.  He then said to Woo San, “Hey, I’m gonna cancel what I said earlier that your cousin is nice and cute.”


  “Dude, what are you talking about? He’s nice.”


  Woo San asked back with a dumbfounded smile but soon closed his mouth as if he had just found something that made him feel ashamed. His face displayed a guilty expression.

  Hwang Hae quickly ran into Woo San when he saw the sudden change in his face.

  “Oh, what’s going on? Is it because your cousin is actually a horrific and vicious person?”


  “Do you think Jooin is like you, bastard?”


  Hwang Hae received an immediate smash on the back of his head and sat still with a mutter. Suh Jin Woon leaned his body forward and asked in wonder.

  “Come on, what is it then? Your face seems to tell that there’s something else.”


  “No, it’s nothing.”


  “Come on.”


  Woo San furrowed his forehead to show that he felt a bit concerned but soon released the tension on his face with a smile.

  ‘Oh, boy, what the hell is now going on?’ Suh Jin Woon and Hwang Hae began to feel uncomfortable. Woo San opened his lips with a bright grin.

  “Well, Jooin is not as horrific or vicious as you guys say but… how can I articulate this? It feels like he’s rather cold since he’s actively trying to stay out of people’s reach.”


  “So?”


  “I guess he’s changing. No, he had already changed a lot.”


  “What?” Suh Jin Woon asked in wonder. ‘What does he mean by a change? Is it because Woo Jooin warmed himself up to him or something?’


  A smile spread out on Woo San’s face.

  He said, “So usually he would have asked me things like, ‘I would make sure it won’t affect you,’ or something like that. He was different this time though.”


  “What did he say?”


  Woo San had his radiant grin again. What Jooin said was…


  “He told me not to get hurt.”


  “Huh?”


  Suh Jin Woon became speechless to hear something more trivial than what he had expected.

  “He stared at me with his pure and adorable eyes while saying ‘Bro, don’t get hurt, okay?’ Geez, I can’t explain how cute he was.”


  Woo San then put his hands around his cheek to reveal how fluttered he was after imagining Jooin’s cuteness.

  Although Woo San also had a charming face, the two boys found it repulsive to see a 180 cm-tall boy doing such a thing. While Suh Jin Woon showed a big frown on his face, Hwang Hae muttered at Woo San.

  “That son of a b*tch.”


  “Dude, we should let everybody know how gross he is for being a huge cousin fanboy.”


  “They already know.”


  “Oh, it’s true… gosh, what should I do with him…?”


  Suh Jin Woon couldn’t help himself but smash his head on the wall for he simply didn’t know what else to say. ‘Oh, shoot! Oh, that crazy bastard!’ Hwang Hae, who was quietly watching Suh Jin Woon’s reaction, also followed suit and smashed his head beside him. ‘Jesus Christ, we never fought anyone after that bastard became the school’s captain… oh, it drives me nuts!’


  Both boys started banging their heads on the wall while the other boy kept staring into space with a euphoric face. The situation didn’t look that peaceful; however, kids in the class were all serene. It was already their second year with those boys, so they were pretty much used to this scenery.

  As the day passed by every day, as usual, Woo San, who smiled with his face flushed red, suddenly darkened. It was because of what he unintentionally saw after going into Woo Jooin’s room without knocking.

  It took him a few years before he could enter Woo Jooin’s room, which made him consider that Woo Jooin might have avoided letting them in on purpose. ‘Since when?’ Woo San thought. He wasn’t sure what the answer was either.

  The last time he went into Woo Jooin’s room was when Woo San was a sophomore in middle school. His outstanding brain made it easier to recall things.

  Just like most of what the Woos would do, Woo Jooin was also smart enough that he rarely wrote memos. He seemed to forget mundane things, but he never forgot those that he decided to remember.

  Woo San recalled that the glass top on Woo San’s desk was clean. Only a family picture was in between the glass and the desk; the rest of his space didn’t even have a single memo. However, the scenery inside the room yesterday changed slightly.

  There were colorful sticky notes attached right in front of the wall above the desk. This was the first time Woo San saw that many memos on the wall.

  When leaving a note, one would usually write something important, and once it became unnecessary, one would simply throw it out. However, in Woo Jooin’s case, it was somewhat different.

