Chapter 25

Woon Seong-ha had been a top student since middle school, selected as a scholarship recipient of the Seohae Foundation.

Whether it was schoolwork, singing, or sports, he did better than average at anything without even trying. He was especially gifted at memorization and comprehension.

But Woon Seong-ha hated showing others just how gifted he was.

If only his parents were around, they’d have been able to support him properly, poor thing.

What a shame, really……

To Woon Seong-ha, being capable always came with pity trailing after it.

Living quietly, without anyone’s pity, was his life’s goal, so he’d originally planned to go to a vocational-track school that led straight into a job. He’d wanted to start earning money as soon as he could.

There was only one reason someone like that had ended up at a prestigious high school.

His grandfather’s dying wish — the grandfather who had raised him after he lost his mother young and cut ties with his father, a man with a criminal record.

Make sure you get your university degree, Seong-ha. What couldn’t you do? You grew up with nothing, but you’re sharp as they come. Go out there, forget all of it, and live a decent life.

His grandfather, who had struggled so hard to raise him, had wanted his grandson to get into a good university so he could live a decent life.

To honor that dying wish, Woon Seong-ha enrolled in the prestigious high school the Seohae Foundation had established. Tuition, uniforms, everything, every semester, came entirely from the Seohae Foundation scholarship.

At first, he got along well with the other students.

Joo Su-yeon, granddaughter of Dongwoo Group’s Chairman Joo Tae-baek — a conglomerate heiress no citizen of Korea could fail to recognize — had even confessed her feelings to him, and he’d turned her down.

And that wasn’t all.

He listened hard in class, bought workbooks with the culture vouchers he earned from the foundation’s volunteer activities, and worked through them — and that alone had been enough to put him among the top ranks of the entire school.

For a brief while, he’d even savored the thrill of beating so-called rich kids — the ones who poured five months of his living expenses into private tutoring every single month — on pure talent alone.

But meeting Joo Su-yeon at a Seohae Foundation volunteer event turned out to be the root of everything that went wrong.

I turned down your confession and you acted so rude about it, I figured you must have some kind of backing.

……

Turns out you’re nothing. Just some lowlife.

From that day, his everyday life fell apart.

Rumors spread through the entire grade in an instant. Students who’d hoped to curry favor with Joo Su-yeon turned their backs on him.

Woon Seong-ha regretted it, over and over, for a long time after.

That day — he never should have gone to that volunteer activity just because he was short on money for workbooks.

The granddaughter of someone powerful had confessed to him — he should have dated her regardless of his own feelings.

No. The real mistake was applying to Yeongpung High in the first place.

To make matters worse, his grandmother’s health began to decline, and Woon Seong-ha half gave up on school life altogether.

Afraid that losing her too would break him completely, he scraped together money for her hospital bills and medicine however he could.

Word that he’d earned Joo Su-yeon’s enmity reached even the teachers, and after that, no one at the school paid him any mind at all.

I bet your grandmother doesn’t even know you just come to school to sleep.

No matter what anyone said about him, he ignored it stubbornly, threw himself into part-time work at night, and caught up on the sleep he’d missed during the day at school.

When he got home late at night and heard his grandmother’s coughing, Woon Seong-ha would only wash up before heading straight back to school.

He held on like that until, before he knew it, it was the second semester of his second year.

On the first day of the new term, a transfer student — a girl — sat down in the seat next to his.

She’ll be just like the rest of them, probably.

Joo Su-yeon and her crowd. Or the ones who just stood by and watched. The new transfer student would be no different.

Hi, Seong-ha.

Seong-ha, you’re not going to answer again today?

Seong-ha, want some of this?

……Even as she kept talking to him again and again, he figured her interest would run dry eventually. That once she heard the rumors about him from the other students, she’d drift away like everyone else always had.

But why. Why, of all things……

“Damn it, Joo Sae-i! Let go, I said!”

“Take your friends and get back to your seats. Now.”

Why are you the one standing between me and Joo Su-yeon.

Watching the transfer student stand up to the crowd surrounding him, as she always did, Woon Seong-ha thought she really had no fear. Or maybe something was just missing upstairs.

Because otherwise, there was no way she’d take the side of someone like him, who had nothing.

I was certain.

Joo Su-yeon was the ringleader, this group were the ones doing the bullying, and the entire class were bystanders.

I’d known Joo Su-yeon was reckless, but I never imagined she’d be this far out of line.

Wasn’t she supposed to be trying to get in good with the Ryu family? How could she pull something like this out in the open, at a school the Seohae Group itself had founded?

Grandfather isn’t the kind of person who turns a blind eye to this.

Unlike Joo Su-yeon, my grandfather, Chairman Joo Tae-baek, was exactly the kind of business figure who’d spoken out demanding this sort of thing be punished severely.

