# Chapter 6
It wasn’t a long distance from home to school, but I decided to take the bus today because I was especially physically tired. In retrospect, it wasn’t a particularly good decision.
“Ugh! Seriously!”
The bulky man standing behind me frowned and shook his head vigorously. His appearance was intimidating with a large scar on his cheek, impressive stubble marks, and a considerably heavy build. I felt my body freeze like a stone the moment I faced his menacing expression.
‘Don’t get involved.’
I hastily averted my gaze, but unfortunately, he glared directly at me.
“Hey hey, gisaeng’s brother, was it you?”
“…”
“Hey. Are you ignoring me?”
“…Me?”
“Yeah, you, gisaeng’s brother. Was it you?”
“Pardon?”
“I’m asking if it was you!”
“It wasn’t me.”
“What do you think I’m talking about when you say it wasn’t you?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Life was too exhausting. Checking his uniform, I saw it wasn’t from our school. I desperately prayed in my heart that this wouldn’t turn into a flag for inter-school conflict.
“From where I’m standing, it seems like it was you.”
“What exactly…”
“You’re the one who touched my butt, right? Tsk. What kind of nonsense is this.”
“What…?”
“What do you mean ‘what’!”
“Me…? To you…?”
“Me~? To you~?”
“…”
“Are you mocking me right now?”
“No.”
“What do you mean no! I saw you!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I felt like the skin under my eyes was hollowing out.
If he’s going to pick a fight, at least do it over something that makes sense. What kind of wealth and glory would I gain from touching that bulky guy’s butt?! I’d rather have my own butt touched!
I sighed deeply inside. I knew I had to resolve this as smoothly as possible to prevent it from reaching Seong Haemin’s ears for the sake of my future freedom, but my energy just wasn’t there. I wasn’t even at school yet, and I already wanted to go back home.
Exhausted, I muttered, “You must have mistaken me for someone else because of the crowd. Really, it wasn’t me.”
“What? If it wasn’t you, then who did it?”
“Honestly, I don’t think there’s anyone here who would do something like that.”
“Wait a minute. Hey, you, let me see…”
The bulky guy completely turned his body in the crowded bus and began scrutinizing my face. I needed to get off at the next stop. I glanced at the stop button. The red light was on.
‘Let’s bolt.’
I decided quickly.
Originally, there’s no point in trying to reason with someone who seems to have swapped their brain with their intestines. I was measuring the angle to escape, planning to push through the crowd as soon as the back door opened.
“Hey, this bastard, I thought I’d seen you somewhere—you’re Seong Haemin’s twin? Tsk, I had a run-in with Seong Haemin recently. This is perfect. Tsk!”
What? Seong Haemin is truly a useless twin! I screamed internally.
If you wanted to be such a good older brother, you should stop picking fights everywhere and do something more productive. It would have been so much better if he had behaved properly; my resentment toward Seong Haemin surged. But what made me most resentful was falling into this damn novel in the first place!
The bulky guy accurately grabbed my wrist in the midst of the crowd. His grip revealed that his build wasn’t just for show; it was so strong that I involuntarily groaned in pain.
“Ugh!”
“Hey? That’s enough.”
Whether an unnamed extra or not, a thug was still a thug. His firm grip felt like it would crush my wrist. It was guaranteed to be at least a bruise, at worst a fracture. The pain was so intense that tears reflexively welled up in my eyes, and then someone pushed through the crowd beside us.
Through my blurry vision, I could see our school uniform. I was momentarily relieved that someone from the same school had stepped in.
Although his smiling face was handsome and likable, his hair was grown out messily like a lion’s mane, his tie seemed long gone, he had no name tag on his chest, all his shirt buttons were undone, and he was wearing a thin gold necklace inside…
No matter how much pain I was in, I didn’t want his help. It would be like replacing one problem with another.
“Who are you?!”
“A Jeseong High lackey thinking he can take on me? Want to trade some candy or something?”
The bulky guy seemed intimidated by the sudden appearance of our school’s lion-maned delinquent. Still holding my wrist, he shouted loudly at him.
“Lackey? Tsk, Do Yunhyuk-nim from Jeseong High is my big brother! Who are you to tell me what to do?”
Do Yunhyuk?
While I was busy standing there pale-faced, my expression froze as soon as I heard the name mentioned by the bulky guy. Even someone who had only casually read the novel wouldn’t forget the name Do Yunhyuk. That’s because he was a villain who displayed extremely malicious behavior.
Do Yunhyuk didn’t discriminate between means or ethics to achieve his goals, to the point where he seemed like the personification of the words ‘vile’ and ‘contemptible.’ In short, he was a character so dislikable that you wouldn’t even want to face him before associating with him.
