<CHAPTER 7>

At Cheonghwa High School, a sa-bae-ja belonged to the Sudra slave caste.

South Korea was a country where the Constitution explicitly prohibited discrimination based on social status.

That was what it said, at least.

But none of that applied here.

The caste system existed in full force.

The children of chaebol families belonged to the Brahmin class.

The children of politicians, generals, and high-ranking government officials belonged to the Kshatriya class.

The children of small- and mid-sized business owners, ordinary judges, prosecutors, accountants, and doctors belonged to the Vaishya class.

And I was an untouchable who could never enter their world.

“My soul was so innocent back then. Heh heh.”

Today, I laughed at the innocent version of myself.

Back in middle school, I had mistakenly thought that if I studied hard and attended school diligently, I could become friends with them.

I naively believed I could mingle with them without restraint.

On top of that, Cheonghwa High was coeducational and particularly strong in the arts and athletics.

For someone like me—a former all-boys middle school student with good grades—it was the perfect environment to harbor foolish fantasies.

Reality, however, was a complete bust.

It didn’t take long for me to painfully realize that my fantasies could never become reality.

At first, my tall stature and handsome appearance were enough to make me a temporary conversation partner.

But once word got around that I was a sa-bae-ja, everything changed.

The classmates I had innocently thought of as friends avoided me as if they had suddenly been given an order.

I’m not exaggerating.

The moment the label of sa-bae-ja was attached to me, I became a complete outcast.

The teachers were no different.

Except for a few of them, they all treated me with distant indifference.

My grades were good, so at least I received that much consideration.

If I hadn’t had the academic performance to back me up, I wouldn’t have survived until graduation.

Even though I knew what would happen, I gathered up my courage several times and tried to communicate with them.

Every single time, I was treated like an invisible man.

Fortunately, the cold treatment I had received from my father’s family had already forged my mental resilience into steel.

That was the only reason I managed to endure.

Before my regression, I didn’t have a single friend in high school.

Three years of high school.

Three years plastered from beginning to end with dark memories and trauma.

“Grandma! This time, I’m going to live differently!”

This period of school life had once squeezed the air out of my lungs.

If it hadn’t been for my parents’ concern, I wouldn’t have been able to endure it.

Second year.

There had been five students, including me, who entered the school as sa-bae-ja.

By our second year, only two of us remained.

I endured to the very end, earning my diploma while everyone called me a stubborn bastard.

My high school years had remained a complex buried deep inside me.

Maybe Grandma had sent me back to this particular point in time so I could heal my own past.

“Even now, that natural grass is insane. How can a place like this exist right in the middle of Gangnam?”

From the main gate, there was a golf practice range on the right.

At the center stood the old main building, three stories tall.

On the left was a five-story building known as the New Building.

It even had an underground swimming pool built to international competition standards.

Above ground, there was a cafeteria for third-year students, an indoor gymnasium used as a grand auditorium that rose two stories high, third-year classrooms on the third floor, self-study rooms, important club rooms, and more.

Behind the main building stood a two-story arts center, its architecture possessing an old-world elegance.

This was the grandeur of a private autonomous high school occupying prime real estate in the heart of expensive Gangnam.

People even said the school’s share of the land alone was worth more than a trillion won.

And that wasn’t all.

The foundation also operated an equestrian center in the Yongin area.

Back then, I had never been able to enjoy any of this magnificent environment.

Unlike me, who had grown up in an ordinary middle-class household, these kids had been trained in the basics of horseback riding, swimming, golf, and more from childhood.

As for me, I had spent my days with my head bowed, staring only at the floor.

But things were very different now.

For starters, my shoulders were held high.

I could feel the soft, cushioned seats beneath me as I made my way toward the classroom.

“Yeah. Money really is everything.”

Every year, Cheonghwa poured enormous amounts of money into improving its facilities.

From the outside, the buildings were covered in ivy.

Inside, they maintained their old-fashioned elegance while continuously upgrading the facilities with cutting-edge technology.

Central air conditioning, heating systems, and air purifiers were all standard.

Through unofficial parent associations, the school also received funding for virtually every resource it needed.

“Now that I think about it, even the kids from wealthy families had designer slippers.”

There wasn’t a single pair of Nike or Adidas shoes in the shoe lockers.

These were the second-year shoe lockers located at the main entrance.

They were filled almost entirely with designer shoes and slippers.

Most of them were luxury brands that ordinary people like me had never even seen in person.

I was the only one wearing cheap three-stripe slippers from a neighborhood stationery store.

And yet—

“Nana~♫”

A little tune escaped my lips.

This was the same classroom I had once needed to take a deep breath before entering.

Now, I felt no need to do that.

