Chapter 6:

Sharing Luck

My second year of high school.

There was a girl named Woo Do-yeon in my class.

Do-yeon was striking. She had attended a different middle school than mine, but her reputation preceded her so strongly that almost everyone in my neighborhood knew who she was. Some boys had even signed up for her private academy just to catch a glimpse of her.

“I’m in the same class as Woo Do-yeon.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yeah. Insanely pretty.”

Do-yeon’s family was wealthy, too. Her father—impeccably groomed, behind the wheel of a high-end luxury sedan—frequently dropped her off right in front of the school gates. Her uniform and shoes were always pristine, her school supplies brand new.

She excelled academically, making her an easy favorite among the faculty.

“Shall Do-yeon read the next passage? My, your pronunciation is marvelous. You lived in New Zealand as a child, right?”

“Ah, Do-yeon. Go ahead and gather the assignment sheets for the class.”

An elderly male geography teacher openly favored her, constantly assigning her tasks while entirely bypassing the class president.

The boys constantly looked for excuses to talk to her, while a segment of the girls watched her with growing bitterness.

That quiet resentment reached a boiling point when the boys circulated a ranking of the girls in our grade based on appearance—and Do-yeon took first place.

“Woo Do-yeon is first and Han Ji-soo is second? No way.”

“Is Do-yeon really all that? I don’t even see what’s so special.”

Why direct your anger at the target instead of calling out the boys for objectifying their classmates?

If I had to offer an excuse for them, it was simply the era. We were in the past, and their mindsets hadn’t been updated yet.

“I think Ji-soo is way prettier.”

“Me too. Ji-soo has that genuine, elegant beauty. Woo Do-yeon is… honestly, a bit much.”

“I have something to say, but I’d better hold my tongue~”

“Do-yeon’s family has money. What if she sues?”

It was pure, unadulterated jealousy. Do-yeon was pretty, smart, rich, and popular.

The same applied to Ji-soo, but in order to drag Do-yeon down, the girls needed Ji-soo to serve as their benchmark of comparison.

Not everyone was blinded by envy, of course. For most, it might have ended as idle gossip behind her back.

The real problem was Do-yeon’s personality. She was icy.

“Do-yeon, are those S-N-L shoes? They’re so pretty. Can I try them on just once?”

“No.”

“Huh?”

“I said no. If you want to wear them, buy your own.”

“…So rude! It’s not like I’m a beggar.”

“Pfft… why would you ask to wear someone else’s shoes anyway?”

“Ugh, I was just asking!”

When Do-yeon clashed with the girls, the boys who had initially taken her side turned on her the moment she treated them with the exact same coldness.

“Ungrateful.”

“She needs a reality check.”

Just as a half the student body was sharpening their knives, the rumor broke.

“Hey, did you hear? The reason Woo Do-yeon has no friends is because back in middle school, she got caught going to Neverland alone with her friend’s boyfriend.”

“Are you serious?”

“Wow. I knew it. She seemed obsessed with guys.”

“Isn’t she still like that? Playing innocent while stringing the guys along……”

What began as a claim about seducing a friend’s boyfriend quickly snowballed into outrageous fiction.

Supposedly, when a boy in her class went to her house for a group project during freshman year, Do-yeon was lying on her bed, patting the mattress next to her.

Supposedly, she was secretly sleeping with the history teacher—a man in his early thirties who had gotten married just last year.

Supposedly, someone spotted her screaming at him in the middle of a crowded street in Yeouido: “When are you finally getting a divorce?!”

I knew it was total nonsense. But when you’re young, people will believe anything if it satisfies their malice.

“At this rate, didn’t Do-yeon seduce the geography teacher first?”

“Wait, are the geography teacher and the history teacher fighting over her?”

“Ugh, stop. That’s disgusting.”

From that point on, Do-yeon became public enemy number one.

Whether she was within earshot or not—often deliberately so—people insulted, mocked, and sneered at her.

Every time the geography teacher favored her, or the oblivious history teacher called her name, a heavy, suffocating silence settled over the classroom.

So, how did it end?

Do-yeon, who had endured every taunt with apparent indifference, opened a classroom window one afternoon and jumped.

Only after she was gone did the same kids who destroyed her write tearful notes saying, “We miss our pretty Do-yeon,” piling them high on her empty desk.

Do-yeon never came back.

And now, here we were again.

“Hey, Woo Do-yeon. Why don’t you share your secret? Your secret to seducing older men. Teach me how to work the geography teacher so I can get the exam questions.”

“Didn’t someone say she was in the nurse’s office all morning? She’s sick, but she still crawled out to eat?”

