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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Simzy
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Three days until the proposal deadline.
I came home from school and immediately sat down at my computer.
I opened my notebook and picked up my pen, when…
Ding!
A message preview popped up.
= How’s the proposal coming along?
It was from Hana.
A smile spread across my face as I saw her name.
‘Hana’s advice was more helpful than I thought. I should buy her a meal later.’
Feeling grateful, I opened the chat window, and…
A series of photos appeared above the message preview.
“Huh? Cough, cough!”
I choked in surprise.
A tennis skirt, panties riding low on her thighs, a glimpse of her mound.
The photos she had taken in the club room today had been sent. There was even a photo of her flushed buttocks as she knelt in the library.
‘This girl, I told her to rest…’
She must have taken them while I went to get the mop.
“Ahem.”
I saved them.
She sent them to me, so what could I do? I’d better move them to the secure folder.
“I should also tell her off…”
Hana, you absolutely cannot send these photos to anyone else. I don’t want to nag you, but you’re going to get into serious trouble.
= LOLOLOLOLOLOL
Don’t laugh and answer me.
= Okay, okay. I won’t send them to anyone else.
= I deleted the Backsa account, lol
Sigh. Anyway, thanks.
= Thanks? Want me to send you more photos?
No, not that! Thanks for the advice!
= Oh.
Thanks to you, I have an idea. I’m going to focus now, so I won’t be able to reply.
= Okay. If you get tired, look at my photos and take a break.
I purposely didn’t reply to the last message.
Instead, I chuckled.
“She’s a completely different person when we’re messaging.”
It was like I was seeing “Backsa” and “Juha” instead of Ju Hana.
I chuckled at the strange feeling and shook my head.
“I need to really focus now.”
This time, I opened my notebook and concentrated.
A blank page.
I hadn’t made any progress for a week, but today would be different.
The scenes I had imagined during class were swirling around in my head. It was still jumbled and disorganized, but it was much better than before, when I couldn’t think of anything.
‘If I can’t create something new, I’ll use my experiences…’
I would write the story as if I were writing a diary.
First, I needed to organize the key words.
‘Childhood, middle school, bullying, dropping out, shut-in life, internet addict, college entrance exam, university, change…’
The theme would be something like ‘A hikikomori’s escape from his room.’
Now that I had a theme, I needed to add details. And to bring out the details, I needed to recall my memories more clearly.
“Old memories…”
I recalled the past I had tried so hard to forget.
Instead of just thinking, “Oh yeah, that happened,” I tried to dredge up every detail I could remember.
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As a child, I was always at the center of the group.
I was bright, active, and made friends easily. In elementary school, I was like the leader of the pack.
Then, around the time I entered middle school…
I moved far away from my old neighborhood. Coincidentally, my childhood friend, Sung-hyun, also moved to the same neighborhood, and we always went to and from school together.
Not long after starting middle school, I was bullied.
Why was I bullied?
This is how it started.
Someone in my class was being bullied by a group of so-called “iljins” (school bullies), and I intervened, saying I would help.
I had a strong sense of justice as a child, and I enjoyed taking the initiative, having been a leader figure in elementary school. Also, I used to talk to those iljins normally, so I thought they would stop if I told them to.
As I expected, the bullying stopped.
However, it shifted to me.
From that day on, I was targeted by the iljins and bullied even more severely than the original victim.
I tried to fight back, but it was useless. Unlike now, I was short as a child. Even if I had been tall, it wouldn’t have mattered. I was alone, and they were many.
Erasers flying at me from behind during class.
My gym clothes or textbooks disappearing.
Those things were bearable. Or rather, I think I preferred those times. At least I wasn’t physically assaulted during class.
As time went on, the number of bruises on my body increased. They didn’t hit my face because it would be too noticeable, but the rest of my body… it was too painful to even recall.
The physical abuse was commonplace, and the mental torment was debilitating. For a middle schooler, having his pants, or rather, his underwear, pulled down in front of everyone during gym class was incredibly humiliating.
More difficult than the bullying from the iljins was the gaze and whispers of the bystanders.
