Chapter 4.1

Han Junwoo is dead.

Not literally, but the entity known as Han Junwoo has perished within this pyramid.

The school was thrown into chaos. Although now erased by hundreds of aligned sneaker prints and the rising dust, just a few hours ago, there were curved tire marks on the playground.

When the piercing siren wailed loudly enough to stab at one’s ears, the entire student body rushed to the windows. Like dried pollack hanging in a fish market, their dull, lifeless eyes crowded the windows. The school was so noisy that shouts from the class next door drifted into ours through the windows.

“What’s going on?”

“You don’t know? Idiot, there’s a fight in the next class.”

“What! Who?”

“That guy, Han Junwoo, and Go Yohan.”

“Wow, fuck… That’s crazy. How did I miss it?”

We’re high school students—right at the tail end of adolescence. At the same time, we’re leaving behind that extremely delicate, self-absorbed individualism, feeling endless shame for our past selves, and reveling in simple, violent, and explosive emotions. So this reaction is only natural.

“Hey, anyone have a friend in the next class? Weren’t those two close? How did they end up fighting?”

“Haven’t you heard the rumors about Han Junwoo?”

Our class was a mix of people thrilled to be the center of the rumor, those who humbly accepted the downfall, and those savoring the pleasure of being on the winning side. There was a white ambulance parked outside the window. For the next thirty minutes, the biggest gossip in school was the identity of the ones who caused that ambulance to be called. We all know how fast rumors spread in our five-story, closed-off private high school.

So, who won?

Those who learned the truth of the incident did not worry about the two students who were injured badly enough to be taken away in an ambulance. Instead, they took delight in the fulfillment of a small yet strangely earnest wish from the start of the semester.

Go Yohan.

Fights like these typically have ambiguous winners. One-on-one fights in particular tend to be that way. However, everything about today’s fight worked in Go Yohan’s favor. The rumors that had spread beforehand only made Han Junwoo’s defeat more certain.

In the filthy corridors of this boys’ high school, people were saying:

“Turns out Han Junwoo is gay.”

“What? Wasn’t he popular with girls?”

“Fuck! Hey! That was all bullshit! Apparently, he was only after asses. They say all the guys he bullied got fucked. It’s terrifying. And he’s from a rich family, right? If you’ve got money, there’s nothing you can’t do, fuck. You can just go to a brothel.”

“Wow, fuck. I never saw Han Junwoo like that; turns out he’s a total slut.”

“Heh-heh. Wow, I wish I was born with a golden spoon. Even a gay can go to a brothel. But isn’t China cheaper? We’re going to China for our school trip, right? Think we can slip away during free time? Wanna go?”

The conversation ended, not with Han Junwoo, but with some shabby, cheap brothel in China. Yet in that short exchange, Han Junwoo’s honor was slashed a dozen times and ultimately murdered. This act of murder multiplies by the number of students in the school.

After losing to Go Yohan, Han Junwoo became a total rag—almost as if everyone had been waiting for his fall.

The classroom was weighing calmness against passion. Everyone’s eyes flicked back and forth like a metronome between the red benchmarks. The back of the classroom floor was still stained dark red. It must have dried by now, but it felt like if you pressed it, blood would seep out.

It was unexpected to see how our timid homeroom teacher, who looked ready to burst into tears at the sight of the incident, actually reacted. The next period was self-study. The classroom had been bustling with excitement over this hot topic, but it instantly cooled when the teacher arrived. As soon as she entered, she threw what she was holding onto the floor, shattering it, and let out a high-pitched scream that could tear your ears.

“What the hell is wrong with you! You, you, you bastards! Do you think I’m a joke? Why do you live your lives like this? Stop it. Stop it, I said! Why are you making noise during self-study time! Is this the time to be chatting? You’ll be seniors next year! Seniors! Please, listen to me and stop causing trouble! Do you know I have to take responsibility for all your actions! I never should’ve come to an all-boys school. I didn’t even want to come to a place like this. I feel like I’m losing my mind. If you live like this, your life will be nothing but trash, don’t you see that? Aren’t you sorry to your parents? And how many times do I have to tell you to keep quiet during self-study!”

Most sensible people, upon seeing someone so timid suddenly explode, would shut their mouths, but this is an all-boys school, a place crowded with all kinds of lacking human figures. Some defy common sense, some haven’t outgrown their pathetic middle-school puberty, and some, even though they study the same, are so dim-witted that they commit idiotic acts. Our classroom is exactly like that.

“Eh, eh—Teacher’s mad. Mad! Don’t be mad!”

“It’s funny when the teacher gets mad.”

Someone sitting in the very back by the hallway spoke, and the person two seats ahead of me whispered softly.

“You bastard! What? Do you think I’m a joke?! You, come out here. Come up front!”

