1. Crazy monster
Episode 1
“Look over there. It’s Jeong Soo-hyeok.”
Yoon Jae, who was struggling with her workbook, raised her head at the sound of her friends sitting next to her.
The playground was visible through the glass window.
Just looking at the playground in July, just before the school break, was breathtaking.
There he was, in the midst of a group of boys playing basketball, oblivious to the heat, in the gloomy sky with dark clouds signaling the start of the rainy season, in the visible humidity, and in the dry dust rising from the ground because it had not rained yet.
Jeong Soo-hyeok.
Jeong Soo-hyeok, who has been on everyone’s lips since the beginning of the school.
What made Jeong Soo-hyeok more famous than his tall stature and handsome face was that he received perfect scores in every
subject on his first midterm exam right after entering school, and that he was a swimmer who won three freestyle gold medals at the National Sports Festival while in middle school.
Of course, Jeong Soo-hyeok eventually rejected the swimming club’s advances that had been chasing him for a whole year, and he was only occasionally seen boxing in the school gym or hanging out with his friends playing basketball or soccer like he does now.
Of course, even now that he is a second-year student, Jeong Soo-hyeok still ranks first in the entire school and has never missed a perfect score on any of the tests he takes at school. That is what still makes him a famous person.
Top 1% in the national mock exam. Not just the top 1%, but number 1 in the entire national mock exam.
In short, he had it all.
He had everything, to the point where he was unlucky.
At least that’s how Jung Soo-hyeok appeared in Seo Yoon-jae’s eyes.
What an unlucky guy.
“I heard that he lives in a very well designed villa.”
“He is so cute and deadly.”
Yoonjae, who was just watching Jeong Soo hyeok score a goal, turned her eyes back to her workbook.
Next week is her final exam that concludes her first semester.
Jeong Soo-hyeok might have the luxury of playing on the playground, but Yoon Jae doesn’t.
I don’t have the luxury of leisurely playing basketball or watching things like that.
That made me even more annoyed.
It was frustrating that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t beat Jeong Soo-hyeok.
*
“I’m back.”
The reason Yoonjae opens the front door and says a greeting that no one can hear is because Aji comes running after hearing her greeting.
A home where only a 10-year-old cat welcomes me.
“Did you miss your sister?”
Yoonjae, holding a heavy cat in her arms, went up to her room on the second floor.
The house was quiet, as if no one was there.
Yoonjae’s father is a university professor.
He teaches humanities at a fairly prestigious university.
We don’t really interfere with each other’s lives.
He doen’t interfere, but he often meddles.
If you ask what the difference is between interference and meddling, I would say that interference is exerting influence in some way, whereas meddling is making someone feel bad without exerting any influence.
My father is a man who does not interfere, but rather meddles.
He mainly interferes with Yoonjae’s school grades.
‘If you start off the same as everyone else, you’ll end up falling behind. You have to start ahead from the start. Can you get ahead with that score?’
A starting point ahead of others.
By my father’s standards, it’s just to secure first place in the entire school, and within the top 10 in the mock exams nationwide.
That’s what he wants.
I plan on leaving home once I go to college.
I plan to take my cat out of the house and become independent.
My mother passed away in an accident last year.
Of course, my mother was someone I had barely seen for 7 years.
Yoonjae’s parents divorced when she was ten years old.
Her mother remarried, and Yoonjae began living with her father since then. That was the end of it, and there was no further contact until she attended the funeral last year.
The funeral itself felt almost like going to someone else’s funeral, like that of some distant relative I didn’t know.
The only thing her father cares through Yoonjae is his reputation.
Will I get the grades to get into a good university as a top student or not?
In other words, will it tarnish my father’s public reputation or not?
Should he brag to others about the name of the university his daughter went to and that she was the top student admitted? Or should he be ashamed? Yoon-jae also knows that this is the only thing her father cares about.
That was the case until four months ago.
At least until March.
He showed that much interest until the beginning of the first semester of my second year of high school.
But now, Yoonjae knows that even that interest has disappeared.
This is because her father now has another ‘child’ he can brag about even if she doesn’t go to a good university.
That’s Jeong Su-hyeok.
Jeong Soo-hyuk, who became their so-called ‘family’ in March.
Yoon Jae also heard her father talking to her stepmother that he would be able to change from Jeong Soo Hyeok to Seo Soo Hyeok within the next year or so.
