Chapter 434 (1/2)

Coincidence arose from suddenness. What followed were emotions like happiness or sadness. This situation was precisely like that. In this case, the emotions that followed were unpleasantness and unfamiliarity.

“May I help you?”

Maru spoke to the boys sitting in a circle around him. The atmosphere of the class was not ordinary since the moment he came to school. A lot of them gave him glances and whispered to each other. It was like they were bachelors who just heard a rumor that one of them had met a beautiful girl.

“You met Ahn Joohyun twice now, huh.”

“And you dare say you don’t know anything?”

“I heard that each scene takes around 3 to 4 hours to shoot.”

“When I watched yesterday, he was practically rubbing all over her.”

His eyes were twitching. He was fed up with making a sympathetic face. Maru just waved his hand.

“I told you it’s just a coincidence.”

“How is two times in a row a coincidence?”

“Right!”

Even though these boys didn’t usually have any brains, they tried to pry into him like they were Sherlock Holmes. Maru needed a Watson to clear up the situation here.

Maru thought about Bangjoo for a second, but he couldn’t sell out his junior. The moment he told everyone here that Ahn Joohyun had a little brother in the 1st year of this school, Bangjoo’s school life would get tiring.

“What do you want?”

In the end, he had to raise the white flag. It was impossible to calm down hot-blooded high school students with too much yang using words. He had to negotiate in order to calm them down.

“Uhm… nothing specifically.”

“Me neither. It’s not like I want an autograph.”

“We’re too old for that.”

The reactions from his friends were lukewarm. Even though they caused all that fuss last time. Maru asked his friends once again.

“Then why the hell are you doing this to me?”

They then replied quickly as though they were waiting for him to ask that question.

“Your stomach hurts when your cousin buys real estate.[1]”

“We can’t let you have all the fun.”

“Of course, of course.”

“Ah, wait. I think it’ll be good if I can get the autograph, now that I think about it.”

“Me too.”

“Get one for us.”

Maru shook his head. Since when did being whimsical become popular? The boys, who were all talking about Ahn Joohyun, switched topics and started asking things about the shoot.

Maru answered what he could. The question he received the most was about the contents of the next episode, but he couldn’t answer since he did not know anything either.

“But you really did look good on camera. Last time, you were wearing a baseball cap, so it was hard to recognize you, but your whole face came out yesterday.”

“Right. But did you wear something on your eyes yesterday? They looked like they were going to burst.”

“They were so bloodshot.”

Maru scratched his eyebrows and replied to them that it was because he got hit. The boys stared at him before nodding their heads in comprehension.

“Are you going to appear again then?”

“That’s it. No more.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I only went there due to a coincidence. There’s also the fact that the director just saw me in a good way. I wasn’t an official cast member, so that’s the last episode I’m in.”

“Well, it did say special appearance in the credits. But wow, Han Maru keeps coming out on TV. Maybe he’ll actually do well at this rate?”

The kids gave him light smacks on the back before going back to their seats. He probably heard ‘don’t forget about me once you become popular’ around ten times. They looked like they were going to keep holding him for the entire day, but it was extremely rare for boys at this age to be so talkative over someone else’s matters for a long time. They then scattered and returned to their normal lives. Games, soccer and then back to games. Rather than celebrities, who they weren’t related to, game items that they could obtain were much more interesting topics.

“That must have been hard for you.”

Dowook seemed to have visited the cafeteria as he was holding a drink in his hand.

“But what are you going to do now? It doesn’t seem to have ended yet.”

Dowook pointed at the back door with an interested face. When Maru turned around, he saw Aram and the other members of the acting club. The problem was that it wasn’t just the members of the acting club. Students from some other departments of the 2nd year had come as well. There was a group of people from class 2 of electrical, which was the class next to theirs.

“Hey, hey. I saw you on TV!”

“Han Maru! I heard you were on TV.”

“Seonbae, I saw you yesterday. You were awesome.”

Maru sighed and brushed down his face.

“Good luck with that, Maru.”

The fact that he could feel a teasing tone from Daemyung’s consolation was probably not because he was s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e. Maru put on some earphones and laid down on his desk. The curiosity wasn’t even going to last a day. He just had to endure through the morning.

“The pop star Han Maru is sleeping.”

He decided to remember those words, which came from Dowook.

Maru turned the volume of his MP3 to twice as loud as usual.

* * *

“Was that really your brother?”

“I told you he was.”

“Really? That’s awesome.”

Bada smiled and shrugged. Her friends had gained interest after seeing her post on her mini homepage yesterday. It was a little embarrassing to talk about her brother, but she felt proud when she heard her friends praising her brother.

“Is he going to come out again? From what I saw, he was really good at acting.”

“W-well. I’m not sure.”

“Why?”

“Because that guy doesn’t say things like that.”

At that moment, the girl sitting on Bada’s right spoke.

“You have it good. I heard that your brother got you the tickets to TTO’s concert as well. I wanted to go too.”

“Ah, right. He did get you those as well.”

Bada coughed and said that it was nothing much.

“Nothing much? Looks like your brother is really doing well. Maybe he’s going to be a main character in a drama some day?”

“Who knows. That dude seems to have m.a.t.u.r.ed after entering high school. He also seems to be doing a lot of work.”

“Anyway, it must be good for you. My brother always nags at me to get off the computer because he wants to use it.”

Bada shrugged. This was the first time she received the attention of her classmates all at once. Her lips twitched in joy when she felt the gazes of envy.

“Actually, he was the one who got me Sungjae-oppa’s autograph.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. Oh, you haven’t seen it yet, have you?”