studying. The atmosphere was calm. Unlike at Oham High, there were no students running wild whether the teacher was present or not. Entering the faculty office, Wan headed towards the desk of the homeroom teacher for Class 3 of the 3rd grade. The homeroom teacher glanced at Wan dismissively and tossed out a curt remark.

“You’re the new kid, right?”

It was a brusque tone.

“Yes.”

“Go to the class and sit in any empty seat.”

“Excuse me? Weren’t you going to take me in?”

“Do you think this is middle school? Take care of yourself.”

He was taken aback. It was the time when class was about to start. The classroom was packed. To weave through that crowd and find an empty seat on his own was a daunting task even for Wan, who was confident in his shamelessness. He had expected to follow the usual transfer procedure, as in other schools: the homeroom teacher would take the transfer student in, give a brief introduction, everyone would clap, and then class would begin. However, the homeroom teacher, who seemed bored with life, ignored Wan and was busy with his own work. Eventually, seeing Wan standing blankly without leaving the faculty office, he waved his hand as if shooing away a bug.

“No one cares about you.”

Wan barely managed to escape the faculty office, avoiding the teacher’s fly-swatting hand. His bag was heavy.

“Should I go to the locker first?”

He walked down the hallway in search of his pre-assigned large locker. At Oham High, the lockers were installed at the back of the classroom, but at this school, each student was assigned a long locker with a dial. Once assigned, the locker could be used in the same spot until graduation. The lockers lined up along the hallway resembled changing room stalls.

[Park Wan]

He found his blue locker with his name engraved at the very end. The password was 0000. Remembering the teacher’s casual words, he turned the dial. With a click, the locker’s seam came undone. When the door opened, the cramped interior smelled of mothballs. Wan put his bag inside and opened the zipper. It was a bundle of textbooks he had brought enough to burst the bag. He arranged the workbooks and textbooks in a row and stuck the timetable on the locker wall. He had to set a separate password, but he couldn’t think of a number to change it to right away. Besides, the dial lock looked strange.

“What’s this like?”

There was nothing to steal in the hungry transfer student’s locker. Unless strange rumors spread, he could objectively assess his position here to some extent. Arriving in front of the classroom, his heart pounded strangely. He had played the individual game to the point of boredom, but taking his first step into a place where unfamiliar people gathered made him feel uneasy.

“Sigh…”

He took a deep breath and opened the back door. Instead of the usual boisterous noise, a quiet atmosphere where everyone was doing their own thing greeted Wan. This was the atmosphere Wan had wanted. The first person he noticed was none other than Mu Jeonghoo. He was sitting at the very back, with his legs on the desk, lounging as he read a book. Despite the sound of the back door opening, he didn’t look his way. Getting closer, he saw white earphones in his ears.

The guy who had given him every possible insult at the restaurant a few days ago, and hadn’t shown his face until arriving at this classroom. Seeing Mu Jeonghoo’s handsome face, Wan vowed to repay the price of the humiliation he had suffered someday. Besides Mu Jeonghoo, half of the students sitting in the classroom didn’t even turn towards the opened door. A few stared intently at the new face. Their gazes were as persistent as an anteater licking the ground.

Wan confirmed that the end seat in this row was empty, and he walked over, hung his bag on the bag hook, and sat down. He was a complete outsider in this place. He took out textbooks and notebooks from his bag and filled the drawer. He was missing one textbook for the fifth period. He thought he would have to get it during the break, and when he looked up, he saw thighs approaching, loitering in his view as he looked into the drawer.

“Which high school did you come from?”

The abrupt question was more like an interrogation than a conversation.

“Oham High.”

“Oham High?”

The kid who asked Wan the question tilted his head. Then, a friend standing next to him began to provide supplementary explanations. Wan wished they didn’t know about the existence of Oham High at all. But judging from the guy who was kindly providing supplementary explanations, he seemed to know a lot about Oham High. It was only natural that the students in front turned around at the murmuring noise. The kids sitting in their seats looked at the seat Wan was sitting in with interested faces.

“Isn’t that a school where you don’t even pay tuition?”

“Really? There’s a school like that?”

The boy who had first asked Wan the question raised his voice as if he had heard something unbelievable.

“If you don’t pay tuition, how does the school operate?”

“…”

“Don’t tell me you learned at a school that’s run on the taxes we pay?”

Wan’s emotions turned to bitterness at the absurd remark. What kind of education did these little shits receive from a young age that made them act like they were the masters of this world? Wan retorted with a sneer.

“To be exact, it’s the taxes your parents pay. And it’s not completely free. We pay for the incidental expenses. I guess your parents are a little short on noblesse oblige?”

Mu Jeonghoo, who had earphones in his ears, burst into a meaningless laugh. There was no way the guys right next to him could have missed Jeonghoo’s snort. A sense of humiliation settled on the faces of the two guys who had come to pick a fight with Wan. The more they did, the more Wan held his head high. The two guys glared at Wan, who was sitting down, with all their might before returning to their seats. Even as they sat down, they didn’t forget to glare at Wan as if they were biding their time. The front door opened and the teacher came in. The majority of the kids who had been watching them turned their backs.

