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Chapter 24
Thinking she must have misheard him, Jiseo asked again. Dohyeok repeated himself clearly in his pleasant mid-low voice.
“I said I was a sickly pretty boy.”
“Wow. This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone call themselves a pretty boy out loud.”
“I was speaking in the past tense. With a face like this, calling oneself ‘ordinary’ isn’t humility—it’s hypocrisy.”
Jiseo was left speechless. It was incredibly obnoxious, but since the speaker’s face itself served as both plausibility and persuasion, she was about to let it slide when something else snagged her attention.
Sickly—what now?
Sure, there was no need to compare him to Minhyuk, a physical-enhancement Esper, but Baek Dohyeok’s build was something anyone would peg as closer to an Esper’s than a Guide’s. Watching him speak of a frail childhood with a solemn expression, without a hint of humor, felt strange. If he’d delayed school entry by a year, he really must have been sickly…
Jiseo glanced at Dohyeok’s arm resting on the table. Even lying still, the prominent forearm muscles stood out beneath his rolled-up sleeve—muscles that had nothing to do with holding pens. Her expression soured as she repeated the phrase “sickly pretty boy…” to herself.
When Dohyeok, sitting across from her, tilted his head slightly as if wondering what the problem was, his well-defined trapezius muscles showed beautifully along the line of his neck between the collar of his shirt. Jiseo, who had trained her own body for years and lived surrounded by Espers who trained ruthlessly, could easily imagine what his body must look like beneath the jacket and shirt. Above all, when he’d held her before, his solid chest and arms had—
No, what am I even thinking right now?
Startled, Jiseo lightly slapped her cheeks. Whatever Dohyeok took that gesture to mean, he responded firmly,
“Ah, I’m very healthy now. I’m still lacking, but I exercise diligently, so you don’t need to worry about that.”
“I’m not worried. Why would you think I was?”
There wasn’t a shred of concern to be found anywhere on his broad shoulders.
Is this the type who brags through self-deprecation? Jiseo thought. If that body counts as frail, then more than half the Espers in this country would have to crawl on all fours into gates. She fluttered her hand, signaling him to continue.
“Anyway, because I had a weak constitution, I tried just about every sport there was, and the one I really got into was fencing. So in my fifth-grade year, I begged my parents to let me transfer to Hayul Elementary School. It was the only school in the country with a fencing club.”
“Oh. Fencing.”
Wanting him to get to the point already, Jiseo responded in a soulless tone. Come to think of it, Hayul Elementary really did have a fencing club. Jiseo herself had always stuck stubbornly to the reading club—read a book, write a few lines of impressions, and you were done—because mingling with friends and running around felt like too much effort.
All twelve years of elementary, middle, and high school.
“It was my very first day after transferring.”
Contrary to Jiseo’s wish that he’d just say when they met and wrap it up quickly, Dohyeok insisted on going all the way back to his first day at the new school.
Thirteen-year-old Baek Dohyeok wasn’t very different from how he was now. Unlike his older brothers, who had shot up like bamboo shoots after rain, he remained one of the five shortest kids in his class until graduating middle school, and he’d been sickly to boot. Because of that, his parents had coddled their youngest son excessively.
Between parents who indulged a son well aware of how impressive he was, and the heavens that gave him everything except height, it was hard to say who was to blame—but in any case, Baek Dohyeok was a confident, aloof child. In other words, he didn’t consider kids his age to be on his level.
That said, since he still retained a rather cute edge back then, instead of bluntly telling his new classmates to leave him alone on his first day, Dohyeok chose to avoid them. At lunchtime, he barely touched his meal and wandered around in search of a quiet spot.
He’d just found a place that wasn’t too sunny, not too shady, and pleasantly secluded, when he discovered he wasn’t the first one there.
“Hey, what did you just say?”
When Dohyeok glanced over, he saw three boys—one with a rat-tail haircut who looked like trouble at a glance, and two others who seemed to be his friends—standing together and threatening a girl with her hair tied high in a ponytail. The numbers alone were against her, but what stood out was how she stood with one hand planted on her hip, completely unflinching. Though there were three of them, it was obvious at a glance: the other two were just extras. This was a one-on-one showdown—rat-tail versus ponytail.
“Did I say anything wrong? Your dad just hangs around at home, right? That’s why, when all the other dads go to work, your dad’s the only one who drives you and your sister to school. A grown man who doesn’t earn money and just mooches around is a disgrace to the neighborhood.”
As the rat-tail boy puffed himself up and glanced around, the kid in the stadium jacket and the freckled one nodded and snickered.
There were kids everywhere who couldn’t tell what should or shouldn’t be said. Dohyeok predicted how this fight would end. Usually, the girl would burst into tears or cry and go find a teacher.
