By Zephyria 
Having packed his belongings in a rush because he was late for the academy, Ryu Jae-min actually breathed a sigh of relief when he realized his phone battery had died. It would have been a disaster if Oh Seung-pyo had seen the screen when they bumped into each other, but thanks to the phone being off, he wouldn’t have seen it.
At the academy, everyone had to hand in their phones and could only get them back after class. Although the phone Jae-min handed to the instructor wasn’t this one, but his ‘public’ phone. Regardless, he wouldn’t have any reason to take a phone out of his bag until he returned home.
Ryu Jae-min had two phones. A regular phone used for calls and messages, and a spare phone used only for the internet.
His education-obsessed parents had tried to buy him a student phone that lacked smartphone functions and could only be used for calls and texts. However, these days, smartphones are used to communicate not only with academies and tutors but even with school teachers. With many group activities and performance assessments requiring collaboration, school life becomes difficult without a smartphone.
Thanks to that, he was able to have a smartphone like other kids, but his parents strictly warned him not to use the phone for “wrong purposes.” Wrong purposes referred to things like the internet, games, and useless chatting with friends. Still not trusting their son, they would occasionally conduct surprise inspections of his phone usage history, but they never imagined that Jae-min would possess a spare phone.
The internet phone was an old device that had lost its owner when his Noona bought a new one. When he asked her if he could have it, she told him to do as he pleased. He readily nodded when she whispered to not tell their father and mother. His Noona was someone who frowned at the mere mention of their parents, so she was always on Jae-min’s side in such matters.
It was nice when she was home and they could grumble together occasionally, but after she started living independently in her second year of university and then got a job, she rarely visited home, making it harder and harder to see her. His mother told them to keep in touch and meet up outside, but like his father, she had no real interest in giving them the time to do so.
“Hello.”
“Did you have a good class?”
“Yes.”
As he left the academy, a car was waiting. It was the pickup manager Hyung who transported him from school to the academy and from the academy to home.
Calling him a ‘manager’ sounded grand, but he wasn’t a professional expert who stayed by his side 24 hours a day to manage his entrance exam studies; he was just a part-timer who helped with transportation based on pre-arranged appointments. A student on a leave of absence, he planned to prepare for the civil service exam after graduation, but since he didn’t think he could get much help from home, he was saving money first and working several other jobs besides driving Jae-min.
Some kids went home alone after class, and some were picked up by their parents, but Jae-min’s parents chose to hire someone to pick up their son. In their hearts, they might have wanted a private chauffeur, but both were people who valued appearances. They didn’t want to be seen as overly obsessive parents.
“You worked hard. Studying is tough, right?”
“Everyone else does it too. You studied to get into college, Hyung. How did that blind date go?”
“Ah, you’re asking about that. I got rejected. I think I overdid it trying to seem funny. Don’t do that in front of girls later. Being natural is the best.”
“I don’t overdo it in front of girls.”
“Sure, sure~. Handsome guys can get away with that.”
He lamented exaggeratedly as he turned the steering wheel. Since they only met during commutes, there wasn’t much opportunity to become close, but Jae-min still enjoyed the brief moments of small talk with the pickup Hyung. Once he entered the house, the atmosphere was stiff and he had to walk on eggshells regarding what to say, but when talking with him, he didn’t have to worry about the atmosphere.
“Goodbye.”
“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”
After parting with the pickup driver, Jae-min let out a light sigh and opened the door. The spacious house, with the TV turned off, was as quiet as if no one were there, but as soon as Jae-min entered, there was a sign of presence. His mother, who happened to be in the living room, greeted him first.
“Jae-min, are you home?”
“Yes.”
She was holding a water glass, having likely just swallowed her usual painkiller. Jae-min’s mother had a sensitive personality and suffered from frequent headaches. She spoke in a quiet voice.
“Mom has a bit of a headache today. I want to stay quiet, is that okay?”
“Yes, are you alright?”
“Of course.”
“Where is Father?”
“In the study. I heard you had a test at the academy today.”
“Ah. The results come out tomorrow.”
He had never mentioned having a test today, yet his mother already knew. This was what he hated most. Jae-min nodded, put his bag in his room, and headed straight for the bathroom. Today, his face in the mirror looked exceptionally expressionless. When he finished showering, changed clothes, and came out, the living room was chilly.
The atmosphere was worst when both parents were in the living room, so today, with no one there, it was a decent day. Jae-min grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and hurried to his room. Now, if possible, he didn’t want to step foot outside his room. Standing in the empty living room, he raised his voice so they could hear him.
“I’m going to review today’s work and then go to sleep. Goodnight.”
Even if nothing special happened and they didn’t speak to each other, he felt uncomfortable just by virtue of sharing a space with his parents when he came home. Once he went to college, he’d be able to move out and live alone like his Noona.