Thump, thump.

The short-selling coin that would soon spawn a whole brood of riches was currently fighting its battle!

All I had to do was wait one month.

By then, there wouldn’t be a single student in this school richer than me.

A subtle confidence wrapped itself around my entire body.

Step.

I stopped in front of the classroom.

Even the hallway floor had recently been completely replaced with marble.

“My body remembers everything.”

Like a formula engraved into my memory, my feet knew exactly where the classroom was.

And there it was.

“Second-year, Class Three……”

A complicated mix of love and hatred suddenly rose within me.

The years of my life that had been etched into this very space.

Painful and difficult memories came flooding back one after another.

I entered through the open back door.

The classroom looked exactly as I remembered it.

There were twenty students.

A large TV for educational purposes and an electronic blackboard.

And the ergonomic desks and chairs that had all been replaced around this time at considerable expense.

At the beginning of every new school year, large numbers of desks and chairs suited to each student’s physique were provided to maximize academic efficiency.

Of course, every classroom was also equipped with air purifiers and centralized heating and cooling systems.

“What did you do over the weekend?”

“What do you think? I spent ten hours grinding through a special lecture with Mr. Choi Hyun-seok.”

“What?! Mr. Choi? The number-one Korean language instructor?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow! I heard it’s hard to get him. How’d you manage that?”

“You know how intense my mom is.”

“I’m jealous……”

“We’re doing another one this Saturday. Wanna join?”

“Can I come too?”

“Well…… if you want to……”

“Min-ju! I love you~”

Two girls were engaged in a little game of push and pull.

Choi Hyun-seok, Gangnam’s number-one Korean language instructor.

I knew the name too.

He was a famous Gangnam instructor said to earn hundreds of billions of won a year.

Kang Min-ju was pretending not to brag while bragging to her heart’s content.

She had a fox-like face, and her short bob suited her exceptionally well.

Her grandfather had once served as the director of a general hospital, while her father was currently the director of a plastic surgery clinic in Gangnam.

Rumor had it that their family was practically raking in money by the handful.

Of course, she was one of the kids who had treated me like I was beneath notice in my previous life.

Even now, her eyes met mine as I entered through the back door.

But she immediately turned her head away.

Her face would eventually be refined into that of a textbook plastic-surgery beauty with her father’s help, giving her an annoyingly arrogant appearance.

Right now, though, Kang Min-ju was radiating a pale pink aura.

Exactly the kind of color that suited a fox.

I went to my seat and sat down.

It was the least popular seat in a classroom obsessed with academics—the back corner by the window.

A number-one instructor?

I wasn’t jealous in the slightest.

As long as there were no butterfly-effect chain reactions, I could maintain the grades I wanted this time too.

I knew every question that would appear not only on our second-year exams, but on every exam I had yet to take.

The CSAT?

Heh heh.

There was no need to even mention it.

I didn’t merely have a vague idea of the future.

I could state it with absolute certainty.

It was an opportunity and a privilege at the same time.

It was freaking sweet.

“Min-ju, me too!”

“Is there still room?”

The kids sitting in the middle of the adjacent rows quickly rushed over.

Everyone was staking their lives on the college entrance exams they would take a year from now.

Their parents had invested heavily in them, and naturally, they had equally high expectations.

Just looking at this atmosphere made one thing clear.

The upper class didn’t maintain its status for free.

People tended to criticize the rich simply for being born with silver spoons in their mouths, but these kids worked their asses off in their own way.

I’d never once heard them say they went to bed before midnight.

If they were even taking private lessons from top instructors on weekends, that told me everything.

Games?

Celebrities?

Fandoms?

The kids I had known in the past weren’t interested in any of that.

“I don’t know…… I’ll have to talk to my mom about it.”

I could already see what kind of person she was.

A high school student, already playing politics.

Everything Kang Min-ju did was calculated.

It was a strategy her mother had devised.

Her mother was a fairly well-known veteran actress.

She had often played sharp, rude upper-class housewives who were always quick to read the room.

The parents of Oh Yoon-seo, who had been the first to approach Kang Min-ju, were high-ranking government officials.

Her mother was a director-general at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, while her father held a director-general-level position at the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

The families of the other kids asking to join weren’t exactly insignificant either.

Kang Min-ju scanned the classmates who had rushed over.

She was checking whether the specific kids her mother had mentioned were among them.

She was quite the little fox.

In my previous life, I hadn’t been able to read the atmosphere at all.

Of course, I understood it now.

The experience of having lived through it once was kicking in.

Our eyes met again.

I gave her a faint smile without looking away.

“……!!”

Perhaps she found it offensive, because Kang Min-ju glared at me furiously.