  His room looked like it belonged to a person tracking down his move every day because of a dysfunctional memory. The memos on the wall had every trace of what Woo Jooin had on his sight. Seeing his memos, one would think that he seemed desperate enough to the point that he would refuse to forget about all the things he had done for an entire day by recording all of them.

  When Woo Jooin came into the room in silence, Woo San looked back in surprise. He was almost about to ask Jooin if he had amnesia. However, when he calmed down and shared a conversation with Jooin, he realized that his cousin was not suffering from memory loss. He just wished to remember the exact time and date of different happenings in his life.

  After careful consideration, Woo San finally asked what he had in mind, which was a memo of someone’s name written in bold letters in the middle of all the other notes.

  “Um, I saw many memos… in your room. Is there any reason why you have so many of them?”


  Woo San didn’t mention if this habit of his had something to with the girl named Ham Donnie for asking such a thing might make it seem like he was invading his privacy.

  Woo Jooin showed a faint smile at Woo San, who was sitting on the couch with tightly closed lips because of his nervousness. It had been a long time since he last saw such a timid smile on his face. Woo Jooin soon closed his eyes and spoke like a whisper.

  “The only person I should try my hardest to remember.”


  What returned to him was a response with a meaning that was rather hard to understand. Quite a long time had passed since that moment happened; however, the meaning of those words still remained unidentified even now. Only Woo Jooin’s fragile voice that sounded as if it was about to break like a sandcastle remained on Woo San’s mind after all this time.

  ‘Damn it, it’s so bothering me!’ Woo San scratched his head nervously then turned his head. Suh Jin Woon and Hwang Hae were still banging their heads on the wall. Woo San yelled at the two boys.

  “Dudes, go tell the So Hyun High School sophomore idiots to fight us ASAP!”


  A few kids turned back to look at the boys in surprise since Woo San rarely yelled that loud, and it was even rarer for him to stand out actively to pick a fight.

  Suh Jin Woon held his head back and muttered with his swollen forehead.

  “Gosh, this is so meaningless that I don’t even want to fight.”


  “Then don’t.”


  “Never mind. I should warm up my body like this sometimes. Let me text them.”


  “Cool.”


  Suh Jin Woon moved his fingers busily to type a few messages. So Hyun High School gangsters would soon come to Sun Jin High School, which was quite well-known in the neighborhood, to avoid getting caught off the brawl that would subject them to penalty from their strict school policy.

  Woo San dropped his gaze at the desk with a grim face. He then raised his head as if he had come up with something and spoke to Suh Jin Woon.

  “Oh, one more thing! My cousin said that we shouldn’t be too harsh!”


  The person who responded to Woo San’s words was Hwang Hae.

  “What the… is he fu*king Nightingale or what? A fight is a fight. I’ll do everything to win.”


  “Watch out, dude. Never speak like that about Jooin, or I’ll smash your mouth.”


  “…”


  “Jooin says there’s someone he wanted to kill personally, but he doesn’t know exactly who the bastard is. That’s why he just wants us to grab those kids first. Don’t be too sad.”


  Woo San then winked at the boys, which made them shut their mouths in silence. They both then attempted to communicate through their eyes.

  Nightingale? Gosh, I made a huge mistake. What’s a Nightingale? He’s just the angel of death.

  The two boys, again, fetched a deep sigh when they found out that their attempt was futile.

  * * *

  Last night, I made peace with my parents. It’s too shameful to explain how that happened, but to go briefly over it, my parents, who went to their college reunion, began the talk first.

  My mom said to me in embarrassment that she told her friends I only scored this much for the mock exam which caused others to mock what she had done. They told my mom that she should be proud of me since I got the score with no private tutoring. When I saw my dad, all he did was to pretend like he was coughing.

  I rolled my eyeballs for I did not know where to direct my eyes. Then I spoke to my mom while dropping my gaze at the floor.

  “When you compare my test scores to Yeo Ryung’s scores, I thought you would be happier if I wasn’t born as your daughter, which made me so sad…”


  Since I cried so much in the afternoon, there were no tears left for me to cry; however, surprisingly, my tears gushed out as I began to talk.