Jae-min took out the second phone he had hidden deep in his bag and plugged it into the charger. The charger was also hidden in an inconspicuous corner so that it would be hard to find even if someone suddenly entered.
While the phone was charging, Jae-min opened his academy textbook. It wasn’t a lie that he said he would review. Reviewing the day’s lessons after coming home was a routine for Jae-min, as natural as breathing. After that, he would spend about 10 to 20 minutes on the internet with his second phone before bed. It didn’t take much time, but the refreshing effect was great, making it a pretty good pattern for ending the day.
Only after finishing his studies did Jae-min pick up the phone. In the meantime, the phone had been fully charged. Jae-min tilted his head. Usually, after posting a new photo, at least three or four comments would appear, but this was strange.
“Why are there no notifications?”
As he muttered, Jae-min noticed a change more important than the lack of social media notifications. The photo on the lock screen was different from usual.
Jae-min’s lock screen was the default one that comes with the phone, but now a photo of the sea was displayed. It was a vast ocean with vivid waves, as if taken from a boat. In any other situation, he would have thought the scenery was cool, but now it felt as if his heart had dropped.
He tried to touch the screen to unlock it, but facial recognition didn’t work. As a backup, he entered his password, but the phone vibrated with a message saying ‘input error.’
As if wanting to believe the phone was simply broken, Jae-min repeatedly entered the same number, and each time, the phone stubbornly displayed the error message. It was as if his mind was rejecting the now obvious fact that the object in his hand was not his phone.
“…….”
After a blank silence, Jae-min finally put the phone down and rushed to sit in front of his laptop. Normally, he would be sleepy by this time, but with his face pale, there wasn’t a trace of drowsiness left.
Urgenty typing the address into the internet browser, the social media screen appeared on the monitor. After entering his ID and password and logging in, Jae-min gasped.
A three-digit number was flashing in the new message notification window. Jae-min didn’t interact much on social media, so even when he posted something new, he usually received fewer than twenty notifications. This was an obvious anomaly.
[A reply from ### has been registered.]
Even as he watched, new replies were diligently popping up. There was only one case where so many notifications would pile up on a social media account that didn’t have many visitors to begin with: when one had made a mistake and was being cursed at. Things had gone wrong.
But no matter how much he thought about it, Jae-min hadn’t posted anything that warranted that. Today had been an ordinary day, just like any other. If there was anything unusual, it was that it rained, and that he bumped into Oh Seung-pyo while leaving the abandoned building.
So… his phone must have been swapped with Oh Seung-pyo’s. There was nothing else he could think of.
‘Please… surely he couldn’t have seen it?’
Jae-min swallowed hard. He couldn’t bring himself to click the notification window, and just in case, he examined the phone he had brought—presumably Oh Seung-pyo’s—but only several message notifications were visible; there were no records of missed calls while the battery was dead. Did that mean Oh Seung-pyo had lost his phone and wasn’t even looking for it?
Jae-min turned his gaze back to the laptop screen. Ryu Jae-min, the top student of Ilyang Boys’ High School, had a secret—or rather, a shame. He was operating an anonymous account on social media.
He hadn’t created the account to use it this way from the start. It was an account created for the purpose of a ‘bamboo forest,’ a place to write and vent like a diary when things were suffocating at home or school.
Avoiding platforms where photos were mandatory, where many peers gathered, where identity verification was required, or where anonymity wasn’t properly guaranteed, Jae-min had settled on a social media platform and timidly created an anonymous ID that felt foreign even to himself.
Having created this empty space, he would read posts recommended by AI or blindly read posts from people that appeared in searches for specific words, curious about what others posted. The ways people utilized social media were truly diverse; some used it for scribbles, chatter, or as a diary, as Jae-min intended, while others posted drawings or novels, and some posted records of good restaurants or travel photos.
Reading these various stories of other people was quite interesting. Even when he tried to find time to read novels or manga on the internet, it usually took at least a few minutes, so he often gave up before even trying; however, social media was convenient because updates were always there even if he only checked in briefly, and he could read them in just a few seconds.
Actually talking about himself, however, felt uncomfortable even after creating the account. When he was angry because of his parents, when school suddenly felt too tedious, when tomorrow was another test…
In those moments, he would write a few lines, but then he’d dislike the idea of leaving his impulsive emotions in writing and would delete them after a few days. Because of this, Jae-min’s account remained empty for quite a long time after its creation.
It was then that Jae-min discovered an account of an unexpected nature, by chance while searching for keywords of interest. Like a water bottle or a shoe caught in a net cast to catch fish, it was mixed in among ordinary search results.
A space belonging to a complete stranger, plastered with provocative photos with the face covered and all sorts of obscene conversations the subject of the photos had shared with an unspecified multitude.