And now you’re telling me that the guy who’s grabbed me is someone who works under such a person? Not just any random thug, but specifically that villain character?
“Haha, Do Yunhyuk…”
Upon hearing the name Do Yunhyuk, the uniformed guy’s face visibly hardened, and then he smiled sinisterly with pupils slit like a snake’s. The earlier smile had completely vanished.
What’s with that expression change? My wrist was already being held so tightly that I could feel the blood pooling from lack of circulation, and now it felt like even that blood was completely draining. My head was spinning.
Moreover, the continuing conversation between the two made me feel even more disgusted.
“Am I easy to mess with? Who are you and where are you from? Spill your name!”
“Did the pig just ask me to spill my name? Kook.”
…Why does his laugh sound like that?
My mind snapped to attention, and I wanted to cover my ears. What is he, some kind of chef? It was truly a laugh that shattered the tension among the students on the bus.
Instead of choosing the easy option of showing his name tag on his chest, the uniformed guy opted to recite his name one syllable at a time as if rolling a poem in his mouth. I emptied my mind as much as possible to endure the cringe.
“Yeon. Su. Hwan.”
“…What?”
“…if that’s my name? Kook.”
The bulky guy’s face instantly turned white, then red, then yellow, and finally blue after hearing the three syllables. A traffic light had nothing on him.
“Ye… ye, ye, yeye, yeye…”
“Kook.”
“Yeye… Yeon Suhwan?! The one I know?”
“Your reaction is interesting.”
I was still standing there awkwardly, unable to escape because my wrist was still being held, and his manner of speaking was really… something.
I checked outside the window and racked my brain. I was planning to bolt as soon as the doors opened at the stop.
“Is… is it really Yeon Suhwan…?”
“Why. Are you coming to your senses now?”
After mumbling to confirm the name of our school’s uniformed guy, the bulky man’s eyes shook violently, and the grip on my wrist slowly loosened. I quickly retrieved my arm. It hurt. My hand was numb and tingling. Only an ugly, reddish palm mark remained on my arm, as if someone had casually scrawled with a marker pen.
But it wasn’t just the bulky guy who was surprised at hearing the uniformed guy’s name. People nearby also began whispering the name Yeon Suhwan: “Did you hear? He said Yeon Suhwan!”, “Yeon Suhwan?”, “Did he say Yeon Suhwan?”, “Why is Yeon Suhwan on the school bus at this hour?”, “Wasn’t Yeon Suhwan suspended?”
Among all the murmurs, only the word “suspended” clearly reached my ears.
‘Suspended.’
It seemed that, of all people, a person of concern had saved me. I didn’t know who he was, but I wanted to pretend I didn’t know him forever. I was grateful for being saved, but learning that he was someone who had been suspended made me feel less thankful. I didn’t want to become acquainted with him.
Just then, the bus arrived at the eagerly awaited stop and came to a halt. Just as I was about to flee the moment the back door opened, the person who had introduced himself as Yeon Suhwan grabbed my other, relatively uninjured wrist firmly. And he quickly pulled me off the bus, almost carrying me. I was dragged down helplessly like a piece of paper.
The bulky guy floundered in the crowd of students from our school who were getting off in large numbers. The uniformed guy, who hadn’t let go of my arm, waved his hand shamelessly toward the closing rear bus door with a grin. It was a smirk.
“You, you! Ye, Ye, Yeon Suhwan! Know that I won’t let you off next time…! If only my big brother were here, argh!”
The bulky guy shouted, gesticulating as he dangerously stuck his head out the bus window. I rolled my eyes in disbelief.
Sticking his head out the window like that? Isn’t that a violation of traffic laws?
The squawking shouts gradually faded as the bus departed. This left only me, the students who had alighted with us, and the uniformed guy who had identified himself as Yeon Suhwan at the bus stop. The students, seemingly in no rush to get to school, glanced at us furtively while whispering.
With my body fully exposed to the curious and interested gazes of the students, I couldn’t even gather my composure to fix my worn-out expression. I just wanted to get to the quiet classroom quickly.
“…Thank you.”
But I had received help after all, so I had to fulfill my moral duty. I thanked him compliantly. I also wanted to avoid creating any reason for trouble in case he was the type to flaunt his assistance.
“Hmm-.”
However, whether it stimulated his compassion or not, the delinquent uniformed guy, whom I thought would just go his way, stopped near the school gate and stared down at me. I awkwardly lowered my gaze to avoid eye contact.
“Let me see?”
But he abruptly held out his calloused palm to me, demanding to see my wrist.
“Pardon?”
“Your wrist. Where it was grabbed earlier.”
“…”
“Tsk. Come on.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