Back then, I had immediately lowered my eyes.

No, I hadn’t even been able to raise my head in the first place.

But I wasn’t the intimidated Ha Tae-woong from back then anymore.

I can see right through that little fox act of yours!

I stared straight at Kang Min-ju, letting the meaning speak through my eyes.

“Hmph!”

She snorted and turned her head away.

Yeah, yeah.

You’re so great.

“Hi.”

“You’re here early today.”

In the meantime, more and more classmates entered the classroom, exchanging greetings.

The atmosphere was completely different from the morning atmosphere in an ordinary middle-class high school.

I’d never heard the usual vulgar language or casual swearing.

Games and otaku obsessions were also outside their sphere of interest.

The norm was to wave, put on a cultured but fake smile, and pretend to be close.

Of course, I was the exception in every possible way.

They wouldn’t even make eye contact with me.

They greeted people from their own circles, took their seats and studied, or chatted with kids on their own level.

In this classroom filled with people who belonged to a special world, I was an isolated island.

“Taewoong, you really lived a good life.”

This was a place that remained a trauma in my memory.

I had buried myself in studying like a madman just to survive.

After entering university, I struggled desperately to forget my high school memories.

I even went to the military as if I were trying to run away from my trauma.

At boot camp, I volunteered for the Special Forces.

I could have been exempted because of the surgery I’d undergone on my skull, but instead, I used a trick to enlist as an active-duty soldier.

I trained both my body and mind through rigorous special combat training.

Thanks to the brutal military life, I was able to escape my trauma to some extent.

And now I was back at the very place where that trauma had begun.

Somehow, I’d returned here.

With a cold smile on my lips, I looked around the classroom with an objective gaze.

The one billion won Grandma had given me.

Without that money, even if I’d returned here, nothing would have changed.

If that were the case, this regression wouldn’t have been an opportunity.

It would have been a disaster.

But now, there were far more things I could try.

Clack.

The closed front door of the classroom opened.

It was 8:20 a.m.

It was still too early for our homeroom teacher to arrive.

“Hi.”

One guy walked in with a short sports haircut and a black backpack slung over his shoulder.

He was around 170 centimeters tall.

Small, but with a lean, agile build.

With his small head and rock-solid-looking skull, that guy was Oh Kwang-jun.

And, just as back then, the arrogant smile around his lips was exactly the same.

That self-assured expression of someone who feared nothing in the world.

A dark aura seemed to radiate from Oh Kwang-jun.

“Welcome, Kwang-jun.”

“Did you enjoy the holiday?”

“Me? Always fine. Hahaha.”

He burst into hearty laughter as he walked toward me.

Then our eyes met.

He gave me a sly, nasty grin.

Haah. That smile.

I remembered it as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.

That demonic bastard who had trapped me inside the darkness of my trauma!

And now we’d met again.

Unlike the classmates who treated me like an invisible man, he had taken a different approach.

He was the only one who had ever gone out of his way to acknowledge me.

Our eyes clashed again.

I didn’t look away.

Throughout all those memories of my past, I had always kept my head lowered, solving problems so I wouldn’t make eye contact with anyone.

But not this morning.

Step.

Oh Kwang-jun came right up to me.

His seat was directly beside mine.

“Lose your damn nerve? You had a nice long break for Children’s Day, right? Hahaha.”

That bastard.

The way he laughed was genuinely evil.

His eyes remained fixed on mine without moving an inch.

I calmly met his gaze head-on.

Under the desk, my hand quietly activated the recording function on my phone.

“Yeah. It was too long……”

Oh Kwang-jun was someone I never thought I’d meet again.

More than a decade had passed since graduation.

“Did Ha Tae-woong take his meds today?”

“Is he crazy?”

The students in the classroom began whispering.

They were shocked by my unexpected reaction.

Officially, there were no bullies or delinquents at Cheonghwa High School.

Instead, there was a rigid caste system.

Among them, Oh Kwang-jun’s family belonged somewhere between the Vaishya and Kshatriya classes.

His father had previously been stationed in the provinces before being transferred to become a chief prosecutor at the Eastern District Prosecutors’ Office.

A chief prosecutor at the Seoul District Prosecutors’ Office—a position where a prosecutor’s influence truly began to carry weight.

Naturally, the son had started walking around with his shoulders held high as well.

He especially enjoyed picking on sa-bae-ja students like me.

He had practically made an art form out of it.

Thud.

He shoved his desk forward with his thigh until he was standing right in front of me.

And then—

“Lower your eyes, you bastard!”

He shouted at me when I continued looking straight at him without flinching.

No matter how strict the school rules were, sa-bae-ja students were always the exception.

I smiled again without looking away.

And then—