EAR Ch 9

As Seungpyo tried to head toward the counter, the kid who came along with him groaned, looking troubled.

“Ah, should I eat bread too? But if I eat bread too, I feel like I won’t have enough money to go to the PC cafe after it ends…”

“Just eat. I’ll buy it for you.”

Oh Seungpyo’s friend got excited, picked out some bread, and put it on the counter together. For some reason, Jaemin couldn’t leave the canteen and stood there holding his milk. In the meantime, Oh Seungpyo tore open the plastic packaging and bit heavily into the sausage sticking out over the bread.

Jaemin lowered his gaze. Absurdly enough, he thought of the sausage-slicing mandoline GIF file that Oh Seungpyo had attached to the perverted comments yesterday (presumably, but almost certainly). Thinking it would be better to leave the canteen, his feet wouldn’t easily move away, worried that Oh Seungpyo might say another strange thing. Next to Seungpyo, the kid who subsequently tore open the bread wrapper said,

“I don’t know about other canteen bread, but I think the sausage bread is seriously delicious.”

“I heard posts saying people want to buy our canteen bread occasionally go up on the internet, too.”

“Right. They say it’s secretly famous.”

“Hey, do you do social media stuff like that?”

At the abruptly changed topic, Jaemin almost dropped the milk he was holding in his hand. Oh Seungpyo’s friend, who had no way of knowing the feelings of Jaemin standing at a distance, answered the question innocently.

“I used to do it sometimes, but I hardly do it since coming to high school. Isn’t it definitely boring since coming to an all-boys school? Why don’t you do it? I feel like you’d get a ton of comments if you post writing.”

“I used to do it, too. Nowadays I don’t do it because it’s bothersome. But as I watch other kids do it, it makes you wonder if it’s really that fun.”

“What other kid?”

“Oh, there is one. A kid like that.”

While listening to the two’s conversation, Jaemin actually grew calm. He calmly tore open the milk opening and inserted the straw. Supplying sugar to his brain while sucking up the chocolate milk, which was said to be even more delicious due to its high organic milk content, he slurped it down. Even while doing so, Oh Seungpyo and his friend’s conversation continued.

“What about your phone? Haven’t you tried calling it yet?”

“Who knows. If the person who picked it up has the mind to return it, it’ll come back.”

“You’re seriously laid-back.”

“My older brother lost his wallet when he drank alcohol, but the person who picked it up handed it in to the police station, so he found it.”

Gulp, gulp, having emptied a whole carton of chocolate milk without even taking a break, Jaemin ripped away the ‘presumed’ prefix he had attached in front of Oh Seungpyo’s three-syllable name in his head while harboring various possibilities up until now.

‘Meaning he’s telling me to speak up first, this guy.’

Oh Seungpyo. Even if people don’t immediately think of who it is just hearing the name, if supplementary explanations are attached—the tall and handsome guy in Class 4, the guy who’s good at soccer, the guy who’s good at basketball, the guy who almost became a celebrity—everyone says, “Ah, that guy.”

Yeah, I know it too. I’m fucking gorgeous. The moment the signal of cockiness turned off on the forehead of Oh Seungpyo, who walked around with that written on his forehead, was fixed. Oh Seungpyo couldn’t make that kind of confident expression whenever he was standing in front of Ryu Jaemin.

That Oh Seungpyo was now acting cocky in front of Jaemin just like usual—no, even more than usual. Jaemin met that gaze, which was half sarcastic and half relaxed, without avoiding it this time, nibbled the end of the straw a few times, and threw it into the general trash can. Having completed the separate collection by putting the empty milk carton into the paper recycling trash can, Jaemin finally slipped out of the canteen.

Though he had to think about the method a bit more, he had decided on the answer for what to do. To keep feeling anxious and walking on eggshells, well. Everyone praised Ryu Jaemin’s personality for being easygoing and rounded rather than like a model student’s, but the reason Jaemin could always safeguard 1st place in the whole school was ultimately one. Actually, Ryu Jaemin didn’t like losing either.

If it was something that was going to get caught by someone anyway, it might actually be fortunate that it got caught by Oh Seungpyo. At least Oh Seungpyo didn’t seem to have any thoughts of immediately spreading rumors or letting the school know.

