Chapter 143 - The Fall (2)

'Who is it?'

I couldn't understand.

'Who's hounding me over Kim Yul?!'

Kim Yul had no relatives. Or he might as well have had none. The ostracism had begun before he could even make friends, so there was absolutely no one to help him. Did they think I'd picked Kim Yul as my scapegoat for no reason?

'Anyway, I need to confront Kim Yul. He must know something. Anything.'

I hurried around to the back of the school. At this hour, Kim Yul would be tending to the little beasts in the animal enclosure. I knew his schedule hour by hour. Sure enough, I spotted him from behind, handing out chicken feed.

'That's right. That's where you belong.'

A guy who barely managed to satisfy his pride by feeding animals weaker than himself. That was how I understood Kim Yul's obsession with the enclosure. Humans were beasts, after all, and weaker beasts had no choice but to serve stronger ones.

[Your current immersion rate is 100%.]

School was no different from that enclosure. Just a slightly bigger one. And here, I was a stronger beast than Kim Yul.

"Hey! Kim Yul!"

I snarled.

"What the hell have you done?!"

"..."

Kim Yul didn't turn around. He didn't even react. He kept handing out feed as though he couldn't hear me.

'Ha. Did he seriously just ignore me?'

Unbelievable. I walked over and roughly grabbed his shoulder.

"Hey, you bastard. When someone calls you, you ans—!"

Something slipped down as Kim Yul turned around. Earbuds. Only then did I realize he'd been wearing them. Classical music blared from the earbuds dangling below his shoulder.

"..."

Our eyes met.

I flinched.

Tears brimmed in Kim Yul's pitch-black eyes.

"What..."

For a moment, I was at a loss for words.

Even I couldn't quite tell why. Because I'd never seen Kim Yul cry before? That could be it. No matter how relentlessly we tormented him, he never shed a tear. That was probably exactly what had further excited the sadism of my 'customers.'

But that wasn't the only reason.

'Who is it?'

He felt unfamiliar.

'Who is this guy?'

Kim Yul's eyes were utterly alien. His gaze was distant. Those eyes weren't looking at me, but at something beyond me. With my hand still gripping his shoulder, he silently shed tears. Even those tears seemed about to fall somewhere other than the ground.

"You..."

"Beautiful."

Kim Yul parted his lips.

"What?"

"The song. The music I am listening to. Music composed by a deaf man."

DA-DA-DA, DAAAH—

Sound spilled from the earbuds. A rhythm I'd heard plenty of times somewhere. But all I wondered was how this beggar had gotten his hands on an MP3 player.

"I think of the humiliation and curses this deaf man must have endured throughout his life. Surely someone called him a deaf cripple. Surely someone snickered and said, 'Look at that deaf cripple.'"

"What the hell are you babbling about...?"

"How sad. Wounds endure through the ages, and someone hundreds of years ago, too, bore a life of humiliation. It must have been so a thousand years ago. It will be so a thousand years from now."

Had this bastard gone crazy?

"Nothing in this world is beautiful in itself. Only the wounded can see beauty. Only those whose lives are broken look upon a life not yet broken and feel relief. For those who endure despite being broken, they shed tears."

Kim Yul's gaze hung in empty space.

"If there is someone who finds the entire world beautiful, they must have been broken by everything in it. Only those who live in hell praise the world. In the deaf man's song, I think of his humiliated life."

"Where'd you pick up that idiotic crap... Hey, you. What the hell did you do?"

I seized Kim Yul by the collar, gripping tightly. As his body jolted, he dropped the bag of feed. Yellowish grains spilled out of the bag onto the ground.

"What the hell did you do to my customers, you Recycling bastard?!"

"..."

Only then did Kim Yul look at me.

"I have done nothing, Death King."

"Death... what?"

"I am merely looking at what it was I discarded."

Kim Yul had the nerve to grab my wrist. In disbelief, I tried to shake off his grip.

It didn't budge.

'Huh?'

Then he effortlessly freed his collar from my hand.

It all happened in an instant.

Flustered, I reached out again, but he struck my wrist.

TAP!

