Chapter 68

It was dinner time after the carnation delivery ceremony.

The dinner menu was Korean traditional dishes(Hanjeongsik).

Shiitake mushroom *jeon, pollack jeon, pumpkin jeon, and steamed spicy beef ribs sliced in **gujeolpan.

The main dish was Yeolgujatang (悅口子湯), which means broth that pleases the mouth or also known as sinseon-ro.

Jae-ho, the youngest of the siblings was struggling with his bowl, so I helped him.

Seeing that, the first and second sibling pushed their bowls at me, too.

*Jeon: a Korean traditional fried dish that looks like a pancake or pizza

**Gujeolpan: Korean traditional platter that allows nine dishes to be served at once

“Can I have more ginkgo nuts and shiitake mushrooms, please…!”

“I want a lot of shrimp balls please!”

“Sure. Eat up.”

“Thank you!”

The three were acting unusually more childish today.

I was told the Silver Tiger’s three siblings made carnations for the entire clan members, so that must be the reason why.

‘I guess they’re too tired.’

I took notice of the dished the three siblings liked the most and gave them my share of those dishes. They were delighted.

Jiho Hwang, who was watching us with a twinkle in his eye, but then sort of messed things up.

“Here.”

Jiho tried to copy what I was doing and handed the youngest, Jae-ho, a bunch of abalone and sea cucumbers.

‘That kid doesn’t even like seafood.’

Eun Jae-ho looked down at his bowl all teary-eyed, not being able to eat it or throw it away.

Clatter.

“Oh……”

White Tiger, who was watching the whole scene, silently replaced it with a plate piled with beef ribs.

“M-Mr. Golden Tiger, Mr. White Tiger. Thank you.”

Eun-ho thanked the two at last, free from the pressure of seafood.

Jiho made a weird expression and White Tiger continued to eat with a cool, indifferent face.

It seemed that White Tiger is one level above Jiho at taking care of children.

On the way back to the dormitory.

White Tiger and I matched the pace of Olmu, who was walking slowly and carefully.

Olmu is usually busy running around me and White Tiger, but today she was worried that she’ll drop the paper flower crown on her head.

‘When she dropped it while running near the front gate, she looked like all hope was lost.’

Olmu had stopped in her tracks as if someone pressed a pause button.

She didn’t move again until Ho-goon Baek put the flower crown back on her head.

I think the three siblings managed to film that. I’ll have to ask them to send that later.

After a long walk with Olmu and Ho-goon Baek, I came to the dorm building.

Before entering the first-grade dormitory building, I put the paper carnation in my item window.

I thought I could fall asleep in a good mood, but while I was heading to my room, I ran into an unexpected person.

“……Oh, Vice prez.”

The central common room on the 17th floor.

It was quite late, but Hyo-don Maeng sat blankly on the couch in the lounge.

It was common for the common room to have at least three or four people, reading and watching holograms.

Now, only Hyo-don was there.

‘Quite a lot of 2nd and 3rd graders stayed at school but most 1st graders went home. Se-eum Sa-wol also went home, too…… Hyo-don must have a lot on his mind on Parent’s day.’

There is still a lawsuit between Hyo-don and his father who sold him.

Maeng Hyo-don has never brought up a topic about his father since his birthday incident.

He didn’t say so, but I was sure he didn’t forget about his father.

“Wha’cha doin.”

“Nothin’.”

I turned around and sat on the sofa opposite Hyo-don.

“Not going home today?”

“No, I ended the lease on my house before entering the dormitory, so I have no home.”

“What are you talking about?”

I answered Hyo-don’s question too honestly.

Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

I regretted it, but it wasn’t something to hide, so I told him the truth.

“It’s been a while since my parents and siblings died. If I still had a house, there would be no one to manage it, so I took care of it before coming to live here.”

“…… Oh, sorry.”

Hyo-don grimaced as if he thought he made a grave mistake.

“……When was it?”

Maeng Hyo-don forced his words to try and somehow change the subject in this heavy atmosphere.

I think it was a mistake when I said, ‘It’s been a while.’

It’s old by my standards, but in this world, it was still last fall.

“Last year.”

Bang!

In response to my answer, Hyo-don hit his head on the wall behind the sofa.

