Eighteen’s Bed Novel Completed - Chapter 33

In such a situation, there were only a few people who called me Jun. The teachers. Unless they were crazy, teachers wouldn’t do something like this. Or Han Taesan.

Just thinking about Han Taesan makes my head throb with irritation. The person with the round face who transferred at an awkward time and completely messed up both Han Junwoo and my insides. Even though my unrequited love is over, my malice towards Han Taesan remains unchanged. Humans are inherently this petty, and once a firm notion is held, it never changes.

However, there’s no way Han Taesan is the culprit of this act. That coward would never dare to commit such an unsightly act.

Then, the last person who calls me Jun.

“Ah, fck! There’s another cockroach rolling on the floor! This rotting building, this fcking rotten building. F*ck, it’s practically the Amazon.”

Kim Minho, who almost stepped on a cockroach behind me, screamed. The sound of him violently kicking the floor was heard a few times, followed by the low voice I had recalled.

“You really like it.”

“What? Cockroaches? Me?”

“Yeah.”

“This bastard… Is he crazy…”

I turned around. I only shifted my gaze, but only one person entered my sight. Ears that seemed to have no more room for piercings. Unnecessarily long arms and legs. The slightly shortened end of his school uniform. The white wrist is visible between them. And the rosary hanging on his wrist.

Go Yohan casually picked up the shredded cockroach corpse with his bare hands. That much was fine. But he even went so far as to approach the horrified Kim Minho and carefully put the filthy corpse into his pocket.

“You should have what you like.”

And he tapped the bulging part with his hand. Kim Minho screamed even louder than before, grabbing the edge of his pocket and jumping around. Leaving Kim Minho behind, Go Yohan strode with his long legs and approached me.

“…”

Our eyes met. His narrow, cool eyes swept over me. I heard the sound of a chair being pushed back beside me. Go Yohan sat down. But he didn’t say anything to me. I stared into space and thought.

No way. It can’t be. It won’t be.

My clumsy deduction, which began that way, didn’t stop until dismissal time. The only time I paused my deduction was during lunch. I had to think of another excuse to eat separately from Go Yohan. Fortunately, the excuse was just conceived in my head and immediately discarded. Thanks to Go Yohan for eating lunch with me.

Strangely, the day after I mentioned Go Yohan’s grades, Go Yohan sat next to me again, capriciously. Though he didn’t say a single word. Whatever he was sulking about, he seemed to have cheered up compared to yesterday.

My deduction ended during cleaning time. I couldn’t figure out the culprit. However, I had discovered one shocking fact, so I had to rest my head for a moment.

It was when I went down to the incinerator area to dispose of the recycling trash. On my way back, after throwing all the trash into the recycling bin and dusting off my hands, I ran into someone I really didn’t want to meet. Han Taesan, trembling with both hands hidden in his uniform, near the building by the incinerator.

Why is he sitting there like that? That building is the cooking lab, so Han Taesan has no reason to go there. The situation was as if he was waiting for me. Come to think of it, this guy had a history of doing such unpleasant things several times. I almost gagged.

I tried to just pass by. Until Han Taesan suddenly raised his head. I missed the timing to avoid his gaze and bit the inside of my lip slightly. Damn it. There’s no one around, and we made eye contact, wouldn’t it seem rude to openly avoid him? I guess I’ll have to acknowledge him. With such thoughts, I reluctantly spoke to Han Taesan first.

“What are you doing here?”

In my words, Han Taesan’s eyes gently curved. Ah. This is driving me crazy. Really.

“Uh, just getting some air.”

“…Your clothes are thin, get inside.”

“No. Uh, it’s not that cold.”

Don’t lie, you crazy bastard.

“Why are you getting air here of all places? In such a smelly place.”

“Uh, you, you were passing by here…”

“…”

“Ah…”

Han Taesan’s face hardened, turning pale, and he looked down at the floor.

“Sorry…”

“…Well, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

I said that, but from above, I was grimacing at his bowed head.

Why did he specifically wait for me here? Thinking about it, it’s utterly creepy. It’s fine that he cared about me in his own way, not talking to me in crowded places for my reputation. Up to that point, yes, Han Taesan wasn’t that stupid. He wasn’t a bad student, after all. I could think of it that way and view it positively.

But if I found out that he purposely followed my path of movement and sat waiting in a spot I would pass, just to talk to me because he couldn’t help himself, wouldn’t it be natural to get goosebumps? Inside, I was on the verge of getting goosebumps, but I don’t know how much effort I put into not showing it on the outside.

“Just, really, I was just passing by…”

His face, looking up nervously, was sickeningly fake. I quickly relaxed my expression.

“Wait, your face is all chapped.”

His cheeks, still chubby, were red. Something felt familiar, so I narrowed my eyes, and witnessed something strange.

“What’s this?”

I poked around Han Taesan’s lips with my finger. Small blisters were clustered on Han Taesan’s lips. I had definitely seen the shape of these blisters before. This must be…

“Hmph.”

Han Taesan, who had been quietly staring at my fingertips, touched his lips after hearing my words, and his face flushed, then instantly turned pale as if doused with ice. Han Taesan, whose face had turned bluish-green, hurriedly covered his mouth with his palm and pulled his head back. Han Taesan, covering his mouth with both hands, bowed his head deeply. That action turned my suspicion into certainty.

“D-don’t touch.”