“Hey—. Why are you like this?”

“I said come out, you bastard!”

The teacher threw the attendance book. It flew between the desks, struck the corner of a desk in the third row, then fell to the floor. The attendance book, losing its momentum, made a loud noise.

“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. Please forgive me. Okay?”

He kept smirking, showing no remorse. It’s always some mediocre punk, neither popular nor a complete outcast, who pulls stunts like this. The sloppy ones act out. They show off, pretending to be tough. But only they fail to see that this bluff is the clumsiest and most pathetic in the world.

“Come out. Or should I come over there?”

“Ah, teacher! Isn’t that too much! Seriously!”

“Hey!”

“Shut up, the teacher told you to come out.”

I couldn’t stand it any longer. Unable to bear it, I spoke up. The class’s eyes turned to me, but I didn’t care and took in that pathetic scene. Honestly, it was so ridiculous that I nearly scoffed. I quite enjoy situations like this.

I’m not good at fighting, nor do I put on a delinquent act pretending to be tough, but the reason I sit at a fairly high position in this jungle is because I feed on guys like that.

“Hey, Kang Jun. Why are you suddenly so serious?”

“You’re the one who can’t read the room.”

Of course, this didn’t happen overnight. During the hierarchy-setting period in the first year, there was some resistance, but now it’s as pleasant as a spiral of silence.

“Yeah. Stop making noise and get out. Ah, seriously, can’t you read the room? Don’t you see how serious this is?”

“If you’re sorry, get out. Because of you, we’re all getting screwed over. You crazy bastard.”

“Ah, what’s with him? Seriously. What’s his deal?”

I could hear Kim Minho muttering under his breath until the end. The confident look he had when teasing the teacher gradually faded, like a dying ember. Under the pressure of the entire class, he finally stood up and went to the front. Look at him now, like a dead rat.

I secretly let out a twisted smile. Han Junwoo has fallen. And nothing could make me happier. Maybe it stems from the fact that Han Junwoo once swung his fist at me.

No, I’m sure of it. I feel a sense of vindication. Honestly, I was a bit surprised at myself. And I feel that electrifying thrill as the power returns to me.

“Get out into the hallway right now!”

“….”

After driving the noisy fool out, the homeroom teacher put one hand on the podium and silently held back her anger for a while. Perhaps she had gathered her thoughts, because it was fortunate in many ways that her tone calmed down considerably. Then she announced she would call each student one by one to ask about what really happened.

“I promise I’ll keep it secret. So please, tell me the truth. Don’t make me disappointed in you. Please, I’m begging you.”

She seemed determined to hear an unbiased account, but as a female teacher, she still didn’t appear to grasp the all-boys pyramid world. Once self-study time ended and the teacher—her face still flushed—finished catching her breath and left, Lee Seokhyeon closed the windows and the classroom door and gave everyone a warning.

“Hey. Watch what you say. Make the right judgment about who’s going to stick around here—Go Yohan or that gay bastard.”

“Han Junwoo threw the first punch. You get it, right?”

Kim Minho chimed in. Such admirable loyalty, isn’t it?

And less than a week later, Go Yohan returned to school.

Go Yohan came back flaunting his swollen jaw, all bruised blue. His nose must have been torn, because there was a square bandage plastered with layers of tape. In contrast to his wretched face, though, the energy radiating from him was more imposing and arrogant than ever. He grinned wide, then tapped his now perfectly reattached fang with his index finger. I let out a light chuckle in return.

Right after the fight, Go Yohan casually got up on his own two feet and walked into the ambulance. It was bizarre but in a flashy, attention-grabbing way that dominated everyone’s chatter for days. I hurried after him. And just before he climbed into the ambulance, I handed him a milk carton.

“This is yours. Say it fell on the ground and tell them you might get tetanus if you don’t disinfect it.”

At that moment, Go Yohan wiped his face with his left hand and looked at me. But the blood, already dried stiff, wouldn’t come off. Honestly, seeing half his face caked in crimson, dried to a rusty hue, wasn’t exactly a pleasant sight. My focus was on how his unusually small pupils were locked on my hand. In that gory state, he spoke, and I strained to listen, caught off guard.

“…I’ll call you.”

His hand, crusted with dried blood, brushed my cheek. It was an abrupt gesture.

“…Huh?”

All I could do was stand there, dumbfounded.@@novelbin@@

Soon after, he texted me, saying most of the nerves were still alive, and they’d managed to reattach everything. And as soon as he came back to school, Go Yohan took the seat next to mine. When my original seatmate showed up, without even looking at him, Yohan pointed his thumb to another empty chair. The guy quietly sat somewhere else.

Before I realized it, that bastard was sitting beside me, tapping my shoulder twice with his index and middle fingers in quick succession. Then he suddenly said,

“Here’s a present.”

