Chapter 23: Doki Doki literary club

[See you at the park at 12 AM.]

“Honestly, why call me out at this hour? I don’t get it.”

I grumbled as I walked through the night streets, illuminated only by the streetlights.

A faint crescent moon hung in the starless night sky. It must have been around midnight.

At least I wouldn’t get lost, since I had been there just yesterday.

Suppressing the urge to go home and crash, I forced my legs to move.

‘You are a man destined to become the king of this business world. That is your sole destiny. You are superior to others, so you’ll be able to follow along just fine, right?’

Unlike others, I didn’t have fond memories of my childhood.

My father, with his stern expression, was always incredibly strict, and my mother, who had gone through childbirth for me, couldn’t care less about me and was only interested in luxury and pleasure.

Furthermore, the things they taught me as part of my “education as a future king” were all incomprehensible, leaving my mind always tangled and my heart full of resentment.

I think I was a relatively sound-minded child at first, but that too gradually changed.

Whenever I, as a young child, did something that displeased him, my father’s large hand would fly out without hesitation.

Crying and screaming like a child didn’t stop him.

There was no forgiveness in my father’s violence, and no happiness in my life.

A life of nothing but pain.

Trapped in a prison I couldn’t escape, I intensely felt the emotion of hating someone for the first time in my life. Coincidentally, the object of that emotion was none other than my own parents.

Nevertheless, I tried my best to maintain my original self.

To avoid becoming like them, whom I hated, I put in every effort I could.

Fortunately, the child was patient and had enough willpower.

However, the problem lay in the child’s surroundings.

My first social gathering after I had matured somewhat.

Countless people approached me wearing masks.

They only looked at my father behind me, not even glancing at me.

I was a little disheartened, but I thought it would be fine soon enough.

It was a problem that would quickly fade if I made my own abilities stand out.

But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded, and when I found out that my first friend had actually approached me to create a connection with my family, I foolishly buried myself under the covers and cried for a long time.

After that, I changed.

No, I tried my best to appear that way.

Few people approached the child who always wore a cold smile and carried a knife under his tongue.

“It should be around here…”

Was I too confident because I’d been here a few times? Relying only on my gut feeling, I seemed to have gotten lost in the darkness.

Panicked, I looked around. I was trapped in a maze of alleys.

Was it thanks to bone-grinding effort? Or was it innate talent? In almost every field, I was always the best.

I was always the one standing at the top of the ant-like swarm of children.

The other children couldn’t catch up to me, and I smiled leisurely as I looked at the wide gap between us.

Perhaps that’s why, I suddenly had that thought. Just as my father said, I was different from others.

If I, who was born with everything—family, ability—was the same as ordinary humans, wouldn’t that be strange?

I accepted that thought, which came to me unbidden, without a shred of doubt, and gradually began to consider it natural. Everything became numb, and I couldn’t even distinguish between acting and reality.

And so I grew taller, got older, and before I knew it, I had become a man identical to the father I hated.

The existence of others was laughable.

It was amusing to see them crawling at my feet no matter how hard they tried.

So I mercilessly crushed those I didn’t like and ridiculed those who worked hard.

The children couldn’t rebel against me, who was backed by one of the top chaebol families in the country.

Even if I vented my pent-up frustrations from home on them, they just quietly accepted it.

I found their submissive attitude pathetic and despised them even more.

And when that hatred reached its peak, I simply decided to ignore them.

Birds flying in the sky didn’t need to associate with worms crawling on the ground, did they? Nobility and baseness were polar opposites, like the two poles of a magnet.

It was then that she appeared.

A small girl who suddenly appeared one day and effortlessly trampled on my pride as if it were nothing.

The first midterm exams after the first semester began.

I was shocked when I saw the ranking list posted on the school gate.

Unlike always, my name wasn’t written at the top.

Instead, the name of some girl I didn’t know was written there, the unfamiliar three characters: Lee Si-hyeon.

Anger surged within me as soon as I saw it.

Rage slowly consumed my reason.

I was sure she had used some cowardly trick.

Second place for the first time in my life.

Otherwise, I couldn’t explain this situation.

I went to her classroom and confronted her.

What kind of trick had she pulled? She then gave an awkward smile, as if troubled, and said,

‘Hmm… Maybe you just weren’t good enough?’

A sharp dagger ruthlessly gouged out my shrunken pride.

That casually thrown sentence left me, who had been furious, dumbfounded.

In the end, I couldn’t say anything more and a few days passed. I began to observe her from a distance.

It wasn’t just academics.

Sports, communication, friendships—she was ahead of me in almost every field except for family background.

It was an undeniable fact that anyone could see, and it was the first wall I had ever encountered.

But there couldn’t be someone superior to me. No, there shouldn’t be.

The desire for the top spot had already become an obsession, a compulsion within me.

But she, the one who still occupied the place ahead of me, existed.

Even if I turned away from reality, the fantasies that came to me unbidden began to remind me of her.

Then let’s make her an exception.

There couldn’t be a human more outstanding than me.

That thing was simply an abnormality in human form. How could I acknowledge an abnormality that wasn’t even human?

Therefore, excluding her, the exception, I was the best.

My overloaded brain began to run in that worst possible direction.

While I was conflicted, I somehow became a sophomore, and soon I met her younger sister.

Eventually, as I walked aimlessly, I realized I was standing on a familiar block tile.

It was the place where I had met those thugs when I went to buy ice cream before.