At the time, he was so shocked that he immediately turned off his phone, but the account he saw then remained intensely etched in Jae-min’s mind. For a long time. Eventually, managing his heart that throbbed like when he lied to his parents, he posted his own photo on his empty account for the first time.
He didn’t know why it had left such an impression. Perhaps it was because of the lewd photos, perhaps because of the harsh words people wrote, perhaps because of the atmosphere where sexual stories—taboo in his household—flowed without a filter, or perhaps because of the thrill that came from the feeling of betraying something important to him…
Whatever the reason, Ryu Jae-min had committed a secret transgression.
Steadying his trembling heart, Jae-min clicked the notification icon. A long list of messages that had piled up while he was at the academy appeared.
[Fuck, this whore is acting expensive again today. Hey, is this all?]
* * *
[Your nipples are hard. Hyung can suck them for you, interested?]
* * *
[You only showed your chest but it’s so erotic. Seriously, no off-line meet? Just once.]
These were the types of comments that always appeared. At first, he didn’t even know what they meant, but now he could familiarly understand the harassment and obscenities.
The latest post above the comments was a photo and a short text Jae-min had posted before going to the academy. A photo taken with his school shirt completely unbuttoned, exposing both nipples. Naturally, the composition was cropped so his face didn’t show. The sentence attached below the photo was concise.
[I took this because I remembered XXX saying they wanted to see it on a rainy day. I’m on the rooftop of a commercial building. It’s too cold to take everything off.]
Previously, someone had left a request saying, ‘Please do an outdoor exposure shoot on a rainy day.’ It was someone who left fairly kind comments whenever Jae-min posted a photo. Today happened to be rainy, and he had a bit of free time before the academy.
Having looked at many accounts of people who made such requests, he knew roughly what kind of photos someone ordering a rainy day outdoor shoot would want. However, he couldn’t go to the academy drenched in rain, and real street shoots were dangerous, so he didn’t do them.
That’s why he went to the rooftop of an abandoned building that people didn’t use and took a photo with a moderate amount of thrill. Honestly, it wasn’t even that erotic. Kids who played sports at school often took their shirts off when it was hot, and what Jae-min posted wasn’t a completely naked photo.
“Ah….”
Jae-min sighed and scrolled down with the mouse wheel. Every comment left by people had a reply.
Jae-min only posted text and photos on his account and didn’t reply to all the comments. He often ignored comments that were tedious to respond to, so there were occasionally people who got angry, asking why he didn’t reply to them.
But today was different.
[Fuck, this whore is acting expensive again today. Hey, is this all?]
└ [Must be a beggar. I wouldn’t sell to you.]
* * *
└ [I work at a public enterprise and my annual salary is 50 million lol. You do paid meets on the side while posting photos like this, right?]
* * *
└ [No negotiations under 1 billion. Get lost, beggar.]
[Your nipples are hard. Hyung can suck them for you, interested?]
└ [I’m very interested in beating up perverts.]
* * *
└ [Do you like PL? Hitting? Want Hyung to let you hit my ass?]
* * *
└ [I’ll acknowledge it starting from 100 flying knees to the face.]
[Are you really a high schooler?]
└ [I’m a 50-year-old man who stole his son’s uniform and came out for a walk…]
* * *
└ [You’re good at joking. Is 50-year-old skin this smooth? lol]
* * *
└ [Filter, you idiot.]
[You only showed your chest but it’s so erotic. Seriously, no off-line meet? Just once.]
└ [Yeah, your chest is like pork belly.]
* * *
└ [If you do an off-line meet with me once, you’ll want to keep doing it~ hehehe]
This was a person who begged for an off-line meet every time a photo was posted. Undeterred by the out-of-context mocking comments, he posted a photo along with a short comment. It was a photo of an erect penis.
(Presumably) Oh Seung-pyo didn’t add any particular words to that photo. Instead, he simply posted a GIF file of a sausage being sliced by a mandoline slicer on a loop, which he must have found somewhere, as a reply. Then, the man who asked for the off-line meet stopped commenting.
As Jae-min scrolled down and checked the replies that stretched far below, his face turned white. He opened the water bottle and drank it straight without pouring it into a cup.
This was why the notification window had exploded. The people who received mocking replies naturally didn’t stay quiet and posted angry replies, and the intruder who had taken over Jae-min’s account was replying to them again, mocking them.
‘Is it really Oh Seung-pyo?’
I couldn’t think of anyone else, but could it really be that Oh Seung-pyo?
Dazed, Jae-min shook his head and quickly pulled himself together. What was the first thing he had to do? While he was staring at the monitor in a panic, there was a knock at the door.
“Yes!”
His voice grew loud without him realizing it. The door opened silently, and Jae-min’s father entered.
