.  While I shuddered at the boy’s overall demeanor, his smooth forehead contorted, all of a sudden, with anger.

  He retorted, “Did you just say I don’t belong here?”


  “W…… hat……?” I stammered while taking a step back involuntarily at his unusually threatening attitude. Regardless of my reaction, the boy continued speaking with glaring eyes.

  “Are you saying that a weak guy like me doesn’t deserve to be here?”


  “E…… excuse…… me……?”


  “No matter how stronger I become, that won’t be able to defeat the ingrained weakness, huh? If that’s what you want to say, fine. I’ll give you a chance to prove that,” he added.

  I still didn’t understand what he was talking about but just took another step back. It was from my natural-born intuition. As if they had looked forward to this situation, the pair of big man and woman came toward me while pulling up their sleeves, followed by the boy’s frigid voice.

  “Teach her some real lesson so that she can never overstep her bounds.”


  “Yes, sir! Get her!”


  As soon as I heard those words, I began to flee in all haste, but just as I expected, the two bulky man and woman were one step behind me without difficulty. Shooting my bolt, I groaned in my thoughts, ‘Gosh, how can it be such bad like this today? I was rejected by Yeo Dan oppa, bumped into some fanatic of evolution, and now being chased by these strangers out of the blue!’


  Just if he had been waiting for this, the believer in evolution’s voice flew over from behind me.

  “You’re indeed a nobody. How dare a girl like you tried to mess up with my business? Should I be thankful or shameful? Things are solved this way within a week of hard thinking.”


  I couldn’t help but shout, “Geez, what the hell are you talking about since a while ago?”


  Wasn’t it enough for him to grab a passerby and say that I was less evolved? Now he was uttering that I had been messing up with his business. What kind of crap was this? Wasn’t he mistaken me for someone else?

  “If my enemies keep appearing afterward, wish they are kids like you. See you then.”


  Regardless of the situation, the boy just babbled his words then left the alley with a shrug. Now I had become a fugitive escaping from some strange man and woman in the vacant alley.

  Dashing in the dark, I shouted, “Are you guys members of a secret association catching less evolved humans for research?!”


  “What the fu*k are you talking about?”


  Listening to the threatening response, I thought calmly, ‘Maybe not,’ then I yelled again, “Are you just aliens then?! If you guys just leave, I won’t report it to NASA!”


  “If you just SHUT UP, we won’t beat you that hard!”


  Those words made me accept my fate, at last. Unlike the gray-brown haired boy, these people looked normal, utterly irrelevant to evolution, but why were they listening to his order?

  However, things seemed to end this way without having the chance to solve my doubt. A hand stretched out from behind me grasped my bag strap, which made me almost collapse.

  I quickly tried to take my bag off me, but instead, tripped over on my own feet while writhing myself. AHHHH! With a loud noise, I fell on my hands.

  “AR……G……H……”


  Plopping down on the ground like a tragic female main character, I breathed out heavily and was just about to lower my head in frustration. At that very moment, a gleam of light beamed down on me like a lie.

  I slowly turned my head to look in that direction. The two big man and woman in front of me also stared in the same direction with dumbfounded expressions. Though the narrowly open door, a guy’s silhouette came into view.

  He looked too run-of-the-mill to call him a savior. Half of his eyes were covered by the thick glasses on his nose ridge and the other half with shaggy black hair. As if that appearance wasn’t enough, the guy was even holding a garbage bag in his hand while hunching his shoulders and back.

  White t-shirt and black trousers…… Looking at his adult-like outfit, the guy seemed to work part-time as a server at a bar or a chicken joint. Even if he was a grown-up man, the guy looked too weak that this man and woman could repel him while dissing him with glaring eyes.

  My face darkened in frustration; the two showed some facial expressions that seemed to say, ‘See? You can’t.’ They even dropped a question triumphantly to the guy who just appeared.

  “Hey, did you finish watching us? Then you should pay for it, right?”


  The guy, who didn’t seem to even perceive our existences until now, looked in this direction with a dumbfounded look.

