For Yi-hwan, there was only one good thing about private high school: no matter what trouble he caused, the teachers would mostly turn a blind eye and let it slide. No one would seriously try to make an issue of it.

He figured that wealthy parents sent their children to private schools for the same reason. That’s why, even though he caused trouble, got into fights, and there wasn’t a quiet day for him, the teachers would hush it up.

Honestly, how many kids that age were mature? At best, being mature meant studying as the teachers told them to get into a good university. One thing was for sure: Yi-hwan wasn’t one of the mature students.

“Hey, where are you going again? Didn’t you say it’s your father’s birthday today?”

“You know my old man’s birthday better than I do?”

“You mentioned it in passing last week. That’s why I asked if we could go on a date, no, have dinner together, but you blew me off. Don’t you even remember? Hey, where are you going again!”

Poor Seo Ji-young. What kind of friends are there between a man and a woman? Why couldn’t that girl, who had nagged him a hundred times to be friends, understand when he said he didn’t want to? Well, if she had any sense, she would have just felt miserable; what good would it do her to understand? It was clear that she wasn’t a mature student either. What good was being mature anyway? Maybe living like this was easier for both of them.

He left school a little early. He planned to head to the alley where his sister was.

Motel, they called it a motel, but it was an illegal massage parlor. Massage parlor my ass. It was a prostitution den where sex was bought and sold by the hour. His sister had jumped into this sleazy life without anyone telling her to. He knew the reason, which only made him angrier. That idiot was just too kind, getting beaten up without ever fighting back. So, as her only blood relative who had stepped up, he had no choice but to play the villain.

The path to the alley wasn’t smooth either. It was as if she was running away from something, his sister had hidden herself in the most dismal place, leaving behind the wide, glittering lights of Seoul.

As soon as he stepped out of the school gates, it started to rain. Fortunately, it was autumn rain, not heavy, but it didn’t look like it would stop soon.

“Hey, Cha Yi-hwan. Where are you going?”

“To study.”

“Bullshit.”

The guys who knew him well snickered.

“Hey, Seo-han-ah. Where’s the pharmacy?”

“Pharmacy? Hey, where’s the pharmacy?”

One of the guys squatting in front of the school gates smoking, like life’s losers, mumbled something and exhaled smoke. A brief regret flashed through his mind that he should have just looked for it himself instead of asking. They were such losers.

“You guys have such pathetic lives.”

“Why, did your girlfriend get pregnant? Going to buy a pregnancy test or something?”

“No wonder you’ve been wandering around so much lately. Who is it? Kwangyang High? Seoil High?”

“If you keep running around like that, of course you’ll get someone pregnant, you bastard.”

It wasn’t worth responding to their low-quality jokes, but watching the little shits laughing so gleefully made him wonder if he would end up like that too, which was pathetic. To think that these vulgar bastards were the catalyst for him to reflect on his life. Well, he was in no position to judge anyone. He himself was just as pathetic.

“My kid definitely shouldn’t end up like you guys.”

“Oh, you crazy bastard, really? She’s pregnant?” All sorts of low-grade jokes swirled around him like thugs. Yi-hwan turned his back on them and walked away.

He remembered his sister saying she had been suffering from migraines for the past few days. That idiot would never go to the pharmacy herself to buy a single pill.

He went into a pharmacy a block away from school. When he asked for migraine medicine, the pharmacist showed him a few that were supposedly effective. He just told him to give him whatever and took out his bills when a girl stood next to him. All he could see was the top of her head, but she was wearing a school uniform.

“Excuse me... could I have some indigestion medicine? It’s for my dad.”

Her delivery was quite clear, but the words that followed were full of embarrassment.

“Oh, where did my wallet go? Just a moment.”

The girl opened the zipper of her backpack, which was as big as she was, and rummaged through it for a while. Her face quickly turned ashen and she looked like she was about to cry. But somehow, she looked familiar. He had definitely seen her somewhere before. Oh, there, the girl’s eyebrows drooped as she gaped, unable to speak.

Yi-hwan took the medicine and roughly grabbed the change. No, instead of grabbing it, he pushed the remaining bills back towards the girl who was standing there blankly, gesturing with his chin.

“Here, give her indigestion medicine.”

He shoved the headache medicine box into his pocket and left the pharmacy. The drizzle made the day feel colder than usual. He heard hurried footsteps. He thought someone was running to avoid the sudden rain, but the quickly approaching footsteps slowed down as they got closer to him.

It was that girl from before. He saw her name tag on the right chest of her uniform first. Jung Yeon. It was a single character name. Nothing particularly special, but somehow it didn’t seem ordinary.

“Excuse me, thank you. I think I lost my wallet, and I don’t know where I put it. If you could give me your number, I’ll definitely pay you back.”

As he faced the girl who bowed her head in greeting, he thought about where he had seen her face before. She was shielding her eyes from the rain with her hand, but he knew. It was that girl who had stood next to him at the police station when he had been taken in, giving him cocoa, saying she was his dad.

That sassy little thing who had told him to shut up and drink his cocoa, handing him a paper cup, saying he was upsetting her dad. He turned around and started walking away, and then he heard her voice talking on the phone with her dad, as if she had received a call.

He hadn’t known then. That he would become entangled with this kid again.

That he would become entangled with that child in such a fiercely passionate and deep way.

<The End>