“…”

“It’s just, just from being t-tired. I’m fine.”

“Are you, by any chance…”

“I, I’ll go up first!”

Han Taesan hurriedly rushed past my awkwardly pointing hand. I remained standing there, caught in a strange emotion.

As far as I know, those blisters can appear from fatigue, but…

Han Taesan’s actions proved that fatigue wasn’t the only cause. He did something. He definitely did something with Han Junwoo. What? I stood still, staring at the door Han Taesan had entered. My fluctuating emotions calmly settled.

“Well, what do I care about?”

I picked up the empty trash can and headed towards the building. As I climbed the stairs, a pebble was thrown onto the calm surface of the water, creating a ripple. What did they do? I looked up at the hallway above the stairs. Unfamiliar kids were shouting and running around.

I briefly calmed the small ripple on the water’s surface again. That’s enough. Whether they actually performed fellatio or irrumation, it had nothing to do with me.

The deduction was over. There were no particular results. So I chose a new direction. If I don’t know who the culprit is, I’ll just make everyone else my ally. I was proud of myself for not falling into the swamp of worry.

In times like these, it’s good to aim for simple but effective methods.

I decided to treat everyone in my class to the most expensive hamburgers today. The decision was quick, and my heart was light. My steps weren’t heavy either. My mother and father, who saw my grades yesterday, had become more generous towards me.

That day, for some reason, I wanted to tell Go Yohan. Even covering up the annoyance of him ignoring me. ‘Maybe God does exist after all.’ He didn’t answer all my prayers, but didn’t he answer the most desperate one?

His healthy dark skin, deep eyes, soft nose, and lips full of charming sighs had somehow turned into ‘just’ Han Junwoo.

Now his skin honestly wasn’t much different from Kim Minho’s, his deep eyes were just sleepy, and his nose, well, even if his nose was handsome, his lips were just ordinary lips. They were stupid lips that openly smoked in front of people who hated cigarettes. Even then, Han Junwoo’s cigarette smell was truly terrible. How strong must he have smoked for it to smell like that? My eyes must have been rotten.

“Yeah, I wasn’t in my right mind. I really wasn’t.”

The plague I caught at seventeen had finally healed, it seemed. The disease that had choked me like an incurable illness finally succumbed to time. I knew this day would come someday. I’m so happy I could fly to the sky. Yes. I’ll just walk on the path of success from now on. I won’t be ignored by anyone, and I won’t suffer by walking a different path from others.

Even though I arrived at school a little late, my mood didn’t sink. Instead, it was soaring wildly. My freedom. I joyfully opened the back door of the classroom. My joy lasted only until that moment. The moment I saw the familiar back sitting in the very back of the middle row of the classroom, my mood plummeted into the abyss.

This time, Han Junwoo was back.

Thud. Thud. I sat down and tapped my textbook with my pen at a regular pace.

Han Junwoo’s new seat was at the very back of the middle section of the classroom. This time, he didn’t sit next to Han Taesan. Well, whether it was out of consideration for Han Taesan or something else, I didn’t care.

The original occupant, after much hesitation, got permission from the homeroom teacher and sat in an empty seat. He tried to protest and reclaim his spot, but as soon as Han Junwoo muttered a low curse and threw his bag, which was on his desk, against the wall, he quieted down. Is this what they mean by “a rotten perch is still a perch”?

The class naturally looked at Go Yohan. As if asking for something. But Go Yohan only glanced at the situation and then buried his head in his problem book. Still a non-fiction problem book. I clenched my toes tightly at the sight of the squiggly lines drawn in every paragraph.

Lee Seokhyun, Kim Minho, Kim Seokmin, and Park Dong-chul all just glanced like Go Yohan. What did I do in this situation? I pride myself on being the smartest and quickest-witted in this class, but in reality, I was just a pathetic high school student who couldn’t help it either.

In the end, I also kept my mouth shut.

And I did something a little underhanded. Our class originally had 36 students. Out of those, I only ordered 35 hamburgers. This was truly an unavoidable force majeure. How was I supposed to know Han Junwoo would come today?

After the second period, which the homeroom teacher taught, large white bags were placed on almost every desk. Only Han Junwoo’s seat had neither a textbook nor a white bag. I sat down and took out a French fry, putting it in my mouth. It was savory. Then I turned my head, smiled brightly at Han Junwoo, who was sitting among the pigs stuffing themselves with hamburgers and French fries, and said,

“Sorry. I didn’t know you’d suddenly come today. I couldn’t order yours. My bad.”

“Kang Jun. You’re too nice. Why do you have to take care of a gay bastard’s stuff?”

Kim Minho, who was sitting in front of Han Junwoo because Han Junwoo had changed seats, said this with his mouth full of hamburger. Han Junwoo expressionlessly swept his bangs back. I turned my head again and took another French fry, putting it in my mouth. That’s when it happened.

“Gay? F*ck, that’d be you, Kang Jun.”

My jaw, which was chewing the French fry, stopped abruptly. My head snapped towards Han Junwoo.

“What?”

“You’re making it so obvious you’re hooking up with that Go Yohan bastard, but you pretend you’re not, you idiot.”

My blood ran cold. The area around Han Junwoo turned icy. Over thirty pairs of eyes looked at me and Han Junwoo. Gazes poured in like a wave. My mind went blank. My jaw trembled.