“I came by thinking you might be asleep… Did you turn on the computer at this hour?”
“I had something to check for my online classes.”
His father walked over to the side of Jae-min’s desk. Only after confirming that a lecture screen was indeed displayed on the laptop monitor did he pat Jae-min’s shoulder as if to encourage him.
“Looking at a computer or phone screen before bed prevents deep sleep. Turn it off and go to sleep quickly.”
“Yes, I was just about to turn it off.”
When Jae-min gave a nonchalant smile, his father finally left the room.
Only after confirming that his father had moved away from the door did Jae-min let out a long breath. His pounding heart felt like it would burst. Honestly, deceiving his parents wasn’t particularly difficult. However, the ensuing anxiety was inevitable.
Jae-min minimized the online class window and brought up the SNS screen again. The troll, presumed to be Oh Seung-pyo, seemed to have no need for sleep, as he was still fighting and teasing the people leaving comments.
“This is driving me crazy.”
Having regained his composure thanks to his father’s sudden appearance, Ryu Jae-min immediately did what needed to be done. He went into the account settings, changed the password, and pressed the button to request account deletion. With this, the primary evidence would disappear for now.
‘What should I do when I go to school tomorrow? Should I try talking to Oh Seung-pyo first? No, will Oh Seung-pyo act like he knows first?’
In the one-in-a-million chance that the phones hadn’t been swapped with Oh Seung-pyo, he might end up looking like a thief who had betrayed himself. While there was almost no other possibility besides Oh Seung-pyo right now, there was still a tiny probability it could be someone else.
‘But what if it really is Oh Seung-pyo?’
…What else could he do? For now, he had no choice but to insist the account wasn’t his.
Since it was a reset spare phone, there was no phone number and no registered name. There were no personal items or photos showing his face on the anonymous account, and since he had deleted the photos as soon as he finished uploading them, nothing was stored. If he denied it, Oh Seung-pyo wouldn’t have much of a choice.
Thinking of him, the first thing that came to mind was the bewildered face he had seen that evening. Why are you popping out from there? His wide eyes seemed to ask exactly that. It was an expression he had never seen at school.
Tall, handsome, smart, and with a good personality—he was the kind of kid everyone in school knew. If Ryu Jae-min was the “top student” to the other kids, Oh Seung-pyo was simply Oh Seung-pyo. He was a boy explained by his name alone.
Jae-min knew that whenever the great Oh Seung-pyo was in the same space as him, he couldn’t fully hide his inner thoughts and felt dissatisfied. Since he heard that Seung-pyo had always been first in middle school, he was probably annoyed that he was pushed down in the exam rankings every time. Even if he didn’t say it openly, Jae-min naturally knew that much.
‘He already dislikes me, so if he finds out about this…’
Jae-min tossed and turned in bed. He tried his best to put his mind at ease, but sleep did not come easily.
* * *
Having stayed up almost all night, his head felt foggy when he woke up.
It was hard to concentrate all day on days like this, so he was in trouble. Before he could even sit up in bed, there was a knock at the door.
“Jae-min, are you still sleeping?”
“I’m up.”
Because he had tossed and turned last night, he slept in a bit later than usual. In front of the door he quickly opened stood his mother, who was already perfectly prepared to go out.
“Mom and Dad are busy too. Even if you can’t wake up on your own, you should get up once you’re woken.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Dad already left. Mom has to leave now too because the meeting location is far today.”
“Yes, have a safe trip.”
“I told you yesterday that I’d be leaving early, but I guess you forgot. Make sure you aren’t late.”
His mother scanned Jae-min, who only bowed his head instead of answering, with a slightly displeased look before leaving the house.
Thinking about it all night wouldn’t solve anything; he should have at least slept properly. Regretting last night, Jae-min washed up and dressed quickly. While doing so, he turned on his laptop to check the account. Whether the account deletion request had been approved overnight, only a short sentence stating that the account did not exist appeared on the monitor; there were no photos, no comments, nothing.
It had been closer to an emotional trash can than a space he operated with particular attachment. Still, after losing an account he had run for about a year entirely against his will, he didn’t feel great.
While Jae-min was putting on his shoes at the entrance, the housekeeper, who had started work early in the morning, approached to see him off. Since she was a rare case of someone working for over two years in a house where helpers were frequently changed, Jae-min felt more comfortable with the housekeeper than with his parents.
“I’ll be going now.”
“You only get one home-cooked meal a day, so what are you going to do if you don’t eat breakfast? Take this and eat it at school.”
“No, I didn’t sleep much last night, so I don’t have much of an appetite. Thank you, Auntie.”
“You couldn’t sleep because you were studying? The professor told me to make sure you eat breakfast before sending you off…”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell them I ate a delicious meal before coming to school.”