After defeating those two, strangely, he wasn’t afraid anymore. If he had been afraid of such treatment, he wouldn’t have moved here in the first place. Thinking that this was the level of the school where those kinds of guys went, Wan, who had found a breakthrough, felt confident that he could get through any other fights that came his way in the same way. If he was an outsider here anyway, he would play the outsider role to the end, and if someone ignored him and came at him, he would ignore them and come at them in the same way.

The story of the newly appeared transfer student who brought up the spirit of ‘noblesse oblige’ and gave the students a blow spread like wildfire. Wan walking down the hallway was almost like a zoo monkey. Hearing the name of Oham High occasionally as Wan passed by in the hallway, he could tell what kind of image the public school Oham High had for them.

Somehow time passed, and lunchtime arrived. Wan realized how weak his imagination was. The large hall was more like a banquet hall where a party was being held than a cafeteria. It wasn’t the typical high school cafeteria. The area was divided, and the food representing each country was laid out in a buffet style. Students could go to the corner that suited their taste that day, take the food, and that was it.

Wan tried hard to resist the urge to let his eyes wander and picked up a plate. He was thinking of going around once and slowly putting what he wanted to eat. Among them, there were foods he had never seen before, and there were impressive foods that made him realize that that food was famous in that country. Next to the area where Chinese food was placed, there was also a vegan corner. The vegan corner was an area often used by vegetarians, dieters, or students who were controlling their diet.

“They have everything.”

Wan scooped a spoonful of mashed potato salad from the salad corner. In fact, he had gone around about one and a half times, but he couldn’t decide what to put on his plate. There was so much food. Since he was human, he wanted to start with foods he had never eaten before. But if he only picked those kinds of foods, the future was obvious. There would be kids who would give him a hard time. Wan didn’t want to force a future that was so obvious. He put meatballs covered in a salty brown sauce next to the mashed potato salad.

After passing the salad corner, there was Japanese food. He looked at the caviar sushi shining brightly on the plate and grabbed the tongs. The expensive caviar sushi that he had only imagined being able to eat in his life was about to be placed on his plate. A troublemaker appeared in front of the tongs that were approaching the last remaining caviar sushi. A slender chopstick snatched the caviar sushi that Wan was about to pick up.

He looked at the owner of the chopsticks. It was one of the guys who had come to his desk in the morning and ruined Wan’s mood. Choi Gilhyun chewed on the popping caviar eggs and gave Wan an obnoxious smile. Wan roughly put down the tongs he was holding on the stand. Choi Gilhyun touched the contents of Wan’s plate with the chopsticks he had put in his mouth.

“All you chose was a puffy potato salad and cold meatballs.”

“…”

“You only pick things like you.”

The way he ate was also annoying. Seeing his thin lips moving busily made him want to kill him. Ignoring these kinds of guys was the best policy. Wan ignored Choi Gilhyun, who was harshly cutting him down, and turned his body. But again, his path was blocked. He glared at Choi Gilhyun with his eyes raised.

“Oho!”

Choi Gilhyun took an exaggerated action and pretended to tremble. Then, with a face that showed he had a good idea, he opened his mouth. He put the slender chopsticks into his mouth full of food. Wan turned his head at the disgusting scene. Choi Gilhyun savored the food with his tongue, and took out a caviar egg rolling around on his tongue. The plump and black caviar was caught between the slender chopsticks. He put the caviar on the potato salad on Wan’s plate as if putting a cake decoration on it.

“This is a gift to commemorate your transfer. You probably haven’t eaten it before.”

Wan’s hand holding the plate trembled at the condescending voice. If you endure three times, you can avoid murder. Wan closed his eyes and thought of his dad working hard in the garden, and imagined his dad and him living well in the future, but he couldn’t stop his instincts. The plate was smashed into Choi Gilhyun’s face. The food that was on the wide plate was smeared all over his face.

“How’s the potato salad? It’s my gift.”

Yellowish potato salad dripped, dripped from under Choi Gilhyun’s face, which was facing the plate as if he had received a cake baptism. The meatballs smeared on his cheeks were a bonus. The hall, which had been whispering as they watched them, became as cold as ice.

Wan wiped the potato salad on his hands on Choi Gilhyun’s shirt. Then, without hesitation, he left the cafeteria.

“That son of a bitch!”

A furious curse was heard. His nape felt cold at the booming voice, but he didn’t look back. He didn’t hear the sound of footsteps running to retaliate. Perhaps people were flocking to him as he jumped up and down in place, or his friends were stopping him.

“Ah, I feel refreshed.”

Although his empty stomach was hungry, he felt as refreshed as if he had drunk a can of cool cider in one go.

But unfortunately, Wan’s act of throwing potato salad at Choi Gilhyun caused everyone in the school to point fingers at Wan. Wan’s actions in the cafeteria were like lighting the fuse of a rocket. Park Wan was a rolling stone, and Choi Gilhyun was a stone that had been there for a long time. They acted as if Wan’s actions of humiliating Choi Gilhyun were a declaration of war against them.

The kids were just kids. Their actions were childishness itself. When Park Wan took textbooks from his locker for a moving class, they soaked his locker with rotten milk obtained from the kitchen. Picking Wan’s locker, which had 0000 as the password, was a piece of cake. When Wan opened his locker before the last period, a sour smell assaulted him. More than feeling disgusted, he was horrified that his textbooks, filled with notes, were soaked in milk.