Chapter 5: Rumours

It was a fact that I was reminded of by the pain from the cut. It was a small memory associated with pain. The students around me looked at me strangely as I danced and laughed loudly.

I didn’t care. I am indifferent to them, and they will soon forget me.

‘Coming.’

I turned around as soon as I heard it, and saw a fat student running towards Hyeonhwa from a distance.

I noticed Taejin, who glanced at me and turned his gaze sharply.

He was working hard.

This past version of him was clearly different from what I could recall from my memory. Just as I wasn’t the same as my past self, I smiled as if I knew nothing.

Again, the protagonist of the regression was him.

Also the scene that would unfold was also good.

-‘Third-rated drama.’

Taejin spotted a person running through the and glared at him with venomous eyes. The fat fucker.

“Hyeonhwa! Accept my love!”

Hyeonhwa was shocked to see him rushing, while shouting such a childish line.

At that moment, Taejin, who was preparing with his fists clenched, stepped forward. He grabs the fat’s hand and elbowed him in the back. Like the bodyguards in movies, he subdued him skillfully.

The heavy body thumped and fell.

“Fuck! Argh!!!. It hurts! Who are you!”

“This? This is my brother….Why are you acting like that?”

“I… … I… … I… … .”

The guy tried to speak but nothing coherent came out of his mouth, he kept staring at Hyeonhwa and Taejin.

“I am Hyeonhwa’s friend! A really close friend. I was just trying to confess today!”

As he smiled and spoke, saliva bounced like a shotgun shell between his yellow teeth.

Taejin resigned to avoid the filth. Students nearby quickly evaded, and Hyeonhwa jumped away.

“Are you seeing anyone? Anyone you’ve been dating?”

Taejin pulled Hyeonhwa aside.

“Brother! Absolutely not!”

Hyeonhwa had an embarrassed expression, this shocked the fat guy, causing him to shake his head violently. He shouted, while lying down.

“Don’t lie to me! You definitely like me, you said ‘nice to see you’, ‘how are you?’ You said that yourself!”

After being rejected the guy went straight into denial, very next second, he got up and ran towards her.

Taejin was quick on his feet and overpowered the guy.

“It’s ridiculous. Inma, do you think of “Hello, nice to see you, see you again” as a love confession?”

Taejin tried to knock some sense into the guy but the crowd took it as a joke and burst into laughter.

“Well, that’s not it, but Hyeonhwa is definitely different! It’s different!”

“Aha~ Really?”

Taejin laughed too and twisted the fat student’s arm.

“Ahhhh. It hurts! Stop it! Ahhhhhh!”

The guy’s screams grew even louder.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the scene that unfolded in front of my eyes.

Right. This is such a childish story. He fell in love with his ‘dream’ girl because she showed him kindness. ‘Hello?’ ‘I’ll see you again.’ A greeting that sounds too sweet, but is just a way of normal conversation. Excited by this alone, the male student falls deeply in love with his dream girl and becomes obsessed with her.

It’s just politeness. Unfortunately he thought that interaction was ‘unique’ to him.

‘It’s a routine for some, but for others, it’s their only way to interact with their crush.’

But what is important here is that it is absolutely not the behaviour of a normal person. When you’re seriously emotionally deficient, this kind of delusional behaviour occurs.

Why shouldn’t the drowning man reach for a straw?

-The same straw that he grasps will drown with him.

That’s what this fat guy was doing. Making sure Hyeonhwa drowns with him.

In the previous life, scene played out quite differently.

The stalker stepped in front of the woman he loved passionately. After doing all sorts of childish things to ask for her love, She tried to avoid him and that led to a conflict with Taejin and the students around them.

In the end, he starts a commotion of cutting himself with a knife to prove his love.

This is what you would have read in the newspaper the next day.

-‘This is everything that happened on March 23rd.’

Today was the day she broke the heart of a stalker.

After an incident, Hyeon-hwa became anxious at school, she pretended to be calm, but she spilled a bowl of hot soup at lunch and burned her leg that day.

This created trauma.

Whenever she sees a wound on her leg, she is reminded of the stalker’s frenzy, and her energetic personality changes introspectively. She wasn’t timid, but she couldn’t enjoy the gaze of others like before.

Contrary to the expectation that she will make her debut as a gorgeous idol, in the end she lives as a beautiful student, but not as a star.

She later got a job, had a normal relationship, had a broken heart, and overcame it and then got married.

In other words, today on the 23rd was such a turning point in a woman’s life.

Clap clap clap… ….

Such a great performance, this day is.

The day his family gets hurt. The day when Taejin, who failed to protect his sister properly, was so disappointed with himself that he started his downward spiral.

Today was a historic day, when the life of Hyeonhwa’s beloved younger brother was completely changed.

“Yeahhhh! cool!”

As I screamed in the public, other students who were watching started whistling. What used to be a silent crowd became loud, cheering for Taejin.

Taejin, who looked around as if he was the hero, smiled brightly. When he lectured the fat guy, the cheers grew. Seeing this, I turned my head and headed to the school gate.

“Who is that brother?”

I heard Hyeonhwa ask as I walked away leaving the laughing crowd behind.

However, my heart only cooled off.

-‘It’s only the beginning. Taejin.’

It was just that much more happened in the past. This time he was able to save not only her younger sister but also himself. And inevitably, me.

-“It was only for 15 days.”

As I passed the school gate, the smile on my face hardened.

‘Isn’t that too much of my weight on your shoulders, my friend?’

It was a bitter smile.