When he replied with a smile, the woman smiled pityingly as if she couldn’t help it. After saying goodbye, Jae-min left the house. As soon as the door closed, his smile vanished and a sigh escaped him.
It was the first time he had ever felt this nervous about entering the school gates.
Jae-min almost never missed a day or arrived late, and he had never been scolded for minor infractions like dress code violations. He had zero experience hesitating in front of the school gates like a criminal.
“Ryu Jae-min, what are you doing?”
Someone tapped the shoulder of Jae-min, who was hesitating at the gate. Turning around, he saw a few classmates standing there, breathing out white puffs of air.
“Oh. Nothing.”
“You’re a bit late for your usual self, aren’t you? It’s cold, let’s hurry. It’s better inside the classroom than out here.”
Jae-min nodded and walked along, blending in with the other students. They weren’t very close friends, nor did they know his situation, but as the number of people increased, he felt as if he had allies.
Of course, that was just an illusion; if the classmates he was walking with now found out about the secret account, it was obvious they would be the first to look at Jae-min as if he were filthy trash. Though he would never be caught.
Entering the hallway, he went up to the floor where the first-year classrooms were. As soon as he climbed the stairs, he heard the cheerful voices of students.
“Oh Seung-pyo lost his phone?”
“No wonder he left me on read yesterday.”
Jae-min stopped dead in his tracks without realizing it. The kids he was walking with looked back.
“Ryu Jae-min, what’s wrong?”
As his name was called, Oh Seung-pyo, who had been chatting with friends further down the hallway, quickly turned his gaze toward Jae-min.
The eye contact was brief. Oh Seung-pyo stared at Jae-min with a face somewhere between expressionless and a smile, then soon turned his head away. Another student asked Oh Seung-pyo.
“Did you try calling it?”
“Not yet. The battery was already dead when I had it. I don’t think they’ll answer even if I do.”
“They might have charged it, so you should try. What if you can’t find it?”
“If I can’t find it, I’ll just buy a new model. I’ve used it for a long time and the contract is over, so it doesn’t matter if I lose it. It’s not like there’s anything on the phone that others shouldn’t see.”
Jae-min and the students from Class 2 passed by the group surrounding Oh Seung-pyo. ‘Something others shouldn’t see.’ When he said that, Oh Seung-pyo glanced at Jae-min once more. Jae-min grit his teeth.
‘Let’s pretend I don’t know.’
Since he said it was fine to lose it, there was no reason for Jae-min to go out of his way to find it. Unless Oh Seung-pyo acted like he knew first, Jae-min had no intention of making it obvious.
However, once Jae-min sat in his seat, he changed his mind again. He thought it might be better to naturally start a conversation while returning the phone.
If Oh Seung-pyo had already seen the account and was testing him by mentioning ‘something others shouldn’t see’ as he did earlier, wouldn’t Jae-min be the only one anxious if he dragged out the time? His head hurt more than when he struggled with an unsolved problem. He wondered if his mother, who often took painkillers for headaches, felt this way.
“Ryu Jae-min, hey, Ryu Jae-min!”
The one who pulled Jae-min out of his complicated morning worries was a classmate.
“Huh?”
“Are you feeling okay?”
“No, I’m fine. Why?”
“Could you possibly show me the last problem of the math homework from yesterday?”
“Yeah, hold on.”
Normally, his books would have already been on the desk, but only then did Jae-min begin to organize them. The student standing next to him asked once more.
“Are you sure you’re not sick? Your complexion looks a bit pale.”
“I think I might have some indigestion from breakfast. Here, take it.”
“Hey, thanks. I’m really glad you’re in our class.”
Some people praised him, saying that while most smart kids hated sharing their work, he had a good personality. However, Jae-min didn’t particularly think his personality was good. He just didn’t feel the need to be on edge over something as simple as showing homework for vacation supplementary classes, rather than exam answers or performance evaluations. After all, the kids who borrowed other people’s homework wouldn’t be able to threaten Ryu Jae-min’s position.
“Take your time and give it back.”
“Yeah, I’ll give it back soon!”
Jae-min watched the student walk back to their seat with his notebook and belatedly organized his desk. Usually, sitting with his books out after arriving at school made him feel more at ease than when he was at home, but today was a failure. He was destined to remain unsettled until the matter with Oh Seung-pyo was resolved.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“Yeah, I’ll skip today.”
“Ryu Jae-min says his stomach isn’t feeling well today.”
When lunchtime came and Jae-min just stayed in his seat, a few students asked how he was. He had come to school barely eating breakfast, but even by lunchtime, Jae-min’s gloom remained.
Instead of going to the cafeteria, Jae-min headed to the snack bar. He had no appetite, but if he skipped lunch too, he would be hungry later and unable to concentrate during afternoon classes, so he planned to buy and drink some chocolate milk.
