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Chapter 19
Im Rampa had warned me before.
“Oi~ careful. Hyone so wild.”
Back then, I had thought:
So that brat Jeong Hyeon-hye must have quite the attitude. A rough-and-tumble tomboy, fitting for the wilderness that was the 1990s?
Absolutely not!
“Singa, there you are. You were with Chae-byeol Oppa again. Is it really that uncomfortable for you to play with us? Even if you feel more comfortable around boys, you should play with us too. You’re a girl. You can’t spend your whole life hanging around boys. The adults will worry.”
“Oh, come on, enough! Hyeon-hye, just leave her alone! No matter how nice you are to her, it’s pointless.”
“Yeah~ If she likes boys so much, let her play with boys!”
Teacher Im Rampa… only now do I understand…
That simple description—wild—had actually been a warning that eight-year-old Jeong Hyeon-hye was a poisonous little serpent, highly skilled in manipulating public opinion, driving wedges between people, and staging self-inflicted victim acts.
I finally understood.
Who could have guessed that such sinister traits were hiding inside that refined young lady who looked exactly like Professor Eun Yeon-ju?
Who could have imagined that beneath the model-student perfection of Jeong Hyeon-gyo existed a highly intelligent sociopath of a younger sister who beat up her peers with jealousy, propaganda, and fabricated stories?
What kind of family produced old-man-in-a-child’s-body Jeong Hyeon-gyo and raised poisonous-flower Jeong Hyeon-hye?
I believe in innate evil now…
Watching Jeong Hyeon-hye once again gather a crowd of friends to paint me as a boy-crazy little girl, I stared with dead fish eyes before quietly leaning against Choi Chae-byeol.
Naturally, I didn’t forget to sniffle sadly for effect.
The moment he saw his first love getting attacked from all sides, poisonous weed Choi Chae-byeol immediately stepped forward.
“Hyeon-hye, lying is basically a habit for you, isn’t it? Every time you open your mouth, you claim Singa ignores girls and only hangs around boys. Got any proof? Everything you’re saying is just something you made up. I stick to Singa twenty-four hours a day—even when I need the bathroom—and I’ve never seen anything like that. So when exactly did you see it?”
Excuse me? That doesn’t sound like something to brag about…
Did he really need to hold it in all the way until then?
The girls who had been secretly glancing shyly at the unusually handsome boy took a few nervous steps backward.
Chae-byeol, however, remained completely confident.
Jeong Hyeon-hye looked at him sadly.
“Chae-byeol Oppa… I know you like Singa. I understand wanting to believe otherwise. But do you really have to turn me into the bad guy?”
“W-Who likes her?! You’re really a terrible kid!”
Startled, Chae-byeol’s voice even cracked.
“Oh? Then I was wrong? You’re not even from our neighborhood, yet you’re always following Singa around. Everybody knows it… Singa, you thought so too, didn’t you?”
The baby viper tossed the innocent yet cruel question directly at me.
Even while acting offended, Chae-byeol shot me a glance full of hidden expectation.
Internally sighing, I equipped my purest spring-water eyes.
“Hm? Thought what? Is there anyone who doesn’t know Chae-byeol Oppa and I are best friends? Chae-byeol Oppa is Singa’s favorite friend.”
These kids were the abnormal ones.
A normal eight-year-old couldn’t read implications and undercurrents like this.
Innocent little Seo Singa knew absolutely nothing.
But by repeatedly emphasizing the word friend, I intended to leave absolutely no room for misunderstanding.
Chae-byeol’s face turned pale.
I sniffled dramatically despite having no actual tears or snot.
“Ah…”
Jeong Hyeon-hye shook her head at Chae-byeol, half sympathetic and half amused.
“Hang in there. It’s just because Singa is popular. She’s not a bad kid—”
“Jeong Hyeon-hye.”
For the first time, the eyes of young Choi Chae-byeol, freshly wounded by heartbreak, filled with venom.
“You think you’re the only smart one, don’t you? The real reason you hate Singa is because all the adults like her and praise her more. You hate having the attention taken away from you.”
That was, in fact, exactly what had happened.
My relationship with Jeong Hyeon-hye hadn’t started out this way.
What adult could possibly dislike a child who looked exactly like the angelic Professor Eun Yeon-ju?
Even I wasn’t an exception despite being a regressor pretending to be a child.
Hyeon-hye had been endlessly kind to her new friend and neighbor.
But then…
Everything changed after the kidnapping incident.
As soon as the adults began showering the returned survivor—me—with attention, Hyeon-hye’s expression gradually stiffened.
From that point onward, she began hunting me.
“What happened here?! Are you kids okay? Why is there a flowerpot here—good heavens, Hyeon-hye! What happened to your hand?”