His stone-hard head will be fine, but I was worried about the dormitory wall.

“Ah, shit…… sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Well, sorry anyways!”

Things got awkward.

No people, no conversation.

I thought of going to the vending machine for a soda, but Hyo-don broke the ice.

“…… Hey, uh, my lawyer and my teacher said never to contact him, but I don’t know what to do.”

It was easy to assume who the person not to contact was.

He’s talking about the trash that was sued in multiple lawsuits, the one who sold Hyo-don to the Fight Club, who is now an unemployed debtor.

Hyo-don chose to escape from the fight club, but on the inside, it seems that he has not completely ended his relationship with his father.

‘Hyo-don is only 17 years old. Even after going through this kind of thing, it would be difficult to break the relationship with his only father at once.’

Hyo-don kept his head pinned on the wall, his gaze towards the ceiling.

“People say that him paying the price and me just watching him get his chance to change is better for the both of us, but I don’t know.”

He is a bastard with no life achievements other than providing the sperm from which Hyo-don was born from.

Of course I wanted to tell him not to contact him.

‘But let’s not talk about it to Hyo-don. He won’t contact him anyway.”

He said he didn’t know, but Hyo-don didn’t even touch the device.

He wasn’t the one who would go against the advice given by Mr. Geun-hyeong or the lawyers who helped him, even if he did hesitate a bit.

Shhh-.

He stopped talking, and the only sound that was audible was the air purifier spinning.

I decided to say anything to change the subject of the conversation as the silence grew.

“Did you eat?”

“……No.”

I was hoping for a taste-appreciating comment by Hyo-don.

I couldn’t believe Hyo-don, a gourmet foodie who ate all the menus of the dormitory cafeteria, skipped dinner!

He must’ve been in serious mental agony.

If you’re hungry, you’ll have more useless and destructive thoughts.

I had to feed him something.

“Let’s go to the convenience store.”

Inside the elevator going down to the first floor.

I thought we were going to the first floor right away because there were no people, but it stopped halfway.

“Hey, those are our classmates.”

“Huh? Hi……!”

As Hyo-don said, there were Lenna Lee and Hanyi.

These two also have no home to go back to, so they probably stayed in the dorm, too.

“We are going to the convenience store. Where are you going?”

“To take a walk. Lenna’s head hut while she kept refreshing the concert ticket page.”

Lenna seemed to have bogged down in the hope of getting a canceled ticket.

Now that Jiho and my talk is over, I should quickly free Lenna from her bog.

“Then let’s go to the convenience store together. If they have a 3+1 deal, let’s share that.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah······! It would be nice if the ice cream was on discount.”

As we moved to the convenience store outside of the school grounds, I told Lenna that I was likely to have a staff seat available for the concert.

When she heard that, Lenna’s zombie-like face came back to life.

“Wow, wow! Really? I definitely want to do it!”

“Good for you, Lenna.”

“Yeah……!”

There was more than one staff job left, so I decided to ask the other kids later.

Hanyi and Hyo-don already said they couldn’t come because they had already had a part-time job on the day of Jae-in Kwon’s performance in Korea.

The four of us bought a bunch of triangle kimbap, bread, cookies, and ice cream from the convenience store.

In the lobby on the first floor of the first-grade dormitory building, in the unisex common room, we spent time eating snacks until May 8th ended.

Sometime before midnight.

Shin-lok Kim visited Myeong-ho Hwang’s mansion.

“I’m sorry. I was late because I had something to discuss with the Academic Affairs Officer. Golden Tiger, White Tiger. Did Eui-Shin Cho already go back?”

Paper carnations were adorned on the collars of the two mythical beings, Golden Tiger and White Tiger, sitting on the living room sofa.

“Yeah. The talk is over. Eui-shin also returned to the dormitory.”

Golden Tiger had a playful face.

‘Is he thinking of ordering me around again?’

To Shin-lok, who said in advance that he would not be able to come to this place, Golden Tiger placed a warning saying, ‘Must stop by today’s mansion’.

Since Golden Tiger has recently been motivated, he had been slightly harsh to the other Tiger clan members.

The Tiger clan were delighted with the changes in Golden Tiger but suffered because of the increased workload.

His descendant, Shin-lok, also significantly reduced his sleeping time.