“What? What do you mean, out of nowhere?”

“Shut up and open your hand.”

I put down my mechanical pencil and opened my palm. At the same time, he carefully placed something on it. I felt a crinkling sensation in the center of my hand that left me a bit unsettled. When he lifted his big hand from mine, I saw one broken tooth with no root and another whose root was still fully intact.

What the hell is this? Confused by the tooth’s strange yellowish end and the dark red stains clinging to it, I glanced at Go Yohan. He leaned back against the chair, smirking.

“I made Han Junwoo chew on meat with a fake tooth for the rest of his life.”

Hee-hee-hee. Then he twisted his shoulders, laughing like he was genuinely having fun—like a pure kid.

“Did you see?”

“…”

“I won.”

This fucking guy.

The one showing absolutely no remorse was Go Yohan. For a moment, I nearly threw that tooth at the wall.

Go Yohan’s return caused another stir in the school. After all, he was the first main character to reappear, his face wasn’t as battered as people had expected, and he showed none of the gloomy aura of a defeated man.

Rumors about who won spread quickly among the second-years. Most of the people who really knew what happened were in our year. For the first-years, second-year drama is too far removed—something interesting yet hard to learn more about without friends in our grade. For the third-years, buried in endless exam prep, it’s just either a nice bit of seasoning to break the monotony or a rotten additive messing with their concentration. But for us second-years, it was a major event that we’d remember for the rest of our lives.

“Go Yohan, are you nuts? Have you lost your mind? I mean, fuck, I knew from the start you weren’t normal, but I didn’t think you were this much of a crazy bastard.”

“Seokhyeon-ah. A barking dog needs a beating with a stick to learn its place.”

In response to Kim Seokmin’s words, Kim Minho sprang up from his seat.

“Yohan, you fucker—right on, man. Seokhyeon! You gotta keep your pride as a man. If you go easy on that gay bastard, you might end up offering him your ass. Fuck, if something’s gonna get fucked, I’d rather be the one doing the fucking!”

Kim Minho, who was perched on top of Han Junwoo’s desk, stomped his foot and laughed at that nonsense. Then Kim Seokmin spread his legs confidently.

“People wondered who’d win if you really fought, but of course it was Go Yohan.”

“Duh. Obviously. You moron! Do you even know who Yohan is? This bastard’s been insane since freshman year!”

Kim Minho let out a shrill cry and playfully raised his fist. Kim Seokmin stood up and caught Minho’s fist in his palm. That’s how their mock sparring began. And there, beside Kim Seokmin, sat Park Dongchul in an awkward position.

“Yohan is really something else.”

But nobody answered him. Probably because he was just repeating something he’d said moments earlier, and the only person who used to pay attention to him—Kim Seokmin—was now busy goofing around with Kim Minho. Park Dongchul rubbed his nose with his thumb and forced an awkward laugh. He knew very well that no one cared about him. Even so, being with others was better than being alone.

See this, teacher? This is the worthless men’s pyramid.

Propping my chin on the back of my hand, I pulled out two thousand-won bills from my front pocket. Then, as though I’d just remembered, I put on a little act.

“Oh, right. Dongchul. I haven’t paid you back yet, have I? For the milk.”

The moment I spoke words of sympathy, right then, Park Dongchul’s eyes lit up with hope, and he wore a cheap-looking grin. I handed him the neatly folded bills as though I were doing charity.

“Here.”

“Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

Idiot. What’s there to be thankful for, really? But I tossed some pity his way, and hearing him say ‘thank you’ was strangely satisfying. Because in that word, he openly acknowledged that I outranked him. And as soon as Park Dongchul spoke, Kim Minho and Kim Seokmin—who had been messing around, testing each other’s strength—stopped and asked,

“Milk? The hell’s up with milk?”

“Jun saved my tooth by soaking it in milk. Without that, I’d have had to live with an implant for the rest of my life.”

Go Yohan bared his teeth and tapped his upper lip above his fang. Kim Minho asked again,

“What’s the big deal with milk? There’s something about milk?”

“Is this bastard dumb or what? Didn’t they teach you to put a knocked-out tooth in milk?”

“Oh, is that it? Hey, Kang Jun, you’re damn smart, huh.”

Kim Minho shook my shoulder. Seeing that, Go Yohan snickered and smacked both Minho and Seokmin’s backs with his right hand.

“You useless idiots. Be someone who actually benefits my life, like Jun.”

I watched Go Yohan’s antics with a slight smile, then turned my head. Park Dongchul was isolated once again. But he was smiling. And behind him, as though annoyed by our racket, were Choi Donghwan and Hong Huijun, staring our way. Looking at them, I burst out laughing even bigger than Park Dongchul.

Indeed, I wasn’t wrong.