While most students ate the school meal, quite a few came to the snack bar to settle for bread or ramen. He heard many schools didn’t have snack bars these days, but Ilyang Boys’ High still had one. During vacation, it was only open for the one-hour lunch break. The snack bar, operated by a school-created cooperative, usually sold snacks from eco-friendly brands that weren’t found in marts or convenience stores.
“The steamed buns at the snack bar taste like shit.”
“And yet you keep stuffing your face with them.”
Leaving the students’ chatter behind, Jae-min picked out the eco-friendly brand chocolate milk that could only be bought at the snack bar and went to the counter. Similarly, a student in uniform was standing in front of him.
“600 won. Not eating the school meal?”
“Yeah, I’ll just have milk today.”
The student in charge of the snack bar today happened to be a classmate of Jae-min’s. As Jae-min paid for the milk and turned around indifferently, he hesitated and stopped his steps again, just as he had in the morning.
It was because his eyes met someone entering the snack bar. The guy he kept bumping into for some reason today, Oh Seung-pyo.
Oh Seung-pyo looked at Jae-min for a moment this time as well, then went to the display shelves without a word. After browsing the neatly arranged bread, he picked up a bun with a long sausage inside and asked at the counter.
“How much is this?”
“All the bread is 1,000 won.”
As Seung-pyo moved toward the counter, the student who came with him groaned as if conflicted.
“Ah, should I have bread too? But if I eat bread, I think I’ll be short on money for the PC cafe after school…”
“Just eat. I’ll buy it for you.”
Oh Seung-pyo’s friend excitedly picked a bun and placed it on the counter. For some reason, Jae-min couldn’t leave the snack bar and stood there holding his milk. Meanwhile, Oh Seung-pyo tore open the plastic packaging and took a big bite out of the sausage sticking out of the bread.
Jae-min looked down. Absurdly, he remembered the GIF of a sausage being sliced that Oh Seung-pyo had attached to those perverted comments yesterday (presumed, but almost certain). While he thought it would be better to leave the snack bar, he couldn’t easily move his feet, worried that Oh Seung-pyo might say something strange again. The student next to Seung-pyo, who had also torn open a bread bag, spoke.
“I don’t know about the other bread, but I think the sausage bread is really delicious.”
“I heard posts occasionally go up online saying people want to buy our snack bar bread.”
“Right. It’s surprisingly famous.”
“Hey, do you do SNS stuff too?”
At the sudden change of topic, Jae-min almost dropped the milk in his hand. Oh Seung-pyo’s friend, unaware of Jae-min’s feelings while standing at a distance, answered the question innocently.
“I did it occasionally in the past, but I hardly do it since coming to high school. Isn’t it definitely boring since we’re at a boys’ school? Why don’t you do it? I bet if you posted something, you’d get a ton of comments.”
“I did it too. I just don’t do it lately because it’s a hassle. But watching other people do it makes me wonder if it’s actually that fun.”
“Which other person?”
“Oh, there is one. A kid like that.”
While listening to their conversation, Jae-min actually became calmer. He calmly tore the opening of the milk and inserted the straw. He supplied sugar to his brain by sipping the chocolate milk, which was said to be tastier due to its high organic raw milk content. During this, the conversation between Oh Seung-pyo and his friend continued.
“What about your phone? You still haven’t tried calling it?”
“I don’t know. If the person who picked it up intends to return it, it’ll come back.”
“You’re really carefree.”
“My Hyung also lost his wallet after drinking, and he found it because the person who picked it up left it at the police station.”
Gulp, gulp—having finished the entire pack of chocolate milk without stopping, Jae-min removed the word ‘presumed’ he had attached to the three letters of Oh Seung-pyo’s name while considering various possibilities in his head.
‘This means I should talk to him first.’
Oh Seung-pyo. Even if one couldn’t immediately picture who he was just by hearing the name, he was the famous kid everyone recognized as “Ah, that guy” when descriptions were added: the tall and handsome one from Class 4, the one good at soccer, the one good at basketball, the one who almost became a celebrity.
Yeah, I know. I’m freaking great. The moment the signal of arrogance would turn off from the forehead of Oh Seung-pyo, who walked around with that written on his face, was predetermined. Oh Seung-pyo could not maintain such a confident expression whenever he stood in front of Ryu Jae-min.
And that Oh Seung-pyo was now acting arrogant in front of Jae-min as usual—no, even more so than usual. This time, Jae-min did not avoid that gaze, which was half-sneering and half-composed, but met it. He chewed the end of the straw a few times before throwing it in the general waste bin. After putting the empty milk carton in the paper recycling bin, Jae-min finally left the snack bar.