“Sniff… I told you to be careful, Singa. Why won’t you ever listen to me…?”
“Me? I did that?”
The first few times, even I had been confused.
Who would expect a child who hadn’t even entered elementary school yet to manipulate public opinion through self-inflicted victim acts?
Only after noticing that adults looked at me suspiciously whenever I was around Jeong Hyeon-hye did I realize I had been set up.
Far too late.
And I wasn’t her only victim.
When Professor Eun Yeon-ju mentioned that Im Rampa had supposedly bullied Hyeon-hye terribly in the past, realization struck me.
This baby snake treated every child—boy or girl—who threatened her attention as an enemy.
“The more you hate Singa, the more it proves you’ll never receive as much love and affection as she does.”
“So what? What’s that got to do with you? You talk like you’re loved. Who would ever like a clingy crybaby boy like you? Seo Singa isn’t interested in you at all.”
“Even so, my feelings for Singa are real. Nobody will ever like someone like you.”
“I’m not jealous. Being liked by Choi Chae-byeol sounds worse than nobody liking me.”
Sparks flew between Jeong Hyeon-hye and Choi Chae-byeol as they glared at each other.
Are these really eight- and nine-year-olds talking?
The 1990s might have produced more mature children than modern times, but watching them felt like witnessing common sense being destroyed.
Were there really this many precocious children in my original world too?
My own childhood had been so ordinary that I honestly couldn’t tell.
Then again, this was a world where regressors clearly existed.
Maybe things really were different.
For all I knew, while I was dealing with this nonsense, Park Min-su might secretly be saving the world with superpowers somewhere.
Mr. Min-su…
Look at how badly your regression has broken this world.
Anyway, this was all Park Min-su’s fault.
Quietly, I retreated from the battlefield.
After killing time among the adults chatting happily, completely unaware of the war raging nearby, I suddenly asked:
“By the way, where’s Jeong Hyeon-gyo? Didn’t he come?”
Since every grade except the first-years had the day off for the entrance ceremony, third-grader Jeong Hyeon-gyo should have been free as well.
Yet only Professor Eun Yeon-ju was here.
His father was always busy, so that wasn’t strange.
But why wasn’t Hyeon-gyo here?
“You shouldn’t call someone two years older than you by his full name. Hyeon-gyo caught a cold.”
Again?
How often did that kid get sick?
Ever since entering the gifted academy, there hadn’t been a single month when he wasn’t ill.
I thought it was a little strange.
But I soon forgot about it.
After all, we weren’t that close.
♧
“Ah, Ham Gyeong-seok? That guy?”
“He was the genius of Seoul Institute of the Arts. Even back in school he was famous.”
“Some people say he’s all flash and no substance, pretending to be an eccentric, but if you ask me, his talent is real. Didn’t he win a ton of film festival awards?”
“When his short films and indie movies kept winning back-to-back, everyone in Chungmuro said a major talent had arrived. Tsk. Who would’ve thought he’d crash this hard?”
“What was it again? Something about abusing an unknown actor?”
“Directors treating actors harshly isn’t exactly rare. How badly must he have behaved for the rumors to spread that far? I hear actors refuse to work on any of Ham Gyeong-seok’s projects now.”
“Thanks to that, all his productions collapsed… If it weren’t for the IMF crisis, who knows? Maybe he’d have gotten another chance. Strong alumni connections, genuine talent…”
“If he’d managed to direct just one feature film, things might’ve been different. But that’s all in the past now.”
“The IMF changed a lot of things.”
The IMF crisis dried up investment money and froze Chungmuro.
Opportunities disappeared for countless directors.
For a rookie director like Ham Gyeong-seok, already branded with a bad reputation, the industry became even more merciless.
[Mr. Gyeong-seok, I tried to be patient, but I’m struggling too now. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to move out.]
Ham Gyeong-seok stared at the text message from his landlord before snapping his phone shut.
“Sunbae, what are you looking at?”
A man wearing a baseball cap stepped into the cramped one-room apartment.
An expensive fragrance drifted from him—completely out of place in such a tiny space.
Ham Gyeong-seok swallowed a sigh.
For some reason, today his junior’s expensive wristwatch and polished appearance irritated him more than usual.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I wanted to see you?”
The younger man said it with a perfectly straight face.
“I heard the news. So you’re doing commercials now. Good choice. First you survive, then you worry about pride. Ah, is this the audition footage?”
“No. Camera test.”
“So they’ve already decided? Hmm?”
The man’s hand froze over the VCR’s play button.
“This kid got the role?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“No reason…”
Bae Seonyeok watched the screen for a moment before turning toward Ham Gyeong-seok.
His expression was strange.
“I know that kid.”
