Chapter 57 (1/2)

Yuja raised his glasses once more.

“You know, we won prize money during the festival.”

Snow White and the Lazy Prince. Their play had won first place. All the teachers loved it. It already had been five months after that.

It naturally led Myohan think of, ‘I’m Class 1’s Snow White.’, and he looked at O Shin, trying not to laugh. He looked back at him, his chin on his hand.

“Why don’t we go and eat meat after the midterm?”

“Oh, great!”

“Yes, yes!”

All the boys who were tired after studying for the exams for days were glad to hear it. Even Sinsul, who had been sleeping, said ‘Meat is great!’ and clapped. Yuja made sure none of them objected his idea and looked at Myohan at last. Myohan looked somewhat bored, but he nodded to show he was fine with it. Yuja smiled with contentment.

“Let’s go together on the last day of exams, as long as none of you has any plans on that day. I’ll choose a place.”

“Okay!”

“Yuja, please make sure you choose a good place.”

“As there are many of us, it would be better to go to a buffet, right?”

Then Yuja started to calculate the number of boys and the amount of money they would need. They had just enough money to go to a cheap meat buffet. Each of them had to pay just a little more for it.

However, neither the money reward nor the meat buffet was of any interest to Myohan. He stabbed his workbook with his pen, and then he glanced at O Shin. His black eyes were full of affection. He asked with a warm smile, “Why?”

Myohan just looked down instead of saying anything. 7 months. During that time, the man had become a part of his life. Now he was completely used to his warm eyes and loving hands. Since when had he been looking at Myohan like that? He tried to recall, but he couldn’t guess. Maybe O Shin had been looking at him the same way all along.

Myohan knew nothing about it. How he knew him, the meaning behind his deadline, what his name was, how old he was, and where he lived. What he did know about him was much deeper than those. Like how he looked at him, and how warm his lips were. He always looked at Myohan and knew what he was thinking. He even knew about Myohan’s mysterious memories, which even Myohan himself didn’t know about.

“Four to go.”

O Shin smiled. They had managed to find eight out of the twelve zodiac animals, but there were still four more to find: tiger, dragon, monkey, and pig. Their letters were common, and they had no more suspects.

“So we’ve found almost all of them.”

He looked unconcerned. He seemed to believe Myohan would be able to find the rest of them before the deadline. The thing was, even Myohan himself was sure he could do it.

“Myohan.”

Myohan was almost lost in his thoughts, but then he heard his name and looked up. Yuja was right in front of him now. He pointed at Sinsul, who was already back to sleep, and spoke.

“We’re going to study for the exams today.”

***

“You can find X, right here. So you first differentiate this, and then…”

A calm voice filled the wide living room. One pen moved fast on the white paper. Yuja filled a page of his notebook with equations and looked up.

“You got it?”

“…”

Only two nodded. Miho, who had been listening in silence, and Jagyeom, who was writing equations down in his own notebook. Yuja looked at the other two with blank eyes and looked down again.

“Well, I’ll explain again.”

Myohan, who was reading an English text, muttered to himself.

“So he’s going to explain it five more times, at least.”

He had accepted Yuja’s demand without protest. He knew Sinsul was going to bring the boys anywhere. At least Yuja leading the study group would be quieter.

And he had been right when the group of five, Myohan, O Shin, Yuja, Chookjae, and Sinsul, arrived at his place. It had become a group of ten.

‘Today, we are going to do math.’

Yuja took out one workbook after another as soon as they arrived, without giving the others time to chat. Math 1 and Math 2. He saw Sinsul’s eyes die out at the sight of the word math. He nodded and put back Math 2. Sinsul was terrible at math.