As a result, workplace bullying had been largely stamped out within Dongwoo Group, which he ran.

Is she fearless? Or just thoughtless?

……Maybe some of both.

Judging by how she started shrieking at me to let go the second I stepped in and stopped her, the thoughtless part at least seemed certain.

And if she hadn’t cared enough to stop bullying Woon Seong-ha even after a transfer student like me arrived……

This must have been going on for quite a while.

I replayed the scene I’d pushed through the crowd to see.

Woon Seong-ha, sitting there with an indifferent expression, as if he were used to this. The group snickering as they watched him.

At the sheer pathetic absurdity of it, I let out a deep sigh, and someone standing beside Joo Su-yeon, watching it all unfold, spoke up.

“Hey, Joo Sae-i. You just messed with the wrong person.”

“What……”

“Su-yeon! Do you even know whose daughter she is?”

Of course I know. I know all too well.

She’s the daughter of the person I hate most in this entire world — how could I not know?

Instead of answering, I just scoffed. My grandfather wasn’t someone whose name was light enough to be waved around as a shield against the likes of her.

I laid my hand gently on Woon Seong-ha’s shoulder and spoke to him.

“Seong-ha.”

“……”

“Our homeroom teacher’s looking for you.”

Of course, it was a lie.

I’d thought invoking the homeroom teacher would at least make them hesitate, but judging by how they only sneered harder, the teacher was probably on their side too.

I grabbed Woon Seong-ha’s arm. It was more solidly built than I’d expected, and when I gripped it with both hands and pulled, he rose from his seat on reflex.

“Let’s go, quickly.”

What were they going to do about it even if I used the homeroom teacher as an excuse? The teacher would obviously be just as careful around me as they were around Joo Su-yeon.

Through the transfer paperwork, the teacher had already learned I was Chairman Joo Tae-baek’s granddaughter. For the sake of confidentiality, there was no way they’d be able to tell anyone that, either.

Shamelessly, I dragged Woon Seong-ha outside.

Before long the bell rang, and still, no one came looking for us.

Honestly, I was worried out of my mind.

This was my first time ever skipping class without permission — what would I do if word got back to Grandfather or Dad……

If I got scolded, what excuse could I even give……

Using the kid who’d been bullied as my excuse felt like something my conscience wouldn’t let me do.

Watching Woon Seong-ha let himself be dragged wherever I led him, I held out the banana milk I’d been clutching in one hand the whole time.

Now that I thought about it, had he been hit before I even got there……

There was a faint mark on his cheek, as if he’d been slapped. The thick-lensed glasses he always wore were nowhere to be seen — knocked off somewhere in the scuffle.

Woon Seong-ha squinted down at me, apparently unable to see well without them. I’d only ever seen him slumped over asleep or sitting at his desk, so I hadn’t realized it before, but he was quite tall — almost as tall as Ryu Do-gyeong.

I pressed the milk firmly into Woon Seong-ha’s hand and even stuck the straw in for him.

As if he had no use for that kind of kindness, Woon Seong-ha just dropped the banana milk straight onto the ground.

With a defiant look in his eyes, he bit down on his lip and warned me.

“Thanks for helping, but stay out of my business.”

“……”

“Go apologize. Tell her you were wrong.”

“……Why would I?”

“What?”

Woon Seong-ha didn’t know I belonged to the same family as Joo Su-yeon. However sharp his words were, underneath them he was probably just worried that I, too, would end up a target for retaliation from Joo Su-yeon and her family.

I hadn’t expected to hear Woon Seong-ha’s voice for the first time like this.

What must it feel like, to be the one being bullied and still tell someone to stay out of it — to go apologize to the person doing the bullying? Looking at him again, the look in Woon Seong-ha’s eyes wasn’t defiance at all.

It was the look of someone deliberately acting tough because they couldn’t stand to be hurt again.

But wait.

Now that he’s taken his glasses off……

I studied his bare face carefully, and one particular face came to mind. Seo Ha-jun — the actor who looked almost exactly like Woon Seong-ha.

Huh?

Suddenly I remembered the scandal over Seo Ha-jun’s past that had set all of Korea ablaze, back in my previous life.

He’d started his acting career hiding his real name, and after rising into the top ranks of actors in his twenties, his tragic past had been exposed, and his real name — Woon Seong-ha — had been forced into the open……

“Wait. Wow, wait, seriously……”

This is Seo Ha-jun!

“Wh-what’s wrong with you? Are you sick? Not feeling well?”

“I’m in shock……”

As if there could be another person in the world named Woon Seong-ha who also happened to have the exact same face.

No wonder — he was way too good-looking to be an ordinary person……!