Chapter 1: A Nasty Cold

I’d caught a nasty cold.

The nights were still chilly even after sunset, so it was no surprise after I’d spent so long completely soaked.

By the time I came to my senses, I had rushed home, washed up with warm water, and gone straight to bed, but it was already too late.

As soon as I woke up, the first thing I did was call my homeroom teacher.

“Sir, I think I have a cold, so I won’t be able to come to school today.”

My voice was so hoarse that he likely wouldn’t think I was lying, but I couldn’t help feeling anxious. He just muttered a dismissive, “Alright,” and hung up.

I fell back asleep as if I’d fainted, only to be briefly woken by the sound of the front door opening in the evening. Seeing my listless state, my mom asked in surprise.

“Have you been sleeping this whole time? Are you sick?”

“I took some medicine. I’m fine.”

“…”

At my response, she closed my door. It was probably a gesture of consideration, letting me get more rest, but it made the room far too hot. I didn’t have the strength to open it again, so I endured, sweating profusely. My stomach was empty and my head throbbed, so I escaped back into sleep.

When I opened my eyes, it was morning again. A new morning. A new today.

“…I really should go to school.”

I murmured the words aloud, deliberately. Thankfully, my throat didn’t hurt too much. My body felt much better, likely from sleeping all day.

But I didn’t want to go. I wanted to use the cold as an excuse to skip one more day. Just one more. That’s all.

Still, if I didn’t go today, it would be even harder to go tomorrow. And the day after, harder still.

I forced myself to sit up.

Of all the times to get sick, it had to be right after that incident. If I missed today too, there was no telling what sort of fantasies those guys would cook up in their heads.

“Lee Yunwoo. You just got up? Aren’t you going to be late?”

My mom asked, pausing as she put on her shoes at the entrance. It felt like I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and then I realized it actually had been a while. Aside from a brief glimpse while I was sick yesterday evening, this was the first time we’d spoken since our fight.

“What time is it?”

“It’s eight o’clock.”

“I just have to be there by 8:40, so I’m not late. Where are you going, Mom?”

I stretched my legs and sat in the doorway. The villa was so small that sitting here offered a clear view of the entire place. My room opened directly into the kitchen. To the left was another room, separated by a sliding door, which my mom used. To the right was the entryway where she was now standing.

Without answering, she asked bluntly, “Is your cold all better?”

“Yeah. I’m fine now.”

“Then why’d you go out in the middle of the night and put yourself through all that? Were you determined to make me worry?”

It sounded like a reprimand, but it was her way of extending an olive branch. After an argument, my mom and I always buried the hatchet like this, pretending nothing had happened. We might have a brief cold war, but that was all.

I just stared down at my feet. Her words stung. I hadn’t gone out in the middle of the night just to worry her. But if I brought up my brother again, we would only end up fighting.

Unexpectedly, it was my mom who changed the subject.

“I found a job.”

“What?”

The awkwardness of a moment ago forgotten, I shot to my feet.

“A job? Where? What kind of job?”

“Hey, one question at a time,” she said, holding me back. Though she chided me, her smiling eyes were crinkled at the corners.

“…”

It was the first time I’d seen her smile since we moved here. Though she tried to hide it, she’d been on edge ever since my brother disappeared.

Seeing her smile made me happy. And yet, at the same time, something surged within me again, hot and unsettling. Unsure of what the feeling was, I forced it down.

My mom gently pushed me away.

“I’ll tell you all about it when I get off work. I have to go now.”

“You’re leaving already?”

“They want me to come in early. But hey, do you happen to know someone named Yoon Heesung?”

“Yoon Heesung?”

Her question was completely out of the blue. I’d never heard that name before.

“Never heard of him.”

“You haven’t? Well, I’m off then.”

“Oh? Okay. Bye, Mom!”

She must have been in a real hurry, because she left without explaining why she’d asked or who the person was. She was in such a rush that she even forgot to hold the doorknob to keep it from slamming shut.

Bang!

The loud noise made me flinch.

“…I’ll never get used to that sound.”

If you didn’t hold the door of this house until it was fully closed, it always made a racket like that. On a windy day, you had to brace for an even louder boom.

But anyway…

“Thank God.”

I muttered, as if speaking to someone.

I wasn’t the only one who had struggled to adjust after we fled to this place. My mom had, too.

She hadn’t been able to find work for nearly a month. After being fired from the restaurant overnight, we’d come all this way to escape the rumors, only to be shunned here as well.

‘Yunwoo. Maybe moving was a mistake…’

Frankly, for the past few days, I had started to worry, ‘Are we going to end up on the street?’ But today, she had found a job, though I didn’t know the details. It was a huge relief. If things had continued this way, we would have slowly chipped away at what little money we had left and truly ended up homeless.

