Chapter 88

It was November. The closer the day got to the 13th, the quieter the rest of the school became. It was even forbidden to talk on the fourth floor where the third years were. For years now, the principal and the faculty worked as much as possible to change the image of the school from a school for delinquents to a school for scholars. At this point, the fact that those who stayed after school to study had the benefit of air conditioning. This right would soon get passed down onto the second years and the first years as well.“At this rate, our school major would change from engineering to humanities,” Dojin said, rolling the candy on his tongue.He could see a few kids gripping onto the textbook despite it being break time. They were students who came here trying to get into engineering colleges in the future. Despite having good enough grades to go to a decent school in Suwon, these kids came here instead. So that they could become the head of a snake instead of the tail of a dragon.“You bastard, why don’t you play around a bit during break time? You study too much.”Changhu was going around picking fights with all the studious kids. They just promptly ignored him, though. Almost as if they didn’t care about the abuse they received from him. After all, the only reason why they were at this school was to go to a better one. Changhu probably knew that messing with them would be no fun as well.“Go to Seoul university, why don’t you.”Changhu scanned the room for other targets with a mocking smile.“Changhu! Let’s go!”“Yeah.”Changhu left once the kids from other classes called him.“That bastard, he’s always like this.”“Don’t worry about him, picking a fight with a dog is just a waste of your time.”“I’m fine, since he doesn’t really talk to me nowadays, but I still feel nervous. Especially with what he said...”“The fire at the auditorium?”“Yeah.”Maru turned his head to look at Changhu outside. He stopped picking a fight with them recently, probably because he found more friends. Especially since Dojin became a lot composed lately as well. This was a good sign, Maru wasn’t a fan of having to deal with delinquents himself.‘A fight between kids is definitely scary, after all.’Adults had a lot of things to consider. They would consider their losses first before fighting, but kids were different. The smarter ones also knew that they wouldn’t be severely punished for committing felonies as well. Even if they put a kid in a wheelchair, they would probably just have to spend some time doing volunteer work. Changhu knew that very well himself, which was what made him very hard to deal with.“If he gets in my way again...”Dojin cracked his fingers with a frown.“Stop it. I thought you graduated from that stuff already?”“That’s true, but...”“Just focus on work. Don’t bother wasting your energy on other things.”“I know, I know.”“Good. Ah, right. Did you see that message by the way?”“About how the prelims got pushed to December?”Maru nodded. The competition that originally had its prelims in November and the main competition in December got pushed back by a month. Something about the location, according to Miso?“More practice for two months, huh. Not like there’s anything more we can do.”The club was repeating runs of their play after that one festival, enough to start acting in their dreams. Dojin muttered a few words of annoyance under his breath before turning to look at Daemyung. Maru recently noticed that the boy’s eyes towards Daemyung had changed quite a bit.“Did you two fight?”“What? No way. Me? Fight who now?” Dojin asked with a smile.“With Daemyung. You guys aren’t talking much nowadays, right?”“Ah, right.”Dojin may have dismissed it, but his expression clearly said something different. Did something bad happen? Dojin avoided Maru’s gaze for a while, before finally giving in.“I’ll buy you some hot chocolate. Can we step outside?”