He would have to think more about the method, but he had decided on the answer. To keep being anxious and walking on eggshells… well. Everyone praised Ryu Jae-min’s personality for being unusually easygoing and rounded for a top student, but there was ultimately one reason why Jae-min could always maintain his position as the top student in the whole school. In truth, Ryu Jae-min didn’t like losing either.
If it was going to be discovered by someone anyway, it might actually be a relief that it was Oh Seung-pyo. At least Oh Seung-pyo didn’t seem to have any intention of spreading rumors or informing the school immediately.
Of course, there was no way he would keep quiet for Jae-min’s sake… He could guess the reason quickly. As long as he held onto Jae-min’s weakness and sneered, he could feel a sense of superiority. Since he was a guy who had hardened his expression every time he saw Jae-min for a whole year, he probably wanted to enjoy the sweetness of this “chocolate milk” for a long, long time.
However, there was no evidence that the account belonged to Jae-min. Therefore, if Oh Seung-pyo intended to take his time, Jae-min didn’t need to be anxious either.
“I should just eat the school meal.”
As expected, one milk wouldn’t be enough to last until dinner. Having regained his dead appetite, Jae-min walked quickly so as not to miss the lunch hour, which had already passed significantly.
* * *
Deciding to eat the school meal was a good decision. This was because tofu tuna pancakes, a side dish Jae-min loved, were on today’s menu.
Jae-min took his tray and sat down. He wasn’t the only one who came late for lunch, so he was able to eat at one table with a few classmates.
“I heard Oh Seung-pyo’s dad is a deep-sea fishing boat captain.”
“A captain?”
“Yeah. I heard he catches tuna. I’ve seen him, and his build is no joke. His muscles are like this. He’s even bigger than Oh Seung-pyo.”
The student explaining folded his arm to emphasize his biceps, which didn’t actually protrude that much. Another student asked curiously.
“How did you see Oh Seung-pyo’s dad?”
“We went to middle school together.”
Listening to the students’ chatter, Jae-min stared blankly at the tuna pancake he had just picked up with his chopsticks. The reason Oh Seung-pyo from the class two doors down was the topic of conversation during the Class 2 students’ lunch break was because of the basketball game in a few days.
Even though classes were continuing, vacation was still vacation, so the atmosphere among the students was much more relaxed than during the semester. Since there was no self-study, the time they left school was also earlier. Consequently, students who had some free time used the gaps to exercise or play games instead of going straight home or to academies.
Jae-min heard for the first time that the students of Class 2 had decided to play basketball against Class 4. Since Jae-min usually didn’t join in the other kids’ playground activities, the news reached him late.
“But Hyung-seo can’t play this time. He sprained his ankle while running down the stairs, so he has to wear a half-cast.”
“Seriously, why do we keep playing against Class 4? Oh Seung-pyo is just a cheat code.”
“Still, if we can just block him well, we might win.”
“How do you win against someone who just pushes through with height? We’re completely outmatched under the hoop. We can’t stop him without Hyung-seo. He’s the only one who’s tall enough.”
Jae-min continued his meal, using the children’s worries as a side dish. He had no interest in sports in general. Far from just lacking interest, he was the type to be treated as an oddball for being indifferent even to national festivals like the Olympics or the World Cup, so naturally, he had nothing to add to the conversation about the inter-class match.
The reason he was listening carefully to the basketball talk—something he would normally ignore—was that he felt the need to learn a bit more about Oh Seung-pyo.
Oh Seung-pyo was holding Ryu Jae-min’s biggest secret and weakness in his palm, shaking it to taunt him, yet Jae-min knew nothing about Oh Seung-pyo. He only knew the obvious, surface-level characteristics that anyone would know. Jae-min added a comment, pretending to have a casual interest.
“Was he this tall back in middle school, too?”
“Who? Oh, Seung-pyo? He was smaller than now, but he was still tall. Since it was a co-ed middle school, he was incredibly popular with the girls.”
“He still is. You know Su-hyun from Nammoon High who became a trainee? Apparently, they’re still in touch. Everyone else’s messages got ignored, so I’m damn jealous.”
Popular with girls. That was something he could have known without asking. Jae-min continued his questioning, pretending to be disinterested.
“Then he must have had a girlfriend?”
“Probably not? He got a lot of confessions, but I don’t think I ever heard about him actually dating anyone.”
“You believe that? If I were Oh Seung-pyo, I would’ve had a hundred girlfriends. He probably dated a ton of them in secret.”
If he had a girlfriend, there might have been a gap to exploit… Furthermore, Oh Seung-pyo seemed to be a personality with even fewer hidden sides than Jae-min had expected. Despite being in different classes, the kids knew a lot about Oh Seung-pyo, perhaps because they stayed close by playing basketball, soccer, or games together.