“Come to think of it…”

If I walked a little further from here, the park where I was supposed to meet Senior would appear.

I hadn’t planned to come this gloomy way, but at least I was saved. With a much lighter heart, I started moving my legs again.

Our first meeting was at the library, but I hadn’t paid much attention then.

I just saw her struggling to get a book from a high shelf and, on a whim, offered a little help.

It was from our second meeting at the park that I started to become interested in her.

The park at dusk, as the sun was setting. I saw her by chance, and she also saw me sitting on the bench.

But for some reason, she pretended not to see me and walked past me with stiff steps.

Feeling suspicious, I called out to her departing back. Her slender shoulders flinched.

‘Oh my! Kim Seong-hyeon Senior! Goodness, I’m so surprised! When did you get here…ahem?’

What was with this girl? Her reaction was strangely awkward.

Was she one of the girls who liked me? If so, it was just boring. Oh, come to think of it, this girl was the student council president’s younger sister.

An interesting plan flashed in my mind.

She was always the perfect student council president, but she was excessively sweet to her younger sister. It was obvious from the way she talked about her sister all the time.

Even her phone wallpaper was a picture taken with her younger sister.

What kind of face would the student council president make if I played with her precious younger sister a bit, broke her, and then showed her? Perhaps a crack would finally appear in that gentle expression.

I approached her with a picture-perfect smile.

‘Your personality is fcking terrible.’*

‘…What?’

‘Oh, I’m talking about you, Senior.’

It was unexpected.

This girl, she didn’t like me.

I momentarily held my breath at her surprisingly firm rejection. And then she fled the scene as if escaping.

‘You don’t seem to have any friends.’

‘I-I do! You’re the one who doesn’t have any friends, Senior!?!’

Our third meeting also happened under strange coincidences.

We somehow got locked in the gym storage room.

Unable to bear the heavy silence, she spoke first, and in the ensuing conversation, she thoroughly refuted me with her painfully logical arguments.

If she was right, did that mean everything I believed in, my entire life up until now, was wrong? There was no way I could accept that.

I lost my composure and became agitated. But she didn’t back down and confronted me head-on.

Everyone usually bowed before me. It had been a very long time since I had met someone like that, after the student council president.

I was at a loss for words.

After escaping the storage room with someone’s help, I slowly mulled over the situation, and anger welled up.

What right did a mere existence like that have to deny me?

But at the same time, a question also arose.

I became curious about how far she could deny me, so I used an uncharacteristically drastic method.

I grabbed the thug who was hitting on her and beat him up, arguably excessively for self-defense.

Naturally, she tried to stop me, and I didn’t respond to her desperate cries. And the result…

‘What, nothing more to say? How boring—’

‘Stop it, you bastard!’

My right cheek, which had been hit squarely, ached. No, it wasn’t an exaggeration, it really hurt.

In any case, knocked down by a single punch from a girl much smaller than me, I stared blankly at the sky.

Even though my red, swollen cheek was filled with the remnants of pain, for some reason, a piece of refreshment, like that blue sky, remained in my heart.

Ah, I finally realized it then. I had been hoping for someone like this to appear all along.

Anyone would do, anyone at all, someone to stop me from becoming more and more messed up.

“Huh?”

I stopped walking at the sudden fishy smell that hit my nostrils.

Had someone illegally dumped food waste nearby? I didn’t know where it was coming from, but it was a very strong, unpleasant fishy smell.

Was it coming from that alley over there? I paused for a moment and looked at it.

Well, a very brief moment should be fine. Unnecessary curiosity began to rear its head, and I headed towards the source of the smell.

‘I’m so sorry!’

The next day, when we met again, she sincerely apologized for hitting me.

Honestly, I was so flustered then that I was speechless. For the girl who always held her chin high and defied me to bow so easily.

She seemed very sorry for hitting me and was much gentler than before.

She accepted my childish tantrums and told me that even someone like me had good points. After talking with each other, I even apologized by bowing for the first time in my life.

Her sly smile bothered me a little, but it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling.

Friendship starts from an equal relationship, she said.

If so, if I acknowledge that I am her equal and ask her to be my friend, can we become friends?

This heart that pounds every time I steal a glance at her face.

I still don’t know if this feeling is romantic love. However, it was a pleasant excitement, like accidentally encountering a forgotten piece of a memory.

Yes, she resembled my innocent childhood self.

Her strong self-assertion, her excessive uprightness, it was like watching a hazy memory from the past play out on video.

Should I ask her to be friends right here? But still, what’s embarrassing is embarrassing.

Well, there was no reason to say it here.

Because I was embarrassed, I decided to call her out separately at night and talk to her then.

Making plans in the middle of the night might make me seem like a strange person, but I was afraid someone else might see.

So when that time comes, let’s ask her to be my friend.

And so, another ordinary day passed, and when night came, I went to the park where I was supposed to meet her.

I walked up the slope and turned the curve.

The fishy smell that had been wafting for a while became stronger, and I turned my head to the side.

—Ah?”

At that moment, my body stiffened.

“Ah…ah?”

Dazed sounds escaped my lips one after another.

My legs gave out, and I collapsed.

The cold asphalt tickled my bottom.

Under the faint moonlight, in the middle of the narrow alleyway, a girl stood precariously, as if swaying in the night breeze, clutching a piece of flesh that had been stained so red it was unrecognizable, a mere lump of meat.

That was,

“Seon-a…ya?”

“Hi? It’s a nice night, isn’t it?”

It was death, wearing a familiar face.