“Is she really sick, or was she on a date with him? That’s why she’s hungry now.”

“Gross!”

“What are you thinking? Are you a pervert?”

“Pfft!”

“Hey, Woo Do-yeon! Can’t you hear me? Are you deaf?”

“Hey! Hey!”

In my previous life, I had turned a blind eye.

My family was struggling financially, my grades were constantly slipping against kids backed by expensive tutors, and I was consumed by a hopeless crush on Seo Jae-gyeom. My own life was a mess.

And frankly, I was terrified.

I didn’t want to step up for someone who wasn’t even my friend, only to become the next target.

Seeing her suffer made me uncomfortable, but I brushed it off the moment I turned away. When people made jokes at her expense, I had probably even laughed along to fit in.

But having lived to twenty-nine once before, I finally understood.

The things that felt like the absolute center of the universe back in high school? Looking back, they were completely meaningless.

Two years into college, you can live a perfectly fine life without ever speaking to a single high school classmate again. Who you were back then doesn’t matter unless you choose to bring it up.

It was all trivial.

And yet, someone had died because of that triviality.

“Wow, look at her pretending not to notice even after getting hit by a walnut pastry.”

“Hey, throw some kimchi at her!”

“Ugh, then I’d have to touch it with my hands.”

“Just pick it up with your chopsticks and flick it!”

“Genius!”

Having returned to the past, I was happier than ever. But this second chance wasn’t something I had earned through merit.

The regressor could just as easily have been Woo Do-yeon or Jung Eun-sung. My pulling the winning ticket was a matter of pure luck.

I was simply luckier than Do-yeon.

If I was allowed to enjoy a second chance while she was left to suffer the exact same fate, the world would be an intolerably ugly place.

So I decided to do what Do-yeon undoubtedly would have done for herself if she were the one who had come back.

> Q. Didn’t you say you were going to focus strictly on studying?

> A. I was going to…… I really was.

>

But I’m an adult now. How could I sleep peacefully knowing what was happening right in front of me? My conscience wouldn’t allow it.

And sleep deprivation ruins your study efficiency anyway.

Besides, academic success requires a proper study environment. How can anyone focus when the classroom is being used as a staging ground for psychological warfare?

Right. Since I stumbled into this luck, I might as well share a bit of it. It’s not like it wears out.

“Ji-soo.”

I turned to Ji-soo, who stood beside me holding her meal tray with a anxious look.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t eat with you today. There’s an empty seat next to Seo Jae-gyeom over there—go sit with him for today.”

No need to let the crossfire hit you.

“I’m really sorry. I’ll buy you chocolate milk after math class, okay?”

Without waiting for her reply, I turned and walked straight toward Do-yeon’s table.

Clack.

The sound of my tray hitting the table reverberated sharply through the cafeteria.

The group at the adjacent table—who had been giggling while pinching kimchi between their chopsticks—instantly fell silent.

Acting as if nothing were out of the ordinary, I pulled out the chair and sat directly across from Do-yeon.

Do-yeon, who had been silently forcing down her food, slowly lifted her gaze.

“Kang Da-hye, what do you think you’re doing?”

Song Yeo-reum, sitting at the neighboring table with a red bean butter pastry poised in her hand, glared at me.

For the record, Yeo-reum was one of the few classmates whose face I still remembered clearly.

She had attended my middle school and was a notorious bully even back then.

The money she systematically extorted from other kids—“Got a dollar?” “Got ten dollars?” “How much do you have on you? No cash? Go pull it out from the ATM”—easily added up to over a million won.

In eighth grade, when I told her I didn’t have any money, she hit my skirt pocket with her knuckle just to check if she could hear the rustle of banknotes.

She had once dragged a friend of mine into a cleaning closet and beaten her simply because she got accepted into a prestigious language high school. She had even tried to force me to help her cheat during an English exam.

Back then, I used to be terrified of you.

I looked at her now: her hair styled using a straightener plugged into the bathroom hand-dryer outlet, her uniform skirt rolled up as high as it would go.

“Hey, Kang Da-hye. I asked what the hell you’re doing.”

“…Sharing my luck.”

“What?”

“Though for you, it might feel more like bad luck.”

“What kind of nonsense—Eek!”

The red bean butter pastry I snatched and threw flew across the gap and landed with a sharp plop right into Yeo-reum’s soup bowl.

Spicy broth exploded outward, drenching her oversized hoodie. Yeo-reum shrieked in horror.

I turned back to Do-yeon, whose eyes were wide with shock, and offered her a ca

lm, easy smile.

Since this stroke of luck made me happier than ever, it was only fair to share it with the rest of them.