“Take it. For short-term memorization, sugar is the best thing there is.”

“…”

I held out my hand.

In my hand was a chocolate whose name started with Ferrero, one I had tasted only a few times in the past.

Ye-rin looked back and forth between my hand and me.

Her mind at war with itself.

“Oh my, does he like Ye-rin unnie?”

“Tch… he knows a pretty face when he sees one.”

The girls around us whispered.

Only three of the number 32 buses could make the school commute.

The first one, the one I was on now, was used by a fixed set of students.

Lately there had been a lot of girls sending me signals.

They handed me notes as they took their bags back.

I took the notes they handed over, but I never answered.

That would not have been courteous to my first love.

“…Thank you.”

For the first time, Ye-rin’s face colored pink.

She seemed to like chocolate.

No — at that age there is hardly a girl who dislikes chocolate.

“You’re my sunbae, so drop the polite form with me.”

“…”

My first love, right in front of me, is a year my senior.

She’s a third-year this year.

From some day after the entrance exam ended, she vanished from the bus.

So my heart was in a hurry.

Ye-rin’s big eyes went round as a rabbit’s.

She had probably never met a man who pushed in like this.

My own personality had been completely rebuilt.

Running the mind art every day, the world looked different.

I had learned that only the man who moves his energy actively can rule it.

Body, mind and wallet all filled out, and my self-esteem went up with them.

At the same time I came to look at the world head-on.

The old man in the dream said so.

Life is short, so live it in style and then come back.

“Oh my…”

“That’s cool.”

“Hnnng… I like chocolate too.”

The people around her were making more of a fuss than Ye-rin was.

The girls looked at Ye-rin and showed their envy.

The truth is I hadn’t known this would work either.

In the past it would probably have ended inside my own head.

“All right. I’ll enjoy it.”

Huh? What kind of twist is this?

The flustered look was gone, and Ye-rin came back at me boldly.

They say a man never knows how endlessly a woman changes, and it seemed to be true.

Her expression changed fast enough to startle me.

“Did the exams go well?”

I spoke first.

The professor said so back in the psychology of women lectures.

That a man who goes more than ten seconds in silence while talking with a woman should give up on the idea of dating.

“So-so. And you?”

From what I’d heard, Ye-rin was first in the whole school.

I’d heard she had never once lost first place, and she did it while commuting, with no tutoring at all.

“Mine went well too.”

Wow — even to me it was surprising how naturally Ye-rin and I traded words.

“What’s this. Your face looks like you got a perfect score.”

“Probably.”

“R-really?”

For a student there is no better guarantee of himself than a report card.

Ye-rin’s face went surprised at my words.

Ye-rin and I both know what a perfect score means at Jangju High, which stands as the equal of Jangju Girls’ High.

“The teachers must have set an easy paper this time.”

No — it wasn’t easy. I had gotten smarter.

By the working of the Dual Intent Mind Art, the accumulated filth inside my body had been expelled in a line.

With the grease cleared out of my head too, the efficiency was beyond anything in the past.

“I see…”

Ye-rin, who was good at studying, finished it with that one line.

That could happen, Ye-rin thought, and accepted it.

The way a first-place mind works really is different.

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Huh?”

“I’ll send you an encouraging message now and then. The entrance exam is coming up.”

I needed a pretext Ye-rin could accept.

“It’s been over a year and a half since we’ve known each other by sight.”

I… have known you for well over ten years.

I looked at Ye-rin with expectation.

Ye-rin, torn for a moment.

“010-3277-XXXX.”

Ye-rin pushed her hair back with a hand and said it fast.

She said it quietly enough that nobody around could hear, but I caught every digit of it.

“Are they exchanging numbers?”

“Already?”

The whispering from the girls deployed around us thickened.

I wasn’t embarrassed.

I saw! I asked! I got it!

And so, making waves on the bus, Ye-rin and I came to know each other.

Screeeech.

The bus stopped.

The Jangju Girls’ High students got off first.

Ye-rin left a thank-you behind her and was gone.