***

There is an idea called… the butterfly effect.

This is a principle that started from the saying that the flapping of the wings of a seagull in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas, USA, and turned into a poetic expression, the beating wings of a butterfly.

This theory, which has also been a principle of the chaos theory of physics, refers to the drastic change in the resulting product due to its sensitivity to the initial conditions.

‘It was written in the journal.’

It seemed to be the theory that Taein-ssi recognized while preparing for a regression.

The butterfly effect is infinitely difficult to unravel, but in short, it is really easy to grasp.

Life is constantly forking at each of the little crossroads we encounter. For example, according to what we saw today, that stalker is an incident for Hyeonhwa and Taejin. Depending on how they accept this, their future will be different.

Housewife Kim Hyeon-hwa and entertainment star Kim Hyeon-hwa-ro.

‘Thank you.’

I was worried a lot. What if they find out that I have returned?

The key to hiding the regression is doing the same things as I did in the past’. However, I came to the past without being ready. If Taejin knows my habits that even I don’t know, and if I do something I didn’t do before, there’s a good chance that I could get caught.

But in preparation for the regression, the guy who wrote the butterfly effect even in his diary changes such a big variable this morning.

“Sincere thanks to you, bastard.”

This child who wants to cry in his yard, desperately hoping for an excuse to change his life, has been slapping his cheek very properly.

Let’s laugh. The guy who was supposed to be beaten and dead made a heroic move.

So he acted unexpectedly. Even if you take a different step from the past, you may say,’Because of me, the future is changing. I have to be careful.’ I wouldn’t think, ‘Is that the guy who also came back?’

Why? Because he has already done something else.

-‘It’s a ridiculous story, but… ‘

In fact, the butterfly effect, an idea that seems plausible, is just a good excuse to use.

There is always an effect according to the cause of everything in the world,

In the world, different circumstances lead to different actions, those different actions cause different effects; and an unknown cause will deliver unexpected results. Human ignorance calls it a mystery.

It is natural that there are as many reactions as there are actions, and the changed initial condition only leads to a modified result.

However, Taejin-ssii, who is a game junkie and blindly believes in the butterfly effect, is ignorant of this practical principle. At best,’science’ seen through movies or games will be all.

So I was relieved.

-‘You can do something harsh as an excuse today, Taejin’

Having organized my thoughts, I moved to change my life.

Beyond the main gate, the place I headed for was the school office.

“This is Sanghyun. Are you looking for the homeroom teacher?”

When I entered the school office, a female teacher spoke to me first.

-‘Who is it?’

I looked up and down so that it wasn’t obvious. She is about 160cm tall and a cute young woman wearing round glasses… … She looked at me quietly, and I remembered who she was.

Her name is Mi-ran. She is an English teacher and her age is in her mid-20s.

-‘I don’t know anything more.’

That’s all the information I know about her. This is because I had nothing to remember throughout my entire life. But I bet she only knows my name, too.

It’s because I am an ordinary student.An ordinary student in the Republic of Korea who does not have any special accidents or incidents is forgotten because there is nothing noteworthy to associate them with.

The same goes for the teacher. There is a difference in meaning between the past teacher and the present teacher. The teacher now has a job. There is no reason to think too much about it.

“Yeah. I want to know about the dropout process.”

“Ah, dropping out… … Huh?”

He stopped and asked Lee Mi-ran, pausing to bow his head to her, and then headed to the place where the homeroom teacher was. She still thought that she was in charge.

Gong Young-ho is a 42 year old male teacher. Enough to overwhelm 3rd year high school students. He is crude, fat and 177cm tall. Currently, my height is 168cm, so it is quite a difference.

As if it hadn’t been long since he went to work, he was now opening the drawer and taking out a piece of paper with a schedule or something.

“Teacher, I would like to know about the dropout process.”

“What?”

He asked deeply.

Again I pronounced clearly.

“I came because I wanted to drop out.”

It was a little loud this time. The school office is quite large, but there is nothing to stop my voice from carrying.

My voice rang out in every corner because there were only a few desks and several chairs in a large space. Even the teachers who were preparing for the day and the students who came for some other work looked at me in disbelief.

A teacher from a student’s point of view, looks lofty, and the thought of being an adult tends to get me down. However, I have gone through a regression.

There was no reason to feel embarrassed to see the teachers who were of the same age as my old self and the new teachers who were young.

“Drop out, what is he?”

“Isn’t he in the third class?”

“You know him?”

On the other hand, two girls continued gossiping.

“Uh. I was in the same class when I was in second grade. He didn’t come to school because his parents died a while ago.”

“Are they both dead?”

“Maybe?”

“Go to another room, the both of you.” Said a male voice.

Why do they have such annoying voices? They pretend to be whispering, but are clearly audible.

Is it because the pronunciation is good enough for an announcer? Is it because the original voice was loud? It was a conversation between them that could be heard very, very well.

“So are you dropping out? Poor you.”

It is still a quiet school office. What can I do? Should I answer them or keep pretending that I didn’t hear anything?

Luckily I didn’t need to do either of those as one of the male teachers next to them screamed.

“This guy’s parents are dead and can you not stop talking?! Do you two not know how to honor the dead? Besides, what? Go to another room?!”

“That… that…”

“Follow me now!”

The man who seemed to be in charge took them out as they panicked and bowed their heads.

Involuntary chuckles came out.

‘The rumor’s will be circulating soon.’

While I was thinking, Gong Young-ho, who frowned at me said,

“Let’s talk for a minute.”