EAR Ch 15

Hick, hick. Ryu Jaemin sniffled even louder as if giving an answer. What’s the use of only having good grades? Acting like a loser. Seungpyo swallowed a curse inside his mouth.

Why was he suddenly so irritated that he had been losing to a guy like this in exams all year round? Seungpyo, who had been sitting crookedly on the resource room desk, jumped up from his seat and approached right in front of the crying Jaemin.

“Are you not going to stop? What did you do right to blubber like that?”

Seungpyo reached out his large hand, pulled down Jaemin’s hand that was covering his eye sockets, and forcefully lifted up the face he had been bowing.

“Ah, fuck.”

That was when Seungpyo was genuinely flustered.

The corners of Ryu Jaemin’s eyes, which should have been crying, were white just like usual, and they were bone-dry without a trace of teardrops anywhere to be found. Seeing Ryu Jaemin’s face, which had returned to the same expressionless look as always before he knew it, gave Seungpyo goosebumps for a moment.

“Why is a crazy bastard pretending to cry?”

He knitted his brows heavily like someone who had seen something creepy, and let go of Ryu Jaemin’s chin that he had been gripping as if brushing him off. With the pushing arm strength, Jaemin staggered slightly and took a couple of steps back.

A polite model student my foot. Ryu Jaemin is truly out of his mind, no matter how you look at it. If you think about it calmly, he must have been out of his right mind to begin with, which is why he posted those kinds of pictures. His heart was pounding like crazy. While Seungpyo took deep breaths to calm his startled heart, Jaemin calmly looked down at his own cell phone without a single word and only touched the screen.

He didn’t know what on earth he was doing, suddenly taking out his phone in this situation. Unable to figure out how to handle behavior that seemed increasingly unfathomable, Seungpyo glared at Jaemin in a defensive stance. Before long, a familiar voice echoed in the quieted resource room.

[If I tell you what I want, can you grant all of it?]

[If possible, I will. I don’t want to keep making situations like this with you. It’s scary and….]

[Scary, my ass.]

Along with silence, the sound of rustling was heard, followed by Oh Seungpyo’s sneering.

[Then if I tell you to strip in front of me too, will you strip?]

[…Huh?]

[Act like a whore in front of me too. I thought about it while listening to class and got curious. How it would be to see in person the slutty act that the number 1 student in the whole school does.]

When Jaemin pressed the stop button on the cell phone he was holding up for all to see, the playing voice abruptly cut off.

Seungpyo stared at Jaemin with his eyes wide open as if they would pop out. His opened mouth only spat out a short sigh a few times and couldn’t say anything meaningful. Jaemin looked straight into his eyes for a moment as if waiting for Seungpyo’s reaction, and this time, he opened his mouth first. His tone and voice were calm as ever.

“You threatened me. Hearing it recorded like this makes it even more chilling. And makes me look even more pitiful.”

“You… recorded it? That?”

While Jaemin’s voice, which had been on the verge of tears, had become calm, this time Seungpyo’s speech was shaking rattle and roll.

“You grab my weakness and threaten me, so I have to hold onto at least one thing too. Just like you said, you—when poked, you get poked.”

Seungpyo stood blankly for a moment and then whipped his hand out toward Jaemin. When he grabbed his wrist to snatch the phone, Ryu Jaemin quietly continued speaking without much resistance.

“Don’t waste your energy for nothing. Even if you delete it from the phone, it’s useless. I linked it to be saved together on another cloud.”

“Ha….”

It wasn’t a sigh, but a dry laugh that came out because it was absurd.

Ever since the day he picked up Ryu Jaemin’s cell phone, Oh Seungpyo had been feeling dumbfounded and absurd at least once every single day, but naturally, right now was at an all-time high.

“Ryu Jaemin. Are you really out of your mind? You crazy psycho bastard…. Who are you going to let listen by recording it? Your parents? Teacher? The kids? Then you’ll also have to explain why this situation happened, and then I’ll bring up the topic of your pictures?”

“There’s no proof that those pictures are me, but there’s no way out for the fact that this is your voice. While talking earlier, I called your name a few times too.”

“Whoa.”

“And even if I really took pictures like that… Oh Seungpyo, do you think it’s justified to take someone’s privacy as a weakness, threaten them, and even demand sexual harassment?”

It had been a long time since Seungpyo let go of Jaemin’s wrist. To be precise, it would be right to say that the strength in his hand had drained away. Jaemin put the phone he was holding into his pocket and looked at Seungpyo with cold eyes where not only tears but even emotion had cooled down.

“If you think that way, I’m disappointed. I didn’t think you were such a brainless bastard.”

Seungpyo kept his mouth tightly shut.

Just as Jaemin said, Oh Seungpyo wasn’t brainless enough to deny that this current situation was unjustified.

Even if Ryu Jaemin had posted perverted selfies on the internet with his face fully revealed, threatening to distribute already deleted pictures under that pretext and furthermore demanding that he re-enact the act in front of him was simply—

“If you want to get called to the School Violence Committee, do whatever you want, whether you pass the pictures around or not. Since there’s no proof those pictures are me, no matter what others think, I’ll deny it to the end. Even if you insist I did such a thing, there’ll be way more people who won’t believe you. But as for you threatening me, the recording is left.”

“What’s the point? You want to go down together?”Isn’t it obvious?”

“Did you think I’d go down alone?”

Now, a faint sneer hovered on Ryu Jaemin’s expression. Seungpyo, who had been dumbfounded, had no leisure time left to retort. Jaemin looked at his watch and said the same thing as before.

“Break time is coming to an end. We have to go out now.”

“Get lost by yourself. I don’t even want to step out the door with you. You crazy bastard.”

“Have it your way. I’m going.”

Jaemin opened the resource room door and walked out without even looking back. Only after the door closed did Seungpyo let out a long sigh and grind his teeth.

“What kind of thing is that? Giving me goosebumps, really….”

He lost again.

Far from succeeding in venting the anger he had been fiercely preparing, he was instead dealt a blow. Oh Seungpyo, who had advanced to high school and become the perennial runner-up, had to admit once again that he had suffered a miserable defeat to Ryu Jaemin.

A proper psycho. A fucking weird bastard. Oh Seungpyo bit his lips. Seungpyo’s father, who had ridden ships for a long time and rubbed shoulders with various people, occasionally shared his life experiences with his children, and among them, there was something his dad said often. You can fight a bad guy, but avoid a psycho as much as possible without dealing with him.

‘Who would have known Ryu Jaemin was a freak like that?’

Just as Jaemin said, even if he went and snitched to someone, it was a reality where no one would believe it. Ryu Jaemin secretly taking lewd pictures of himself and uploading them to the internet, casually answering sexual harassment and dirty talk, pretending to cry and acting like he was being bullied when caught by him and told a few things, recording the conversation and counter-threatening Oh Seungpyo….

Even if he exposed that he was actually such a freak, most of the people at this school would likely laugh it off, thinking, “There’s no way.”

“Ah, right. The phone.”

While getting caught up in the absurd conversation, he hadn’t even properly gotten around to saying give his phone back.

Though he told the kids he didn’t care because he could just buy a new one, Seungpyo naturally intended to get his cell phone back from Jaemin. After all, the pictures taken so far, memos written whenever he thought of them, and various other data were in the phone, and he hadn’t backed up all of them.

Nothing goes right. Oh Seungpyo replaced venting his misplaced anger by kicking the table leg. Crash! The innocent table couldn’t even cry and fell over, taking Seungpyo’s kick.

Grumbling, Seungpyo set the desk back up and left the resource room, grinding his teeth. It was a fucking day.