Haah. How is even the back of her, walking away, that lovely?

Is it more so because of the uniform? Heh heh.

And the bus pulling away again.

“Hey!”

Just then somebody sent out a powerful frequency calling me.

My head turned.

What are these things?

Industry High kids who should have gotten off long ago were glaring at me from the back seats.

Eyes plainly looking to pick a fight.

It was like looking at a second Hong Seong-hyeon.

“You. Come here.”

A bastard the size of a bear, sitting in the middle of the back row, crooked a finger at me.

A bastard I knew perfectly well.

Industry High’s ssireum team. (TL Note: ssireum is Korean belt wrestling, contested in a sand ring — a school ssireum squad is a serious athletic program, and its members are big.)

His name was Choi Hyeok-chan.

A bastard who had been in the local paper a few times was calling me over.

I got up from my seat.

Students from several schools watched with startled, hatchet eyes.

I walked over to them, step by step.

Seven of them slouched in their seats and glared at me.

“I’m here.”

Nothing to be scared of.

“I’m here? This son of a bitch — we let him off and now he’s lost every scrap of fear!”

“Kh kh. Hyeok-chan. What do we do? Drag him off?”

The Industry High bastards spat on the bus floor to scare me.

What childish bastards.

Every time they breathed, cigarette smell came off them in a wave.

High schoolers who knew the taste of a hangover cigarette.

“I’ve got dibs on Ye-rin. Hand over the number.”

This isn’t steamed skate. Dibs, my ass.

And hand over what?

“No.”

“You shit! Ye-rin is mine!”

Choi Hyeok-chan, shouting loud enough to take the bus apart.

A big lumbering bastard like this treats a woman like an object.

A textbook one-sided crush, with Ye-rin’s own will nowhere in it.

Though most of the boys riding this bus were probably the same.

“Look at this pig, out in Siberia hunting for scorched-rice water.” (TL Note: the Korean proverb is about looking for scorched-rice water at the well — demanding the finished thing where the raw material is. Tae-san moves the well to Siberia and puts a pig at it.)

A curse has to be juicy to taste right.

From hanging around with kids these days, my cursing had improved right along with my grades.

“This crazy shit!”

Whip!

The bastard beside me threw a punch.

A cowardly punch, thrown without warning.

Anyone who expects a straight fight out of punks is the crazy one.

Thock!

I opened my right palm and caught the incoming fist.

“…!”

Surprised?

You thought this was only possible in the movies?

Even inside a swaying bus I did not sway, and I could move both arms freely.

And I squeezed, lightly.

“Aaaaaagh!”

A scream like a piglet’s throat being cut rang out.

I pushed him lightly toward his friend the pig.

The bastard went down with a crash.

Sorry. Your hyung has been overflowing with strength lately.

The bastards shot up from their seats.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everybody relax. Today’s the last day of midterms. Can’t you cut me a little slack? Exams don’t matter to rock-headed bastards like you, but they matter to me. Let’s pick a quiet day and cut each other’s throats. All right, Hyeok-chan?”

I’ve gotten completely nice lately.

I smiled at Hyeok-chan the pig.

Kindness overflowed.

The soft cruelty of proposing a day to cut throats on.

Nobody taught it to me, and my blood boiled hot.

He dares treat the first love I crossed death to meet as an object?

Hand over a number so fresh I got it today and haven’t even texted it?

The bastard has ironed the folds out of his own brain!

“Hey! What do you students think you’re doing!”

The bus driver looked in the rearview mirror and bellowed.

Even in those days what an adult said still worked.

“I’m sorry for the noise.”

I bowed my head and said I was sorry.

These pigs may not know what a public place is worth, but I am a student whose dream is to be a model citizen.

A few buildings in Gangnam for reasonable pocket money, a few vacation houses on Jeju and abroad for the summer, and if there was a little more room, a private plane to run — I wanted to live quietly.

Anyone who tries to take that ordinary dream of mine away.

The curse of raw shit shall come upon him!

(End of Chapter 20)