Chapter 240 (1/2)

Aram saw that the container was empty and pouted. Maru had told her that Daemyung would be here.

“He’s not here, right? So let’s just go.”

Jiyoon pulled on her arm. She had this thought before, but Jiyoon was actually quite strong. If she hadn’t done any exercise, she might actually be forced around by Jiyoon instead. Aram said okay before taking a step back.

“But is it okay to leave this open?”

Usually, it would be locked with a padlock, but it was wide open right now.

“Perhaps it’s because he had business here? I don’t think Daemyung-seonbae is the type to forget about these kinds of things.”

“Oh? You flatter him quite a lot. You do like him after all.”

Aram chuckled as she watched Jiyoon blush. ‘Daemyung-seonbae’, was how she called him. On the outside, Daemyung honestly wasn’t that charming. He was a little beyond plump, he was physically dense, and he had a quiet voice as well. However, his personality was flawless. He was the one who took care of the first years the most after all. He was the kind of person who would carefully ask what problem someone had if that someone was frowning.

‘They do suit each other, I guess.’

Daemyung and Jiyoon. Jiyoon was a little too much for Daemyung in Aram’s mind, but the two weren’t a bad combination. If he was some trashy guy, Aram would have persuaded Jiyoon otherwise, but she could accept Daemyung. Well, the way Jiyoon looked at Daemyung wasn’t really ordinary, especially recently.

“Do we need to wait then?” Jiyoon spoke as she looked around. Aram told her that they should just go, but this weak-hearted girl was worried about the what-ifs and told Aram that they should return after he returned.

“Geez, you worry too much.”

“You’re the one who’s too relaxed, ARam.”

“Oh? You’re retorting back at me more and more these days. This won’t do!”

Aram started tickling Jiyoon’s waist. Although Jiyoon could withstand pain very well, she was very ticklish. She soon started giggling and started running away but Aram chased her to the end. They ran laps around the shipping container and started sweating. The news mentioned that the average temperature would be 2 degrees higher than last year, and indeed, it was quite hot. It was only the middle of May, but it was so hot.

“Let’s come back after eating ice cream.”

Aram grabbed JIyoon’s hands. Since it would only be for a short while, Jiyoon thought that there should be no big problems and followed suit.

* * *

“When are midterms again?”

“In three days.”

“Today’s Monday, so, Tuesday, Wednesday… midterms start on Thursday?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy moly. Then it lasts until Monday?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s annoying. I won’t get to have fun on the weekend.”

These guys giggled as they read the comic books they borrowed. Geunseok clicked his tongue and closed his notebook. The teachers started giving away the answers starting last week. They didn’t just tell them the pages the exam questions would be created from, but the specific lines as well. It was like that for every subject. Only their majors teacher told them the vague outline and told them to study everything, but for the rest of the subjects, the teachers made it so that blind memorization would be enough to get full marks in the exams.

If this was cram school, their teachers would not think well of doing such a thing. After all, a short range of revision materials meant that the questions would be really hard.

‘But this shithole school isn’t like that.’

As expected of an engineering school, they just fed you the answers. Thanks to that Geunseok never missed the first place in the exams. He did not remember studying hard for the exams, but he was still first place. In fact, the tests to get into a cram school was harder. On top of that, he had a lot of private lessons these days as well, so he wished that he could decrease school to just one hour.

No matter how hard these teachers tried to teach him using chalk, he had already learned them beforehand through other lessons. Square roots and whatnot - his cram school had already started calculus, while the school was actually following the national curriculum.

What was funny was that these guys were complaining that it was hard. He wondered if these guys had a brain in the first place.

“Uhm, Geunseok.”

He smelled something sweet. Geunseok smiled and looked at the girl that approached. She had a voluminous body, had small earrings on so that the teachers wouldn’t notice, and she also wore a pale layer of lipstick. In the class, there were two types of girls. The girls that were only biologically classified as ‘female’ as well as those that wanted to be an actual girl. This girl belonged to the latter. She was quite cute and she was well developed as well. Above all, he liked that she didn’t reject skin to skin contact.

“What is it?”

“Did you write all of it down? I was going to do all of it but it was getting too sleepy,” saying that, the girl pulled a chair over and sat down.

“Sorry, I didn’t make notes for this class.”

“Really?”

“The teacher was so good at explaining that there was no need for me to write anything down.”

“I didn’t understand anything though.”

“Isn’t that because you dozed off in class?”

“......”

The girl pouted. Geunseok poked on the girl’s cheek and spoke.

“Instead, I’ll explain things for you. Just the parts that the teacher said were important.”

“Wow, thank you so much.”

Their distance was short enough that their shoulders touched, and Geunseok started explaining the class materials to the girl. After being humiliated by Maru, he had stayed quiet for a few days. Any laugh that he heard sounded like disdain for him, and any kind of gazes he received felt like they were looking at him as though he was a liar. He felt disgusted. Every day was an agony. The ones close to him treated him just like before, but Geunseok thought that they would be looking down on him on the inside.

However, after some time passed, Geunseok realized that those guys really didn’t care. In fact, those guys came up to him and consoled him, asking ‘you look worried these days, are you okay?’ And other words like that. It was strange. He was humiliated in front of the entire class, yet no one seemed to change their attitude towards him. Those that outright ignored him were just those that weren’t close to him in the first place.

After that experience, Geunseok realized one thing - that people generally didn’t care about others. Unless it was someone really close, they did not care a single bit unless it affected them as well. After that, Geunseok started smiling again and acted kindly towards everyone again. He treated them food, listened to their worries, as well as proactively doing what had to be done. At one point, he realized that the evaluation of him became much better than before. His classmates offered him to play with them a lot more frequently before, and their members were a lot more varied as well. He even got close enough to the ones that simply ignored him before. No, he made it so.

He remade his kingdom. In this small classroom, there was no one that hated the person known as ‘Hong Geunseok’. Not a single one. It was extremely pleasurable. He was acknowledged by the teachers and the others flattered him as well. The fact that some girls became more flirty with him was also an element that made him feel better.

‘That’s not right.’

The fact that there was no one that hated Hong Geunseok was a mistake. There was just one. And whenever he looked at her, Geunseok felt twisted. He looked at the cute girl smiling at him and naturally glared at the plump girl sitting behind her.

Kim Soyeon. She was someone that he didn’t even give a glance at in the acting club, but right now, she was unpleasant as hell.

“What?”

The girl sitting next to him became curious and turned around. She also found Soyoen.