Naturally, there was no way he would keep his mouth shut for Jaemin’s sake… The reason was easy to guess. He could probably feel a sense of superiority while gripping his weakness and being sarcastic like now. Since he was a punk who stiffened his expression every time he saw him throughout the entire year, he must want to enjoy sweetness like chocolate milk for a long, long time.

However, no evidence existed that that account belonged to Jaemin. Therefore, if Oh Seungpyo intended to act leisurely, Jaemin didn’t need to feel nervous either.

“I should just eat school lunch.”

As expected, a single milk wouldn’t cut it to last until evening. Jaemin, who had recovered his dead appetite, quickened his pace in order not to miss the lunchtime that had already passed by a lot.

📚

Deciding to eat school lunch was a good decision. Because today’s menu was tofu tuna pancakes, a side dish Jaemin liked.

Jaemin held his meal tray and sat down. He wasn’t the only one who came to eat lunch late, so he was able to have a meal at the same table with a few kids from the same class.

“Oh Seungpyo’s dad is a deep-sea tuna fishing vessel captain.”

“A captain?”

“Yeah. I heard he catches tuna. I’ve seen him before, and his build is no joke. His muscles are like this. He’s even bigger than Oh Seungpyo.”

The kid explaining folded his arm to emphasize his biceps, which didn’t bulge out all that much. Another guy asked, looking puzzled.

“How did you get to see Oh Seungpyo’s dad?”

“We went to middle school together.”

Listening to the kids’ chatter, Jaemin blankly looked at the tuna pancake he had just picked up with his chopsticks. The reason Oh Seungpyo’s story from two classes over came up on the dining table during Class 2’s lunchtime was because of the basketball match coming up in a few days.

Even though classes were continuing, vacation was vacation, so the kids’ atmosphere was much more relaxed than during the semester. Since there was no autonomous study either, dismissal time was early. So the kids who had some time didn’t head straight home or to the academy, but instead utilized the marginal time to exercise and play games.

Jaemin heard for the first time that the Class 2 kids had decided to play basketball with the Class 4 kids. Jaemin didn’t usually join the kids’ playground play, so he had received the news belatedly.

“But Hyeongseo can’t do it this time. They say Hyeongseo ran on the stairs, sprained his ankle, and has to wear a half cast.”

“No, why do we keep clashing with Class 4? Oh Seungpyo is way too OP.”

“Still, if we just block that guy well, we might win.”

“How do you win when he pushes us around with height? Under the basket is totally lacking. If Hyeongseo isn’t there, we can’t block him. He’s the tall one among us anyway.”

Jaemin continued his meal, taking the kids’ worries as a side dish. He had no interest in sports overall. He lacked interest to the extent that he was indifferent even to the Olympics or World Cup—which were festivals for the entire nation—making him a type treated as a freak, so naturally, he had nothing to add to the stories about the inter-class match either.

The reason he was listening attentively to the basketball match talk, which he would normally have let go in one ear and out the other, was because he felt he himself needed to know a bit about Oh Seungpyo.

Oh Seungpyo was gripping Ryu Jaemin’s biggest secret and weakness in the palm of his hand, shaking it and teasing him, yet he himself knew nothing about Oh Seungpyo. He only knew to the extent of features anyone would know, standing out completely on the outside. Jaemin added words as if simple curiosity had arisen.

“Was he as tall as now back in middle school, too?”

“Who? Ah, Seungpyo? He was shorter than now, but he was still tall. Back in middle school, since it was co-ed, he was super popular with the girls at school.”

“He’s popular now, too. You know Suhyun from Nammoon High who got into a trainee group, right? I heard he still contacts him these days. All the other kids who tried contacting him got left on read, I’m so jealous.”

He’s popular with the girls. It was something he could know without asking. Jaemin continued his questions as if without selfish motives.

“Then he must have had a girlfriend, too?”

“Probably not? He received a lot of confessions, but I don’t think I ever heard a story of him dating someone.”

“Do you believe that? If I were Oh Seungpyo, I would’ve dated a girlfriend a hundred times. He must have met secretly a whole bunch.”