Which girls he had “some” with in middle school, who he still contacted frequently, the fact that he usually spent his after-school time gaming or exercising but spent a bit more time studying since entering high school, and even which university his older brother attended, the fact that he often rambled when drunk, and the name of the conglomerate his father supplied tuna to.
Conclusion: Oh Seung-pyo is a man with a strong drive for self-expression and self-display. That was the extent of the new facts he learned, and it wasn’t a particularly good sign for Jae-min. If he had nothing to hide from others, it would be just as difficult to find a weakness to grab hold of.
‘If only I could see his phone, I might find something.’
Returning home late at night after finishing his daily routine as usual, Jae-min shoved Oh Seung-pyo’s phone deep into his desk drawer. As long as he couldn’t break the security, it was nothing more than a useless piece of scrap metal. However, thinking of that obnoxious attitude, the desire to return it obediently vanished like smoke.
Because he spent unnecessary effort, his bedtime was later than usual. As Jae-min lay in bed and closed his eyes, something he had heard during the day suddenly flashed through his mind.
‘I used to do it too. I just don’t do it lately because it’s a hassle.’
Right. Oh Seung-pyo had said he had an SNS account.
If he had a personality that loved self-display, he wouldn’t have deleted the account even if he had postponed using it out of laziness.
Lying down, Jae-min turned on his phone. The nagging he’d heard until his ears bled—telling him not to mess around with his phone—reflexively came to mind, but this was an emergency.
He accessed an SNS platform popular among his peers. Although Jae-min didn’t have an account on that platform, it wasn’t hard to find the accounts of his classmates. Entering the account of a boy he had lunch with today and scanning the friend list, he easily found Oh Seung-pyo’s account, as expected.
He said he didn’t use it lately because it was a hassle, and indeed, the most recent post was from about half a year ago. Half a year ago… summer. There was a short video of him playing basketball at an outdoor court that looked to be in a riverside park rather than at school.
[Wow, Oh Seung-pyo, hey—!]
Jae-min, who had reflexively played the video, was startled by the shout echoing in the quiet room and quickly pressed the mute button. He hurriedly shoved the phone under the covers and waited breathlessly for a reaction from outside the door, but fortunately, no sound was heard, as his parents had likely fallen asleep.
He lowered the volume to the minimum and played the video again. The kids were shouting excitedly toward Oh Seung-pyo, who had successfully made a shot from a distance. It seemed to have been the game-winning goal.
In the caption below the video, only a V-sign hand emoji was entered. Jae-min scrolled down to see the comments.
Why isn’t your phone working? Try checking this and contact me.
* * *
Why haven’t you logged in lately? Did you quit?
* * *
Oh Seung is still the same.
* * *
Basketball is boring without you.
* * *
Why did Oh Seung-pyo go to an all-boys high school, you idiot!
* * *
Who took this? You look damn cool.
The video was from half a year ago, but comments had been posted as recently as yesterday. They were all devoid of any real substance, simply comments for maintaining friendship or greeting one another.
The photos posted below were mostly ones where he was posing to look cool or laughing excitedly. Below a photo of two drinks topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup, there were only trivial jokes.
Whipped cream fully charged.
Why two drinks?? Who did you go with?
* * *
└ Hyung…
* * *
Is this mint chocolate? I’m cutting ties with you starting today.
* * *
└ Who are you?
* * *
You liked this kind of stuff?
* * *
└ If you’re a man, it’s all about the whipped cream.
There was also a photo taken in school uniform. February; seeing the caption ‘High School Uniform,’ it seemed to be a photo taken before admission. He looked happy. Entering high school must have been a purely joyful event for Oh Seung-pyo.
Even looking further, there were no stories that seemed particularly meaningful. It was a waste of time. Just as he was about to turn off the phone, a photo caught his eye. It was the same ocean photo that was on Oh Seung-pyo’s lock screen.
Middle of the Pacific.
Wow, where is this?
* * *
└ My dad took it from the ship lol.
Jae-min turned off the phone. As he moved the blackened screen to the nightstand, only the image of the deep blue sea with undulating waves remained as an afterimage in his vision.
He had been to the ocean a few times, but the ocean set as Oh Seung-pyo’s lock screen was different. Even though it was just a still photo, the texture of the waves was vivid, and it felt as if there was nothing but ocean in all directions, which explained why it didn’t look like a common beach photo.
Jae-min also had a photo of the ocean on his phone. It was a photo his Noona had taken and sent while traveling in Europe last year. She said it was taken in Greece, and Jae-min had saved it because he definitely wanted to go there once he entered college.
He would soon be a sophomore. This year would probably be harder than last year, and next year as a senior would be even harder than this year. Still, it was a process everyone went through. If he could just endure for two more years, Ryu Jae-min would become an adult, experience campus life, travel alone, and live on his own.
To achieve that, he had to settle things with Oh Seung-pyo before the break ended.