“This is your share of flowers. The siblings fell asleep while waiting for you. They told me to give it to you today.”

Golden Tiger picked up a paper carnation from the table and handed it to Shin-lok.

As Shin-lok got closer to the sofa, he saw the sacred animal and the three descendants of Silver Tiger sleeping on the sofa and rug.

Shin-lok had no idea that there would be carnations for him.

He looked astonished as he received the carnation from Golden Tiger.

“Thank you.”

He carefully took the paper flower and held it against his chest.

“There is also a paper carnation for Red Tiger, and I think it’s best for you to take it to him.”

Shin-lok Kim had changed his identity several times and has been a teacher and lived with humans for several decades.

He knew what day it was and what the carnation meant.

He didn’t even glance at the carnation remaining on the table.

“No. I think it would be better if the children gave the flower to Red Tiger themselves.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

Shin-lok had an unnatural expression as if wearing a mask.

“I will go back if our business is over. There are materials to be submitted to the National Assembly and Seoul City Council within this week. Golden Tiger, sir, and White Tiger, sir. I will head out.”

Shin-lok gave no time for Golden tiger to speak any further, and after a polite bow, he turned around.

When Shin-lok disappeared outside the mansion, Golden Tiger opened his mouth again.

“He talked about things I didn’t ask. He must’ve really hated the whole situation.”

Golden Tiger looked back at White Tiger and continued.

“Shin-lok and Red Tiger are stupid. Don’t you think so, White Tiger?”

As Golden Tiger expected, White Tiger gave no answer.

On the weekends, Sang-hoon Yoo, Nam-wook Jang, and I hung out.

“Hey, why do you look so tired?”

“I hung out with the dorm kids last night and went to bed late.”

“Well, Ui-shin. It is important to get adequate sleep in your teenage years. Growth and development are declined and academic ability is declined also. In particular, studies are being conducted that lack of sleep has an effect on the development of psychic skills…”

Even today, Nam-wook Jang’s nagging was the same.

We arrived at the cinema while ignoring Nam-wook.

There was a movie that Sang-hoon Yoo wanted to see, so the first schedule is to watch a movie.

The movie Yoo Sang-hoon chose was a Hollywood blockbuster in which a Korean star player appeared as a cameo.

Unlike what was widely advertised on posters, there were only a few words or scenes in which the Korean star player appeared.

However, after the film was over, Sang-hoon mentioned those few scenes over and over.

‘I guess Sang-hoon was a fan of that player.’

He said things like the psychic skill activated just before landing was exquisite, and the shooting form was perfect in the scene of playing basketball with the main character.

So Sang-hoon likes that player because he plays basketball.

Then the topic changed.

“I heard Sihoo’s far cousin and you are childhood friends. In particular, that cousin’s savior and precious person is your sister….”

“Childhood friend is bullshit.”

They’re talking about Won-woo Do.

Sang-hoon interrupted Nam-wook and expressed intense feelings.

“Has anything bad happened? I only heard compliments about him.”

“…… I made a completely crazy guy into just a crazy guy.”

In the end, I think it’s the same, as either way is crazy.

Sang-hoon scowled horribly as he said that.

There seems to be something about Won-woo’s story, but Sang-hoon did not seem to have any intentions to tell.

Nam-wook thought so as well and spoke about something else.

“Ah, I heard something from Sihoo. I think it would be better to leave time free for the next or next-next weekend.”

“Why.”

“I heard that Juorang TC Group will hold a party and give awards for the incident at Jamsil Baseball Stadium on Children’s Day.”

They do things like that?

If that happens, they will contact the school next week.

‘It is highly likely that the main characters will participate. If there is a party, I definitely want to go.’

After we three ate 5 servings of thin-sliced pork belly and *naengmyeon, we had fun in the VR game room.

Perhaps it was because I haven’t played many games except Player Meister High School.

Among the three, I had the lowest wins and Sang-hoon showed the highest.

We played until the Nam-wook’s curfew, then promised to meet again and parted ways.

*Naeng myeon: A Korean traditional noodle. It’s served ice cold, usually. People like to eat it after Korean bbq.

It was weekdays again after the weekend.

The performance day of the EverLake Team Master Jae-in Kwon arrived.