But it’s still Jeong Soo-hyeok.
But before I become a third grader, he will probably change to Seo Soo-hyeok.
The reason is that my father and stepmother have not yet filed the legal paperwork.
I heard that due to the complicated circumstances of the adults, they won’t be able to register their marriage until next year.
I don’t know what the complicated circumstances are, but next year, I will become a real, legal family with that unlucky Jeong soo-hyeok.
Yoonjae was ranked first in her entire school throughout middle school.
It was Yoonjae’s pride to not miss that grade.
However, when she entered high school and met Jeong Soo-
hyeok, her pride was shattered.
Jeong Soo-hyeok is a monster.
He did not even make a single mistake.
In all his exams so far, he has never gotten a single question wrong.
‘You must be getting really expensive private tutoring. You look like you have a lot of money.’
‘Have you seen what he’s wearing? Sneakers, I saw those on a luxury website before. They cost hundreds of dollars. Of course he gets one-on-one tutoring, right? I heard there’s something like that. Consulting. He arranges private tutoring for different subjects. I bet he does that too.’
Every time his friends said something like that, Yoonjae laughed inside.
Yoonjae, who lives in the same house, knows Jeong Soo-hyeok the best.
Friends guess what Jeong Soo-hyuk will be like based on his appearance, but the person who knows Jeong Soo-hyeok best is herself.
Jeong Soo-hyeok doesn’t even go to an academy, let alone private tutoring.
He comes home at whatever time he wants and just wander around whenever he wants.
It doesn’t mean that he goes around being a bad person.
He sets aside some time to go to the swimming pool at the cultural center, and hangs out with his basketball club friends and play basketball until he is drenched in sweat before coming back.
I also heard that he performs with his bandmates on the weekends.
Jeong Soo-hyeok’s position was said to be at drums.
He does band, swimming, basketball, and other things and his grades are perfect.
How is that possible?
They call him a monster because he does the impossible.
The Jeong Soo-hyeok that Yoon Jae knows is a monster.
When I see Jeong Soo-hyeok like that, I feel miserable for no reason.
I can’t help but feel ashamed of myself for staying up all night solving workbooks.
Even so, in the end, Jeong Soo-hyeok is always first, and she is always second, behind Jeong Soo-hyeok.
If I hadn’t lived in the same house, if I hadn’t been bound by the petty name of family, if I hadn’t known what kind of person Jeong Soo-hyeok really was, I wouldn’t have experienced myself becoming this pathetic.
She must have consoled herself by saying that it was because Jeong Soo-hyeok worked a little harder than her and that it was because fo that she came in second.
Even if you weren’t the top student in the entire school, getting second place was a great achievement, and even if you weren’t in the top 10 in the mock exams, getting in the top 20 was really great. You could have smiled and been satisfied with getting 20th place among students in the same grade nationwide.
If only I didn’t know Jeong Soo-hyeok.
I really wish I hadn’t known about his daily life.
Yeah, if I hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have hated Jeong Soo-hyeok this much.
If I think about it, then I know that Jeongsuhyeok didn’t do anything wrong to me.
This irritation and hatred is not directed at Jeong Soo-hyeok, but at myself.
I should hate myself for not being able to overcome this wall of limitations, and I should be annoyed with myself, but this feeling that I can’t control whenever I see Jeong Soo-hyeok is probably jealousy.
Jealousy towards genius.
“Ajiya, I have exams starting next week so I won’t be able to hang out with you. Sorry.”
Yoonjae chuckled as she threw her bag on the bed and stuffed a snack she took out of the desk drawer into Aji’s mouth.
Aji is a cat that I picked up from an alley 10 years ago.
I don’t know what breed it is.
It’s just a cat with a common pattern.
Even 10 years old is just a rough estimate of its age.
I heard a whining sound under my parked car on a rainy day, looked inside, and there was a baby there.
I took Aji, who had been starving for several days and was crying as if she was dying, straight to the hospital to get her injured leg treated and brought her home.
At that time, it was my mother who took care of me together with Aji.
Mom, Aji, and myself. The three of them lived like a family, but Mom was the first to leave, and Aji was the only one left for Yoonjae.
My father doesn’t like cats.
Yoonjae knows that he hates having Aji’s hair on his suit so much that his expression hardens when it gets near him.