Its course twisted. My hand lost its direction and flailed pathetically through empty air. In the blink of an eye, my hand had missed him.

"... Huh?"

I stared blankly at Kim Yul.

"How unfortunate."

Kim Yul calmly picked up the bag of feed.

"[Kim Yul] is furious. What Kim Yul wants is not physical violence. More precisely, he wants revenge far deeper than physical violence. And [I]... find myself wanting to fulfill Kim Yul's wish."

"You, you. What did you do?! Huh? What the fuck are you doing?!"

"Kim Yul wants you to experience everything he experienced, exactly as he did. That is revenge. To cast the other person into the depths of the hell into which you fell. That is what [Kim Yul] believes."

Kim Yul.

No.

"And [I] agree with him."

Someone I did not know gazed steadily at me.

"Wait, Kim Yul's murderer. The day is waning, and the road ahead is long. Very long. Let us meet again after that."

Kim Yul walked leisurely away, carrying the bag of feed.

"Hey! Hey! Stop right there! Right...!"

Just then, my trouser pocket vibrated with a buzz. A text had arrived on my phone. Probably one of my customers replying after seeing my missed calls. Glancing sideways in the direction Kim Yul was heading, I quickly checked my phone.

+

Don't ever contact me again.

Contact me and I'll kill you.

+

I was dumbfounded. Flustered, I called the customer who'd sent the text. But no matter how many times I called, they didn't answer.

A chill ran through me, making me shiver.

'What...'

Nothing changed the next day.

'What's going on?'

Instead, things got worse.

"E-Eunseo."

When I arrived in the classroom, a friend approached me hesitantly. He'd appeared in [Playing with Kim Yul] dozens of times. His blows had a satisfying impact, making him quite popular with the customers. He seemed taken with his own popularity, too, and quietly enjoyed it.

"What?"

"There's a note. Someone asked me to give it to y-you."

My friend was utterly terrified.

"What's wrong?"

"Here... S-sorry."

He put the note on my desk and hurried away as if fleeing. Frowning, I unfolded it.

The writing was scrawled in an awful hand.

[Hwang Eunseo lives in a garbage dump. His indoor shoes and uniform are all recycled. There's only one piece of trash that can't be recycled, and that's Hwang Eunseo himself.]

"..."

I didn't react right away simply because it was so absurd.

"Ha."

I let out a hollow laugh and looked at my friend.

"What's this... Are you fucking kidding me?"

My friend flinched, shrinking back behind the other students.

I'd already spent the entire night stewing over my customers acting like assholes. Now even this so-called friend was doing this, and fury boiled in my chest.

"Did Recycling tell you to do this? Hey. Hey. Look at me. I said look at me. Even between friends, there are things you can do and things you can't. Huh? Did Kim Yul tell you to give me this note?"

My friend couldn't say a word. He still wore that terrified expression. I was so dumbfounded that I started toward him, but another classmate approached my desk.

"Hwang Eunseo..."

"What?"

"Sorry. Here."

He practically threw another note onto my desk. I reflexively snatched it up and read it.

[I feel so sorry for the younger kids at our school. They have to call you their senior, Hwang Eunseo. Have you thought about how that makes them feel? Doesn't your conscience bother you?]

My mind went blank.

In that moment, three more classmates dropped off notes. Like the first two, they had all eagerly taken part in 'Playing with Kim Yul.'

[Hwang Eunseo, you're seriously filthy. Somehow you're even filthier than the math teacher.]

What was this?

[Shocking! Student Wears Uniform Without Washing It!]

I had no idea why the hell they were doing this to me.

[You smell really bad. You seriously stink.]

Something had happened yesterday.

Something had happened, and I was the only one who didn't know.

Something had made all my customers turn their backs on me. And not only that—it had threatened my friends and forced them to put on this ridiculous show.

'Let's calm down.'

My heart was pounding like crazy.

'Calm down. Think calmly. Did Kim Yul do this? No. There's no way. He was a little strange yesterday, but no. Who is it? Who did this?'

That was when it happened.

"Hwang Eunseo!"

Our homeroom teacher poked his head through the classroom's front door. Every student turned to look at him. He surveyed the atmosphere in the room, then spotted me and beckoned.

