Chapter 102

Byungsoo couldn’t tell if he was drinking hot chocolate through his mouth or his nose, his brain went into overdrive as he looked at Maru. Some kid he met for the first time in his life was buying him hot chocolate for no reason. In the past, he would’ve drank it happily with no worries at all, but right now he was trying to figure out why he was being given this drink. He didn’t like how far he was thinking into this, but that didn’t change the fact that this was what he was thinking right now. “I ended up hearing your phone call a moment ago.”“......”Embarrassment washed over him immediately, to think that the fact that he was a horrible son got exposed in school….“Do the others bully you a lot?”“...N-no. They don’t.”Byungsoo felt a chill run down his neck. Maybe the delinquents sent this guy to test him? Changhu could easily do that to him, he closed his lips tightly and smiled. At the same time, Byungsoo curled up his toes from the sheer amount of shame he felt.“Saying yes is always difficult.”“W-what are you talking about? They’re all nice people. You’re not even from my class. You don’t know what my class is like. They’re all… Good people.”He started saying all sorts of stuff to cover for himself. The only thing he got better at after entering high school, it looked like, was lying. Much unlike his grades, unfortunately. His mind is an utter mess, Byungsoo continued speaking good things about his friends with as much passion as he could gather. Funny thing was, talking like this was actually starting to reduce the amount of anger he felt at them. That’s right, they were all nice people from the start. I’m the weird one. Changhu’s the same. He wouldn’t be like this if I did a bit better.After repeating the same words over and over again, Byungsoo stood up from his seat, saying he would leave. So who cared if this was Changhu’s test? He didn’t do anything wrong, he should be able to go home safely.“You might actually start thinking that for real if you keep brainwashing yourself like that.”Byungsoo turned to look at Maru, who was staring directly at him.“Brainwash? I really...”“There’s no better method of brainwashing than repeating lies to yourself.”“I never lied.”“Is that so?”Maru suddenly walked over and put a hand over Byungsoo’s shoulder. What was this guy thinking?“Changhu’s probably still at the school entrance.”“W-what?”“You said you guys are friends, right? Let’s go.”“No!”“Why? I thought you were friends?”“Y-yeah, but we aren’t that good friends.”“Friends are friends, though. Come on, let’s go talk with him.”Byungsoo gritted his teeth and pushed Maru away. He realized he made a mistake, but this was better than getting dragged away to Changhu. Byungsoo apologized immediately.“Sorry, I didn’t hurt you, did I?”“I see what you’re thinking. You think I’m with Changhu, don’t you? I’m not with him. I’m actually here with you because I want to silence him before he goes wild.”What in the world was this kid talking about? He’s here to silence Changhu? Byungsoo couldn’t understand what Maru meant by that. What could a victim like him even do?“Don’t you imagine it often? Fighting back against the guys that bullied you?”“.....”“Coming to school isn’t very fun anymore, is it? You just want to go home, staying in school just makes you feel more painful. You just end up expressing your anger at your poor parents.”Byungsoo’s stomach turned, it felt like he was close to throwing up. He could feel anger and resentment boil up inside of him. How dare this kid act like he knows everything?“You must be treated like an idiot at school. You don’t even have friends to go back home with. You don’t even know how much money they took from you at this point, do you? Since calculating just got too painful at some point.”“.......”“You must think of the past a lot. I used to have so many friends in middle school. Ah, were you perhaps bullied in middle school, too? Did you ever have a single friend in your life? Is it that bad?”“N-no, it’s not...”“You had friends in middle school?”“Yeah.”“Pft.”Byungsoo gritted his teeth hard enough to hear it creak, the other boy’s laughter was making his head start to swim. How dare this kid…“You’re lying. You were probably bullied your whole life. You just look the part. You were bullied in elementary school, too, weren’t you? You were probably that kid who would get awkward whenever the teacher singled you out. Be honest with me. You were alone for all of your life, weren’t you?”“I wasn’t.”“Wasn’t? There you go, lying again.”“I really wasn’t. Even I, back in middle school...”“Even I? Eh? That’s an odd choice of words. So you’re being bullied now? You just said you had a lot of friends though. So you were lying, after all?”Byungsoo became dizzier the more he heard Maru speak. Why was this kid being like this? What did he do wrong? He really did have a normal life in middle school. He played soccer, he went to PC bangs, and he went out to play with his friends on the weekend. He wasn’t lying. In fact, his friends just called him not long ago. He wasn’t making any of this up. For the first time, Byungsoo raised his head, and whispered bitterly.“What do you know?”He ended up spitting those words out in bitter anger. Maru’s face turned into an angry frown, which woke Byungsoo up immediately.“I… That wasn’t what I meant, I was thinking of something else. I’m sorry, I’m not lying.”“Why do you get so defensive?”“......”“Don’t you have something else you want to say?”“That’s...”Maru’s frown disappeared off his face, Byungsoo sighed in relief. Thank goodness, it didn’t look like he would get hit.“The fact that you’re lying tells me you feel pain from the truth. Saying the truth is difficult, isn’t it? Neither of us has that kind of bravery, after all. But there comes a time where we have to gather up our courage and say the truth. Don’t you feel like you’ve been driven to the edge of a cliff sometimes?”Even in the loud classroom, there was no one who greeted Byungsoo. Byungsoo also thought it was normal to not be talked to. As a matter of fact, he got scared when someone talked to him. What were they going to make him do now? What did they want from him this time? The classroom made Byungsoo feel like he was choking. Whenever he was inside, he counted each second, each minute, waiting for the hours to pass. ‘I guess I’m at the edge.’Recently, the stories of students who committed suicide didn’t sound like such a foreign idea to him. Of course, he didn’t like the situation he was in. Who would? He wanted to struggle, and try to make a change in his life but lacked the courage. His voice always crawled somewhere deep in his body, sitting there until it eventually transformed into anger and hatred. Anger that he expelled to his mother. He knew this was wrong, but he didn’t know how he would change anything.“I know why you didn’t say you dislike your situation. No, why you couldn’t say it. After all, if you could say whatever you wanted from the very start, you wouldn’t have a single worry in the world.”“...What do you want from me?”Byungsoo was confused. He would honestly feel better if someone like Changhu was beating him right now. In his head, he could tell where Maru was trying to go. But he didn’t have the courage to say that with his mouth.“I can’t do anything. I’m a coward. I’m just… dumb. No matter what the other kids say to me, I can’t say anything back. Even when they take money from me, I can only smile. If I don’t, I’m just going to get hit, so how am I supposed to fight back?”He felt the strength sap from his shoulders. He just said whatever came to his head and he felt embarrassed. He felt pathetic for saying something like this. Maru probably thought of him as a bug at this point.“Done.”A happy voice. Maru was smiling.“What’s done?”“That’s good enough. That’s how you take your first step. And once you take that first step, everything else just becomes that much easier.”“What did I do?”“Talk. Talk honestly. You can only lie if you still have a place to run to. If you really get pushed to the edge, that’s when you start doing drastic things. Most people just end up giving up on themselves since that’s the easier option.”“...What are you trying to say to me?”“Don’t you feel alone at the edge of that cliff?”