  The thick horn-rimmed glasses on his nose made me assume, ‘Oh lord, he has quite a bad sight. Maybe he studies a lot.’


  At that moment, the guy turned his head to look at me and suddenly changed his attitude. Just until now, he only paid attention to the garbage bag that he was holding and looked as if this whole situation was none of his business. Suddenly putting down the trash bag, he descended the stairs. While the bulky man and woman became bewildered at his action, the guy walked closer and stretched out his hand to me.

  Instead of holding it, I just looked up at him in a daze. When his face in the pale light suddenly turned clear, that was when I shrieked, “Are you…… Ban Hwee Hyul?”


  Watching him nod, I had my mouth wide open.

  Oh, dear, how could Ban Hwee Hyul, not the Four Heavenly Kings or Ruda, show up at this perfect timing? Someone, who would definitely get attacked together, appeared, instead of a person strategically helpful in this situation.

  I just mouthed to him, ‘Go, just go call the cops.’ However, he didn’t listen to my words but just waited for me to hold his hand. It seemed like he would never step aside before I got up.

  In the end, I sighed and grabbed his hand to stand up. As soon as I did that, a loud sneer burst in front of us.

  “Ha, so are you trying to be like a law-abiding citizen? You can’t just walk past this situation because your conscience hurts?”


  However, Ban Hwee Hyul just stared at them absentmindedly then “turned to look at me.

  “Are they your friends?” he asked.

  “Do they look like my friends?”


  As soon as I spoke that way in disgust, a ringing voice pierced through the alley. Ban Hwee Hyul and I turned our heads to look in that direction at the same time.

  “Hey, you over there, choose what you got,” said the bulky guy. Slowly folding his finger, he added maliciously, “One, get beaten here with her.”


  “.……”


  Ban Hwee Hyul furrowed his brows wordlessly.

  The big guy folded another finger and uttered cheerfully, “Two, go back into that door ASAP and forget everything you just saw.”


  Listening to his way softer voice than the previous one, I was assured that this wasn’t really some options given to Ban Hwee Hyul. The proud look in the man and woman’s eyes were saying like, ‘If you aren’t an idiot, you won’t choose the harassment side when we are about to have mercy, are you?’


  I held my breath. If that was the case, the purpose of all this wasn’t about to beat someone in the first place; it had something with me, but why?

  I swore to God that I never met that evolution fanatic before. If I did, I would have raised my guard even just by his hair color and remained in my mind……

  Anyway, that wasn’t the point right now. I pushed Ban Hwee Hyul away to the side. Unlike his huge figure, Ban Hwee Hyul easily moved out from my sight and was looking down at me blankly.

  Heaving a sigh, I uttered, “They told you they’ll let you go. Just leave.”


  Honestly, I also didn’t want to drop lines like these, which sounded like those from the main characters in some fiction. However, when the situation turned out this way, I couldn’t say something like, ‘Would you get beaten together since it’s lonesome to get attacked alone?’ Come on, that didn’t sound like, ‘Do you want to go to PC bang together?’ did it?

  Then I felt something going slightly wrong and uttered, “No, just watch me from aside, and see if I’m getting serious injuries, then call 911……”


  The big guy, watching us, then threw this remark as if he had been waiting to say so.

  “Leave or get beaten. Choose just one.”


  “Uh, he said no. Bye,” I quickly replied.

  Dropping his gaze at me, Ban Hwee Hyul seemed to show more mixed feelings on his face. As there was a prolonged silence, the big guy, who couldn’t wait anymore, leaned on one foot and detached his lips again.

  “Hey, to be honest, we don’t want to beat someone who looks older than us. Let us respect the elders, huh?”


  That was when Ban Hwee Hyul opened his mouth.

  “I……”


  I, what? Feeling anxious, I stared at Ban Hwee Hyul’s face. He was actually thinking too excessively about something unnecessary in the first place. Commonsensically, only one getting beaten was better than two people going through that. However, he looked too heroic and tragic as if he had made up something in his mind.