If they had just remained bystanders… but the kids who had pitied me at first, at some point, began to laugh at me. As if there was something wrong with me that caused the bullying.
The girlfriend I dated briefly broke up with me the moment I was bullied. And then she started dating the ringleader, leading the laughter at me. Now that I think about it, she was at the center of the bystanders who laughed at me.
At the time, I had no one to lean on. Because even my best friend, Sung-hyun, turned his back on me.
Sung-hyun witnessed me being dragged into an alley and bullied.
He was asked by the iljins if we were friends, and he denied it. I stopped going to and from school with Sung-hyun after that day.
Around then, I started to wonder if there was something wrong with me. I began to blame myself, thinking it was wrong for me to have intervened in the first place.
During the bullying.
The reason why I didn’t immediately tell my parents or teachers was because of the iljins’ threats.
If you tell, you think it’ll stop? No, then we’ll bully you even worse.
Your house is at ○○ apartment, right? If you snitch, we’ll go burn it down. Your parents too…
Now, it sounds ridiculous, but it was a frightening threat to me at the time. I was worried that something would happen to my parents because of me. So, I hid the bullying completely.
But if you keep a secret long enough, it will be discovered.
The iljins extorted money from me, and the amount they demanded grew day by day.
Eventually, I started taking money from my parents’ wallets and piggy bank, and my parents found out one day.
The bullying, which had continued for over a year, ended.
My parents, upon learning about my condition, were heartbroken, self-blaming, and furious beyond words. Their fury turned towards the school and the iljins, and the bullying by the iljins, which I had feared so much, came to an end with shocking swiftness.
The case was so big, and the evidence was clear.
The matter didn’t end at the school level. The incident was reported in the news and on the news broadcasts. A nationwide investigation into school violence was conducted, as people’s attention was drawn to it.
Meanwhile, all the ringleaders were brought to trial.
Detention Order No. 10.
Long-term detention in a juvenile detention center for up to two years.
That was the verdict for the ringleaders.
Since they were all over 14 years old and their crimes were so severe, the maximum sentence of two years in a juvenile detention center was decided.
But my parents didn’t forgive the perpetrators there. They demanded an appeal to get them prosecuted, and in the process, Sung-hyun attended as a witness, and the child who had been bullied before me also revealed the details of their victimization.
Group bullying, school violence, cigarette burns, extortion, threats to kill family members, etc.
Additional testimony and victims came forward, adding to the already atrocious crimes. The trial was even conducted with a considerable amount of public attention.
The perpetrators eventually received criminal punishment.
They were sentenced to five years in prison, although the Juvenile Act was applied due to their age.
While the trial was underway.
I shut myself in my house.
For five years.
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For the remaining three days.
I went straight back to my apartment after class and devoted myself to writing the proposal. Even though I had an idea, time was still short.
But unlike before, I didn’t just sit at my desk, staring blankly. My hands moved nimbly, just like when I was working on the 19+ commissions.
‘I’m not good at writing either…’
I thought I was only bad at creating, but writing it all down wasn’t easy either. I would have been able to write an essay easily if there was a correct answer, but organizing the story was another problem.
So I used drawings.
Just like Hana had included simple storyboards in her proposal.
Of course, I couldn’t draw every single scene. Even though I was known in the industry for my fast hands, it was impossible to draw all that story in three days.
I drew storyboards, focusing on the essentials, the parts that the reader needed to understand. Even so, the amount was enormous, and my wrists felt like they would break.
“It’s done!”
On the third day, at dawn.
I raised my arms in the air with tired eyes.
“It’s been a long time since I felt this tired…”
It was the first time since the emergency commission for ‘Yusi’ at the beginning of the semester. My eyelids drooped from the intense fatigue.
I stumbled to the bed without washing.
Thud, and sleepiness washed over me.
‘Ah, but what if they find out it’s my story…?’
I hadn’t thought about it because I was so focused on completing it within the time limit.
‘It’ll be okay, right? The protagonist isn’t even using my name, and there are many other slice-of-life stories set in universities.’
Isn’t the story of a bullied protagonist meeting good friends and gradually changing their life a common theme? So, it should be okay.
Yeah, it’ll be okay…
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