"Come with me for a minute."

"Me...?"

"Good grief. Is there one Hwang Eunseo in this class or two? It's nothing serious, so hurry up. Oh! Class president! Collect everyone's phones and bring them over."

I hesitantly followed him out of the classroom. It was strangely quiet around me as I left.

There was a chill in the air.

It was as if my classmates knew why I was being called out. As if they had no questions at all about the teacher summoning me. Only the goody-two-shoes studying ahead first thing in the morning kept looking at their notes.

"Hwang Eunseo."

The faculty office.

"Yes..."

"You haven't been going around doing anything bad, have you? Nothing like that?"

The teacher asked casually, his tone making it sound truly unimportant. Uniformed students wandered around the office collecting paper printed on only one side. Teachers were sorting handouts before first period.

"Sorry?"

"I asked whether you've been doing anything bad. Anything come to mind?"

"No..."

My heart raced.

"Nothing?"

"Hmm."

The teacher scratched his head.

"Hey, Hwang Eunseo. Don't go telling anyone about what we've just said. Understood?"

"Yes..."

"Listen to this."

He handed me earbuds. I took them. They were connected to his computer. With a click of his mouse, recorded voices began playing through them.

["Hey, hey! Don't hit him yet! Just make him kneel!"]

["Uh, well. We had plenty of submissions this time, too. We'll draw from the five people who sent in requests to decide today's theme."]

The back of my neck went cold.

["Ah, today's winner is Queen. Congratulations, Queen. What are you all doing? Applaud. Applaud!"]

["Woooo!"]

My voice.

And the voices of the friends who had just tossed me those notes.

["Queen's request is... Let's see. Wow, she even gave us a budget again. One hundred thousand won. So we won't go hungry, to pay for our meals. And for our popular star, we'll mix one bowl of black bean noodles with one bowl of spicy seafood noodle soup..."]

CLICK.

The teacher stopped the recording.

"Did you hear that? You heard those voices, right?"

"Yes."

"Someone emailed me this recording yesterday. The sound quality isn't great, but listening to it, it sounds like your voice, and some of the other kids' voices. So I thought I'd ask, just in case. Hwang Eunseo, isn't this you?"

"No, sir."

I forced a bewildered expression onto my face.

"What's Queen, anyway? Is this some kind of play?"

"Who knows? I listened to it once from beginning to end, but it's awfully strange. It feels unpleasant, anyway. The email said [Play this for Hwang Eunseo of Second-Year Class 5], so I wondered if this was some prank you kids were pulling or what..."

Fuck. So this was it. This was how they were threatening everyone.

Fortunately, this teacher was an idiot. Even after hearing the recording, he suspected it was a childish prank. Well, being such an idiot was why he had no idea what was happening in his own class. For me, it was a godsend.

'They can't do anything with a recording like this. It's just a blank shot.'

Some bastard among my friends, or one of my customers, had probably copied a recording. Now they were messing around with that copy. If they had evidence more conclusive than an audio recording, there would have been no reason not to send that to the teacher...

'The problem is that the kids got scared of a blank shot. Damn it.'

The teacher looked up at me.

"This really isn't a prank you kids pulled, right?"

"No, sir. Um, but am I not allowed to tell the others about this?"

"No. Don't tell anyone, ever. Anyway, if you say it wasn't you, that's that. Go back to class."

"Yes, sir."

I left his desk with quiet footsteps.

'Damn it. Damn it, damn it!'

RATTLE.

The moment I slid open the faculty office door, I came face-to-face with someone standing on the other side.

"..."

It was the class president. She held a blue plastic collection box in her arms. She'd brought the phones she'd collected from the classroom.

"Oh, sorry."

With the same expression as always, the face of a model student, she spoke and stepped slightly aside. Normally, I would have thanked her, but I had no room for that now. I merely met her eyes briefly and went out into the hallway.

'I don't know which bastard sneaked out a copy, but I'll make them pay before today is over! Fucking asshole. Making a fool of me. This goes way beyond a prank. How could they do this to a friend in their own class?!'

RATTLE.

Behind me, the quiet sound of the door closing rang out.