“Yeah, you’re right.”
But Dohyeok’s expectation was spectacularly overturned. The ponytailed girl readily agreed with the rat-tail’s outrageous insult. Intrigued by the unexpected turn, Dohyeok unconsciously pricked up his ears, wondering what she’d say next.
“…You’re absolutely right—to get your ass beaten!”
In a flash, the ponytail threw a punch straight into the rat-tail’s face. With her left foot firmly planted, she twisted her upper body and put her full weight into it—a perfect punch.
Everyone there, including Dohyeok, stared with their mouths open. Just as the rat-tail staggered back awkwardly, clutching his nose and muttering something—
“Hey—hey, blood! Nosebleed!”
The kid in the stadium jacket made a fuss, pointing at the center of the rat-tail’s face. A thin stream of blood ran down his reddened, ugly face. First strike wins. Especially in elementary school fights, a nosebleed meant game over.
“Hey, you bitch! Im Jiseo! You think I’ll let this go? I’m telling my mom everything!”
“Go ahead. I’ll tell the teachers and my parents everything you said and did too—and I’ll tell everyone you got beat up by me and got a nosebleed.”
“Damn it… hey. Let’s go. For now.”
The rat-tail turned away, seething, and the stadium jacket and freckled boy exchanged looks and whispered before following him. The girl called Im Jiseo brushed off her hands with a few sharp claps and turned away with a triumphant hmph. Still half-dazed from what he’d witnessed, Dohyeok ended up facing her—no, Jiseo’s—face as she turned around.
Noticing the boy staring blankly at her, Im Jiseo asked irritably,
“What are you looking at? Why?”
“I’m just passing by.”
Don’t mind me. He tried to sound indifferent, but honestly, he was a little intimidated. In his thirteen sheltered years, this was the first time someone had overwhelmed him with sheer presence. But that wasn’t the only thing that shocked young Dohyeok.
The girl, still brimming with irritation and anger, was incredibly pretty. Her flushed cheeks looked like round apples, her hair swished and shimmered every time she strode forward, and her large eyes, framed by unusually long lashes—
“Wait—wait. Time out. Time, time.”
Jiseo abruptly cut off Dohyeok, who had been deeply immersed in reminiscing about sixteen years ago, raising both hands in a T-shape. As Dohyeok continued talking, Jiseo’s expression had visibly rotted in real time—and by the point where he’d started describing the ponytailed Im Jiseo’s looks, it was practically on the level of food waste left out for days in summer.
“You were there when I beat up the rat-tail kid?”
…He had been.
“Ah—yes. That’s right. Rat-tail.”
But Im Jiseo didn’t show much curiosity about why Baek Dohyeok had just happened to be there as if by fate.
“Did you tell the teacher?”
“As if.”
Compared to the shocking revelation that the witness to the most intense memory of her Hayul Elementary days—the infamous rat-tail incident—was Baek Dohyeok of all people, Jiseo seemed far more concerned about tracking down the snitch. Dohyeok felt conflicted.
Even back then, he’d been the kind of kid who drew attention everywhere—adults would stop, come back, peer at his face, and say things like, “Wow, you’re really handsome.”
So feeling a twinge of bitterness at being treated by Jiseo as just some passing elementary school kid, he nonetheless comforted himself with the thought that at least she hadn’t pressed him for more details.
Of course, even if she had, he wouldn’t have answered.
“Ah, then it really must’ve been that bastard Lee Gap-gyu who snitched. Damn it—he swore up and down it wasn’t him.”
With her arms crossed, Jiseo nodded, looking satisfied. Dohyeok’s gaze sharpened slightly as he looked at her—at the woman who still remembered the name of a nemesis from over a decade ago, a kid with an unconventional hairstyle and an unusual name by even MZ-generation elementary-school standards.
“Do you still keep in touch with that—no, that friend?”
“No. I bought him apple juice and said I was sorry things turned bloody, and we agreed that fights on empty lots were sacred and we’d keep it a secret. But in the end, I still got scolded by the teacher. My dad got called in too. Lee Gap-gyu insisted it wasn’t him, but it didn’t really add up. I should’ve hit him one more time.”
Aside from the perpetually annoyed look she wore whenever they met, Jiseo rarely showed much expression. Seeing her fume now as if it had all happened yesterday, Dohyeok’s eyes finally softened. As his relaxed lips murmured, “That’s unexpected,” Jiseo began gathering up the empty cup ramen container and plastic wrappers she’d finished with. Dohyeok naturally took the trash from her hands and disposed of it, then said,
“Shall we go get some coffee?”