Suddenly, a prickling sense of unease made me check my phone.

‘I should get going.’

If I didn’t get ready now, I’d be late.

My mom had just shared such good news; I couldn’t ruin the mood. I had to pull myself together. I had to act like I’d just missed a day of school for a simple cold, and that I was perfectly fine now.

Despite my resolve, I dawdled as I put on my uniform.

I really don’t get why Im Namwoo torments me…

‘What kind of shit did you pull to have to transfer all the way out here?’

Im Namwoo had started picking fights with me from my very first day.

‘Huh? I asked what you did. You must be hiding something.’

It was apparently a rare sight for a high school senior to move to a seaside town at the end of June, and Im Namwoo relentlessly questioned me about it. It didn’t take long for his questioning to turn into bullying. Not content with just pestering me, he eventually started preventing other kids in the class from even speaking to me.

‘Are you talking to that f*cking outcast?’

He would patrol the classroom, his eyes blazing, as if to say he wouldn’t let anyone off the hook for interacting with me. After he threatened even the class president, no one dared to speak to me at all.

It was that easy for me to become an outcast.

‘Still, graduation isn’t that far off…’

I had to endure it. I certainly didn’t have the confidence to face a guy his size. I slung my backpack over my shoulder. Grabbing the doorknob, I closed the front door as gently as I could and forced my legs to walk.

But the determined steps I’d started with grew heavier the closer I got to school. I dragged my feet, worrying I might wear out the soles of my shoes. The salty air blowing in from the nearby sea felt particularly unbearable today.

I turned my head and saw the vast, rolling blue water.

“Hah…”

The sight only drew a sigh from me. I honestly didn’t see what was so beautiful about the ocean. It smelled, it was humid—what was there to like? Even though moving here was the first time I’d ever seen the sea, I felt no excitement.

‘Maybe I just hate this whole town.’

I kicked a stray pebble on the side of the road.

“…Ah, so then earlier…”

“The gym teacher was at the gate…”

“I saw it on my way home yesterday…”

Returning after two days, the school was buzzing with noise. It was even more chaotic than usual, probably because the bell was about to ring.

Then, as I cautiously opened the classroom door and took a step inside, something strange happened.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

“…”

An unsettling feeling washed over me as the sounds from the hallway died away. The classroom had fallen utterly silent. It was as if our class alone had been sealed in a vacuum.

That wasn’t all. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on me. A flood of gazes poured in my direction.

‘…All I did was open the door. What’s going on? Did I do something wrong?’

Even when a teacher suddenly calls you out for talking during study hall, the atmosphere doesn’t freeze over like this.

‘Is it because I was absent yesterday?’

But being out sick wasn’t something to be this shocked about. Besides, I was basically invisible in this class—my presence or absence made no difference. There was no reason for them to react this way.

I stood there like a statue for a long moment, completely bewildered.

“…What were you saying?”

“Did you buy this on your way here this morning?”

“Hey, hey. Let me see that.”

The classroom started to fill with noise again. As if nothing had happened, the students resumed their chatter.

Just like that, the room was once again bustling with sound.

“…”

The few seconds of silence felt like a dream.

Suspicion crept in immediately. Was this another form of bullying? Something Im Namwoo had orchestrated? As I walked to my desk, I glanced toward the window-side seats. That was where Im Namwoo sat.

‘He’s not here?’

To my surprise, the desk was empty. As were the two seats in front of it. Not just Im Namwoo, but Park Hyungtae and Kim Youngseok hadn’t come to school yet either.

That was strange. No matter how much of a delinquent he acted, he always showed up for school.

The seats remained empty even after the preliminary bell rang. They were still empty when our homeroom teacher, looking haggard, entered the classroom.

“Morning assembly will now begin.”

I was surprised by the fact that he was even holding an assembly. Today was full of strange occurrences. Except for my first day, our teacher had never bothered with morning meetings. In any case, between Im Namwoo’s crew and the teacher, today was one weird thing after another.

Then, our teacher delivered some astonishing news.

“Starting today, Namwoo will no longer be attending. He has transferred. That’s all the announcements. Let’s begin class.”

“…”

Having dropped that bombshell, the teacher hastily left the room. He seemed to be in a hurry, as if being chased or having urgent business to attend to. My eyes widened.

‘Transferred?’

Transferred? Just like that?

‘So… Im Namwoo isn’t coming back?’

I couldn’t believe this sudden stroke of luck. I could finally attend school in peace. But along with the relief, I felt a deep sense of confusion.